What was I before I became a MOT?

What did I do for a living before I lived for my twins?  I cannot remember doing anything important at all.  I was a mediocre student (too lazy to study) so I went to college in a big city and got a degree in art – how useful!  Then I moved to England and got a degree in culinary arts  - that was more useful, at least I got a job cooking.  At first it was fun, like a game –hey!  I have a job! I’d never had to work before – I know, Spoiled Miss, getting a monthly check, but believe me, it reads a whole lot better than it lives.  Can you imagine being 20 years old, going to college and living in NY, with no money apart from an insufficient allowance and no idea how to work, let alone how to get a job?  I knew I needed more than the monthly check provided, but it didn’t occur to me to GET A JOB.  Finally, a friend suggested I try waitressing.  Well, at my first interview at TGI Friday’s, (why I picked that place, of all places, I can’t remember) I was asked – What experience do you have, I said –“None whatsoever,” and was hired for my honesty!!!? Anyway, to make a short story even shorter, I was there for about 4 nights, spilled a tray of drinks all over a customer, decided the job was boring and anyway I was too good for waitressing and should concentrate on school, so I took in a roommate for the money and quit the job. 
 
A few years after I graduated, I found myself in London, working at various restaurants and going to cooking school.  It seemed like such a game.  The paychecks, miniscule as they were, seemed like a treat – Hey!  I’m being PAID! Wow, real money… Of course now I look back and see I was totally underpaid and overworked – I mean 70 hours of work and about $100 pay a week…no joke!  Then I came back to the US, got different cooking and catering jobs, finally left the cooking racket, worked in a department store.  (Boy did that seem like a game after sweating my brains out in a kitchen.  I got to wear heels and makeup and look pretty all day.  I worked at the store at night and at an office as receptionist during the day.  Once I got to the cosmetic counter kind of tired and droopy from a rough day on the phones, and I heard a co-worker tell someone over the phone – “Oh, She is working tonight!  We’ll have fun for sure now!  Gotta go.” That perked me up like a slug after a rainfall.  I used to be such a trip to be around…).
 
My office jobs were usually as a secretary or such, which were okay, and I could have worked at them for longer, but I had to leave the last one due to pregnancy related complications.  I wasn’t sorry at all – I really didn’t like that last job at all.  My co-workers were, for the most part, immature, whiny, complainers and, since it was over-the-phone customer service, I had to soothe immature, whiny, complainers as a job.  Yuck.  I liked working as an Executive Assistant much better.  I used to be the glorified secretary to the president of a large corporation.  (Great job for someone who doesn’t know how to type…) Anyway, that was a cool job for all the perquisites, but the hours got to be a bit much (staying until 7:00 three out of five nights a week, the calls at home on Sundays) and when the job encroached on my personal life (the president had a senior assistant – an Executive Adviser, or some wacky name – who hinted I not date the man who is now my husband because he wasn’t quite high up enough in the company, and to be careful with the “pillow talk”!! Those were her exact words.  As if I didn’t have enough to talk about without having to spill company secrets), I left to join a different team in the same corporation.  But I got canned from that position for using the Internet during work hours, everybody did it, but I got busted, and went to my (Ick Ick!) Customer Service job.
 
The point of this L’Histoire de Moi is that I have not exactly had a brilliant career.  I do believe I have suffered from a lack of guidance and structure.  I wish there had been a guidance counselor in my Prep school.  Well, there was one, but - honest to God - he had a brain aneurysm my senior year, so I went off to college without any ideas of what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I never thought I’d be an unholy blend of two parts classic frustrated suburban house-wife, three parts amusingly acerbic mother of twin boys, and a splash of my former, fabulous, self swimming to the surface of the shaker from time to time…I’m quite an overwhelmingly intoxicating cocktail.  (Good thing my husband has strong head for drink.)
 
So here I am now – living for my babies.  They are my reason for being, my full time job, my joy and pain (sunshine and rain – give it up for all the Rob Base fans!)  What will I do when they are older and not so needy?  When they don’t nurse anymore, or need me to help them go to sleep and when they go to school all day, what will I do?  What will be my excuse for being around?  Will I still feel important, as I do now, or will I go back to the somewhat insecure and drifting existence I lived before?   Will I ever feel I have the right to complain again?  I was always unsure of who I was “professionally” and insecure as to who I was allowed be personally.  I used to think, and still do sometimes, do I have a right to tell my family what I really need from them, because I am a hanger-on, a slacker, and should be glad for whatever I get?  I don’t deserve attention/assistance/my own back because I haven’t worked for it.  
 
Once one of my sisters-in-law, in own, her inimitable way, asked me – “How can you justify being a secretary with your intelligence and education?” Obviously she was just trying to hurt my feelings.  That question makes no sense! What fantasy-land did she grow up in to think that a degree in art and a glib tongue equal gainful employment?  My parents raised their children to marry well, not to work and do well for themselves.  Well, I did marry a man who is able to support me, as did my sister, actually my brother married someone who supports him too, so I guess Mummy and Daddy’s plan worked out.  I am just waiting for my SIL to ask me now – “How can you now justify not having a “real job” at all?” Well, let me wake you up to reality here, my dear – right now I AM A MOTHER OF TWINS and that is all I can be and do.  I am proud of my babies and proud of myself for still being somewhat sane (as if I was ever completely sane to begin with).  This motherhood position I now hold, and it was a HUGE promotion in ranks, is so much more than any kind of paper pushing job could ever be.  The only catch is I am terribly afraid of what will happen when I am made redundant by their maturity. I need them to need me.
 
BUT, in the midst of this love-fest, there are moments when I can’t stand these helpless, little, needy, crying, whiny creatures.  They want so much of me all the time and are very unpredictable.  They want to nurse, they don’t want to nurse, they want me, they push me away.  I take them outside for a change of pace and one of them will cry bloody murder because he wants to be inside but the other is happy to be in the fresh air.  One of them likes to be in the car, the other shrieks and carries on like he is being eviscerated on a car trip of any length at all.  I try to go jogging in the morning with them, but the little guy wants to be carried, which defeats the purpose of a jog.  So I try going earlier, to see if they'll sleep (at one point I got up and went running at 4:45 AM - Christ Almighty, what was I thinking?) but you can't trick these babies of mine.  They cry at night when we are trying to put them to sleep, they both want me all the time, at the same time, and it can make you CRAZY!!!
 
Good thing I am a Gemini and used to going back and forth all the time.  I am confident in being a mother to these boys because my instincts and impulses have served me well so far, but I am worn out and resentful of their relentless neediness too.  The $64,000 question, asked by Mothers of Twins is: how can I resent them at the same time I love them?  I want them with me and want to make them happy; they are my babies, and the only valid reason I have for being alive.  But I need to live for me a little too…
 
Goethe wrote: Enjoying simple pleasures one ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.  Wouldn’t that be nice?  To speak a few reasonable words on a daily basis…I try, but is anyone there to hear me?