Happy Monday everyone! This week, we’re continuing with our series of Table Talk conversation cards. If you missed last week’s card and want to go back and print it out so you can use it at your family table, or with your book club, or at your next meeting or holiday party, you can click here to get that card.
On the porch today, we’re moving on the Card #2, which comes from Beth Webb Hart’s book, Sunrise On the Battery:
I have to admit that this question really made me think. Have I ever had to choose between my dream and someone I love?
I think, as a mother, you often put your dreams aside to see to the needs of a family. Over the years, all those things that had seemed to define you when you were young–hobbies you loved, passions you thought you would pursue, accomplishments you intended to strive for–seem to take a backseat to things that won’t wait. A crying baby, a shoebox diorama that has to be turned in tomorrow, an argument that requires a peacemaker (or at least a referee), cupcakes for the class party you found out about at midnight while going through a rumpled backpack. The list goes on and on.
It’s probably that way for most moms. Thinking back now, I remember the early years of marriage, when life seemed to be sort of a push-pull struggle between individual dreams and family needs. I remember leaving the house one Thursday night to go to the writers’ critique group, and seeing my husband standing there one the porch with our new baby, looking desperate. We laugh about it now, looking back from the perspective of parents whose growing mini-men are increasingly forming lives of their own, with less and less time for Mom and Dad.
We wonder, now, why that young mom and dad wasted time getting their nickers in such a twist over who was going to babysit. We have a different perspective on it at this point. We realize that there are times for different purposes, and a dream delayed isn’t necessarily a dream lost. Kids grow up and leave the nest, options open up again. There’s more time for dreams.
But there’s a part of me that thinks fondly back to those days when life was a battle just to get a few minutes alone to think. Sometimes, I’d like to to unzip those mini-man costumes, and unearth the two little boys who once lived in this house–I know they must be in there somewhere. If I had one more day with those little guys, I’d let them scatter Hotwheels cars and Legos everywhere, and I wouldn’t make anyone play “pick up clean up.” We’d read the same Dr. Seuss book for the thousandth time, and play Candyland until all the color cards were gone. We’d make sandwiches and walk down to the fishing hole, and hunt for fossils, and make bows and arrows. At the end of the day, I’d climb the ladder to the bunk bed that doesn’t get used anymore, and we’d sing bedtime songs, and say prayers, and talk way past bedtime, and watch the stars outside the window, and try to imagine how many there are.
Did I ever give up the dream for someone I love? Maybe mothers just replace one dream with another… and maybe we postpone a few. The trick, I think, is in learning to embrace today’s dreams, and treasure yesterday’s, and look forward to all the dreams yet to come.
New On Shelves — The Latest Moses Lake Book
Click here to read the first Chapter!
