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| For the love of people, not a paycheck. |
I have periods of time where I question this choice. Recently, more than ever.
It all started with A. Actually, the conversation popped up years ago and resurfaces for a gasp of air and a quick sucker punch to my and my husband's parenting egos. "We should put A in some kind of activity..." one of us mutters, typically while driving to the grocery store with a delicately, tactically written grocery list and a fistful of coupons. The other parent sighs and agrees that theoretically, it's a wonderful idea. We move on. This summer we did manage an acting class, and as most places go, attendance made us eligible for mailings galore regarding future classes. The mailing in question outlined the fall session. And what else would they be choosing to preform but Harry-freaking-Potter mashed up with Alice in Wonderland (Johnny Depp and Allen Rickman? Sign me up for that class, please.) This catches A's eye quicker than a pink cupcake with glow-in-the-dark glitter. "Can I? Can I? Can I? CanIcanIcanIcanIcanI?" The husband and I exchange a few texts and it's generally agreed upon that the one time $200 chunk of money could be worth it, except...
Wait a minute. I'm having some technical difficulties with contacting my other half...why is my phone flashing some ridiculous message about a missing SIM card? As if nothing happened, the message fades away and all is back to status quo. I mutter promises of paypal and internet registration, "getting to it when I can" to satisfy A in the moment. I'll just wait for a nice, calm afternoon when the dad is home. Say, Sunday? Sunday.
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| Nice and calm...HA! No such thing in this house. |
Except, come Saturday outside the mall, after an episode of entertaining W with the bottom of my phone in her drooling little mouth, the home button on my phone decides to take a nap for an undertermined amount of time. There's really no telling when he (yes, my phone is a he) will regain function. Oddly enough, I'm standing outside the Apple store having just had my laptop serviced but I won't even consider turning around and bringing him in for this problem; probably cheaper to just buy a new phone these days, the way Apple has been behaving (that's a different post). So Saturday we stumble upon a new need: a working communication device. Due to some interesting new ideas about how to make money on my cell carrier's part, the cheapest I'm looking at is a go-phone I can rig with my SIM. For $200. I'm stressed now, and when I'm stressed...
I go for a run. A nice jaunt around the local walking track since it's free and much too humid for an outdoor run. My favorite part of this kind of run? Listening to my Zombies, Run! app and pretending the walkers that litter the inside lanes are the shambling undead, and if I don't create more distance they're sure to close in and devour me. I mean, seriously, there's plenty of me to enjoy. It's a nice half hour to forty five minute escape from reality, adrenaline pumping practice for the real deal. When I'm done I trek my sweaty self back down to the parking lot...but something catches my eye. Through the giant windows lining the hall I see the gym equipment, skinny chicks on ellipticals and stair steppers. But I've bet they've never had babies! I reason. (Again, a different post, a different day.) But, I bet I could get there too if I purchased a REAL membership instead of just free-track-running-time. So I grab a brochure from the front desk, and plan to commit just as I planned to do so nine other times this very year, to throw some variety into my workouts by attending their many classes and trying new machines and maybe even swimming laps in the pool for joint-friendly water cardio. Without another glance at the details or specs, I bring home my ticket to being a hot, skinny member of a real gym and hope that the male parent sees it the way I do. Over the course of the next two miles of driving my excitement builds, all concerns of phones and Potter pushed aside to make room for my big hot-mama-plans.
You can guess how this ended.
"How much is it?" He asks.
"Oh." I have to shuffle the papers in such a way that I appear to be doing nothing more than making it easier for HIM to view the numbers. Because of course I looked at prices before I got my hopes up...
"For the single one-year long membership..." (more shuffling) "$200."
No response. And that's how it started, the turning over and over of my priorities. The realization that it was this $200, or rather the allocation of this $200, that would define me as a person, as a parent. My choice here, and yes he left it up to my discretion, would both make and break my fragile mommy ego since no matter which route I took, the effects of letting go the other two would haunt me just as most other decisions seemed to do throughout my 27 years of living.
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| An example of a decision I DON'T regret |
I could enroll A in the Alice Potter acting classes. Drive forty miles to the cities each Saturday, every other being on top of an overnight shift at work. Ultimately, culmination is a thirty minute presentation to showcase vast imagination of our youngsters for which I'd need to hire a sitter to occupy the younger two lest they ruin the ambience by screeching and shouting for A's attention which, being seven and hardly a trained professional despite two months and copious amounts of cash worth of classes, she would grant them in between frantic glances to her father and I just to be certain we were aware of her presence on stage. (If you can't tell, we've done this before.) And all of this during the school year so I would be adding to my time away from her.
However, I can see those big eyes of hers welling up with waterfalls of salty sadness, wordlessly ripping my heart from my chest; how dare I keep her from her true home in the spotlight? As Hermione, no less? Deprived, secluded, shut-in child I'm creating through years of systematically, strategically planning to be just short enough on cash that yet again she's forced to "sit this one out". How will she ever get into television if I keep sabotaging her efforts? If I drop the ball (or the Golden Snitch, as it were) again... this $200 has the power to salvage or ruin my title as "awesome mom".
The phone. Eventually it'll take a permanent crap and be useless to me, hopefully later rather than sooner. But the longer I delay, the riskier it gets. What if I'm in trouble and in that desperate moment murphy's law strikes and I'm left stranded in a bad situation? What if the zombies are closing in and I can't call my husband to tell him one last I love you, because my phone has decided that baby drool is electronic cyanide? If I don't get a new one, I'm throwing caution to the wind and surely we'll all end up dead due to an inability to contact emergency services. I'll lose my title as "safe, responsible mom".
But then what about me? Isn't a happy mom a better mom? Endorphins make me happy, as would squeezing into my very best zombie survival gear. Can't squeeze without shedding the W poundage that still plagues me (and the N poundage as well, if we're being honest here.) Typically, too, I'm good for the contract. I pay, I go. But I'll be taking more time away from my family for the "selfish" pursuit of a better body, though of course a healthy mama is a present-for-years mama. It all feels too egocentric of me though, to drop $200 on something that in the now only benefits me. I've never been very good at the "bigger picture". If I pass am I forever forgoing the title of "hot mom"?
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| "It's ok Sam, SHE'S never had ba-- oh, wait..." |
This money, this thing I always swear I can't let step in the way of making a happy life for my babies, is leaving me paralyzed. In the moment, in the face of this decision, I am impotent and spastic simultaneously. "It's your choice," he says and I mentally curse him with the responsibility he is strapping to my shoulders. I understand he's merely making an attempt to hand me a bit of financial power. And then I dwell and ruminate on every decision that has led me to this point, each time I insisted that money doesn't mean happiness and chose instead to follow my dreams and improbabilities. Had I been selling my family short the whole time? Literally?
And now $200 was going to stand between me and the various moms I so badly wanted to be.
Don't get me wrong. I figure if I can't buy the kind of life I want my kids to have, I can make due with what we DO have around us. I can create for them a world of love and comfort and silly fun and security, without needing tons of money to do so. Just because we can't afford acting classes doesn't mean she won't put on her very best Cinderella dress and act out an entire's day worth of a princesses's life. Just because we can't put N into skating lessons doesn't mean I'm not going to go out onto that ice with her and fall again and again just to teach her myself how to keep getting back up. I may not be able to afford the nicest clothes for little W but in the dead of summer we don't need much for clothes anyway (I have clothes for my baby, I'm talking NICE-go-out-in-public-and-look-all-Gymboree-model clothes).
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| But come on, who needs clothes with a tush like that? |
In closing, I'd tell you which way we went in the end, but instead I'll show you how the powers that be made the decision for me:
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| And curtains! |
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