Daydreams: Mothers and Vocations

I'm a compulsive daydreamer. When I meet someone of my own age, particularly someone born in the same year as me, I love to know what they're doing, what they've done, and then I picture myself in their position, tinker around with details and make the stage my own.

Case in point - I often read a weblog of a girl who lives in Australia. She's my age, married to an Australian, and has a little 1 1/2 year old baby. She's also expecting her second child. I certainly don't want to be a mother right now, something that I get rather sensitive about because too many people ask me that question. But it's her absolute bliss at being a mother, partcularly a stay-at-home-mother that I admire and certainly envy.

So I get green every once in a while and then start daydreaming. Years from now - would I be working a 9-6 job? Would I be depositing my children at daycare or my parents' and only seeing them for a few hours each day? My ultimate dream scenario - I'm staying at home with the kids, but I'm still earning some meagre dollars from freelancing and teaching privately. The only full-time job I wouldn't mind taking - teaching writing classes at the liberal arts college that Linda Lim recently proposed Singapore establish.

Other scenario to be relished - my short fiction gets published every now and then in literary journals and I have an advance from a nice publisher in New York so I get to work daily in my office at home in Singapore. If I get writer's block, I leave the room and check on my children. If they're bored or stuck with a differential equation or chemistry formula, I'll see if I can't solve it myself. And if I can't, I'll suggest we wait for Dad to get home, and why don't we go to the beach and read some Hemingway or Hammett? Maybe a little Frost or Szymborska? (In case it isn't known to all, I have this uncontainable excitement about introducing my children to all the wonderful books and paintings and music that I grew up with.)

Working mothers and stay-at-home mothers. Working moms get to earn respectable money and stay-at-home moms don't seem to earn enough respect. They've made a noble decision to devote their energy to the children, but few people recognize that sort of sacrifice. When my mom tells me that she wasn't smart enough to get a high-flying job, I tell her that she is far more special to me because she stayed home than if she were some dragon-lady boss at a company with a big name. Perhaps she didn't have the opportunity to earn her own income in her thirties and forties, but she earns a great deal of love from my brother and me, and the respect of her friends who see how much she's loved.

Many mothers who work are forced to because of financial burdens and that's more than valid a reason. It's the mothers who knowingly choose a fulfilling career over fulfilling their children's lives whom I regard with suspicion. If they have the means to choose between their jobs or their children, but still prefer the material achievements of their careers, they have very little right to be parents.

A student of mine recently wrote an excellent paper on making sure people are fit to be parents, and it made me wonder about how we move (or don't move) from being centered-thinking individuals to selfless parents. How do we accomplish this? It's not too different from getting married. It's about making changes in certain areas of our lives to make the rest work. Recently, LK has been very down and stressed at work, and he wondered if he should take a different job, one that would pay considerably less, but that would not be killing him prematurely. And I actually felt happy that he said this, because I don't think we should be chasing that sort of income if the other parts - and more importantly - people, in our lives will suffer. I'd be happy to see him come home for dinner and not at some God-forsaken hour. Happier still if he comes home smiling than dead-tired and demoralized. He would be able to read to the children when they're small and eager to have a story before bed, he would have enough energy to go for a walk by the beach, play some video games with me, and also take out the garbage.

I feel lucky that the vocation I wish for myself - writing - would allow me to be at home with my family. I'm only wondering if I will have the opportunity to pursue that vocation. We'll see. And that's the end of my meandering train of thought for today. Who knows what I'll be thinking about tomorrow? Perhaps I'll walk into a store and catch sight of a great cash register and start thinking about working as a cashier. (In case it isn't known to all, I have a strange fascination with cash registers and their large buttons that make clicky sounds. Once, I nearly took a job at Cold Storage because the cash registers there have the best sound effects.)

Posted by Monoceros at December 3, 2004 9:03 AM