Choices

Yesterday was not a really good day to receive a link to my alma mater's alumni website.  Josh was sick, I was coming down with it, the house was a mess, my husband was on a 24 hour shift, and I could not believe that I was not sitting in a nice, warm, clean office somewhere with manicured nails and adult conversation.  So in the middle of feeling like this, I happen upon the wonderful exploits of my college friends.
Disclaimer: I know that many of my college classmates are now stay at home mothers.  They were just not people I was friends with..

As I've said before, I was in a highly academic program at a highly academic college.  Googling some of my friends from college, I discover they are now: three doctors, a college professor in philosophy, a Ph.D. in chemistry, a college professor in English literature, six attorneys and several professors of theology.  One friend has an MBA, my best friend from college is an editor and analyst in Washington, D.C. and I watch her sometimes on Fox News and CNN.  Four have written books.  And this was my inner circle at college, the people I was closest to.

Meanwhile, I wiped the baby's runny nose at least 8 million times yesterday.

It is hard not to compare our dreams with our reality, especially when many of our peers have accomplished what we believe to be what we wanted.  I wanted to be a lawyer or a college professor of philosophy or literature. Or both.  I did not want to be a stay at home mom, and, actually, I didn't even want kids. Or marriage--I didn't want to ever get married until I was 26 years old and Robbie changed my mind.  And I didn't want kids, but I knew that Rob would...and my doctor was clear that if we wanted children, sooner was better than later--there was no later.  So here I am, 29 years old, which in my college peer group is way to young to be married and a mother.  In fact, I am the only person I know from college who has a child.  And no doctorate, no corner office, no teaching position.  I'm a mom, and I have no idea how I wound up here.

This isn't to say that I don't love being a mom.  I do.  I love my baby boy with my whole heart.  But I don't always like being a stay at home mom, which to many people, is the next thing to heresy.  I don't enjoy running a home.  It bores me.  I miss people.  I miss doing things, accomplishing things.  I may not get a PhD at this point, but there is a certain level of success that I wanted to attain.  I want to wear nice clothes to work and not have to change clothes five times a day because they got spit up on.  I want to have a job where things are accomplished, my desk is neat, and I get to go to meetings and have coffee.  I may be the only person in the world who loves meetings.

Maybe I just want an accomplishment that I can stick up on the alumni board, too.

We've talked off and on about me going back to work. I  was hired back at my old job, working with emotionally disturbed children and their families, but I didn't have all my addresses back to 1982, which New York state now requires for a child abuse clearance.  And, frankly, working full time doesn't make a lot of financial sense with what we would pay for day care.  If I could figure out how to pay for school, I'd finish my teaching certification, but that's going to be on hold till summer at the earliest.

So I honestly don't know what to do.  I know that a lot of women would kill for my options, and I am so thankful that the choices are there.  But I have to decide what the right choice is for me--to stay home and keep trying not to be miserable, or go find a job and probably lose money on child care.  Or to find a third alternative that just hasn't presented itself yet.
But I have to figure something out before I go crazy.