What A Girl Wants

Do you honestly believe that there is at least one thing that absolutely everyone wants? Could we ever agree? This question came up at the dinner table recently when my very persistent son, who has a bright future in automotive sales, was working on his fourth attempt to convince his parents that we wanted the video game he was coveting as much as he wanted it. He’s young and he hasn’t quite figured out that we don’t all want the same thing. If this were true then there would be a run on my favorite things, namely the Chocolate Pecan Mudslide at Dairy Queen and three inch pumps with cute wraps that circle the ankle. But it’s obviously not true since, during a recent trip to the bathroom, I noticed that the woman in the stall next door was wearing hideous brown suede tennis shoes. It was like looking at the offspring of Shaquille O-Neal and the chick from the Progressive Insurance commercials—some things are just innately wrong. Shoes can either be athletic or they can be suede but mating the two only yields the “sensible” shoe, a shoe no designer would ever touch.




I’m also grateful we all don’t want to drive the same car because then I’d have even more trouble remembering where I parked and there’s no way I’m using back-window decals as my car identifier. I’m not sure why some random motorist thinks I should know, by way of cutesy cartoon characters mooning me from the back window, that she’s married with two goofy looking kids and a dog but apparently it’s important (to her, not me.)

Knowing my luck, if we all wanted to drive the same car, it would probably be one of those egg-shaped cars some genius auto-designer modeled after the apple-car that the worm drives in the Richard Scarry books. I’m pretty sure that my high heels would force my knees into my chest making it impossible to drive—and then I’d be really ticked because that would mean that I’d have to wear “sensible” shoes all the time. Ugg! Kill me now. It’s amazing Communism ever took off because I’ve just punched several convincing holes into the idea that life would be bliss as long as it’s equal.

The list of the things I want in my life is as complex and contradictory as I’m sure your list is. I want Eva Longoria’s body, but I don’t want to have to diet and exercise to get it. I want to be one of those Brady-esque moms who bake treats and make amazing science projects but and there a lot of times just hearing my children’s little voices gives me a headache. I want to be a published writer (that actually makes money), but what if I don’t like signing books or talking to Oprah? What can I say? I’m a woman and that automatically makes me as difficult to figure out as a Rubic’s Cube.

Since I’ve somehow melded Oprah with my writing career, it’s obvious I dream big but I’ve also never had big dream come true so it seems like a fruitless want. My son’s big dream is to be a football player, he’s also dreamed of being a chef and an animal doctor. I have another son who dreams of being rich so that he can drive a cool car. My daughter wants to be a princess but I don’t have the heart to tell her how few monarchies still exist or how strongly I oppose the whole idea of a monarchy. And I recognize how unlikely it is that my children will see all their dreams come true, or if they do come true, how likely it is that the reality won’t look much like the dream. But it doesn’t keep us from dreaming.

I’ve stumbled upon the one thing that we all want. We all want the dream and the freedom to work toward it. Maybe that’s what makes the rest of the world so crazy mad at the free world—we have the one thing they want.

Life in Barbie's Dream House

My daughter and I sat down to play Barbie dolls. This is her current favorite thing to do and, as with most carpet play, let’s just say that I can think of hundreds of things I’d rather be doing. But, occasionally the mom guilt kicks in and I get down on my knees for some quality time with my daughter. We sit in front of the Dream House, with the elevator that keeps falling to the ground floor, dolls in hand and we play. These play dates generally go something like this. She hands me a doll and she takes a doll, then she proceeds to move through Barbie’s Dream House asking my doll questions like, “let’s go on a picnic, what would you like to eat.” To which I will reply something like, “How about grilled ham and cheese?” My response is almost always greeted by my daughter placing her hands on her hips and correcting me. “Mom, she doesn’t want ham, she wants peanut butter and jelly.” Play continues pretty much along these same lines until I get tired of being told exactly what my doll should say and what she should wear. In Barbie’s Dream House there is no room for improvisation, there is only my daughter’s script to be played out precisely.


Actually, I know how she feels. Control in life is very important. Without it we can feel lost and directionless. She has looked at the dream house, planned her day and she’ll be darned if I’m going to foul it up with grilled ham when her vision called for peanut butter. I felt this way not that many years ago as I was working my way through high school (okay, so it’s been many years but I digress.) My life had a plan and I was excited about it. I was doing what I had to do to keep it on script. Good grades, admission to my college of choice, and moving out on my own. I’d even planned it all out to the point where I would meet a successful man, marry, have perfect children and the perfect life. At first it seemed like my perfect plans would work, but anyone over the age of thirty knows that perfect plans are a fantasy and rank right up there with growing wings so that we can fly.

I could fill notebooks with the things that in my life that went off script—far off script. And, if you’re ever a fly on the wall around any group of women you’ll quickly learn that everyone’s life has run off track at one point or another. We never plan for the hard stuff and yet, we all go through it. Experiences vary but they all seem to include some event that really throws life into the spin cycle. No one plans to go through foreclosure, a divorce, wayward children, job loss, or serious illness but those experiences are sadly common. We don’t plan to be lonely, unhappy or overworked. But these events dramatically change life in the Dream House.

I never planned to be a working mom. I wanted to be capable and educated and the mother to lots of kids, but I wanted to be home where I believed that I could best influence and guide them. My reality was lots of years struggling with even having children, followed by financial difficulty. I then made the difficult choice to go to work and to entrust large parts of children’s days to caregivers and teachers. But this sequence of events doesn’t tell the entire story.

I’m actually happy that life forced me to make the decision to go to work. While I still work very hard to be a good mom, I honestly believe that I’m a better mom because I work. Small children drain me. I’m not good at playtime, and I have a tendency to lose my personality when faced with long weekends of my kids bickering and asking for things from me. The women at daycare don’t have this character flaw. They seem enraptured when a child tells them about how they lost their tooth—even if it’s the fourth story today. And I can be just as enraptured by that same story from one of my children because, when I get home from a long day at work, I crave time with them. So, my kids have my undivided attention in the hours I’m home and I think that is better for my children than the frazzled mom they would have had if my life had gone according to my plans. This new path has also made me realize that I like my work and I like the fact that it makes me feel capable and gives me some recognition that is sadly lacking for stay-at-home moms. My husband and I have more to talk about on our date nights than just the children because of my exposure to the professional working world, although our children are still our favorite topic. Has it been hard? Unbelievably. I didn’t hear their first word and I missed a few performances. Lost teeth came home in plastic bags, and I didn’t get to kiss very many boo-boos but I’ve learned to appreciate the good stuff and I’ve learned to recognize that there is no perfect plan. Every blessing comes with a sacrifice.

Maybe that’s why Barbie’s Dream Home has a faulty elevator—it keeps dropping back down because even a perfect size six with blond hair is going to get knocked down. And in the process, she may see things in a whole new light.

Our financial crisis has been safely averted, and now I choose to work outside my home. I still make plans and I still work toward my goals. They’re important to keep me moving upward, but I now know that life resembles a game of chutes and ladders and that I won’t always be on top and some of my plans will bust, but the ride eventually starts to go back up and the view can be surprisingly beautiful. It’s all about having the courage to uncover your eyes and enjoy the ride—hair-pin turns and all.

Passion and Procrastination

We’re making our end of summer list. That’s the list that we should have made at the first of the summer but we always seem to make the last week of summer of all the things we want to do while we have the time and the weather is still nice. So far it’s going to take a lot of cash, several nights without sleep and a private jet to get everything done in the next week. I doubt we’re going to make it and I’m surprised at how many things we haven’t done since it’s been a fun summer so far.


Faced with Everest sized to-do lists, I wonder why I’m such a procrastinator and how my children are going to fare in the world at large with such a dysfunctional example of how to get things done timely. I blame my profession mostly. As an accountant I’m always facing hard deadlines and I somehow manage to meet them—my left brain running at optimum efficiency. But in my off hours I like to think of myself as a free spirit, capable of creating works of art, playing, daydreaming, and maybe even summoning spirits like Sandra Bullock in Practical Magic (I also want to live in her house on an island, and grow my own herbs.) Apparently I’m schizophrenic. I like to think the people I associate with at work, while wearing my conservative suit and sensible shoes, wouldn’t recognize my weekend persona except for the hard-to-miss head of ridiculously curly hair.

I’m not sure why it’s so important to me to be creative, especially since I’m incredible adept at using my left brain—you’d think that would be enough for me. But creative people are fun and unpredictable, interesting and entertaining. Given that description, who wouldn’t want to be right-brained? Creative types are considered frauds if they operate efficiently in the world at large and rational, controlled, highly professional people are boring and cranky—as my teenage son likes to point out whenever I get mad at him. Boring, but we never out of milk because we were too busy playing to make it to the grocery store and we don’t have to deal with overdraft fees since we actually pay our bills before we buy a great pair of new shoes. Obviously my left-brain wins most of the time, but that doesn’t keep me from trying creative pursuits and fighting against being boring—at least to my kids. Perhaps procrastination isn’t the legacy I’m leaving to my children, maybe it’s passion. Maybe they see me trying to do all these different things, always at the cost of something else, and they see that it’s important to do the things you love. And forgetting to pack a lunch, or wash my car is just a byproduct of trying to live with passion. Because life is short and I’d love try it all, see it all and especially taste it all. But I can’t—no one can. There’s just not enough time.