My Career

I have been a stay-at-home mom for 25 years. Oh, I have always done something, such as babysitting, teaching adult education, writing and editing, and working part-time in a store, while raising my kids. I need to be productive in some way, and I have a lot of curiosity about the world that I could never satisfy by simply being at home. I never had to leave my children with a sitter, though. Having gone through that experience myself, I had no desire to inflict it upon my kids. So I took them with me, worked when Daddy was home with them, or worked while they were at school.

So, here I am, over 50, with no career path and no retirement of my own. Don't get me wrong--I know with absolute certainty that I did the right thing. But it's hard to endure the lack of response to my job enquiries. I'm sure a lot of it is because nobody can believe that a woman who graduated from college 30 years ago has anything to offer. Even if there are no gaps, essentially, in her resume.

Let's see: making Halloween costumes and high-school play costumes, while memorable for my kids, isn't doing anything for me. Ditto making all those cinnamon rolls, breads, pies, cookies and other goodies for my family. Not to mention having dinner on the table every night. With vegetables.

Writing and editing nice little essays about home life? Nope, doesn't hold any water, evidently. I'm a good writer and editor, but my work, though published, has mostly been on some pretty lightweight subjects. At a friend's house one evening, I told her husband, a lobbyist, that I was available for freelance work. Oh, he didn't need me. He has a guy on retainer who used to be a chief editor for Advertising Age. I felt like the world's biggest loser when he told me that.

My book on how to dress and conduct oneself? Huh. The one agent I did speak with wanted to know if I had a TV show. The fact that I taught adult education and have over 25 years' experience helping others to get a more professional image means little to literary agents. They want a name people recognize. Sigh.

And all that volunteer work I've done? On committees for our homeowner's association, president of the Drama Boosters at the high school for two years? Fat lot of good that does me. I don't even bother mentioning it.

Granted, I live in the Washington, DC area where power is everything and everyone is truly top-notch. I'm a little guppy swimming with piranha.

Still, in my heart I am deeply content. My older daughter told me recently she and her siblings-in-law were discussing their childhoods. There was nobody, she said, who'd had a happy childhood. But that wasn't true for her. "Couldn't have been better," she said. My son has said the same thing.

Maybe I can't retire on that, but it's worth more than a million to me.