As I was coming in to work, I had already decided to entitle my post thus, even before reading rpg’s “awwww….”-inspiring piece in Futures.
Saturday afternoon, between batches of holiday cookies with my son for school, getting ready to accompany him to his soccer game, making refrigerator magnets with my daughter, helping her wrap her friend’s birthday present, and preparing a hurried lunch after their tennis lesson, I received a telephone call from Tunisia.
Since my hands were covered in cookie dough, I was not fast enough to pick up before the answering machine took over. My colleague was visiting his Ph.D. student in Tunis to help her write up a paper, and wanted my opinion on a point of discussion I had suggested he include based on another paper I had read. (The details are unimportant for you, dear reader. Tell me otherwise if I am wrong.)
My decision was to send back a quick text message (with clean fingers) saying that his paper should indeed not hinge upon that point. But my laptop was still at work, since I knew I had a family-oriented weekend ahead and would not use it, and I would probably need to double-check the implication.
Before going to bed last night, after having fulfilled many – but never all – of the domestic duties I had intended to, I reached down toward the bottom of the stack of books, catalogues and other things cluttering up my night table, and opened up A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. I find that I can read a couple of pages of these essays and feel recharged.
…as Miss Nightingale was so vehemently to complain,—”women never have an half hour . . . that they can call their own”—she was always interrupted.
Still true.
For all the dinners are cooked; the plates and cups washed; the children sent to school and gone out into the world. Nothing remains of it all. All has vanished. No biography or history has a word to say about it. And the novels, without meaning to, inevitably lie.
How futile to only spend time with my children, when countless potential people could benefit from my words of wisdom, distilled this weekend with my colleague now returning from Tunisia? Perhaps that moment of inspiration was lost indefinitely? As much as I believed a friend’s observation that one’s children will remember board games played with their parents more than the absence of dirty mugs in the sink, I had a moment of doubt. How many of us have felt that laundry and ironing (in particular!) were futile exercises in running on a treadmill, no advancement to be made, and entropy winning the battle?
I will live on in my children’s chance off-hand remarks to their loved ones, that they remembered stringing garlands on the banister like that. (Low-resolution rendering, lossy over time and someday to not be replayed anymore except in derivation.) And in my publications – although who will know which words were mine, in most of these? Ah well, personal glory is not for the likes of me.
How futile to only spend time with my children,
Never say that. Never. Be grateful that you have the children to spend your time with. Cherish it. And them.
Lovely post Heather. And I am sure that you will live on in the memories of your children and the people around you. The best we can do is to make some kind of impact on the people we meet. Striving after fame for its own sake is an ultimately soulless pursuit…
And with regard to the endless chores around the house, have you seen The Mom’s Song?
I am absolutely grateful to have the opportunity to raise children. I was being a little facetious, since I had already made my choice. It’s just that raising children “well” – insert your definition thereof here – is inherently selfish, eh?
But then again, so is the pursuit of glory, even if for the better good.
@Stephen – hadn’t heard it, but I might have written it.
I remember something my father told me when I was in my late teens. “I remember you and your sister when you were small,” he said, “and then whoosh! You were teenagers”. My father had spent the intervening years building his business. I never asked him if he regretted those lost years. Anyway, this memory spurs me to spend as much time with my kids as I can.
Heather, wonderful post. Don’t you dare stop blogging..
Aww, thanks, Steffi. I just thought I would cut down a bit. Having a blogroll over there was nice… but it was more for personal use, and now I’ve been converted to Google Reader, it’s not so necessary. I’m very touched, though.
I’m totally with Richard for his remark that the most interesting blog posts are the off-the-cuff ones, whereas the ones which have been brewing for a long time (pigmentation?!) either seldom see the light of day, or else were hardly worth giving birth to.
Interesting ideas and thoughts Heather.
..and I don’t think you should stop blogging either ;) but I think you already knew that?!
Heather, what you say about the posts and stewing – don’t you think that depends on the general gist of your blog (or the post)?
True, in the sense that I need a lot more time to write a science-based post than an off-the-cuff personal one – but the ones that get comments back are usually the latter, which is a bit more gratifying for the author. And that is my experience in both places.