What I’m Going to be When I Grow Up
my mom and i had a really good talk the other night. she was a little more reflective than usual in our conversation; symptoms of an impending birthday. crazy how those birthday things tend to do that to people. all my birthdays went pretty good until i hit 25; i didn’t handle that one so well. for whatever reason, it seemed like the beginning of the end. thirty just seemed way too close. i was depressed for days and then got over it. i decided to pull myself together and save my energy for the big 3-0. and that’s years and years and years away, so why worry about it now…
back to my mom’s conversation. obviously, the older you get, the more important these little life checkups are, and she was going through one of those moments. i guess i was a little surprised; this woman ALWAYS has it together and then some. but like most children, i don’t tend to think of my parents as mere mortals. and approaching another birthday (a lady never tells which one) makes one wonder about what they want to be when they grow up. i guess there’s never really an answer to that one. but the best part of that question is that you still ask it, you still want to achieve and be something better than the present, even if you’re not a dewy-eyed neophyte whose only real world work experience involved a hairnet.
so what’s a youth-challenged woman to do these days?
ANYTHING!!!**
maybe that’s just optimistic naivete, but i really do believe that you can accomplish what you set your mind to do, keeping reality as a level-headed companion. i believe in making opportunities exist where there are seemingly none. gee, is this why i’m a teacher? hmmmm. maybe.
of course i know nothing of rejection and sacrificing myself to the opportunity gods…um, right. one of my personal goals is to publish a children’s picture book. last winter break i mailed of my six month labor of love to over twenty publishers. what happened? well i’d like to preface the results with: the hardest part of that whole process was actually mailing the damn things. i had worked so hard on my story, and to send it off to be skimmed by some office flunkie sifting through truckloads of unsolicited manuscripts, did not exactly inspire confidence. and then the rejections came back, and back, and back. so far my little story goes unnoticed, but does that mean it’s over? hell no!
one lesson i learned from my mother is persistence. once when my sister and i were just wee babes, she tried to get public assistance during a difficult financial time in our lives (we wuz po’). she was getting no help from the bored application processor who quickly denied us services. she sat her babies on the lady’s desk and said, “then you feed them,” and started heading for the door. point made, the lady quickly ushered my mother back to her clueless children and to an approved application. ahh, the gentle art of negotiation.
that’s what inspires me, to a large part. people that don’t take no for an answer, who carve out their own niche in life and go for whatever it is that makes it all worthwhile.
so that’s my birthday wish to all, myself included. keep doing what it is that makes you happy, and at the same time don’t be afraid to try new heights. you might enjoy the view even more.
**case #2837465: rita golden gelman’s fabulous book, tales of a female nomad. check it out!