Eating it too.

I'm thankful for my job and everything; really, I am.  I lived through a layoff at age 25 during a pregnancy with a one-year-old on my hip and two dysfunctional teenagers under my roof and a spouse with a fledgling business.  I've worked for some terrible companies that sucked the life out of everyone who made the mistake of walking through the doors day after day, and for some whose culture I could only sum up by combining the worst parts of junior high with the best parts of a Russian gulag.  What I have now is heaven on earth in every way imaginable when it comes to jobs and careers in this part of the country.  I know this, and even after almost three fairly stable years -- a lifetime given my work history -- I remember it consciously every day.  

And that's all fine and good, it's GREAT, actually, if I'm only talking about my career, my job, "success" as defined and recognized by the broader culture.  But if my self has to come into the equation, whoever I am without broader culture's expectations and confinements, all I know is that I feel torn, and maybe a little trapped.  I hate the phrase, "I want my cake and eat it too" because I've always cringed in disgust at its grammatical structure, but it's actually how I feel about mostly everything these days.  I want to conquer every metaphorical hill I approach at work, but still have time to rest under the metaphorical stars and sip metaphorical wine and listen to my kids metaphorically play peacefully (since they would only ever play peacefully in metaphor).  I've made certain choices that can only be sustained by my continuing to work. In an ironic and vicious cycle, there is a way in which I actually DO "have my cake and eat it too."  My kids attend the school they do only because my job affords us the ability to pay for it; we live in a large, comfortable house with nice amenities and we live (to say the least) a life of luxury when compared to most of the world's population exactly because of this job, the thing that I say makes me feel torn and trapped.  

None of us are sick or hurt or in trouble; there are no chronic diseases or unmanageable behavioral crises or stalkers or bullies or fatal allergies to deal with.  Things are taken care of - big and small, important and unimportant, all of the official, bona fide priorities end up addressed and checked off the list.  Bills are paid, deadlines are met by the skin of their teeth, gifts are bought for birthdays, social functions are attended, teaching moments are seized, life lessons are taught, tantrums are endured, relatives are called, paychecks are earned.  But there is a sense of it all being mildly frustrating, even the best times, the times when everyone is fed and clothed and cooperative and at least feigning contentment.  I'm not only talking about frustration stemming from the adults:  Bryce and Quinn feel it too.  Quinn's premature teenage eye-rolling and Bryce's passive-aggressive maneuvers of resistance to school and homework and Tae Kwon Do breathe a whole new life into the finger-tapping and sighing and clock watching and complaining that formerly characterized the malaise around here, mild though it may be.  Sure, nobody's walking around with suicide notes taped to their foreheads, but we aren't playing ring around the rosy, either.  The insanity has died down from a few years ago; there are no longer one or two uncontrollable 25-pound toddler-sized demons shrieking at us because we dared to put the wrong style of noodle on the dinner plate.  We have more peace now, which is what I wanted.  We have the money we needed to have both kids at the school I feel is right for them, also what I wanted.  We have a dog who is obedient and calm; again, what I wanted.  There is simply a blanket of rushed and irritated blah over all of us.  Quinn verbalizes this perfectly on a fairly regular basis these days, most recently when a relative brought birthday gifts over for Bryce and we were all going through the social motions of pre-meal and pre-presents conversation.  Quinn stood up and with a bored expression, announced, "I think it's time for Bryce to open his presents, blah blah blah."  I totally got that.  

Maybe what makes all of this a little tragic, if tragic weren't too strong a word for the more mild irritation and fatigue I truly have about it all, is the fact that I know if I didn't have the demands of my job, and had the ability to be at home always, to have "free choice" like Quinn's kindergarten morning time offers him, if I could "have my cake and eat it too" in what I guess is the traditional sense, I know enough about myself that I can honestly say I'd be complaining about all this cake, there's too much cake, who said I wanted so much CAKE, anyway?!  Get the cake out of my face!  So here I am, back at the beginning - or is it the middle? - of my vicious cycle.  Ho hum, I have to go to work tomorrow.  What they say about all work and no play really is true, blah blah blah.  

Yin / Yang

Yin

Over a recent weekend, my mom and I loaded the kids up and drove five hours to see my brother one last time while he still resides in a nearby region. The kids are much easier to travel with now than they were a few years ago, but that is still a significantly relative statement. I went from cursing myself for allowing the kids to drown out reality with movie after movie to cursing the kids for not having the mature, appreciative perspective that kids never have when their days still stretch before them with so much ease that they actually have the edifying option of simply looking out the car window, or taking a nap. Once at our destination, there were relatives to visit and minor family crises to discuss and a goodbye party to administer for my brother, which made the kids' completely normal, age-appropriate bickering and mischief slightly more annoying than usual. 

During one of the several intra-city car trips to accomplish one thing or another while taking the occasional deep breath after telling the kids dozens of times to quiet down and not cause a heart attack or fatal car accident, we were waiting at red light in a busy intersection where a downtrodden, frail old man leaned against the concrete bridge railing holding a cardboard sign scratched with fading black marker, HUNGRY NEED WORK. For the first time in that 20-minute ride, both kids were actually quiet, but I thought it was just a coincidence until, right as the light turned green and my mom drove through, Bryce's intense but (for once) quiet voice came from the back seat, "are we gonna pay that guy?" The guilty silence choked us while we drove through the now green light, I think both of us hoping we wouldn't have to answer his legitimate question.  He asked again, this time more intensely:  "Hey.  Are we gonna PAY that guy?"  I spoke up finally, "Well, Bryce...we probably should have.  I wish I would have thought of it before we went through the light."  I hoped that would be the end of it so I could go back to thinking about whatever superficial things were on my mind.  Now he became adamant, and a little confused as to why this was even up for discussion:  "He doesn't have a job!  He can't even buy FOOD.  We need to go BACK and PAY HIM SOME MONEY!"  

Ummm, yeah.  Option 1:  Tell the ethically observant six-year-old that we'd rather hurry up and order our pasta at the restaurant we were approaching and hope he wouldn't lose that apparently natural sense of human obligation and responsibility.  Option 2:  Turn the car around and pay that guy some money.  We chose option 2 after flogging ourselves for debating over it, which meant we had to turn around and get back on the highway, then turn around again.  When we approached him and handed him the money, my mom told him the six-year-old had insisted we come back to him.  "God bless you," he said as he gathered the few belongings he had with him.  He crossed the street in front of us and waved to the back seat where Bryce was watching intently.  Then he looked down at the $20 bill, the first time he'd checked the amount since receiving it, and his expression of disbelief and gratitude was obvious from a block away as he mouthed "wow" on his way across the street.  He turned back and waved a second time to the kids.  Bryce was quiet the rest of the way to our dinner, and when we saw my brother that night and told him the story, he told Bryce it was good karma, that one day it would come back to him when he needed help or money or food.  We got in the car a few hours later to head home and Bryce asked, "Mom, are you happy that we helped that guy?"   I told him yes, and that I appreciated him reminding us to pay more attention to what is around us, that sometimes adults forget these things.  "Yeah, and you're one of 'em," he laughed.  

Yang

We've spent countless hours this summer pulling our hair out over Bryce and his antics.  Right now he is in a phase I could only label as "bullying" when confronted with anything not meeting his exact preferences.  Quinn, of course, receives the brunt of this problem, but he's also not as innocent as he appears in these cases, so if we're not gritting our teeth over Bryce's bossy, impatient, aggressive stances, we're wailing over Quinn's latest manipulative regression attempt to get his way or draw Bryce into a fight.  Bryce's birthday is this week, and despite all the warning signs flashing in our faces, we attempted to have a "fun" and "family oriented" weekend complete with Friday night at the movies and Saturday last minute birthday party errands (Who wouldn't want to pick out one's own party balloons and snacks?  Bryce, that's who.).  Within five minutes of every attempt, one of us was rolling their eyes, sighing, or saying aloud, "I AM SO SICK OF THIS.  JUST STOP IT!"  

At Bryce's birthday party today, one of our neighbors' kids let out a wail about something and I caught his mother's eye and said, "so it's not just us."  She let it fly after that:  "What is it?  Summer?  What is the problem?  They're constantly fighting and yelling and hitting."  We were talking in unison by now, "And the CAR, that is THE ABSOLUTE WORST!  It's like they know they can get away with something back there!"  

They start school tomorrow and frankly we're just hoping the teachers are more disciplined than we are.  Our disciplinary tactics (questionable already) have fallen by the wayside over the past several weeks.  Even our normally poor attempt at a regular routine has completely failed, resulting in kids who fall to the floor and writhe anytime they're required to get dressed and walk out the door and away from a blaring television.  As John suggested tonight, "we either need to go back to an agrarian society where the kids actually have to work the fields all summer, or we need to go to year-round school."