Oops, I’m a Housewife.

I don’t think there are many women these days that aspire to be a housewife.  Sure, they are out there in the world, somewhere, but I don’t know any of them.  I mean, my mother stayed home, but she had children.  I’m talking about young people, recent graduates, my peers and friends.  It never even occurred to me that I could be a housewife, nor did I want to be one.  In my experience, when I tell people with jobs that I stay at home they usually give me a sad, sorry-for-you reaction.  I can’t fault them for it, because it probably would have been my reaction two years ago, along with thoughts like “I could never do that.” and “Yikes.”

So let me give you a bit of an introduction.  I grew up in the south and went to Clemson University to study chemistry and horticulture.  A bit of an unusual combination, yes, but I could be anything I wanted to be.  At least, that’s what I’d been told.  I stuck around at Clemson to get my Master’s degree in environmental toxicology.  I wasn’t completely sure what I was doing with my life, but I felt a deep sense of purpose and accomplishment.  Right before I started grad school, I met Mr. Meena through a mutual friend.  Boy, he was a northerner!  You should hear him say Chicago.  I didn’t really think I was due to marry anyone soon, especially this crazy guy that was studying mechanical engineering and actually liked it.  I had dreams of working for the EPA or doing research at a government lab, you know something really cool, top secret, and definitely satisfying.  But of course, Mr. Meena wooed me with his huge smile, and we got married the day after we both graduated.

During our final semester, Mr. Meena and I were both racing to see who could land a job first.  I kept getting distracted, though, with writing my thesis and planning a wedding.  We went right down to the wire, with him getting the offer he wanted just one day before graduation, and two days before our wedding.  So we got our respective degrees, wed at sunrise the next day like the crazy people we are, and went off on our honeymoon.  A couple weeks later we moved to Charlotte and made a life together.  Mostly, I tried not to throw all of his old raggedly man things away.  He started working and I took two months off to recover from the effects of grad school.  But eventually the job search began.

Now if you are a recent college graduate, you know that being geographically limited is just terrible when you are trying to find a position.  Add to that my desire to work in a nice lab, stay in the environmental realm, not work night shift, and well, generally be happy at my job, and finding the right position started to feel impossible.  I went on many interviews to places that weren’t right for me or had long commutes and low pay.  I started to sleep in late, watch a lot of TV, and be generally cranky.  My husband got up early to go work for what seemed like an eternity to me and we didn’t know anyone in Charlotte.  It was a shock, especially since I had been at Clemson for almost 6 years and had such a built in community there.

Photo by Cureton Photography.

Furthermore, I am not the housewife type.  I don’t own an apron and usually put off laundry until I have nothing to wear.  But if I was home all day, it didn’t really seem fair to ask Mr. Meena to cook and clean when he came home.  I missed being in the laboratory oh so much.  Unlike some professions, it’s just not something you can do from home.  What’s ironic is that I had always wished for more time to organize my life, have more adventures, learn new skills and experience new things.  But I didn’t actually do any of those things during my stint of unemployment; I didn’t want to, I just wanted to go back to work.  I started to have what I called a ‘start of life crisis’ where I questioned my career path and if it was what I was supposed to be doing with my life.  Because if it was, shouldn’t it be working out for me?

I spent ten months as a housewife before I got a job.  And it was a good job!  One of those jobs I didn’t think I would get since I could only look in and around Charlotte.  I almost couldn’t believe it.  I got to talk to adults during the day, rather than just talking to my bird and questioning my sanity.  I brought my family in for a tour so that they could be just as excited as I was.  Not only did I learn a lot, but I truly enjoyed myself, had a great mentor, and became a better lab analyst.  And of course there were other perks, such as more income and faster debt reduction (goodbye, student loans).  I arrived home when Mr. Meena did and spent time mostly with him instead of by myself and I thought that was great.

Four months flew by before I had a rude awakening.  The city had a multi-million dollar budget deficient and I was one of the workers being cut.  I was laid off late on a Friday afternoon and I had to turn in my badge, pack up my things, and be escorted from the building.  There was no warning… I left the building with samples still running.  When I was driving home I realized that I had just lost my first real job.  What would my friends, family, and previous boss think?  How did that make me look?  Would they understand that I had worked really hard and done my best?  Did it matter?  I was sad, angry, confused, lost, and, worst of all, alone at home again.

Within a day or two I had already found another job listing that I was interested in.  It was pretty much the work I had been doing, but with a smaller city that wanted me part-time.  It seemed perfect!  I was determined not to be a housewife… but our life took another unexpected turn.  Mr. Meena’s company asked him (us) to go far, far away to Germany for a year for training.  At first I was terrified, but we went on a weekend vacation to think about it.  We took stock of our life: no kids, no mortgage, no furniture, me without a job or commitments… and realized there would never be a better time to do it.  Plus who in their right mind turns down an opportunity to go abroad like that?

I was just so darn excited.  I was going to learn German and I started planning what to take and what to leave here.  I looked up the rules about traveling with our bird, Koopa.  I also read all the articles about what to expect and freaked out when they said that Germany doesn’t typically have things like hot sauce, ice cubes, or peanut butter!  How would I survive?  Then I got a call from the part-time job that I had almost forgot I applied to in my going-to-Germany fervor.  There was a part of me that was just dying to go for it and knew I would love working there for two months before leaving… and another part of me that couldn’t do it in good conscience.  I have seen how it drains a workplace to pour time and resources into training a new employee just to have them leave and then have to repeat the whole process.  I didn’t want to be that drain, so I regretfully declined.

All was fine and dandy until the paperwork battle started at Mr. Meena’s job.  Should I have been surprised that there was no way we would go to Germany in just two months, like we planned?  I suppose not.  It has now been five months since I lost my job and we still don’t have a certain date for Germany.  I am a housewife again.  When we move I will more than likely be a trailing spouse because of the difficulty of getting work permits in those situations.  Even if I do get to work, it is unlikely that it would be in my field.  Furthermore, I’ve accumulated some health problems that could prevent me from working in a laboratory.

So here I am.  I’d like to say that I embraced my fate this time, but I think that it really was worse since I knew what I was missing out on.  It’s accentuated by the fact that I had been so unrealistically happy with my job in a world where few people are.  I’m pretty sure that all I did the first week was lie in bed and mourn my loss.  I can be a bit dramatic.

I have good days and bad days.  Sometimes I cope by convincing myself that the kitchen isn’t all that different from the laboratory.  I have to measure things and follow a procedure- otherwise I might have an epic failure on my hands.  I’ve developed some hobbies that help me more than I thought they would.  I’m trying to actually do new things and have adventures with this time in my life, but I’m only moderately successful with that.  Sometimes Mr. Meena comes home and tells me about the shining report he received from his boss or the big project he gets to work on and I struggle to be genuinely happy for him instead of envious that it’s not me.

We recently met another couple at our church that we have a lot in common with; specifically that it took the wife two years to find employment after they moved to the area.  I think that she could sense my anxiety when I told them that I was unemployed.  She shared with me about her two years at home and I had a lot of déjà vu while listening to her.  But after a while she was gushing about how that brought her and her husband closer together in unexpected ways.  She told me how they learned to communicate, to love, and to serve one another.  And when you get down to it, those are the things that will make a happy marriage.  She was so full of grace about the whole experience, and it left me feeling like I was wasting an awesome opportunity.  Her words stuck with me and provided comfort and encouragement.

I am a housewife.  Welcome to my blog.

I thought about calling it something like ‘The Unintended Housewife’ or ‘Unhappy Housewife’… but I found that those names are common and that I didn’t really want to be defined by being a housewife.  I am, however, a Meena.  So I have decided to call my blog ‘My Meena Life’ and to write about all that it contains.  My writing will probably be about my hobbies and travel experiences at my home in Charlotte/the Carolinas and throughout Europe while we live there.  I might throw in some health-related posts every now and then.  I also hope to self-reflective stories and personal developments, which I hope can encourage people in similar situations.  I can pretty much guarantee that this won’t be a DIY blog, because I can barely DIY anything useful, much less come up with ideas for DIYs.  I’m sure the blog will evolve and grow with me, but that’s my vision so far.

With all that said, thanks for reading my first post!

Photo by Cureton Photography.