A day in the life

“What do you do all day, Mama?” asks my daughter as she readies for another busy day at school.

This question is the kind you always know is coming, like “how are babies made?” but are never quite ready for when it does.

I fumble for a quick answer, knowing there is not one. Her eyes lower to focus on her Cheerios, not wanting to meet my “deer in the headlights” gaze. She knows she got me, and I think it scares her a little.

The truth is, I don’t do any one thing all day, like my mother did, or like I did, before my children were born. On surveys about profession, I check the box labeled “other.”

“Homemaker” doesn’t quite fit, although it surely is one of my tasks. Make that double homemaker—city and country. Sometimes, when I’m feeling prolific, I check “writer,” but I know I couldn’t feed my mini-Schnauzer on what I make from writing every year.

Mostly, for the last 20 years, I work in the service of my family. It is a job that uses all my skills at one time or another, yet hones none of them. I am rough around all edges, but thoroughly tested.

“Uh, I walk the dog after you leave for school,” I stutter, trying to construct an average day.

The question has surfaced at an innopportune time. My degenerating spine left me immobile for a few days last week, as it has three times already this year. I am feeling blue about my chances for leading an active life in my 60s, let alone into my 90s, as I had hoped. Each burst of energy or quest for fitness dooms me to weeks of pain.

“I make doctor appointments, go to the chiropractor,” I offer weakly to my inquisitor. “Check my e-mail and write replies.” I omit the numerous detours onto home improvement websites, or Neiman-Marcus online sales. A woman needs some secrets.

Meanwhile, my daughter is learning trigonometry one hour, the history of mankind the next, then French, English, Chemistry, all before 3:00 in the afternoon. I haven’t even planned dinner by then.

She must sense my discomfort. “It’s okay, Mom. I’m just curious, that’s all,” she says, trying to let me off the hook.

“I write,” I reply “but not as much as I could,” I admit.

“There is laundry,” which I detest, finally, after faithful labor lo these many years.

“And when I’m in a show, there are lines to learn, rehearsals...”

But not this month. This month, I am chairing a committee for my city co-op. In this test of co-operative living, three adults will try to research, plan and propose a planter and appropriate plants for the front entrance to a loft building in order to dissuade extreme skateboarders from using our attractive raised loading dock for their death-defying acrobatics. This task will generate masses of emails from all 14 co-operators, with conflicting ideas about everything from planter size to the moral/esthetic dilemma of using rainforest ipe wood or recycled plastic for the planter.

A new heating system did not generate this much interest, a few years ago. In the end, we will have an evergreen athletic barrier that needs another committee to take care of it. Now, that’s what I call gardening!

Not.

What I call gardening is what I’m not doing; tending to rose bushes that need guiding along the trellis, weeding the perennial beds, planting annuals, amending soil, watering new groundcovers by the riverbank to stave off erosion.

There is so much to do in the house I’m not in. Open the pool, wash the spiders from the kayaks, set the screens and store the storm windows. This is the curse of the part-time homeowner. The transition between seasons is the busiest time—but so often you are not where you need—or want—to be.

And there it is, my child. Another day in the peripatetic life of your stay-at-home mother.

Wait, I forgot to make dinner.