My father said that when his father died, my dad suddenly had a new and immediate relationship with his own mortality.
It was as though all my dad's life, his father had stood between my dad and the Grim Reaper.
Somehow, even well into adulthood, our parents remain the Giants that we feared and revered all those years ago when we were small. Somehow, we still are small in their presence.
Somehow, embarrassingly, almost shamefully, there is comfort in that.
Like the smug sense of false security when speeding just behind a motorist who is speeding faster than you: surely he will be caught and I will escape because... he is ahead of me.
But this is not so.
Every once in a while, the siren wails for the car behind. And whether there be Giants ahead or between, be we ever so small, we are always seen.
Live with joy. Know that this moment is all that is certain; fill it.
So I went to a baby shower yesterday.
This is a ritual in our culture. Generally, these affairs are all-female events. The women, the carriers of the mitochondrial DNA, the daughters of Eve, gather to shower one of their number with abundance for the new life to come.
It is a useful ritual. I had a couple myself.
Like all rituals, these have an expected format. First, the in-gathering: women from different areas of the chosen one's life gather, meet and mingle. Each brings a gift deposited on a table or in a corner designated to receive the offerings.
Games are announced: for each package of diapers, a woman receives a ticket for a drawing. A giant baby bottle is passed around filled with jelly beans; we are each to guess how many.
Finally, a diaper pin rests on each placemat. Each woman is to put on her diaper pin. Each is to listen to hear when any one says the four letter word: BABY. If you hear this word, you win the speaker's pin, and any other pins she has collected.
She who wears the most pins at the end wins.
Then there is food: line up for cut up veggies, chicken, macaroni and cheese, Swedish meatballs. Later, there is a cake in impossible pastel shades.
Winners are drawn for the diaper lottery. The winner is announced in the bean-counting. The diaper-pin wearing, non-BABY-saying winner is not announced yet: save this for the end, when all have had plenty of chances to say the WORD.
The pinnacle... or at least, the POINT of the ritual takes the longest. This is the unwrapping of, displaying of, and cooing over of each and every gift.
How many ways can you say cute or soft?
I understand the utility of the ritual. Still, I was struck by the materialism, the consumerism.
The lost opportunities. Here is a gathering of women, at a moment of power. Rather than recognizing and celebrating the awesome creative power that moves through us, we squeal and giggle and nibble and niggle.
The baby this shower welcomed is known to be a girl. Pink and lavender colors washed over and through the gifts.
There was no strength here -- and there should be.
I really don't know how people do it.
I know that I am not the only one.
So many, many people are over-extended.
Working full time at a job. Working full time at a relationship. Working full time at a family. Continuing life long learning.
Working hard at playing! Working hard at relaxing!
As if!
Currently, I am teaching Sundays (2nd grade Hebrew and Jewish Theater), Mondays (undergraduate class in Intro to Theater), Tuesdays and Thursdays (3rd grade Hebrew). I am teaching/directing Mon-Fri for an hour a day (a Shakespearean production with 7th and 8th graders) and directing my youth theater troupe on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.
Saturdays are usually taken up with social obligations. See, it says "obligation" and it does feel more like an obligation than a day off.
So, how do people manage? I am eagerly awaiting the opening of the show in a few weeks, to relieve my Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday evenings.
Looking forward still more to January and the end of the Monday through Friday commitment.
How do people manage?
On top of this I am working on a relationship, a family, serving on a board, trying to participate in a religious community.
I feel stressed, struggling and sometimes desperate.
And guilty.
Because I'm not even "full-time" at anything.
And because my house is a mess.
How do other people manage? Full time jobs, families AND a clean and orderly house?
