I’ve been trying to figure out when and where I got the notions for how a life should be lived.
For almost as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a wife and mother. Certainly a mother, forever. I can always remember wanting to have children of my own. I don’t remember if the wife-and prefix always accompanied the -mother part. Probably, because they went together. People weren’t supposed to be mothers and not also wives. That was a given, back then. At some point, that particular notion solidified more, and my Plan A was to become a devoted housewife and stellar mom, and Plan B was to become a teacher, in case I needed another occupation, if a devoted husband didn’t come along.
In those bright eyed days, I knew that I could and would do a much better job at partnering and parenting than my parents did. I was nice, after all. I would be nice to my husband. Therefore he would be nice to me. We would be nice to each other. We would like each other. Anybody can get along if they’re kind. There would be children. Of course there would be children! Children are the most amazing things in the world! They are fresh new people. They like colors and sounds and shapes and feels. They love to discover things, and there are new things to discover every day. We would play. We would laugh. We would make things. We would discover things. We would learn things. We would all like each other. We would all be nice to each other. We would all be comfortable with each other. We would live happily together. Happily ever after.
This is the part where the soundtrack cuts in and there’s a screech like the sound that a record needle makes as it’s dragged across an album abruptly.
I sure made a lot of grandiose assumptions back then. I look at my boys and wonder what traumas I’m planting in them, in this revolution of the circle of life that we’re tumbling through right now. That whole husband notion thing didn’t pan out very well. Apparently there’s more needed than simple human kindness to keep a relationship afloat. So far, I haven’t given them a childhood in which they get the benefit of a healthy father figure. They get precious little interaction with their dad, and my heart breaks to think about what their hearts hope for, with him. Because those are two more broken hearts to chalk up to the masses of children who grow up with parents who don’t know or care how to make their children feel loved. As for the parade of men who have come and gone through their young lives, I only hope that they remember the fun times and that they never catch on that there was ever a competition in place, between them and those men, for my attention and affection. As if there’s not enough for everyone. Please.
I wonder how many men actually ever grow up.
The question that I think I’m trying to answer for myself is whether I truly want to be with someone, or if it’s a false notion. I know that I need solitude, down time, quiet time, time to be in my head time, lost in my mind time, time to wash emotions through me time. I think that maybe I don’t know how to be me around someone else, or maybe I don’t feel free to be me around someone else. Or maybe I just haven’t been with someone who really wanted to know me, what makes me tick and how I work. I know that I have been more lonely with someone than I’ve been when I’m alone. Why this persistent yearning, this deep ache? What is missing and why is it needed?
I think about the kinds of relationships that my kids will form when they’re older. How will they treat others? How will they be treated? I haven’t been able to show them an example of a healthy adult couple. I haven’t been able to give them the family life that I envisioned as a youth.
Instead of Plan A or Plan B, I’ve ended up following Plan C, in which I’ve spent a lifetime in a technical profession, devoted to my fellow working brothers and sisters, leery of the leadership. Sort of parallels my childhood, now that I look at it this way. I’ve given my work so much of me. Sometimes I think I’ve given too much of me.
I think that I want to lead a simple life filled with simple pleasures like walks down country roads, smooth coffee, freshly baked bread, star gazing, cloud gazing, tree gazing. Seems like nice things to do with the people you love.
