Things done, but not the things I expected

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I meant to spend this week catching up on business chores and making significant progress on work projects. Instead the week has been one of reconnecting to my local communities. Also I finally made good on the promise I made to myself that as soon as the weather was nice I would tend my garden. This year my spring bulbs will have a fighting chance to be lovely instead of struggling to survive beneath a mat of dead foliage.

Now if I can only find focused time to spend on the work projects…

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Change, Fixing, and Growth

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The only person you can change is yourself.

I don’t know who first said the words to me, probably my parents, and they probably said them many times before the concept finally sunk into my developing brain, but I know I had internalized it by my late teens. If I wanted my life to change, or a relationship to change, or something to be fixed, the course of action which was most likely to succeed was for me to change. It is good advice and side-steps worlds of frustration. 20 years later I’ve finally accepted that the rule might have a corollary. Sometimes me changing is not the right answer to a particular problem.

All of my children are facing personal challenges right now. The point of childhood is to face challenges and learn from them, so this is not unusual. Gleek is struggling to work through some interpersonal difficulties in her church class. Link has a two page paper he does not want to write and chores he does not like doing. Patch has several friends moving away. Kiki feels overwhelmed by her homework load. There are more–life rarely parcels out challenges one per person–but these are the ones at the forefront today. My default solution is to change me. I could talk to Gleek’s teacher and make requests which would ease her experience. I could organize Kiki’s tasks for her and become the dictator of her schedule. I could sit Link down and babysit him through every word. I could arrange for Patch’s days to be filled with activities so that he won’t have time to feel sad. Four months ago this type of thing is exactly what I regularly did for my kids. I twisted my energies and time into the necessary needs. Sometimes parents must contort themselves for the benefit of their kids, but I did it so much that I became tied in knots.

Reading Naomi Remen’s book My Grandfather’s Blessings helped me untangle some of those knots. Particularly this quotation:

Seeing yourself as a fixer may cause you to see brokenness everywhere, to sit in judgment on life itself. When we fix others, we may not see their hidden wholeness or trust the integrity of the life in them. Fixers trust their own expertise. When we serve, we see the unborn wholeness in others; we collaborate with it and strengthen it…Over the long run, fixing and helping are draining but service is renewing. When you serve, your work itself will sustain you, renew you, and bless you, often over many years.

Sometimes the troubles of my children are not mine to fix. Sometimes my job is to hug them and stand nearby while they struggle to grow into their own answers. If I always change me to solve our family’s problems, then I steal opportunities for growth and change from my children. I know how to organize a schedule. Kiki does not. She can not learn how if I always step in to do it for her.

There are some things that I must fix or they will remain broken. There are other things that I should not fix because they belong to someone else. I wish the difference was marked more clearly.

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Emotional weight and things which matter

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Out of the blue comes a day like today when I get all of the important things done all on the same day. This is not to say that I accomplished everything on my task list. Not even close. I haven’t even caught up on all the things which fell behind during the weeks of sickness. But last night my paper journal and I had a good long talk and I was finally able to identify which of the perpetually postponed tasks were the ones filled with guilt. Today I put those things first. I worked on the Emperor Pius Dei layout. I worked on editing my book. I made dinner and enforced a homework hour for the kids. I helped my son make a boat for cub scouts. I did some other stuff too, but those were the things which really mattered to me.

Sometimes the things which matter are not the things I think ought to matter. This is another case of my emotional brain not communicating clearly with my logic centers. The logic center is the place from which I write all my to do lists. My emotional brain is the place which assigns emotional weight to all of the tasks. I can accomplish a hundred things which seem important, but the day will feel like a failure if I leave the weighty things undone. This is true even when the weighty thing is “shop for new shoes” a thing which my logic brain is not at all sure should even be on the list. Whether I think they should or not, some things matter more to me than others. The things which matter will shift and change according to my emotional currents. I have to take time to observe those currents so that I can make my lists to match.

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Notes to things I feel grouchy about

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Dear school,
One second grade child does not need four different reading programs each with a log for me to track. Yes I know that minutes-read can count for all four programs, but I still have to write it down four times and make sure that my son turns in four pieces of paper. Seems a bit like overkill, particularly when none of it actually increases the amount of time my son reads.

Dear church,
I understand the valuable social purposes of all the various auxiliaries and activities. We currently have a family member in every single one, which means that we often have weeks when our family routine is disrupted 3-5 times. Please understand that when we skip some of these activities it is for sanity’s sake.

Dear History teacher,
Your humanitarian project, history chapter review, reading assignment, and movie watching assignments are all simultaneous. My daughter has other classes, some of which also have time consuming assignments. I am really tired of her feeling overwhelmed. Can we pick and choose please?

Dear house,
I know you are messy. I’m sorry about that. Someday I will clean you up and make you pretty with paint and decorations. Right now I have neither the time nor creative energy to spare. It would help if you could just perk up a little and stop looking so distressed.

Dear New Gas Range,
I’m not grouchy at you at all. I like you lots and I’m so glad that I have you. Please continue to be wonderful.

Dear book project,
I know I haven’t spent time with you in almost two weeks. I know that you are supposed to be an important priority, but somehow I always do other things first. I’m trying to find my balance again. Hang on.

Dear Son’s Birthday Party,
Yes I know I need to reschedule you. Not this week please? Or next week? Do I really have to? (Yes I know I have to, because you matter to my son and he matters to me. Sigh.)

Dear Social Media,
You are full of things. I may have to ignore you for awhile so I can clear my head.

Dear Daylight Savings Time,
It has been brought to my attention that you will be arriving next week. That timing is not convenient for me. I much prefer being able to get my kids to bed at night after dark has fallen. They complain less that way. Also I don’t want to lose an hour. I’m already behind schedule on just about everything. I need every hour I can get.

Dear Food in My Fridge,
I wish you were different food.

Dear Monday,
I’m about done with you today. When I see you again next week I expect to find that I have re-established a normal schedule, that no one is sick in my family, and that I’ve caught up on all the work which fell behind while I was sick.

Best regards to you all, and please understand that while I’m grouchy I’ll get over it. Small grouchiness is like that.
–Sandra

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Managing a bad day

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Some days, today for example, I feel like a failure as a parent. My logical brain has a whole list of reasons to explain this feeling. It supplies them in regular rotation, proving them to be completely interchangeable and thus not the cause of the feeling. The feeling pre-exists the reasons and can not be quelled by logic or by copious contrary evidence, both of which my logical brain also supplies. It is a mood. It will pass. Some other day, perhaps even as soon as tomorrow, I will look at the same lists of faults and triumphs, and I will come to the conclusion that I am pretty good at this parenting thing. Logic and emotion are often only passing acquaintances in my head.

So on a day like today I cry some, hopefully in private, but more likely in an embarrassingly public location like church. I sort my thoughts into piles so that I can re-examine them on a more energetic/rational day. Then I find something to do. It has to be a small thing because I really need it to succeed. Today I succeeded in pulling copious quantities of lint out of the dryer vent pipe. In theory this will improve the function of our dryer, but even if it doesn’t, I still succeeded in removing a sack full of mess from our lives. Also I gave two kids haircuts and they don’t look awful. That’s three more bits of evidence to weight the scales on the side of being a competent human being. It’s a start.

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The Type of Mother I am

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Last September I walked with Kiki into her school and, against the advice of a school administrator, dropped one of Kiki’s classes to replace it with a free period. Throughout the remainder of September and October I monitored Kiki’s every assignment. I set up schedules for her to get everything done and then argued or cajoled her into sticking to them. It was a very time-intensive, hands-on version of parenting and I believe it was the right choice at that time.

In January I washed my hands of Kiki’s homework and handed all of it back to her. In the same six months I have looked at exactly one of Link’s assignments. Gleek and Patch get their homework done more or less on time. I know for a fact that my kids spend far more time attached to video game screens than their neighborhood peers. This is a very lassez faire style of parenting and sometimes I feel guilty about it. Yet I also feel like it has value in allowing my children to experience their own choices and the consequences thereof. Sometimes the best thing they can have is a mother who stands back.

At the end of this month I will deliberately shed my mother duties for a day so I can participate at an author event for a Junior high school. In August I will leave my children for a week while I attend WorldCon with Howard. In September there is an event I very much wish to attend, but it would again require me to hand the care of the children over to someone else. The fact of imposing childcare on another person aside, I can’t help but feel that the choice to pursue these events is selfish. I feel as if I abandon them. I don’t. Not really. I know there are benefits. When I went on a trip a year ago, Kiki made some life-critical emotional break-throughs that she would not have made if I had been home. Being away from mother allows struggle and growth in different ways.

All around me are mothers that I admire. I see them planning educational opportunities, going on family outings, requiring chores, cooking regular meals, and enforcing homework. I want to be all of them. I want to spend copious amounts of time providing a firm and reliable structure for my children. I want to stand back and let them learn through struggle. I want to play with them and fill their lives with joy. I want to escape them so they can grow and I can grow in ways that we can’t do together. I want so many things which seem to directly contradict each other.

Then I remember a long ago guest lecturer in a college course who spoke about women’s issues. She said “You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.” I can be all of those mothers in rotation. I just need to let the demands of the day be my guide. The guest lecturer was also a little bit wrong. Life is limited. Sometimes when we choose leave something for later it means we are choosing not to have it because time will run out before we get there. This is okay too, so long as we choose first the things which matter most to us. Each day I will choose the mother I should be. I will know that what may appear to be inconsistent parenting may actually be a straight and steady course toward well-adjusted children and a mother who still has her sanity.

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School decisions

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This week was not a great time to have my focus completely scattered by being sick. Now is the time of year when I make a series of decisions which will affect the shape of the next school year. For the older two this means combing through course offerings, attending registration meetings, and trying to find a good balance between challenge and sanity. Things are even more unsettled for the younger two. Normally I’d just discuss with their current teachers about who would be good for the next year. However this year I’ve dropped their names into a lottery for a charter school and they both tested for gifted programs. I will not know how those things turn out until the end of March. Then there will be decisions to be made. I can’t know the outcomes of those decisions in advance. I am so very tired of making important decisions based only on my ability to prognosticate and whatever inspiration I can glean.

I get very tangled up about these decisions, but then I have to take a deep breath and remember how flexible our local school system is. We have lots of options and if one doesn’t seem to be working, I can switch to another one.

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Still recovering

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We’ve achieved a semblance of normality. It is a slow-paced normality with many naps, but all the kids are back at school and no one has a fever anymore. Howard and I have been tag-teaming for the past five days. We take turns sending each other back to bed. We also pared down to the absolute essentials. Yesterday I had three necessary tasks. I had to finish up the last tax paperwork. I had to attend a registration meeting for my high schooler. I had to make sure that the family birthday celebrations were not delayed or abridged by sickness. I accomplished those things and nothing else. There is an accumulation of tasks which is nibbling at the edges of my consciousness. At some point I’m going to have to find high gear and scramble to catch up. That won’t be today.

I have my list of essential things for today, tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday. These are all parenting and family things which are time sensitive and which will live in memory for decades if I mess them up. I am proceeding cautiously because this particular sickness fills my brain with dumb at unexpected moments. On the list of things I really ought to get done are shipping, house cleaning, and email. A little at a time is all I can do.

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Sick Day

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I will assuage my guilt at postponing my son’s birthday party by chanting “Infectious diseases do not make good party prizes.”

Current sick count:
1 case of pneumonia (Howard)
2 flu cases with chills, fever, and body aches (Kiki and Me)
1 sore throat (Gleek)
1 unsettled stomach (Link)

That’s 5 out of 6 people. Hopefully quarantine will prevent us from being Typoid Taylers. Also hopefully everyone will play nicely all day. I’m in the head cold with body aches category.

Edited to Add: Over night the sore throat manifested as stomach flu with attendant middle-of-the-night clean up. The unsettled stomach is now feeling fine.

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