April 14, 2006

You Are Privy to a Great Becoming

When you're anal-retentive but your apartment has fallen into disarray, the last thing you want to find out on Thursday night is that you're having people over for Easter dinner on Sunday. Our friends decided that they're not making the trek up to New England for the holiday, so it looks like my dream of just ignoring what the church across the street calls on their marquee the "rememberance [sic] of the sonrise" will not be realized. What's the point of being a lapsed Catholic if you have to cook Easter dinner?

It's in my nature to plan ahead, to make cleaning schedules, to create a menu and shopping lists, and to concoct too-grand plans so that I make things extra hard on myself and eventually collapse in a stressed-out, crying heap (I guess I didn't leave Catholocism as far behind as I thought). I hate last-minute house-cleaning and menu-planning because it makes me stress and obsess and make to-do lists until I render myself unable to relax or sleep. And I grind my teeth. This is for one simple dinner with four people.

I consistently resolve to be more laid-back and spontaneous, and just to let things go once in a while, but it BOTHERS me so much when I'm trying to watch a movie and I just know that there are clean dishes in the dishwasher that so clearly should be put away, and there are clothes just sitting in the washing machine that should be drying, and how DARE I sit there and enjoy "Repo Man" when my bookshelves are so dusty? I'm not saying that I always get up and do these things. That's the worst part - I just sit there and obsess over them instead. I blame the insane women in my family, but I know that I have to work on changing my obsessive thoughts/behaviors.

But then sometimes I think my behavior is necessary, or else my house would be filthy or I'd never get anything done... but one of the biggest reasons I'm still resistant to having children is that I'm so afraid of turning into my mother - someone who never left the house on Friday nights because that was her night to clean the bathrooms. Someone who used to hose down her five naked kids in the front yard in the summer so that we didn't track dirt or grass into the house. Someone who scrubbed her kids' faces with boiling hot water every night before bed, until our skin was red and raw. Someone who currently has a Port-a-Potty in her backyard so that her grandkids don't get her kitchen floor dirty if they need to use the bathroom after they go in the pool. Someone who criticizes every inch of my body and told me I needed to stop eating before my wedding because I was going to look like a cow in my dress (I weighed 115 pounds at the time, by the way). In short, she's someone I don't want to be, but someone I always come perilously close to becoming.

Ergh. I guess being AWARE is something, right? My mother doesn't have that going for her, that's for sure. My sister and grandmother don't, either. I'm working on it, which is more that I can say for those ladies. It just doesn't make me any less scared to have a daughter.

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metanephros at 11:35 am

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