Posted on 03/15/2006 8:46:15 AM PST by Hannah Senesh
Who has time to spend an afternoon at home, standing aside and watching the ordinary lives of our children?
"You wouldn't believe what I’ve been doing for the last few weeks," said my friend Shirley as we both eyed the sophisticated basket of baked goods at the trendiest food shop in the city, and pick at a bowl of freshly-cut vegetables gleaming with just the right amount of spiced virgin olive oil.
"Every evening I try to recreate the taste of the omelet and the salad my mother used to make, and I can’t do it. I use different vegetables, I refresh the oil, I mix it up with emotion—but nothing happens. It all comes out with today’s taste. I want that good old-fashioned taste."
"It's obvious," I explained, "you need to use regular oil instead of olive oil. You can’t use canola, either. Go to the supermarket, buy a bottle of corn or soy oil, and you’ll find your childhood memories in that bottle," I assured her.
That evening I tried it at home: cucumber, tomato, and onion in a shower of regular oil with a lot of salt. It came out so perfectly that I imagined the tune of an old children’s television program and I fantasized that my mother would come out of the kitchen in a moment in a checkered apron, stand in the living room, and scold me for faking my scales on the piano again.
Once upon a time
Once upon a time the kitchen was not merely an unwelcome intruder in the living room. Once upon a time the pile of dishes did not reach the ceiling. Once upon a time, every room in the house had a door you could close. Try setting limits today.
Once upon a time, mothers were at home at 5:30, busily preparing the evening’s dinner. It wasn’t that they worked less than we do today. They worked, studied, cooked, and cleaned. Few had hired cooks or housekeepers; they simply managed things differently. But mostly it was the norm for parents to be with their children.
Even the most demanding job started to quiet down towards 5 or 6 p.m., and fathers came home while it was still light out, which gave rise to a custom of "being at home."
Those were the days
Once upon a time it was perfectly okay to work until 2 or 3 p.m., and anyone whose workday included a long mid-day break went home for lunch and a quick afternoon nap, which meant that parents were at home. They were present. They hovered in our lives and our consciousness. We saw them, we smelled them, we felt them.
They were not our mobile entertainment, they did not sit all day playing with us or creating activities for us, but they were there: they sent us on missions like folding laundry, had us stand beside them to peel potatoes or check for stones in the rice, listened with full attention to our conversations about ourselves, corrected us where necessary, and got involved, and there was a sense that we were not alone, so we didn’t feel lonely. We didn’t need to be the center of anyone’s universe because we were part of the world.
Who has the time for all that today?
Today, I don’t know how much we are really at home, really present, as our parents were in our lives. How many times a week do we spend the afternoon at home, standing off to the side and watching the simple daily activities of our children: the struggles over the temptation to play games instead of doing homework, the small tricks over the lunch plate?
Busy lives
Most of our children, after all, eat lunch in daycare centers and come home at 4 p.m. Some are brought home by babysitters, others by a parent who rushes out from a job he is forced to cut cruelly short, and immediately they run to various after-school activities, to meet friends, or to run errands.
And who has time anyway just to sit around the house and notice the smell of the house, the special sounds of 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the slow transition from full light to dusk?
Everyone’s in the same space.
Today the workday for parents is long and intolerable, and very few parents manage to get home while it is still light out to be with their children. Only those who are really lucky have a job that allows them, if not to work from home, then at least to do some of the tasks in the afternoon from home, within the most important four walls of their lives.
What kids want
Because that is what our children really want. For us to be home. Not to play with them all day long, not to read to them endlessly, and not to turn them into the sun that shines in the center of our universe.
All they want is for their lives and ours to be conducted, at least some of the time, in the same space for there to be enough overlap to hold onto. They want to feel we are truly there with them. Not just on the phone, giving out instructions, but really at home, in the same protected, complete physical space, busy with our affairs, working or cooking or cleaning or having a rest in the afternoon, but there. Accessible. Flesh and blood.
Perhaps if we internalize this, we will succeed in educating ourselves to work fewer hours and to run less quickly to nowhere.
This doesn’t just depend on the individual, of course; it demands awareness and consideration from employers and bosses as well. But don’t they want to connect to themselves from the most basic and simplest place? Don’t they want to use the gift of life to the fullest instead of passing through it without any idea where they came from and where they are going?
And perhaps, if we were more tranquil and moved slower, we would even manage to recreate the taste of the omelets from the good old days.
Mystery solved
By the way, one phone call to my busy mother solved the riddle: the omelets of my childhood were cooked using Blueband margarine, the miraculous rectangle that added a gleam to every dough, that moistened every cake, and that was licked with gusto when covered with a goodly layer of white sugar on a piece of regular white bread.
I called Shirley right away: "Go buy Blueband margarine. It will bring the taste back to your omelet." But she was already standing next to the counter, stirring an organic millet pancake mix with her oldest daughter, which she intended to eat with honey and dates.
Anat Lev-Adler is the author of the bestselling "Secrets of Working Mothers", published by Yedioth Ahronoth
You have to weigh if you want kids. If so then get used to buying no car newer than 3 years old (depreciation is a killer during the first three years) and driving it for at least 10 years. You don't have to eat out every week. You don't need the latest and greatest of toys (stereos, big screen TV etc). You don't need more house than you can live in.
All these 'things' are but dust. Only children live on after you. (And I've never gotten a hug from my car yet)
Depends on the school. Some schools are simply too expensive for kids to pay for. Other schools are simply too competitive for students to spend time working, even part-time.
If your kid gets into an academically-elite school, he or she is going to have to have a highly developed work ethic to simply graduate with good grades.
DISCUSSION ABOUT:
"Mommy, Daddy, please come home (What children really want)"
This is a wonderful piece!
To be included in or removed from the MORAL ABSOLUTES PINGLIST, please FreepMail wagglebee.
I'm a SAHM of 3 homeschoolers. It's been hard for me to juggle everything in our house. I found this cookbook and it has done wonders for our family! For anyone interested, check out this site!
http://www.savingdinner.com/
It takes the guesswork out of "what's for dinner?" but allows for family favorites, too.
We've made lots of sacrifices so that I could be home with the kids. We only have one car and live in a small house. We don't have any credit cards and some people may think our kids don't have enough opportunities. They do have a wonderful, loving home life! I wouldn't change it for the world.
Congradulations! They have what is important. You are doing an excellent job it sounds to me. I want our daughter to homeschool. Sure hope she does as I can see the many benefits. Actually, it is a way of life and quite similar to life in years past.
I hope you can convince her! Sometimes I feel like I'm not doing enough and other times I think I'll scream if we don't take a LONG break. I've found that we work well 3 months on/1 month off. The kids enjoy the "free" time and it keeps school from getting stale. Start sending her books and articles! Once you read them it's hard to avoid! :o)
Of course you are.
#39, well said.
I work for a company that has it's headquarters in Japan. So, many meetings take place at night. I know it's crazy, we could use more people that's for sure.
Thanks for the ping! This is a WONDERFUL article, and one that should be read by every parent! Bookmarked! :D
I even think this article is one the homeschooling crowd would enjoy reading.
Thank you. I'm a stay at home mom, and sometimes the house looks like a couple of hobos squat in it. Raising my daughter is a full time job in itself, and for me, the conversations I have with her are a lot more intriguing than any of the mindless exchanges I had when I worked in "suit land". She's going to be three on Tuesday, so she's just starting to really make sense when she's talking. The other day she said she "had ghosts in her diaper". I'm still trying to figure that one out, but it was cool when she said it!
I've hooked up with a mom's group that's quite active: trips to the zoo, park days, the science museum. I also train thrice weekly as a triathlete. Curiously, I have more interaction with people now as a mom than I had as a single woman. When the midget is napping, or I've managed to subdue her with a puzzle or pen and paper, I'm focusing on my writing career. Curiouser still, my fiction has taken on a lot more depth and complexity now that I've got this ultra cool job.
Even when I was employed in my field (as a copy editor and writer for financial institutions) I felt my brain was atrophying. There are so many times you can hear, "Working hard or hardly working..." before wanting to brain someone with a paper shredder. The film Office Space is scary in the way it reflected my "career" track.
I never want to go back to cubicle land, but if you can believe it--sometimes I feel guilty for not having a 9 to 5 job, such is the feminist brainwashing. If it works for some women, fine, but I'm having too much fun.
...After my husband finished college, we married....he went straight to boot camp (Navy) and when he left for his assignment, I eventually joined him.
Our first child arrived during these Navy years...
..After his time in the Navy, he went back to grad school....we lived on campus....dirt poor...beyond dirt poor, and with a small child.
During this time, women's lib was rearing it's ugly head...
..and coming on campus to organize ....
..they especially targeted (I believe) young wives (& there were quite a lot)...many with children already...
..and tried very hard to disillusion us in our daily activities of homemaker/mom/wife.
I speak the truth....I attended their meeting and the focus was....
.. working outside the home....
....taking back our maiden name...
...and empowering ourselves.
...This is where/when it all started, IMO!
I almost weakened due to their rhetoric about being less than fulfilled if I stay at home.
But I chose to be sensible, sane and the happy homemaker by doing just that!
It took years to get the material things we wanted....
..but our children always had mom home....hot meals & the whole family together.....listening/caring/calming/being....and dad consistenly & steadily in their lives too.
Priceless!
Who told you that because my parents never did and I surely didn't give a damn what anyone else said.
Ping!
Thanks for the ping.
So why the hell are the Republicans enlarging Big Stupid Government and stealing/squandering even more of our money/time than ever before?
Bless you!
We don't believe in living in debt. We also don't believe that the neighborhood we live in is a place to raise kids. It's safe, there's nothing wrong with the neighborhood per se, but we feel that a kid needs some land to run on. And we're looking for that now, but it needs to be the right place for us. Which means fitting in our budget (difficult right now in Central Florida), being close enough to work that we're not driving half the day to get there, etc.
I will say that we do eat out frequently, but that's out of convenience since we both work. If I were to stay at home with kids, part of that job would be preparing meals.
And, like I said, we could squeek by on his income, in our current home, but we don't feel that's any way to bring up a family, in that we wouldn't be able to save for any unforseen hard times and the things mentioned previously.
We've also only been married 3 years and we're trying to enjoy that first. I'm not going to stress about having or not having kids. I believe when God wants us to have them, it will be, and we'll be happy with the blessing.
Louisiana has a program where the state will pay for part or all of your college tuition if you remain in-state and your high school grades are good enough.
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