Dumb and Dumber

The older I get, the dumber I get. I've gone from believing I had superior intelligence, to thinking I had above average intelligence, to feeling fairly average, to wondering what in the hell happened to my brain?

I was lied to. I was told I was smart. All through my life I was told I was smart. But I'm not. What happened?

Grades came easy to me as a kid. But I was lazy. So I scored B's with little effort and very poor attendance. Grades that my friends would study and stress over I would achieve by half-assing my way through assignments and showing up to class on test days. I took this as evidence of my own intelligence. But somehow I was wrong. It has occurred to me that rather than my own mind being exceptional, it's possible I was just surrounded by people who were simple, making me appear smarter than I really was.

In my professional life, I started out stumbling into a career at a much younger age than most. I seemed special. Particularly since as with most of my life, the effort I exerted to achieve my status was minimal. But then something happened. I was suddenly surrounded by people who were smarter than me. And something else happened. I got older. And I didn't move up. I kept getting older and I kept not getting promotions.

So I realized I needed to work. I needed to do something to get ahead. And I did. To the best of my ability. I tried. I did what I was told and tried to make myself visible. But nothing. And everyone around me was getting smarter and smarter.

After an eight year career, I left my job to play house. My second child was born so I became a stay at home mommy. And I became even dumber. I became, and am now, so closed off from the world that often subjects that used to enthrall me now leave me confused and feeling like an idiot. Politics used to be my topic. I would jump at the opportunity to get involved in a debate over the latest ballot issue. In the last primary election, I chose my candidate based on who my husband was voting for. I am that woman. I am ashamed. But somehow in my mind, it was better than not voting at all.

When the tv is on, it is on cartoons. So I do not get my exposure to the news that I used to get. I do not listen to talk radio anymore because my daughter finds it boring. And frankly, I am never in the car long enough anymore to listen to enough of a show to learn anything anyway. While my days are filled mostly with kid related activities that do not require much, if any, brainpower, I understand that I could make an effort to involve myself in cerebral activities. Right now the most intellectual activity I engage in in any given month is my two hour monthly book club meeting. And even though I hate that I feel so dumb now, for some reason I have no motivation to get involved in any other activities.

Ignorance is bliss? Sometimes I believe it is true. The last book I read, "The Center of Everything" by Laura Moriarty had a line in it where the author (who was about thirteen at the time) said that maybe it's easier to not think about things. And isn't that the truth? It's easier to not think about the problems of the world, the geo-political state of the planet, war, current events, or anything really that is outside of your immediate bubble. I like my bubble. It's comfortable. But damn, do I feel stupid sometimes!

Living for Today

One of my closest girlfriends is Christian. We are constantly discussing religion. She is fascinated and confused by my lack of faith. She frequently questions my reasoning. She can't understand how I can not believe in miracles and a higher power. She can't understand how someone can live a good and moral life without fear of retribution in the after-life. She can't understand how I, as an Atheist, can possibly be a good human being. Even though she knows that I am in fact a very good and moral person.

A few days ago, during a girls night out, we of course got on the subject of religion, afterlife, heaven, and all of that good stuff. She told me how sad she is that I am living my life thinking that when I die, everything ends. It is sad that in my mind I will just cease to exist.

She then went on to state that she couldn't understand why I am not living my life to the fullest. As a Christian, she believes that her life will truly begin when she dies. Once she gets to heaven, there will be no pain, no worries, no stress and she can do basically anything she pleases. But for me, since I believe my time is finite, why am I not living a more exciting and fulfilling life?

This question caught me off-guard. Not because the religious aspect of it has any meaning for me. But the fact that the fullness of my life was being called into question startled me.

I am a mother of two. I have a happy marriage and a wonderful husband. We own a home. Two cats, two dogs. We take annual vacations. I am privileged enough to stay home with my amazing kids. I have a great relationship with my mother. I have enough friends to fill my social calendar. What else could I possibly want out of life?

I was sad.

I suppose I can see how others would see my life and think it is not exciting. I have acknowledged to myself a number of times that if at the age of eighteen I had looked twelve years into the future and seen the life I live today, I would have been horrified. Terrified of my own future, my own destiny.

But that would have been my perception at eighteen. My perception of my life now, at thirty-one years of age, is that it is an amazing life. Everything would be easier if we had more money. But money is not important. The things in life that matter are ever-present in my life. How could I be more fulfilled?

It is impossible to look at someone else's life and try to determine whether or not they are living life to its fullest. For some, their career is what brings them fulfillment. For others, it is adrenaline and adventure. For me, and I suspect for the majority of the human population, it is family. It is love. It is home and security.

There are so many things I still want to do in my lifetime. I want to travel to Greece. I want to take a cruise. I want to go to grad school. I want to pursue a career that will benefit my fellow human beings. I'm only thirty-one. And I feel like I'm still young enough that I have plenty of time to do all these things.

So many of the aspirations I had in my younger years have been post-poned, or even cancelled, because I chose to have a family. I would have loved to have served in the Peace Corps. But when the time came to consider that path, I knew that meant postponing parenthood for more years than I was willing. And so I chose not to pursue that route.

When I was younger, I had always assumed that I would be earning six figures by my mid-thirties. But I am now a stay at home mom. Clearly I will not be a big money earner anytime soon. And I'm okay with that now.

I know that there are plenty of things I cannot do now that I had intended to do. But I also know that there is no one on this earth that has brought me more happiness than my children. There is no experience that I could have gone through that would be more wondrous than hearing a baby laugh for the first time, watching them learn to walk, or taking them to their first day of school. Nothing I gave up would fill my heart more than having my kind and wonderful husband to wrap my arms around at the end of my day.

So I am living for here. I do not have infinity to look forward to. All I have are the eighty years I'll be granted on this earth. Not a day goes by that I don't think about how fortunate I am to be living the life I'm living. I've been so lucky in most aspects of my life. I am fulfilled. I am happy. I'm looking forward to fifty more years of adventures. And the choices I've made have given me the ability to look forward to sharing those adventures with three amazing people; my husband, my daughter, and my son.

My daughter wants two mommies and two daddies. She told me this the other day. She thinks it would be "cool." I suppose when you're five, the idea of having twice as many people to dote on you isn't so bad.

Early in my years as a parent, I realized that so long as I have something to say about it, my children will always have two parents living in the same house. I realized their lives would be easier for it. And as difficult as life is, I don't want something I can control to add more difficulty to their lives. So yes, I'm among the part of society that believes it is best for couples to stay together for the sake of the children.

Fortunately I live within the confines of a happy and loving marriage. So living up to this ideal hasn't been difficult at all thus far. But now it turns out that this isn't want my eldest child wants.

I understand she's five. I understand that she doesn't comprehend what this implies. In spite of my explanation that in order for Mommy and Daddy to marry other people, we couldn't be married to each other anymore. We wouldn't all live in the same house anymore. She would live part of the time with me and part of the time with Daddy. She smiles and nods eagerly as though this is the best idea she's ever had.

I know that she doesn't know that there are millions of children in the world who dream of the day when their parents will be reunited, bringing together the happy family and restoring order to their world. I know she doesn't know that she is lucky and that all in all, her life is easier for having both of her parents in the same home. Yet I am still saddened by her request.

Obviously, no matter how much she wants her father and I to get married to another man and woman so she can have two mommies and two daddies, this isn't going to happen. And we have told her so. But there is a part of me that is almost offended at the request, even though it is from a five year old. Here I've been feeling so proud of myself for giving my children the ideal nuclear family, *as defined by family values institutes across the country, and it turns out that isn't even what they want. It is a hopeless chase. Assuming we can please our children. Assuming we can give them what is best. No matter what we provide for them, no matter what efforts we make, no matter how simple the assumption, it will be wrong. They will always want the opposite of what they have.

My daughter is doomed. She will never have the broken family that she thinks she wants. Two bedrooms, twice the toys, twice the clothes, parents pandering to the kids out of guilt. I can see the appeal.

It's just too bad for my daughter that my husband and I actually love each other.

Where did all my new go?

I remember life as a youth as feeling magical. Everything just seemed more special fifteen years ago. And as I was driving today, listening to Taylor Swift sing her most recent hit on the radio about life as a fifteen year old, I thought about what it was like when everything was new.

Newness. That is what brings magic into youth. Everyday is filled with something new. Something previously undiscovered. A new experience. A new revelation. A new bit of knowledge. Something new is bound to cross your path when you are so new to this world.

And as I thought about the magic I felt as I experienced my first kiss, my first time driving a car, my first day in a new school, all of the firsts I've experienced, it makes me wonder if "new" is no longer a part of my life. Is this yet another curse that comes with becoming an adult? Loss of magic, loss of excitement, loss of new.

There are plenty of things I will experience for the first time going forward. But they all seem to be in relation to my children. I will someday (presumably) be a grandmother. That will be new. I will give my child(ren) away at their weddings. That will be new. I will accompany them through all of the firsts, all of the new, as they go through their lives. But I will only be experiencing new vicariously through them. It won't be my new. It will be their new. Thrilling of course. But not mine.

Where is my new? As an adult, how do we continue to experience new on a regular basis? Is it only through the accumulation of meaningless material possessions that new can remain in our lives? Perhaps that is why we continue to seek bigger, better, newer things. This is the only way we can bring the magic of new, the magic we experienced daily as children and teenagers, back into our adult lives.

Life now is so much more satisfying than it was as a teenager. I can honestly say that each day of my life is filled with more contentment and happiness than I ever experienced as a youth. The drama of the pre-teen and teenage years has not escaped my memory just yet. I don't miss those days at all. Maybe that is the trade-off. New disappears, but security and comfort are abundant.

Worth the trade, I suppose.

But I can't help bt mourn the loss of new.

Mom the Volcano

She always wants to help. But never with the things I actually want her to help me with.

She’s at my elbow, begging to help me do dishes. After saying no a couple of times, I finally give in. “Here, you can load them in the dishwasher after I rinse them. Don’t stack them too close together. Just like this.” I hand her a few dishes. When I turn back they are not quite right so I go back and re-do everything she’s just done. She is unperturbed, but it frustrates me. I yell at her to go away. She pleads that she just wants to help. At this I tell her, “you helping me doesn’t help!” I point her toward the living room, hollering that she needs to go pick up the toys I told her to pick up three hours ago. “THAT is how you can help me! Do the one thing I asked you to do three hours ago!”

Three deep breaths later and the guilt set in. Her walking away with her head hung low. The hurt in her eyes at hearing that her helping is more of a hindrance than anything else. How can I speak that way to someone who is trying to help? How can I speak that way to the most important and wonderful little girl I’ve ever known?

I have become my own mother in so many ways. In many ways that are positive. But in many ways that are negative as well. I remember as a child, older than my daughter is now, but not much, feeling like I had to walk on egg shells. I never knew what reaction I would get from my mother. She was incredibly volatile, a volcano ready to erupt at any moment. Her screaming terrified me, although she rarely ever struck me. I am almost positive that I had fewer spankings in my entire life than my daughter had between the ages of three and four. Yet I was terrified of my mother all the same.

The rules always changed, and that was the worst part. I never knew where the line was. Some days a mess on the floor would make her laugh, some days it would make her furious. The same was the case for jokes, various childish ways of acting goofy, pranks, etc. I remember the fear, the dread, that would fill my chest cavity when I knew I’d done something that may or may not wake the sleeping dragon.

As a teenager, I joked with my friends that something happens to a woman’s brain when she has children and she loses her mind. Loses her ability to contain her anger, her rage, her frustration. At the time it was a joke, but now I find it is true. No one frustrates me like my children. And I have found from week to week, something that would bring fire to my eyes one day may elicit only a shrug of apathy a few days later. I hate knowing that I am raising my children in such an uncertain atmosphere. I want to be consistent. I want to get mad on Tuesday about the same thing that makes me angry on Monday. But some days I just feel like I don’t even have the energy to get upset about things. I want something that makes me chuckle on Friday to make me chuckle on Saturday too. But I have found that some days, the endless list of things I have to pick up, clean up, take care of, outweighs any amount of cuteness that may otherwise make me smile.

She brought a couple of stuffed bears downstairs from her bedroom today. I looked down and poked at the purple Care Bear’s face. “What is this brown stuff on your bear?” I could feel my blood pressure rise as the frustration at her carelessness with her toys resurfaced yet again. “Oh, it’s just chocolate pudding” she responded with a shrug. Her nonchalance made me laugh. As though it was perfectly normal for a stuffed animal to have chocolate pudding all over its face. So in that moment, I decided to let it go. Not ask where the chocolate pudding came from, how long had the bear been in this state, where is the chocolate pudding cup now…all of these questions no longer mattered, because she made me laugh. She made me laugh by exhibiting an attitude that in all honesty, on a different day would have made me even more furious. But today it didn’t. Today I let it go, and the purple Care Bear will go into the washing machine with the next load. I guess today we got lucky.

That Man Deserves a Spot in Heaven

A male co-worker recently tried to get me to declare that all men are dogs. At the time, he was trying to engage in what he thought was some deep conversation. His intent was to get me to say that all men were dogs. He would then progress to the statement that all dogs go to heaven.

I declined to agree with his initial premise, which caused him quite a bit of frustration. Initially I said that my husband is a wonderful man. I definitely would not classify him as a dog, and he indeed is a man.

My co-worker then moved on to discuss the doginess of all other men. But I still could not agree with the statement. Men in general are not dogs.

What struck me most about this conversation was the fact that there is a sentiment among the population that men in general are dogs. I'm not even sure what that means. Yet this is a statement that typically would not be met with a lot of opposition. Why is that?

When I was a teenager, it's likely that I would have agreed that men are dogs. And I would venture to guess that the initial idea of men being dogs originated with women. But as I think about it, it seems to me that rather than men being dogs, women just cannot tolerate people who think and behave differently than them.

I thought about the kind of a woman that would vocalize this thought. "All men are dogs." This would come from a woman who'd been burned. A woman who perhaps had been cheated on. Or maybe a woman who yearned for a man who did not return the feelings. A woman who had expectations of romance, flowers, gifts, expensive dinners, and being showered with attention but did not receive all of those things. If a man does not live up to these expectations, does that make him a dog? Is a man a dog because he does not fall in love with every woman who develops a crush on him?

And what of the man who is promiscuous? Can you fault someone for their genetic engineering? Through urges brought on naturally by evolution, many, if not most men will try to copulate with as many women as they can. I would never try to justify the actions of a man who commits adultery. A vow is a vow, and as conscious beings, humans have the ability to over ride their carnal urges. But promiscuity in and of itself should not earn a man the title of "dog."

Men and women are different, physically, emotionally, biologically. But men are not inferior to women because of these differences any more than women are inferior because of their differences. It saddens me to think of this message being communicated to girls of all ages. Men are portrayed as being less than human. In fact, I remember thinking of boys and men as being an emotionless, sub-human species.

As an adult, as a married woman, as a mother, as someone no longer emotionally vulnerable to the disparities between the sexes, I see men in a different light than I did as a young girl. My husband is a great man, capable of enormous amounts of love and affection. He is hard-working and caring and funny and very much a human, not a dog. He can be hurt. He feels pride. He feels anger. He experiences betrayal, disappointment, and successes. But his reaction and expression of each of these things is very different from my own as a woman. Not better or worse, no less real, just different.

Holding a position now which puts me in close proximity to quite a few males on a fairly regular basis has also made me realize just how similar men and women really are. The boys I'm around have crushes, and they feel what girls feel when they have a crush. They flush when a pretty girl is around. They get excited to receive texts from that special girl. They talk about a recent date that went well and laugh with each other. They encourage their friends to make the next move. Yes, they want to have sex. But they also want companionship.

Did men earn this title of "dog" because of sex? Is that were it came from? The so-called "hit it and quit it" mentality?

Can we be honest about that? There are men who use women for sex. There are women who use men for sex. It is unfortunate when a woman is taken advantage of, is intimate with a man, and then finds that he has no interest in seeing her again. But isn't it pretty easy to spot that guy? Isn't it fairly easy to avoid him? I'm just gonna come out and say it: Ladies, if you are worried about being used for sex, stop sleeping with guys the first night you meet them.

Men are not dogs. Some men may act like dogs. But women seem to be allowing it to happen. Maybe it is women who need some behavior modification. I can assure you that the men in my life definitely deserve a spot in heaven, even if they aren't dogs.

To know both sides

I vividly remember as a child promising myself that when I grew up and became a mother I would remember what it was like to be a kid. I promised myself I'd recall all of the anguish and frustration that goes along with not being in control of life. I swore that I'd never forget how it feels to want something so badly and be told no.

Now as a parent, I have found myself having disagreements with my children that I'm sure I had with my parents when I was small. And my daughter never misses an opportunity to tell me all the ways that she will be a better parent than I am. She tells me all the things that she won't do to her children, like make them clean their messes. She'll let them stay up as late as they want and eat candy whenever they please. She tells me that I don't know what it's like to be a kid.

On the contrary, I do remember. And as I said, I recall all of the promises I made to myself as a result of all those frustrations. What I also realized though is that at that age, I was missing a piece of the equation. I knew what it was like to be a kid, but I didn't know what it was like to be a parent.

So in spite of the fact that I understand most of my children's motivation for their behavior, I continue to interact with them similarly to how my parents interacted with me. Discipline, boundaries, rules, are all still in place. I take comfort in the knowledge that in all likelihood, one day my daughter will have the other piece of the puzzle. Someday she will have a similar conversation with her kids, only from the other side.

The cycle is fascinating. The revelations are inspiring. And these simple discoveries, the little things in life that make you say, "oh, I get it," are what I intend to discuss in this blog. I hope to entertain a few readers. Please leave a comment to say hi if you like what you read.