Archive for December 17th, 2008

This morning, the thermometer was dipping very low – 27 degrees reading out on the rear-view mirror of the Suburban, as we left at 7:10 a.m. of a Monday morning workday, and I thought how different it is when you work a day job.

But I wasn’t alone, I had the kids with me, and I was taking them to my mother, who would drvie them to their schools as I arrived at 7:40 a.m. to work as a substitute teacher.

Working days is something I haven’t done, really, for about 20 years. It was never my first choice, because I always had a complex about “being there” for my kids. However, as my youngest went to school this fall, suddenly there was no one to “be there” for, and so I decided to earn some much-needed extra money.

Part of the reason I resisted working is that I enjoyed being at home with small children. But part of it was because I didn’t want to be like my mother, who I thought of, as a child, as being the ultimate career woman, a cold-hearted sort who couldn’t care less what happened to her kids, just as long as they had nice clothes. Perhaps that wasn’t fair, (now with my own teenagers I’m learning that kids don’t always understand their parents particularly well) but the fear of being like her was enough to scare my away from serious consideration of “really working” for many years.

I’ve been a freelance writer, so I wasn’t truly malingering, I promise. But making the decision to go to work outside the house was hard. I was helped in the decision by the assurances of my mother that she could come to my aid. Retired, and living close by, she was in a position to do driving and light after-school childcare and I was desperate for any and all help. I still worried, however, that she was relishing this moment of finally showing me she was right, as I came over to her side – the working outside the home side – of the fence.

I’ve been turning this over in my head for weeks, as I am this morning when I bring them to her. She’s parked her car on the street to wait for them, and as we arrive, she jumps out. The one-time cold hearted career woman, who once wore a perfect red worsted suit, is now wearing jeans and a white Polartec jacket with matching gloves, and in the back of the Explorer she has a cat carrier with a cat in it on the way to the vet. The kids pile into the car, with joyful shouts of “Hi Grandma,” as she tries to wrestle her Border Collie, who’s coming along for the ride, into the cargo area. The dog has other ideas, however and finally Mom surrenders, and allows her to jump into the back seat right on top of the kids, who are delighted. She closes the car door and I reflect: she’s got a cat, a dog and four grandchildren in there. And she’s having fun! She smiles as she waves goodbye and I drive off. It’s like, the life I was living all those years, it comes naturally to her. She can do it! She even wants to!

Could it be, I think to myself, that all that nurturing energy I just saw was in there all the time, but never showed itself in the mother of my youth because it was hidden behind the same things that now dominate my life, worries about marriage, money, extended family, and that the true womanly nurturer is just coming into top form? Maybe so. Whatever the truth of the situation, my mom has become someone who’s eminently “there” for her grandkids and that’s a reason to rejoice. Not just for me, who’s struggling to learn how to work days, and the kids, who need a ride to school, but her dog and cat as well.