Tales of discipline and devotion

Hi sweetie,

My last post was more about what happening with me than with you lately, so this one, my little love, is for you (but someday when you are in college, it will be for me, which Grandma Bear already understands and you will someday...).

Last week I saw that your perfectly white straight teeth were almost perfectly white. Almost, with the exception of two upper molars didn' t look so white anymore. They looked a bit brown, like you'd been hitting the black coffee during the afternoon.

I told you about this, in a way I thought made sense even to someone who is almost five, as "you want to have pretty teeth don't you?" Really what it meant was the days of letting you brush your teeth by yourself were over and it was time for me to step in and assist. Although as some of our studio audience can imagine, you didn't want to play that game. I even threatened, that first night after I saw my negligence, we can do this the hard way or the easy way, and I vote for the easy way.

My vote obviously was not the deciding vote, which is odd, because the hard way involves usually me holding you down in some fashion while I pry your mouth open enough to get the toothbrush to your back molars. Do I even need to say that this involved multiple threats, a couple timeouts, and CPS don't listen, even a spanking.

I hate spankings. Most of the time I feel like it's some caveman like behavior intended to show dominance over someone else. Okay, maybe it's not just for cavemen, but I don' t like it anyway. More than a few screams, yours and mine, and more than a few threats of no TV for the next century, and I got enough of your back teeth brushed to declare a truce. This day I felt like I failed my Mom-test, big time, and somehow it should be easier.

When I picked you up after school that day, you said "I told Tatiana that we were mad at each other last night but not anymore." Fair enough.

Sometimes the biggest challenge as a parent is defining the boundary between lenience and dominance. How much should I let you do, how much is about finding out where the boundaries are and letting you inch over them until I say stop? How much about parenting is negotiating instead of dominating? I don't know these answers, I suppose they are too experiential and subjective for a glib response.

But what I do know is two days later I passed the Mom test with flying colors. Imagine this: Friday, day before Valentine's day, and I can't even say it slipped my mind because that would be the equivalent to a mile long stretch of black ice and I skidded for that whole mile stretch rather than a comic banana peel slip. Anyway, nobody in our household remembered that it was pajama day in your preschool, especially not when I was urging you to pick out the shirt and leggings to go on under your school uniform jumper a little bit faster. I didn't have one thing on my mind to distract me, I had a whole herd and it was about to catch up to me.

We walk into your classroom, a bit late, and all twenty kids simultaneously shout "you aren't wearing pajamas!!!" Ugh. I look at one of your teachers, hanging out in a white robe, and say "I'll be back." At that precise moment I am grateful I'm not working and that I could go back home. I ask you quickly, which pajamas you want. No hesitation: Kitty cat pajamas.

There is no dillying or dallying as I drive the couple miles return trip. When I return you are seated at the table with your pint sized friends, who see me first and squeal my arrival.

We duck into the back of the room and swap clothes. Your eyes open wide, you declare:

"MOMMY YOU'RE THE BEST!"
And throw your arms around me for a hug that lasts at least 90 seconds.

Thanks love, I needed that.
Mommy

Two Arm One Leg Wave

Read when you're sixteen, again when you're thirty

Hi sweetie,

I received an email from an old friend on Friday saying that he was looking for something inspirational, needed something for the particular mood or moment, and found he'd bookmarked this blog, these letters I write to you and the world. I'm going to paraphrase what he said, although reading the actual email is only a TAB away. He wrote that he read these letters about a mother that loves her daughter and how they were full of rich and amusing details and brought him up from the place of being down.

I needed to see that message, right then, at that moment when I felt like the world was crashing down, my familiar world being destroyed albeit to create something new. I needed to see that my writing made a difference to someone, that I make a difference to someone.

It's so hard to let go of what isn't working, especially when what wasn't working had a regular paycheck. We're going through a lot of transition in the household these days, my 18 month contract gig and I parted officially last week. Was this your choice or theirs, a friend asked recently. I tell an elaborate story full of drama, but really, it's mutual. I was done, they were done with paying me to work for them. I feel like I've told the story so many times that the amusing part of the drama has dissipated leaving nothing really of interest except a few measly details. It involved time, and money, and egos all around.

So it's gone. Adios. Sayonara. So long and thanks for all the fish. I'm doing my best to breathe life into my yoga company, breathe more life, more energy, more me. It's doing well though building a company, running a company are intensely creative activities and require more attention than a newborn baby. I wonder if all that I go through now will catapult you forward into your destiny, beyond what I've already accomplished. WHEN I create a wildly successful company, one that makes a difference to those it touches, does that give you a more solid platform to move from, move beyond into your own missteps rather than ones that stopped me?

Ah, we shall see. I often think it's a child's destiny to go beyond where her parents stopped, either by choice or chance. See, my love, I want an unusual life. I stopped wanting to be an 8-5 employee in 2001 when the towers fell and I was laid off from my last real full time job. I wanted to forge my own path, create my own way, be a contractor but not let someone else have that much control over my time for the sake of money. I'm not lazy, I like working, but I like working at an office a lot less than 40 hours a week. All the drama and chaos and personality headbutting and chauvenists and glass ceilings. Argh. It's enough to give me a headache imagining it, remembering it.

So really, my job and I parted ways because I didn't want to be glued to a desk and an office and a job 40-50 hours a week for a regular paycheck. I saw I was capable of doing a job given to a VP, but didn't want that job. Is that bad? You decide, you, my sweetie and our studio audience. I have a dozen crazy ideas in my head, I want to hire instructors to teach classes through my company, be the facilitator, the instrument through which yoga happens. I want to teach a bit, and play with formats involving writing and movement. I ponder whether I want to go back into the world of high technology, it's still there, but heaven it interests me as much as a mismatched pair of socks. I'm afraid I'd get stuck doing what I hate, the day to day support that sucks the life out of me.

Okay, now I'm being dramatic, but seriously that's what gets under my nails and makes me bite people with problems I don't want to solve.

So we're in a period of transition in the house, as well as in transition in your room as it's slowly coming into focus with new paint, new window, patching and repairing around where the old closet door was and the new closet is. Your bed has been downstairs for a while now, but soon, I'm hoping one more week soon, it will be back together.

I'm also hoping that in what's left of February, I figure out with some clear picture of what is next for my career. It may seem odd that I'm writing this to you, although you're a bit less than 5 years old, and won't read this for a few more years, but perhaps what I want to say is that I bet everyone goes through this life angst, everyone at some point says what the heck am I doing and is this it? Is my life really only about going to work and coming home and picking up kids and making dinner and going to bed and doing it all over again except on weekends the rules are suspended except if work emergencies supersede any plans that may involve fun?

I'm sure it's not me, as much as I'm sure one day you may ask this question as well. Planning for that one day, just know you are not alone, but you are among a few if you do something different.

I love you
One million,
Mommy