The Indecision Project

I'm not sure what today's entry is about.

That's probably part of the reason for my title today. Other reasons:

1. While fretting AGAIN over whether I should be a career woman or a domestic goddess, my husband asked me who I want to be; the answer to that question should be my guide. I came up with nada. Other than, "what God wants me to be." Now, I love God and trust Him and all that, but I don't care what you say--when it comes to practical application, that is a decidedly unhelpful answer. And yes, I am aware that I'm the one who said it.

2. I don't know AGAIN what I want to be when I grow up. I had an epiphany about the Masters' in Nutrition Science. When I realized I had to put it down to homeschool, I was not disappointed. At all. Between that, listening to NPR, and visiting the Art Institute of Chicago in November, I realized I'd lost my art-loving soul somewhere between the GRE and Ivy Tech admissions.

3. I can't do housework. I feel too depressed and overwhelmed. And for the first time in my blogging existence, I feel oddly uncomfortable discussing the reasons for this. To quell any anxiety this cryptic little point I'm making may stir up in my loved ones, my marriage is solid. I am not pregnant. My kids are happy and doing well. Neither me nor anyone in my family is gravely ill or having a midlife crisis. I'll probably end up talking about it, but not today.

4. I am once again leaning toward sending Nora to public school. She's in the process of testing for the High Ability class, which would be the only appropriate path for her as public schooling goes. I just can't shake this feeling that I can. not. do this (homeschool, I mean). Plus, she's practically vibrating with excitement about going to kindergarten.

5. Okay, does anyone see a fine line here? I find myself wondering when it's appropriate to accept that I need to be changed by God and when it's appropriate to say "this is how He made me" and accept that I have limits. What are those limits, really? If he can do anything, than how can I have limits if I have faith? I know that I do, and I know that I have to, but I'm having a hard time reconciling the two, and what falls on what side. Is "x" something I should trust him to change, or is that just part of my fabric? Hm.

This is why I would like to hide under my covers until I absolutely must come out to shave my legs.

The Graduate v. The Mother

All right, folks. It's time we talk about appropriate Mothers' Day gifts.

Before you all go, "Uh-oh, George. What'd you DO?!" I would like to say it here that he knocked it out of the park. He did it exactly right and should teach classes on this matter. We will speak more of it later.

But. To all of you out there who give your moms diet books and cleaning supplies, let's have a chat.

Today, my husband got himself and the kids up early, went to the grocery store and bought sausage, eggs, and crescent rolls, and came home and made breakfast together. They brought it upstairs to me, pleased as punch, and armed with their little crafts that Daddy coached them through (oh, and by the way, he also made a paper-plate flower himself). Husbands? Children? This is how you do it.

But we had to leave our social time at church and I have to spend the rest of this day parenting, cleaning, and making dinner by myself because an entire institution thought it would be the best Mothers' Day present for mothers to see their sons walk at graduation.

Now we first must ask ourselves: is that really a good gift? I hear it all the time--what better gift could we give these mothers than giving them the gift of witnessing the culmination of their children's studies, and honor them for their accomplishments?

I am a mother. I have a mother. And I have lots of friends who are mothers. And I can tell you that all of us would say that we spend our days running our families. We make sure everyone has clothes on their backs, food in their tummies, praise for their latest art project, and appropriate guidance when they have questions and make wrong decisions. We spend hours thinking about what's best for our children. What the right thing to say is, and how we must say it. We weigh every single thing we do against what kind of effect it could have on the long-term for them. We spend most days working our children toward a goal of one kind or another; and we spend all the other days in celebration of them getting there. Our entire lives are focused on the lives, the struggles, and the accomplishments of everybody else.

So is it a good gift to give a mother another opportunity to think about someone else? Talk about someone else? Celebrate the good someone else is supposedly contributing to society? Well, a good mother might not argue. A mother who loves in humility won't put up much fuss. And honestly, there's never going to be a time a decent mother sees her child graduate and begrudges them of it. But as a mother who is treated well, I have no problem informing all the gift-givers out there--graduating is not a Mothers' Day gift. Whether you're an administrator who has idiotically planned this, or a graduate who thinks it's a sufficient way to honor your mother, listen: this is a "gift" that indicates a giver who is not only not grateful, but has no idea what mothers do--for them, for all of society.

If you're a graduate today, dude it's not your fault. Congratulations. But give your mom a freaking cake or something. Put a moment aside that's hers, and hers alone. She worked hard to get you here, and deserves some credit.

A little sideline chatter at 4-and-5-year-old soccer

I'm funny sometimes. But any spin I can possibly put on this would make it not as funny. So I'm just going to let you see what happened. This is no input from me; I promise.

Me: Oh, good. It looks like they're doing a relay. Run around the cone, Nora! No, don't run to the cone and stop! Keep going! Tag her hand!

George: Go Yellow!

Me: I don't think anyone on the yellow team wants to go.

George: Is the coach picking up his feet?

Me: Yeah, I think so.

George: Well, at least we're not the blue team. Everyone on that team decided to go at the same time.

Me: Hm. Yeah. And they're just kind of running...wherever.

Blue coach: The cone! The cone, guys! No! Go back in line! Not you! You run around the cone! Aidan! Sophie! Anna! Come back! It's not snack time yet!

Me: Nora, stop hugging Carrie! It's your turn! Hey, I thought they already made it through the line. Didn't they win?

George: Looks like they're going again.

Me: Sweetie, put the flower down!

This is way more fun than the big leagues.

Too much estrogen might as well be...I don't know, something bad.

I should probably start this one off by warning you--I should probably not pick a day on which I'm drowning in psycho-hormones to write. But I did. So.

I know in my head that everything is not wrong; everything is not bad. But I feel like it is, and it's pathetic. Every day, I have a new thing to share on my status update, and it's a reason for rejoicing. It's amazing (in an appalling sort of way) that my body not only doesn't respond with happiness and gratitude--it wants to hide from the world for the next two weeks. Preferably, under my covers.

Then, of course, there's the inevitable thought: but how can my children be happy if their mother is hiding from them? Hm. And what kind of mother hides from her kids? Answer: a bad one. I feel like hiding from my kids. Not taking a break from them, mind you, but real, bonafide hiding. A+B=I want to be a bad mother, or would at least prefer my children's suffering to my own. And that is only one of the slippery slides down which I fling myself this time every month. Oi!

*headdesk*

I'm going to go bury my miserable head in some Psalms. Go say a prayer for my husband, will you? He's gonna have to amp up the long-suffering this weekend.

Learning Materialism

Recently, I have considered homeschooling Nora for kindergarten next year. I never thought I would, actually. All along, I've not been the kind of mother who can't get enough of her kids and would hate to send them to school because I'd just miss them. Nope. That's not me. Many times, when I'm feeling guilty and down on myself, I wish I were that kind of mom. But, today, that's neither here nor there.

The initial reaction I get from people when it comes up in conversation is, "Whaaaaaaaat?!?" Because, let's face it. Nora loves people, especially peers. According to everyone and their teacher, Nora not only would thrive in the public school setting; she'd be profoundly deprived if I didn't give her that. I'm not gonna lie. That point has given me major pause.

But these things...this is what I know. This is what I cannot deny.

1. I was distressed in my spirit for months. Months. I knew something was not right with my family; I knew something was wrong with my current trajectory on the MS in Nutrition Science path.

2. One day, about a week into Lent, when I'd been praying my face off with regard to everything, but especially my children, I just woke up and knew that I was uncomfortable sending Nora to kindergarten. And I had the power to assess my reasons, turn off the "but-that's-just-what-you-do" nonsense, and go in a different direction.

3. Because there's always an issue with William needing "dealt with," Nora spends her days either fighting harder than the average kid for love and attention, or giving up and tuning out any need of that from me at all.

4. Right now, I only see her when we're on our way out the door, trying to get a meal in every Oprisko tummy, or nudging kids upstairs to bed. Once we're doing a full-day kindergarten in combination with me being a full-time student, I will likely go days without having an opportunity to ask her what happened at school today.

5. Everyone says Nora's a leader. I agree that she's got that in her. I also agree that she has a big enough voice and big enough enthusiasm to grant this illusion. But, more than anything, she wants to be the first person who strikes her fancy. The first peer who has everything in the world, the first one who makes fun of the loner, the first person who's even mean to her...that's whose approval she wants; that's who she wants to be; that's the lifestyle that becomes a basic expectation. Yeah, that's human nature. But I don't think we, as a family, should have to be on the defensive end of that lesson. She has great potential for leadership. But I don't exactly think her leadership potential will be cultivated well by 25 other 5 year olds.

6. There is simply not enough material to fill a full day of kindergarten. Period. I have heard first-hand from my friends who have kids in kindergarten that the teachers are reaching for material to fill the time. They have a movie day every Friday. Every single Friday. I'm sorry; that's unacceptable.

7. In our experience with preschool (which, by the way, talk to me about the preschool she attends. Our experience with Montessori has been first-class; I wouldn't trade it for anything, and neither would she), a lot of the kids are completely Disney-fied. Every girl is a princess looking for love, every boy is a superhero trying to kill bad guys. I don't care how much people say "that's just the difference between boys and girls." No. They're assigned to foolish gender roles because that's what we teach them. And if we don't, then their peers will because that's what their parents taught them. Insist all you want that it's in the genes. I don't believe it.

8. I've seen my daughter adopt a society-pushed, pervasive materialism. Maybe I have isolated myself enough in my adult life that I've just missed it, or maybe our economy is bad enough that companies are more desperate than usual to make money. But have you ever watched Nick Jr. or the Disney channel for an hour or more? Every kid watching that is riddled with commercials, ads, "want this!" "Buy this crazy thing or you'll never be happy!" It's bad enough that adults are flooded with that every day. But my 5-year-old? She doesn't even understand her foundational moral code enough yet to know any better.

I had a talk with a friend of mine who has her son in the public kindergarten, where Nora would go next year. She said all the boys are obsessed with Star Wars. Harmless enough, right? Star Wars is a classic. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that someday, we'll probably all watch it together as a family. Probably lots of times.

But, ah...I don't think I'll be showing it to my kindergartner. It's violent. There's intense emotion, complicated and abstract concepts too nuanced for a kid that age to process properly. The school, which houses only kindergarten and first grade, has a library full of Star Wars comic books, because that's what the kids want. My friend showed me one that her son brought home, and said this was the seventh--at least--that he's borrowed. I leafed through it, with my daughter in mind, noticing the rejoicing over the demise of bad guys, kissing scenes, fighting scenes and angry faces...ugh.

Again, all those things, I don't mind using as teachable moments. We don't celebrate when anyone is lost or hurt, even if it's someone who's hurt us. We don't need to be kissing boys just yet. We don't turn everything into a fight because the guys in Star Wars do it. But right now? Now? At age 5? To me, that's just parenting on the defensive. It's not proactively setting forth a model for the way we should live; it's the peers she trusts and sees every day setting that up for her and us saying, "No, they're wrong."

I want to make it clear here that I do not judge people for putting their kids in public schools. I'm not judging you if you enjoy yourself some good Disney. Every parent knows their child best, and every parent knows what their kid can handle. Every parent has their own style and preference of methods. But to me, doing public school right now, for Nora, feels backwards. I am not opposed to doing it eventually. Maybe even for first grade.

But I don't think we'll do it before we feel she has a foundation solid enough to hold steady on her own in a world full of "stuff", girls too young whose sole purpose in life is to be beautiful and find her handsome prince, and bullies whose approval she craves. I want her confident in her values. Then and only then will we set her free to discern right from wrong on her own.

I don't think that's being overprotective or establishing in her a lifelong ignorance of the world. She'll know the world soon enough. But it's my job to grow her up with a solid view of it.

I will happily take that on.

Different Door, Different Me

Do you ever forget who you are when you travel?

I have an unfortunate tendency to be a bit of a chameleon. I'm not saying it's always bad--a lot of times it's just kind of neutral, like I wear my clothes or makeup differently or something--but many times, I just forget everything. I can't remember who I am, who I want to be. I just see what's around me and match it, or I decide it's too much work to be the new person in a new place, so I just default to the old.

This past weekend, I traveled to Philadelphia for my best friend's 30th birthday party (a fun surprise party and nice time, btw, Kell--loooooved seeing you!). I forgot to pray. I forgot all the things I've learned recently by clinging wholeheartedly to my church, and I became this passion-filled, wily thing. And when I say "passion-filled," I don't mean all energetic and concerned. I mean I was filled with all my passions--pride, anger, forgetfulness, selfishness, self-importance, gluttony...I can go all day like that. It's like, if I don't have my routine holding me fast, I don't have anything holding me down.

My husband had been gone for almost a week by the time I left, and during that time, I'd been saying prayers for him. I'd prayed an Orthodox prayer that said at one point, "...keep him from all danger, misfortune, and temptation." The first two sound pretty typical, right? Like, please, God, keep his plane from plummeting to the ground and don't let him get robbed. But temptation? Like, what do you think is going to happen, other than exposure to non-Lenten foods? My husband's a smart man. He's not running off with a prostitute or blowing all our savings at a casino.

But yeah. I get it now. Now I've come home struggling to even remember to pray. When I left, I ran to it as if I couldn't wait. I hate that.

It'll get better, I know. Fall and get back up. But I've come to realize how heavily I've come to rely upon my home. My early mornings, my drop-offs and pick-ups, my time alone when the kids nap. I rely upon the clothes in my wardrobe, for heavens' sake, and my bed and my brand of toilet paper and my Ivory soap and my safety doorknobs that hurt my hands when I open them. I mean, home sweet home, sure. But shouldn't I grow to a point that I'm the same person, whether I'm opening and closing my own safety doorknobs or someone else's?

I should. I should, indeed.

That's a Good Man

Whoa! Two in one week. Slow down there, pardner, you say.

So I have to share. I was putting off going to bed (a foolish decision that I continue to make as I write this), and I pulled off the shelf a book I hadn't cracked open in years. It's sort of a primitive scrapbook I made for his birthday--the first birthday I'd planned ever for this brand-new boyfriend of mine. :) He'd been going through a low point his first year in grad school, so I surveyed our friends.

He was a popular guy in undergrad. Everyone at our itty bitty school knew him, and everyone loved him. He might say that's not true, but I was there. I never met anyone at Taylor who didn't adore him completely, and it was because he was intentional with everyone. He made everyone feel special, like someone in the world was genuinely interested in their lives and perspective. At the time I made this book, I'd been trying to tell him this time after time, and he brushed it off time after time. You're saying that because you love me, he'd say. So, I gave it up. I made about forty little cards out of cardstock and passed them out to friends via campus mail. I asked friends to write on this card and tell him what they thought of him. Cards came flooding back to me. I even had people asking for them who hadn't received them in the first place. Some even requested additional cards because the space I'd given them wasn't even close to enough for them. I compiled the cards into a scrapbook and that was his birthday present.

As I flipped through it tonight, two things struck me. One, I realized that was the year he turned 25. 25! Oh my gosh, such a kid and yet such a man. And how lucky I am to be here, five years older even than the man described in the book, and have him living in my house. How lucky I am to have his children call me mommy.

The second thing I realized is the fact that the man described generously by a jury of his peers is the same man I live with today. All of the wonderful things they said are still true.

He would probably contest me on that. But, you know. He was wrong the first time, too.