A big day for Grace at school today: Nana and I were there to help her talk to her class about her “me book” and her family. It was a little underwhelming as a presentation but I really enjoyed seeing her classmates and watching them all fidget trying to sit still a
nd pay attention.
I very much liked Lisa Belkin on Sarah Palin, but it was her her blog entry today about how we all airbrush our stories of parenting that got me thinking. She talks about the ugly truths that we keep hidden, either about ourselves as parents or about our doubts about our children.
And my reaction reading this is to nod but also to think: this is just not me … And I found myself echoing the last line of her NYT magazine piece: “You often learn who you are by realizing who you are not. ”
I find that I am consistently more honest and consequently more bleak about my children than most parents. (“More honest than the average HBS student,” as a favorite professor commented). I am intuitively open about my childrens’ flaws and weaknesses, about their speech therapy and their lice, their brattiness and their defiance. I am also quick to acknowledge my own failures as a parent, my short fuse, my distraction, my inability to sit and just be, my frustration and impatience with many of motherhood’s quotidian tasks. I simply feel no deep urge to protect myself by smudging with vaseline the lens through which I see parenting. But why, and is this a bad thing?
When there is an altercation on the soccer field or at the bowling alley, my automatic reaction is to assume that somehow Grace or Whit was the instigator. When they reveal that a teacher was unhappy with them about something I instinctively take the side of the teacher. Does this mean I do not trust them enough? That I assume the worst of them? I don’t think so, but I do wonder. I do know I don’t believe in protecting them artificially from the way the world works, both formally (rules) and informally (opinions and judgment). I have also been wondering lately about where the line is when these stories become not my own anymore, when I begin sharing things that are actually theirs to own and mete out as they see fit.
These thoughts, in combination with the shockingly insecurity-creating responses of fellow mothers about Grace’s solo flight mean, I guess, that I’m having a moment of parenting introspection and doubt. I may have some sense of what I am not, as a mother, but what does that mean I am?
This summer, my father asked me what three topics I thought were the most important in the presidential race (and in the world) for my generation. I surely can’t speak for my generation, but the answer was easy for me:
1. The environment
2. The US geopolitical situation (including the massive need to repair our brand, getting out of Iraq, addressing the petropolitical situation in the Middle East, an overall overhaul of our approach to international issues)
3. The economy
This list is so intuitive and so immutable as to be fact in my mind. Listening to Paul Friedman’s latest, Hot, Flat, and Crowded is only making me more convinced of the primacy (and interconnectedness) of numbers 1 and 2.
Maureen Dowd is hilarious today. Truly hilarious. Her column makes me think of the sister whose Grammar Police State I grew up in. As verbose as I am, I’m remarkably unastute when it comes to grammar. I generally handle grammar as I do most topics in this world (none of which I know much about, unless it’s Perez Hilton’s latest headline or Sharon Olds’ poetry): by being often wrong and never in doubt.
The best story about Hilary (other than the funny way she revealed that she pronounced cornucopia wrong – ahhh the sweet joy of knowing something that my little sister did not!!) is the Star Market story. She wrote a letter to the management of Star (this was some point in grade school, I am not sure exactly when) explaining the erroneous language on their “12 Items or Less” signs. Don’t know that we can draw a specific causal link, but I’ll note that the sign at my local Star (I cannot call it Shaws) now says “12 Items or Fewer”
I am having a wonderful weekend just hanging out with Grace and Whit. Yesterday was a perfect day with lots of low-key play with friends, hanging out at playgrounds, and Armando’s pizza for lunch. Whit was asleep by 6:57 and Grace by 7:02, so wiped out were they by the day.
This morning we went to Starbucks (see above) and on the way home, Whit surprised me by busting out with one of his classic apropos of nothing deep thoughts:
Whit: “Mummy, when I get to heaven, will I see you there?”
Me: “Yes, Whit, I think so.”
Grace: “Of course you will. She will be dead before we are.” (do you sense a theme here?)
Whit: “How do we get to heaven, mummy? Is it like an airplane ride?”
Grace: “Yes, I will go by airplane.”
Whit: “I want to go to heaven by taxi.”