Once upon a
time I vowed that I would never be one of “those” Mommys living in the suburbs
and driving a big white SUV.  Flash-forward
15 years or so and I love my suburban community and grey crossover SUV.  Still, every time I see a big white SUV
trolling around my neighborhood, I smile to think of the career-aspiring, young,
single woman who naively made that vow so many years ago.  I always try to get a glimpse of the driver –
is she a woman like me?  Or moreover, am
I a woman like her?  This afternoon at
the 4-way stop sign I noticed that the license plate holder of the white SUV in
front of me read, “ Love my life as a Mommy and Wife.”  I immediately presumed that the driver was a
stay at home mother.  If she were a working
mother, she might have chosen to write, ‘Love my life as a Mommy, Wife, and a
60-hour per week professional multi-tasker with a one hour commute and a 401K
plan.’  My dear friend Jean Marie lists
her occupation on Facebook as “COO, CEO of the LeBlanc family.”  So clever, and true.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

I’m looking
for love in the suburbs these days.  As I
wrote in my last blog, this is the first time in 23 years when I do not have a
business card, a title, a career.  I have
a career behind me and one of which I’m proud, but the future is
uncertain.  In the meantime, I am a Mommy
and a Wife, period, and I can’t say that I love it.  Don’t get me wrong – I love being a Mommy and
I love being a wife - but something’s missing. That something is a huge part of
my identity.  Like it or not,
deliberately or not, sometime, somewhere in the past 23 years I stopped taking
for granted that I would have a career and the career became an integral part
of my identity.   So, with the current transition in my life, also
known as the thrill and anxiety of determining the next chapter of my life, I’m
facing an identity crisis.   Not to be confused with a mid-life crisis, an
identity crisis sounds something like this:  If I don’t have a title, how do I explain what
I do?  If I don’t have an office to go to
or gaggle of colleagues, where do I belong? If I’m not working, what am I
doing?   These questions are always immediately
followed by the BIG ONE: Can I find contentment in being a wife and mother,
period?

Today a
friend told me that I was talking like I was retired.  Maybe tired, but not retired.  The notion that I have closed a chapter of my
life is inescapable.  To be honest, in
some ways I feel like I have retired, so to speak, from the first part of my
career.  My attitude turns
optimistic  as I realize that this is a
real opportunity for me to take stock of my strengths, appreciate how much I’ve
grown and how far I’ve been, and take the reins of the next chapter of my life
and my career.  When my head isn’t
spinning with questions and I’m not in the throes of an identity crisis, I’m
enjoying the time to go at my own pace, relax, slow down, and spend quality
time in everything that I do.  I have
choices when I wake up every morning and that’s a powerful feeling, even if it’s
simply a choice of whether or not I will get a carwash after taking my daughter
to daycamp or go get coffee and read the paper instead.  I think this is called freedom. 

Love,
identity, freedom – these are significant concepts that I’m grappling with every
day these days and many a sleepless night too. 
“Relax,” my brother tells me.  I swear,
for a moment I wondered where my dictionary was so that I could look up the
definition because I wasn’t sure what he meant. 
 But slowly, slowly, I’m coming to
terms with my identity as a non-working person, contemplating where I’ve been ,
lessons learned, and intentionally mapping out next steps, and I realize that I
am fortunate to be able to even have the time to contemplate such things.  Whatever or whoever I am at this moment, this
time is a gift.  And while many things
are uncertain right now, some things I know for sure – I will never drive a
white SUV with a  custom license plate
holder, unless of course, my children or my husband buy me one.  I love my life.