Blooming Women
  • Bl(oom)ing Women Accessory Salon
  • Home + Table of Contents
  • Watch us grow!
  • About Blooming Women
  • About Being a Contributor
  • Contact
  • Happy Birthday, Blooming Women! One Year Today!
  • Blog—Maniacal Musings—Becky Lyn Rickman, Managing Editor
  • Blog—Jessica's Journey—Jessica VanVactor, Guest Contributor
  • Blog—My Armenia—Carol Rickman's Blog
  • Dealing with miscarriage
  • My Story
  • Circles
  • The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Being Single
  • 5 Stages of divorce recovery
  • The Circus is in Town
  • (You're covered with) The Fingerprints of God
  • Thunder Roared and Love Soared
  • A Period Piece
  • A sneak preview of the Gertie sequel!
  • Six Steps to Cultivate your Femininity in the Business World
  • Chore Zoning or Don't try this at home!
  • The 50 with Meredith Morse—Opera Singer
  • The 50 with Jessica VanVactor
  • Memorizing Joy
  • AT LAST! My interview with Shan White, Life Coach for women in transition
  • Questions and statements we don't care if we never, ever get asked or told again (am I right, girls?)
  • The Date
  • Moonshadow's Spirit
  • Broken Writer + Hypnotherapy = Amazing Trips
  • The "R" Word
  • The 50 with Carol Shepherd Rickman
  • Triumph During Transitions
  • A Kentucky Afternoon
  • Mothers
  • 10 things chemo taught me
  • What if . . .
  • Forgiveness—A poem
  • Mantegories (n. from the Latin; man+categories)
  • Insomnia 101
  • Blooming Bud Interview: Sierra
  • Masterful Mindsets
  • It's in the bag!
  • Important lessons for children: Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can
  • Nursery rhymes, and times, and slimes, and grimes, and crimes
  • Things I learned as a single mom
  • Sadie's Soapbox: Dating
  • The Dress
  • 8 Things That Have Surprised Me About Having a Large Family
  • The gift of longing
  • The Semicolon Project
  • Most embarrassing moments—culinary edition
  • MilitaReality—a brat's perspective
  • About those elusive wisps of thought
  • Being there
  • The Giving Mom
  • How I still haven't learned to keep my smart mouth shut!
  • If you give a mom a cookie . . .
  • Cacti and Geraniums
  • The Three Gardeners
  • Beauty is as beauty does
  • Words for Sabra
  • Arm scratching in Baltimore
  • Pornography didn't kill our love and friendship . . . I did . . . and how we got it back
  • Hardening off our little bloomers
  • The Wonderful, Magical Women of Blooming Television
  • Shake it like a Polaroid picture!
  • 25 Date Nights (that aren't dinner and a movie)
  • Hills Like White Elephants
  • Maryland Beaten Biscuits
  • The night we thought the house was exploding
  • A mysterious case of goosebumps or "What is that on the wall?"
  • Militareality—Real stories of military wives
  • Finding my metal in wood
  • Another blooming bud interview
  • Chariot of Fire
  • Secret gifts of love
  • The best prank I ever pulled was . . .
  • Connie
  • Dating and other hazards
  • Favorite childhood memories
  • When God speaks . . .
  • Zanie gets into another sticky situation
  • No-see-ums: A little useful information
  • I love my kids, but . . .
  • Meg's poem
  • Another blooming bud interview
  • Some of my favorite herbal recipes are . . .
  • I love my cat, but . . .
  • I love all creatures, but . . .
  • The thing all girls and women must see and know . . .
  • The Great Chicken Debacle
  • The Powerful Influence of Brothers
  • How I feel about blooming is . . .
  • Sometimes grandma is up—other times she is simply upside-down
  • Anyone out there as anxious as I am?
  • Some of my funniest childhood memories are . . .
  • You might be addicted to Harry Potter if . . .
  • This month's survey:
  • Another Blooming Bud interview
  • The most valuable life lesson I've learned is . . .
  • The greatest blessing to come out of the most painful thing I ever experienced was . . .
  • The most powerful influence on my life is . . .
  • The thing that could have broken our family, but didn't was . . .
  • The funniest thing that ever happened to me was . . .
  • The time my dad really surprised me was when . . .
  • NEW FEATURE: Interviews with Blooming Buds
  • ANOTHER NEW FEATURE: A survey
  • The most valuable life lesson I've ever learned is . . .
  • My most embarrassing moment was when . . .
  • What really puzzles me is . . .
  • One of the most fun days I ever had was . . .
  • The most scared I've ever been was when . . .
  • The people who have been the biggest influence on me are . . .
  • I like to relax by . . .
  • The best way to do . . .
  • My most embarrassing moment was when . . .
  • The most fun I ever had was when . . .
  • When I grow up, I want to be . . .
  • What really puzzles me is . . .
  • The most amazing bargain I ever found was . . .
  • Those annoying things kids do and what they mean
  • My shameless self-promotion
  • The thing about getting older is . . .

HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS

By Sabra Sherrow, Guest Contributor
Confessions of a hardworking stay-at-home mom and what that choice meant to her.
I remember reading "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway in a short-story class I took in college. It's an impressive little story. Some people don't like Hemingway because they find him boring. I can understand that, but I find some of his work to be deeply profound and this story is one of those cases. During a stop at a train station in the 1920's, a couple discusses their relationship and the decision of whether or not to have an abortion. The overarching theme of the story is the disconnect in their relationship. They're talking about the same thing, but not really, because their perspectives are so different. The woman talks at one point about the hills she sees in the distance and how they are like white elephants to her. Again, he doesn't quite get what she is saying. The part that struck me the most was that the man seemed to think that he did understand these situations from her perspective, and I was left pondering the futility of that. How do you get someone to see your side if they are already convinced they do—even when you are certain they could not.

I feel like I run into this problem often when attempting to relate what it's like to be a stay-at-home mom. Many women—and men—stay home to rear their children, but there are so many variations of this same circumstance. I often end up in the same discussion with a woman who works part-time outside the home. She has done a lovely job raising her children, and at the same time, has been able to continue to work here and there in a field that she thrives in. She worked hard to achieve that career and I respect that she is still able to do that while remaining the primary caregiver of her children. It's quite an accomplishment. My own situation was different. As a student, the idea of motherhood seemed very foreign to me. As an only child I couldn't even imagine what you would do if you were home all day with children, besides cook and clean. I worked hard at my degree, graduating 96% nationwide of all the graduates in my field the year I finished. I obtained my dream job, but quit after only a couple of years to stay home when I gave birth to our first child. This was 12 1/2 years ago.

Leaving my career was my choice. I wasn't forced into it. I knew when I married my husband that this was something we both wanted. Yes, I wanted this even though I truly had no idea what it would entail. After much prayer and contemplation, I became even more convinced that this was the only path for me. There, of course, were other choices, but there was no doubt in my mind which direction I would go. 



Making that choice, however, was like cutting off an appendage. It was taking a huge part of my identity, my source of validation, my accomplishment, and turning away almost completely from it. Doing so, I knew I might never return to those things I had worked so hard to attain, at least for another 30 years or so. What a strange and alienating feeling to find myself in this new life that I had chosen. It had nothing to do with money. It had nothing to do with being spoiled or "able" to stay home (he made nearly nothing for the first several years I was home). It had nothing to do with feeling I was making a right choice while others were making a wrong one. It had nothing to do with feeling I was a "better" mother than the women who worked. 

Yet every time I try to talk with my friend and convey the emotional difficulties of being home "full-time," she commiserates about how she understands exactly and lumps us into the same category. I leave these conversations confused, with the "Hills Like White Elephants" feeling. I was sharing my perspective, not hers. To me, the emotional impact of my choice was different than hers. I don't believe it would be possible for her to understand my experience unless she had done it herself. Not turning away from that rewarding, fulfilling, well-earned part of my life for maternity leave and then going back to pick up a shift now and then—but leaving forever and never going back. The finality in it is so surreal that I often still feel surprise that I made the choice as easily as I did. I know for a fact that her choice doesn't make mothering easier. She still works hard and deals with the same complications of being a parent that we all do—potty training, tantrums, getting a child to sleep through the night, dealing with the busy schedule of school-aged children. For me, however, when I encounter a rude or misinformed comment in the community about staying home, I find myself wondering if the impact is slightly different for me than for women who still possess a place in that realm of their lives. Surely the sting is slightly different. I wonder if that feeling of wanting to defend your identity doesn't bug you as much when your identity is more multifaceted, at least as far as the outside world is concerned.

For me, I would venture a guess that I will never know. I can say with confidence that, if given the choice over and over, I would continue to choose the same. In contemplating my own "Hills Like White Elephants" feeling of being misunderstood, I see the truth that we often don't fully understand exactly what it's like to be in someone else's shoes . . . even when we think we do. Myself included.


Copyright © 2014 by Rent's Due Publications

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, click a button on any page to send email with details of the request.
Proudly powered by Weebly