I see my 48th birthday on the horizon, and I begin to take stock again of where I am in my life. The stock I’m taking is not so much about retirement savings, or professional accomplishment (although, I’m human, and there’s an element of that). Rather, it’s kind of a “am I walking the talk” evaluation. Am I putting my money where my mouth is. If I’m not doing that, then life is a lie, really. A story I tell myself.
This year I was baptized. To those who have known me in the past, this is probably an ultra-creepy proposition, and I understand it. To my brothers and sisters, I think it’s off-putting, but our family is so repressed that instead of a discussion, there’s more like the polite smiles followed by a run to the fridge for a beer. I love them so.
But being baptized, for me, was not about wanting to be saved from hell because I don’t believe in hell. My faith in Christ’s divinity was very hard to admit to in these days of fundamentalism and misconceptions galore about his life and its meaning. I kind of felt like, in a public way, to some folks I’d be aligning myself with the likes of George Bush and the late Jerry Falwell. Like getting sober, publicly admitting that faith was a challenge to synchronize my inner and outer lives. An opportunity to get honest, even though it’s kind of embarrassing for this ex-Unitarian and recovering Catholic.
Now, as with getting sober, I’m challenged within the more private space of how I’m actually living my life. Money has come to the surface as a place where I need to look hard and work hard. I waited to have a child because I was too busy being selfish, drinking and divorcing. Later, I needed years to recover before I could take the plunge and plan a family. So, at the age of 43, I finally had a baby, and I just poured everything I could into my love for that child. Unfortunately, that has meant a lot of money that maybe could have been spent differently.
My spending on my son has exceeded levels with which I am comfortable. I will do without basics because he wants a new toy. His room has become a shrine to the wonders of the injection molding industry, and may account, single-handedly, for the uptick in the Chinese economy. I have rationalized this well — I had so many brothers and sisters that we each had only the basics. Mom would buy you an Easter outfit which consisted of shoes, coat, and dress. There was never that cute little barrette for your hair, or the plastic necklace, or the little purse that matched. Just the basics.
So, I’ve reversed the paradigm and eschewed the basics for all the frills. Now, I feel like I have indigestion after a long time of overindulgence. I remember when I felt this years ago while walking around the Short Hills Mall, a chi-chi mall in New Jersey where mothers walk ahead of their kids in strollers, pushed by the au pairs. I felt nauseous, like why was I in this place where so much unneeded junk was being sold within an infrastructure that was consuming resources like mad. It all felt so wrong.
So it is that my spending on my son, which rationalization has made feel right for 5 years, now feels wrong. I fear he has become expecting of materialistic rewards, and now I have a challenge on my hands to re-shape things. I need to re-shape what it means to be a good parent with regards to money. He needs my help, in turn, to re-shape his thinking on the terms “need” and “want.”
When I was a kid, my jaw would have dropped in awe had my Mom offered to buy that little purse. What happens with Blake is that when I say “no,” he throws a fit. Something is very wrong with what I’ve done to have moved his response so to the opposite side of the dial so as to conflate desire with entitlement. In a way, I have achieved everyone’s goal of “not being my mother.” On the other hand, there’s probably somewhere in between the two places that I need to examine.
My mother was highly practical, and fulfilled her 8 kids’ needs in a dutiful way. When I was 10 years old, I had been taking piano lessons for two years, practicing on our old used upright piano that was donated to us by someone at my Dad’s job. But I was getting really good, and my Mom wanted to do something nice for me. So, she told me she was getting a tax refund, and that the check would go to buying me a new piano. I ran out to that mailbox every day. When it came, I asked right away if we could go, and we did, and we bought that piano, and it was like Christmas. I have never, ever forgotten my Mom’s generosity that year.
I would like break the paradigm here and be more like my Mom. So, I will document here where I fall short, and where I triumph. Straddling that line between need and want is not easy for me, and at this point, probably distorted for Blake. I so want him to experience the joy of the “special,” and I think in a way I’ve removed that from his life. So, I’m going to work to get it back. Tantrums await, no doubt, but it’s important that I do this. My narrative about my childhood is not so important as the reality of my son’s happiness.
Let’s hope I can pull it off.

I have seen the future, and it’s so pretty that I’m scared for our children. It’s pretty, perfect, fun, and just the BEST EVER! 


