Success

My husband was asked to speak at my son’s elementary school this year for career day. I was a little jealous that what I do all day every day is nothing that anyone wants to hear about, especially kids, but also wondered how many kindergarteners would care to hear from a guy in a stuffy suit talk about wills, trusts, contracts and mediations.

He called me on the phone as soon as his presentation was over and told me about how, right out of the gate, he asked the group of kindergartners sitting criss-cross applesauce in front of him, “Does anyone in here know what a lawyer does?”

One kid in the front row raised his hand and said, “A lawyer is a person who lies,” setting the tone for the next half-hour.  

Success is something I have been thinking about. Someone recently told me that they thought of me as successful. It caught me off guard because I do not think of myself that way at all.

I am a poor excuse for a housewife who is not utilizing the master’s degree she was told would help her have it all. I have a bunch of freelance and part-time titles for work that keep me connected to the real world and use my brain, but none of them are ever going to make me rich or put me in a corner office wearing a bad-ass business suit.

I have my own pair of horse clippers that I use to shave my boys’ hair on the back steps and an annoying eye twitch that never stops. I have to remind the boys to put on shirts everyday and my 5-year-old girls-are-easier-to-potty-train-than-boys little lady WILL NOT poop in the potty no matter how much I beg or bribe.

My house is usually a wreck. My kids yell a lot at each other, and I yell at them. Our dog barks too much and runs away whenever he gets the opportunity. My poor husband keeps a bottle of hot sauce handy and uses it very often to pretend he is enjoying the bland, unimaginative dinners I cook for him.    

I just found a pair of running shoelaces that I have been searching for for eight months. A friend gave them to me for my birthday and I promptly put them somewhere I would remember, but then forgot. (How is it possible that there are places in my own home that I haven’t been in for eight months when I am sure I could tell you, in detail, about what is on each aisle at our local grocery store?)

When I was younger, I thought the successful me would include accomplishment in a job with a command of my surroundings at home, someone who might be asked to speak at my kid’s career day. That is not me.

“What is success?” I asked my husband over dinner.

Ever the literal thinker, he started giving me a dictionary of words like “stature” and “status” and “wealth” but then finished it up with “the idea that a successful person would be someone who achieved whatever goals he had set for himself.”

My kids are all different, but I try hard to hold them to the same standard. I want them to work hard and do their best. “Their best” is individual to each of them – not the best but their best, whatever that may be.

All I want for Ellie, my daughter who was born with Down syndrome, is for her to be happy. That’s been the goal since before she was born. She has had a lot of tall fences to jump over in her short life, but as long as it’s where she can find happiness, I will continue to give her a lift or the encouragement she needs to scale to the top.

When I thought of my oldest boy as an adult, before his sister was born, the idea of success was a little cloudier. If I’m honest, it was hard for me to let go of all of the typical, worldly expectations and ideas of what the perfect life for him would be. When I pictured him as an adult, it was in a suit with a two-story house with a family and a dog. It was the flip side to the image of the same “having it all” bill of sale I was sold as a kid.

Once my daughter was born, I began to ask myself why I was holding him to a different standard. At the core of it, didn’t I just want him to be happy too? If I give my children the tools to become happy adults, isn’t that the best definition of success that I could hope for?

“We have children so that we can enjoy them,” I heard this week. And I guess that is at the core of it. Being over stimulated and always in demand, I have, from time to time, questioned our decision for children and wondered if I would have been smarter to make a different choice or to focus more on a professional life rather than one that includes so many diapers, snacks and carpools.

Today when I think of people who are successful, I think of people I know who are whole and can communicate their needs clearly. People who are secure in who they are and don’t seem to let the strain of other’s opinions weigh them down. They are able to give themselves over to the present and focus on what is happening right now instead of what has to happen in the future while learning lessons from what did happen in the past.

At least once a week, Ellie calls her daddy at work and asks him to take her to the neighborhood Mexican restaurant to get chicken strips and French fries. Tonight was one of those nights and when we got home, my husband was parallel parking my car in front of our house, something that takes him two or three tries.

It’s become a joke. He blames it on my car or on the cameras and sensors that beep at him. He likes to say the mirrors are off or that my car isn’t the same size as his. Either way, he never makes it to Park on the first try, and I always make some sort of sideways comment about how the neighbors are watching, laughing at his inadequacy.

“Success is parallel parking this car in this spot the first time,” he said to me as he put the car back in Drive and tried again.

“Mommy always gets it right the first time,” I heard from someone in the backseat.

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