As Kids Grow Up, a Mom Must Carefully Evaluate Her Path

Dear Vicki: I’m the mother of three kids, twin 8-year-old boys and a little girl, 5.

Before I got married and had kids, I worked as a surgical nurse, and, I must say, I had a very good professional reputation. Still, once the twins were born, I realized that the long and crazy hours of both jobs, mothering and surgical nursing, were incompatible, and I chose to become a full-time mommy.

Once I made that decision, I truthfully never thought about it again. Now that my youngest child has begun kindergarten at a school with a full-day program, I finally have time on my hands to wonder about my career decisions.

Sure, my kids need me every day (especially as a driver), but if I got my act together, I might be able to think about going back to work. Am I supposed to pick up where I left off?

RETURNING TO THE LAND OF THE LIVING

Dear Returning: Welcome back! I, too, had an epiphany like yours. One morning about a year ago, I yelled up the stairwell for all of my kids to get in the car. Nothing new, there. This time, however, when I went out to my big, old SUV, there the four of them sat--in their own places, without car seats and with seat belts fastened.

It jarred me so deeply that I was hardly able to make the drive to school. No car seats, no bottles, no lifting anybody into a too-high seat; they handled it all perfectly without me.

It was my Emancipation Proclamation and my Waterloo, all at the same time.

I, like you, had had a vibrant career outside the home that three pregnancies in four years brought to a standstill. I remember feeling the angst at the time of giving up something that gave me great satisfaction (not to mention income), but I was able to choose staying at home rather, and I grabbed the opportunity.

That’s not to say that I got amnesia. I thought about my job often while I was wiping poopy bottoms or walking the floors with colicky infants, sometimes with a yearning that made me weep. I would watch my husband go off to work in the morning and secretly yearn to hop into my own car to escape the countless crises that made up my day. No lunches at a sushi bar, no fancy clothes, no leaving my desk each night with the sense of a job well-done.

For years I considered it a victory every time I managed to shampoo my hair and to change out of my oversized sweatshirt and black leggings before my mate returned home. Still, I believed that my real job was at home with my kids, for as long as they needed me.

Even after the kids were older, I didn’t exactly sit on my glutes, what with running errands (usually for them) and keeping up the house. But the challenge had changed: They could get by on a basic level without me, and I didn’t know what to do with that realization.

A few of my fellow mommy girlfriends took this change as their cue to return to jobs that they’d missed. A few others submerged themselves further into the job of “professional mommy.” They became room mothers in kindergarten, organized hot-lunch programs and put together the slide shows and special gifts for the Mother’s Day party. I didn’t know where I belonged.

I tried to think back to my pre-pregnancy days to recall the hobbies and interests I had then, seeing this new era as an invitation to rediscover my old creativity. It was a bust--I’d completely lost touch with the ability to devote two straight hours to needlepoint without constantly thinking that I should either be earning money for my time or giving my time to the overworked teachers who needed photocopying done.

Between you and me, I think that it’s still too early for moms like us to rush into major lifestyle changes. This is what I call “mommy adolescence,” a time when we have notions of expanding into the world but are not yet equipped to make our debut. Especially those of us with older kids.

After all, how can you, a surgical nurse, recommit to your serious work when you may hear any year now that kids in your twins’ school have tried marijuana? I, like you, am still figuring all this out, but I suspect that this “mommy adolescence” is Mother Nature giving us a wake-up call, reminding us to begin thinking about what we’d like to claim for ourselves from our dwindling youthful years.

Maybe it will be a part-time return to our previous careers, maybe the discovery of a new career or perhaps a recommitment to the task of full-time mothering. We must each choose a path for ourselves.

If it’s of any use, I’ve decided to expand my career of writing from home to include travel and more assignments. Things are still wobbly around here, and my kids are not particularly fond of my additional distractions.

Still, perhaps it will be a gift for them to learn life doesn’t always revolve around them.

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Vicki Iovine is the author of the “Girlfriends’ Guide” and parenting correspondent for NBC’s “Later Today.” Write to her at Girlfriends,SoCal Living, L.A.Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A., CA 90053; e-mailGrlfrndsVI@aol.com.