Choosing Home
by Daria Sockey in Homemaking on Monday, January 17, 2011 6:00 AM
Last week I turned in my letter of resignation.
I’m going home.
A little over three years ago, economic necessity forced me to find full time work outside the home after years of the large family/homeschooling lifestyle. I figured I could handle it: only four kids at home and three of those in high school or college. They certainly didn’t need me at home most of the day. And I could phone in food prep directions during my commute home so that dinner would be at least partly prepared when I arrived.
It was fun at first: buying a business wardrobe, meeting new people, becoming familiar with the customs, jargon, and and humor that is unique to the office environment. My salary was not huge, but along with good health insurance benefits, it really helped us to make ends meet. All in all I was pretty pleased with myself. I began imagining that this job might turn into a career, with raises and advancement to higher positions in the field.
Silly girl.
Before the end of the first year, I came to the sad conclusion that I am not one of those working moms who can juggle home and career. The house was a mess, I was fixing really stupid meals. I didn’t have the energy at the end of the day to be as concerned, as proactive, or as playful with the kids or my husband. I was just plain tired. Still am. All sorts of things are being left undone, or are being done very badly.
Oh for the days of homeschooling while nursing a baby and potty training a toddler! Those were good times, but until then I didn’t realize just how good.
Thanks be to God, things have come together so that I ‘ll be able to leave the job behind in another month. There’s still the matter of buying our own health insurance, but it looks like we’ll manage.
Right now, I’m writing a fantasy list of all the things I’m going to do with those wonderful 8 hours a day that I’ve been missing for three years.
Let’s see ... catch a couple of daily Masses each week, plan menus, find inexpensive low fat recipes that actually taste good, do lots more writing, learn all the features of my digital camera, walk daily, use some of my pristine collection of exercise videos, work with my autistic kid more consistently on speech and language activities, plant a garden, volunteer more at church, get back into community theater, learn to play violin. And clean the house during the week so that Saturdays will be devoted to something more interesting.
There’s just a little apprehension that I’ll fall back into the slapdash disorganization of my former stay-at-home days, and won’t accomplish half of my grand schemes. And this time there won’t be a day job to blame for my lack of success.
The fact is, my weekdays for the last twenty five years have been devoted either to homeschooling or to the office. I don’t know what it will really be like to call my days my own.
What do you think, at-home moms whose kids are in school during the day?
Does my list of activities seem unrealistic? Do your daytime hours yield a harvest of accomplishment for you? Or does reality interfere in ways that haven’t yet occurred to me?
—Senior writer Daria Sockey is an at-home mom in Pennsylvania.
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