The Family Girl Blogs (aka "The New Working Girl Blogs") Blog #34, Imitation of a Regular Life (1 of 2) To see all of my Family Girl Blogs, click on this link: http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/28818/family-girl-blogs

There are so many things that have happened to me these past seven or so years, though I know that all I have gone through don't even compare to one-tenth many of those here in BC have gone through.   But these changes of fortune and ups and downs in life are mine own, and they have helped to shape what I am now, whatever that is, which includes my attitudes, my beliefs, my points of view on life, and so many other things.

Being in a foreign land makes one look at one's life from a fresh perspective.   I suppose because the people around you look at you differently, forcing you to re-assess who and what you really are - to see yourself from a different perspective.

Hence this blog.

I suppose I should say a more different persepective heehee.   After all, us BC denizens already have "skewed" perspectives.   No offense, of course... note the quotation marks? :)

I guess all I ever really wanted was to be like everyone else, or, hmmm... That's not strictly correct... Lemme think that one through a bit...

Actually, who wants to be like everyone else?   Of course, everyone wants to be different from everyone - to be noticed, for example - to be given recognition: to hear the words "good work!" from one's boss, for example, or to be credited for your work, to be recognized for your skills or knowledge.   So. Definitely not just like everyone else.   Even with something as simple as getting kudos for your stories here in BC. :)

So it made me wonder what I really meant when I said I wanted to "be like everyone else," when I clearly didn't want to BE just "like everyone else."

Let's change tacks.

I'm sure people in DC know about 96.3FM and the Quiet Storm, which they would have on air during late evening and after midnight.   At least they did way back around 2005 or 2006.   The Quiet Storm's mostly mellow music,  jazz and old R&B.   Just the kind of soft music you'd want to have at night.

Anyway, all of this doesn't have much bearing to this blog, except that WHUR is memorable to me because of the slow, sad songs that I used to indulge in back during my suicidal "dark phase."

One of these songs that had an impact on me was a real oldie from Barry Manilow (and you guys can quit your eye-rolling and eyebrow-raising, okay?).   The lyrics go, "she's a great little housewife though sometimes she talks like a fool.   But she helps at the store in the holiday rush and she picks up the kids after school, and she puts down the phone when her husband comes home and she changes from mother to wife.  'Til she feels the words hanging between them, and she hangs by her words to her life."

A sad song from a melancholy suburban wife - pretty dated imagery which, I suppose, has less meaning in today's more emancipated world, where the stereotype of a modern female includes going beyond the confines of a housewife or homemaker - an acceptance of career, personal fulfillment and personal goals & recognition.

I grew up in a house where this was the accepted norm even though my folks weren't into that.   So my sister always knew she would be able to do what she wanted, which was just as well, given her outgoing and self-actualized persona.   I doubt if being "just" a housewife was part of her life goals.

As for me, though, the life of that girl in the Barry Manilow song seemed like a wonderful life to me - one I would probably have killed for.   But when I listened to the song a bit more, the lyrics, the melancholy melody and Barry's slightly-lisping singing did indeed make her humdrum housewife-life seem tragic, and cutting her wrist on a broken glass "quite by mistake" seemed like an explainable thing.   Justification for suicide can be many and different, one from the other (I should know), and her diappearance into the obscurity of suburbian life seemed to be one of the more justifiable reasons.

Now, with a little bit more experience with this thing we call life, with my now-jaded-yet-expectant pov, I can understand where she's coming from.   My own reasons for suicide those years ago were more "direct" reasons, but her reasons - a sense of unfulfilment, of not reaching her potential, of not discovering what else she could be - is comparatively vague and amorphous, but yet understandable.

Her life-role seemed one that people expected of her, that of "housewife" and "mother" - honorable labels that older generations hold in respect and esteem.   But for Generation Y folks such as me - those labels have become mutable and less rigid, and included "professional" and "working woman" as parts of the definition of wife and mother.   (Although my being born in 1981 makes that debatable - if I am really a Gen Y or a Gen X baby boomer.   I suppose it's better to say I'm an Echo Boomer, then. heehee...)

I suppose, in my patented long-winded way, I am saying that I am still confused about what I really wanted.   I am still looking for that storybook life that I have in my mind's eye, just like everyone has of their own particular dream, but, like everyone who has gone through enough life experiences, I, like everyone else, know that the storybook thing will always just be in the storybook, that real life will always be less than that.

That girl from the Barry Manilow song was living the storybook sixties-seventies wife, but it wasn't enough for her.   And, lookimg back, although, at the time, I thought that was the life for me, I don't think I would have wanted it for long. I am a child of my time, after all - a child of the internet, of Murphy Brown, Rebecca in Cheers, the gang from Friends, of Hillary Clinton, Tailhook, of the Pentium computer.

I love my ma, and I can look at being the stereotypical kind of wife like she was as some sort of ideal.   But, in reality, it's just not for me.   At least not completely.

Hillary Clinton's infamous quote from the nineties goes "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life."   That is the crux of the thing - the stereotype, traditional "storybook" life and the Gen Y self-actualized career-driven life.

For me, there are many role models out there that seem to be able to balance a home life/family life yet pursue a career, and do it femininely and with unquestionable success.   One of them is Giada DeLaurentiis - pursuing a glamorous, unquestionably feminine career, and balancing it with a family life.   I  have no talent in the kitchen, of course, and have no real ambitions to be a famous chef or anything like that, but I think you know what I mean. In her program on the Food Network, I always liked it when she shares her culinary masterpieces to her friends or her husband & family at the end, looking beautiful, coiffed and galmorous.   It's probably staged and all that, but I can't help but hope they're real.   And that's what I want - to be who I have a potential to be, and yet have the kind of family life that Ma and Dad have. If I don't, well, the girl in Barry Manilow's song put it better than I ever could:

"Oh, God, I love my husband and I love my kids.   You know, I wanted to be like my mother, but if I hadn't done it as soon as I did, oh there might have been time to be me - for myself, for myself..."

This blog may be a selfish one, perhaps - at least that's how it sounds to me, wanting to have my cake and eat it, too.   If it does, I hope you don't feel too bad about me.

In the meantime, I say goodnight, for tomorrow, I will need to continue on with my imitation regular life.
     

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