Reduced Status
Just after The Husband and I moved into our ranch house in downtown Austin and before the boys (my soon-to-be-step-sons) took up residence with us full-time, I found myself with endless afternoons to unpack our combined loot while the breadwinner was off at work.
The move from CA to TX had reduced me to unemployed houseperson status. Never mind that just two months ago I’d been producing award-winning television in San Francisco and hauling in a decent amount of cash. I had decided to wait (some call this foolishness, some thought it daring) to look for work once the dust settled.
It seemed, just overnight, I’d become the little lady at home, polishing the silver and putting it away in its’ own, linen-lined drawer. In the absence of a career, I took up whistling.
I will not let this be the soundtrack of my death.
There were many mornings when The Husband pulled out of the driveway, a luxury we never had in the Bay Area, and I’d wave a limp wrist from the front door. He’d look back at his sophisticated City Girl who was wearing, (with regular frequency now), a dowdy, maroon fleece vest and flannel pajama bottoms. Hardly recognizing myself in this pathetic Lands End outfit (and believe me, this vest wouldn’t even make it to the clearance rack!), would be just the motivation I needed. I’d watch his car disappear down the block and I’d be at the sink, dumping out my coffee and going straight for the hard stuff. Or at least, that’s what I wanted to do.
I’d think, “How has this become my life?”
People (my ex-colleagues especially) would try and talk me into enjoying these isolated afternoons. They’d say, “take this time to figure out what you want to do next…enjoy the quiet…paint a wall…find yourself.”
I was finding myself at Linens N’ Things in the middle of the day.
Before I offend a large population of women, including friends and family, let me just say that buying towels is a perfectly acceptable thing to do. It’s just that after many years of working 10 hours a day in the frenzy of a loud newsroom, where someone’s always shouting “We’re LIVE in 5 minutes,” where seconds mean everything and everyone’s writing, editing and running in a panic right down to the wire…
Linens N’ Things was just a little too quiet. Except for that damn smooth jazz.
I will not let this be the soundtrack of my death, I thought. I am better than this fleece vest. I am not Mrs. Bread Winner.
How many women have reached their personal breaking point at a mini-mall buying scented candles they don’t really need?
I’m sure I’m not the first, but I might have been that day in Linens N’ Things. I apologized to the woman shopping next to me, “You know, I’m just not ready for full-blown domestication.”
The silver would have to wait until the night before Thanksgiving. It was time to get back to my career. I put the window treatment down and whistled right out the door.
Hi Izzy Rose,
I’m here as promised. You’ve got interesting post here. I really appreciate the way you’ve written your post, on how you connect with your readers. While you blog about your life, you also give information to your readers. This post gave me the information on how it is like to work in a newsroom but at the same, I get a glimpse of your interesting life adventures. Cheers and good luck to your blog.
Okay, first of all, this was too funny. TOO funny. I laughed out loud at the bit about the soundtrack of your death. Also appreciated the mini-mall candle contemplation.
I relate to this a LOT. A few years ago I took a full week of vacation time which had been sitting untouched in the vacation time bank in the sky; but didn’t go anywhere, just stayed home with Thing 1, who was at the time about 18 months old. On the second day, I told my mom over the phone of all our wonderful trips about town, errands run, groceries bought in peace before 10 pm, no lawyers barking of deadlines and such and lamented, “Mom, this is great. I wanna be a stay at home mommy!” Knowing me all too well, her response was, “Umm, yeah. And what are you going to do NEXT week?”
And she was right. It was wonderful in many ways, but by the time the week came to an end, I had an existential crisis in the frozen food section. I admire the women who do it. Tough row to hoe they got there.
Great post. Just loved it.
Thank you for the validation. I worried after posting it that my picture might be hanging outside the shop doors at my neighborhood mall with the warning- Do not sell towels to this woman!