Last weekend we went to stay with another family we have known since I was in graduate school. On Saturday afternoon I found myself at the elementary-school playground, watching my kids run around on the grass. The youngest one was literally running around — in circles — and the older ones were playing ultimate frisbee with the other kids and dads.
Me? I was too tired to run or kick a ball or throw a frisbee or do anything but gestate. In mid-to-late pregnancy, everything is growing so fast that it sucks up all the available energy. And even if the rational mind knows why this is, and understands the deep reasonableness of to sitting and take it easy for a few minutes or an hour between doings, sometimes it weighs heavily.
Oof, I am a good-fer-nuthin’ sluggish loser. It affords a marvelous opportunity to feel slightly sorry for oneself.
Out on the grassy field, my seven-year-old daughter, the only girl on the field, sprinted after the boys, leaped for a catch and missed, skidded to a stop and ran back the other way. She is a confident girl-child, strong and bright, more than a little ornery these days.
I am ornery too, swelling and tired. I have written before: I wake up many mornings, astonished to find myself here, having chosen to throw all my best efforts into raising and educating five children. Plenty of other worthy people save some of their best efforts to build other things. Often very worthwhile things, and indeed things that serve families in many different ways.
“…the family constitutes one of the most important terms of reference for shaping the social and ethical order of human work…. In fact, the family is … a community made possible by work…
“…Man must work out of regard for others, especially his own family, but also for the society he belongs to, the country of which he is a child, and the whole human family of which he is a member, since he is the heir to the work of generations and at the same time a sharer in building the future of those who will come after him in the succession of history, All this constitutes the moral obligation of work.” — Laborem exercens 16
(I am trying to get across, in case you can’t tell because pregnancy has stunted my communication skills, a notion of “there are a lot of different ways to lead a life of good service to the human community that helps children and families to flourish.” It is meant to be an inclusive sort of expression. I am trying to insulate myself from accusations of taking a side in the mommy wars here.)
Even so, I am haunted by a rat-racey sort of element. All that time, effort, and emotion I invested becoming an educated person, now poured into the education of more little persons, some of whom in turn might simply pour all their effort into the education of their own young. Turning, turning, turning through the years. Get ready, get ready, get ready for a real life, when you will grow up to do Important Things and be respected. And then: when readiness is achieved, toss it all lightly aside in favor of a more centered life… one spent helping little ones get ready, get ready, get ready.
A treadmill wheel, so to speak.
I think the vague disquiet comes from having grown up with the notion that the most important thing for a bright girl to do is to grow up and achieve. Other than making plenty of money and living in interesting places, the details were often missing. Perhaps it all only meant “achieve more than those other people do.” Instead I am achieving something that anyone with working reproductive organs and enough time on her hands can do, and do just as well as I can.
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“Poor kid,” I say to my husband later about my youngest, as I decompress in a recliner, “by the time i have this baby he’s not going to be able to remember a time before I was practically an invalid.”
“‘Poor kid’ indeed,” says my husband, “he is going to have a new sibling to play with.”
“Yes, and that will be worth it,” I say. I suppose it is a different sort of treadmill, one a little closer to nature. Raise kids to raise kids to raise kids, on and on, one generation after another.
On this treadmill, the primary directive is to keep children, then adults, whole: by keeping families whole, by passing on the habit of living examined lives dedicated to forming the next generation. These families are “made possible by work,” and so it’s also to serve that prime directive that we pass on diligence, care, a knowledge base, and skills.
It’s so easy to mistake the means for the end, isn’t it?
You look outside and work on the world outside the circle of the family, always in order to strengthen and support and form your family, so that your children grow up strong and can do the same. But the circles are interconnected and the work we do also (if it is good work) serves other families through the medium of society and an economy. It all hangs together, and the whole thing will be stronger the more of us who acknowledge that the purpose of all that work is to prepare the next generation and also a place for it to thrive — and each individual has a place in that scheme whether he or she passes on genes or not, and whether he or she takes a place willingly or not.
And that? That is even before you bring eternity into the mix.
Every act, thought, and word has unimaginable consequences: a truth that is accessible to all honest philosophy.
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