Tonight I’ve been feeling Lydia hiccup, move, and kick, and she is already so cute. I love her little hiccups, and it’s rather amazing to watch my stomach move. I feel overwhelmed with a desire to be a good mom. She totally lucked out in the dad department, and sometimes I wonder what it would be like to grow up with a dad like Abe.
My own dad passed away six years ago, and in the time between his death and now, my feelings towards him have become increasingly less complex. I used to feel such a mixture of emotions when I thought about him, but now I mainly feel love and gratitude; I can see he loved me and did the very best he could, and that’s all that matters to me now.
But I can not fathom what it would be like to grow up with the type of dad I know Abe will be. I’m sure it would be wonderful. The other day Abe called home to see how I was doing, and I told him I was about to plunge into yet another child development book. I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss any opportunities to help Lydia develop all of her neural pathways and maximize the firing potential of her little neurons. Abe grew silent on the other end of the line, and I asked him what he was thinking.
“She doesn’t have to be perfect,” he finally said. “I mean, we’ll still love her even if her neurons aren’t perfectly developed, right? I think it’s more important to make sure she’s happy than developing that final brain groove that would get her first place in some school math competition.”
I was taken aback. Up to that point, I’d already rehearsed in my head the conversation I’d have with Lydia when the time came for her to choose between Curtis and Juliard; I’d already envisioned her playing her first Suzuki recital at age 4 and her first public concerto at 8–or 10, if she seemed to be lagging. Scary, right? Tiger mom in training. But Abe is not quite on board. In fact, every time I slip in a tiger mom reference, he states that he is outright scared by Amy Chua.
And, to tell the truth, I am so glad he is. When I take a step back, I realize the most important thing is to make sure Lydia experiences gobs of unconditional love. I want Lydia to know God loves her and to understand how to access His love and guidance always. I also want her to inherit her dad’s integrity and virtue. These traits trump any skills she may pick up along the way. I know what matters most in my family’s value system, and outward achievements pale in relation to the development of character.
And…yet. Achievement and the development of beautiful character can (and often) go together. However, when I try to figure out what my role is in helping my daughter develop, I get confused. Should I push her to be her best, or should I just let her develop naturally (whatever that means) and allow her the freedom to choose academic or musical mediocrity? That’s not a rhetorical question to me–it stems, rather, from a place of genuine confusion.
I have always idolized my mother, whose life explains, in many ways, my ambivalent approach to these questions. My mom was a corporate lawyer with a ridiculous number of degrees from Stanford and the University of Chicago. These degrees are especially ironic because I can think of no one I know who is, or at least used to be, as explicitly anti-intellectual as my mother. Although she has softened in recent years, I remember her despising overt intellectualism and completely rejecting the value of her degrees. Although she once majored in English during her undergrad years at Stanford, I never once witnessed her read a non-religious book. (She tells me she has read some in recent years, but I have yet to see this.) She was infinitely more proud of my decision to serve a mission than she was of my decision to go to grad school at Harvard. In fact, I didn’t even bother to attend graduation because I knew she wouldn’t be there. (In fairness, if I had really cared, I’m sure she would have come.) Her driving passions are God and family, and I remember her telling me from a young age that nothing–nothing– this world could offer could compete with motherhood. If my dad had acquiesced, she would have quit her job in a heartbeat and stayed at home with us full-time. I knew that her priority was her children, and I was happy to occupy that spot of importance in her life.
I feel absolutely no ambivalence towards staying at home; it’s what I have always wanted, and already I feel like I am living out a dream.But what about my daughter? I hope someday she will want to be a mother too, and I hope that she will find the same satisfaction staying home with her children that I anticipate finding with mine. But I also want her to feel fulfilled as a person, to develop her talents to the point of no regret, to achieve whatever she needs to achieve in order to better know herself and her own potential. Maybe it’s partly because I am entering motherhood at an older age (at least in the Mormon world), but I feel very satisfied as a person; I don’t need any more degrees or professional advancement to feel self actualized, and that makes the whole decision to stay at home soooo much easier. I want Lydia to feel similarly satisfied with her life so that when the time comes for her to decide how to best express her talents, she will actually know what her talents are. At the end of the day, I don’t want to push, but I do want help give Lydia wings. When it comes to raising my child, I don’t like the idea of making tons of mistakes.
Abe says it’s a good thing we don’t have an inflexible formula about child-rearing, and that we will raise Lydia one day, one case, one prayer at a time. He also says it’s actually a good thing we have no idea what we’re doing because then we can lean more completely on God to lead us. I take comfort in these thoughts, and I hope that Lydia will feel our unconditional love–even when we make mistakes.
