mamazine inspiration

OK, so I love going on my fellow mother, neighbor and friend's website Mamazine, to read funny, insightful, close to home type of stories about being mama's. I love the wide range of liberals, the stories I can't relate to, and those that I can. Most of all though, I love to read stories posted by those I know. It's like a little gratifying peek into their head. It confirms that the outwardly appearance that they put on, is really who they are. They're not just going along with what I say, interacting with me in an altered way that would fit my reality. No, they really are thinking the way that I think, often in a much better, well written way, and it's a nice kind of echo.

So the co-owner of the site and my daughters current best friends mother (haha-figure out that one), just posted a piece inspired by a sociologist saying that parents need to be at peace with their parenting decisions and move on- not to be conflicted with guilt about what decision was made. I find this quite hits home... For the most part, I'd like to think that my world mantra is go with the flow. What happens happens, whether you will it into being or not, and the rest of life is defined by how you deal with it.

For example, I got pregnant. I got pregnant when I was only 19 (yeah yeah, babies having babies... blah, blah, blah). Luckily I got pregnant with the right guy at the right time. Well, I don' t know how much luck has to do with it; it seems kinda harsh to say that the husband I love and the life we lead is all based on luck. But really though, through a rough time of being a college freshman in a major I hated, ignoring the fact that my only real parental type family member was dying and I was supposed to be so caught up in my new life to not think about it, and then getting pregnant. Whew, it forced my hand to change my life. So we were going to have a baby and the details were going to have to work themselves out. Details like, where to live? When will college get finished? How will we support this baby? Will everyone for the rest of our lives continue to look at us with pity for being the poor kids stuck with a baby? Well, the story goes- move into great neighborhood by the great graces of a grandmother who wouldn't raise the ridiculously low rent on us, have baby and use part of dead, wondrous grandfather's insurance money to get us through the rough times, and make life as depicted across America.

Sure there were times when I second guessed myself. The thoughts of my own mother's neurotic behavior courses through my mind as I question the seemingly unavoidable reality that one day I will turn into her. Or at least fuck my kids up as much as she could do to us (sis and I). Or when I have to fess up that yes, I'm at least ten years younger then you, and have two more kids then you do, and of course the pregnancy wasn't planned. But the way things have worked themselves out, is that we just took our lot and reorganized our life to comfortably settle around those events.

These events, they occur much more often then I'd like to admit. Someone was right when they said that life is out of our control (as much as I'd like to think that I am in control). So I'm sitting around playing the waiting game while oops baby is waiting to find their self crammed into some nook or cranny in our two bedroom place (currently stuffed with four already). Or when my worst fear (or one of many) was realized when it was obvious that my firstborn perfect little being was a diabetic. We just said, ok, this is our life, how are we going to make it ours? We purchase a mini-crib to shove baby #3 into our room (since there is no more room elsewhere), and be glad that this ends any quibbles about one day having more (we're done, at least until my sanity regains itself in at least 5 years). The diabetes, we just started adding blood sugar testing before meals, shots after meals, disclaimers about snacks during play dates, and laborious processes to kindergarten registration, into the daily grind of life.

So in the grand scheme, we do a good job of being at peace with our decisions. But those are the big decisions, the ones that need immediate attention and action. It's the little decisions that make us crazy parent's go crazy. Like Kindergarten; the brave new frontier for me. Morgan is my firstborn; I've never had to go through this process and there really isn't a manual that will guide me through every decision out there in my little world. For example, am I wrong to only choose one school and stick with it? Should I have at least looked at other places? Put ourselves on at least one waiting list to feel that we have "options"? Part of me enjoys the fact that I left myself only one option so I don't have room to second guess and make a "decision", but then I begin the second guessing. Once I go to the school and hear horror stories about certain teachers, or find out personal things about teachers that I don't quite agree with (ok, this sounds worse then it is- I'm referring to finding out that one teacher is a devout Christian woman, which petrifies me because it sounds as if she's the preachy, spread the word, live by the bible type). And then the principal seems all cold and unforgiving. And I imagine myself running into problems and not getting my way about things (diabetes management, problems with religious teachers, not being worshipped by staff). At this point is when I would hate the fact that, like overzealous parents, I'm not on other waiting lists, let alone even looking at other schools. And this is where the doubt sets in. Can you really say no to this line of thinking?

Ah, to be a parent is exhausting. If you're not doing the right thing, or contemplating the right thing, you're kicking yourself in the ass for not realizing what the right thing was before choosing the wrong thing, and then to top it all off, we've got the "others" who judge us about the things we do as filtered through their lens of what the right thing is. Bah humbug, back to doubt, life, and the careful navigation through it all!