Idling

I am singlehandedly contributing to destroying the earth. It is 40 degrees with the humidex and I am sitting in a running car with the AC on. Anise is napping, there was literally no other way today. I am sorry environment, I just may buy carbon credit for this.

After not having touched my flute in between concerts for many many months, I have been having an urge to play again. I don't have any concerts coming up until the fall, and none are my own. It feels great to be stress free (free of work stress that is) and Anise has been so happy lately. Performing is such an intense stress for me. It has great highs that accompany it, but it is like no other pressure. I think I am bad at hiding it and I certainly pass a lot of the stress along. I wonder if I will constantly be weighing the pros and cons of working until one day I will wake up and my kids will be gone and all I have is work. I will then look back and say how silly it was that I was preoccupied with so much questioning, instead of just taking 5 years to raise kids and then slowly, when the time is right, get back into things. Instead I ruminate over the same questions again and again, all the while not really having as much control as I think I do.

I live in a neighborhood with a lot Hassidic Jews with huge families of 15 children. The women start young, probably at 18 and spend the majority of their adult life pregnant or with an infant. I think of myself and my complaints about how hard motherhood is with just one, and I wonder what it feels like to have 13. They have no room for contemplating choices because their choices are limited, and that must be freeing in a way. But I can make that choice too if i wish, to just raise kids (or kid) and do nothing else. I know that choice would not fulfill me, or make me happy, but it looks easy from the outside. Yet if I made that choice my day today would be exactly the same! The tantrums would still erupt, food would still have to be cooked, house still cleaned. So what seems easy and free about that other lifestyle? Something having to do with order and expectations? I don't know, but they don't look that tired.