“I’m really looking forward to the day my house is cleaned up”

Susie quit her job as a teacher to care for her two boys at home. “I was juggling teaching and being a mother terribly and knew I had to let one of the two go. Since it was difficult for me to send the boys back, I let the job go,” she wrote.

stay at home mom

‘My identity was rooted in my career. I had been a teacher for almost twenty years and loved every moment of it. Could I rediscover myself after years in the trenches? My answer was a definite ‘yes’. Overall, the transition to becoming a stay at home mom was easier than I expected. Moreover, teaching and taking care of the boys at home were very similar. An annoying teenager who hid my stapler for the thousandth time turned into an annoying toddler who hid my car keys for the tenth time. The standard ink stains on my sweater were exchanged for bleach stains I got from scrubbing pee from the bathroom, the floor, and everywhere. The triumph I felt when a child finally dared to read an essay in class was the same triumph I felt when my three-year-old learned three letters of the alphabet. By scratching those letters into my Honda with a sharp stone.’

Bloody plaster

One drawback: the endless mess and filth in the house. “My house always looked like someone had broken in, dumped two trash cans on the stairs, and then rubbed mud into every carpet they could find. Decorative dishes were full of entry forms and clothing tags and too often a cloud of dust of mite and cat dander rolled by. If you were looking for a piece of cheese, you had to look in the vegetable drawer – next to the spoiled melon and mummified hot dogs.’

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Susie managed to embrace the filth and chaos. She saw it as proof of an active and sober family. “And now, with an almost grown kid going to college and a kid about to be out of the house any minute, I can finally buy those fancy cleaning gadgets and feel under a pillow without fishing a bloodied bandage out of it. And that makes me sad.’

‘Empty, gray and awful’

“An empty house means I’m not a stay at home mom anymore. And then what am I? When I look to my future, I picture myself in khaki pants, shaking up the pillows and arranging dust-free knick-knacks on the mantelpiece. Rooms no longer smell of sweaty feet, but of lavender and vanilla. I can finally live in that radiant home I’ve always wanted, but now that ‘utopia’ is approaching, it feels empty, gray and awful.’

A new me

She sees her transition from being a teacher to a stay at home mom as a smaller transition. ‘I never lost sight of who I was, I just broadened how I saw myself. Now that I have almost an empty nest, I have to reinvent myself. This time not because I want to, but because I have to.’ Susie doesn’t consider babysitting a neighbor’s child realistic, nor is returning to her old job after a 918-week sabbatical. ‘All I know is that I must move on into the unknown, towards a new me. But there’s no doubt that it’s certainly not a spotless house.’

Source: Scary Mommy

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