Envy

I am green with envy. Emerald green. All fucked up with it. I am really into the author Ayelet Waldman - her book, "Bad Mother" is great. She lives near me, one of her kids knows one of my kids, she has 4 young children, she is funny and irreverent and an "over-sharer" - I totally relate. She is also: Harvard educated. Married to a very successful fellow author. Generally viewable as a success. It appears that she is pulling it off. Four kids, career, marriage. This all came up in a tidal wave as we are driving in Berkeley and my daughter points to a perfect house and says, "Hey, that's where my friend Zeke lives, you know, his mom is that author you like, Ayelet Waldman." Lets just say, it physically hurt. And I realized, not only am I not pulling it off all that well, but I think that I may be flailing.

This trend of having large families (one which I was ignorant of) is not something I relate to. I think having that many kids falls into one of two categories: either you are so poor you don't know about or cannot afford birth control or you are so wealthy that you want lots of offspring to further the wealth or show off or something.

Where I fit, I am not sure. I was just so damn impulsive and newborns are so little and they smell so good. I have 4 kids but I do not: have a nanny or a babysitter or daycare - or a house cleaner (anymore) - or a big house (we live in 1000 sq feet) - or a nice car - or family with much money - or all four years at one college with a degree in hand - or a career - or a fucking plan. During the economic boom my husband (a framing contractor) had a stint with making really great money. I spent it all and he helped. We were totally un-managable, out of control, directionless weirdos. I am actually grateful for the lesson now learned because...well, I had to learn it someday.

And when we had money I went right along with the wave of being a middle-class, high-falutin', liberal do-gooder with pity on the uninsured and under-served in our community o dear! I came from a very comfortable, quite well-educated, middle-class background and I expected that would be the life I too would live. But the money-management gene skipped me over. The entitlement gene landed fair and square though and here I am feeling the weight of my circumstances on my shoulders.

I wonder where I really belong - although I abut the moneyed elite in the Bay Area geographically, politically and culturally, I feel out of place. And at the same time, I recoil in horror when I go inland or north or south. I do not "get" those people either. They vote wrong, dress wrong, eat wrong, spend their money wrong. I am a stifled product of a rigid environment that no longer represents or defines me.