judiism

i get asked the question a lot.

it honestly doesn’t bother me (this isn’t a ‘mind your business’ rant), it just …troubles me, a little.

because really? i have no idea. and i guess i feel like i should.

i took a photo the other night of greg and the girls and the frame just looks so complete. which feels so strange for me to say, because while wanting more than one child was never in question for me, there was a time that wanting more than two children wasn’t much of a question, either.

lately i look at our family of four and i get knocked over with a feeling of simple joy - happiness, wholeness, a sense that things are good and steady; a complete sentence. and all that in equal measure with all the expected feelings of anxiety about rocking this boat.

and that makes me think i have my answer.

but then i remember my gut feelings, a picture of a giant family that once occupied a huge space in my mind, and i feel like i’ve betrayed myself in some strange way.

not knowing is almost entirely ok with me. there’s a peace that comes with not making a decision like this - a ‘decision’ which isn’t entirely mine to make anyway (yes obviously there’s greg’s feelings to consider, but i’m referring to forces beyond either of our control).

it’s strange to me, i guess, that i never wondered about this ‘last time.’ but i guess that’st just called growing up - feeling comfortable and present and with a sense that, yes, this is enough.

and yet, i know there will always be plenty more love to give, just in case.

in the meantime… are we done? i have no idea.

nosmokewithoutpryor answered: something you and the girls could personalize? maybe a jewelry box that the girls help decorate, and you can fill w/ cheap toy jewelry?

ooh i really like that idea a lot! i’ll keep you posted if that’s what we end up going with… thank you!

i posted a link to a blog yesterday that expressed with such remarkable acuity the agony i feel myself when making food choices for my family.

but a similar anxiety spreads to my decisions about, well, nearly everything else.

i’m suspicious of things that cost too little - child labor in stifling third world factories! illegal immigrants working on massive farms! government subsidies for corn production! favorable tax shelters for certain kinds of business and other things that i’ve only sorta heard of and know too little about but that sounds scary and bad! gahhh

but i’m about as equally suspicious of things that cost too much - why on EARTH should a blouse at j.crew cost three times a blouse at old navy? it can’t POSSIBLY IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM be three times as well-made don’t even try that on me.

i have no answer. that’s not [at all] the point of this. this is simply a glimpse into my anxiety-addled mind lately. every single choice feels monumental. every dollar is a vote and every vote says something about who i am and who i want to be and whether or not i’m making the world my children will inherit a better or worse place to be.

it’s exhausting.

or in this case the aunts-and-uncles-es.

i know this kind of question can be annoying questions to answer but i’m really stuck, so i’m asking anyway.

my brother- and sister-in-law are very generous gift-givers, especially with their nieces (i.e., my kids). their daughter is turning one in 2 weeks, so now we have to come up with a gift for her…

but we’ve been trying really hard to save / not spend frivolously lately, so while she’s my darling niece and i of course want to do something lovely for her, i’m not looking to buy her a pony or anything.

any ideas for something really special that won’t be TOO terribly spendy?

i think i would pay cash money for a therapist who would ‘see’ me via email.

i mean, for one thing, i get shy and nervous in person (proooobably the exact reason i should be doing it in person but whatevs) so i think i’d be more open via email.

but also? i have no time!! i LOVE therapy. therapy is GREAT. it just doesn’t fit into my LIFE. but i’m sitting at a computer all freakin’ day. (and i type really really fast.) i could shoot off a missive about the argument i had w/ my husband this morning and then take some time later to read what someone said i/he/we did wrong and help me figure things out. wouldn’t that be amazing and efficient?!

for a thirty-one-and-a-half-year-old woman, i have an astoundingly limited capability for internalizing the ramifications of some of the choices i make.

it’s kind of a remarkable skill, actually, the degree to which i can seemingly willfully ignore what i should very obviously understand to be the results of a series of quite ordinary actions.

and so it was with some actual shock, and not a small bit of delight, that i thought to myself this afternoon, “self. you’re really tired. i think it is perhaps because you went to bed LATE last night.”

fingers crossed this train of rational thought carries me all the way through to making a better decision at bedtime this evening.