Tag Archives: Parenting

Is the Beginning of the End Too Late?

Posted on by

0

Is the beginning of the end too late?  I know I have already asked this question, at least once this year, but it is rearing its enormous head, yet again, begging my attention.  I feel that everything that is happening, with my job, with my family, and with my interests and pastimes, are all coming to some sort of end.  The thing?  Well, a simple, “What is going to happen next week?”

It is easy for me to be a coward, until, that is, I realize that if I choose to not do something, that I will literally end up with nothing.

The next step?  I need to be clear that I want my job, that I want to be with my family, and that I value my lesser talents in my hobbies.  Yes, an enormous and ugly head is rearing itself up, right now.

So, in this end, I ask, “Let’s do something!”

With some disposable money, a short trip outside of this one horse town is possible.  Then again, visiting friends or throwing a big party and inviting some out of town guests is always fun too… and probably something worthwhile if I can promise some fun and a magical tour of the city’s bars in the trendy and bar part of town.

About time….  My children are going to be hanging around the house for the whole summer!  Should I promise them another Camp  Summer?  Or, should I home school for two months and have themselves teach themselves a new skill?  And to practice on it?  I had perspicacious parents who did this to me every summer.  I would get home from summer school, which was filling half the day, and i would have to read books, practice piano, or do a chore like bake muffins or cookies.  Having responsibilities like these made me aware that I was more privileged than other children.  It made me aware that I had a lot more to do, than just come home and watch television.  I actually loved a lot of the things that happened to me in childhood, and I valued the things I could do, and having control over these talents, tasks, and knowing things when I heard other people talk, helped to keep me interested in school, life, and other people.  I accredit my parents for being the smart and cool parents for doing so.

So, this end that I see approaching, very quickly, is it for real?  Is it too early for everything to end?  or is it in fact too late?  Am I now too old to start a second career?  Am I too bored with my job to be able to do another similar job?  Do I have time to go back to school and find that magical, hoped for, favorite second job?  all these things are true, which makes me ask myself, “Am I filled with enough energy to handle two lives happening to just one person?”  Can I be a student and still be a parent to a family and a wife to a husband?  While I go to school, will I have time and money to cope with all of it?  I really cannot take out a second mortgage for myself, while I also envision taking out a mortgage for my children’s education.

With responsibilities pressuring me in a way that I could’ve never understood before, I feel as if I am giving up on myself in order that I am responsible for my children.  As well as for my husband.  Being a wife and mother changes priorities.  Men will always win, as men are.  And I am willing to put my education somewhere at the back, where perhaps, when all monetary responsibility for my children and also my physical responsibility for providing a home to them, is past.  It is not as if I have lost hope in myself.  It is at this fork in the road that I yet again, take the right hand fork.  I can’t see how far it leads, or, where it will begin again, but I am confident in being here.

If I can convince my children to fend for themselves a few days in the week, with promises to pay for visits to the theme park or the water park, and maybe a ten day trip family camping or going to rented cottage, this summer, I think I can still live with myself.  I will have the time to indulge, in secret, my interest in art.  As I fumble with the pencil in my hand, and play with the color of paint.  This looks as if it will become a satisfying two months, before the next time  I will have to yet, again, make the THE decision.  I will have to decide whether to be more of a mom, more of a wife, or more of me.  So, for now, it is done.

Hanging Out With Friends

Posted on by

0

Look in the distance, do you see the car driving on the hills?  It’s like seeing the roller coaster when it’s far away–the train of cars travel the track–the noise clicking and clacking.  The ride down the hill is a rush of noise and wind.  The screamers have no qualm and scream.

I think the roller coaster is like the popping corn machine at the movie theatre.  Irrisistible.

The hills are beautiful.  Come hang out with me there.  It’s as far as you can see, and then, it just drops….  Into the valley on the other side.  It’s a place in suburbia, surprisingly.  No need to drive for two hours for this fun.  We can make it there in summer or in winter.  It’s just a big hill, so, you have to bring your own picnic.

The hills are on top of each other, building up, climbing higher, and the mounds can be seen, following them, up, into the horizon.  They change colour with each season…  white with a blanket of snow in winter, the greyish green of regeneration in spring, the bright, bright green of healthy growth in summer, and the yellow of dying grass in fall.  It is beautiful here.  And, I do have to travel to get here, but not like when I want to find myself skiing on a hill.

I miss the days when the roller coaster was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.  It was complete and utter beauty.  Strength, power, noise, propelled movement, and the thrust and rust o wind.  I saw the engineers sitting at their drafting tables, perhaps their hands on a keyboard and a mouse, as they made the ability of flight come alive.  I loved that riding the hill downward gave me a reason to scream.

I miss that all of my friends and I could just go, on a bus, out to a whole bunch of wild rides…, our favourite one being the Wild Beast.  It was rickety because it was built when wood was cheaper than reinforced steel, and we loved imagining the possible catastrophy of the wood cracking and ripping and just collapsing beneath the weight of the cars with us in it, flying.  Part of my scream was a dare to the inanimate wood to just collapse!

Today, I am more likely to become motion sick on those rides.  I get off, feeling nauseas, and wishing that good things could last forever.  Why is it roller coasters only exist in my memory?  Anything that they are now, are just illness-causing games…  I gamble with myself, with my children, and with my younger cousins and my new nephews saying…  “The next one….  I’ll get on the next one….  I’m not too sick yet!!!”

Do we only go on these rides because we imagine what it is first, before ever, ever, even approaching close to one?  Do we hear the words, “roller coaster,” and know what it is?  Or is the sight of a train of cars running on a track and making a rhythmic beat all the way to the top, …  and we’ve already decided?  Do we watch the cars follow the round about tracks until the end, making sure no one dies, and then, fearlessly, make our decision to go on it?

I tease my nephews, they are young, and fearless, and will attack anything that even sounds remotely fun.  It is a rite of passage towards the time when riding… a hill, a board, or a car, involves more than just daring.  It involves responsibility…., and more importantly, the ability to take control, which is the ability to use the power in your hands.  At what point does all of this make sense?  So, it’s not about booking with mom and dad about borrowing the car for the weekend…., or even for just a few hours…., it’s about filling it up with gas, it’s about parking it in an appropriate place, not only to save on the parking ticket, but so that the car just doesn’t get lifted.  There’s also not putting too many friends into the car, as that makes the car go fast–and the friends screaming their approval about making the car go fast, will make it go fast.  This is a trap for instant car accident if not instant paralysis from getting hurt in the accident.

I miss the days when friends were easy to find and easy to entertain… now, going out with friends, there is a minimum investment of a few hundred dollars just to start the evening.  We leave the kids at home, with a babysitter….  We take the car….  We go a little earlier for drinks….  Then, there is dinner, and, if it is in the evening, sometimes there is a show we can catch.  Lunch is similar…  Cheaper, but difficult to do, is the shopping trip with the girlfriends.  Everyone is on a different schedule, and this makes spending an afternoon together difficult to plan into happening.  But, as human beings always are, when there’s something that we can take advantage of, and, gain from, we will probably plan it into happening.

So,  from the days of  “riding the rails,” when my heart hit the quick beat, now, just driving the safely back from a trip and seeing the house up the drive and getting into the garage, is a true treat, making my heart hit that quick beat.