1950s Housewife Meets 2014

Around Mother's Day I always have the urge to come to terms with how I'm feeling as a mother. Not really a mother report card necessarily, but more like, "let's reflect on what it all means" kind of thing. What it all means to me, at least. It's surprisingly hard to do. Other peoples' experiences with motherhood sometimes make more sense than my own. It's kind of confusing. But here goes....

I stayed away from Facebook and Instagram on Mother's Day. It was a gift to myself in the form of, "you can feel the way you want on Mother's Day....you don't have to internalize anyone else's experience." And so I did. And I really loved it. I got to go for a run (a sunny run, even), my husband made me an amazing bacon, tomato, green pepper, cheddar cheese omelet, my kids gave me hugs and kisses on demand, and I was hand-delivered a card signed by all three of my loves. In the words of The Onion, Mother's Day was successfully completed by mid-morning. It was awesome.

Then we went to church. I heard some of the talks and not some of the others. (Noah always melts down with about 15 minutes or more to go.) I enjoyed what I heard, but can't remember any of it now. We had a delightful dinner at a friend's house, and I really enjoyed that. It was a day of basically zero cooking, which, in a mom's life means that she almost really did get the day off! Good enough for me! I'll take it.

And then the next day I went on Facebook....and pretty much saw what everyone posted. And it was okay. The day had passed and I was ready to do some reading about other peoples' thoughts about a day that comes but once a year for who-knows-why (it's on my to-Wikipedia list) and a day which I simultaneously like and dislike.

I read C Jane's post about 99% self-care and 1% pure sacrifice. That is so true for me. I knew what Natalie Holbrook meant when she wrote about not expecting everyone to be fulfilled by the same thing. Hear, hear! I laughed out loud over fMh's Hashtag Hijinks: #itwasmom post because ohhhhhh the things I could contribute to that hashtag. I really liked Alison Faulkner's take on the strangeness of how we can all be doing the same thing but take away different things from it. Seriously, it's pretty bizarre.

Here are my own thoughts about my current experience...

I think a lot about Betty Draper. If I was put in a time machine and launched back to 1950, I think my life would look very much the same now as it did then (save for the microwave and the Totino's Pizza Rolls, which, by the way, where have those been all my life? I had eight for lunch the other day and I did not regret it.) If I'm a feminist, you'd never know it, because I could seriously be dropped right through the roof of Betty Draper's house, land next to her, tie on my ruffly apron (yes, I have a ruffly apron that features pink paisley and pink flowers, among other colors) and resume washing dishes while she lit up a cigarette. I would not have coiffed hair or a starched dress, but the rest of my life would parallel hers a lot.

My husband and I have a split-down-the-middle division of labor. And it works great for us. I do all the housework, all of the childcare (except on weekends when we both do it), cook all of the meals, and run all of the errands. He brings home the paycheck, manages the budget, pays the bills. Boom and boom. Life: taken care of. Very traditional, very 1950s, very....2014?

Except now I have choices, which Betty Draper didn't have. Even though I'm in a very traditional family unit in every sense, I always know I have the option not to be. I would be exactly like Betty Draper -- sour-faced, disgruntled, resentful, loveless, frustrated -- if I knew I HAD to do all of this. If I had zero other options as a woman, I would have the feelings of a cardboard cutout human. Thanks to feminists of yore, I am the recipient of so many happy thoughts during my housewife life because I know the rest of the world can value me beyond my womb. I can be and do a lot of different things and that seriously rocks. I do not take that for granted.

While I'm vacuuming, I think, "I could be a pediatrician" because we were just at my kid's pediatrician and she was a woman and she was great and I could do that, too, if I really, really, really, really wanted to (med school would be real commitment, so, we need a lot of "reallys" in that sentence). While I'm doing the dishes, I think, "I could be Renee Montagne" because I was just listening to NPR and she's a woman and I've been told once I have a great voice for radio. While I'm putting out my kids' lunches on the table, I think, "I could be The Pioneer Woman" because I was just checking her blog and she has a kind of ridiculous humor and I like that and she's a woman with a down home folksy style and I'm a woman who can channel my inner redneck any ol' time I really need to. (That was a terrible run-on sentence that would so fly in the blogging world.) While I'm looking out my front window at my neighbor's maid service that comes once a week, I think, "Psssshhhh, I could be a Merry Maid" because that's what I do anyway, after all. It's just one aspect of my job and I'd like to see them try to do more than just cleaning all day every day. Pssshhhh. (This is me aspiring to something higher, just like I learned to do it Mia Maids, which is a leeeeetle different than Merry Maids.) While I'm folding laundry I think, "I could write the great American novel, give that little Ernest Hemingway a run for his money," because maybe I don't like the way he treats the women in his life and what better way to honor them (Hi Hadley!) than to write a little something from a female perspective. Huh? I don't know where I'm going with this, but I'm just trying to point out that it is an invaluable blessing to me to be able to carry out my daily tasks as a mother and as a housewife knowing that I actually have the opportunities laid before me to do just about anything else I'd like to do if I decided one day that I did not indeed want to be a full-time mother and housewife. It's reminded me of some quote by Marjorie Hinckley that I swear was in her Glimpses book, but I can't find anything online...but I'm pretty sure she said something like, "Don't major in Home Ec because you need something way more interesting and intellectual to occupy your mind while you are folding laundry." Amen to that, girlfriend. Along those same lines, I did find this quote from her: "Develop some intellectual curiosity. If you have it, you will never be bored. If you haven't, cultivate it, hold fast to it. Never let it go. To the intellectually curious, the world will always be full of magic, full of wonder. You will be interesting to your friends, to your spouse, and a joy to your children. You will be alive to all the wonderful possibilities of this world." Obviously. Yeah.

So while I opened this blog post alluding to some ruminations on motherhood....it kind of turned into a conversation about homemaking....which is interesting because I guess that's kind of what is happening right now due to the ages and stages of my children. They are five and almost three and they can be quite self-sufficient in a lot of ways which has freed me up to stay on top of housework and meals. Apart from breaking up fights, changing the occasional diaper, turning on the TV, getting them food, reading them a story, and taking them outside or in the car, the rest of my work is house-related. So cheers to being a housewife in this great age, and Betty Draper, I salute you.