Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Giant Step*

A couple of weeks ago, I was waiting for my turn to step off a platform and ride in a harness that, if all had been checked and re-checked correctly, would safely carry me down most of the length of a cable. Peering down from that platform had already caused a young kid to turn away & go back down the stairs, someone's small boy who probably shouldn't have been trussed up to go in the first place, but I was an adult who was game. Like my granddaddy before me who had faith in human engineering, I, too, had that faith, as well as the need to get that rush I'd always craved from roller coasters - which I haven't been near in a long time. The closest opportunity was this zipline at a campsite outside Waco, and I was taking it.

I somehow recall being told to lean forward when stepping off the platform, which, for an incredibly long second, was scary as all hell. I felt like I wasn't harnessed for that second, the only thing between me and the ground being a rope attached to casters that I was supposed to hold onto for dear life lest I plummet five stories to the grass below. I'm not quite sure how I overcame that second, but I did. The ride was over far too soon, the line of harnessed adults and kids too forbiddingly long to wait in again. It wasn't 'til later when I realized I was probably the only mom to venture up there.

It turned out I wasn't the only mom to zipline...I was one of two moms to do it out of nearly fifty at the family camp weekend. Yes, it helped that we two were parents of kids who didn't need loads of supervision, but the reaction I got from one or two other moms was mild shock at my foolhardiness. "How could you do that?" I was asked. Well, I just...did it. As did, in many cases, these moms' husbands and children. For most of these moms, though, it wasn't happening. Which made me wonder: did adventurous natures lack in the moms from their very girlhoods, or did having children make them more cautious?

I shouldn't put ziplining and riding roller coasters as the adventurism bar here, though it's tempting. There are other ways to be adventurous, stuff that I'd probably turn around and ask, "how could you do that?" about. Once upon a time, having children was one of those things - on occasion, when people ask me why I don't have more than one kid, I still wonder how anyone can do as my sister-in-law and some others I've met have done and still make their way amidst the kid fray in their own households (cheaper by the dozen, my tuchus). I've been acquainted with roller derby moms, horseback riding moms, moms who get on Jet Skis regularly, and moms who can be parents and still hold down full-time jobs - the latter being something I felt made no economic sense for me to do once I had my son over a decade ago.

These days, though, as I look for something more full-time outside the home, I wonder if I shouldn't have pooh-poohed those who thought I was letting feminism down with my decision to be in the home and occasionally part-timing it when I could. It's not like I was raised to see homemaking as a life goal - I was raised to see career goals and, more specifically, financial independence as being the bedrocks on which I had to raise myself up and then do what I wanted. Having a brother who was nearly fifteen years younger than I cemented the idea I had that I didn't want to have anything to do with children, much less have my own. Kids were messy, demanding, draining crapshoots who sprawled in the way of my dreams of being an artist, throwing tantrums in the face of those goals. Plus, I knew I'd been a difficult kid in many ways, a trial to my family for a long time. Perpetuating such a cycle was furthest from my mind...until I got burned out working myself to the bone as a glassblower and then I followed my husband to a new job, ill from morning sickness in those first few months in a new city.

I now fill out applications online for all sorts of jobs, many of them in retail, some of which I get rejected for via email nearly right off the bat (although I really should go over and schmooze more), and maintain an existence as a bit of a pinch hitter housework-wise - I feed a Twitter addiction, read voraciously, and putter between bursts of doing laundry, nagging my son to do his homework and not take so many damned "breaks" (yet another thing I never wanted to do, but here I am...), doing lots of yard work, cooking, and running vacuums and mops every so often. Because most of this is not bringing in any money, I still feel useless - because who knows what will happen down the line, how much longer I'll be part of a couple or if my spouse can be relied upon to keep up his breadwinning ways? Those thoughts are the ones that have me trying to get a come-from-behind-the family start on something that will keep us cushioned should any of the worst befall us.

I remain suspended in this incredibly long second that has lasted more than a decade, waiting, holding on to this caster'd rope for dear life, because there is no harness. I have no clue what will happen if I fall...hell, I can't even see the bottom, don't even know if there is one. I just want to take a chance off this domestic platform. One step. One good, strong step.

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*Soundtrack for this post consists of this song and this one.

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