Labels: anything syndrome, appreciative, By Dawn Yun, grateful, Honda Insight, iPhone, IPhone 3GS, money, Prius, recession, something/aynthing, stuffed animal

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As my father was packing up his car when he left the family, his parting wisdom was this: “Never become financially dependent on a man. Just look what it did to your mother."

My mother was residing at the time in a locked ward on seventy-hour hold for suicidal threats.

His words still haunt me today, 40 years old and financially dependent with two kids under five.

Today, my husband winced at the pile of Costco party supplies I just came home with.

"We already had plastic cups."

"They’re giant and red,” I say. “They’re too big for punch.”

He looks at me, I look at the floor. We both sigh, all contained hostility.

"We're not making enough to match what we spend. . . at all now,” he tells me.

I am ashamed and angry. I turned down a job working in the county jail because I realized I just couldn't work there once I felt the despair pour into me while walking among the locked units.

Somewhere, after having kids, my past armor has disappeared. But we are both angry at me for not taking that job, despite our verbal assurances to each other that it was the right decision.

We need money, and my private practice is not bringing in enough yet. Financial dependence and wanting my kids to have their mom and a great preschool is right, in my mind.

My guts differ.

We're going broke and I am panicked and embarrassed. I want to see it differently, that I should be supported for being available to my baby while she is small, but I harbor backlash beliefs that I should be bringing in the money that will take the stone partly off my husband's back and give me the self-esteem that seems to have escaped along with my six-pack abs and taut skin.

I remember my father's words and how I lived by them, aggressively independent and hard-working.

Terrified, really.

There is something to grow up here with, another perfect lesson in losing my position of invulnerability thanks to choosing children.

This tight-fisted nausea itself is where I need to stay for today, and hope for a little faith to open.

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar, Costco, financial dependence, financial independence, money, parents, preschool, saving money

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Shortly after my son lost his first tooth, he began asking what the tooth fairy did with the teeth she collected. His kindergarten mind grappled with how the tooth fairy made the money that she left under children’s pillows at night. Since I had no ready answers, I let him ponder.

That Halloween, our dentist offered to collect Halloween candy for the tooth fairy. Each child who turned over his trick-or-treat loot could choose a toy from the dentist’s toy box. After my son reluctantly parted with his colorful assortment of fun-sized candy bars, he smiled knowingly. In the car, he announced that the tooth fairy must sell the Halloween candy and use the profit to fund her nighttime pursuits.

“But what does she do with the teeth?” he asked.

The truth is that the teeth, at least his teeth, sit in a little box on my dresser.

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with the teeth after stealthily snatching them from beneath his pillow, so I stashed the first one in the box until a better idea came along. That was six years ago. The box filled with pairs of upper and lower incisors, bicuspids, and molars. And now that my son has just one more baby tooth to loose, the box will soon hold a complete set of baby teeth -- save the one my son swallowed in the car when he was six.

Other moms I know simply toss their children’s teeth in the trash. But I couldn’t dispose of them so causally.

The teeth serve as proof of my son’s steady growth, more tangible than a photograph.

Those bits of bone are physical evidence that the adolescent, who has the same size foot as me, was once just a little tike with a single toothed, jack-o-lantern grin. Like tiny pearls stringing together my son’s childhood, these relics represent the transition from a five-year-old’s steadfast belief in the tooth fairy to an eleven-year-old’s willingness to consciously suspend disbelief for the sake of his younger sister.

For now the teeth will stay put. I don’t anticipate turning them over to their rightful owner any time soon. And as for my seven-year-old daughter, I don’t have the same dilemma.

While she’s fascinated with the idea of the tooth fairy, she refuses to place her baby teeth under her pillow. Instead, she lovingly stores them in a box on her dresser, right where they belong.

By Tina Bournazos

Labels: childhood memories, dentist, money, Tina Bournazos, tooth fairy

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I’ve been working a lot lately and I’m not seeing my son enough. That bugs me. He’s only three. How can he be spending more time at preschool than at home? What kind of mother am I?

This is not the first time I question my work/family balance. Even when I’ve got the balance right, there are still days it gets thrown off, either because I’ve added to my work schedule (less time for family), our son is home sick unexpectedly (less time for work), or I just feel the need to spend more time with our son (no change in time, just want more of it).

Lately, I’ve added to my work schedule, so our son no longer stays home with me one full day a week. Instead, he’s in preschool full-time. Ack, I feel guilty just writing this—even though I know he’s happy there, loves it, and it’s a great place for him.  It’s not him I’m worried about, really; it’s me.

Will I have regret, I wonder, when he’s eight or nine and wants to spend all his free time with his friends instead? Will I think: I should have spent more time with him when he was three and wanted only to be with his parents?

Time does not run backwards, I know. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

The extra work I’m doing now is intended to help our family out in the future when I can then hopefully spend more time with our son. The situation is temporary. The trouble with living for the future, though, is this: you’re not living right now, which is where life happens, where memories get created.

So it comes back to balance again. I have to ask myself what will be more painful: cutting out some work and postponing important goals a little longer, or continuing to feel like I’m not seeing my son enough?

I resolve to pick my son up early from school at least one day a week so that we can play, regardless of my work crunch. Because those are the kind of memories (of my son and family) I want plastered all over my mind.

By Cindy Bailey

Labels: Cindy Bailey, full-time working mom, guilty mother, money, preschool, stay-at-home mother

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