Last weekend, daddy took the children to visit Oma & Opa for a couple of days. Mommy stayed home alone: Absolute decadence to enjoy a whole day of relaxing in the garden, daydreaming, actually reading a book all the way to the end, grabbing a sandwich & not bothering to cook ... just letting your soul relax ... I had forgotten how great that felt! (Though I did wonder whatever I used to do with my time all those years when I still had so much of it to myself ?!)
It did feel very strange at night, though. Amazingly difficult to fall asleep, all by myself in a big, empty, and awfully quiet house. I must have sneaked into the children's empty room about a dozen times. I guess I've definitely turned into a clucking mother hen.
When Edwin finally arrived back home with my little darlings on Sunday afternoon, Natasha had fallen asleep in the car. No question to put her down in her bed, though; mommy blissfully sat for an hour in the garden, with a sleeping toddler on her arms :-)
On Sunday morning, I had been mailing with Michele, a former colleague of mine from my times at Nortel. Michele is one of the best usability experts I've had the pleasure of working with, a kind and considerate person, and has been a great example & inspiration for me. A mother myself, I cannot imagine how she possibly managed to complete her studies while bringing up three lively boys, or excel at a full-time senior position with Nortel!
After a long and successful career in HCI, Michele wanted to do something completely different and recently completed a degree in gardening. She doesn't seem to miss her jet-setting days at the leading edge of HCI & high-tech. This gives me hope there will be live after IT for the rest of us at some point, too :-)
On Sunday evening I was watching the concert for Princess Diana. She was an amazing person in many different ways, but above all she was a mother. Watching her sons' interview reminded me what's really important; it doesn't matter if you're a working parent or not, if you're rich or poor, pink or purple. What matters is that you give your children boundless love, show true compassion with others, and try to raise your children as kind, decent, loving adults.
I'm sure Princess Diana would have been proud of her sons yesterday.
2 comments:
I tend to agree with Katha Pollit, when she wrote in The Nation shortly after the death of Princess Diana that she and Mother Theresa were "flowers of hierarchical, feudal, essentially masculine institutions in which they had no structural power but whose authoritarian natures they obscured and prettified. ... Despite protestations to the contrary, [they] were in the modern mass-market image business. Neither challenged the status quo that produced the social evils they supposedly helped alleviate. In fact, by promoting the illusion that nuns with no medical training, or selling your dresses for charity, could make a difference on a significant scale, they masked those evils or even (in the case of Mother Teresa’s opposition to abortion and birth control) made them worse."
I couldn't find the complete article online in a quick search but it was titled "Thoroughly Modern Di."
Thanks, Chris, for reading my notes and sharing your comments!
As always, your insights make me stop & (re)think.
You remind me of my teenage ideals and how,over the years, I have watered them down in order to "fit in" better, and sold them out in exchange for simple luxuries.
For those of us too weak and/or lazy to fight the incredible injustices of modern society and its suicidal spiral towards self-destruction, is it a good thing to meekly voice our concerns occasionally and pay lip-service, or are we just glossing over the true issues and create a false sense of security?
Yet how can we else not drown in despair?
I shall ponder about this for the rest of my day / week / month / life.
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