Home on the Range: A Day in the Life...

Since last week's post, I have been doing a little self-assessing and mulling-over. The self-assessment centered around the question, “How am I able to fall behind in the very activity I would prefer to lose myself in?” The mulling-over focused on how to incorporate some measurable quilting segments into my weekly schedule and stick with it. I know people who work for The Man full-time, and they put in more time behind the needle than I do.

I started out looking for my lost shaker of lint, and ended up in a process of awareness that would bring Freud to his knees. I am ever grateful to my studies and years as a counselor, as those skills frequently help me untangle some of life's mysteries. I chose to go the route of cognitive behavioral therapy, a nod to Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck, and reality therapy, from the halls of William Glasser. I began to peel back the layers of the onion, looking for my inner child. Ah, I love all that counseling mumbo-jumbo. It helps normalize my situation.

My problem stems from the perception of the value of work; the Christian work ethic, my friend Ann calls it. I learned about it as the Puritan work ethic in my American history classes, with its emphasis on the value of being a useful and contributing member of society. Value was tied to the concept of work within the community. The work ethic system is what kept the industrial age moving along. It is the stick in the corporate world, while advancement, recognition, and an increasing paycheck are the carrot.

Somewhere along the line, the work itself wasn't valued, but work that was connected to a paycheck was. As I was coming of age, what was once known as “women's work” was scorned, basically because the salary stank and there were no benefits. The working world of the traditional man was what we valued. Instead of adding choices, which must have been the original intent, the women's movement of the 60's and 70's reduced them by at least two; being a wife and a mother was no longer worthy. Bringing home the bacon and frying it up in the pan was the way to go. We wanted it all.

When Hubba and I started reproducing, we decided I'd stay home with the critters. I could always go pick up some kind of meaningful work with a paycheck once they were in school, and get myself back on a career path. Besides, from what I was led to believe, being a SAHM would be a nice break from teaching all day, and then spending my evenings in graduate classes or advising the school newspaper staff. My school days usually started around 6:30 a.m., and if I was home by 6:30 p.m., it was a short day for me. As usual, we make all decisions with incomplete data. The stay-at-home route wasn't the respite of my preconceived notion. The women's movement had lied.

I was swamped! I worked days and nights, and I didn't get lunch and dinner off, either. Once we got The Dot under control, we went ahead and had T-man, and it started all over again. There were days I envied those women who could drop off the progeny for the day and not have to quad-task 1.) first aid, 2.) kitchen cleanliness, 3.) crying jags (and sometimes it was even the kids), and 4.) relationship skills between siblings, all on four hours of sleep. I always did the night shift, because Hubba had the job, and I could "rest" during the day. Ri-i-ight.

I bumped into a former teaching cohort who asked me, “Are you working now?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Her face brightened. “Really? Where?”

“I'm at home.”

“Oh, I meant, do you have a job?”

Sheesh. Women's movement, schwomen's movement.

Another acquaintance asked why I wasn't teaching anymore. “You're just wasting your education!” she scolded.

Hmmm. Let's evaluate that situation. At the time, the local daycare center had been running employment ads for child care workers, the only requirement then being a GED. That doesn't mean people with GEDs aren't fabulous with children, but the stated educational requirement was a GED. So, if we are on the subject of me wasting my education, it would follow that I would leave my children with someone with a GED, go off to a teaching job, and let other people's children have the benefit of my education. The trip from Point A to Point B did not seem all that circuitous to me. I decided to waste my education on my children.

There I was. I found myself working crappy hours, pouring my heart into work that needed a diaper change every thirty minutes, and my peers were dissing me because I didn't have a job.

I went to the church basement. The ladies down there were confused by the new system, too. A generation before, they had married, started their families, and when the kids got in school, they took over from the older ladies who served the funerals, polished the brass, and were officers in their circles. Now the younger women were at work, even before the kids started school. I filled in as best as I could, but they were adapting quickly, and soon figured out how to cover the loss. It was a Catch 22 for me there, too. They no longer provided child care for circle, because there weren't enough SAHMs with kids to make it worth the effort. I couldn't go.

The stay-at-home choice is a lifestyle choice, and the division of labor became obvious: Hubba brought in the paycheck, paid the bills, and mowed the lawn, and I did the rest. I am not bemoaning this situation, mind you. I saw my status as bringing a great deal of value to our family. I could get the homemaking tasks out of the way, and when we had time to be together, we could do something entertaining and educational. I didn't discover a glitch in the system until the first day I started back to graduate school for mental health counseling, and the sitter came in.

“Oh, yeah. Erica, can you show the kids how to make their beds? I never did get around to that.” It hadn't occurred to me that doing chores was “being together”, too, and arguing about who would do what was as useful as arguing about politics and religion over dinner.

I did the counseling career for a few years and loved it, but situations change and that came to an end. I didn't make any substantial money in my counseling practice, but I was passionate and confident about the services we provided, and in our ability to perform them well. The community saw me as “working”, and the kids could say their mom “had a job”.

In reality, though, the only thing that changed for my family was -- nothing! I still did the laundry, kept the house in order, and did all the shopping. We ate out more, which I hated, but something had to give. I helped with homework, ran the kids to practices and rehearsals, and made the weekly trip to La Crosse for The Dot's 5-hour dance-class marathon. I'm not trying to pat myself on the back. It's another clue as to how I got where I am today. I did a lot of meaningful work, I contributed to my family and community in a positive way, and I felt valued.

Then the little traitors both graduated from high school and went off to college. I figured the only thing I could do to bring value to them now was to find a job and make money for their expenses. I needed to go to work. I tried a couple of more-than-full-time jobs and wound up hating my life. By then I figured it's not work unless you hate it. Otherwise, they'd call it fun! The worst part was that I didn't believe I brought anything significant to the plus column, and it was depleting me as a person. I applied for different jobs, as I had off and on over the years, and got nowhere with that. Clearly my skills were not needed in the work world. That is gratifying, she said sarcastically. It didn't make me want to rush right out and apply again.

I quit the last job that was heading nowhere in January. When I hung up the phone that day, I walked straight to my quilting basket and picked up the piece that I had put down two-and-a-half years earlier. As I shook it out, the dust literally flew into the air, but that wasn't what caused the tear in my eye. That quilt and I sat down in a chair, and we began to think. As I stitched, the quilt unwound the coils in my befuddled mind. If the only way I had come to see myself as a valued member of my community was by the size of my paycheck, I had somehow bought into a system that I had steadfastly rejected for decades. When did that happen? No wonder I was perplexed.

Awareness, as they say, is the first step. It didn't hit me until just this week why I'm not constantly quilting, even though I'm not “working” and really do have some time to devote to it. Instead, I have been running around trying to justify my existence since last January. If quilting is fun, I shouldn't be doing it. I should be working.

The truth of the matter is, I am not going to find a job that will make any significant financial impact for the better on our lives at 406 Center Avenue. If one exists within driving distance, the chances are I'm not in line for it. Yet, I am lucky enough to have been prepared to do other kinds of work, to find other ways to bring value to my community, and I am ecstatic that I have the privilege.

I do need to earn some money -- there are always things that need to be paid for or donated to. And there's fabric, too, of course. But, if I teach a few classes and do a decent job of it, other people may want to take a class from me. If I bake a few cakes, and people find them really yummy, they may order one or recommend them to their friends. If one of my favorite school districts calls, I'll go sub and keep up with middle school pop culture.

And, when I'm not doing those things, I'm going to gather my things together, and do a little free range quilting. It's valuable work, and I love it.


Copyright © September 2005 Kari E.O. Burns