I never set out to be a stay at home mom. In all honesty, I never thought I’d be anything more than a secretary, but I at least thought I would always have a job. After partying my way through my freshman year in college, my mother told me that she and my dad weren’t sending me back for a second year.
“A girl doesn’t need a college degree anyway.”
So at 19 I began working as a secretary and that was that. But after five years of working in clerical jobs - secretary for a pompous old insurance broker, receptionist for a group of psychiatrists, billing clerk for a property management company - I needed to find something else.
I had briefly dated a guy who was in the Army. After a weekend spent at the base where he was stationed, I thought, “Wow, this military life doesn’t seem so bad.” After a particularly boring morning working as an accounts payable clerk, I paid a visit to an Army recruiter on my lunch break. Of course he made the Army sound like the bomb diggity.
Three weeks later I was on a plane for basic training. I had chosen to train to be a psychiatric specialist, thinking that it was something I could also do as a civilian when I got out of the Army. There were a few other . . . unforeseen challenges let’s say, that I had not considered. The first was that working on a psych ward, while being far removed from secretarial work, wasn’t exactly more fun. More exciting at times, sure. But putting a patient in four-point restraints does not really equate to “fun.”
The second challenge that came to define my time in the Army was an injury obtained in basic training that, in the end, not only made it impossible for me to stay in the Army because I could no longer run, but also made me a disabled vet for life.
I met my husband, Mike, while I was in the Army. He got out of the military a year after we got married and immediately started college. I worked - as a secretary, of course - while he was in school. After graduation, he received a commission in the U.S. Air Force. When we moved to his first Air Force assignment, I planned to get a job.
You guessed it - as a secretary. I was 31-years-old by this time and my greatest skill was my 85-wpm typing speed. But Mike saw things differently. He told me that it was now my turn to go to school.
“I am not smart enough to finish a college degree.” I truly believed that. After nearly failing out of college as an 18-year-old, how could I possibly finish a degree in my thirties, especially with two preschool-aged children to take care of?
But start school I did. My initial goal was to get an associate’s degree. I figured I could probably handle that. The first few classes I took were basic computer courses that I breezed through fairly easily, which got me thinking maybe I really could finish a bachelor’s degree. After a year of easy A’s, and a lot of encouragement from my husband, I made the leap and entered into a human resource bachelor’s degree program.
It was around that same time that I started having problems again with the service-connected foot injury and was bumped up to 30% disabled with the VA. As such I was eligible to apply for the VA’s Vocational Rehabilitation program. I took all of the aptitude tests they required, met with a counselor who determined that I was, in fact, capable of completing college. The whole process was a bit comical to me because I already was attending college full-time, maintaining a 4.0 GPA. When the final decision was made to accept me into Voc Rehab, which meant that the VA would start paying for my tuition and books, as well as pay me a monthly subsistence while I was in school, I was told that they wanted me to get a computer degree because that was where I had scored highest on their aptitude tests. The problem was that I didn’t want a computer degree. I wanted, and had already started, a human resources degree. So the gentleman I met with at the VA Regional Office told me that they would agree to pay for my HR degree if I would agree to also get a computer degree.
“So you’re saying that you’d rather pay for me to get TWO degrees instead of just the one HR degree?”
The answer was yes. I was in shock. Just a little over a year earlier I had been convinced that I wasn’t smart enough to finish anything beyond an associate’s degree and now I was going to take on a double major.
What had I got myself into?
But I tackled it with no small amount of cockiness. Every new “A” I received convinced me even more that I truly was smart. I was capable. I was relevant. I was so much more than just a secretary.
For the next year, going to college was my job, and I excelled at it. But as I approached my last year of school, I realized that we would have to leave North Dakota, where we were stationed at the time, and move on to Mike’s next Air Force assignment a full year before I was to graduate. There was no guarantee that the next base we went to would have a local school offering the same two degree programs. It was a hard decision to make, but Mike chose to volunteer for an assignment in Korea. It was a one-year unaccompanied tour, which meant the kids - now aged 4 and 6 - and I would stay in North Dakota for the year that he was overseas. It allowed me that extra year I needed to finish my degrees. I wasn’t happy about the separation; none of us were. But I loved my husband so much for being willing to make that sacrifice for me.
In July 2001 I finished college, graduating summa cum laude with a 3.94 GPA. I’d done it! A week after I finished my last class, Mike returned from Korea, we packed up and moved from North Dakota to North Carolina. I was going to get the kids started in school and then I was going to go out and find my career.
I was ready, and I was excited.
Less than six weeks after Mike signed into his new unit two planes flew into the World Trade Center towers, while another hit the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. All plans for a career were destroyed. Mike deployed a month later. He would deploy two more times in the three years we were in North Carolina. As much as I wanted a career, being home for my kids after school, giving them that one guaranteed point of stability, was more important.
Looking back, life seemed to suddenly shoot into fast-forward after 9/11. Mike deployed three times in three years. He was gone so much, our son Keeghan asked one day, “Why doesn’t Daddy want to be with me?”
In 2004 we (blessedly) left North Carolina and headed to Texas where Mike had been accepted into a two-year master’s degree program. No deployments for two years! We were thrilled! As soon as the kids started school, I applied for a job with a large insurance company in San Antonio and was almost immediately hired. I wasn’t going to be working in the human resources department as I would have liked, but at least it was a foot in the door with a good company. It would give me some much-needed work experience to support my education (I hadn’t worked since 1999 when I quit working as a secretary to focus on school).
Again with the life-in-fast-forward. I worked for a year and a half, quitting when we were a few weeks out from moving to our next assignment in Washington, DC. A month after I quit working, Keeghan was diagnosed with cancer. He was ten-years-old. Our daughter, Mackenzie, was 12 at the time.
Two brain surgeries. Thirty-two radiation treatments. Nearly two and a half years of alternating between living in hospitals and shuttling back and forth to chemo appointments, all the while homeschooling both children because we couldn’t have them around the germs of a full classroom. The career I had hoped for had morphed into something entirely different. My career now was as teacher, patient advocate, nurse, doctor, mom. It may not have been a job that paid well, but it paid in ways that can’t be measured by most. It allowed me to spend the last two years of my son’s life with him, 24/7. That is priceless.
Keeghan died in 2008, a full seven years after I had finished college. In that seven years, I had worked for less than two. As soon as he died, my “job” in life was just keeping it together. Keeping my 14-year-old daughter who had once told her little brother, “If you die Keeghan, I will have to kill myself because I can’t live without you” alive. Keeping my marriage from completely folding because the weight of grief was so heavy.
I won’t lie, I remember very little about the first two and half years after Keeghan died. I was treading water in an ocean of tears. Mike was still active duty in the Air Force, Mackenzie was attending a public high school, and I was home wondering what to do with my life.
In 2011 Mike got orders to go to Okinawa, Japan. That assignment was the catalyst I needed. It got me to a new place, away from family and friends who did more to make the grieving worse than they did to help. In Okinawa I found an international women’s group to get involved with, eventually holding two positions on their Board of Directors. Ironically, one of the positions was as Secretary. My forever curse. But I learned in working for that group that I was still capable of working, of doing something well. When we found out in December 2012 that Mike had been selected for a squadron commander position in California, I knew it was time. Time for me to finally get out and find a job. Mackenzie would be starting college in California. There was no reason anymore for me to be a stay-at-home-mom.
Which brings us to now. I am a 47-year-old woman with two degrees - degrees that, for the record, I kicked ass at - but still . . . two degrees that are 12 years old, with less than two years of paid work experience to support. I’ve been applying for jobs for two months now and have received nothing but replies of “does not meet minimum qualifications.” Admittedly, I am in a somewhat remote area of California, so jobs within a reasonable commuting distance are not abundant. But I cannot describe how much it pains me to apply for a Department Assistant position, nothing more than a GLORIFIED SECRETARY JOB, and receive an email back saying, “Unfortunately, we are not moving forward with your application at this time. We encourage you to visit our career site at blahblahblah . . .” from a human resource assistant.
Don’t just stab me, why not twist the knife a little while you’re at it?
I should be working in the human resource department somewhere, and instead I’m being turned down for secretary jobs by one. My resume full of volunteer positions is probably a source of great amusement for these people who have been fortunate enough to work. People who probably think I’ve led a pampered life.
I never meant to be a stay-at-home-mom. I never meant to be nearing 50 and unemployed. Unmarketable. Unworthy. Considering the way our family’s life went, I wouldn’t change anything. But still . . . I’d like a chance to prove myself now.
