Switching Topics
I was thinking on my way to work how accomplished I might be if I switched my obsession with politics, which is actually an obsession with the politics of others, to an obsession with art.
Although, I like making money, so, I dunno - it'd have to be the kind of obsession that came with a lot of nerve, I guess. Because nerve is really all that is required these days to make your mark, isn't it. Nerve and a certain absolute confidence in your own talent that even the little devil's advocate living in your brain (I call him John Knox) shouting "You can't be an artist - you can't draw!" (and it's never "You can't be an artist - you haven't suffered!" - which would be true, too) - can't dissuade you from going for it.
And to be honest (I almost never am, Dear Reader - I'm a mother, afterall) is because last night I realized I'm lying about something I used to not lie about - for the wrong reasons.
Let me explain.
I stayed home with my children because I have the kind of ego that required that I stay home with my children. I am paying the price for that - financially - now, but I have to be honest and say that I have absolutely no regrets about having done it. Part of the reason for that is because my mother stayed at home with us when we were children (and there are 4 of us) until my father died, fairly suddenly, after being diagnosed with inoperable cancer and she had to go back to work - and luckily she had a teaching certificate.
After that, she was a working mother - she loved working, actually, and became involved in local politics, as well. And, although I was proud of her, I really wanted her to be at home with me - not out at meetings. My grandmother lived with us, too, so I wasn't even subjected to daycare or babysitters (much).
So, when I got pregnant and everybody at the NDP (at Queen's Park, so it was Toronto) started advising me about waiting lists for daycare and which ones and how much and yaddayaddablahblah, I just listened politely and nodded and played along until one day I fessed up that I hadn't done anything by way of making childcare arrangements because I was planning on staying home with the baby. (I was also planning on having more in short order because I was in full "copying sister-in-law" mode, too, but I saved that fess-up for six months after baby #1 was born - so that even my ex was caught by surprise.)
My co-workers kind of laughed it off until they realized I was dead serious, then they tried to reason, cajole, threaten me out of my decision. They were right, of course. I hadn't thought through any of it (I was copying my sister-in-law on the stay-at-home with children part, too) but I knew it would be a lot harder FOR ME to put my kids in daycare than it would be to FOR ME to stay at home with them - no matter how isolating, lonely, financially devastating, ultimately not great for my marriage - it would be. (The marriage part is tricky because I keep reading about how successful marriages with a stay-at-home parent are and I can't imagine how that is - I really can't.)
In any case, my point is that I am very much on the Left and although I don't belong to a political party, I share many of the beliefs of the NDP, particularly with regards to its policies on universally accessible affordable childcare for all parents who want it. The New Conservatives, on the other hand, offend me with their blatant hypocrisy about childcare because, although they insist it's important, they don't want to pay for it. They just want to strip women with children of any participation in economic society (thereby excluding them from power - because money is power, Dear Reader) for having made the decision (or not...) to have children.
They disgust me, in other words. I loathe them. They are anathema to me. I wish death and destruction upon their grotesque abomination of a Party.
Liberals? Well, Liberals are smart because they talk a good and caring game and make lots of promises about childcare that would meet the needs of pretty well everybody, but they also know that the childcare years are short and after that, well, nobody wants to pay for anybody else's childcare. That's just the way Canadians roll. And Liberals know it.
Still, there's no reason why I shouldn't be honest about my personal experience, is there. This is just a blog, I'm just one person, and although I wouldn't have done childcare any other way - and that's in spite of some significant fallout - my reason for that, to be absolutely honest, is that I truly believe it was the best thing for MY children that I stayed at home. Our family has since undergone a bit of a revolution, so, there you go, but - I am standing by my choice now because, well, I didn't always on account of it's tricky to stand by a personal choice that can be so easily co-opted by all the bad political guys our there (New Conservatives) for all the wrong reasons.
And that's kind of why I got to thinking about switching my political obsession with the politics of others to something more articulate - like art.
