Aspirations and Fear

I realized this week—to my surprise and confusion—that I still aspire. Not the breathing-in kind of aspiring. The hoping-to-achieve kind.

It’s been nearly eight (!) years since my first child was born, and five years (!!) since I left graduate school and payroll work. Only one of my three kids is in school right now. I have two-and-a-half years to get all three of them there. But that point is suddenly close enough that I can see the reality of it. Close enough that all of those things I said I might do when all three kids are in school are now barrelling toward me more quickly than I expected.

I thought I’d be ready for this. The decision to leave grad school and paid work was gut-wrenching for me. I knew, though, that my children would only be small for so long, and it was important to me to be their primary caregiver through their earliest years. And that one day they would go to school, and at that point I would figure out some other professional me to be.

As I see that point coming closer, I find myself unready. Unsteady. Terrified. And exhilerated with the possibilities.

Some of you might say it’s the anxiety about the babies growing up. And there is some of that of course. But I trust them, and while I will sigh nostalgically over their baby selves, I also know that their growing selves will be just as interesting and sigh-worthy.

No, the anxiety and excitement and confusion is about me. About my self-identity. The caring for my very small children is important to me. I would not have left grad school if I didn’t feel that the care of their early selves was the most important work I could do for them. Them going to school, though, provides me with the time to begin to rebuild my individual identity, the one that is separate from my children. It is very unlikely to be the same me that I was before I was a mama, though there are still big chunks of that fierce girl (a feminist intellectual, determined to fight The Man, and make new knowledge) left in me. It is very unlikely to be completely disentangled from the mama-me either. I AM someone’s mama now.

How will those bits of fierce girl and fierce mama fit together? And what other pieces will fit in there? Who will I be and what will I do?

For a full 24 hours this week I decided that I wanted to get an Accounting Degree and become a CPA. This seemed like a very reasonable thing to want to be. I would study for a few years, and be virtually assured a steady job with steady pay that would allow me to support my family in the event of catastrophe, or to allow my husband to take a turn away from the payroll as the before-and-after-school parent.

Ha.

I don’t really want to be an Accountant (though, seriously, all of the numbers and the puzzle of making them make sense does seriously appeal to that hyper-organized, A-personality, keener part of me). I want to be a writer. But boy oh boy is that scary.

Look, if I became an Accountant, I’d have to put in the work (and the money) to be a student for a few years, but at the end of it I have no reason to doubt that I’d get a reasonable job. To become a writer, I’ll likely have to put in some hard work for a few years, producing readable, publishable material, but there is no virtual guarantee at the end. The work might suck. Or the market might be resistant. From what I hear the publishing industry is hard. This lot-of-work-for-no-guaranteed-return is scary. Make-me-think-about-Accounting scary. Shake-in-my-boots-and-make-me-want-to-overhyphenate-everything scary.

Two trusted people poked me just the right way at just the right time. I remembered that scary isn’t always bad. If I wanted to avoid the unexpected and the difficult, I’d never have become a parent. If I wanted an opportunity to CREATE (which, as you might notice, I love to do) anything like new knowledge or understanding, I could do it with writing. If I wanted to try to pick up and rail against The Man, I could do it with writing. I can write in the space between packing the kids off to school and greeting them with a snack. I could write and find a balance point between the two.

While I’m not a big one for doing things to please other people, it did help, this week, to have two people point out to me in their own unique ways, that they do want to read what I write. That they do want me to give it my best shot. And that no decision has to be made RIGHT NOW. I still have a little time.

But I think I’ve already decided. And here it goes. One baby step at a time. I will try to add Professional Writer to my list of personal descriptors.

Deep Breath.

*****
P.S. Today R and C were involved in an incident that resulted in a spectacular head bonk for C. He has a goose egg on his forehead the size of Manhattan Island, otherwise he is ok. We’ll check on him a few times tonight. In the moment of the trauma, I acted exactly as I had to. Did all of the things I was supposed to do at the right times. Soothing, icing, hugging, checking pupils, and asking the right questions. I really am sure that he’ll be fine. But the aftermath leaves me wrung out, on the weepy side, and with muscles shivering with fatigue and emotion. Seriously, if I can convince an injured four-year-old to hold the ice pack to his swollen head in spite of the searing pain, surely writing won’t be so hard. ;)

Supplemental Laundry Center

“Use it up. Wear it out. Make it Do. Or do without.”

I totally wish I could remember where I read this, but applause to the person who generated the phrase. At it’s heart, it’s a phrase about frugality, I think. For me, it satisfies twin drives: the desire to save my family money and the desire to save resources and be environmentally and socially responsible. Oh, I might add a third—the creativity and cleverness that is often involved in the “make it do” part.

We are a single-income family with three children under eight, so I face the challenge of this phrase every day. One step at a time, we’ve whittled down our practices to make the most of what we have. One car. One walking commuter (payroll spouse). One biking commuter (oldest kid). Nearly year-round garden. No cable or satellite television (remind me to post about this as a watershed change in our lives). Second-hand clothes that are reused and remodified until every last bit of lint is shaken out of them. Home cooking and food preservation. Compost pile. Jam-packed recycling bin. Green electric company. Just to name a few.

But I know there’s room for more changes.

We live coastal South Texas. The same climate that makes it possible to garden almost all year long, is the climate that makes August feel like sitting in a pot of boiling water. We need the heater (mainly for one chilly bedroom) here and there for a total of only a few weeks each year. There are a few weeks before and after the heat need where the house is comfortable with windows and doors open. The other six to eight months of the year, the temperature inside the house and outside challenges my body’s internal thermostat. This makes air conditioning our single biggest energy suck.

We set our thermostat high (82F usually), turn it off when we’re not at home. Employ strategic window curtaining to minimize sun-warming (an opposite strategy occurs in winter, with strategic curtain-opening to warm cool rooms). In other words, we’re trying.

With three small kids, I do one to three loads of laundry every day. I estimate that this makes laundry our second biggest energy suck. We had tried a clothesline when we first moved here three years ago. We strung a long line between two trees and hung up some stuff. We gave up after a few days because of things blowing away in the sea “breeze” (yes, I did use clothespins), a general lack of drying in the high humidity, and other life events sucking our time and energy.

I am committed now to trying again. I have a new clothesline, strung in a spot slightly more sheltered from the wind, in a cradle of fencing that will likely catch any clothes that decide to take flight. And I have a splinter-free table for the laundry basket. So, yes the SLC is just a table and a clothesline, but doesn’t it sound so fancy? ;)

I am on day five of daily hanging, and so far, I’d say my renewed committment and our slight modifications are working. The humidity does seem to prevent the clothing from drying completely most days. Seams and pockets are very resistant. One day this week, everything dried completely (I cheered and did a snoopy dance). The other days, I took things down at the end of the day and tossed them in the dryer to finish them off.

Overall I think it is going well. I’m using the dryer less than one-quarter of the time I was using it before. I look forward to the next electric bill to see what kind of an impact it will make.

Now, this is not easy. Hauling wet clothes in the basket out there is not for the faint-of-back. And the lifting and clipping is a good upper-body workout. I doubt I’ll be able to do it on sick days. And I’m curious what impact the high summer humidity will have. I wish my line were just a smidge longer. Right now, it’s a W, one line strung at angles between the house and fence. I wish I had just two more spans. One day this week, I did one load in the dryer because I ran out of room on the line.

Unintended perks: My preschoolers love to hang out under the wet laundry. It’s a fort. It’s a space ship. It’s a cool spot out of the sun. They also love to put the clothespines back in the bag. And the work of the laundry actually seems to go by faster in the morning, because I do the load and hang it up, or do one load of wash after another, without having to wait for the dryer.

And no. Not washing by hand. Not gonna do it.

Next post: Aspirations and Fear

Pre-Running

I’m following a plan from Runner’s World, which begins with eight straight days of walking. Then ten weeks of interval training, combining walking and running for 30 minutes, four times a week. In the beginning, it’s much walking and little running, but as the weeks progress, the ratios change until it’s half running, half walking. At that point, soul-searching determines whether to make the leap to a full 30 minutes of running or a repeat of the half and half. Anyway. Three days gone and I’ve walked every day, in spite of a nasty and fluctuating head cold that is now settling, against my wishes, into my chest. Gr.

My three day total is sixty minutes of walking, with a total of about 3.6 miles walked. Hoo rah.

Oh, and the other goals, hm, I’ve blogged or written very long email messages every day. And I’ve been in bed for at least eight hours the past two nights, though, due to aforementioned head cold, not slept a full eight hours either night. I’m trying. :)

It occurred to me as I was responding to Cass’s comment yesterday that I may not have been clear on the challenge I’ve set out for myself with this running thing.

I have never participated in organized sports. Or disorganized sports of any time. The one and only time I tried out for a team, was trying out for the Powder Puff football game in high school. I was one of only three girls cut. I took a tennis class in college. I liked it, but I can’t say that I really set the court on fire. I really enjoyed an aerobics class I took in college once, but I think I was more inspired by the hot, long-haired, rock-star looking instructor than anything else. The only physical activity I have stuck with for more than a couple of months is yoga. I participated in a class for nearly a year, and have maintained a spotty individual practice since then.

I don’t object to getting sweaty. I don’t even object to a little satisfying achiness after a good workout. So I can’t really explain the lack of athleticism in my life. The past few years, a lot of my physical energy has been spent on my small children. What with the incubation and the nursing and the carrying and the chasing (times three), I figured I was getting a pretty good workout, even if it was sort of random and varying in intensity.

All children weaned and walking responsibly now, I find myself feeling a little sluggish and looking for something physical to do. Hence the running. It’s cheap (I shelled out for some fresh Nikes [my olds ones were at least six years old, and a little weary feeling] and borrowed a stopwatch from my oldest child), so it doesn’t betray my goal to minimize my consumption. I can do it almost anytime and anyplace, which is helpful when juggling the schedules of three children and a partner who is often in demand outside of the work day.

It feels like a big deal to me, and I’m inordinantly proud and excited to be trying to run. Funnier now, don’t you think, that I’m less worried about the running goal than the sleeping goal?