Elementary Appearances.

Sep 27

As a child, did you ever plan (or meticulously outline) what kind of parent you would become? Tomorrow I get to live into my childhood dreams of becoming a cookie-baking, classroom-volunteering, Glitter Mom. Tomorrow I get to be the parent I wistfully wished for, the kind I could show-off at school. My own parents worked way too hard for in-school appearances. The closest I got was a fifth-grade field trip to my dad’s engineering office. Our class was doing a unit on electricity, so we orchestrated a trip to see how machines are actually made. It was my proudest day of elementary school.

It’s hard to say which one of us is more excited for my Kindergarten debut. J and I were talking about it while crafting this morning…

Me: “When I was little, I really wanted my parents to visit my class, but they couldn’t because they were working all the time.”
J: “And you don’t work as much so you can spend more time with your kids, right?”
Me: “Yes, but when I work less, do you think I make more money or less money?”
J: “Less money.”
Me: “Right, I make less money. So then how do you think we can still have all this stuff?”
J: Looks up quizzically.
Me: “Your grandparents worked really really hard when I was little. And now Babushka, Dedushka, Grammy, and Daddy’s [deceased] grandparents are all able to help us in different ways. Babushka and Dedushka didn’t have anybody’s help when I was little, but we do.”
J: “So they couldn’t come to school, but now you can!”

Such is my daughter’s reality - so many of her grandparents’ sacrifices manifest in the day-to-day things she takes for granted.

I often find myself struggling with the juxtaposition of this reality, and American Individualism. Yes, I worked really hard throughout school. Yes, I pursued a PhD precisely because I knew it would give me the freedom to work fewer hours once I had children. But nothing about my life is the result of “pulling myself up by my bootstraps”. J can bring her mother to school because her grandparents were educated workaholics, because her great-grandparents fought for opportunities, and because everyone in her lineages had some degree of dumb luck.

Tomorrow’s trip to Kindergarten feels like a victory for all of them. Tomorrow, I get to do this extraordinarily ordinary thing because I stand on the shoulders of GIANTS.