Ok, this could be a new low. Quoting Spice Girls in my title line isn’t going to endear me to the masses..
But. How often do we ask ourselves what we want? Is it just noses to the grindstone? Do we get enough belly button gazing to see what we want and then act upon it?
Of course there needs to remain parameters. One of the things I want to do is pack a back pack and travel. I have three kids who might be a little non plussed if they woke one morning to discover Mum’s gone to Malaysia to find herself, but she left a good supply of bread in the freezer…
So you need to work with what you have. I can of course pick up and take my girls to Malaysia for a year. I think about that quite a bit- live a less complicated life, give them a taste of a completely different culture, work less, write more (Ok, so writing IS work, but it’s pleasurable. It doesn’t count)
I have been reflecting on wants and desires while I have been writing my novel. I look back at key times in my own life where my wants were squashed- and I know the life I live now is so very far removed to the life I dreamed about. Well in SOME ways it is. I had a romanticised view of mothering. I thought I’d be the soccer mum, the one making amazing parties, sitting and creating with my kids, connecting and building relationships with them.
I haven’t always been able to connect. I have to withdraw some of the feminine connective power to be able to provide instead. It’s a choice though. I could, if I was really dedicated to all things mothering quit the job, quit the writing and slum it with the other fulltime ‘Martha Stewart” mothers. I’ll admit to craving it. Sometimes.
But I guess my bigger choice is that my girls get to have a mother who is driven, who abounds in hugs, cuddles and great dinners, but isn’t so good at the bag packing (though I pack a mean lunch box!), the well designed kids bedrooms where everything is in it’s place, and remembering to pick up the lost book bag at some point during the holidays (two weeks and I never quite made it)
My first two children (the last is only two so is too young to decide) want creative careers. They want to draw, design, act, write. I guess my biggest choice has impacted their futures. They can see they can supoport themselves to reach their own dreams.
So what I want, what I want, what I really really want, is I hope they get it always. That they will understand that while I didn’t “do this for them”- becasue there is no doubt I have written for me, though I also write to support them becasue I found it is something I can do that allows me a wee bit of freedom to parent too… that I do hope it will give them the secure knowledge that what they want, what they want, what they really really want, they can go for.
Though if it includes grabbing a back pack and travelling, they better take their mother. Who’ll be taking her laptop.
1 Comment
July 18, 2008 at 10:05 pm
nice websites. good luck searching.
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