sarah jane on what's new

Sarah Jane is a stay-at-home mom with
three children who writes a parenting
column for a local newspaper. We will be
posting her columns regularly on our blog.
Enjoy!

Not long ago I visited my old workplace where someone asked me the harmless question, “what’s new with you?” Although it’s been years since I left work to raise my children, this question still makes me fidget.

What should I say? My mind spins through a cycle of potential answers but they all seem embarrassingly mundane. Honestly, this week I was delighted to learn that peanut butter washes off sunglasses quite easily. And last week I suffered a terrible shock when I discovered the green Teletubby was not Dipsy but actually Tinky Winky! How could I have been wrong for so long?

Instead of offering these truths, I default to the polite answer, “not much, how about you?”

For me, the hardest part about being a stay-at-home mom is trading a life full of adventure--or what now seems like adventure--for the daily monotony of washing dishes, managing laundry, and returning toy debris to its proper location.

I know these years will fly by. Soon the school bus will wisk away my children and leave me awkwardly or blissfully alone. But it’s hard to shelve my dreams and plans, even temporarily, and as my friend Scott says, “learn how to be truly selfless.” Sometimes I want to put on a crisp pair of pants, hop into a car without crumbs or carseats, and dash off to the airport where I board a plane toward some exotic destination, or say, Milwaukee-- I don’t care--just to be alone and be me. Me! Me! ME!

But if I simply change my attitude, I could appreciate life’s smaller moments. A day managing five loads of laundry was also a day discovering potato bugs in the backyard. A morning of wiping jam off ten fingers was also a morning when my daughter said to our cat, “we missed you at the swimming pool yesterday!” It’s these moments that color my days but are often forgotten among the mayhem of feeding, clothing, bathing and otherwise raising three small human beings.

Anyway, that’s enough about me. What’s new with you?