Showing

I just got off the phone with my educational loans people, asking for a forbearance. Finally. I've been nervous about starting this, because I'm not sure that I want to let go of my 3-year grace period just yet. I'm a big hoarder - you should see my basement. I've got enough canned tomatoes, soup, pasta and tonic water to survive if the big one hits and we somehow manage to live through it. We might be unable to use electricity or plumbing, but if we've got a can opener and maybe some gin, we're in great shape.

Anyway, the payments are getting to be too much for our single-income family, so it's the right thing to do now. I also cancelled our New York Times subscription today, because it's very expensive and generally serves only as extra weight in our recycle bin at the end of the week. I loved the idea of getting the NY Times every weekend - curling up with a cup of coffee and the Magazine or the Book Review, hours and hours of blissful quiet and peace stretched before me, but come on. Are you kidding me? That was in another life, and hopefully in a life somewhere far in the future, when there are no children running around here on a Sunday morning trying to stick their fingers in light sockets and screaming, "Cinderella, on! Cinderella, on!" Good-bye, highbrow intellectual me. Hello, Survival Mama. Stained, tattered Mama who now showers every other OTHER day and uses moisturizer and deodorant as an afterthought.

I realized the other day, fighting the crowds at an outlet mall to buy my daughter some new fall clothes at Carter's, that I am far more concerned with what she is wearing and the state of HER clothes than with my own. Before I had kids, when I would dream about life with kids, I would always picture myself as one of those very together mommies, with nary a wrinkle or a stain on my tailored wool pants and silk blouse, and though it would be a challenge sometimes, I would always wear at least just a little bit of makeup to brighten up my face. Fast-forward to reality: most days I hang around in my bathrobe, mascara smudged under my eyes from last night, until an hour in the day I prefer not to mention, hoping for a window of opportunity in which to bathe myself before putting on a new pair of underwear. My other issue with getting dressed these days is my in-between waistline. My regular pants don't quite fit me anymore, but maternity pants look ridiculous - like I'm trying to "look" pregnant. I almost forgot about this schleppy-sloppy time of pregnancy, where mostly you just look like you haven't been taking care of yourself. It doesn't help that I reach for the same old black yoga pants almost every single day, just as soon as I step out of my bathrobe.

What's been a trip is that my tummy is really sticking out much sooner this time. I had convinced myself that I was really just behind on my situps, and I really needed to start drinking my coffee without two heaping teaspoons of sugar and a hefty pour of half and half each morning, but some good friends plus a random old woman in my workout class at the Y pointed out to me that indeed, I was "showing" (the old lady said it was either that or I was just really putting on the pounds. I told her she was very lucky that I was pregnant, or I would have had to strangle her with a resistance band). Note to reader: Just because you are old and/or have been around the block a time or two, that does not give you the right to approach random people and ask, "Are you pregnant?" What the hell is wrong with you! I swear it seems sometimes like people never had a mother - at least a mother that taught them anything about how to act.

The other thing that people have said to me so far this time that has been annoying is, "Another one? Already?" As if I have not waited the requisite time of _____ (insert random time period here) and have, most irresponsibly, disrupted some code of child-spacing. My daughter is almost 20 months now. That means that when this baby is born, she will be almost 27 months old. It's not like I got pregnant right away, and the second one will be born before the first one can even walk! Good Lord. It's hard not to get freaked out by what people say, though, especially since there are no certainties around the whole child-bearing/child-rearing thing. Surely if I lived in another community, people would be saying, "Well, what took you so long?" I have to remember that what my husband and I are doing is right for us, and stake my confidence on that.

That brings me to something that is constantly on my mind; the whole thing about staying at home and not being out there working, using my law degree to the greatest extent possible. I used to really worry about it, most of all because when our daughter was born, the amount of time I was going to take "off" kept changing the older she got - my husband and I hadn't really hammered it out as much as we should have. And money kept getting tighter and tighter (it still is). But the more I stayed home with her, the more I knew that this was what I should be doing - what made me the happiest. I also knew that going to work and being away from her was going to make me very, very sad. I do not know a single other woman who was an attorney and had a baby and now stays home full-time. That is a bit disconcerting - it makes me feel sometimes as if I am not following the "right" track for a female attorney, and that somehow I will never find my way back on again. But I have faith that this experience, while taking me out of legal practice for a while, will make me an even better attorney - more well-rounded, perhaps - and one who is not bitter for having "missed out" on these formative years. My hope is that I will be more than ready to go back to work when the time comes. Fresh and optimistic. Certainly, I want my children to see me take my education and use it to make a difference out there in the world, and contribute to the household income to boot. I also want them to see that I am committed to them, and that nothing is more important than the time I got to spend with them when they were small.

Life is much less complicated these days for me. It is also much less glamorous, a little softer around the edges, a lot more raw. I talk about poop now with all kinds of people and don't even give it a second thought. I sing "B-I-N-G-O" right out loud with my daughter and show her my bellybutton when she shows me hers - I don't care who's around. It is very rare that I get flustered or embarrassed around other people now, or that I fail to say what I really think, without my voice shaking so much. I don't get bogged down, stressed out by what I think people are thinking of me or what they actually mean by what they say. I live rich in the knowledge that nothing else really matters, when it comes right down to it. Nothing but my family. I will work hard to support and promote that, and the rest is just bullshit. I would want to hire someone like me.