Just another uncomfortable silence as the last of the kids finally left for the day and I’m alone with my thoughts. The boys are at work; Avery is off to a meeting and work as well. We were just in the kitchen, she making her lunch and me making sandwich rolls and chocolate cake for dinner tonight, each of us so alike in the way we make our messes.
She just launched her thrift shop online, is continuing volunteer work with a group that encourages young voters, and is full of ideas to save the world. She is majoring in international relations and wants to become an advocate for women.
As we talked together, I told her we really aren’t that different. She disagrees. Which leads me to feel rejected. I told her I was very much like her as a teenager, I joined amnesty international, I wore shirts with slogans about saving the whales and the oceans, we collected cans and newspaper to earn money for our school, we were uptight with our water usage, my grandma was a stickler about recycling, and my favorite class was oceanography. I've always had an affinity for nature, have a soft heart for those less fortunate and am intrigued by documentaries and books about the environment and the poor, wishing there was more I could do. I wasn’t anywhere as well-read or as aware as she is, and I didn’t know much about the causes I was trying to benefit, but I bought the shirt to help Bosnia and ran the booth to send care packages to our servicemen in college anyway. I did the tiniest bits I could think of to assist. It wasn’t much, but I felt drawn to these people and causes that tugged at my heart.
I tried to explain that just because I’ve never been to a rally or a protest or a sit-in doesn’t mean I don’t care about the world or that I’m not trying to make a difference. Not at all. But I know she doesn’t believe that my efforts are the same or as valiant as those who are more prominent or vocal.
I apologize to myself and to the world. I am not as confident in showing up in a big way and am much more timid when it comes to putting myself out there. The news makes me nervous, it honestly hurts my stomach and almost paralyzes me. When I read a book or story or hear a clip about the pains and suffering, my own life seems beyond pointless. It is difficult to muster up the strength to clean a bathroom or shop for more food when so much of the world is impoverished, starving and homeless. Why all this luxury, for what? And so it has the opposite effect on me than it does on Avery. It propels her to action, it gives her fighting energy. It only makes me sad, despondent and overwhelmed with hopelessness. I feel immense visceral guilt for the life I have. Which makes me feel completely useless.
And so I have tended to the causes and people that I've personally felt led to instead. I’ll never be a leader type; I can’t imagine being front and center of anything. I don’t feel pulled to travel to other countries or even to large demonstrations. But for as long as I’ve known myself, I’ve felt a desire to help closer to home in small, nearly imperceptible, ways.
But is it any less noble to notice the one? To visit the ladies who live alone or in a home that isn’t their own? Was it helpful at all to read to the blind, recording textbooks in a small quiet library room to a tape recorder for friends I’d never meet? Does it make a difference to send letters and notes and prayers and love across the miles even to strangers I’ll never meet?
A friend asked me just yesterday what I do all day. I think I hate that question. Because I feel like I have to validate how I use my time, to prove that I’m making worthwhile choices, that I am somehow contributing. I told her the basics, where I volunteer, that we’re remodeling our house so I paint and do a lot of yard/housework. I tend to the housekeeping of course and I cook a lot. But nope, I don’t have a podcast, I’ve never taken a humanitarian trip or served a mission. I refuse to be on the school board or go door to door to encourage the bond vote. Just thinking about any of that gives me great anxiety.
So I try to tell Avery that even though it doesn’t look like much at all from her vantage point, the greatest success in life is never out there. It is here. Who cares about all the work you do across the oceans or continents if your own family is falling apart? I tell her all the time this is a small recess for me, just a few short years that I want to devote myself to this cause. I guess people can see it as a sacrifice of my own career, that I’ve given up myself and my potential to mop floors and cook dinners, that I’m not as valuable as those who have careers or organizations they’re growing because I’m just a mom. I tell her over and over that this is temporary. I have decades to do whatever I want. But that this is the most important, influential work I’ll ever do in my life regardless of what else I choose to fill my time with later on.
The greatest, most powerful institution and organizational unit in the world is the family. Without question. Why would I not insist on putting my best energies here? I have just five kids. The most valuable thing I have done with my time—in all my lifetime—is to be present for them. To teach them. To answer them. To guide them. To explain to them. To read to them. There is no greater feeling than seeing them all take off, independent, confident, able, secure, and ready. To have played the tiniest role in their growth overrides any sense of accomplishment anywhere else.
And I have just four more years with kids at home. Only four. I know they don’t require me in the traditional way toddlers do, but I believe teenagers still need parental influence and presence. I’m content and honored with the work I do, both at home and in the slightest ways I can share joy with those around me with.
But I feel like I’ve not lived up to the role model Avery has wanted, and she surely doesn’t intend to waste her life the way I have. I refer her to so many of my women friends who are doing exceptional work in the community and the world. They are enthusiastically engaged in their causes, and their personalities are much more like hers. My personality is simply and innately more reserved. Maybe I’ve done her a disservice by not exposing her to more of these amazing women.
But I also wonder if she’s ever considered where she got the ideas she has or how she has been able to develop her passions. It's possible her home life contributed in a small way to her open-mindedness and care for the environment and empathy for the less fortunate by our conversations and what we value, what we watch and what we read and what publications we subscribe to. But just because some choose a quieter path, those contributions can still have merit. There is a place for those of us who are doing work on an individual level close to home as well as those who want to engage in larger, more public platforms.
I guess I just wish she could see that we’re not all that different in how we view the world. There is some of me in her, absolutely. I just didn’t have the confidence and drive she does at such a young age, nor the personality, to act on my inclinations. She is funny though, I’ve been talking about the plastic packaging of body wash for years now and have tried to convince her of the merits of bar soap; she thought it was too gross. But just the other day she came home, proud of her newly purchased soap. She is also a converted thrift shopper, something I’ve been advocating for years as well. I was also amused that she took an apple for her snack today and wrapped it in a cloth napkin. Just as I did the very day before. I just finished a documentary on the chemicals in our environment, forwarded her one about ranchers becoming vegetarians, and am in the middle of one about the period movement in India. I don’t think our interests—or hearts and desires—are that different.
She inspires me, no doubt, and I see the incredible impact her life will have on the world. But she saddens me also. Because I feel, in her eyes, that I’m not enough, that I’ve somehow let her down by not being bolder in my activism, that I’ve resigned myself to only showing up as a mom. It grieves me most of all that I haven’t been successful in convincing her how impactful such an advocate at home can be. But I have a feeling we will continue to learn from each other through the years. Maybe she will understand, as she becomes a mother herself someday, where I was coming from and why I felt so strongly about spending so much of my time and energy on my family while I had kids at home. And I know her zeal for aiding those who are troubled has already stirred my thinking and I’m anxious to follow her lead and broaden my sphere of influence just a little more in the upcoming years. I just don't think we're as different as she thinks in how we see the world.
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