A Mommy

Some of the best conversations I have happen in the most simple places.

 

I was sitting at the table eating pancakes with my six-year old granddaughter this weekend and asked her if she wanted to have children of her own one day.

 

She quickly said yes around a mouth full of sausage.

 

“A boy or girl,” I asked.

 

“A girl,” she said.

 

Then I suggested a few names for this unborn great granddaughter of mine.

Jefferina. Maybe Jeffanie (like Stephanie).

 

She said no. She already had a name picked out.

 

She wanted to name her baby after her dance teacher, Shelly. I don’t think it rolls off the tongue nearly as smoothly as Jeffanie but it is sweet that she loves her dance teacher enough to make her the namesake of her child.

 

Then I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. I was expecting the usual answers. Princess. Super hero. Ballerina.

 

Nope.

 

She said she wanted to be a mommy.

 

Before I could stop myself, I laughed and said, “No, like a job.”

 

My granddaughter put down her fork, looked me in the eye and said very seriously, “That is a job.”

 

And she is right.

 

I was being a mysoginist. I didn’t mean to be. It just came out. All those years of living in a male dominated society and having the old stereotypical family dynamic baked into my brain and I just blurted it out before thinking.

 

My lovely wife was in the other room and I know she heard me.

 

I expected a wayward shoe or brick to come flying towards my head at any moment but she said nothing.

 

There were no projectiles of revenge.

 

Of course, being a full time, stay at home mother is a full time job. More than a full time job.

 

I know that because my wife did it.

 

When we had our first child, my lovely wife worked at a large bank. She was a trust officer and had a very promising career ahead of her.

 

But as our son got older, she hated leaving him at daycare while she went to work every day. She liked her job but didn’t want to miss all of the little things our son would do for the first time.

 

So we decided to take a risk and try to live on just what I made. We knew we would have to sacrifice but it was worth it.

 

My wife never went back to work. When our twins were born, she was at home with them every day and got to experience all of the little things we missed with our older son- their first steps, their first words.

 

And it was hard. Real hard.

 

There were days that I would come home from work and she would be sitting on the back steps crying. Being home all day with three small children wasn’t the barrel of laughs she thought it would be.

 

What she did used to be common. Women would stay home and take care of the children and house and the husbands would go off to work.

 

Now, it’s not so common.

 

Very few women stay home with their kids any more. Not because they don’t want to but because they just can’t. Trying to raise a family these days is expensive and requires two working parents.

 

And even if a woman wants to stay home and raise a family, she is often looked down on by society. Television and movies portray stay-at-home moms as unfulfilled women who are haggard and continually stressed out or who drop the kids off and then spend their day with friends doing hot yoga and drinking pumpkin spice martinis.

 

So, when my granddaughter said she wanted to be a mommy when she grew up, I wondered what kind of life she would have.

 

Would she miss the opportunity for a career? Or be considered ‘less than’ by society?

 

I asked my granddaughter why she wanted to be a mommy.

 

She picked up her little doll and held it under her arm.

 

“Because everybody needs a mommy,” she said.

 

You can’t argue with that.

 

Sounds like Shelly will have a good life.