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Posted: June 16, 2006 Filed under: Uncategorized 7 Comments »A confession:
When I am hefting large piles of books around all day, I often think, "Crap. I’m killing the baby."
Then I have to force myself to think of all the centuries worth of women working in fields and such and how they had babies anyway.
"Women in the fields," I think to myself. "Women in the fields."
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Now we are going to dinner and a movie. We don’t even particularly want to do this (OK, I want dinner. Badly. And I don’t want to cook. And the green beans were rotten anyway. So.). But the child has been sitting in the house most of the week and wants to do something fun.
WES: That’s the problem with children. They make you DO stuff.
ME: Next time I am going to train it better.
WES: Yeah, good luck with that.
ME: No, really. I’m going to do it. Past the age of five it will be totally self-sufficient and self-entertaining.
WES: In fact, you won’t have to interact with it at all.
ME: Right.
WES: Excellent.
ME: There’s always boarding school.
WES: If I had a penguin, I would never send it to boarding school.
This post made me laugh twice
women in the fields Ha!
i was driving back to the office from a depo in the valley on wednsesday where it was really dry hot. in certain weather, heavy traffic from a court appearance or a depo on the way back to the office provides minutes sort of like white lillies or one of these moments like yours in tuckahoe. the npr was all about over-scheduled children, and how they dont have to spend time alone or be self-reliant. so an 8 year old will have opinions about mark rothko, but wont be able to tie his own shoe, let alone entertain herself at the airport for thirty minutes. the npr piece seemed to put a lot of it on the extent to which youngsters spend their time in time mediated by adults. time has rules, authority, and structure. (i will add my own thought, which is that a lot of these programs for kids only succeed if parents feel good, which means that every kid is special and unique and expressive and fabulous, which can be good when coupled with an understanding that there are seven billion little souls on the planet, and we all have to take care of ourselves and eachother, on some level.)
you and i dont always line up, but on this kids self-sufficiency issue, i think we see close to eye to eye, maybe.
what’s so funny about “women in the fields”?
my first instinct as i began to judge briar before finishing the sentence was, jesus briar, you’re not going to break your baby, for all of time women have been making babies and working hard. then she said women in the fields, and i was like, yeah, that is what i am saying.
I have to share this with you. My mother in law was a mountain woman. A woman from the nmountains of Puerto Rico and none of her 21…yes 21 children! were born in hospitals as a matter of fact my husband was born when my mother in law was out IN THE FIELDS gathering twigs, sticks and whatever else she could for the cooking stove. She went into labor and my hubby was born in a field behind their home. So carrying a few books is okay just dont over do it. Like dont carry that huge ass thesaurus!
i would never send Margie or Pipo to boarding school either, but I might send one of them to penguin bootcamp if he or she fell into drugs.
Do you even know how infuriating it is to be deeply….involved in activity with my wife, and be….very close to sealing the deal, and suddenly thinking to myself…..I hope this doesn’t kill the baby. Yeah.
And then I feel guilty for pushing that thought away, and thinking of me.
I’m going to be a horrible mother.
Don’t worry, neither Margie nor Pipo will never do drugs. But I offer to penguin-sit if you just need a night off.