So, what do you do?

I used to ask people, upon meeting them, what they did for a living. I thought you could learn a lot from a person based on their answer and it's true, you can. And if I'm being honest with myself, and you, I was a little judgemental. We all use social norms to categorize people and for me, that was the fastest way to put people in a box and determine whether or not I might have something in common with them. At the very least, it was a way to start a conversation. I knew that I had an interesting job that I liked to talk about so maybe they would too.

I thought about all of this today as my five month old daughter screamed in my ear for the umpteenth time (she's suffering through a bit of a cold) and I wondered how I would answer that question now. Would I talk about the job that I'll be going back to in September? Would I say that I would love to be an at-home mom? And what would the pre-baby me think upon meeting me and hearing me answer with "I'm a mom"? Probably some pleasant chit-chat and then turn the conversation to her own, far more exciting career.

Robert Fulghum has an excellent essay about answering this question in his book It was on fire when I lay down on it. He describes himself as everything that he is. Father, preacher, singer, dishwasher, dancer, neighbour, dreamer, traveler... the list goes on. I've always thought, even as I waited to slide people into a box, that this was an exceptionally good answer. What a lot of conversation topics! But of course, with a person who answers like that, there would probably never be a lag in conversation to begin with. And why can't we be all of the things that we are? As he notes in his essay, that is not what people want to hear.

So the question now becomes, what do I want my answer to be? Who do I want society to see me as? I would love to be an at-home mom but would I ever be comfortable answering the question that simply? Can I identify myself with out a career? Or would I feel the need to explain what I used to do, before I became a mom. It's a question I'm not sure I'm ready to answer and, since I never go anywhere without my daughter these days, no one even asks.