I've been in a bit of a funk the past few days-angry and resentful-about everything. I know its due, in part, to a sugar binge I've been on...it started with the dark chocolate-with-sea salt bar we got in the store last Friday. It's an incredible combination, and it has quickly shot to the top of the chocolate heap. We sample it and recruit followers. It's easy-sugar is a drug-a powerful and provacative drug.
So, anyway, I have been in a sugar-induced funk, and this morning, amidst the breakfast-fixing and lunch-packing, I was also chopping cheese to send with each of my three children to school for their Valentine's Day parties. I was cutting quickly, and intensely, telling myself that in 40 minutes they would all be gone and I would have four hours to myself...just be nice for 40 more minutes.
My oldest daughter said, "you are really good at chopping cheese." This comment transports me back fifteen years, to college, when I worked at a little cheese shoppe in downtown Lawrence. I managed a 10-foot international cheese case full of cheeses from all over the world. I cut and wrapped, and gave samples, and made the most terrific sandwiches in the world. I tell my daughter the story of working there...how great my sandwiches were, and that I had a group of regulars that only wanted sandwiches made by me, that I used to walk there from my apartment to serve the lunch rush.
The conversation steeps me in shame, and longing, and grief, and I desire the pungent smell of that cheese shoppe so much at that moment, I didn't know if I can continue with my morning responsibilites. The shame, by the way, is because I didn't appreciate the freedom I had-how could I have known that phase of my life was the pinnacle of freedom I have experienced to date? Unattached, almost a graduate, with absolutely no idea what would happen next, and not caring that I didn't know. Bliss. Now I know that was bliss. The grief, by the way, is because that girl is dead and gone, and lost to me.
One might think that my life is no good, because I am sitting here crying as I write, for a carefree past existence, but that is not the case. I am living the life little girls dream of-only better. All the parts of the perfect life are in order-great husband, three exceptional children, an exciting, successful business that I so enjoy, a custom-built house on twenty wooded acres, good health and friends and family...why it all feels like a brick upside my head today, I don't know. I hope its the sugar. I'm sure its the sugar, it messes up my thinking, and makes me obsessed with What If's...
What if I didn't have kids? I'm just positive and convinced I'd be famous for something by now. I'm bursting with selfish, explosive, creative energy that bounces around my brain looking for a path, and here I am with three kids to worry about! I'd be on my fourth best-selling novel, or my third knock-out screenplay, or finishing a one-of-a-kind photography collection that would be voted Best Coffee Table Book of the Decade..something like that. I'm mad with childless people that don't produce great works. What is stopping them?
That is my fantasy-a fallacy, I know. If I didn't, or couldn't, have kids I would spend my life (as star-studded as it may be) with a deep sense of unfulfillment, and probably, I wouldn't be half the person I am today. With three sets of eyes on me constantly, I am, more often than not, on very good behavior-a role model-a vision of what I hope they will be, at least in some basic way. I had a very good mother, and I place a gargantuous amount of importance on the job. I have to do it well, it's too important not to. I created these people, and I will do right by them. I love doing it, mostly, and I tell myself that I will live-long and prosper-personally at a later date...that if I send these three out into the world with a start I can be proud of, that unfathomable rewards will come.
Ahh, my spirit is lifting. It's all going to be okay, as long as I appreciate what I have, right now today. I am going off the white stuff though. I gobbled-up all the Valentine's cookies that the babysitter left us, and there is a little bit of that chocolate sea salt bar left, so that could be a problem, but I wont' buy anymore. I have three Valentines parties to attend this afternoon, that will be laden with sweets (hopefully yucky Wal-Mart sweets that I have no desire for, I only eat the good stuff) and I am going to a fancy dinner-out tomorrow for the holiday...will I be able to resist the dessert? Hmm, maybe I should quit sugar on Monday. Yeah, I'll start on Monday.
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