Life Support: List work history: Mom
She has many skills and 32 years' experience. Who cares?
Thursday, May 06, 2004
By Mary Gauntner
While sipping a steaming mug of coffee, I leaf through the Sunday morning newspaper. This is the one day of the week that I don't have to go to work or baby sit, so I try to slow down and enjoy things.
I open the paper to the Want Ads. My job as a mother is pretty much over. I have become the baby sitter for my six grandchildren, and I work part time at a greenhouse. I am also starting a new phase: the single life. Recently my 32-year marriage ended. I bring my full attention back to the Want Ads. "What type of job am I qualified to do?" I wonder.
Skimming a long column of advertisements, I take out my pencil and circle Baker. I did a lot of baking. I start to calculate on my fingers, nine children, nine birthday cakes and one husband; cakes for 32 years.
Let's see, that's 9,600 cakes and that doesn't even include the ones for holidays or desserts, plus thousands of cookies and cupcakes.
I continue. Child Care. This category makes me stop and sit up. This is something I know a whole lot about. There was a time when I had five children under the age of 5. I even had three small babies in diapers, at the same time. I would line them up on a bed as if it were a conveyor belt and have them changed before they knew what hit them. I used cloth diapers with real pins. No sissy disposables with the easy tape tabs.
Cook. Three meals a day, seven days a week, for 12 months a year. That's about 1,092 meals a year for 32 years. The number comes to 34,354. Aspirations to be a gourmet cook gave way to 365 ways to cook ground meat and chicken.
Getting into the swing of things, I spot Driver with a $500 sign on Bonus. I imagine all the unpaid miles as I drove my children to their sport practices, games and miscellaneous activities.
Going back to driving ads, I remember that I drove a white van that seated 13 people. That qualifies me for commercial driving. Circle School Bus Driver.
Merry Maids catches my eye. Cute title for drudgery work. These maids vacuum and do light work. I vacuumed so much that my yearly birthday present became a Hoover or Eureka. I cleaned toilets, windows and walls. I dust mopped two times a day to keep ahead of a growing colony of dust bunnies. I ran six or seven loads of wash daily, while the clean clothes piled up outside the laundry room begging to be sorted, folded and delivered.
I circle Nurse. I didn't have an official uniform but cuts, scrapes, and blood didn't faze me because I was prepared for any medical emergency with my well-stocked medicine cabinet. Hairstylist. I could wash a lot of heads at a quick pace: dry, comb, style, cut and perm.
Teacher. Most have a starting salary of $37,500, with weekends, holidays and summers off. "I wonder what it would be like to have weekends off and three months in the summer to do whatever I wanted to do?"
Plumber. I am a wizard with a plunger and can retrieve toothbrushes and every kind of tinker toy from the toilet, even pulling out those sturdy little people that accompanied every toy.
Research Coordinator. I spent hours at the library with my children, helping them to find the information that they needed for every report and term paper, until they were old enough to do it themselves.
Waitress. Unlike me, a waitress not only gets tips but gets to keep them and doesn't even have to do the dishes. Family Therapist. I was the ear that listened. I dried their tears and counseled them with advice and suggestions.
Receptionist with typing and telephone skills. I called to make doctor, dentist and orthodontist appointments; kept careful files of financial and health records; and typed more term papers than I care to remember.
Newspaper Delivery Person. I drove my kids on their early morning and evening paper routes when the weather was cold or snowy, when they needed to get it done in a hurry because they had to get to a scheduled sports practice.
And don't forget: Nanny. I tap the pencil on the paper. I would love to live in someone else's home for a change.
"Hello, I am answering your newspaper ad that is in the paper for a nanny."
"Thank you for calling. Before an interview, you will need to mail in your qualifications, listing your experiences. I will also need recommendations from three of your previous employers."
"Well, I never worked for anyone else, but I feel that I am qualified to do the job because I am a mother and have raised nine children."
"I'm sorry. You obviously have vast experience in this field. But without three recommendations we cannot consider you for this position. Goodbye."
I look with disbelief at the phone. "You must be joking," I start to say. But all I hear is the buzz of disconnection. The woman has hung up on me.
I look through the ads once again looking for a job with my qualifications. I am a mother who survived the rigors of life with nine children and all the frills that went along with it.
I wonder why there isn't an ad for a used mom who comes without recommendations. No Mom to circle in this list of want ads.
My attention is drawn back to the truck ad, the one that says you need your own cargo van. "Why not?" I think, as I dial the number. I can truck along with the best of them, make some money and see the country. I would look good inside a red cargo van, with Scraps, my cat, by my side. "Hello, I am answering your ad about the cargo van driver."
First published on May 6, 2004 at 12:00 am
Mary Gauntner is a free-lance writer living in Franklin Park. She can be reached at mgauntner@chatham.edu.
