Out of the clinic I loved telling people that I was an R.N. and seeing their respect for me go up a few notches. At home however I rarely felt as accomplished

H

ospitals have a reputation for being frightening forbidding places — especially for children.

For me however the hospital was always a warm nurturing place. My father was a respected doctor and on Motzaei Shabbos he used to go do rounds in the hospital. Often he would take me along with him.

Not only was the hospital a place where I spent quality time with Abba — who would show me all the secret doors and passageways — it was also a place where I was treated like a princess. Abba would drop me off in the nurses’ station while he went to see patients and the nurses would ooh and aah over me. “Oh you’re Dr. Berger’s daughter!” they would exclaim. “You’re so cute!”

My father never wanted any of his children to become a doctor because he had to work really really hard. But the field of medicine fascinated me and I loved seeing how my father helped so many people with his knowledge. In school I loved science and especially biology.

My mother’s job was more academic and therefore less interesting to me. She was a professor at a prestigious law school but she was usually home when I was home and would often tell people how lucky she was that she could work while the kids were in school. On Fridays when she came home later than I did she would sometimes prepare a treasure hunt for me leaving a list of clues on the table that sent me searching under the piano behind the couch and in various other places until I finally located the prize or treat she had hidden. I never felt like a latchkey child.

Once my mother came to my school to speak about theUSgovernment and the principal introduced her as “Dr. Berger.” I was thoroughly confused. My father was the doctor not my mother! Only later did I learn that my mother who had earned a doctorate of law was rightfully a doctor as well. But I never thought of her that way. She was my mother first a law professor second. Her job was just a job; she enjoyed it as an outlet for her intellect but it was never her main role.

In school, I was a stellar student, earning straight A’s and bringing home report cards that attested to my conscientiousness, my good behavior, my attentiveness, my participation in class. I was never the type who loved being with kids, though. I never wanted to babysit or work as a day camp counselor; I didn’t even go gaga over babies.

After seminary, I earned a degree in computers through a frum college program. But by the end of the program, I realized that I had no interest in working in computers. I wanted to work with people.

My schooling came to a halt then, however, because I met my husband, Yosef, and we got married and moved to a tiny, out-of-the-way community that was built around a yeshivah. Being a more reserved person, Yosef did not want to learn in a large institution and get lost among thousands of other bnei Torah. He opted to join the small kollel that was attached to the community’s yeshivah, where he could easily develop a relationship with the roshei yeshivah and other kollel members. We became one of the few young couples that inhabited this small but vibrant hamlet, and I got a job working half-day in the yeshivah office.

As the years went by and my family expanded, I felt a growing sense of discontent. Filing papers and answering phones in the office wasn’t particularly stimulating, and neither was sitting on the floor with my kids and playing with blocks. “Oops! The tower broke. Now let’s make it again.” And again.

After spending an afternoon in the park, pushing kids on the swings and breaking up fights over whose sand castle it was, I’d feel depleted, and hardly interested in preparing supper, facing the laundry, and doing the dishes. I’d go through the motions of being the attentive mother throughout the day, but when Yosef came home, my litany of complaints would start. “I can’t take another minute of this! Here’s the baby. I haven’t sat down all day!”

I was bored. My brain was atrophying. I was too smart for this.

With the support of my husband and parents, and after consulting with daas Torah, I enrolled in an evening program to become a registered nurse. I chose nursing for two reasons — one, because I had always loved the medical field, and two, because nursing was one of the only programs offered by our pint-sized local community college.

In nursing school, I was in my element. Once again, my mind was being challenged, and the courses I was taking — anatomy and physiology, microbiology — were like candy to me. The atmosphere at this little college was quite heimish, and no one objected if I came late, left early, or missed some classes due to my family or religious obligations. I was a responsible, conscientious student, and my teachers and classmates knew I would work extra hard to make up for the lost time.

I was salutatorian of my graduating class at nursing school, and I was proud of myself that I wasn’t valedictorian — proud, because I had chosen many times to study less and be more present for my family. Had I put in the extra effort, I could have been valedictorian, but I felt that I had done the right thing by striving for excellence and not perfection.

I would have loved to work in a hospital, but I chose instead to work in an outpatient clinic, where I was able to take a part-time position, working 20 hours a week in a cardiology unit. Like my mother, I never wanted to put my career before my family; I tried to make it work so I could have the best of both worlds. My hours were initially divided into two ten-hour shifts, which meant that I worked from eight to six two days a week and was home the rest of the week.

I arranged for a competent, caring neighbor of mine to watch my kids in her house on the days when I was out until six, and I had the peace of mind of knowing that my children were being taken care of well. Later, I managed to reshuffle my workweek into three eight-hour shifts, which was much better for the family.

As an RN, I did not have to do any of the more menial work associating with lower-level nursing. Instead, I spent my workdays speaking to patients, assessing their conditions and concerns, analyzing test results, and making nursing diagnoses and treatment plans. I would routinely draw up medication schedules and get the attending doctor to sign off on the necessary prescriptions. It was highly intellectual work, plus it involved working with people. Most of the patients were appreciative and pleasant, and my colleagues and superiors were courteous and complimentary. By the end of the day, I felt like a million dollars. On top of that, I had a paycheck to show for my efforts, and I was moving forward with my career by taking additional courses to advance my qualifications.

At the clinic, I felt smart, accomplished, and efficient. Out of the clinic, I loved telling people that I was an RN and seeing their respect for me go up a few notches.

At home, however, I rarely felt as accomplished. I’d fold an entire load of laundry, only to have my toddler turn it over in one second. I’d clean the entire house in the morning, only to have it dirty and cluttered within ten minutes of when the kids came home. By the time Yosef returned from kollel, there was little I could point to by way of concrete achievement. The noses I had wiped, tears I had dried, and tantrums I had averted did not seem to add up to a meaningful day’s work. Besides, I liked working with my head — and motherhood and homemaking involved a great deal of menial, tedious, repetitive, mindless work.

I worked at the clinic for three years. But then, my superiors at the clinic started pressuring me to go back to the eight-to-six shift, and my oldest son, Shmuli, who was eight at the time, begged me not to send him to a babysitter again. “I want to go home after school,” he complained. “I want to just come home like the rest of the kids in my class and have a mother waiting for me.”

Around this time, there was a little girl with a heart condition being treated in the clinic where I worked. She was the same age as my Shmuli. One day, during my shift, she underwent a routine procedure — and her heart stopped. I was part of the team that administered CPR and defibrillation and tried desperately to resuscitate her. Watching her die in front of my eyes, I thought to myself, What wouldn’t this child’s parents give to be able to spend another day with her?

That incident drove home the message that every moment with my children is precious. Previously, I had believed it — in theory. Now, I wanted to live it.

I thought back to my childhood, and remembered how it had been so obvious to me that what my mother really wanted was to be home with me. Rather than work as a lawyer, she had chosen to become a professor, so that she could work fewer hours. And she would always tell people how happy she was that her job allowed her to be home when her kids returned from school, and be off in the summer when the kids had vacation. Even when she couldn’t be home, she managed to give me the feeling that I was the center of her life. And because of that, I had grown up happy and secure.

Would my children be able to say the same thing?

If I had had to honestly answer the question of how I wanted to spend my time, I would have said, “working every day at the clinic.” But the real question, I had to admit, wasn’t how I wanted to spend my time, but how Hashem wanted me to be spending my time. In His eyes, was baking cookies or feeding the ducks with my kids less valuable than drawing up treatment plans for patients? If I weren’t there for the patients, another nurse would take care of them. But if I weren’t there for my children, no other mother would. My career as a nurse was important only to me — but my career as a mother was important for my children, and their children, and all future generations.

All my life, I had thought of myself as a smart person. But when I thought about it, I realized that it was dumb to allow my identity to revolve around my brains and my profession. Brains are simply a gift that Hashem gave me, I reflected. They’re not who I am. Who I am is what I make of myself.

Making something of myself didn’t mean striving to become the head nurse in the clinic. It meant making myself into a mother, using the intellect Hashem had given me, not the maternal feelings that seemed to come naturally to other moms. I never felt an urge to dance with my kids, or splash through puddles with them, or sit with them on the floor and play pretend games, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t do these things — if not spontaneously, then deliberately.

No one would ever know that I didn’t scream at my two-year-old for flooding the bathroom — and that’s what made the achievement truly meaningful. Perhaps this is what tzniyus is really all about, I mused. It’s about finding fulfillment from within, instead of craving recognition from without.

I quit my job not because I wanted to, not because I had to, and not because anyone was telling me to. I did it because I felt it was the right thing to do.

I went back to working in the yeshivah office several mornings a week. One evening a week, I continued working as a nurse, in the office of a nurse-practitioner, just to keep my foot in the door.

I continued working as a nurse in other ways, too. People in the community often call me for medical advice, and drop by my house to ask if their kids need stitches, or for injections, removal of splinters, or other minor medical procedures. Living out in this rural region, I also remove a lot of ticks. So I still get to use my nursing skills, but for chesed, not for pay.

It’s been seven years since I quit my job at the clinic, and I have to admit that it took me until recently to fully make peace with that decision. Many of my friends have advanced in their careers during that time, and part of me used to wish that I could have, too.

When people hear that I went from being a nurse to being a mommy who works part-time in the yeshivah office, they typically respond incredulously: “You went through all that schooling and you gave up your career?”

I used to answer, “My nursing career can be put on hold. Raising my kids can’t.” But I would feel pangs of regret while saying this, and I’d have to try to convince myself along with them. Today, however, when people question my decision, I just smile and say, “I’m helping people in other ways now.”

Several years ago, both of my parents retired. And I noticed something interesting — my father was no longer the doctor, and my mother was no longer the law professor. He was learning Torah most of the day, and she was spending most of her time helping her children and grandchildren.

A person’s work is not his identity, I realized. You can work at the same job for 20 or 30 years — but the minute you leave, it’s over. Your family, on the other hand, is for the rest of your life.

Eventually, when my kids get older, I’ll probably go back to working as a nurse. In the meantime, I try to do a great job as a mother. Even though kids aren’t naturally my thing, I can still get straight A’s in mothering, as long as I recognize that time with my children is worth infinitely more than any paycheck, workplace compliment, or admiring response from the people who asked me, “What do you do?”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 627)