Planning for War

Strategizing for life and happiness is very similar to the methods for winning a war. Strategy is the key component for both planned and spontaneous moments taking us from one point to another. We were having breakfast at the Family Diner just this past Sunday and I overheard a family who seemed to be in the midst of an intervention for their niece, a heroine addict. The tone of their conversation was very encouraging. When asked what her thoughts were for her future, she replied that she believed that everything happens for a reason. The fact that a friend contacted her out of the blue and referred an open job at the local factory felt preordained. The timing and unexpected nature of the opportunity colored it fate in her mind. Calling it all fate was the best, only acceptable way she could cope with the reality of her own poor decisions. In her uncle's attempt to agree with her in order to keep the positivity flowing, he failed to contribute any real wisdom. Her grandfather, a shrunken man over age 80, shook his head and muttered an indecipherable comment. The uncle interpreted it to mean that in grandpa's day, the ideal situation would have been for her to find a nice man to marry and pay her bills. In truth, I believe the 80 year old man probably meant more than this and wanted to give real pearls of wisdom but was paralyzed by the tragedy and apprehensive hope that his granddaughter could escape the drug world and survive the next 20 years being self sufficient. In any case, this last weekend took on a tone of desperation of someone at the brink of loosing total control over her circumstances.

I was visiting with a girlfriend of mine this last week on a play date with our two baby bears. Like all new mothers, it was a matter of time before her bubble of self expectation would burst and she become exposed to her new uncontrolled reality. I've read articles in several parenting magazines that exposed this bubble. Our post baby life is so incongruous with our pre-baby life that all our prior experiences become inapplicable. All of a sudden, it's a lot of chaos. The chaos in fact that never ceases to end. The hardest part is being able to see beyond the fog of self denial and witness the clear picture that we are in the process of changing identity. No one has made the comparison that becoming a parent is like the process of a worm molting into a butterfly. You are no longer your prior self in physical form, though your spirit remains the same but changed. The goal is to regroup and reorient. The goal is to form new goals and get rid of old ones that no longer work.

What's most difficult for us Kohler-Designer moms is the fact that we're not from around here. There is no family support. We're all on our own. Our husbands are the main bread winners and they work at Kohler, one of the most demanding companies ever to exist. Therefore, if we are to succeed in making this picture work we must identify, strategize and attack.

My friend and I talked about our own respective future plans as parents. Possible second babies in near future. How to hasten our husband's metamorphisis into parenthood. How to regain control of our own current life so that we can walk out of our doors more often without so much worry of the uncontrollable. The best thing we got out of our conversations was knowledge that we weren't the only ones going through this and that we weren't going insane as our husbands would have it. it was vindicating to find confirmation for how we've been feeling. Baby steps in the right direction but undeniably steps in the forward direction.