Stay-At-Home Mom

I have a mental image of myself as a stay-at-home mom.  It is a false impression of myself because I have not been a mom with no job outside of the home for many years. However, I cannot shake the inner conviction that this is what I am.  The problem started when I became a crossing guard for the elementary school close to my home.  My kids would walk down to the corner with me and play awhile and then continue onto school when it was time.  When the foster kids came, the same thing happened.  I brought babies to the corner in car seats and did my job while they napped or had a bottle.  Now that my kids are high school age, they drive up in their cars and hang at the corner with me.  It never seemed like a real job because I am home 95% of the day.  I still have my crossing guard job and now I am also a social worker working ten to fifteen hours each week.  With two jobs, I think it is safe to say that I am truly not a stay-at-home mom anymore.  However, I made an appointment for a delivery yesterday and casually said, "anytime in the afternoon is fine.  I am a stay-at-home mom."  What????  Why did that come out of my mouth?  Of course the delivery guy could care less what my occupation really is but my mental wheels started to spin.  What am I, really?  I started to make a list of what I am (this is a nice exercise in identity exploration, by the way).  My biography reads accurately with foster mom, adoptive mom, and biological mom to start the list.  I am also a volunteer, crossing guard and a social worker.  Just to make the list longer I added daughter and sister.  I see a lot of "moms" on the list but not stay-at-home mom.  Yet this is how I think of myself for some strange reason.  My identity crisis has now begun to really bother me. 

I love being a mother.  It was all I wanted to be when I was growing up.  People would say, "that is not a job, what do you really want to be?"  So I decided that being a teacher was probably a safer answer.  I did that occupation for awhile and quickly learned that controlling 25 kids was not something I was good at.  Plus it did not feel like mothering to me.  When my three biological children arrived I was in heaven.  I wallowed in motherhood until my baby went off to first grade and I was stuck cleaning the house over and over again.  That got old really fast.  I tried volunteering and ended up running a nonprofit Little League in my town.  That took up a lot of time and I was pretty good at it, but it wasn't mothering.  More biological children was not an option because of fertility issues.  My husband felt adoption would be okay but not fostering!  He was very sure that becoming a foster parent was not something he was willing to do.  I was content to try adoption.  Well.....that did not work out quite the way I thought it would and soon I was talking him into becoming a foster parent.  First I coerced him to attend an orientation.  It was no big deal and no commitment necessary.  I am pretty sure that he went just to make me happy.  I followed that with a training class and pretty soon he was reluctantly willing to give fostering a try.  I found the perfect way to continue my career as a mother with the arrival of my first foster child. 

So here is the answer to my identity crisis.  I am a mother and I will always be a mother.  Everything else is secondary to my primary occupation of motherhood.  I found the answer to my question by accident this week.  A reporter interviewed me and my family about what it is like to be a foster family.  She asked a lot of great questions but one stuck with me.  What do you find the most surprising about foster parenting?  My answer came very quickly.  I am always surprised by the strength and intensity of the bond that  forms between me and my foster child.  It is a mother/child connection that can be as strong as my feelings for my biological child.  It is a complicated bond that is made up of trust, love, caring, and feelings of protection.  All these things put together form the definition of motherhood for me. My heart is aways at home caring for my children even when I am in a meeting or holding up my sign in the middle of the road.  I am grateful that my husband loves me enough to participate in my occupation.  I am sure that his identity is not as intensely linked to parenting as mine is. 

For those of you who are wondering, that bond does not break when the child leaves my home.  I carry those children in my heart too and I hope to see them again someday.  When I attended the opening of the Heart Gallery, a foster mom at the next table was very excited to see a past foster child of hers.  She said, "He is one of mine!"  as she dashed off to give him a hug and visit with his new family. I have many children that I call mine too.  I am a stay-at-home mom because that is where my heart will always be.  I think next time, I will take a little more pride when I announce that I am a stay-at-home mom to the delivery guy!