Homework

Kathryn Loosli Pritchett
Volume 23, No. 3

The first day of my second real job was one of the happiest of my life. Standing on a street corner, waiting for the N Judah streetcar to take me home through the streets of San Francisco, I felt a rush of pure joy. I had just been hired to be the building manager for a high-rise medical office building near Golden Gate Park. With my new job came a private office with a brand new electric typewriter where I hoped to compose brilliant short stories on my lunch hour. I had a radio in the office so I could listen to music as I worked on lease documents. I also had a bank of windows that allowed me to watch the fog swirl outside the building. And I made a vast sum of money – $20,000 annually – that kept me and my law-student husband in high struggling-student style. Though I wasn't yet a full-fledged writer, I was a successful businesswoman in a power suit with a little ribbon tie, and I had big dreams.

After a couple of years on the job, I waited on that same street corner for the N Judah and prayed that someone would offer me a seat so that I could better endure the nausea of my first pregnancy. At lunch time, instead of writing short stories, I'd lie on the orange industrial carpet behind a locked door and sleep. My little power suits gave way to pinstriped maternity jumpers that I would sew on the weekends to accommodate my expanding waistline. 

The head janitor figured out early in the pregnancy what was going on from the snack stash I kept near my desk. But it wasn't until I was six months along that I told my employers that I was pregnant and that I would want some maternity leave. I worked until a week before my due date, and then packed up my little radio and picked up the last paycheck I would receive for over a decade.

My oldest daughter Claire was born a month later at the hospital at UCSF, right across the street from my former work place. Those first weeks of motherhood were a hazy blur of nursing and catnapping and staring at this beautiful creature that had come to live with us. Though my work replacement would often call about this or that issue or to gossip about the boss/janitors/tenants, I didn't really miss the job I'd left behind. I had plenty of challenging work taking care of a new infant, and the outside world hardly registered with me.

But then, as we established a routine, I began to realize that I was frequently at loose ends. We lived in a ward with few other young mothers, and my husband worked long hours. When I wasn't taking care of the baby, I read or watched TV. Some years later, I noticed a woman in front of me at the checkout line that I was sure I recognized as an old friend. Later I realized she had been one of the afternoon hosts on a local TV talk-show during Claire's first year, and yes, at that time in my life, she was a very good friend!

Often I would break up the day by taking Claire out for a walk around the block, to a park, or to a nearby mall. One day while strolling around a large department store browsing for clothes I didn't need – where was I going, after all? – I spied a young janitor wiping out a drinking fountain and felt a pang of jealousy. "She has a place to go everyday and things she's expected to do," I thought. "I don't, anymore."

Even then I knew my envy was ludicrous. (After all, I had more than enough clean-up opportunities with my own little family!) Though I had tentatively planned on returning to work after Claire was born, after a few months away from work, I knew that being home with my child was where I wanted to be. I missed the camaraderie, respect, and income from my job, but these losses were significantly outweighed by the rewards of raising my daughter full time. Those months of feeding, changing, worrying about, singing to, and loving my new baby had bound me so closely to her that caring for her was more meaningful than making money for myself and my employer.

However, the "janitor incident" made me realize that I needed to connect with some kind of support group. I signed up for a parenting class at a nearby community center. There I met other women with their firstborns. All of us had left work to stay home with our children, and we were all desperate for advice on raising kids and for friendship with other adults.

Over time, most of these women went back to work, but a few of us continued to stay home with our toddlers and then preschoolers and finally elementary school children. All of us added more children to the mix. By the time my second child was born, I'd moved into a new ward that had a few more young mothers. Friends asked me to be part of community volunteer organizations. I was now part of two book clubs. And, of course, once the kids were in school, there were many opportunities to chair a committee, spearhead a fundraising drive, and organize class projects. When my third child was born, I was actually relieved to have an excuse to "stay home" for a while.

Besides finding new friendships and responsibilities, I was also learning a good deal from my children. When Claire learned to tie her shoes, tears streaming down her face with a mixture of joy and frustration, I learned about perseverance. When I tried to console Sydney, my second daughter, after she'd let go of a balloon and it flew up into the sky and she responded, "It's okay, Mom. We'll just go put our wings on and go get it," I learned to think beyond my limitations. When my little boy, Will, at five, told me he was very talented because he could twist his tongue sideways, I considered my own unique gifts.

During those years of full-time parenting, I wore out three strollers. I microwaved about nine million quesadillas. I drank chocolate milk for the first time since I was a kid. I went to the circus, the emergency room, the skating rink, the gymnastic studio, primary activity days, library reading hours. I saw first steps, first haircuts, first Doc Martins, first best friends. I learned all the characters' names on Sesame Street and all the lyrics to every Raffi song. I became a fan of Fred Rogers. I read and read and read until my children could read their own books, and then I read to them some more.

And because I was home while I was doing all these things, I learned about houses and gardens and crafts. I took a sewing class and, unlike my brief time in 4-H, I paid attention. Building on the skills I'd learned as a Merry Miss, I knit elaborate sweaters for my family. I planted one garden after another until I had a lengthy list of favorite plants from Abutilon to Zinnia. I learned that eight-way hand-tied springs made the best sofas and that paint colors should be chosen after you brushed test patches on a wall.

Eventually, those years of daytime childrearing led me to my return to the work force. Even as I was happily engaged in the process of stay-at-home parenting, I still yearned to be a writer. I had continued to write through the years-Relief Society lessons, sacrament meeting talks, family newsletters-but I wanted to be published.

Claire had a classmate and soccer buddy whose mother was a features editor at a large daily newspaper in the Bay Area. I worked up the courage to ask her if we could go to lunch sometime and talk about how to begin a writing career. She humored me, mostly I think because she'd worked with me on a school fund-raising committee. As we talked, she told me that she needed someone to write interior design pieces and liked how I'd "pulled together" my own home. She encouraged me to write about some topic of home design that interested me, and she'd look it over and give me feedback.

I wrote a short article on slipcovers-something I knew little about, but fortunately I had a professional seamstress friend from the ward as a resource. My editor-friend liked the story and bought it from me. Before long, the paper's home and garden editor began to call me with story assignments. Within a few years, I was writing design features for a number of local newspapers and national magazines. Over the past two and a half years, I've also written a biweekly newspaper column about home and what it means to me. I spend the hours when my children are in school talking with artists, designers, and landscapers about their work. Then I tell their stories-and some of my own-to my readers.

A few weeks ago, I was covering a home furnishings trade show in San Francisco. I ran into a colleague, a young woman in her thirties who works for a well-known shelter magazine. To my surprise, she asked me for some career advice. As she laid out her ambitions, I asked her if she planned to have any children. She told me that she didn't think children would ever fit into her economic or career goals. I was saddened that this talented, capable woman had so quickly dismissed the possibility of rearing children. I couldn't imagine that the benefits of money, fame, and power would outweigh the companionship and adventure of raising children. 

Of course, I recognize what a luxury it is to have my career choices driven primarily by interests rather than economics (writing is almost always interesting and sometimes glamorous rarely lucrative). And, although we did make some sacrifices by my not working, I count myself fortunate to have been able to live on one income while my children were young. I also realize that my daughters may not be so lucky.

Claire, now fifteen, came home from early-morning seminary the other day troubled by a church video that encouraged women to stay home to raise their children. That same day she was turning in her class schedule requests for her all-important junior year and was concerned about which Advanced Placement classes she should take. "At church I'm told to stay home with my kids," she said, "but what I'm most worried about now is getting into a good college so I can get a great job."

When I grew up in rural Idaho in the '60s and '70s, my interest in college and a career was an anomaly. For my daughters, the pressure for career success is at least as strong as the pressure to be a stay-at-home mom. And yet Claire's frustration echoes my own at her age. I would sit in MIA classes that told me to become a better person so I could be a better mother. I wondered, why not just to be a better me? 

The irony for me is that my detour off the career path of my twenties led me to the career path I really wanted from the beginning. By alternating periods of outside-the-home employment with stay-at-home mothering, I've found a rewarding mix of work and motherhood. 

I occasionally pass my old work place on my way to Golden Gate Park for a field trip or an outing to the aquarium with the kids. I've also passed by when headed for interviews with sources for stories about Chinese pottery, modern furniture, or native bulbs. But now when I drive by that same street corner where I caught the N Judah years ago, I'm behind the wheel of a family van that's littered with soccer gear, library books, and homework as well as my notebooks and a stray business card or two. For me, it's a satisfying jumble.

Kathryn Loosli Pritchett writes and folds laundry in the San Francisco Bay Area. She can be reached at klooslip@aol.com.

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