Too much swimming through my mind… where would I even start? (a cynical part of my mind is simultaneously quipping that it’s like a chocoholic slapping both cheeks and gasping with joy at the sight of a mini chocolate chip set before them as dessert, and saying, “I just don’t know what bite to take first!”)
I’m having a day of small-mindedness. Realizing the smallness of me, of my family, my ideals, and smaller still are my problems. I’m grateful, that’s not a complaint, but I don’t know how to be an attentive captain of my own life in the somewhat self-absorbed way that that requires while also maintaining a broad enough mind and perspective to grasp what’s happening around me, in my community, my state, my country, and in my world. And in spite of how well I’ve lived until now with my head buried in a hole, I have resolved to try and be a better neighbor, a better world community member, and a better mother by increasing my knowledge and awareness of world events, and these past few days seem earth-shaking enough to have probably pulled some people’s heads out of the sand even before they were ready – and I might have thought I was ready, but am I?
My daughter’s friend was supposed to leave this past week for Iran – she’s from there and she was to spend most of the summer there. I say, “was supposed to”, and that gives this false sense of hope, the same that I was kindling, that perhaps her trip might have been cancelled or at the very least postponed, but from my daughter’s attempts to call the girl’s house, we think she went ahead and went on the trip anyway.
How much worry is warranted? How do I accurately represent current events in Iran to a 10-year-old without causing her undue alarm and also without downplaying these as events to pretend that they are less significant than I truly believe they are? I don’t know these answers, and it’s another piece of my feeling (or is it recognizing?) the smallness of my mind.
Locally, I’ve been following news on Ms. UsedToBeMs.California Prejean and on Schwarzenegger and the California biggestbungledbudgetdebacle. To put Ms. Prejean in context so far as the past year here in California, ideally I think that kids come up with questions regarding homosexuality when they’re ready - along the way, I’ve acknowledged that there are homosexual relationships and people, so it won’t come as a complete shock or news, but there hasn’t been much of a need to put a fine point on it since we happen to be a thus-far heterosexual family in a predominantly heterosexual neighborhood. HOWEVER, when proponents of Prop 8, under the auspices of protecting children, used public schools and the children to execute and exact their arguments for state laws to enforce their own anti-gay marriage beliefs, it unforunately put public schools in a position of having to step into the argument simply to clarify that the accusations being made (that if prop 8 failed it would be mandatory to teach gay marriage to kindergarteners – seriously, this is one of the starkest versions of the argument made, but all different varieties of this argument rang from televisions, radios, and newspapers quoting staunch prop 8 advocates). From what I saw, it ostracized a very small minority, the few homosexual families who up until the proposition had been un-self consciously getting along with other parents and neighbors and school officials, only to wake up one day to fields and boulevards planted chock full of Vote Yes On Prop 8 signs – as well as sides of houses, bumper stickers, and loud conversations on school grounds. Clearly I have a point of view myself, and clearly it is not The Point Of View nor was it The Winning Point Of View, but since I have literate children who have been ducking amidst the crossfire I’ve tried to state as clearly as I can that there are Alternate Points of View, and that most people in our family also have a Point of View, and to explain to them why it has caused such a hullaballoo. Just when that was being put to rest, Ms. Prejean went and stumbled into politics herself – and from my biased outsider perspective, what seemed to happen was a lot of politics, a lot of polarization over an issue, some scapegoats & fun with animals in general, culminating in a dethroned, but godly & righteous, former-Ms.California Prejean who seemed to be using the controversy to obscure her apathetic-seeming work ethic & lack of follow-through. Again, news that I ended up trying to digest and regurgitate in an age-appropriate manner to my daughter who was marvelling at a beauty queen parading across newspaper headlines, tearing rainbow flags down as she went.
And how on earth am I supposed to give an unbiased account of Schwarzenegger’s state budgeting abilities? To inform my daughter that state parks are being put on the chopping block because until now he’d been relying on pillaging & plundering slushy & not-so-slushy parts of school budgets to balance the budget for the state? That this was his encore performance to taking away funding for the Gifted and Talented Education program and that yes, he’s probably a LOT of the reason why she’s been requesting to be home-schooled, as the schools have emphasized their budget crisis, their limited funds, the children taught there overhear this, but also they witness the atrophy of their own educations and they see science become extinct, they hear the silence as music fades into the past, and their thoughts are garbled by the din of their overcrowded classrooms – and this in one of the top-ranked public schools in California.
I know when the task before me is impossible, and I couldn’t provide my daughter with the arguments in favor of the decisions he’d made. I gave in and simply suggested a letter writing campaign.
That, on top of graduation parties, ex-spouse visits, an almost alarming-right-out-in-the-open pants wetting by my 7 year old, and then the few days that I spent completely convinced I was preggo, even with what looked like lines on some of those IC HPT’s, and a positive OPK… now a couple days later I’m saddled with what feel like PMS-cramps, but a day late, …I guess I’ve expanded my focus beyond my microscopic self so that I can give my obsessing and worrying a break and broaden my horizons? I’m not sure.
Of course this has been written while I’ve been intermittently getting my “real” work done, so I’ve glossed over the philosophical spiral I fell down when contemplating public vs. private education, intellect, and intelligence earlier – but I guess that can be saved for another post on another day.
