Every time I am sitting on my couch or in bed or arguing a particularly awesome FB thread I have a lot to say. I think often about sitting at the computer or opening my journal to let brilliant words of wisdom flow forth from me with little effort. I am out of practice. My hand writing is bad and my mind works much faster than my hand moves the pen. I haven't typed lengthy papers or text since my college days, before I had my son, and he is 6 years old.
The time flew by, my fingers don't seem to work quit as smoothly as they once did when all I did was spend countless hours "talking" (typing in chat boxes) with friends, blogging in LiveJournal, and doing homework assignments I deemed lame. Now I know the truth, most of the time they were lame. I was disinterested because I was being forced to regurgitate misrepresented facts. I always really enjoyed teachers who encouraged me to think, those were also usually the teachers who gave me the best grades. I never was much for doing the assigned work. I'd write and write for hours in my journal, during class, at home, even hanging out at the mall on Friday nights. But ask me to write a 1 page paper due in a week and for some reason that was agonizing torture, probably due to the boring subject matter. Still I wish I had tried harder anyway.
I don't know why I ever gave up writing. I say it is because I had my son and settled down. As if that left me with nothing to say. It wasn't my son or my husband silencing me. It was the deafening silence that is motherhood. A time when you are suddenly conscious that what you put out into the world could someday negatively effect your perfect little person. However hiding things from our children is perhaps the most negative effect of the modern American culture on future generations. Motherhood in America in a lot of ways, and I never noticed this before I became one, means hiding your past life, your "worst" self, from the world so as to uphold the sanctity that is motherhood. I have a news flash, for you. Every single human being has a mother. Everyone is born (for now, before The Matrix pods) and no man or woman is without flaws, including everyone's mother. Every single person, and this is what makes us most similar, makes mistakes, big ones, small ones, they all feel the same to the person who is guilty from them. I think that must have been why I stopped writing. I felt over exposed. I didn't want the world to judge me or my family by what I have put down in words.
Now my son will be 6 years old in a week. I have come a long way in my ideas about being a mother and parenting since before I had him. I am as honest with him as I can be. I let his questions dictate what he's ready to talk about. I hope someday to be a new generation of American parent who doesn't perpetuate age discrimination. Who talks to their kids openly when they have questions and listens and tries to help when someday they come home with their own mistakes, those mistakes that everyone makes.
I'd like to dedicate this blog post to an anonymous friend who messaged me this week, out of no where encouraging me to write. I had actually been thinking about her days before, about how I was glad I had something like Facebook to find those who had made a lasting impression of kindness on me. She was one of those people, who you knew for a brief moment in life, and really connected with, but knew you were moving on to different paths in life. Often I hear that the internet age is dividing people. That somehow being able to communicate constantly gets in the way of communication at all. I happen to believe that the technology to communicate quickly and efficiently with people all over the world and the ability to keep track of friends who have moved away but meant a lot to you at some point in life can only be good. We are more connected than ever and we need to find the similarities to find peace instead of using this new communication to perpetuate anger.
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