Still working off a cold. Thankfully it's not worse but it's not much better. Soon and very soon.
I just read Alert the Pizza's post for today and it made me cry. She has 3 children. I've know Pizza for a long time. When we were younger it seemed that she would never get married or have children and I was sure that moments after graduation I'd be married and have 3. Somewhere we flip flopped. Somewhere along the line, I who loved teaching children of all ages and babysat through summers, I became deathly afraid of children, babies especially. Another friend had a baby somewhat recently and I dreaded seeing the baby, meeting the baby and heaven forbid holding the baby. It was a traumatic experience made worse by the filming of it all because I'm sure the horror was plainly on my face.
But last year another friend had a baby and her baby didn't scare me. She was okay. I was able to hold it without feeling complete and overwhelming panic. HA! I just noticed I called her an 'it' and not 'her' in that last sentence. Well I'm not cured of my baby phobia just yet. But reading Pizza's post sure did make me cry. And it made me wonder 'What have I been doing all this time?' I have no idea.
1 comment:
I can't get around the fact that I think my kids are cool. But I'll be the first to point out that kids are really freaky. They make us do and feel things that we would never have imagined, whether they're ours or someone else's. And there is a huge difference between taking care of someone else's children, and figuring out how to care for our own. Knowing that we are responsible for those three little people--well, it's enough to make me want to stay in bed with the covers pulled up sometimes. Especially if there is poop involved ;) People always give them back to US when poop is involved.
It's difficult to talk about kids in general terms without resorting to tired cliches like, in spite of the challenges of cleaning the smallest child's poop off the bed of the largest child, we can find great joy and satisfaction in even the smallest moments where they show their love and humanity and discovery. I'm being a little silly here, but not because I want to diminish how much I like my kids.
Kids are like us (who were once kids, I think), complicated and messy and surprising. They bring out the best in some people and the worst in others. Mine bring out *both* the best and worst in me--sometimes in consecutive moments.
I can't answer the question of what you've been doing all this time (though I *know* what some of your jobs have been) ;). But I can suggest that you *have* been creating. Populating the world with music and poetry and love, as a teacher, coach, friend, counselor, songwriter, musician and singer, and so many other things.
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