The Birch Aquarium is a few miles from our house but we hadn’t been
up there until a few weeks ago when David and I met a friend of
Jake’s wife and her children. When Jake’s mom came to visit a week
later, I suggested we go back there since David liked it so much. One
of the rooms in the aquarium shows fish that blend in perfectly with
their environment and use camouflage not to become prey. I love sea
horses but I had never seen these little creatures before. These sea
dragons must come from the same family as sea horses since their
faces look so similar. I know this isn’t fantastic photography but I
thought the little fish was sort of neat and I haven’t been out
photographing for so long that I snapped a shot of it.
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Anyone who’s seen David and Jake quickly exclaims that David is an He’s one of the happiest kids I’ve ever seen. All you have to do to Lest you think he hasn’t got any of my genes, I was sitting at my That he got from me. Almost a month ago, David turned one. While it was relatively I spent the last year also worrying. What did I know about being a There are no words for the amount of joy he has brought into our I forgot how much time it takes to tweak this site. I’ve spent the So I am trying to find a way to allow me to post more frequently and I am in a constant state of flux on what to do about this site. This May, I will have been writing on and off for six years. For the first three or four years, I did write consistently and I looked forward to coming home and writing down my thoughts and feelings. Some days it was an effort but most days it really wasn’t. I still regularly go back to those posts and reread them so I am really glad they’re there. Not to mention all the photos I’ve accumulated over the years. They are all fantastic records of those years. Since I stopped working at the investment bank, it seems I haven’t really written consistently. I had a bout of consistent photo posting but even that came to an end with David’s birth. But then I can’t get myself to do it. This feels like a part of me. Something I poured so much of myself into. Something I can’t seem to let go. So I sit here, frustrated and unsure and tired of going back an forth. I most likely will make yet another set of changes to see if I can make it more enticing, easier for me to update more regularly. And if that doesn’t work either, well we’ll get there when we get there I guess. I am sick and tired of reading/hearing how parents feel like their kids owe them things. I understand that different people have differing points of view and all are valid. Well, this is my space so here goes nothing. Kids don’t ask to be created. Having a baby is something people decide to do (or accidentally fall into in some cases but we’re going to ignore those cases for today’s point) and people try to set up their lives as much as possible to accommodate this new being. Having a baby is hard work, bringing it up is even harder. I am only at the very beginning of it and I can already admit it’s very very hard at times. And he hasn’t even come close to being a teenager yet. By no means, do I feel the need to belittle the amount of work, emotion, money, and sacrifice that goes into raising a human being. However, I feel like parents lose sight of the fact that this was completely their own decision. You had this baby because you wanted to. You fed and clothed and educated him/her because it was your obligation as a parent since this being that you decided to bring into this world would be helpless without you. Since you chose to create this person, I believe it’s your responsibility and duty to see it all the way through. Then, if the now grownup decides to “pay you back” by taking care of you and wanting to be with you, that’s great. But I don’t feel like that’s the kid’s duty. I feel like it’s my duty as a parent to raise my child such that he can learn to take care of himself and be the kind of parent that he’ll want to be around.
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, “Speak to us of Children.” And he said:
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable. I know many parents wish the best for their kids and tell themselves that all the things they don’t allow them to do or tell them to do are for the kid’s best interest. But the desire to control one’s children seems too enticing. It seems so overwhelming that everyone does it. Even when the kid has kids of his/her own. The parents still have expectations and still try not to let go. It’s been a relatively long week and hence the lack of updates. Even though I’ve had nothing urgent or critical to do, I’ve felt remotely annoyed and stressed out all week. Normally, I’d look forward to the weekend to get some rest but I have two shoots this weekend, which generally means I’ll be working my ass off and before I know it, it will be Monday again. And, as opposed to most normal companies, my place of business does not feel MLK day is an important enough holiday to observe. Good Friday? yes, absolutely. MLK day – no fucking way. Thanks to the generous number of replies to my askme thread, I checked out twelve new books from the library. I gather some of them should be good. David has also generously lent me one so I am hoping I am set at least for the next few weeks. I am still in the blah zone for books, and feeling like there’s too much mediocrity there compared to excellence but I guess that’s the case by definition isn’t it? One of the comments Jake’s brother made at our wedding was about Jake’s tendency to obsess about things. He mentioned how he had a thing for remote control cars. And then he had a thing for something else and he’d obsess about that endlessly. We all laughed at the time, mostly because it was so true. Jake does obsess about things and delve into them wholeheartedly. So much so that it’s as if nothing else exists. He gets to be a complete expert on that particular thing. And then he moves on to the next. Cars, comic books, computers. While this is definitely true about Jake, I’ve been noticing that it’s slightly true about me, too. I spent five years trying to write novels and short stories. I studied Japanese non-stop for six months and then continued regularly for two more years. I learned to knit and knit anything I could get my hands on. I picked up wire jewelry and made earrings I never wore. I picked up photography and that particular obsession took me all the way to starting a small business. I have always been more breadth oriented than depth, but I still find myself obsessing about things. I find that the initial excitement of learning something new is so intoxicating that I momentarily become unable to think about anything else. I am wondering whether this is a trait particular to people like Jake and me or does everyone experience it to a certain extent. Are we crazy obsessive people or is it just human nature? Does your brain actually secrete something different when you have a new experience or learn something different? I hope so, cause that way makes me sounds a lot less crazy.
Even with my foreigner naivete, I had some fantastic friends in college. People I really respected and loved. People I looked up to. People who inspired me. People who made me laugh for hours. Some of them, I have been able to keep in touch with. With others, I have sadly lost connection. Every few years, something strikes me and I go searching for my old friends. Sometimes my emails are met with pleasant surprise and sometimes they think I am a freak who needs to move on.
My main goal for this year is to be more patient and pleasant. I want to be kinder and more about others. I want to listen more closely. Most importantly I want to remember that my “list of things to do” is often crap. It’s stuff that doesn’t matter and such I shouldn’t stress about completing it over being with my family or keeping in touch with friends. I find that I often prefer to stay at home and do my list of items over hanging out with friends or taking a walk with David. Like other “busy” people, I have a hard time keeping up with my emails and staying in touch with my friends. I want that to change this year. Living here, I’ve learned the importance of good friends and I don’t want to lose touch with the people who mean the most to me just because I am posting on my site or scrapbooking David’s first year. These things are not worth falling out of touch with friends. I want to work on judging myself less. It’s okay if I am not the best programmer, photographer, mother, wife, or the prettiest woman. Things that make me who I am are unique and they are perfectly fine. I know this sounds like a self-help section but I really have trouble keeping track of what matters sometimes. I often worry that I will be exposed for the fake that I am and will lose my job or the clients will ask for their money back. I didn’t study years of photography after all. I wasn’t a CS major at school, just a simple IS one. I get frustrated with my husband at times and I don’t play with my son enough. I need to lose weight. I have a huge nose and sunken eyes. These are all true. They are facts I try not to stress about but often dwell on at length. I want 2006 to be the beginning of the new me, who dwells less, appreciates more and takes action when possible and necessary. I want to get influenced by others less often. Things that people say get to me. Someone’s off-hand remark may kill my already low self-image. Someone’s look can cause me to feel small. Even someone’s lack of words can have a negative effect on me. I am too affected by other people’s opinions of me. Or my skewed notion of their opinions of me. I take all the bad to heart and gloss over the good. I want 2006 to be the beginning of the me that realizes people are allowed to have their opinions but it doesn’t mean their opinions are worth more than mine, especially when they are about me. As a friend of mine told me years ago, it’s the person staring back at the mirror that counts the most. I know it sounds cheesy but, to me, it’s important to remember it, so I am writing it down. Most importantly, I want to be more open, honest, caring, and patient. I want to look, listen, digest it all. I want to take fewer photos but with more meaning. I want to read fewer books but with more substance. Do fewer things but enjoy them more. Really live. So I can be calmer and wiser. I want to be a good example for my son. I was much happier in 2005 than I’ve ever been in my life. I had really hard and terrible moments but deep inside, I feel happy and content on many levels. I know that was David’s present to me. And I want my present to him in 2006, to be a more grounded and confident mother. I figure the last day of the year is an appropriate time to look back and reflect. And we can save the resolutions for the first day of the year. Here’s to a year of not drinking Diet Coke. That, in itself, is a huge accomplishment for me. Just wanted to make sure that didn’t go unacknowledged. So February brought home our little one. March and April passed like a blur as I figured out how to get David to nurse properly and how to balance my job and my new life. Spring brought new friends thanks to a mom’s group. My first group of friends in San Diego. David didn’t really like to sleep so we took a lot of walks and read. Jake started preparing the paperwork to finally open his fund. He talked to lawyers, auditors, accountants. The second set of big changes came in August as Jake formally opened his doors and I decided to start a small business of my own. This meant much more driving for me and I was lucky that the small venture prospered very quickly. David grew up and became even more fun to be around. We all worked and worked some more. He finally figured out how to sleep through the night and forgot about it all over again when the teeth started peeking out. He looked like he was never going to crawl and just when we thought he’d walk instead, he tricked us and started crawling overnight. As the year came to a close, Jake and I finally fell into a groove and we have figured out how to achieve some sort of balance with our new family setup. I don’t know what 2006 is going to bring us but I imagine it won’t be as substantial as 2005. Having a baby and starting two businesses is enough activity for several years if you ask me. All I want next year it for us to keep being healthy, for our businesses to be successful (especially Jake’s) and for the year to bring a lot of laughter. So here’s to a quiet, peaceful, healthy, happy, and prosperous 2006! |
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