I’m givin’ it a go with yet another carnival. I’ve enjoyed reading Barbara H’s flashbacks…which led me to Linda’s… and this week, the prompt looked so interesting that I want to play too!
Prompt: What did you want to be when you grew up? Why did you want to be that, and did you do it? Did you consistently plan to be whatever it was, or did you change your mind often?…
When I was young, I wanted to be a Mom. As the second of seven children, I grew up changing diapers (cloth), grinding baby food, and keeping tight rein on squirrelly youngsters.
In my late elementary years, I wanted to be a homesteading mom. I was entranced by the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, had entered into the normal pre-teen-girl horse-obsessed mode, and was overjoyed to find all sorts of 1970s back-to-the-earth homesteading manuals at our local library.
In Junior High, I started helping out with a girl’s club at our church–and when the teacher had to bail, I took over. I discovered that I loved teaching. I assisted in a fourth grade classroom for one year and actually enjoyed grading papers, writing tests, and figuring out ways to help kids learn. And so I figured that when I grew up, I’d be a homeschool mom. Of course, by then, I was becoming a bit of a pragmatist and realized that I couldn’t just count on being a mom–I should probably have a back-up plan. I would be a teacher.
I was chatting with an aunt one day as we drove through the hills around my grandparents house. Somehow we got on the topic of what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said I wanted to be a teacher. She told me she wondered if she hadn’t really explored her options before deciding on being a teacher. She wondered if she’d have still chosen it if she’d felt like she had more options.
She got me thinking, and I spent a while exploring my options. I perused encyclopedias, college course catalogs, and occupational outlook handbooks. Even though I found dozens of degrees and occupations interesting, I ended up with five on my list of serious contenders: teaching, midwifery, nursing, dietetics, and English. Of course, English was quickly knocked off the list as being completely impractical–what can one do, after all, with an English major? Midwifery was struck from the list once I discovered that midwives cannot legally deliver home births in the state of Nebraska.
Which left me with teaching, nursing, and dietetics. I started thinking practicals: Which one would be most likely to let me do what I really wanted to do when I grew up? I finally arrived at dietetics. After all, a dietitian can be full-time and support herself if she has to. Or she can do on the side consulting as supplemental income if she’d really prefer to, say, be a mom or something.
It was decided. I would be a dietitian. I was fourteen years old.
Eleven years later, I’m a Registered Dietitian. Currently, I teach college students (many of them future dietitians) how to cook. Someday, I want to teach mothers how to feed their families. I wouldn’t mind working with a nursing home population, either. Or maybe I’ll get my Ph.D. and spend the rest of my life teaching future dietitians about the importance of food and family.
Or maybe, just maybe, I might be able to do what I’d really like to do…what I’ve wanted to do all along–to be that woman. I’ll settle in a little town or neighborhood. I’ll get involved with the community. I’ll be the house with the revolving door, with kids and adults coming in and out. I’ll share cooking tips with other mothers as we watch our kids play in the neighborhood park. I’ll do workshops and classes through one of the local churches. I’ll consult a few hours a month for the nursing home in the next town over. I’ll homeschool my children, hand-sew all my clothes, and can produce from my own garden. I’ll host Bible studies in my home and five-day-clubs in my yard. I’ll be a local La Leche League leader and maybe eventually become an international board certified lactation consultant. And when the women in the neighborhood need a helping hand, a shoulder to cry on, a woman to help them when they’re having a baby–they’ll know that they can come to me.
That’s what I want to be when I grow up.
A girl can dream, right?
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