Bad Parenting Confessional: Away

I wrote you last week about my vocational challenge now that my old job has come up again. I really appreciate all the witty and wise commentary on that post. Helped enormously. If you ask me this is just what I need this blog for; my friends and family thank you all, too, for your contributions to my sanity.

The saga will continue. I don't have to do anything right now but a lot is suddenly on the table again. What about being a two income family? Do we need it? And, childcare what do you do anyway with kids three and a half and almost two for care -- is there a slam dunk to see them through school starts? Or is it really not worth it at this point with kids 22 months apart? You have to remember Vancouver childcare options are abysmal.

And, staying at home? Wasn't I just committed? (pardon the pun) I was and I wasn't. I mean I feel I can make anything of these choices they are stressful and, in my opinion, too numerous for those addicted to tranquility but I have found out I am not among that group. My family though entirely plain in many respects is not static; we have our chaos. Blessedly benign chaos. It will ever be thus, I expect.

There is really only one outstanding bit of major business. You see back in November when I was sure I was going to work my kids were driving me crazy and vice versa; the bad behavior all around was a concern. I told myself many times that going to work would improve our family. That being away would actually make me a 'better parent' relatively. For shame. Earlier this month when I mentally moved myself to being 'at home' I felt that my previous mind-set was pretty sick. I looked at everything and decided I couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't ever think absence would be a means to my being a better parent. Like a quest for the holy grail I was set to one task; to find something -- and everything -- else available to make me a better parent besides that. One who is better with the full acknowledgement of the impossibility of being good enough.

But now am I back to square one? How will I apply my new found knowledge to this scenario? Am I a stay-at-homer at heart? You know I have never had a childcare arrangment that lasted more than 7 months? Do I sabotage them since I want it to be me?

(A bunch of this goes to the SAHM's myths of perfection. I will still be keeping up my 52 reasons. Who knows maybe those 52 will represent the 12 months service I am supposed to give my employer before I am allowed to resign from work scot-free.)

Messy Breakup

So we had a nice luncheon for nanny today, ice cream, cards and little prezzies. She is entirely sick of us, our instabilities, our renovations; she is off to a new job. She says she's done with nannying. It was as nice a goodbye as I could muster...

...Considering work, called at 9:18 today to tell me the guy who took my job has resigned. I could start back as soon as May 5. To make it all worse I have seen this coming for 3 weeks, or maybe it was 5 months?

If anyone has a therapy method, book, pill, or drink that will make this all go away name your price!

More to come....

Fragile

My friend she lost her baby three days ago.

She told us on the Internet. She’s not the first one.

Bad is right motherhood is a cloister. This place of typeface speaking can be a release. A breakout from the cloister and the arras. I hear you.

He says we’re lucky. We are and we aren’t. Our family can still survive on the mythology that the children are immortal because they might out live us. We may pretend they face no fate of dust like us. We feel that they will live on. And on. And on.

When it comes to my children I have no sense of proportion. Among other things I want them omnipresent and everlasting. Yet with these little ones I know inside it is as fairy’s wing as fragile as a sprite's voice on the wind. They are not necessarily strong. They have rattled their little bones out of nothing more special than a mother like me. A woman of no extraordinary power but something magical instead come from something plain. Though they be magical they are not necessarily strong.

To those who lose their little ones, or cannot find them, there is no quell. There is a place for wailing. I wonder for how many years we have not heard. For how the pain and loss was swept away so callously. Or in ignorance and superstition. I hope it means something to have their names heard; to say it aloud.

Dear mothers… It means something to me to be included. It teaches me that whether the person in her bed upstairs or the person in his crib sleeping tonight lives a hundred years or a hundred days or a hundred minutes or any less they are my child. They are mother’s child loved and cherished without measure or proportion for all eternity.

My heart of my heart to you CC.