I was just reading a blog about a mother, recovering from surgery, who felt bad because she didn't have green milk and lucky charms for breakfast on St. Patrick's day this year. Some of the commenters said they try to make their lives revolve around their children, but they can't for too long... I have a hard time relating to this.
I have always felt that the correct analogy for my children is not that I revolve around them like a planet around a sun, but that they are satellites revolving around me. Let me point out first of all that there are 3 of them, and I physically can't revolve around all 3 of them at the same time (unless by a miracle they all want me to do the same thing, which almost never happens...)
They really do seem like my satellites. Luke is like something in low earth orbit, very nearby, practically crowding into my atmosphere. Amanda is further out (perhaps geosynchronous orbit) but well within view. As Eleanor gets older, she's going in to her own worlds, exploring away from me. There are things about her life I don't know, and I shouldn't know, although I try to communicate about the things that are important to me and to her.
My relationship to my own parents is more like a comet: I come around every once in a while, in person 2 or 3 times per year (I wish it were more!) and more often by phone. But I can just imagine the pictures I have seen of the orbits of comets: a long thin orbit, close to the sun for a while, and then flung way out into space for new adventures and independence. I think this picture is much more appropriate for growing children than my forcing myself to revolve around them.
I do admit that I feel especially like a tired planet when Luke, Amanda and Eleanor have been revolving and pulling at me especially hard. Does gravity ever get used up? Perhaps the force holding a 1 year old child to his mother could be exploited as a power source someday... =)
(If you are curious, we had green milk for dinner, but that was because Eleanor climbed up onto the counter and got the green food coloring out of the cabinet (after she got the milk, a cup, and a straw). We are only very tangentially Irish. I remember times growing up when I had no green clothes to wear, even if I had been Irish, because my mom didn't like green, so I decided I didn't like green, so I never got green clothes.)
I have always felt that the correct analogy for my children is not that I revolve around them like a planet around a sun, but that they are satellites revolving around me. Let me point out first of all that there are 3 of them, and I physically can't revolve around all 3 of them at the same time (unless by a miracle they all want me to do the same thing, which almost never happens...)
They really do seem like my satellites. Luke is like something in low earth orbit, very nearby, practically crowding into my atmosphere. Amanda is further out (perhaps geosynchronous orbit) but well within view. As Eleanor gets older, she's going in to her own worlds, exploring away from me. There are things about her life I don't know, and I shouldn't know, although I try to communicate about the things that are important to me and to her.
My relationship to my own parents is more like a comet: I come around every once in a while, in person 2 or 3 times per year (I wish it were more!) and more often by phone. But I can just imagine the pictures I have seen of the orbits of comets: a long thin orbit, close to the sun for a while, and then flung way out into space for new adventures and independence. I think this picture is much more appropriate for growing children than my forcing myself to revolve around them.
I do admit that I feel especially like a tired planet when Luke, Amanda and Eleanor have been revolving and pulling at me especially hard. Does gravity ever get used up? Perhaps the force holding a 1 year old child to his mother could be exploited as a power source someday... =)
(If you are curious, we had green milk for dinner, but that was because Eleanor climbed up onto the counter and got the green food coloring out of the cabinet (after she got the milk, a cup, and a straw). We are only very tangentially Irish. I remember times growing up when I had no green clothes to wear, even if I had been Irish, because my mom didn't like green, so I decided I didn't like green, so I never got green clothes.)
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BTW, we were Scots-Irish, which meant militantly protestant, which meant my mother encouraged us to wear orange on St. Patrick's Day. I kid you not.