What do you Do?

By Allison Berman
May 12, 2009

What do you do? It seems a simple enough question.

If you were to pose that question to a child you might hear an answer like, my five year old's. "What do you mean what do I do?" When I repeated the question, persisting, she told me she goes camping and roasts marshmallows, and skis, and paints, and eats yummy sweets, candy, and all sorts of junk. And then she asked, "Is that what you are talking about?" My daughter's friends all gave similar responses.

When someone asked me that question at 25, I answered simply, "I am a Marketing Executive." So, based on my "extensive" research, somewhere between 5 and 25 years old, we learn that when someone asks the question "What do you do", we just know that the second part of the question "for a living" is implied. This is something I never really gave much thought, until I stopped working outside the home to raise my family, at which point I had a minor identity crisis. I no longer got paid, so, what did I do? Or more to the point, who was I?

Was I my husband's wife? My daughter's mom? The family chef?

It has since become a question I have pondered quite a bit over the years.

The more that I have thought about the question, "What do I do?" The more I have come to realize this is a question I can't answer in 2 words anymore, and the truth is I really couldn't at 25 either.

At 25, I window shopped my way home from 49^th and Park to 80^th and 1^st. I cried with my girlfriends when their hearts were broken by a guy they thought was "the one." I threw great parties even though I couldn't cook to save my life. I dyed my hair blond, black and most colors in between. I spent my summer weekends going to Fire Island or hanging out in Central Park, and when I felt lazy I sunned myself on tar beach (my apartment's roof deck).

I raised money for breast cancer philanthropies and wrapped presents for children in need every December. And yet, I answered the question, what to I do, by saying I was a "Marketing Executive."

It was the truth, but such a limited perspective of what did.

What do I do today? I paint and write. I support my husband in his endeavors and take care of my children. And I still do a lot of same things I did 10 years ago. I still love to window shop. I try to be a good friend and a good hostess (now I can cook). I stopped dying my hair for a while but started again recently when I counted one too many grays. I come alive at the beach and I still do what I can to support breast cancer research and my local community in general.

My answer might not be as succinct as it once was, but it is also a much more accurate description of what I do. What do you do?

Allison Berman, an artist and mother of two, handpaints custom home accessories for interior designers and private customers. She works out of her home studio in Warwick, NY. See her collection at www.withlovealib.com. She can be reached at ali@withlovealib.com. Her column appears Tuesdays.