From Domesticity to...Something Else

This is a blog post I began on another blog (Keep it Human). I am also a med student, and I am also a mother of two (shown above with their daddy in the background). ***First, to give you a sense of where I am in life: I am at the dining room table. It's 9:30 p.m. I'm eating one of the fudge-sicles I got for my daughters - Mazie, age 9, and Vivian, age 7 - at the grocery store today. It's 80 degrees outside and our windows are open to the crickets and the hum of neighbors' air conditioners. In this apartment, papers aren't crisp. My tongue is sore from today's choice of foods: cheddar potato chips, a whole pint of cherries, a large decaf, cuban beans, and the popsicle. I am sitting in front of a laptop computer that has become the one non-living item I would grab first if the apartment caught fire. For it is the embodiment of a lot of work I probably haven't backed up adequately. On this computer: ideas, spreadsheets of anonymous data, copies of letters I've written, meticulously-made notes on lectures that have blended into one item in my memory. Around me, the apartment I share with my husband and kids is disheveled with various stacks of paper...under furniture, beside the table, atop the table, trailing over to the stairs (that's the cat's fault). The papers are almost all mine. ***When I started med school, I asked my stepdad for advice. I always ask my stepdad for advice. He went back to professional school when he was the same age I was at the time, 31. He told me this: "Do not waste a single minute thinking you shouldn't be there because you're older, or that you need to apologize for yourself in any way." He said he felt in retrospect that he wasted time and effort second-guessing himself instead of just plowing forward and doing the work (don't get me wrong - he definitely did the work ALSO). ***Three years later, I have a much better understanding of what he meant...yet I am just beginning to take hold of that sense of belonging that he urged me toward. I have spent time worrying that I am in the wrong place. I have often felt inferior because I took a different route. Those feelings of inferiority weren't anyone else's fault. In fact, fellow students, preceptors, and administrators alike have welcomed me and have been 100% accepting of my nontraditional status. ***The only way I have to frame the difficulty I've had just-working and not worrying about whether I should be working in this particular way is a matter of identity. When I walked through the doors of EUSOM on the first day of orientation, heart aflutter and puffy-eyed from having cried my goodbyes in the car a moment before, I was a MOM. And a WIFE. I knew I wanted a career, and physician seemed outwardly like a good fit, but I had busied myself for the previous five years with a hard-won old-school domesticity. If anything, the domestic phase was the one that didn't fit my personality at first. But by the time I got to med school, I was in it and it was in me. I had my routines down to a science, laundry cycles established, folding rituals, menus, recipes memorized and cooked by muscle memory. I used cloth diapers and liked it, I could recite the contents of the fridge at any time (literally), and I knew where everything in the house was. Tape measures, business envelopes, pants hangers, chrome spray paint, garden shears, spare drier sheets...you name it. My linen closet was a vision, and my floor was free of paper piles. ***Once med school began, I spent a lot of time in class worrying about the contents of the refrigerator, or my kids' teachers, or their safety, or their arrival to and from the things they had to do that day, or their reading development or apprehension of math facts. I told my husband which spatula to use. I cried about mold in the bathroom. I developed a mental tic wherein if I heard a siren, as I often did because the med school is directly across the street from Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, I spasmodically entertained the idea of the ambulance bearing one of my children. The urge to call my husband and make sure it was not our kid would rise until I called. I wouldn't ask him directly for fear of seeming crazy, but I'd find out what was going on, you know, in general, and listen for signs of panic in his voice. He eventually began to ask when I called for no apparent reason, "Did you hear an ambulance?" He had figured me out, and after that it was clear how crazy I was being, so I forced myself to stop. ***But let's face it: I had lost control and I hated losing it. I had to hand over the daily care of my most precious softies to other people. As simple as this sounds, and as much of a relief as it could seem in the abstract, actually losing the control of the workings of my household felt like a small death. ***In med school you have milestones: Your first didactic phase test, your last didactic phase test. Step I, your first shelf, last shelf, Step II, etc. As I progressed through these mile stones, I kept expecting to fall flat on my face and be proven to have been badly mistaken about choosing med school. While I had my share of private ignominies, the catastrophe never arrived. And here I am with one year remaining and...my floor is a mess. ***My floor is a mess, my bathroom has mold, my husband put the kids to bed tonight. But something else has happened. As I am bleary-eyed, I'll pick up there next time. Til then, thanks for reading! Brandi

***Now it's 5:50 in the morning. The papers and the mold persist, and my kids are still abed. But I want to tell you what has happened and how I tolerate things I never used to tolerate. I have to say here: the mold and the papers are an emblem. In fact, I am not simply a former neat-freak. I am a former control freak. The mess stands for a lot of other hidden factors that are harder to explain. But we'll call it mold for now. ***What happened was the inevitable march of time and data adding up to one shocking conclusion: my kids are thriving and my husband is a good person to care for them. I know, it's stunning, right? When I felt a strong disparity between the real and the ideal of daily life, I started going through the mental exercise of asking myself: Will this hurt anybody? If the answer was no, I forced myself to put it aside. This tactic works fairly well with non-domestic aspects of child-rearing also, by the way. ***While it may seem that my domestic standards have been thoroughly dismantled, with only "Remaining Alive and Free of Injury" remaining, the shift has allowed me to see the entire world and my role in it much more pragmatically. I still strive to do excellent work, but I really try to let go of everything that doesn't really matter. I will still drop everything to help mediate an argument between my kids...or help with an art project...or answer one of those really interesting questions I can't believe they asked. I haven't thrown out the baby with the bathwater. But I think I have jettisoned a lot of unnecessary baggage. I don't worry about how they look. I encourage their own sense of style. Lots of times they put together really interesting outfits that I never would have thought of. ***I certainly don't worry about how a thing gets done. I don't exert my control over the orderliness of the shelves. The laundry festers awhile before it gets folded and I don't iron it either. The thing we insist on is having a clean sink before bedtime, and usually Richie does that while I cram a few more school-related things into the end of the day. I don't worry about the way I look very much, and I certainly don't worry about the way my house looks. I still love the feel of clean floor under my feet. Richie cleans up in the ways he thinks are important, and his ways are important. They are different from my ways. But he does it and I don't get to tell him how to do it. ***I am also more relaxed with my kids, much less likely to micromanage, and much more likely to say Yes. I love to say yes. If I say no, I usually ask them to think about the logistics of their request and try to get them to see it my way before I say no. ***So, what felt horrible at the time has actually been a powerful and necessary transition - a transition that has forced me to let go of some things only I cared about and to do a lot of things that a lot of people care about. Now I am about to march forth with research, writing, and learning how to care for patients. These activities are extremely important to me. If I don't do well at these, someone will get hurt - or at least helped less effectively. Meanwhile, my kids are thriving. I find creative ways to have fun with them, and I savor time with them as I never did before. My husband is an amazing domestic god. I help out, but I have to ask where the scotch tape is. ***There are some to whom the above struggle would not make sense at all. It looks from the outside like a no-brainer: you have the opportunity to go to med school; who cares about the running of the household? But if you are a stay-at-home mom, I'm sure you get it about the ownership and sense of pride you begin to take in the running of your household. It's relatively thankless work, denigrated since the late sixties. But it can be beautiful, pleasing work as well. I just had to switch to a job with an 80-hour work week, and since I was so invested in domestic work and it was part of my identity, it felt really bad to let it go. ***I'd love to hear feedback on what I've written. I've left a lot unsaid, and maybe some of that was crucial. In the meanwhile, feel free to respond!