Dear Claire,
Dear Claire, I have a confession to make: you are making me more vain than I have ever been before. In the past I've taken a moment or two to indulge in my own vanity, but it'd always backfire. Maybe I'd buy a new pair of slacks for myself, but the slacks I'd buy wouldn't be in fashion any more or they'd be tan coloured when whites are no longer seasonally acceptable. Maybe I'd go buy myself a shirt, something I saw in a magazine, but as you know you're Dad's on the skinny side so the shirt never fits right and it hangs off in baggy long ways that only serves to showcase the physique I lack. Other times I've gone off and gotten a cool haircut, something that requires some gel to shape and mold into the said "cool" look only to experience time and again that I have a sensitive scalp and hair care products trigger a massive bout of dandruff and then I grab the nearest baseball hat to cover it all up. So, suffice to say, the God's aren't smiling on me when I've been vain and 90% of the time I give up and head forth as is.
But today I'm here to confess that you're changing that. I can't say I'm vain for my own self, maybe I am, maybe what I'm saying is that I'm passing my vanity onto you - I want to get things for YOU that really are things that reflect well on me. But I can't help myself. For example, I took note yesterday while I walked with you that pushing you in your stroller is a lot like pushing a shopping cart down an aisle. The shopping aisle in this sense is the street a few streets over from where we live, the fancy streets, the streets with big houses, houses under renovations, houses with large yards, houses with multiple cars out front, house with people who are successful milling about, houses with Nanny's, houses without financial problems, without jokers and dreamers in them, but houses with people that achieved and no longer need to dream as much as manage success. Don't get me wrong, your mother (YM) and I don't feel like failures (most days anyway), but it's hard not to walk down the fancy street, the aisles of parent wanting, and not dream and want for new things "for you".
I can't help but want a large SUV where you'd be more safe, higher up, easier to load you in and out of. Would you actually be safer or am I more interested for my sake, that I would be able to be one of those Dad's I see stepping out of them with tailored pants and an air about them that everything turned out okay? I'll see these same fancy-types walking down the street with a $2000 stroller and look at all the built for accouterments and think, "wow, their kid looks cozier, comfier, warmer, and happier in there, maybe I should have boughten that stroller, does this make me a bad parent that I only got the one you're in?" It's not like we bought a stroller for $50 at a garage sale either, but maybe we should have, because the second thought that descends when I see a kid like you in a Boogaboo (read: stroller we couldn't afford but wanted) is that "I'll bet they didn't have to ask their parents to buy that for them", like we did for your less-expensive stroller.
Don't get me wrong Miss Claire, this isn't about flat-out envy for people your Dad's age that somehow arrived where they set out to (at least financially) - not totally anyway. It's also not about feeling sorry for myself, because I actually love doing what I do and feel as lucky as hell, too lucky in fact, to have a chance at all to be doing what I do (insert image of real abject poverty/slum here - placed against image of my rather obvious affluence in comparison). It's just that I'm beginning to wonder if my new wanting for things, under the guise of "being a better parent, giving my child everything, making her the happiest child of all time", isn't in fact just a new reallocation of wanting and consuming. Can you ever define me as your parent with a such-and-such outfit on? Or will you show your relation to me when you start playing guitar and begin to rock it out as I think you will? Or your relation to YM when you show your generosity and kindness, sharing what you have with other kids, a sweetness that YM has in spades? Just how do we want you to reflect us - with stuff, labels, affluence or with character?
Well, I'll cut to the chase on this one, the affluence isn't going to happen, so we'll work on your character. And truth be told, every parent knows this, we don't give you character, we don't give you what YOU are, you came that way already in tact, you are YOU from the first breath, in the womb, all we do us give you encouragement to trust that, trust and go forth as YOU.
Now, if I can just get me to turn that voice off of wanting, of vanity, of thinking we'd be happier as a family if we had that house there, in that car over there, of that level of financial security that I'm projecting onto that person over there ... About the only thing I'm really good at Miss Claire is making you laugh and although it doesn't put food on the table just yet, it does put goodness in our bellies all the same, so I'll work harder at turning the wanting voice down because it's so blind it's dumb ... (that last sentence is awkward, I'm not suggesting that blindness equals dumbness, that's obviously very wrong ... later I'll re-write that part).
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