A Real Mom's Resume

By Mandy B. Fernandez

I have been both a stay-at-home mom and a work-outside-the-home mom. During my at-home stint, I was asked by others, “So, what do you do for a living?” When I answered, “I’m a mom,” I was often faced with sympathetic looks or simply dismissed.

Upon reentering the workforce and having to explain maternal gaps in my employment, I dreaded explaining my family priorities to a new company. Didn’t the hiring official know what I had endured just to be on time for the meeting?

After one particularly grueling interview process, I came home and completely re-wrote my resume to reflect what I really wanted to say about the work of being a mom. I grant any mother out there permission to borrow it. Please feel free to hand out the below document to your future employer or to the wise guy who asks what you do all day.

A Real Mom’s Resume

(Insert Your Name
And Address Here)
Phone: It is out of order, my kid threw the device in the toilet
E-mail: whyme@moms.me

Summary:
· Extremely organized since I manage two children, a husband, this household and a crazy pet
· Highly resourceful when it comes to restraining myself from pulling my hair out each and every day
· Dedicated to excellence in bringing up fine children (forget that incident where kid number one pulled that lady’s pants down, will you?)
· Possesses a positive mental attitude (for at least five minutes a day when I lock myself in the bathroom)
· Willing to learn and ready for increased responsibility, training and education (I’ve mastered the art of saying “no” under extreme manipulation and regularly manage a borderline dysfunctional family)
Goal: To work for an organization that allows me to escape my world and pretend I’m 22 years old, single and fifteen pounds lighter.

Technical Skills:
· Wipe butts
· Talk on the phone, burn dinner and help with homework all at the same time
· Read and do the voices of all animals in a book
· Type while completely ignoring my children
· Operate heavy machinery and build things (Have you seen the toys these days and the engineering degree you need to put them together?)

Education:
· Degree in Early Childhood Education (okay, not really but I’m raising two small children who haven’t killed each other. Shouldn’t that count for something?)

Experience:
Motherhood
October 2007 – Present: Position of Overworked, Underappreciated Mother

· Manage all personal affairs of the humans that came from my never-region
· Coordinate meals, teeth-brushing, illnesses, meltdowns, and bedtime stories
· Notify upper management (grandparents) when I absolutely need a break from the above listed items
· Record the number of daily tantrums for historical purposes (to throw it back in my children’s faces someday)
· Manage records retention program (throw out old artwork, doctors’ bills and expired coupons)
· Manage travel accounts and expense reports (trips to the grocery store, children’s museum, coffee shop, bookstore, etc.)
· Update filing system (photos of children that haven’t been updated in two years!)
· Coordinate all slobber and snot removal in the house, for kids and dog
· Supervise the details of all holidays, birthday parties and all the shopping that goes along with those events (except for Thanksgiving since I had a meltdown after the turkey fell apart and I burned the pumpkin bread)
· Balance checkbook and organize finances (eating only cheese and crackers until the next paycheck)
· Coordinate occasional opportunities to have a date with my husband (never mind find time for myself)
· Memorize cult classics known as Sesame Street, Elmo, Dora the Explorer, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and every Disney film known to man (what’s an adult movie?)
· Nurse every bruise, scrape, cut and fall that my children incur in my presence
· Defend the dark arts—monsters, thunderstorms and imaginary creatures that scare us
· You name it, I do it. Now do you really think you could hire someone else that would do a better job than me?

References: I have them. They’re just smeared with peanut butter and jelly right now so I can’t clearly make out the names and numbers.
I’ll look forward to hearing back from you. Thanks for the consideration.

Mandy B. Fernandez is a freelance writer living in Pensacola, Florida with her husband and two children. She writes creatively and professionally on topics such as education, business, creative arts, health, family life, parenting and natural foods. You can learn more about her at www.writtenbymandy.com.

By Lorri Barrier

“Okay, the doctor will look at these pictures and be in to talk with you in just a bit.”

The table is comfortable, lights low, it’s blissfully quiet. In any other circumstance, I’d drift to sleep. But this is my second mammogram in two weeks, and I’m on edge. The first one was easy, but then I got the call about the spot, “the area of concern.”

I look around the room, notice fancy drop ceiling tiles that would look nice in our basement, if we ever get around to remodeling it. I close my eyes, become aware of Steve Perry’s familiar voice singing “Faithfully” ever so softly, coming from somewhere in the room.

Faithfully. I was in middle school when that song came out. I was already a C-cup by then. I remember the boy sitting behind me in history class reaching around me, trying to cop a feel. I turned and punched him twice in the shoulder—hard. He never bothered me again.

But later that day I remembered where his hands had been, and they left a sense of shame. Something’s not right about these breasts, announcing to the world that I’m a woman. Because I’m not. I’m still a little girl.

I spent the rest of that year hiding under sweaters and jackets, waiting to grow up.

I look at my watch. 1:22 pm. I take a deep breath and tell myself not to worry. I put my hand to the breast with the spot, try to feel something. I don’t.

A boy I loved touched my breasts when I was sixteen. I remember feeling shocked awake, electrified. I gasped when he kissed me, his hand still under my bra. My breasts were alive for the first time. Sexy.

Sexy, when I lean down to kiss my husband, and he whispers, “Nice view.” This is what I will miss, if I had to lose one or both. How will I feel that way without them?

A knock on the door and the doctor and nurse come in. The doctor is youngish, red-haired, wearing a plaid scarf and coat, as if he just got here. He reminds me of Doctor Who. I smile a little.

“I’m just going to take another look with the ultrasound wand,” he says.

I have to roll on my left side facing the wall, to give this stranger full access to my right breast. I put my arm above my head. His hands move my breast to the desired position. “This gel might be a little cold.”

There’s a picture on the wall, right at eye level, for all of us forced to look this direction. It’s a lone dandelion magnified, a few seeds caught in flight, pulling away from the center, weightless. I think of blowing dandelions into my daughter’s face, her eyes closed, laughing.

It’s odd having an ultrasound on my breast and not my belly, though the connection is unmistakable. All my children preferred to nurse on the right side. Even now at age seven, Morgan often rests her hand there while we read a story or if I lie with her as she goes to sleep. Her hands remember. For the first part of her life, my breasts were food, comfort, home.

I look back at the dandelion, and I see the similarity to the image they took earlier, my ducts and veins aglow with radiation, like strands of Christmas lights, like fragile white dandelion fluff clustered around a nucleus. Not like my breast at all—a cross section in a textbook. From my angle I had to look askance at the image, my untrained eyes searching for the spot.

“I think it looks okay,” the doctor says after a few minutes. “I’m happy with this. The same spot on the second mammogram doesn’t look like something we need to be concerned about. We’ll see you in a year for your annual.”

I exhale the breath I’ve been holding all week. I practically jump off the table.

I wore my pretty bra, pink with black lace, and I look at myself in the mirror as I pull it back over my shoulders.

In the hallway to the lobby, I see exam room doors closed, and I know there is a woman behind each one. A woman with a life, a woman holding her breath, another woman releasing hers, another still waiting to take the next step of a difficult journey.

Outside, the sky is a perfect Carolina blue. I inhale. It’s warm; it feels like spring in February. It feels like a new day. It feels like a second chance at everything.

The radio says tomorrow we might get snow. It will probably just be a little bit, but the kids will be excited.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

About the Author: Lorri Barrier is a teacher at Stanly Community College in Albemarle, NC. She married with three children, and lives in Mt. Pleasant, NC. She has always enjoyed writing, and finds her inspiration from nature, daily life, and childhood memories. She feels lucky to live on farmland that has been in her family for over 100 years, and much of what she writes is tied to her rural upbringing.

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