The Canonization of Saint Mother

A vivid memory from my childhood: money was tight, times were tough, and my mother was preparing to return to the workforce to help put food on the table for her children and keep a roof over her family’s head. No one was happy about it, but when life gives you lemons, you do what you must to make the juice drinkable.

Before an interview, I remember my mother expressing that she was nervous about returning to the workforce with her resume in hand because there was such a huge gap between her last date of employment and her current job search. To account for the gap, she had put the occupation of homemaker on her resume, a term I did not understand at the time, much as I did not understand why my mother would be feeling insecure about her desirability to an employer. She ran our lives, she took care of us, and even from the perspective of a child, I could tell that what she did every day at home was hard work.

Her insecurity, as well as the business world’s dismissal of homemakers, is not one of those things that I have come to understand better with age. In fact, that anyone would look down on someone who chooses to manage a household is deplorable. Most of us only wear a small handful of hats in our professional careers; homemakers wear a million.

First, my mother was the alarm clock. She had no snooze button, her ringing was…