I've been very emotional about Sarah Palin since her announcement a week ago, and I have genuinely tried to examine why.
I like her, I identify with her loving a big family, I appreciate that she lives unapologetically. I deeply, and very personally, celebrate that she is a high-profile example of how we should value all babies, even the inconvenient and the imperfect. Even when it changes your life and breaks your heart.
I don't agree with everything she says. I don't even always like her tone, though speakers at both conventions used sarcasm and condescension to play to their crowd. And that's her job, to be the pitbull and appeal to the people to whom that tactic appeals. (I am not one of them.)
For a few years now, while struggling to hang on to my identity and at least few IQ points while raising babies and preschoolers, I have said the words "I can't" way too often. I can't take that job, I can't take that class, I can't volunteer right now, I can't go to an HOA meeting, I can't even go to the movies. Because I have small kids. Because right now, I have babies, no childcare, no nearby family, a husband deployed . . . oops, I'm getting myself emotional again, let me get through this to the good part . . .
The peptalk I often give myself is that I chose to be a stay-at-home mom, and right now, this is exactly what I want to do for my kids. And someday, when they are older, when they need me less, I will be able to go out and do more, get involved, improve the HOA, grow my business, get an MFA, volunteer at my church, go to a Feminists for Life conference, take guitar lessons . . .
And I think that deep down in my sub-concious, I worry, what if I'm kidding myself? What if this is what I am, and choosing to be a stay-at-home mom, and for so long, will erode the . . . potential for me to do more? Will my abilities, my "talents" if you will, whatever gifts I have to bring to the table, atrophy if I have another kid and keep choosing to stay home?
I say Sarah Palin is my new hero, because the day I saw her for the first time, she made me stop saying "I can't." I'm not going to run for PTA president or city council anytime soon, because my choice is still the same--I want to stay home with my babies right now. But it's not because I can't. It's because I just won't. Not yet.
