“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.” - G B Shaw

I feel like I should file this under "be careful what you wish for."

If you read this blog, you know my ambivilant feelings about being a working parent. How I have trouble with the balance between working and mothering, and how I often wished I could spend less time working and more time with my child.

Well, I got my wish.

My job was eliminated at the end of September, just about three weeks after my son started school. So now I'm a stay-at-home mom whose child is gone all day. (If you'd like to savor the irony of that for a moment, go ahead - I certainly do on a daily basis. Especially since we can't pull him from aftercare or we risk not having it when we need it.)

My job right now, obviously, is to find another job. But also to keep the house clean, and do the laundry, and get things decorated for the holidays. To make lunches and walk my son to and from school on (increasingly rare) warm sunny days. To sew and tend some plants and make fancy holiday tags. And (oh how I try!) spend less time at the computer.

I'm not going to insult every stay-at-home mom in the universe by saying "wow, I didn't know this was so hard". What has surprised me, though, is how it continues to be hard for me to find the right balance in my life between my 'new job' (sitting at this computer, writing resumes and cover letters and hunting down interesting work posted on obscure corners of the web) and my 'mom job'. I assumed it would be simpler than this. Now I'm starting to see where failure to do the dishes was my real true lack of desire to do them, coupled with a very handy excuse (Oh, I worked all day, I'm tired, I need to spend time with E/have time for myself/do this fun thing). But I'm slowly learning. And the holidays are coming, giving me more household projects to manage and more things to balance.

I tend to think, actually, that it's likely that a new job will present itself right around the the time that I've found the right balance in my new life. Because that's the way these things go.

In the meantime, though, I'm going to bake cookies and make gift tags and enjoy this opportunity to make an extra-special holiday for my son at the very moment he's at an age to most fully enjoy it.

"I can hardly wait to see you come of age. But I guess we'll just both have to be patient."

John Lennon, Yoko Ono & Sean, NYC, 1975
Originally uploaded by rising70

"He didn't come out of my belly, but my God, I've made his bones, because I've attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I'm so proud of all those things. But he is my biggest pride."

I was going to write about something else today (about our tree, actually) but I've been reflecting all morning about the life and death of John Lennon, and his family, today, and I wanted to write a little about it.

When their son Sean was born, Lennon and Ono struck a deal: she would work and he would stay home and raise their son. In 1975 this was a revolutionary idea. Not just because the Lennon-Ono family was one of the five or six most famous families on the planet, or because of their wealth, but simply for the idea itself: mom going off to work and dad staying home in his PJs and changing diapers and taking care of every meal -- especially a dad raised, as Lennon was, in the middle- to working-class ethos of World War II era Liverpool -- was something to be looked at askance, despite the rise of feminism. (For comparison, the film Mr. Mom came out in 1983, and the idea of dad as sole caregiver was still considered high-humor, as it is, to some extent, today.) Again and again during those five years, in myriad ways, it was implied that Lennon had somehow "lost it" -- lost his mind -- to want to chuck in fame and music to take care of his infant son.

I've been trying to bring this to some profound wrap-up, but I can't find it. Suffice to say that my heart goes out to his son today, for his loss, and I hope those years of his father's love provide him with some comfort.