Lately, my 7 year old has started to ask a lot of questions, in different ways, about whether or not I work. Last week she asked, "Mom, do you go to work or are you an at home Mom?" My response? " I work sometimes." I couldn't do it. I couldn't say what I knew I should have said: "I used to work but I'm not working right now." Yesterday she asked me to go on her class field trip to the pumpkin patch. "You can, you're a House Mom." Two words - House Mom - hit me like a ton of bricks, made all the more weighty by my daughter's awareness of, and insistence on, defining my work status. After all the reflection, contemplation, and highs and lows of adjusting to unemployment and my loss of identity as a 'working parent,' the truth is, I still don't see myself as a stay-at-home Mom, aka "House Mom." Today was unusual in that I didn't have anything scheduled all day. After dropping off my daughters at school, I went right home to work on their scrapbooks. I made a cup of coffee in a quiet house, then took it upstairs and broke out the scrapbooks and all the supplies and settled in for a while. I lost track of time (real joy will do that to you), until I stopped to notice that the clock was ticking very loudly. So loudly, in fact, that I couldn't believe that I hadn't noticed it before. And then it hit me: I DON'T HAVE TO LOOK AT THE CLOCK. I had nowhere to be for hours. I could sit at the desk and play with stickers and colored papers and sip my coffee for as long as I wanted. I worked too hard for too many years to take it for granted. Until recently, I had not been inside a bank since college (many years ago, I can assure you). I've been inside the bank three times in the past two months. I can report that there are now thick plastic counter-to-ceiling walls separating customers from the bank folk. I can also report that the plastic barriers at the post office have been removed. I've been there a few times in the past few months too. These days, I no longer feel anxious about getting all my errands done and finding the time to do them. I have time to get everything done and stop at Starbucks for a latte in between. I have time to go to basketball games, arrive on time for soccer practice, enjoy a matinee, do laundry, clean the kitchen, and go on tomorrow's 2nd grade field trip. I have been focused on staying busy and savoring this time off from work but until today, I hadn't really reflected on what it meant to be able to do all these things - without guilt. Today, somewhere between the latte , the bank, and the frame store, I wondered, for the first time: why did I always feel guilty leaving work early to see my daughter play basketball but I never felt guilty for missing a basketball game to work? In my day, I learned that the feminist movement was all about women having options as an alternative to staying home and taking care of the house and the children. Opportunities opened up for women, but somewhere along the way some of us didn't see options, we saw obligation. If we could work (just like men), then we should work. That's not to mention the fact that we also continued to be the primary caretakers of the children and the home. These days, in addition to errands and cleaning, I am also fully engaged in the job search. The past few months off having given me the time and mental space to reflect and to be more deliberate about my career choices for the first time in 23 years . I now realize that, like many women, my career was not only on over-drive, but it was on auto-pilot. One might say that Newton's Law of perpetual motion applies to my career - move forward, accept more and more responsibility, accept every opportunity, just say 'yes.' Then you wake up one day and you're screaming at your kids and the traffic and too tired to walk the dog. Most of the working women I know who have advanced their careers are Type A, driven parents who pretend not to have a life beyond work just to get a promotion so that they can work harder, have more responsibility, and less quality time with their friends and family. Oh yes, and more money. And there's the rub. A couple of weeks ago a friend asked me how the job search was going. With my new-found outlook on work and career, I responded that I was looking for work that I would really enjoy and be happy to go to each day. Without hesitation, he responded, "Work is where you go to get money." He didn't understand when I said that I believed it could be more, more than just a place to get money. "That's why they call it work," he said. Flash forward a couple of weeks to lunch with my sister; the same topic came up. She agreed with my friend. "That's why they call it work," she said. She went on to say that most people show knows hate their work and they do it mainly to 'fund' their leisure activities and they find happiness in those. There are also many people in this country who work simply to survive and meet their basic needs, I thought. Still, who said work couldn't be enjoyable, fun, engaging? I'm not so naive as to believe that work can be all laughter in the hallways, potluck lunches, and inter-departmental volleyball games. But given that people who work full-time spend the vast majority of their waking hours engaged in work, it struck me as sad, even pathetic, that people would readily accept that work cannot, should not, be enjoyable. It seems that for many people, there is a clear distinction between work ("Ho hum, another Monday morning") and happiness ("TGIF!). I will not accept it. Then again, I don't have any expensive hobbies. On a lighter note, I am revisiting 8th grade algebra these days, much to my chagrin. I thought I was finished with algebra for the rest of my life! An old, familiar pain hit in the pit of my stomach as soon as I opened my 8th grader's textbook and laid my eyes on a+2b= 10y. I decided to adopt a new perspective on algebra, in keeping with my new perspective on work, and I posted a little note on my computer: work+home= life + happiness. You don't need to be a mathematician to figure it out: both sides are equal.