This view is so familiar. The drab corner of the Kansas City airport feels just as much like home as my personalized dorm room. You know, frustration and detours always seem to make people a little more human. Delayed flights, for example. As I stood, staring out the window, (as if my eyes would make our plane come down from the sky) racked with anticipation at the incoming news of whether or not our flight was going to land, a woman sat behind me. I saw her wipe her eyes. She was crying… attempted to pass it off as a yawn during the late hours. But I knew better. I asked her if she was going home, and she just launched into a story about her life.
At work this week, I asked question after question of my coworker, just digging for stories about his life, a picture of who he is. He then overheard me do the same to someone else working the same shift. He cocked his head and said in a monotone voice, “Kaitlin, you really love to hear stories about people’s lives, don’t you?” Absolutely. These are the essence of our existence! They deserve to be told! Back in the airport, I asked the woman, as she described that she flies just as much as I do, what it is she does. She replied, “Oh… I’m just a housewife. I mean, I’m not just a housewife…. I’m a stay at home mom.” I looked at her and in character I said, “Say it with pride!” “Okay! I’m a stay at home mom! Well my baby’s gone and grown up, but…” Me: “You’re still a mom. Always a mom.” She nodded happily and went on to tell me about her witty granddaughter.
I’ve had these conversations before. And I have been the one to degrade the unpaid, at times unglamorous, tread upon position of the woman who puts her family above her career. I’ve thought so deeply about these issues, and now I stand on the outside and wonder why… not why I came to the conclusions that I have come to, but why I had to analyze the idea of motherhood so much. What was I missing?
If so many women internationally give up their own careers for the lives of their children without thinking twice, why am I still thinking about how my independence is actually a hindrance to being able to do so? My mind, longing so deeply to understand what it means to be a woman, cannot stop asking questions, trying to understand who a mother is. Mothers are most often the primary face in the life of their children. It is through the mother that many children will learn their first word. Without my own mother, where would I be? Certainly not able to write any of the words that are typed here. She spent hours upon hours with me, kneeling on the yellow carpet of our New England basement, while I sat in a little wooden desk, pencil in hand, scratching out the alphabet. She poured into me my first two years of school. How could I ever possibly say that it was degrading for her to do that? To give up her own noble career of nursing to care for me? How could there have been another choice? Even if there was, she would never have thought of it. She was with me. She was a mother.
And so, my heart breaks at my own former opinions, and at the voice of downtrodden housewives who feel ast though they are inferior to the career women of our world. This is tragic. There is nothing more detrimental to a society than removing or destroying the identity of a person. Why are there so many children without mothers? We have taken away the value of motherhood. If we told mothers who they are, we would not have to take them to court to tell them what to do. So, women: stand with pride. You are mothers, whether or not you have your own children. It is apart of your lovely spirit to nurture those around you in your own beautiful way. And men: help her to understand who she is. If you are man, she can be the woman. A graceful dance of union and balance. Children: I know you will not understand for years what she has done, but love your mothers, in the best way you know how.
Let us stand and repair society, repair people, repair families, one identity at a time.
