After 40 some odd years of completely rebelling against the way my mother chose to be in life, in many ways I have followed her footsteps. As we work so hard to do it differently we are still operating from the story we were told. The same point in the sand that was put before us.
As I went into surgery for my breast last week I thought to myself, Good God! How could I consider plastic surgery? Why would I elect to put myself in this odd unloving environment for a procedure that at it’s very best is false?
But of course, everything I’ve said I would not do in my life I HAVE DONE. I suppose that is just going to continue to be and I have to make peace with the fact that I DON’T KNOW SHIT ABOUT ANYTHING.
Ok. That’s not totally accurate. And it’s the pendulum swing again. But you know what I mean.
When my kids were young their dad would spend long chunks of time away. I got a nanny right away to help me. I never liked this arrangement, and in all the years I had help, I wasn’t able to make peace with it. This project of raising children was too delicate, too important, but the reality is that I couldn’t do it alone. What I really needed was two lives, one that I could fully nest in with the children without anyone looking on, and another life out in the world with my continuing career. I was never able to find this balance, but only go back and forth when the feeling on one end of the pendulum made me feel too sad. None of these nannies were right in the long run. I swung that pendulum wildly looking for the right support. From the first nanny who was a mother herself, then on to the young au pair, to the foreign, to the American. The young back to the old.
These days I’m trying to slow it down. Or is it that I’m slowing down no matter what? The pendulum taking it’s natural course that I’m only along for the ride with? The illusion of control.
I’ll most likely keep it swinging. I’ll say all kinds of things here and then take them back, change my mind, find out I’m not exactly the person I thought I was yesterday. This life is a mess that we just keep trying to find the beauty in. Most days I do.
Two photos taken with Iphone and put together in the Diptic app. The left, a door in Greenwich Village, the right, tulips in Central Park.
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