do tell…
Posted on March 1, 2007
Filed Under marriage, kids, parenting, suburban joys, career |
So I’m hearing a lot about author Sara Davidson’s new book, Leap: What Will We Do With the Rest of Our Lives? which I haven’t read but did hear her talk about on NPR’s On Point a few weeks ago. (Imagine me up on a ladder applying Benjamin Moore Satin Impervo White Linen paint to the newly installed moldings in our bedroom while listening to public radio. I was using an artists’ sized paint brush b/c I suck at painting and anything bigger is a disaster in my hands. Suffice it to say the project took me days and days, maybe even an entire month. I am sooo thankful for public radio.) The book was also featured in the Boston Sunday Globe last weekend. With such great press and a very full talk show circuit, it seems that Davidson has answered her own question, “What will I do with the rest of my life?” Let me guess, live off the proceeds of this book? Lucky her.
In listening to her recount the existential crisis she endured before she renewed herself as a writer, I felt startled and surprisingly sympathetic. I was thinking, “This is me, she’s talking about. Except, wait a minute, this phase she’s described isn’t supposed to happen until I am in my 50’s and I’m only 33.” Standing there at the top of the ladder with oil-based paint dripping down my wrists, I was internally screaming, “Hey, what the fuck’s the matter with me?”
So it would appear that I, like Davidson before me, am going through “‘the narrows’, the point where choices narrow to thin slices of possibility.” I precede most of my fellow travelers through the narrows by about twenty years but I’ve always felt like an old soul so this doesn’t surprise me all that much. My little G just went off to full day Kindergarten this year and big O is a second grader. Suddenly, inexplicably, I’ve got some time on my hands, (that is when I’m not painting a room, shoveling a driveway, sorting the recycling, walking the very energetic and demanding dog, volunteering in the classroom, playing tennis, scrubbing the toilet, doing the grocery shopping, remembering all friends’ and family members’ birthdays, hosting playdates, driving kids to various extracurricular activities and planning the school’s annual fundraising event.) So you see what I’m getting at here. When my Better Half ( and I use that phrase only because he’s asked me to) suggests it’s time for me to get a job, I cringe.
The truth is I feel somewhat marginalized by motherhood, craving the mental stimulation of my former, non-maternal life but finding it impossible to make room for both. My response to the Better Half, you show me a job that starts at 9 a.m. and ends at 2:45 p.m., pays well, offers benefits and dental (we paid $600 dollars for Big O’s teeth cleaning, x-rays and two fillings last month), and allows for the occasional sick child, teacher workday and flexibility to attend the second grade performance of Snow Fall complete with choreography and glockenspiels, and I’m all over it. Until then, I blog therefore I am.
And hey, if any of y’all know about that job I mentioned above, Do tell….
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Just found your blog from your BlogHer post…I’m empathizing all over the place. In fact, my “motto” on my blog is Blogito Ergo Sum. I’m having it printed up on tshirts. Want one????