June 28, 2009 | Filed under: Boys Are Dumb, Thinky

I want him to be cute and smart and funny, but doesn’t everybody say that?

I want him to be sensible and responsible and responsive to others’ needs.

I want him to have a job he likes and finds fulfillment in.

I want him to have a positive view of marriage and building a family. It would help if his parents are still together and actually like each other, but I recognize he’s not in charge of that particular dynamic.

I want him to have friends, some of whom will become my friends.

I want him to be good in bed. Yes, I said it.

I want him to come with only an overnight bag’s worth of baggage from previous relationships, if at all possible.

I want him to still be hopeful.

I want to walk down the street with him, holding hands. When we’re 60.

I want him to be athletic.

I want him to know, instinctively, that we’re on the same team. Some days we’ll be running a relay race, others we’ll be the core of an offensive line, but always we’ll have matching jerseys.

I want him to like his family.

I want him to like my family.

I want him to read and explore and travel and be willing to join me when I suggest something crazy like, “Let’s hike the Grand Canyon!” At the very least, I want him to willingly hold down the fort when I go off and do something crazy like hike the Grand Canyon.

I want it to last.

June 30, 2008 | Filed under: Because They Pay Me, Thinky

I started my first job in DC six years ago, on the tenth of June. (I meant to write this to commemorate the actual anniversary, but like so many brilliant blog ideas I’ve had this year, time got away from me.) I had a good job, it was in the field I wanted, there was a lot to learn and my colleagues were willing to teach me. Work also provided a hefty part of my social life, for which I am still grateful. It was exactly what I wanted.

* * * * *

I’d had visions of my big city life since I was a kid. My job, oh, that was usually the focus of these daydreams. The frantic pace, the expense account lunches, the schmoozing at cocktail parties, the conversations about how we’d be a hell of a lot more successful if certain people were capable of removing their heads from their asses for just five minutes. (Yes, even my daydreams contain foul language.)

My last place of employment had none of that, which is probably a good thing.

* * * * *

I wear a suit every day, except for the days on which I don’t anticipate any outside meetings and then I wear an outfit over which I can toss the jacket that lives at the office specifically for that purpose. You know you’re dedicated to your job when you work six days in a row, one of which is a Sunday and another of which is a federal holiday, all of those days decked out in a suit and heels. It was three months before I wore jeans to work on a Friday, and only then could I get away with it because it was Good Friday and half the city wasn’t at work anyway. I blow dry my hair and do full makeup almost every day, again only slacking on the days I’m not in a suit. I shave far more than once a fortnight now, to accommodate all the pantyhose-wearing. The personal upkeep alone is a part-time job.

* * * * *

“How’s the job going?” a friend inquired.

“Have you ever been thrown into a murky pool filled with piranhas that immediately get to work eating you alive?” I replied. “It’s kind of like that.”

I had a rough couple of weeks there, time that conveniently coincided with my parents’ visit, which I’m sure just made me a barrel of monkeys to be around. I don’t know – maybe they liked being snapped at and told I don’t have time for things and work sucked, could we please not talk about it, what did you do today? Probably the icing on the cake was when I left them at the table to order my dinner for me while I went to the restroom and sobbed. If they noticed that I came back to the table without any mascara on, they didn’t mention it.

* * * * *

I knew this job would be a challenge. I picked it because there were new things to learn and good opportunities to develop skills in areas in which I know I’m weak.

I grossly under-estimated the extent of the challenge. Every day is a busy day. Few days go as planned, even when I don’t make a plan until 10 AM. I try in vain to enforce my rule of going home on time two nights a week. Officially we end at 5:30 but anything before 6:30 counts as “on time” in my book; 8:30 is not unheard of. And those weaknesses? Boy do they come to the fore in some pretty ugly ways. Well, awareness is the first step, right?

* * * * *

“Who are the piranhas?” my friend asked, “And why aren’t you biting back?”

I didn’t bite back, but I did manage to pull myself out of the water last week and score a couple of wins. That’s enough to keep me afloat for a while.

September 5, 2007 | Filed under: Thinky

Hiking that weekend I saw a two families (obviously traveling together) with school-aged children stop to play in a pool of water at the base of the waterfall. Two boys and a girl, obviously the youngest of the three, but only by a year or so. The boys jumped in the pool headlong and came up shivering and sputtering and laughing about how cold the water was. One of them spent his time bobbing up and down, trying to figure out if it was more comfortable to be mostly submerged or half in/half out of the water. The other made a game of swimming to the waterfall, where the water was coldest, staying there for as long as he could stand it, then swimming back to the warmer side of the natural pool.

The little girl, however, despite being clad in her swimsuit, barely got wet. She hung out around the edges of the pool, squatting down to examine various rocks and poke at the sand with a stick. She watched the boys play, but didn’t join them.

I watched the three of them, the stark dichotomy between boys and girl: her quiet, self-contained play; theirs boisterous and exuberant. I willed her to jump in the pool, to exhibit the same sense of adventure and fearlessness as the boys, to be loud and splashy and undisturbed by the fact that to do so might be lack decorum or be disruptive. I wanted her to be more aggressive, more physical, more vocal. I wanted her to be comfortable with her body. I wanted these things for her, because a lifetime ago, that would have been me playing quietly on the edge of the pool, not willing to take the leap in. I wanted her to not have to wait until she is in college to feel empowered to speak and act assertively, to not feel constrained by what others feel is “appropriate” behavior for a girl.

It’s taken me days to realize that perhaps I needn’t have worried — that not joining the boys’ games did not signify a failing on her part. Rather, in eschewing the boys’ play and instead doing her own thing, she demonstrated that she’d already achieved that level of self-assuredness I sought for her — the ability to make and trust her own decisions — without really trying.