What do you do?

Every once in a while I get thrown out of my comfort zone a bit.  And I think that is a good thing, because it usually makes me think.  When I think about the people in my social circles, it seems to me that there is a lot of diversity--people from different places, backgrounds, ethnicities, education levels, political and religious views, etc.  But I guess there is one thing that most of us have in common--apparently I stick close to other stay-at-home moms with multiple children.

We went to Ryan's work Christmas party yesterday afternoon.  His entire team was there with their families. Families including a few wives, a few girlfriends and a few toddlers.  And us...with our entourage.  No big deal.  We all sat around chatting and snacking and getting to know each other.  At two different points in the conversation two of the other women there asked me the same question: "What do you do?"  It struck me as the strangest question ever.  In fact I don't think anyone has ever asked me that before.  I looked over at my FOUR children sitting there eating and wanted to say, "What do you THINK I do?!"  Instead I just sort of mumbled, "Oh, I just stay home..." and sort of gestured towards my kids.

The thing is, I'm not ashamed of being a stay-at-home mom.  I think it is incredibly important and I really wouldn't even consider leaving my kids in the care of anyone else so that I could work outside the home.  I have occasionally had jobs that took me outside the home in the evenings, but as soon as I felt like those were interfering with our family life, I quit.  To me, this is the most important thing I could be doing.

But I still felt like I wanted to defend myself to these other women (who were also mothers.)  I wanted to say, "But I have a college degree!  I am educated!  I am smart!  I am qualified to work!  I promise! I'm not stupid!"  I don't think that these women were judging me--just trying to get to know me and assuming that everyone works, I guess.  And I guess a lot of mothers do.  Frankly, I can't imagine it!  Being a mom is hard enough without adding the stress of a full time job to it!  I take my hat off to those women who can pull it off.

Anyway, it was just an interesting moment in my life where I felt completely in the minority.  It made me think about how other people live and think about how we choose to live.  This is really the only way I ever considered doing it.  As soon as I got pregnant with Isaac, it was understood that I would stay home with our children.  I am glad that we are able to live this way--we don't live extravagantly and we have to be frugal, but it's worth it to us.  I need to be better prepared next time someone asks me what I do, though.  What do I do?  I get up at 5 am every day to have a moment to myself before I start cleaning, comforting, teaching, baking, transporting, helping, instructing, cooking, picking up...MOTHERING.