So we've arrived at the last day of 2008. It is amazing to me how quickly time passes anymore. I remember being a kid, when the only things you really looked forward to were your birthday, the last day of school and Christmas and how it seemed like it took F - O - R - E - V - E - R for each of them to get here. Now it seems as if I blink and another year has passed. Birthday? POW! Anniversary? POW! Christmas? Again?! Really? POW, POW, POW!
I was musing about life in general the other day. I have never been one to have an actual five (or ten or even one) year plan for my life. I cringe when I have to answer those types of questions during job interviews. I usually end up saying something along the lines of, "I don't have a specific job or position that I envision, but I do want to be doing something that I enjoy and find challenging and exciting." Which, while it is a cop-out of sorts, is true. I have a couple of hard-charging friends from college that actually did have the next five years of their lives planned out at age 18. I admire their drive and ambition, but could never really see myself with the proverbial clipboard and ruler planning out every possible permuation. Come to think of it, though, this particular foible of my personality does seem to be a little out of character. As I believe we've established in the last year or so, I am an anal retentive, control freak but something about the "life" situation makes me just want to float along reactively taking things as they come. Ah, what a complicated lass I am! Apparently, it's all part of my particular charm.
Twenty years ago, the only things I pictured myself being were a wife and mother. I managed to achieve the former but not the latter and while there are days that I mourn the "me" that could have been, on the whole, I am probably happier than if I had had children. I've come to know myself well after some time in therapy and much soul-searching and though I could have been what we call in Texas a "fair to middlin'" parent, I would have struggled daily with my limitations. Many mothers would be perfectly fine being the proverbial "C" student of parenting. "Better than most" could be the rallying cry of great hordes of people and, really, since perfection in the raising of children is a quixotic goal, they are probably the healthiest of us all. But none of that is my style. Call it personality or genetics or personal idiom but only the loftiest of goals is good enough for me and when I cannot live up to them, mounting frustration often gets the best of me. My mother tells a story about me as a very young child that I find summarizes that characteristic of mine better than I ever could myself. When I started to talk, I started saying words. (I believe that car was the first one I said.) I was making the transition from babbling to words beautifully and then I just stopped altogether. Dead in my tracks. Nary a word was coming from my mouth. Mom was starting to really become alarmed and then I suddenly busted out with a complete sentence. She said that it was as if I knew that sentences were the next step and that I wasn't going to talk anymore until I could say them. Perfectly. And she truly suspected that I was practicing in my crib by myself so that I could unveil the first sentence in a dramatic fashion. Fast forward a year or so later when I was learning my ABCs. I would get somewhere around the dreaded L-M-N section and would lose my place. Instead of calmly starting over again, I would suffer a world-class meltdown with full on crying and carrying on and probably even some flinging of myself to the floor. And, yes, I am thirty (mumble, mumble) years older and have better control of my emotions but I still find that lack of perfection causes frustration which often threatens to boil over into anger. And I truly believe that the years of daily mounting frustration of parenthood would have turned me into a horrible, shrieking shrew.
I guess that somewhere in this end-of-year post, I fell into the justification for why we didn't pursue egg donation or adoption after our failed fertility treatments. I know that my dear, sweet friends and relatives will chime in with the "you'd be a GREAT parent" and "nobody's perfect" and "everyone thinks they are a worse parent than they really are" statements. And while they are all probably true, it wouldn't be the act of not being perfect, it would be my reaction to it that would potentially drive me over the bend. Self awareness is a beautiful thing when you're able to act on it.
And now in the worse segue of time, may you all have a happy, healthy, and safe New Year. I promise to be back to my normal, inane postings very, very soon.
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