We have a long standing tradition in my family on the first day of school. I get up early, make the kids something “special” for breakfast, they take a lunchable – don’t ask me why it’s what they’ve always wanted, and I drop them off to class. When they get out in the afternoon we go somewhere for a snack and discuss their classes, teachers and which of their friends are still there. I can remember clearly holding my eldest’s hand as we walked to the Kindergarten class for the first time. They actually let the parents stay for a little while to make sure our kids are really going to be ok and we’re allowed to sneak out once we feel comfortable. I saw parents that left their son or daughter at the gate and wished them luck. There were others that like me wanted to sneak out earlier than they did, but not look like we didn’t care and finally others that didn’t leave at all – when the rest of us wandered back in at the end of the day they were still there hovering over their child. Not to say that I’m not nostalgic and I recognize the milestone of starting kindergarten, after I dropped my “baby” off for the first time I went home and cried – yes I am one of those mothers, but I’ve also learned to try not to hold onto things longer than my girls do, I refuse to be that mother where the children are rolling their eyes and trying to get away from them in public because they’re smothering them with too much motherly love. Trust me when I embarrass my children I want to do it for the sake of embarrassing them not by accident.
Yesterday my oldest started high school, they do things a little differently at their school and she wasn’t starting class until after noon. With some things that have happened this year I just wasn’t able to take the day off to be with her and after kissing her sleepy head goodbye and wishing her luck I drove off to work with a heavy heart and guilty conscience. She did tell me earlier, that it was ok and she understood that I can’t always be there for the little things, which of course made me feel even worse. When I got through my morning calls I realized I had a break in the day and decided to take off early and meet her for our after school tradition. I pulled into the parking lot and took my normal spot looking forward to hearing how things were different but the same. As the bell rang I watched her walk out of class with one of her girlfriends and give me the “acknowledgement nod” as she headed off to her locker, after a few minutes I decided I was hot and done waiting – my car is the ultimate solar conductor for heat and met her at her locker, instead of being greeted with a warm smile or even a hello – she turns on me and says “You need to go home right now and get me my gym clothes and tennis shoes”. Slightly taken aback I recovered quickly and moved into “MOM” mode. “No, you’re in high school now and it’s your responsibility to make sure you have everything”, “but the coach won’t let me practice in my school clothes” “Well let’s go talk to him” as we walk up to the coach she becomes sullen and silent after spending a few minutes looking at each other I tell her again it’s her responsibility to take care of her stuff, she rolls her eyes and explains she didn’t bring her gym clothes for practice. He looks at me then back at her and promptly tells her she’ll have to practice in what she’s wearing and walks off to the gym. My loving daughter turns to me with exasperation grumbles something about how terrible her shoes are, which I pretend not to hear, I smile give her a kiss on the cheek and a pat on the shoulder and tell her I’ll be back to pick her up after practice. As I drive off I realize with a little anger, that all the worrying about being there for her was just in my head, I had made myself sick thinking I was letting her down and with anyone that’s every dealt with a teenager can tell you they’re not thinking the same thing when it comes to the things that they do. But I also realized that she has reached a point where she doesn’t need me to be there for her all the time, she’s actually starting to do things on her on and make her own decisions, not necessarily all good ones but she’s at least sticking to her guns. I guess it’s finally happening to me my little girls are growing up and pretty soon they’re going to be leaving the house and mom will be more of a guidance counselor instead of a bringer of things or taxi service. I guess that is until the next time one of them leaves their gym clothes or something else at home again.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
The Gumby Dilemma
I come from a family of guilt, not to say we’re murderers or there’s something terrible that was done in the past and we have to pay the price for it. We’re just people that need to feel guilty, we’re not doing enough, we don’t have enough time for everything that needs to get done, we don’t have enough money to help all of the poor people in the world etc. It’s not a totally bad thing – it’s driven all of us to do more and try to achieve more in our lives than the generations before us so that our children will have better – which of course we feel guilty for but, then you have days that you just don’t know what to do with yourself you’re so torn between what you really want to do and what you really need to do.
My mother is lovingly known as the “Martyr” in our family. Yes I did inherit her guilty feelings and sometimes although not often even do it better than her. In a recent conversation she was telling me how horrible she felt because one of her friends had had something terrible happen to them and she hadn’t been there to help her out. Of course she doesn’t mention in this story that the friend didn’t tell her about it until way after the fact and there wasn’t much she could have done anyway. I mention this because I have found recently that she will at times pass the guilt along, suddenly I’m starting to feel bad that she feels so horrible and I should have done something about it to help her help her friend out. I know it’s a vicious circle. I’ve noticed also that maybe I’ve gotten lucky and my oldest may not have been given the guilt gene – her sister definitely has poor thing is always trying to make up for something she didn’t do or had no control over. The oldest though can’t be bothered, she does what she wants when she wants and doesn’t worry about it one bit, I’m very envious.
With that background I give you the “Gumby Dilemma” – you get stretched so far by guilt or habit or responsibility that you don’t know which side is up or what you were doing anything for in the first place. I found myself there this morning. I’ve been working hard to take care of my mother since my father passed away, I do it out of love always it’s just sometimes harder than others to feel gracious about it, add to it the children going back to school and all the things that need to be taken care of for that, walk through, school shopping, sports meetings, PTA meetings, forms, needing to take a second mortgage out for everything etc. Then add in my husband being out of work for a little while again – I swear he’s not “one of those guys”, he’s always the last one to get laid off of whatever construction job he’s on but I really wish we could find a company that would realize it’s cheaper to keep him than hire a few new guys to break in once everything’s said and done. Finally add in my insane idea to get farther back into the workforce and move my job 20 miles farther down the road, and attempt to train for something new. The final straw came this morning when I got a phone call from my biological father, he didn’t have anything terrible to tell me, just wanted to talk, and he was feeling a little lonely and wanted to hear a friendly voice. After a rather nice conversation with him I hung up and cried….Yes I felt guiltily because I hadn’t spoke to him in a while and he might feel bad about it. Then later at lunch I was attempting to shop for my mothers birthday lunch but was bombarded with phone calls about work and other such things. Half the time I couldn’t tell you what day of the week it is, I wake up in the middle of the night and worry that I might have a face to face meeting earlier than I think the next day. And then I feel bad because I can’t even get myself off the couch in the evening to help my daughter wither homework. I think today if you could see my arms and legs they might stretch around my office building twice in each direction.
They tell us women we can have it all, a career, children a husband and a nice home. What they neglect to tell us is the guilt will drive us insane and at the end of the day, all of our pants are either Capri’s or short shorts, all of our sweaters are short sleeved or tank tops and that multitasking lifestyle that seems so popular is just a fancy name for being Gumby!
My mother is lovingly known as the “Martyr” in our family. Yes I did inherit her guilty feelings and sometimes although not often even do it better than her. In a recent conversation she was telling me how horrible she felt because one of her friends had had something terrible happen to them and she hadn’t been there to help her out. Of course she doesn’t mention in this story that the friend didn’t tell her about it until way after the fact and there wasn’t much she could have done anyway. I mention this because I have found recently that she will at times pass the guilt along, suddenly I’m starting to feel bad that she feels so horrible and I should have done something about it to help her help her friend out. I know it’s a vicious circle. I’ve noticed also that maybe I’ve gotten lucky and my oldest may not have been given the guilt gene – her sister definitely has poor thing is always trying to make up for something she didn’t do or had no control over. The oldest though can’t be bothered, she does what she wants when she wants and doesn’t worry about it one bit, I’m very envious.
With that background I give you the “Gumby Dilemma” – you get stretched so far by guilt or habit or responsibility that you don’t know which side is up or what you were doing anything for in the first place. I found myself there this morning. I’ve been working hard to take care of my mother since my father passed away, I do it out of love always it’s just sometimes harder than others to feel gracious about it, add to it the children going back to school and all the things that need to be taken care of for that, walk through, school shopping, sports meetings, PTA meetings, forms, needing to take a second mortgage out for everything etc. Then add in my husband being out of work for a little while again – I swear he’s not “one of those guys”, he’s always the last one to get laid off of whatever construction job he’s on but I really wish we could find a company that would realize it’s cheaper to keep him than hire a few new guys to break in once everything’s said and done. Finally add in my insane idea to get farther back into the workforce and move my job 20 miles farther down the road, and attempt to train for something new. The final straw came this morning when I got a phone call from my biological father, he didn’t have anything terrible to tell me, just wanted to talk, and he was feeling a little lonely and wanted to hear a friendly voice. After a rather nice conversation with him I hung up and cried….Yes I felt guiltily because I hadn’t spoke to him in a while and he might feel bad about it. Then later at lunch I was attempting to shop for my mothers birthday lunch but was bombarded with phone calls about work and other such things. Half the time I couldn’t tell you what day of the week it is, I wake up in the middle of the night and worry that I might have a face to face meeting earlier than I think the next day. And then I feel bad because I can’t even get myself off the couch in the evening to help my daughter wither homework. I think today if you could see my arms and legs they might stretch around my office building twice in each direction.
They tell us women we can have it all, a career, children a husband and a nice home. What they neglect to tell us is the guilt will drive us insane and at the end of the day, all of our pants are either Capri’s or short shorts, all of our sweaters are short sleeved or tank tops and that multitasking lifestyle that seems so popular is just a fancy name for being Gumby!
Monday, August 2, 2010
TEXTING
I recently received a status update on facebook from one of my friends, she was amazed that her teenage daughter had send and received almost 9,000 text messages one month. Since I’m one of those types of people I started doing the math, 31 days in the month it’s a little over 290 texts a day, 16 hours a day of awake time….that’s about 9 text messages sent and 9 replies, mind you this happened during a school month so I crunched the numbers a little differently say 10 hours of texting (hoping that the kid’s not doing it during school) that’s about 15 sent and received. I can’t even imagine how much time that might take. I consider myself to be halfway decent at texting and with the I phone having a QWERTY keypad definitely helps but still, it would be a lot of work to do that many. I’ve even considered doing a test to see how long it would take me to send out 15 text messages and get 15 back but the people I am in contact with would probably think I’m a little stranger than they initially realized and may not want to talk to me ever again. . I don’t think I would even bother having the feature on my plan (and yes with 2 teenage daughters we have unlimited text on our plan) if it hadn’t become the only form of communication with my girls. As far as they’re concerned it’s much easier to text me to ask about something they want or have to do than actually dial a number and talk to me. Even my husband communicates with his friends by text rather than call them, and then he get’s annoyed when they don’t respond as quickly as he would like. I don’t know how many times I’ve had the conversation with one of them that starts with “Why don’t you call them and find out?” With a roll of the eye I generally get this response “No this is easier, I’ll let you know when I have the answer” I have actually been put on hold while my daughter is talking to me on her cell phone to answer a text she’s received - I’m not sure if that shows the instant gratification of this new generation or what kind of hold I have on my kid.
I wonder what the text’s look like, are they sending one word at a time? Maybe they’re sending out to a group of people, 30 messages in an hour seems like a lot, I’m not sure I have that many contacts in my phone to be able to send that many. I surely don’t have enough to say to anyone including my husband and kids to constitute having that many texts. Although playing carpool mom for my 13 year old and her friend I’ve noticed that instead of talking to each other on the drive home they text. I’ve decided it’s for privacy of conversation on their end, they would be mortified if I knew what was going on with “Jimmy” and his girlfriend, or what “Sally” said to so and so at lunch. So I decided to check how many texts my oldest had done last month and was stunned, 5,000! She’s not awake long enough to have that many, I swear she’s grown an allergy to sunlight since school got out and as far as I can tell she’s snoring by the time I got to bed so where is she finding the time to do all of them? As we discussed this over dinner, she puffed up with pride that she had had that many small conversations with her friend that I had to laugh, and then because I am an parent of a teenager and have far too much time on my hands I proceeded to tell her that when I receive my 120+ page bill a month I can read all of the texts that have been sent back and forth with everyone on our plan, suddenly her face changed and a small twitch started at the side of her mouth. “Really? You can read everything?” My husband who up until that point hadn’t been very interested in the conversation perked up at the sound of fear like a shark that smells blood, he went in for the kill. “Yes, we know everything, ask Jasmine how her cats doing for me” It was a shot in the dark but it hit home with such accuracy I honestly though she’d fall out of her chair. With knowing eyes my husband and I looked at each other across the table and gave each other a mental high five. Soon after she asked to be excused, and I watched her from the corner of my eye as she made a beeline for her phone, she flipped it sideways, and her fingers went to work with such fervor I imagined I could see sparks flying. Once finished she snapped her phone shut, TURNED IT OFF and breathed a sigh of relief. I’m not sure when she’ll figure out that we have no idea what she sends to her friends and in all honestly I don’t worry about it, she’s a good kid and aside from the standard teenage psychosis she gives me no reason to think otherwise. I do have a strong suspicion though that until she does realize it, her texting numbers will be WAY DOWN!
I wonder what the text’s look like, are they sending one word at a time? Maybe they’re sending out to a group of people, 30 messages in an hour seems like a lot, I’m not sure I have that many contacts in my phone to be able to send that many. I surely don’t have enough to say to anyone including my husband and kids to constitute having that many texts. Although playing carpool mom for my 13 year old and her friend I’ve noticed that instead of talking to each other on the drive home they text. I’ve decided it’s for privacy of conversation on their end, they would be mortified if I knew what was going on with “Jimmy” and his girlfriend, or what “Sally” said to so and so at lunch. So I decided to check how many texts my oldest had done last month and was stunned, 5,000! She’s not awake long enough to have that many, I swear she’s grown an allergy to sunlight since school got out and as far as I can tell she’s snoring by the time I got to bed so where is she finding the time to do all of them? As we discussed this over dinner, she puffed up with pride that she had had that many small conversations with her friend that I had to laugh, and then because I am an parent of a teenager and have far too much time on my hands I proceeded to tell her that when I receive my 120+ page bill a month I can read all of the texts that have been sent back and forth with everyone on our plan, suddenly her face changed and a small twitch started at the side of her mouth. “Really? You can read everything?” My husband who up until that point hadn’t been very interested in the conversation perked up at the sound of fear like a shark that smells blood, he went in for the kill. “Yes, we know everything, ask Jasmine how her cats doing for me” It was a shot in the dark but it hit home with such accuracy I honestly though she’d fall out of her chair. With knowing eyes my husband and I looked at each other across the table and gave each other a mental high five. Soon after she asked to be excused, and I watched her from the corner of my eye as she made a beeline for her phone, she flipped it sideways, and her fingers went to work with such fervor I imagined I could see sparks flying. Once finished she snapped her phone shut, TURNED IT OFF and breathed a sigh of relief. I’m not sure when she’ll figure out that we have no idea what she sends to her friends and in all honestly I don’t worry about it, she’s a good kid and aside from the standard teenage psychosis she gives me no reason to think otherwise. I do have a strong suspicion though that until she does realize it, her texting numbers will be WAY DOWN!
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