Going Nowhere -- and Loving It!

A little while ago my husband and I were sitting at a red light, stuck in downtown traffic, and I read the following bumper sticker in front of us: My Life is Better Than Your Vacation. It was plastered next to one of those stick figure decals in the rear window of a very large minivan. There they were: stick Daddy, stick Mommy, stick Sister, stick Brother, stick Baby, and even stick Dog, next to their smug self-proclaimed affirmation of a perfectly happy harmonious (stick) family. My husband snorted in disgust, “That’s obnoxious!”

Is it really? Now, several months later, I find myself faced with the prospect of a travel-less summer. We have no plans to stay away from the comforts of our home other than the occasional night or two of camping nearby. After seven months of regular trips out of town, mostly for my work, I am very much looking forward to spending as much time as possible back at home, in the same house with my ENTIRE family, falling into a regular routine and rhythm that had previously been disrupted so frequently before. I am very much looking forward to my “plain old” life. I hear my SAHM friends complain but I still can’t help envying the repetitive reliable cadence of their days. Breakfast, park, lunch, play dates, groceries, dinner, baths, then bed. Sometimes there are morning work outs, sometimes there are music classes, and sometimes there are day long trips to the beach or the aquarium. There are variations and changes and last minute plans and cancellations but the underlying tempo of their households beats steadily without fail, and their families know it. I am counting down the days until I can get my own daily rhythm back.

That being said, however, I still travel extensively -- in my mind. Since my children have not yet turned 5 and since our household budget is tight (hence, the multiple out of town work assignments), actual travel, i.e., a real vacation away from home, is not feasible. And I am a sucker for the ploys of email marketing. Disney, Tahiti, Hawai’i -- they all beckon me, taunting me from the comfort of my electronic inbox, with big blue letters screaming, “Special Deal!” and “Limited Offer!” and my personal favorite “You have been chosen for this Exceptional Vacation Package!” So I surf the Internet and I dream of tropical turquoise blue waters, squeals of delight meeting a life-sized Mickey Mouse, and breezy summer nights in remote locations. And while I’m fantasizing, my children are appropriately thrilled/grateful/enthralled by our fantasy vacation -- again, all in my mind.

Because the reality of my fantasy is this: unless you have a personal nanny who travels with you, traveling with young children is a lot of work and, quite honestly, not that much of a vacation for me. There's the packing, the planning, the back up planning, and, oh heavens, the whining which is almost non-stop between the children and the exasperated grown ups! I read about these exotic vacations where the authors journey to exotic locations ferreting out the non-touristy secret places that are so fascinating to homebodies like myself. They write about adventure, unusual customs, stunning vistas, even dangerous passages and near death encounters. In short, they write of a life I would have yearned for before my children were born.

These days, though, I find that my children are adventure enough for me. The old adage about seeing the world anew through your child's eyes really does ring true. My almost 5 year old twins don't need a trip to French Polynesia to be captivated by their surroundings. Heck, they find a minivan with automatic doors just as fascinating. Seriously, I can let my kids crawl around inside our minivan while it is still parked in our driveway and they will spend the next hour inventing games, pretend driving, and digging for buried treasure. And I can't count the number of times that a couple of flashlights in the hallway closet was all they needed to make their imaginary cave expedition complete. As for me and my "expeditions", I find that there is nothing more amazing and engaging than participating in the growth and development of a human being, from embryo to adult. Stunning beauty? I see it every day through a mother's love in my babies' constantly changing faces. Unusual customs? They make their own rules as they go along; cracks in the sidewalk become rivers of fire we have to hop over and after bath rituals include naked marches in the living room chanting, "New world kids! New world kids!" As for danger, I am so often amazed and bewildered by the ability of my child's tantrum to elicit such a powerful fight-or-flight response in me. I would have to concede that my most frustrated moments are indeed quite dangerous, if only for the sake of my emotional sanity! In the blink of an eye, my children are changing, morphing, adapting, then changing again. Just when I think I have them figured out, they move deeper and deeper into unchartered waters of parenthood leaving me flailing and struggling to keep up. And as they change, I change too. They reveal parts of me I don't like and parts of me that I didn't know existed. I had no idea I was such an awful and wonderful person until my children were born. There is no place on earth that challenges me more than my child's heart.

I will probably never climb to the volcanic rim of Mt. Yasur or swim with the dolphins in the South Pacific Ocean. I doubt I will ever visit Fiji or Tonga. I still enjoy reading about the experiences of other travelers the way I enjoy reading about Internet vacation specials. I still travel to all those places in my imagination. For now, I am perfectly happy, almost in a stick figure kind of way, to keep my REAL adventures at home.

This post was inspired by the book "The Unexpected Circumnavigation" by Christi Grab. I received a complimentary copy as a member of the online book club From Left to Write. All opinions expressed are my own. You can read other members' posts inspired by "The Unexpected Circumnavigation" at From Left to Write on book club day, June 28th.

Man Up, Mom!

I spent most of the month of April mimicking a single working mother. Although my dh had not died, deserted, or divorced me, he did take a permanent full time position in Wichita, KS, over 1600 miles away from our two dogs, our 4 1/2 year old twins, and me. He had received the official offer letter on a Tuesday and three days later he had packed up everything he needed and driven away. He had planned on flying back later in the month to take care of the children while my job called me out of town for a week. Then, when I returned, he would also return to his new home in Kansas. We would be ships passing in the night. Because it was cost prohibitive to visit every weekend, we planned his return trips here only on the weekends when we needed to transition childcare duties, me heading out of town and him heading in. 

It wasn't our first, second, or third choice arrangement. It was our last-ditch-effort choice. But I was burning out. Extra work days during the week and occasionally weekends, daily activities with the kids, school activities, lessons, and my unemployed husband desperately scouring the local job market without success were all taking a toll on me. We presumed that once he secured a stable salary, ANYWHERE, then I could cut back on my work hours and hopefully regain some portion of my lost sanity. Of course in the immediate aftermath of his departure, it was quite the opposite of the relief I so desperately needed (Running on Fumes). 

I didn't cry immediately after he left nor for several days afterwards. I was too overwhelmed by my suddenly single parenthood status. The kitchen sink sprang a leak two days after he left. The dog ran away. The kids decided to clean up all the accumulated dog poop in our backyard from the last month -- using our precious grill cookware. I was suddenly on garbage duty (previously his job), nighttime kitchen clean up (again, his job), and every other task that used to be a shared responsibility, from planning meals and play dates to enforcing regular baths and nightly bedtime routines. Truthfully, I was in shock for those first few days. I was fortunate enough to have wonderfully sympathetic friends, fellow moms who knew all too well how much I depended on dh. They brought me food, invited us to dinner, and watched my kids when my hastily put together childcare plans still couldn't cover my expanding work schedule. Most of all, though, when the tears finally did come, they offered shoulders to cry on and kind words of sympathy as I blubbered over my bad moments. By the second week as a single parent, I cried every day over something, whether it was stressing out over getting to the Easter egg hunt on time, or getting down on my hands and knees yet again because my careless son casually spilled another glass of milk all over the floor, or stripping the pee-stained sheets off my bed when late for school because all three of us had co-slept in it the night before. In the midst of it all, I was vaguely aware that single working mothers do exist in the world and they manage to make it all work without crying every day. But by now, I was wallowing in a pit of self pity out of which I could not seem to get a foothold.

Two weeks after his departure, dh returned while I headed out of town, relieved for the first time to be alone in a nice quiet hotel room where someone else makes the bed and straightens up the room. True, I was still working 40 hours a week but when I came "home" at the end of each day, I had nothing to do except take care of myself. For the public record: "I missed my husband and my children terribly the entire time I was gone!" The truth: It was kind of nice.

The good news is that dh was miserable in Kansas without us. So he recently renewed his efforts to find a local position here and this time he was successful! Hooray! But I am still reeling from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) from my brief stint as a single working mother, an experience which I tended to lament quite frequently. In fact just the other day I was relating my tale of woe to another mother at my children's preschool, an acquaintance whom I am slowly getting to know through our brief exchanges when picking the kids up from school. As I unfolded my tragic tale to her, she listened very politely, and then responded with a calm, "Well, yeah, I DO know what you mean." Duh. I had forgotten that she is indeed a single working mother. And unlike me, her husband who passed away last year will most definitely not be returning. I felt a bit foolish when I suddenly remembered her circumstance and the tragedy of her recently departed spouse. In all fairness, the reason I had forgotten about her single parenthood-ness is that, unlike me, she does not wear it on her sleeve. There was no evocation of pity or sympathy for her plight. Neither was it an unpleasant topic to be avoided. She conversationally explained to me how she had been functioning as a single working mom to her two young boys for a while as her husband's health had declined. She conceded that, like me, she had been overwhelmed in the beginning but now she took it all in stride. Hmm. Suddenly my pity pot wasn't so comfortable to sit on any more.

Then this past weekend, we took the kids camping with their preschool. They had a wonderful time running around like wild animals, the grown ups had a wonderful time sipping schnapps by the campfire, and there really wasn't much to complain about. In the wee hours of the night as the fire dwindled, I sat with a couple of moms who happened to be Slavic. As the conversation meandered, one of them, a lovely Ukrainian woman, related to me all that her grandmother had endured, from war to famine to the horrors of an oppressive Soviet regime where the solution to all problems discordant to the state was to shoot first and ask questions later. Like the single widow I had spoken with previously, there was no self-pity or sentimentality in her conversation, just a blunt statement of events and circumstances untinged by pathos. There's nothing like a Ukrainian woman to kick me off my pity pot for good!

And just to make sure the lid of that pot stays firmly nailed shut, I recently read "Good Enough is the New Perfect: Finding Happiness and Success in Modern Motherhood" by Becky Beaupre Gillespie and Hollee Schwartz Temple. This book is chock-full of examples of working moms who chucked their pity pots out the window a long time ago, including a single mother who is also a top executive at a leading public relations firm. She spends at least one night a week away from her daughter with whom she is very close. While I am typically in the throes of lamentation over leaving my children for my away work assignments, this mom simply says, "This is the job I have, and I have to do it." How very Slavic.

These inspiring mothers deal with the same frustrations and joys of balancing their work lives with their home lives. They just choose to focus less on giving the frustrations center stage and more on enhancing the joys of what they do have. They are problem solvers, entrepreneurs, the proverbial go-getters. There doesn't seem to be a victim among them. They aren't afraid to experiment and they aren't afraid of failure because, as all successful people know, failures are simply opportunities to learn and improve.

I am thrilled that dh is back home with us. With his return, I can feel my blood pressure beginning to return to normal. I have always known his contribution to our family is invaluable which is why I was so upset to lose it even for a short period of time. Thankfully my foray into single parenthood seems to be over but the future is always uncertain, especially in this unfriendly economy. Though I wouldn't choose to do it again, if I had to I now know I can do it. But this time I would leave the self-pity behind.

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book to review as a member of From Left to Write. All opinions expressed are my own. You can read other members' posts inspired by Good Enough is the New Perfect at From Left to Write on book club day, May 10th.

Running on Fumes

When my boy/girl twins were born, I experienced the same mixture of joy, dread, and anticipation that most other women feel when they realize, for the first time, that they are actual mothers with all the weight of responsibility that the title entails. Just as I was forewarned, the first year was a blur. "Baby brain" made me forget almost everything besides my name. And despite following the admonishments to "sleep when the babies sleep", I could not shake the fatigue that seems to have permanently lodged deep within my bones.

A bevy of well-intentioned mothers encouraged me over and over telling me, "Don't worry, it gets better as they get older." Of this population, there was a subset who egged me on with, "Wait until they are walking; it will get much easier then." My mother was quick to correct this piece of misinformation. I regretfully concur with my pessimistic but sadly correct mother. Once my children could walk, they could suddenly run -- away from me and in opposite directions. It wasn't any easier than carrying and breast feeding them in tandem and now my fears of injury weren't based simply on insecurities about my own abilities; I now had a whole wide world of uncontrollable variables into which my stumbling toddlers many MANY times waddled headlong into.

Once they had learned to follow instruction (somewhat) and they had finally developed sturdy "sea legs" (the kind that don't cause me anxiety watching them climb down a steep uneven bank into a rocky stream unassisted), then I started to see the proverbial "light at the end of the tunnel." They began to play more harmoniously together. I heard less crying and screaming and more conspiratorial giggling and secret conversations. They started spending hours (okay, maybe ONE hour) together in a bedroom playing make believe, constructing fantastical stories of imagination that would make J.K. Rowling proud. Their physical coordination rapidly developed and I no longer had to hover over each of them fearful of unintentional physical mishaps. (Intentional mishaps were another issue altogether, as in, "Mommy! He hit me on the head!" or "Mommy! She pushed me!") There were still bumps and bruises and, my all-time favorite, when my son somehow broke his nose on the play structure at preschool, an event that was oddly unwitnessed by ANYONE. Still, they could pee in the toilet, dress themselves (with cajoling), and eat unassisted (when motivated). I thought I had finally entered the penumbra of the sweet spot in parenting. They were still young and adorable yet I was no longer their only hope for survival in this world.

And then my husband left me.

We had been struggling along financially for a while so when the opportunity came for me to increase my work days and since the children's dependence on me was rapidly dwindling, it seemed like a viable option. My unemployed husband was frustrated by an unfriendly job market and expressed his willingness to be a SAHD until he could find suitable employment. Unfortunately, the nature of MY profession follows the motto "In for a penny, in for a pound." My work hours steadily increased as my husband's job prospects became more and more grim. Just as I was coming out from under the fatigue and pressure of "perfectly parenting" (HA!) my young helpless progeny and grooming them into self sufficiency and resilience, I shouldered an equally heavy burden of a stressful job and maternal guilt as I watched my children shift their previous "Mommy" loyalties to my husband. It seems I couldn't win for trying.

Then, lo and behold, my husband DID finally get a job. In Wichita, Kansas. He received the official offer on a Tuesday. By Friday, he had packed up his essentials into our SUV and he was gone. I was suddenly faced with an unchangeable work schedule (under contract until July), new childcare challenges, and all the tasks of household management that are more easily handled with two people rather than one. This ranges from who does the dishes at the end of a meal (me), who makes the meals (me), who shuttles the kids to activities (me), who takes out the garbage (me), who does the laundry (me), who bathes the kids and fights the good fight at bedtime (me) ... You get the picture. While my husband is languishing in a temporary residence 1600 miles away from us wishing we were with him, it is difficult for me to muster up an ounce of sympathy. That would require my exhausted brain to actually form a coherent thought.

There is only so long a person can endure repetitive stress and extreme fatigue. I believe this is why one of the most effective methods of interrogating prisoners of war is sleep deprivation. I was burning out. I vaguely recall an old Bill Cosby skit that I had once heard. It is a hilarious monologue about his father's car. In his typical exaggerated self deprecating manner, he describes how one day his father came to him very irate because he (Bill Jr.) had used his (Bill Sr.'s) car the night before and then returned it with an empty gas tank. Bill Sr. sticks his son's nose by the open gas tank and asks him to smell for fumes. That's pretty much how I feel. My gas tank is empty. I've been running on fumes. Most days I am in survival mode, mechanically shuffling from one task to another. I would probably notice how stiff my back and neck are from the constant pressure except my entire body aches all the time. My back and my neck are a drop in a sea of pain. And my mind feels like it is constantly swaddled in cotton; my life is a fog right now, the proverbial "new baby blur" -- only my children are not new babies. They are four and a half years old. It is a cruel twist of fate that has landed me here, just as worn out and overwhelmed as when my children were first born. There is a horrible resentment brewing inside me somewhere I am sure; I am just too tired to find it.

In a fit of nostalgia and curiosity I searched for the old Bill Cosby skit on YouTube. I had not heard it since I was a teenager. Here's the funny thing: I had remembered it wrong. When Bill Sr. sticks Bill Jr.'s nose by the open gas tank and asks him what he smells, it isn't fumes. He smells nothing, NOT EVEN fumes.

Considering what I've been going through, yeah, that feels about right.

This is an original post to Year of 4s.

What would YOU do for love?

It's the cheesy kind of question I would never have posed to myself 4 1/2 years ago. Back then, I had nothing to prove. No aspect of my love for my darling husband was ever in question. We courted, argued, broke up, reconciled, and eventually married almost 8 years ago, all against the wishes of friends and family. In marriage, our relationship flourished and we effortlessly proved wrong all our past nay-sayers. It is no exaggeration when I declare my husband to be my best friend and confidante, the only man I desire at my lowest points and all the other points in between. While our marriage is far from perfect and we still quarrel, I know that he is the yin to my yang.

And then my boy/girl twins were born.

Like most (hopefully all) mothers, my love for them grows exponentially every day. I find that all the old cliché's are true. As one new mother declared to me, I never knew I could love someone as much as I love my children. All at once the daunting power of unconditional love has been wielded before me, reflected in the wide-eyed innocence of my son and daughter. I devote my time, attention, and affection to making them happy, keeping them safe, and staying connected to them any way that I can. In short, I adore them.

The problem is, this doesn't leave much time, attention, or affection left over for my beloved spouse. When my children were babies, the allocation of my limited resources of energy was clear. I had helpless infants to care for; my fully grown husband was fully capable of taking care of his own needs. But somewhere along the line, what had originally been a necessity became a habit. My children are now on the threshold of elementary school. They are not the vulnerable infants they once were yet I still cater to their every need at the expense of my patiently enduring husband.

Surely he must wonder what happened to his beloved bride. Where did our loving terms of endearment, tender moments, and sensual glances go? More importantly, are they gone forever?

I had a long day at work today. As I wearily walked through the front door, I was instantly bombarded by clamoring children. I love them, I adore them, and I wish so much that I had more of me to give them than the withered human spirit that I am reduced to at the end of an exhausting day at the office. Sometimes, MANY times actually, I wonder if it is even possible that I am still the same girl my husband fell in love with 11 years ago. And then I looked up and there he was, apron wrapped about him, my favorite Korean beef marinating between us. The slices were so thin that when he finally went to grill them outside, he had to pick up the delicate morsels with his bare hands. With his eyes burning from the smoke, he bravely forged through 3 full pounds of the succulent meat, expertly flipping them on the foil lined surface with a deft flick of his wrist, each piece grilled to a perfect mix of slightly smokey crisp and tender juicy meat. It was perhaps the sexiest thing I have seen in a long long time. Much like Elizabeth Bard's adventures in "Lunch in Paris: A Love Story with Recipes", the sensual connection between food and intimacy apparently weaves a thread through our family as well. The power of this sensuality is comforting, sustaining, and thrilling all at once extending beyond the food on our plates and the satiety of our stomachs.  Without a single word being uttered between us, we are reminded that we are still mysteriously united in the tantalizing bonds of seductive affection and palatable romance.

I adore my children. I adore my husband. What would I do for love? I guess I'm already doing it.

Disclosure: This post was inspired by Elizabeth Bard's book "Lunch in Paris: A Love Story with Recipes". While I received a complimentary copy of the book, the opinions expressed above are my own. This is a "From Left to Write" book club post.

Strange Places

I'm in a strange place these days. That's not to say that Sacramento is so unusual, but being absent from my family for a week at a time each month is. Prior to the initiation of these long distance job assignments, I had spent a grand total of 4 nights away from our twins over a period of four years. That's an average of one night a year and even then I had to be pried loose from my precious children with a crowbar, kicking and screaming. Now I am absent 5 nights a month. I've just multiplied my annual average times 60! But as the recession has continued to cast a pall on our household (see my prior blog post "Living with Mr. Mom") I have increased my non-maternal work hours exponentially to sustain "the lifestyle we have become accustomed to."

Of course I always envisioned that lifestyle as one where I was a SAHM but then my dh had envisioned it as one where he was gainfully employed. I guess the joke's on both of us!

As if working weekends and holidays weren't bad enough, now my latest job (one of FOUR that I currently hold) requires these weeklong overnight trips away from my husband and children who, until recently, were the centerpiece around which I designed every one of my days. Instead, now each month I drive up to Sacramento where I hole away in a small hotel room with a kitchenette and shuttle back and forth each morning and evening to my given assignment for that week. The first night away from the warmth of my children's squirmy bodies in bed was rough, really really rough. I missed the nighttime giggles, the gentle hands that clasped my arms around them, the snuggly kisses and hugs. I barely slept four hours that night, if even that much.

The next night was our first time trying Skype. It only made me miss them more. I didn't want to hang up but I didn't want them to see me cry either. Again, I slept very little. I could see that this would be problematic since my job requires me to be clear-headed and alert, not sleepy and weepy. After a ridiculously difficult day at work because of my sleep-deprived state, I vowed that the next morning I would check out the "gym" at the hotel. The "gym" turned out to be two treadmills, a stationary bicycle, and an elliptical machine in front of a small television that blared the 6 o'clock news. Still, it was better than nothing.

And it worked. That night, I slept like a baby. Speaking of which, I am slowly realizing that the quality of one's sleep is actually enhanced by the ABSENCE of a tiny person laying next to you in bed kicking you all night long. And there are actual benefits to being able to sprawl across the bed without worrying about waking anyone up, child or adult. Hmm. I now make a point of visiting the pseudo-gym every morning that I am away on assignment, something I very rarely get to do at home. Which got me to thinking about other things I could do that I rarely get to do at home, like watch trashy t.v., openly indulge in unhealthy snacks, and eat Asian food (I have the misfortune of being married to a non-Asian eater). I also get to indulge in movies, shopping, and salon and spa services without wondering who will watch my kids or how to get home in time for the sitter - because I know who is watching my kids (dh) and I'm not coming home until the end of the week. It's as if for a week at a time I shed my Mommy identity and become someone else. And that someone is single and childless.

I am in this awkward phase now where I am still kind of in the throes of mommy guilt for abandoning my family on a monthly basis (albeit necessarily) and kind of enjoying parts of it. It's like a rainstorm while the sun is still shining. I'm not quite sure how to feel yet. Teresa Strasser expresses this ambivalence between maternal instinct and human solipsism best in her memoir about her pregnancy entitled "Exploiting My Baby". I know there are PLENTY of mothers and/or pregnant women who are truly offended by her anti-Nancy O'Dell rhetoric and her scathing criticism of "overmommying". Personally though, I find it hilarious. Heck I don't even know who Nancy O'Dell IS and it cracks me up! Especially during these long absences away from my children I remember very well all the insecurities I had when I was pregnant, my fears about what kind of mother I would be and whether or not I would embrace the maternal instinct that I was certain lay dormant within me. Like Strasser, I was not one of those "I-always-knew-I-wanted-kids" type of moms. In fact, dh and I devoted very little time on the topic and made the decision fairly hastily, so as far as I'm concerned Strasser and her husband have one up on us already! Reading her book while laying in my hotel room in a bed that had been made for me while I was out, my kitchenette and bathroom cleaned and restocked with supplies, I realize I am not alone. There are plenty of mothers out there (or mothers-to-be) embroiled in the same selfish versus selfless battle.

So how should I feel? Sad because I miss my kids or kind of relieved because I get to spend some time selfishly taking care of my needs alone? I think Teresa Strasser would snort in disgust at my over analyzing. I'm here, for better or for worse. As she says, "Let's not be bound by our scrutiny, but by our communal attempt not to screw up."

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of "Exploiting My Baby" for review. The opinions expressed in this post are my own. This is a "From Left to Write" book club post.

Watching My Inner Helicopter Parent Fly Away - NOT

We carry into motherhood the baggage from our childhood. For those who have been blessed with a happy one, there is a wonderful connection running through past, present, and future that is a precious rarity much envied by those of us who are less fortunate. As for the rest of us, we strive to avoid the mistakes of our own mothers, mistakes that ironically helped mold us into the caring, sensitive, and vigilant beings that we are today.

The current generation of helicopter parents are a product of childhood cautionary tales combined with a veiled form of comparative parenting. We are the modern day Smiths striving to keep up with the elusive Joneses. A helicopter parent will very rarely say, "If it was good enough to do X while I was growing up then it is good enough for my child." We also very rarely think, My child doesn't need to do Y; I didn't and I turned out fine. We are motivated by a desire to create an environment BETTER than that which we grew up in, whether that means more toys, more vacations, more time with Mom, or just more attention. And our materialistic monetarily based society is more than happy to accommodate. For anyone with enough money, there are products and services out there that our mothers never even dreamed of, much less desired. For starters, there are vast libraries of books covering topics from sleep training to homemade baby food recipes to early toddler emotional development to early childhood discipline. For the generation before us, there was little more than Dr. Benjamin Spock and even that was viewed with skepticism. The notion of reading books on parenting was mostly considered preposterous. As my mother contemptuously told me when she saw my library of child rearing books, "Parenting is something you DO, not something you READ."

Consider also the bevy of classes available to entice even the most closeted helicopter parent: baby sign language, infant massage, music together, dance, gymnastics, infant swimming, toddler skiing, immersion Spanish or Chinese, and many more. Like the a la carte menu of a five star restaurant, they all sound so good. So we sample and survey and exchange notes with the other helicopter parents. We flock to the "right" classes with the "best" teachers. Maybe it's all hype or maybe we will stumble upon the one who will recognize and nurture the secret latent talent in our child that we do not yet see. If my mother was contemptuous of my books, she was beyond disgusted with the multitude of classes in which we enrolled.

Of course there is the piece de resistance, the Holy Grail if you will, for the helicopter parent: the RIGHT school. Forget the minor expenses of books and classes; this is where the REALLY BIG bucks are spent. For the price of a small kingdom, the average helicopter parent can buy the reassurance that if her child does not get into an Ivy League school it will not be her fault. Just before my twins turned three years old, we enrolled them in no fewer than 3 preschools. One was a drop off with extended care for the days that both of us worked. It was play-based and came recommended both by other mothers in my network and by online reviews, criteria that are crucial in the decision-making process of any helicopter parent. The second was an expensive academic preschool which I had toured TWICE the year before. This was also a drop-off program and was in session only a few hours twice a week even though it was more expensive than the first school which offered extended childcare hours. The third school was a parent participation preschool which met for a few hours on Saturday mornings, markedly less expensive although much more heavily laden with after school responsibilities - for the parent. In a bout of indecision, I maintained this ridiculously busy and somewhat confusing schedule for a semester before withdrawing my children from one of them. For the first four months of the school year, they would ask me every morning, "Where are we going today?" A very good question indeed.

We are now at the age of kindergarten planning. While the very notion is beyond ridiculous to my mother, we the helicopter parents spent many hours agonizing over the age old question for the parent of a child born in the fall - send them ahead or hold them back? For my mother's generation, this question is a no-brainer: Get the child out of the house into the public school system as soon as possible. From my mother's perspective, why on earth would anyone in their right mind elect to keep their child underfoot in the household, the mother's domain, for a second longer than is absolutely necessary? After all, we want to FINALLY see our tax dollars put to good use and regain the solitude and privacy of our household for at least some small portion of the day. I suspect that were it in my mother's capacity she would have thrown a ticker tape parade on the day her last child (me) went to kindergarten for the first time.

But here's the thing: I am not my mother. While my children drive me absolutely crazy from time to time and I have moments when I desperately want to run and hide from motherhood if only for a few hours, I actually really like my kids. Unlike my own mother, I am not chomping at the bit tempted to yell, "Don't let the door hit you on the way out!" I want to savor every moment and memory with them, from the smell of their downy baby hair to the unexpected gentle touch of a soft palm on my bare arm. The good and the bad both have space in my heart for them. I would rather have the pain of a thousand heartaches and be fully engaged with my kids than be spared a second of pain and lose a fragment of an inkling of who they are becoming. I don't want to miss it, not any of it. Because as they are growing up, so am I. The beauty of my children is that I get to live a new life with them and experience the world around me with them.

Why would anyone want to rush through that?

So hover away. Study them. Plan for them. Obsess over them. And enjoy.

This is an original post to Year of 4s.

Are my children enough?

I am not typically an adventurous person, especially with four year old twins in tow. But at my husband's request, we recently spent four weeks in Mexico where my mother-in-law has lived for the last twenty years. This wasn't Club Med Ixtapa or Puerto Vallarta or Cabo San Lucas. We stayed in historic places on the Yucatan peninsula where it is not unusual to wake up with a tarantula, a scorpion, or a boa constrictor on the back porch. There was a beautiful lagoon, awe-inspiring Mayan ruins, expansive colonial mansions over 400 years old, and festivals in the evenings in the town square where men and women danced and sang about love and the glory of their city. There were also plenty of days and nights when the heavy humid heat in the air was oppressive leaving me scratching my MANY mosquito bites in frustration, wondering if I would ever feel really clean again. 

Both my MIL and dh were often attuned to my more frustrated moments (a wallflower I am not) and it was during these times as well as late into the evening after my defiant and mischievous children reluctantly fell asleep that I would peruse David James Smith's most recent book "Young Mandela". I had recently read Mandela's autobiography from 1994 "Long Walk to Freedom" which turned me into an instant fan. I was impressed by his steadfast and enduring devotion to a cause which required so much personal sacrifice, in particular over 27 years in prison away from his wife and his young children. To never see my children grow up is a sacrifice I could not imagine making under any circumstance.

So I hid in my sadly un-air conditioned room from time to time under the lazy whirl of the ceiling fan and read about the world in which Nelson Mandela grew up, a South African apartheid society where mosquito bites and humidity were the least of a black man's troubles. In "Long Walk to Freedom" Mandela's regrets over his personal sacrifices are quite muted. However, in "Young Mandela" the voices of his family's regrets can be heard loud and clear. While the book covered many other contrasting elements in perspective between Mandela and several other freedom fighters, it is the familial component that strikes me to the core the most, for obvious reasons. 

Take our extended trip to Mexico, for instance. I had kept a running journal of our experiences, the trips to the beaches and ruins and marvelous dinners both homemade and at various eating establishments. But I heavily edited out the emotional outbursts, by both children and grown ups alike, which were a product of over exhaustion, stifling heat, and a multitude of insects with vociferous appetites. Did I re-write history the same way David James Smith implies in his book that Nelson Mandela did? Will my children, on some level, resent my subtle propaganda in the way I have chosen to remember their childhood versus the way it really was? Nelson Mandela's children clearly do. And based on Smith's account of the acrimony between the Nelson Mandela Foundation and his first family, resentment unfortunately pervades his familial relationships.

My newest part time work assignment obligates monthly visits to Sacramento for weeklong periods, just myself, no kids. Granted, it is a far cry from 27+ years in prison. Still, will my young children feel some vague sense of abandonment at the far end of the spectrum of what Mandela's daughters, Zenani and Zindzi, clearly feel? More importantly, I wonder what aspects of their childhood I will be missing during my absences. New games? New playmates? The gradual and insidious evolution of their personalities? Will there be an indefinable distance between us that, over time, will become more and more difficult to bridge as my children grow older without me? I often wonder how much Mandela really regrets not getting to know his oldest son, Thembi, before his untimely death. The time we spend away from our children is unfortunately lost forever. One of Mandela's comrades was asked if all his personal sacrifice was worth the struggle against apartheid. His response was less than satisfying.

But the most uncomfortable and unsettling issue that arises for me after reading "Young Mandela" juxtaposed against "Long Walk to Freedom" is this: 

Unlike Nelson Mandela, I have no noble cause which would compel me to sacrifice my family life in the ways he did. Reading both accounts of the relatively peaceful revolution against apartheid in South Africa, I am still unable to irrevocably resolve in my mind and my heart either position - neither his, which can be described as "freedom at any cost", nor his children's, which is a tragic lamentation of the family life they never got to have. Both perspectives are valid and virtuous - and sadly incongruous. I don't believe I could have made the choices he had, even knowing the inevitable outcome. So I ask myself with hope and some degree of trepidation, when I am 92 years old like Nelson Mandela, will I reflect on my life with satisfaction or with regret? Will I be fulfilled by my devotion to my family or feel a personal void for not contributing a greater good to our society? Will I have secured a good enough future for my offspring by concentrating my efforts on the home life before me, or am I being short-sighted by not investing my efforts into the future of the generations beyond? Mankind is rife with causes and struggles, many of them right before us in our own small corner of the world. But these causes are not where I choose to invest the vast majority of my energy and effort. No, that bottomless repository resides firmly with my family and I can't see that changing for any reason. I consciously make this decision every day. But I still ask myself: Will my children be enough for me? I sincerely hope so.

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of "Young Mandela" to review. All the opinions expressed in this post are completely my own.


This is a "From Left to Write" book club post.