I had a hard time becoming a working mom. Mostly because I had a hard time becoming a mom, and then realized I’d never really worked, so figuring out how to do both at the same time was pretty overwhelming. I was 19 when my son was born, a year of college under my belt and experience in absolutely nothing. In one particularly sad moment, I remember looking up “beauty schools” in the yellow pages thinking maybe I could have a career in hair. I think that was a move inspired by the movie Grease. Fortunately, I never dropped in, so never became a dropout.
I finally summoned the guts to go job hunting when the boy was eight months old. We needed the money and I needed a life outside of our apartment. I was more lonely and depressed than I’ve ever been that first year — my friends had all gone back to college, I’d moved to a city where I knew no one, and I was at home with a baby while my husband worked long hours and made new friends. The boy was my sole focus; my entertainment, my job, my friend. I needed to get out for his sake as much as mine.
I found someone to watch the boy while I found a job and then, when I actually had a job. That was mystifying – do I find the job first, or the childcare provider or the other way around? Connie watched the boy, and then the girl in a relationship that ended up lasting many years and many different jobs.
I remember the day I found that first job — at a touristy store in Old Town St. Charles — making just a dollar more than I was paying per hour for childcare. The day I applied I was hired on the spot, wearing a floral skirt and sweater I’d had since I was sixteen years old. “I like the way you look,” said the store’s owner, a woman who within two months had a breakdown, abruptly closing the store without notice. It became apparent during my short time there that she had a buying addiction. She was in way over her head and kept acquiring more merchandise to sell.
It was OK, and probably a good thing that job ended, although it was jarring to show up for work one day and find that I had no job. I called my sitter from a pay phone to tell her what happened and that I was heading to the mall, that bastion of employment for the underexperienced, to find another job immediately.
To be continued . . .
