I don't know why she does it

"Some mothers work because they have to - others for their own fulfillment."

And there it was - it might has well come in the form of a back-handed slap. Somehow because I am sensitive about my fulfillment - that it's private and not for outside commentary, I felt like this sentence filleted me and left me for dead. I am sensitive for sure - but on this topic, my sensitivity is off the charts. When pressed, do I have to work? Couldn't we downsize or live more frugally on my husband's income? Yes. Is my own fulfillment an appropriate reason to leave my son? Is that really the only purpose of my work? Somehow "my own fulfillment," sounded about as reasonable for a mother as a heroine addiction.

It doesn't matter that the speaker of this sentence is from another era in time, a different gender, a speaker of throw away statements and meaningless platitudes. It doesn't matter that I like what I do, that I'm good at it, and that I re-affirm these statements constantly. It is nonetheless some sort of painful cross to bear for me that being a working mother isn't a choice that everyone celebrates and respects. I guess I have to ask myself, do I respect women who don't work? Who only take care of their children and their home? Who seemingly have no other aspirations? Even the semantic choice of these sentences implies that I probably don't. I say I do - that I am even jealous of a woman who can be that cut and dry about her life -I am still learning how to manage all the multiple simultaneous players - there is nothing cut, dry, clear, simple or easy about the life of a working mother. And yet I assume that it is much more so on the side of a woman who has chosen to stay home full-time.

These statements about working mothers always seem to hearken the "greatest generation." Either they are uttered by someone who legitimately has membership in said glorified group, or they remind me of a much simpler era for women. An era that I certainly romanticize. When I was in college, I had a passion for vintage clothing from the 1930s and 1940s. When my roommate at the time was asked to describe my personal style, she said, "Paige dresses like she is waiting for the boys to come home." I certainly carry a romance for a simpler time - of pure female domesticity. In turn, or rather in Jekyll and Hyde fashion, I have a passion and love for all the modern electronic, fact-paced complexity that makes up my life today. I have love and hate being a modern woman. I dare not give up all that I have that is career, work, productivity, and yet often I wish I could stay home and bake bread. The idea of living slower, simpler and less attached to things and achievements is attractive to me - but not all of the time.

This is certainly the Gemini in me - at once in rapture with two lives - two options and two choices - when you can really only have one at a time. This latest run in with the need/fulfillment assertion about working women, I found myself clenching my teeth. I said in a total projective non-sequitur, "I think I'm a better mother when I do what I love." It was defensive and laced with the antagonism I'd carried each time I'd heard this opinion. Am I a better mother? I guess my ideal - of the war-time mother - of the woman tethered to home and children and her kitchen, is not really what I want - especially if the way to have it is to give up my creative work. I have colleagues and friends and peers who are so confident in their modern nanny-aided choices. They trust that their children will be OK, that their work is really important, that they can work by day and mother by night, or vice-versa, as the job might be. I don't have this confidence. I still battle each side - not enough to quite my job, obviously. Not enough to hire a full-time nanny. Not enough to make more space on either side of my life. So I remain, often squished by both as they clash and conflict for each of my 24 daily hours.

I sit with this idea - that I work to be fulfilled, even at the expense of my time at home. Is this OK? The veteran women and mothers in my life who I respect (both stay-at-home and work-outside alike) say that this is rudimentary self-respect. Of course it's ok you numbskull, I am sure they want to say. Motherhood is not composed entirely of self-sacrifice. And yet there are others who are of the mind that maternal fulfillment comes after - after the children are born, bred, put to bed and taken to school. After the work is done and by the way, it never will be. I probably respect these women too - I'm afraid enough or insecure enough in my own choices to think they are no idiots or domestic simpletons but that they might have a good point.

I suppose I have multiple-maternal personalities. What makes this worse is how the concept of "enough" in literally any category, eludes me. I never know what is enough salt, enough skinny, enough money, enough stuff done for the day. So it's no surprise that I understand neither enough maternal sacrifice nor enough maternal fulfilment. Perhaps no one knows. Perhaps I need to continue to find out? Its uncomfortable - like the a blister - not to know the answer and to know it will continue to press me for quite a while.

Since I never know what's "enough" for a blog post - I stopped to look up "fulfilment" in the online dictionary.

Fulfillment - a feeling of satisfaction at having achieved your desires.

It doesn't say "fulfillment is a feeling of satisfaction achieved outside of the home - quenching desires of the professional, outside world." Who is to say what a woman's desires are? Perhaps they are professional, perhaps they are maternal. The expression is my heart's desire, whether the satisfaction, the fulfillment comes from motherhood or work, or both or neither - it's up to each woman to decide. So if I can go back to the statement that catapulted me into this argument - a woman's own fulfillment is exactly what drives a woman to stay home or work outside the home - if she of course doesn't "need" to do so. We've given choice to women and we've in term loaded the word fulfillment with notions of selfishness - something that can only be achieved at the expense of her family, some sort of oats she must sew that can't be done with mothering alone. I now believe that fulfillment is the ultimate creative project for a woman - she decides what will fulfill - how to do it - and then to do it if she is graced with choice. And for me, graced with a life of choice - it's certainly both - I am not fulfilled completely by work, nor am I fulfilled completely by motherhood - it's the union of both in my life which makes me feel FULL. The fullness is often overwhelming - too much - completely foreign - in life which is often all about seeking. Perhaps it's this unsettling feeling of fullness that makes me question - it certainly would be a lot simpler if it were just one or the other.

Today my husband will take my son to the park so I can write and finish up some work. After which I will play with my son and put him to bed. At the end of the day, I will be filled with work and motherhood, literally, to my heart's content. It doesn't look like everyone's life (it's Sunday after all) and it's certainly what I need to do, based on my choice - and perhaps that's absolutely enough.