Susan Senator

I know (in my mind) that I am fortunate not to “have to work.” We are living on Ned’s salary, with me doing all of the housework, most of the children-work, and all of the household expenditures. I am the only one who buys anything, I do all the buying of clothes, food, and all the other stuff you need/want in a home. So I manage all the money, meaning, I keep a running total in the checkbook, but Ned balances the thing every month. Ned also manages investments (although our biggest investment is our house and I take care of that, and the lawn).

So what? You may be thinking. I feel the need to explain what I do with my time because I was raised to be a career woman, and I’m only partly that, and only recently. I grew up thinking that I would be an actress, or a singer (I did and still do very good impersonations of singers, like Barbara Streisand and Shakira). I thought maybe I’d be a poet. Or a fashion designer. Or start a school for disabled children (really! this is what my friend Debbie and I planned when we were 11). But I did not ever dream about a husband, a wedding, or babies. Even though I was an insatiable Barbie player, most of the time I was just putting outfits on her and when I got older I was having her have sex with my other dolls; but never, ever a dream wedding. It wasn’t until I met Ned, when I was 18, and started dating him, at 19, that I had the thought of marriage. All I wanted, until Ned, was to fall in love and all of its lovely accoutrements. I totally played the field.

So I fell in love with him pretty quickly, and decided I wanted to marry him one day when I was watching The Waltons and MaryEllen was talking about how she loved her husband. I thought, “That’s how I could feel about Ned.” And then I thought, “Why don’t I marry Ned?” In the end, I married him without a plan; just the feeling that I wanted to live with this man forever and we may as well make that formal, so I asked him one night, “Wouldn’t you say we’re engaged?” And he said, “Uhhhh….” Then we had a fight, during which I kept trying to prove to him that because we had no intention of ever breaking up and planned to live together, that we were, in fact, engaged. I said I didn’t need a ring. So after a few more hours of arguing, he agreed. Then I said, “So, can I call my mother?” Once you call your mother, a vague arrangement to be together always becomes an Engagement, with the question of “When?”

Ned then formally proposed, first with a ring drawn on paper, then with the cute little solitaire diamond we picked out together at Perlstein’s in downtown Philadelphia. We got married at the end of our senior year of college, right after graduation from Penn. I was set to go there to grad school to get a degree in history, and Ned got a job in the GRASP lab, where they were working on robotic arms and that kind of thing. We got a little apartment (after the initial roach motel) in a Victorian house and lived there for a couple of years until I said, “I’m done with Philadelphia, let’s move.” Ned said, “Where?” And we decided together on Boston, figuring I could get a job in history there (an historical society or a teaching job) and Ned could get a high tech job. Only one of us succeeded. Well, I did get a job in an historical society but it totally blew huge chunks all over its precious little collections. I went on to an advertising job at Jordan Marsh, which also blew chunks, and then a job writing for a high tech company, which also….

Then I got pregnant with Nat (and really blew chunks during morning sickness) and decided to just quit and roost and write. So I wrote a couple of novels at that point and got an agent, but the stuff never went anywhere. They were historical fictions, set in 19th century Russia, with tons of plot twists, not much character development.

So what? You might be thinking. Well, I guess I want to understand how it is that I don’t feel quite like I’m doing it all right. I have a bit of a writing career, at last, although not writing the kind of books I thought I’d write when I first started out. But then again, what turned out the way I thought it would when I first started out? Not adulthood; not motherhood; not my writing career.

As I said, I feel a certain degree of inexplicable shame over the fact that I have this free time. I have thought about getting a job, teaching at a university, or as an autism aide in a public school. I poked around here and there but nothing turned up. I even entered a contest to become a model for More Magazine. I actually sometimes get depressed about it. I think, “What did I do wrong, that I have time on my hands?” I know that once this new book proposal sells I will have a lot to do, but still — my hours are my own. People ask me how I have time to write and I feel embarrassed, like I shouldn’t have time to write because my life must be so tough. My plate must be so full!

It’s only full sometimes. It’s tough, but not always, or I would not be sitting here sort of smiling as I type.

But still — I know I’m a writer and all, but that’s so part time. I am so dependent on other people’s schedules, on waiting for agents, editors, etc. I always need to be coming up with new ideas and finding hooks for them for my articles.

So what? You may be thinking. Well, I am trying to understand why I am ashamed of what I do with my days and the first step is talking about it/writing about it. Going public, and figuring it out with others. I guess. So be kind, and be wise, and help me feel okay about my existence.