What I do

This page of Austin Kleon’s book Show Your Work reminded me of an awkward moment on the streets of downtown Aiken, SC, where I was home visiting my parents, when my mother and I ran into a friend of hers. The friend asked me this question. I was speechless. No words came out of my open mouth.
            After four years of staying home raising my son, I had just begun to paint again, and at that point I didn’t have the confidence to say I was a painter, and I didn’t want to say that I was a mom and I made dinners. If you’re a woman with a child, the mom and dinner part seems to be a given—those things have to get done--but what else do you do? Well, that’s what I wanted—to be doing something else and mothering on the side. I also remember that my sister dreaded that question, too, and she was a single gal with a good-paying job for a major financial company. But she hated her job and had nothing good to say about it. She probably wouldn’t have minded if it were her side gig. (She eventually quit her job and went back to school for a degree in a health field. Now she has a different good-paying job and can confidently attend parties.)
     We put so much time into our jobs, we want to be proud of them. Not that I wasn’t proud of being a mom, but I knew I was capable of—and wanted to be—doing so much more, and I didn’t have a tidy answer to cover all that.
     A year and a half later, I do have a new response to The Question. I say that I paint and I take care of my son, and if there’s time I add that I make dinner four days a week.