Why did I decide to leave home? Well, in my fourth year of "domestic engineering" (which still felt like housework) I retyped, categorized, cross-referenced and annotated every recipe in my 150 cookbooks. The project took one entire year and when completed enabled me to cook twenty-four hours a day without ever running into a snag due to a misplaced recipe. But my family (two children) did not eat twenty-four hours a day, and my husband preferred Twinkies and Coke to Quiche Lorraine.
Frustrated in my creative energy, I then took to decorating. By my eighth month of pregnancy, I had painted the dining room of our apartment for the third time that year, then proceeded on to the built-in china cabinet, painting each drawer and shelf a different color. Not stopping there, I decorated our fancy glasses and empty bottles with glitter and displayed them with little Italian lights on the top shelves. More, more, more...I bought driftwood, plastic grape leaves and velvet birds for the middle section. But wait, something was missing...music! The stereo then found a new home in the only space remaining. I stood back and admired it...then went into labor and delivered child number three.
After the purchase of our first home and the birth of our last child (number four, James) I felt the need again to be involved in something that utilized my creativity, so I took up crocheting. Not just the usual things like scarfs, vests and afghans (remember the cookbooks and china cabinet?). I crocheted pictures...then entered myself in the local art fair where people would stop and shake their heads as if to say "my, my, my, isn't that strange!"
About this same time, I longed for some adult conversation so I would turn on the TV and converse with the people on the soap operas, cheer on the quiz show contestants and talk to my plants. After a year of this, I lost contact with the real world, became an expert on East Indian Spices and Songs of the Middle 50's and filled each room with leafy greenery. Next came arts & crafts, hypochondria, reading, fits of hysteria, and jigsaw puzzles.
Finally child number four reached school age, and I wondered if I would suffer from the empty nest syndrome, or go into deep depression because no one needed me? When the day actually arrived, I kissed Jimmy good-bye, looked around at my beautifully decorated `empty nest' filled with cookbooks, crocheted pictures, plants, and echoes, grabbed my coat and hat and closed the door behind me. "Well done!" said I, and headed out into the world... certainly not for fulfillment but for furtherance.
Hey World, I'm back. Let me at those matching shoes and purses, lunches in classy downtown restaurants, people without peanut butter and jelly on their faces, scissors that stay put and are mine all mine, and bathroom doors that don't knock the minute you shut them. I'm free, free, free! Free to pursue my fondest wish, my deepest desire.
Jim is in fourth grade now. Three years have gone by. What was `my fondest wish, my deepest desire'?
Well, during year `one' it was lunch. What a thrill it was to call a friend and say "Are you free for lunch?" Not liver sausage at my place while Bozo's Circus is on, but `Cervantes at noon'. The mobility I suddenly had was exhilarating, and by the end of the first year I had upwards of three luncheon dates a week. But it felt like there had to be more to life than knowing the special of the day for every restaurant within a thirty-mile radius of my home.
So year `two' I sought intellectual stimulation and growth. I attended lectures on anything and everything (favoring the ones that offered sweet rolls and coffee). When I heard all I could stand about God, rape, telekinesis, and Walgreen's latest gadget, I quit the circuit and tried out school. I enrolled in our local college for a course in expository writing, English 101.
Surrounded by college freshmen I learned very quickly that my clothes were out of style, and that I was the only one in class who stiffened up from sitting too long. But I earned an `A' and felt as proud as I did about my cookbooks, china cabinet, and crocheted pictures. I moved on to a course in The History of Women...then A Study of Non-Violent Revolution...The Philosophical Dimensions of Being Human...and finally a course on Death and Afterlife. A fitting end to year number `two'.
A straight `A' student with twelve whole credit hours, I felt educated enough. Time to check out the business world. I accepted a part-time job downtown and felt awful when they handed me my first paycheck (all those years of volunteering had warped me). The second paycheck was easier to accept; the third was already beneath me and I thought seriously about demanding a raise. (I made the quickest adjustment to the business scene.) Ten months of part-time employment brings me now to the end of year `three'. Where to now?
I really don't know. I decided not to rush myself into anything. But as the months roll on, the possibilities are being narrowed down for me (last month, arthritis in my fingers eliminated the massage parlor, thank God!). I feel the pressure to choose something and yet am satisfied at doing a little of everything. There is a certain uneasiness though. What if I wind up a herring pickler? Will my husband still love me? Will the children be proud of me? Is there a future in it? Oh well, if nothing ever becomes of me at least I can say I tried...and succeeded!