Good Morning

It's 4 am and I'm wide awake.  I woke up before Sis did and then she called out to go to the potty.  I'm on monitor duty because Mama took a cold and flu pill; she feels all stuffy and needed to sleep.  But I can't.  It's been almost an hour.  And if I sit in the dark awake, at least tonight, I have dark thoughts.  Which do nothing to get me back to sleep.  I'm not sick or anything, just awake, thinking stressful thoughts about money, death, health, kids, tomorrow.  Nothing that is upsetting in the middle of the day, just a lot of hyperbolic, late night/early morning thoughts.  Which makes it sound like I can dismiss them; I can't.

So, I read the reader responses to Pico Iyer's essay about simple living.  It's the usual grab bag of responses to an essay that involves getting rid of belongings, moving to a totally different place, and staying far removed from "ordinary" life.  I don't know who Iyer (beyond that he wrote for Time for years and lives in Japan, but my battery is low so I'm not going to google him now) is but he wrote a book about the Dalai Lama so I'm wondering if he has Buddhist leanings.  Anyway, some readers see his simplicity as the perfect antidote to modern American consumerism, while others find it an example of privilege.  

I have gone through a period of being hard on myself that we don't live more of a simplified life of less stuff and fewer "have-tos" of the kind he describes (though, I'd keep the health insurance!).  I think, though, that that's just another way to beat myself up, some kind of American Puritannical guilt that I should always be striving to be "better."  I think simplification is a worthy goal but the self-flagellation is actually a mental habit in direct contradiction to simplification; it creates all sorts of extra baggage.  

I've mentioned here our attempts to downsize, if not in actual stuff, in the perceived need for stuff, and some weeks are better than others.  Seeing all of it out of our basement and in our living space while the basement is redone really brings home the problem. We're in a time of great upheaval, not just physically (which I really embrace--it's been years, maybe since we moved 7 years ago, since we've proactively organized our space and stuff), but a psychic reordering.  The kids are hitting almost four with an "I can do it by myself", not listening at all because they know better, even bossy and pushy (yep, physically too) vengeance (gosh, how do you spell that?  Not time to look).  I need to regroup, reground, remember how I like to parent, how I like to live.  

Just not at 3 am.  Or, well, it's now almost 4.  

And I thought I'd tidied this post up at least somewhat neatly when I recall an article that has really been on my mind, from UU World and is actually relevant to Iyer.  It talked about "stickers" vs. "boomers," oddly named sociological concepts (not sure if they're "real" academic concepts or words used to convey other concepts to the reader) describing American habits of either hunkering down in one community and making a life there or of uprooting (approximately ever 7 years) to a new locale for work, better climate, better education, family/friends.  The article declares that our habit of relocating, our dedication to "boomerism" is a main cause of several American problems, such as  lack of community involvement, even short-term thinking about the environment.  People aren't vested in where they live, don't try to make it better, get up and leave at the sign of trouble, don't have ties with neighbors and so no social network, even trash  literally and figuratively the environment because of a lack of ownership.  Now, I haven't fully explained the article, and a few pages in a magazine can't fully flesh out a sociological concept's complications, but I find it a compelling idea.  Especially because the schools in my area stink.  Teachers are being cut so that elementary school classes will rise to 28 kids each; letters to the editors in the paper call for only parents with kids to be taxed to pay for school so that the elderly and childless need not shoulder this "burden."  Instead of fighting this, trying to make it better, many of my friends--none of whose kids are even in the system yet--are either going to move from town completely or put their kids in private school where its "safe."  

Since we're not paying the Catholic Church to educate our kids in its erroneous doctrines (which always surprises my friends--not the erroneous part, which I never say outloud to Catholics, but the not-going-to-Catholic-school part.  Um.  We're lesbians.  Do you know what your religion teaches about us?  How do you think that would make my kids feel?), don't want to make the familial sacrifices to afford to pay for non-religious private school, and the market for selling the house is terrible, we're "stuck" in the public school system.  And I don't think this is bad.  I can become and active and involved parent, something every school wants, and try to make it better.  Which is a better lesson for my children than any of the above.  And it helps other children, not just my own, which is all about community.  I understand that "sacrificing" their education, especially at a time when education is touted as the golden ticket to survive economic downturn (ask my M.A. and Ph.D. friends how well they're managing that.  Or how well I'd be doing on the job market right now), seems like a travesty--I was told today that my ideals are nice but that my friends aren't going to sacrifice their kids' futures for such ideals.  And I say a child's future is more about lessons outside a classroom than in.  

Hmmmm.  There is a certain clarity, dare I say simplicity?, at 4 am.  And at least I've blogged it so that I can remember . . . 

I'm going back to bed.  Good night.