Born and raised in Queens, with one foot in Manhattan every chance I got, my move to the suburbs was one that was quite traumatizing. Everyone would say, “Oh, you’ll see, you’re going to love it.” But nine years later and I am still waiting for that Sound of Music moment where I twirl around in the middle of my tree-lined street, a midst minivans and those idiotic decorative flags that people hang to signify the change of a season, the birth of a baby…or the best…just a cheery picture of a green M&M for no apparent reason at all; and declare that my world is alive because I live in the suburbs. Don’t get me wrong, our life is nice and there is nothing—of any real danger or heartache—that I should be complaining about. But being a writer, a poet, an artist trapped in the body of a sweet smiling housewife; I often find myself longing for the poetic and inspired surroundings of a tenement slum or clay hut beside the Nile River. Honestly, anywhere would be more inspiring than a neighborhood filled with high ranch homes, Dunkin Donuts and 7-11s. Hell, I get excited at the thought of frequenting a Manhattan bodega, rich in Mexican accents and Goya brand sodas or at the idea of putting money in the meter to parallel park my car on a city street.

While I am desperately trying to enjoy every moment of my children’s youth before they grow up and leave the nest, I am also crossing out the days (on a large calendar that I keep hidden beneath my desk), which marks the time left before they both leave for college and my husband and I can buy the New York City apartment we’ve always dreamed of.  Of course by then I will probably be plagued with rheumatoid arthritis or stenosis of the spine and too orthopedically inclined for the hustle and bustle of city living.

“Why don’t you get a job? Go back to work? Work in the city?” ask my friends…usually the ones without children. The answer: “Why don’t you try and get a job after being out of the work force for ten years?” Unless I want to mop the floors at Wal-Mart or pick-up a couple of late night shifts at the topless bar in the neighboring town (I can still shake my ass pretty good on account of all the Zumba classes I’ve taken over the years), there aren’t many options for someone like me (and after two pregnancies in which I gained a hundred pounds each time, I don’t think the titty bar is still an option. Unless of course there’s suddenly a high demand for breasts that resemble cow utters).For me to go back to work now, I would not earn enough money to cover the babysitting fee, not to mention my extreme fear that if I am not around to watch my kid’s every move they will surely end up addicted to heroin or in some sort of cyber-sex ring. 

When I was a young woman, about to start a family, no one told me that once you have children you’re basically stomping on all those years of fighting for woman’s rights, marching on Washington for freedom of choice and signing petitions for equal pay. Once your hormones kick in and you fall in love with those powder-scented, soft-skinned bundles you suddenly forget how hard you worked for your Master’s degree or how much ass you kissed to get to the top of a lucrative career that once defined your being. I personally think the whole thing was a joke designed by men, they sat in a wood-paneled back room of some moonshine serving bar and said amongst each other, through clouds of cigar smoke, “We’ll give er’ them damn equal rights. We’ll even train er’ to think she can do it all just as well as a gentleman, but we know that lady heart of hers will lead er’ in the opposing direction, and most of em’, all they’ll ever be is a bunch of bitches chasing them their tails.”

 No one tells you that ten years later, when the little bundles grow up and don’t smell so sweet anymore, that you’ll be left with a severe addiction to serial killer dramas, Starbuck’s lattes and over-priced frozen yogurt; taking anti-depressants to keep you from the confines of an institution (which seems like a nice change of pace most days) and a diagnosis from your psycho-pharmacologist that it’s not that serious, your just slowly Dying of Boredom in the burbs.

Beat the boredom and share this post with a friend!