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March 16, 2004
Duck decoys and chocolate sundaes
I have worked all my adult life and most of my teens. I got my first paycheck at the age of 13 for dancing in the Nutcracker. Since then I’ve scooped ice-cream, painted duck decoys (!!), poured coffee and have been poured coffee and for a year in college I mapped the ocean floor. I’ve been a rat and a swan and a rose and a princess. I’ve written computer manuals and legal briefs. I’ve worn sweats and suits and 18th century Russian national costume to work. I’ve gone from part-time to overtime, but I’ve never been a full-time mom.
Summertime … and the living is easy!
I still haven’t told the human resources manager, but May 31 will be my last day of work. I’m going to be a SAHM. At least for the summer. We’ve rented a house outside the city from June 1 – August 31. Because St. Petersburg is a filthy, polluted and generally unhealthy place to live, most people send their children to the countryside for the summer. Traditionally the children live exclusively with the grandparents for three months, but that would happen in my family over my dead body, and I mean that quite literally. Not that my mom or Dima’s would take the kids anyway; they are a new generation of Russian babushka (grandmother). Unlike their doting force-feeding predecessors, our moms are hard-working, self-centered power shoppers (thank G-D Dima’s mom doesn’t speak English and can’t read this!!) Another option, that of the rich, is to have the kids live outside the city with a nanny, the parents visiting on the weekends. Remember what I said about my dead body? Ditto here. The third option is to do what we have done since Andrei was born, and stay in the city. But it’s so sad to see my kids all alone on the dusty playground, poking around in the cat feces infested sandbox. In the summer, there is really the impression that all children have been evacuated from the city. Dima and I were always getting comments about how we love ourselves more than our children, keeping them in the city for the summertime, while we satisfy our selfish need to work.
Door #4
This year, we have decided on a fourth option. And what’s behind door # 4? A one-way ticket home from work. I still can’t believe I’m actually going to do it. I’m excited, because recently I’ve really been feeling like Andrei and Anna need me and I’m not there for them, that I’ve been missing out on their first years. Andrei is already so big, and soon they won’t need me the way they do now. I want to be the one to pick Andrei up from preschool and hear the morning’s adventures, to take them on their walks, to hang out with them. I hate coming home at 7 p.m. or later when the kids go to bed at 8 o’clock, and that precious hour of the day when I see them, instead of being relaxed, I have to goad them into putting away toys, getting undressed, peeing/pooing, bathing, getting on pyjamas, brushing teeth. That one hour I have with them is so stressful; sometimes I wish I could come home when they are already asleep. So much for “quality time.”
Losing my income, identity, image
As I wrote above, I have worked almost all my life, and I am scared. I’m afraid of the usual things, like not having “my own” money, and this may sound shallow, but I am afraid of losing the respect I get when I tell people I work at ****. My job allows me to talk about politics and the economy and other interesting (at least to me) subjects with the men at parties, while the women are comparing manicures, telling one another about their last vacation in the South of France, and occasionally about their children (who are mostly with nannies). One woman actually asked me why I worked, since Dima earns enough money for me to stay at home. I work because that’s what I’m used to doing. I like the income and the status, I like the job itself. Although Russia has more female top-managers than in most industrialized (including the US!!) countries, most women in our circle of acquaintances are expected to be “arm decoration”. I wrote about the phenomenon in an earlier post. I’m pretty sure most of Dima’s business acquaintances and some of his friends wonder what the heck he was thinking when he married me, a career-oriented former ballet dancer who has never had a manicure or a suntan, doesn’t like Versace and hates to shop. Of course, I am sinking into stereotypes, but it is true, on the whole, Russian women are much more feminine than their Canadian or American counterparts, especially the well-off.
Will I get fired?
There is also the fear that I will suck as a full time mom. That’s a big fear, because it’s the most important job in the world. What if I can’t do it?
Andrei and Anna
Andrei and Anna have chicken pox (vaccination against chicken pox is widely available in Europe). If they weren’t covered in spots, you’d never know it, they are as energetic as always, even more so, since the quarantine confines them to our apartment until Monday. They are climbing the walls and bouncing off them. The only fever they have is an extreme case of cabin fever. They feel great but they look scary. They LIKE looking scary, because when you’re a 4-year old, scary and yucky is cool and when you’re a 2-year old who has a 4-year old brother, you want to be exactly like him, so you think scary and yucky is cool, too. That and peeing standing up, which finally Anna has stopped doing.
And thinking about peeing reminds me to ask. Please tell me, why is there so much fun underwear for girls and none for boys? Or is this just particular to Russia? Anna has lots of cute undies in bright colors, with all sorts of flowers and cats and dogs and princesses. The only “fun” underwear for boys I have seen is Speedo-style, which Dima and the preschool teachers say is bad for the testicles. So Andrei has grey briefs (but not ball-constricting Speedos) and blue boxers, and he’s envious of Anna’s colorful assortment, which I understand.
And on that note, I shall complete this entry, as it is already too long.
Warm regards,
Lisa
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