And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house,
With a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself - Well...How did I get here?
This kind of feels like my life - except well, I don't have a wife, but when I take the time to really look around and think about my life (during the 3 seconds between checking fevers, running errands, doing my best Darth Vader impression, and patting a little bum in hopes that the little boy attached to that little bum will please, please, please go to sleep) I sometimes wonder how I got here.
I look at the extra bedrooms that we designed and see them filled with little boy clothes and little boy shoes, little boy toys, and little boy boundless energy and love. I watch these two little silly beings splash and play and fight over toys in the tub and I wonder how on earth we got so lucky. It's really enough good fortune for one lifetime to simply find someone to love and spend your days with, but to grow a family with that person and build a life and home...well I have no words (rare I know) for how lucky that makes me feel.
And on top of that, our children are happy and healthy (and silly and loud) and we can provide them with all of the things they need and most of the things that they want. While I would love to say that we don't spoil our children, I think we probably do. We don't always wait for special occasions like birthdays or holidays to give them new toys or new clothes. We simply can't wait to see the joy on their precious little faces when presented with a gift we know they will love. We both spend most of our weekdays away from them at work, and maybe we feel we need to give them these things because we can't give them ourselves all the time.
While we work a lot, when we're not working we try our best to give them our full attention. We get on the floor and play . We listen to them and ask about their days. We have dinner together. We both give them baths and get them ready for bed most nights. And, if the littlest one cooperates, we read books together. We make our children our world. And I have always been proud of us for putting them first and being able to give them "the best" despite our meager carpenter and environmentalist budget. We have been able to give our children nearly everything we have wanted to give them...and it has been blissful. It has felt successful. And it has made me feel that, even though I can't spend every minute of the day with my sweet little boys, I am a good mother because I give them "the best" - whatever "the best" may be...star wars action figures, organic food, ninja legos, fresh berries regardless of the season, cozy bedrooms, colorful play spaces, a hundred "I love yous" and "I'm proud of yous", and endless time spelling words over and over again until Brody knows the letters by heart. It means a million other things, and maybe most importantly, it means finding the best people to care for our children when we cannot.
So when I look around our house and see everything we have accomplished and provided, when I drop Brody off at his fancy private school in my new (to me) fancy big car that I park next to all the other fancy parents' fancy cars, I feel well, fancy. And again I feel successful...and it feels good!
This fancy life feels good, until we got next year's tuition increase notice in the mail for Brody's fancy school...and the bubble burst...and I realized this fanciness is not reality...this fanciness is not my beautiful life.
"And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!"
Ok, so I'm being a bit dramatic...it is an amazingly beautiful life, and all of the things I have described (minus the fanciness) are real and true, but the thought of not being able to afford Brody's magical, 2-miles down the road, perfectly perfect school just devastates me.
I cried.
Well, after I called the school to make sure there wasn't a mistake that 10 months of kindergarten was going to cost more than a year of what I paid to go to college...I cried.
And after I ran the numbers to see if we cancel cable and lower our cell phone plans and sell the tractor and sell a kidney on the black market if we could afford it and realized that we still can't...I cried.
And yes, even after I sent his name in for public kindergarten registration and toured a great after-school center for him to be bussed to after kindergarten (yes, I realize I am going to hell for even considering having my precious child take a bus without me from kindergarten to the after-school center)...I cried.
But my tears are not so much because the school or the after-school center are worse than the fancy school he is at now. The public school will be a brand new (dare I say fancy) building and the center is awesome. They have a very structured program for the 5-6 year olds. The building is clean and pleasant and they have afternoon clubs, sports, and activities. They even have a pool for cryin' out loud.
I have realized that my tears are because I feel like I failed and because I feel terrible that my boy has to change schools again. While I'm sure he will have no trouble making new friends and getting used to a new place, my whole intention of sending him to the fancy school was to be able to take advantage of full day kindergarten. I feel like I didn't do enough research and didn't make the best decision for him. Had I known that we wouldn't have been able to afford for him to stay there for kindergarten, I would have expanded my search to find a place that we could have afforded for him to stay another year. My tears are full of guilt for not being able to provide him with what I consider "the best". And I am disappointed in myself.
And I don't quite know what to do with that yet...because how can I possible disappoint this boy?
No comments:
Post a Comment