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sarah.elvins's avatar

This made me cry over my tea this morning. I lost my dad ten years ago and he LOVED to eat out, everywhere from the local greasy spoon to the finest fine dining experience. Oh, to slide into a booth across from him one more time. A great piece, capturing just how seemingly mundane conversations across a formica table could be so essential to my memory of my dad.

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Sarah's avatar

What you described is exactly the mood I have always wanted with my kid. I had a great conversation recently with someone who asked what kind of life I wanted (it was a pre-interview pseudo-interview) and all I could summon was "flexibility enabled by trust" -- but this ^ is what I want. I want to not be slave to a clock the way my mom was. And I don't think she was, actually, though she may have thought she was and she definitely made me feel like she was. She was just always protective of her work time to the point of being kind of paranoid and making me feel like an imposition on her. She always said in some words or others, that I was the most important thing in her life, but a, I always felt like an *image of me that she could brag about and was never real and was never possible* was the most important thing and b, actually not even that was more important than being at work on time and for the entire day. The stories I have of what she said if I ever called home sick from school oh the stories. They all involve throwing up in the nurses office. Multiple times. Because she didn't come pick me up.

I want the opposite of that. I want to KNOW my kid. I want to listen to her real thoughts. I want to be late for work because it was the kind of morning that calls for taking my kid out to the diner and I want to leave early because it's the last day to get ice cream before the shop closes for fall. (obviously, all important feelings revolve around food).

And now I get to grapple with the feelings of guilt because obviously her obsessive work has led to a material comfort that left me with no student debt, and no worries about paying for her elder care, and what an ungrateful child I am. Fun!

But anyway. Thank you for helping me distill my vision for my life! The rest is for therapy!

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