Green-eyed Monster

In a string of emails related to up and coming classes for our kids I keep coming across signature lines of other parents that include things like "Vice President, ___ Magazine". And it's a magazine you've heard of, absolutely. Sometimes I google these people, and they have pretty interesting lives. Have you ever googled people you know? It is amazing what there is a record of out there.
I think the problem is that if I had a signature line it would be something like:

Kristin Sposito
(I've worn the same skirt for 3 days)

or maybe

Kristin Sposito
(It is 11:30pm and I have on a headlamp because if I want to read before bed I can't turn on the light since I share the room with 4 other people)

or even:

Kristin Sposito
(I bought my first item from an infommercial this summer. Shampoo. And my hair doesn't really look any better. It does feel better though, doesn't that count for something?)

Just not very impressive signature lines, when it comes right down to it. I think I am honing in on what I feel most envious of, which is a huge thing. It isn't money. It isn't any material possession, unless you count that I am becoming increasingly jealous of people who live in a place where there is a separate room for the adults and the children. And people that have a nice, soft couch in their living room (as opposed to a wooden church pew). I don't particularly want to be famous--it looks pretty high maintenance, and I wouldn't probably be able to get away with wearing the same skirt for 3 days. My experience with the paparazzi this summer left me very glad for my relative anonymity. I'm not really jealous of people who travel, it feels like we are doing plenty of that these days. I don't feel like I don't have enough time with my kids--my cup is definitely full in that department. I could use more time with Brett, but we manage flirty phone calls around the edges, and we know we're in this for the long haul, so the fact that the kids trump our quality time for a few years doesn't bother us all that much.

What I am truly jealous of, and this comes up a lot in New York, is people who have careers that I think I would enjoy. You are hearing this from someone who has always had trouble choosing, mostly because choosing one thing means *not* choosing something else. And the *not* has always been hard for me. The good part is that the range of things that I find myself wishing I could do is getting much narrower. In fact, it usually has something to do with writing, publishing or editing. And sometimes it has to do with Masters degrees from Columbia University. Maybe academia in general.

Anyways, it is hard to be a mom today--most of us are highly educated and driven. The glass ceiling is cracking, and if we wanted to we could be the movers and the shakers. But then there is that pesky little problem of our biology. That if we were ruling the world we would shed a tear or two about the kids we weren't with. So we stay with the kids. We hover and micromanage and sort of try to perfect this motherhood gig. We read the books and have the theories and we take all that energy that would have gotten us promoted and respected, and we channel it to our poor little offspring, who would much rather be squirting whipped cream from a can into their open mouths or making toilet jokes than being the recipients of our overprogramming.

It will be interesting to see how the kids turn out from all these over-zealous moms. But it will also be interesting to see how the moms turn out after putting a career on hold to be with their kids. Will they go back to school and try something new? Will they jump right back in to where they left the work force? Or will they realize that raising kids was actually a great gig and they can coast on their husband's retirement with the full satisfaction that they just did one half of the Family's work and they don't have anything left to prove?

However that comes to pass, I like that I am figuring out what makes me feel passionate, what kind of "work" I would do on my own in my free time, without pay. That I love words and how they can paint a feeling, tell a story or evoke a mood. Describing something to someone else who wasn't there to see it first hand or drawing connections between things known and unknown and portraying it artfully, choosing an identity and reinforcing an image with carefully selected topics...I don't know what it is about that, but I love it. And I admit, I am totally jealous of anyone that gets paid for this kind of work.
Envy can be helpful--it can show you where you wish you could go and point a direction in which to apply your efforts.

It will be interesting to meet these other soccer moms--it isn't a homeschooling league, so I'm sure that most families in the group will include two working adults. It's for families living on the Upper West Side, so I can be pretty sure that there will be an assortment of high profile careers represented. I'll try to come up with a signature line that won't make them feel like the neighborhood is going downhill. As in, it won't include references to laundry, headlamps or infomercials. And just maybe we will discover that at the end of the day it doesn't really matter about careers and paychecks and ambition-we'll just be two moms on the sidelines with kids the same age. Then again, maybe they have an opening for a travel writer who has never actually written and doesn't mind not being able to change clothes for days on end...You never know.