I nearly found myself apologizing to the barista at Starbucks yesterday for not being employed. Although I only sometimes ponder my enforced unemployment on a deep and meaningful level, I haven’t been ashamed of it, yet. And it would be hard to find a reason to be ashamed. According to the latest census, Alberta has the highest two parent family rates in the country. Well over 70% with the majority still being married couples as opposed to common-law. The county we live in has the highest per capita income levels of the province and even without much of a sample to poll, it is becoming very clear to me that many women here have just part time jobs, if they work at all. Frankly, I am more ashamed to be lumped in with the SAHM crowd than I am to actually being jobless. Most conversations center around children. The ones you have. The ones your kids interact with. Those who are related to you in some fashion and, of course, the ones you think aren’t being raised all that well. It makes me a bit nostalgic for the teachers’ lounge.

Until today though, I was holding shame at bay. Without much effort truthfully because I have been too busy to worry about what a burden to society I am. Okay. I’m not that. But, I wonder what my friends and acquaintances back home think about my life of blogging, writing, child-minding and wife-ing. 

The barista is one I see often. I am beginning to recognize and be recognized in return. She is probably my age and nearly always looks frazzled, but we exchange pleasantries now and today we discussed how long the week has been and how tiring Friday always appears. She was, of course, speaking as someone who’d spent the week whipping up lattes and various coffee or tea delights for, well, hardly “the masses”. This is Fort Saskatchewan, and it’s just a tiny coffee shop tucked in a corner of the Safeway. Still, what did I do this week? A husband and a small girl-child qualify even less for “masses” status. I endured more immigration minutia, cooked…..some, cleaned….some more. I wrote. More and more that takes up time that my job used to occupy, but I doubt that the barista would have considered it work.

Do I work anymore? I held stay-at-home mothers in my community back in Iowa in a rather dubious regard. I wandered among them for a time during that first year of widowhood when I took time off to get back on my feet a bit. I stood out though. At the gym they talked about triathlon training and vacationing in Cancun over the previous winter. At the grocery I was either dressed too slovenly to pass or didn’t have the requisite toddler in the cart and bun in the oven to be taken for one of the privileged women who had a choice about  whether or not they worked. And, I guess that is what it comes down to…..choice. The widows’ group I sometimes attended seemed to have an abundance of mothers whose husbands had the foresight to plan ahead. They had insurance and other goodies that enabled them to choose their children over going back to work, or more likely working for the first time in a long time. I knew teachers back in the early days of my career who taught “for the fulfillment” it provided them, and even then, single and childless, I thought that was a load of crap. Dilettantes who were setting back the women’s movement by pretending to be working women. It’s not work if you don’t have to do it. Right now, I can’t work. I lack the legal status. A year from now? Who will I be then? What choice will I make?