A Few Lessons From My Family

My life was extremely…different before I had my family. Or I should rather say that my perception was extremely different. I had experienced very little joy and much anguish…and it made me bitter, to say the least. But this post isn’t about how miserable I was. It’s about a few of lessons I have learned from my man and our child, from my family.

The first lesson is politeness. I never believed in polite conversation, meaning I didn’t believe in conversation for conversation’s sake. This will sounds silly but I learned how being polite can affect people from my man. When someone says “Hi. How are you” he always asks how they are doing in return. I never used to. I didn’t think anyone really cared when they asked that I didn’t want to be that fake person who asks but doesn’t expect a truthful answer. People would ask me how I was doing and I usually would tell them to ask me another question. Now I ask they are in return because I see that it makes them feel good, usually. I also say thank you all the time. For example I say thank you when I get off the shuttle that takes me from the mall parking lot to the college campus. I know that if one person is really nice to you it can make your entire day better. Before I knew Scott I wasn’t happy enough with life to behave this way. Now I know it is worth it.

Lesson two: children make all the difference. I’m the oldest of five children and helped my mother raise two before she remarried and had two more. I love children. I always have. The way they perceive the world, their mindset, their love, it’s all so amazing…but I never wanted to have kids. My picture of the world was too negative. I didn’t want to be responsible for bringing anyone else into it. My friends say they always knew I would have kids. I heard the words “Yes, mom” from them many times over the years. I guess I was always trying to take care of everyone. Even when I couldn’t be saved I still wanted to save others from the harshness of this world. And then I met Scott. It may be fair to say he saved me.

This is where the story gets cheesy and I tell you that falling in love has magical effects. At first I hadn’t changed my mind about having children, but before long I was actually considering it. Scott is very good with kids (he mentioned something once about being on their level). Although he hadn’t said it directly I could tell he wanted to have children, so one day I asked him why. After saying “Who said I did” and me explaining that I knew he did, he gave me the best answer anyone ever could. He said that he felt he could raise a child to be a good person thereby making the world a better place. About a year and nine months later I gave birth to our daughter.

Lesson three: not anticipating what happens next. This began learning this lesson from Scoot and then it was really driven home by our daughter. I went through this phase where I asked many people what their favorite thing in the world is. Scott’s answer was “not knowing what will happen next.” The idea is very attractive.

I was the type of person that was always anticipating what would happen next. I have an analytical nature, including much over-analyzing. This came in handy sometimes. I was always prepared during road trips. But I learned from my family that this behavior was taking my attention away from the moment I was living in. Instead of feeling the warmth of the moment I was too busy thinking about what would happen next. In the hospital, after our daughter was born, I should have been spent every second being engulfed in my new baby, even when we had visitors. But most of the time while we had visitors, I was nervously deliberating what should be happening over the next few days. I can see it in the pictures taken of us in the hospital. I was looking out beyond everyone. I should have been looking at my baby in every picture, and it pains me to know that I wasn’t. If we have another child I won’t make that mistake again.

The lesson didn’t fully set in on me until L was over a year old though. I did make sure to start cherishing every moment once we brought L home. In doing so the idea of her growing up too fast hasn’t been a problem. Unfortunately, I still felt the need to most days to have a plan, and if the plan didn’t get played out then the day was a bust. But very rarely do things go according to plan when you are a new mother, or even a mother of three I would imagine. I soon found out that the days when L and I had the most fun was when we had nothing planned. It was liberating to feel the freedom from worrying about anything. We would just have fun. Nothing more, nothing less, and I now find these periods to be the happiest, most comfortable and care-free times of our (my family’s) lives.

All I ever wanted was to be happy in life. For me happiness has to come from learning how to be happy. I am continuously learning and have been provided with the best reasons and tools to do so.

Dolls are for Girls

When I was young a played mostly alone. Now, the boys didn’t want to play with me because I am girl and I was too asthmatic for sports. Every year when I was in elementary school we had physical fitness tests. I supposed they were attempting to asses our physical abilities for the sake of statistics, but I can’t say for sure. For one of the tests we were timed on how quickly we could run a mile. After the first two years I learned that I wasn’t going to get a good time so I might as well walk the whole thing and take the maximum time, I think it was thirteen minutes.

I didn’t want to play with the girls because I wasn’t at all interested in what they were doing. Dolls, house, patty-cake-type hand games, being catty even at a very young age, pretending to be a princess, none of that appealed to me. I remember as young as three or four I was playing with He-Man toys (I even named my kitten Cringer) and Transformers. I wanted to be He-Man for Halloween one year but my mom wouldn’t let me because I was a girl. Of course, I forgot all about it when she made my She-Ra costume. It looked authentic and she even teased my hair up like hers.

Why do I bring this up? I started a controversy today with two of my coworkers, K and A. Now mind you, it was more like friendly banter but I am very convicted regarding what I stated. I don’t recall how the conversation started but I mentioned that I was going to buy presents for two little boys whose shared birthday party my daughter and I would be attending next weekend. I said L was old enough now that I would let her pick out the gifts (with slight guidance) for her friends. She said she wanted to get Kyle, who will be turning four, a remote control car, and his brother Sean, who will be turning two, something with unicorns. But, I continued to explain, Kyle and Sean’s parents were of the type that boy’s shouldn’t be allowed to play with “girl’s” toys. For example, the mother had once mentioned that Kyle had requested a Dora The Explorer bicycle but she and her husband couldn’t bring themselves to buy it for him. Both of the coworkers I was speaking to agreed that they should not comply with his request and gave Dora’s cousin Diego as the alternative. I was immediately annoyed and this perplexed me for two reasons: 1) I don’t agree because I would buy it for my son (if I had one), and 2) Dora doesn’t engage in “girly” behavior. She explores the forest, climbs mountains, counts things, and solves riddles. There’s no fairly princess glamour or tea parties with fancy dresses. Fuel for the fire.

Keeping my irritation subdued, I listened as K went on about how her godson’s mother let him play with girl’s toys and K stopped letting him bring them to her house because he started acting “fruity.” I looked her right in the eyes and said “K, toys don’t make people gay.” She replied that he was acting it and she wasn’t having that in her house. I wanted to scream at her “so what if he was” but she’s my partner and you can’t afford to burn bridges in the corporate world.

After K walked away from my desk I went to the cubicle next door. Apparently I wasn’t done with the conversation. I asked A whether or not she thought boys should be allowed to play with toys normally targeted towards girls. She said they should not. I asked why and all she said was “because they’re for girls.” Oh, it was on.

Trying to keep the conversation at an intelligent level instead of it being reduced to a “you’re wrong…no, you’re wrong” argument, I chose my words carefully. I asked for specifics. Exactly which toys should boys not be allowed to play with. The main answer was dolls. Why, I asked, and the answer was “because they’re for girls.” I asked why dolls are considered girls toys. Is it just because they have always been perceived that way? Why were they given to girls to play with in the beginning? I’m thinking it was because woman used to be the sole caregivers for the children while men were the providers. Little girls were given dolls to play with to emulate what they would be doing when they grew up or to emulate what they’re mothers and grandmothers did. I told A that I knew she agreed that men should take on an equal roll in the care giving to their children and housework and the like. She agreed they should. I said “Well, then why should we stop them from doing it as children?” It teaches the responsibility, as MW agrees in his/her article “The Value of Playing With Dolls for Boys and Girls.” Again, the only answer was that dolls are for girls.

Both K and A stated there were no boy’s toys that are unacceptable for a girl to play with. I was even told it was because there is such a thing as a female tom-boy but there was no male counterpart such as a sally-girl.

While pregnant with my daughter I knew that I would try very hard to make sure she was exposed to all kinds of toys and all kinds of play. Even her clothes as an infant were varied, not all pink and lilac. Until her third birthday her toy box was equal parts cars and dress up jewelry. Twice a child older than her asked their parent or me why she was wearing a Spider-Man shirt when Spider-Man is for boys. My reply was simply “because she likes Spider-man.” When a little boy asked his mother I waited patiently to see what would come out of her mouth. I don’t think she knew we were within earshot. I was pleasantly surprised to hear her tell her son that anyone can like Spider-Man and explain that she herself has a Spider-Man hat.

Around her third birthday though, she was much more into dolls, princesses, and ponies, and she made it very clear her favorite color is pink. She does occasionally play with her cars and trains. Of course, I accept her for the little princess she is (I call her Princess Lunatic). I will just mention that in addition to the Barbies (I’m trying to be ok with this one. I will only buy her the ones that do not look like hoochies. Thankfully she wants the veterinarian Barbie) and mermaid dolls, she also wants a tool set for her birthday.

Morality: Black and White?

Morality is the motivation that drives reasoning of right and wrong.

How many of us believe that to every problem the moral choice is black or white? How many of us believe there are gray areas?

On the phone last night my mother was telling me in an exasperated voice that when she was employed at a military university cafeteria she overheard one student tell another that she should be fine because nothing is ever black and white, it’s always gray. My mother vehemently disagrees. My response to that was to ask her if she thought there could be, not that there is but that there could be, one set of rules that could possibly govern and provide the correct moral answer for every situation. The question came from an essay I had read the night before by Gareth McCaughan on utilitarianism. He states:

Firstly, about rules. There are a lot of rules in the Bible, and many Christian
communities have come up with others (either deduced from the ones in the Bible,
or not). I distrust rules, even when they come from the very most reliable
sources. It seems improbable to me that any finite collection of rules can
really give a perfectly accurate account of what one should and should not
do.

McCaughan is stating this as an introduction to the question of what a satisfactory set of ethics would be. He attempts to pit Christianity against utilitarianism and then, in the same essay, attempts to take Christian ethics and use them as a basis for utilitarianistic thinking.

Now, up until last night I would be perfectly content with my answer to the question posed to my mother (and implied by the last sentence in the quote) as being “no.” It’s very easy to say that many situations are to complicated, complex, and convoluted for any one basic set of rules to be able to truly guide you.

Take, for example, a situation (which I think I recall from my college ethics class) where a man’s wife is dyng. He does not have the money to purchase the medicine that would save her life. The pharmacy refuses to give the man the medicine or allow him to pay for it in installments. The man is contemplating stealing the medicine he needs to save his wife.

Most of us are going to say that this situation is not, cannot be, black and white. On the one hand we know stealing is wrong. And on the other, is it right for the man to allow his wife to die when he can prevent it?

So, after dropping the question on my mother she gives the answer that I knew she would (but I was using the question as a segue to the example above). She said “There is one [set of finite rules].” She, of course, was referring to the Ten Commandments. In response to which I asked her, really more just contemplating that asking, if there is a commandment appropriate to govern every situation in which a person has to make a moral decision. And being an unwavering Christian, she said there is.

Here I began my normal critical analysis out load. I gave my mother the situation I mentioned above and asked her to use the moral code from the bible to deduce the correct resolution. She said stealing is wrong no matter how it is justified. It doesn’t mean that anyone would let their wife die because of it; it just means that stealing is wrong.

However, the commandments also teach us that life is sacred. The man would be choosing one sin over another. There is nothing in the bible, that I am aware of, that gives one sin precedence over another, no instructions on how to reason morally. McCaughan says as much in the same article I mentioned above.

It is tempting to infer from the absence of an ethical system in the Bible that
there is none (beyond the requirement to do the perhaps-opaque will of God); but
there is no justification for this, even if one takes a very high view of the
authority of Scripture. If you are going to rescue someone from drowning, you
just throw them a rope and tell them to grab it; you don't try to give them
swimming lessons.

Here McCaughan is saying that while the commandments are laid out, there is no further instruction for following them, no structured guidance for the situations we will face as humans.

It is true that an easy look at the commandments can leave a person feeling like there is something missing. You begin to ask “well, if this certain situation came up would I really have a choice and would my action really be a sin.”

I often find my self asking other questions like “What about the killing during war? How can Christians volunteer for the military? If you killed someone in self-defense, is it a sin? Is it considered suicide if...” and other such questions. Usually the response is "I don't know. I'm not God."

So, as I have said, before last night my answer was that most situations leave you in shades of gray. But the reality of it is quite simple according to the commandments, and I see it this way now. The actions you take, if they are a sin and no matter the reasons, are black and white. The reasons for choosing to sin are shades of gray…and purple…and red…and aquamarine, etc. Stealing will always be a sin, as will killing, and so on.
However, if God can see the struggles we face his judgment can be sound. We must look at our situations with an honest eye and see if we really put ourselves there. If we are the cause for the reason to sin God may not be as forgiving as if we are not.



As a side note: In regards to the cited essay. I don’t think McCaughan is half as intelligent as he tries to make himself sound. I think he is making excuses for his indecisiveness in knowing himself. Based on his web site I infer that he is a jackass.