UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

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2003-08-20 - 7:37 p.m.

WHAT PRICE GLORY?

Allowing children dreams is an important part of raising them. Helping them turn dreams into goals, with work, with persistence, and with practical steps is even more important. I want to support my children and I do support my children. But every once in a while, mere human that I am, I look at what it costs for me and say, �What price glory?�

I now have two children, each with a callback at our local professional children�s theater and not for the same plays. If both get in, I will have an extremely difficult schedule for a month of rehearsals with each of them and then three or four weeks of alternate day improbable schedules with each of them. Two out of nine months of the school year for each of them will require hard work�trying to do demanding rehearsals and keep up with even more demanding school work, including missing several days during performance weeks. For me, it will be four out of nine months that will be improbable.

Mr. Philately will help but it will play havoc with home life. He may get more work hours (or I may) because our offices are near the theater. What we will not have is very many family dinners this year and I will miss those family dinners more than I would have thought. (Not the cooking, of course. I never miss the cooking.)

A better mother might not have such selfish thoughts but I have never aspired to the title of �Best Mom in the World.� I am not a perfectionist. I am content to be a good-enough mother and, with some luck, something more: a good mother. Some self-sacrifice comes with the package. This much self-sacrifice makes me pause.

But I will smile and nod and be excited for the girls. I will help them by reading lines as they prepare for their callbacks. I will support them and I think they know that my daring side and my loving side are really, really excited for them. It�s my practical side that�s sassing�and I think they understand that too.

Perhaps it is not good for children to be too easily self-sacrificing too often. Perhaps it sets them up with unhealthy expectations of others and of relationships. Perhaps I am just justifying myself.

Whatever the situation, if I am being honest, I am holding too thoughts and only one of them is �wonderful.� The other is �what price glory?�

LAST YEAR: no entry�I am not sure why

TWO YEARS AGO: on vacation in Detroit


IN CASE YOU MISSED THEM:
Who IS She?
The Minyan Snatcher
You�ve Come a Long Way, Boys
I Am NOT Frodo
Needing God

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