Month: March 2008

We’ve always given our kids allowance money. I feel that teaching my kids to handle money is a crucial part of my responsibility as a parent. They can’t learn to handle money if they never have any. Some families choose to link allowances to chores around the house. I have always resisted doing this. I felt that it was better for the chores to be just a requirement of being in our family and the allowances to be a benefit for being in our family. This seemed right and fair to me. It is possible that this seemed fair because for years I got the benefit of being dependent upon Howard’s comfortable Novell income.

I’ve recently changed my opinion on allowances. In the past two years I’ve had to work hard to help the money come in. The workload has steadily increased for me as I picked up new tasks; accounting, shipping, book layout, etc. It frustrates me to see the house become a disaster while the kids don’t care enough to help. These same kids would rather wait a few extra weeks for money to arrive than do chores to earn the money. I’m doing too much and it would really help if the kids would just pick up their toys once in awhile. Howard has long been of the opinion that kids who don’t work should not get allowance, but since I was the one running the allowance system, he did not argue about the way we’ve been doing it.

So I have now shifted camps. Yesterday I announced to the kids that they’d received their last free allowance. From now on they must work if they want to get paid. They must also mark the chart to keep track of when they worked or else they won’t get paid. The kids took the news with hardly a comment. I expect there will be moaning and groaning some time in the future. Maybe this will get me more help around the house, which I desperately need. If not, then at least I’ll get to keep more of the family’s hard earned money instead of watching it get spent on candy and dollar store toys.

Howard and I are extremely fortunate. We manage to pay all our bills on the income from a creative endeavor. This is joyful for us, and inspiring for others. I can not count the number of times that people have spoken with Howard or I to tell us that our success gives them hope for their own dreams. I’m glad that we are cause for hope. I love feeling like we are adding something good to the world. But each of these conversations has a hidden accompaniment. Inside my head is a voice that whispers “What if you don’t get to keep it? What if your endeavors crash and burn? What will that do to all these people who have looked to your success with hope in their eyes?”

Howard hears this voice too. We talk about it sometimes. These conversations come when the lurking fear has been particularly loud, when money is running low, when visits to the Schlock site are down. Then Howard and I stand in the kitchen, afraid. We are afraid because our success is not completely in our control. No matter how hard we work, all of our income is dependent upon the goodwill and interest of others. Usually Howard and I take turns being afraid. One fears, while the other comforts and reassures. The days when the lurking fear runs rampant in both of us, are very dark days.

I think this is one of the reasons that Howard and I work so hard. We keep trying to build a structure strong enough to banish the lurking fear forever. I don’t know if it can be done. And if it can, I have another voice that wonders if the comfort will cause us to lose the edge. If, in the end, we will discover that the lurking fear is our greatest asset rather than our biggest enemy. If our reactions to the lurking fear are part of what defines who we are. Or perhaps that is just the lurking fear speaking, trying not to be banished forever by making me afraid of succeeding too well. I fully intend to take my chances with succeeding too well if I can get there.

Until then we just have to go on working hard, and hoping, and trying not to listen to lurking fear.

Spring sunlight streams hope through my kitchen window. I used to love all seasons equally. That is no longer true. I no longer like Winter. I like some winterish things, but the season as a whole weighs me down. The harder the Winter, the more I delight in the coming of Spring. This Spring is still colder than I’d like, we still freeze almost every night, but the sun carries some warmth now. Even better, my Spring bulbs have emerged and some are even starting to bloom. It makes me want to get outside.

Unfortunately while the advent of Spring lifts my spirits, it doesn’t make my schedule any less busy. So I look wistfully out my windows as I pass. I did get outside one day this week, but then I remembered that next week is my trip to Ad Astra in Toronto Canada and there are approximately a million things I want to get done before I go. About half of those things have to do with actually cleaning up my house so that it will be nice to come back to. Fortunately Kiki has panned a sleep over with friends for this evening. The festivities are contingent upon her helping me get everything clean and ready. Kiki is an excellent worker when she is motivated.

When Howard and I were engaged we attended a devotional meeting led by one of the General Authorities of our church. I don’t remember which one he was, or the topic of the meeting, but I remember clearly that at one point he challenged the audience to look inside themselves to find what was truly most important to us. I remember searching inside myself and discovering that beyond the “givens” of living a good life as outlined by my religion, the most important thing was to be a mother, to pass on to children all the love and nurturing that I had received. After the meeting was over, Howard and I talked about it. He said that for him, the important thing was to create things and share them with other people and hopefully make a living doing so. We discussed how these two things would fit together and figured it would work very well.

That event was the beginning of our plan for our life together. Thereafter we measured all our wants and projects to see if they helped or hindered these core goals in our lives. We spent money on a house because it provided some stability for both central goals. We then began paying off the house as quickly as we could to further provide financial stability. Even when Howard’s Novell salary doubled, we did not spend much more than we already had. Instead we saved and plotted so that we could some day quit that job without jeopardizing the welfare of our growing brood of children. We made sure that we accumulated the skills we would need to succeed. The realization of the dreams has sometimes been different than expected, cartooning rather than music became the creation of choice, but the core goal was the same. Knowing what the goal was, let us steer our lives toward it.

All of this is fresh in my mind today because I read a rant by Robin Hobb in which she likens blogs to vampires that suck the creativity out of fiction writers, leaving them dry. I do not agree with all that she said, but it was an entertaining read and it made me think. Creative people are frequently filled to overflowing with ideas. They don’t just have one dream, they have a hundred. One of the hardest things for a creative person to do is to stay focused on a single shiny possibility, particularly when some of the others seem so much easier to reach. The tendency then is to chase one dream for awhile and then abandon it for the next. This frequently leaves the creative person about where they started with all the dreams still out of reach. This distraction is what Robin Hobb is lamenting. However what Ms. Hobb does not acknowledge is that for some people blogging is actually a help and inspiration for the writing rather than a hindrance. One person’s distraction can be another’s stepping stone. It all depends upon the situation and the core goals. My blog has been both depending on circumstances.

I frequently feel dazzled by all the shiny possibilities for my life, but I must reluctantly acknowledge that I can not achieve them all. I must choose. Not only must I choose, but I must make sure that the biggest, most important things get the largest slices of my attention. I’m still not finished with that motherhood project I began 13 years ago. I can’t abandon it. I must also continue to support Howard’s core goal of living creatively. In fact both of those goals long ago became “ours” rather than mine and his. That process began on the very first day we talked about it. I add and subtract other shiny possibilities from my life as time and energy allows. But even there I’m not picking possibilities at random, I have a few things I am deliberately chasing, such as writing fiction. And so I slowly, but surely, chart a course through life with which I can be pleased. Slowly, but surely, I am reaching some of those shiny possibilities and putting them into my pockets.

I made an interesting realization last week. Nearly everything I do has multiple purposes. If I pick up a sewing project it is because I enjoy sewing and because Gleek needs a new church dress. If I weed my yard it is because I enjoy gardening and because it makes the house look nice. The more purposes that an activity has attached, the more likely it is to actually get done. All my enjoyments also have agendas. I think there is nothing inherently wrong about mutlitasking this way. It is a good and useful skill. But lately all the needed aspects of my activities have had far more emphasis than the enjoyment aspects. I think I need to make just a little space for single purpose activities. I need to give a child my full attention just because they want to talk to me. I need to read a book just for fun. I need to give myself more micro vacations. I’ve done much better at this during the past week and I can feel the tension unwinding. It is good. Today I spent several hours on single purpose activities. It was harder than I expected. Part of my brain kept agitating, telling me we weren’t being productive enough. Obviously I need more practice at taking time off.

This morning Patches didn’t want to go to preschool. Instead he clung to me and informed me that he just wanted to stay home. I happen to know that Patches really loves preschool and has a great time there every day, so the slow development of a reluctance to go has puzzled me a little. This morning I was settled enough in my own brain to realize that what Patches was really saying was “I want more time and attention from you Mommy.”

I’ve been busy a lot lately. Patches is around me most of the time, but he usually only gets half attention at best. A lot of our interactions involve me trying to find something to occupy him so that I can go back to working. That adds up over time and creates a little boy who feels lonely. In January I was making sure that I carved out daily slices of time to give Patches full attention. That fell by the wayside for the past month or so. Not surprisingly, this is also when Patches started resisting preschool and bedtime.

Today I scooped Patches onto my lap and read with him for a full 40 minutes before preschool. That is a big chunk of time out of my perpetually busy days, but Patches needed it. When time came to leave for school he was content to go.

The second thing I remembered/realized today is that Patches is very verbal. He uses words to sort his experiences. Since he can’t write yet, he needs someone to listen to him and ask pertinent questions. I should totally understand this because it is exactly the way that I am. Words are how I process my experiences. But no one has been listening much to Patches lately. We’ve all been busy. Tonight at bedtime he expressed a fear of monsters and I realized that his head was so tangled up with thoughts that he felt unsettled. He was interpreting that unsettled feeling as fear. So tonight I had him lay down on my bed while I folded laundry. I asked him about preschool and a torrent of words flowed out of him. He gave me a play-by-play of the treasure hunt, recounted the story his teacher read about leprechauns, explained that he was sad twice because he didn’t get to find clues, described exactly where all the clues had been hidden, pondered on the differences between BBQers and grills, and a dozen other things. He talked nearly non-stop for over 30 minutes. He finally fell asleep when I had to leave the room for a few minutes.

I need to remember this. I need to make time for my Patches. More than any of the other kids, he needs to be able to read and write. I need to take time to teach him those things. I really need to take time to listen to him, particularly before bed.

Patches friend on the way to preschool: “My Mom called me awesome possum, but I’m not really a possum, but I am a awesome.”

Gleek singing the Star Spangled Banner “Jose can you see!”

Howard snuggling the blanket wrapped bundles of children after family prayer “You’re a snuggy huggy buggy ruggy!”

Sandra observing the giggling and tickling after Howard’s declaration “looks more like wiggle piggle tickle giggle to me.”

Gleek talking about her friend whose Grandpa just died “But it’s okay, she can just hug on my Grandpa.”