Tending my...

Flock Herd

Because my family is more like a bunch of goat kids with their own wild ideas and dispositions, than a docile bunch of geese, though I watch over them like a mother hen sometimes. This post is a reminder that we make choices every day, and each new day is a chance for new choices. My own, the past twenty years (really, already!?) have been all focused on doing one thing well; raising a family, creating a place for this family to grow and thrive.

I have had to come to terms with the consequences of my decisions, over and over again.  This was one of those weeks of facing the music. Before I go on; warning, this post contains an image of a very, teeny tiny spider, but it is a spider, so (Mom), beware. 

I attended the annual conference for interpreters and translators in Iowa last week; (IITA). When interpreters get together, we are just like parents everywhere, and we compare notes on our kids. It is never football or music with interpreters; it's all about languages. And...on the topic of bilingual children, I came up lacking. Sigh. I always meant for them all to be perfectly bilingual, it was the plan. My lovely children are bilingual, but not all of them are perfectly fluent, at least not when they are in the States. Give them a couple of weeks in France and it all comes back...but it's been three years. Other interpreters HAVE succeeded, some of their children are fluent in not only two, but five languages.

Should I have done things differently? Should we have lived with the house as it was, no improvements, no repairs, no new AC? Should I have stayed home from that San Francisco conference?, said no to kids' dance lessons?, kung-fu?, giving to charity?, to make sure we could go to France each summer? Or was it just not going to happen anyway, with five children, the expenses daily life involves and the various activities I would have to hear arguments about missing in the summer? 

None of this is productive.  Here is what life is now, today. No one can tell about tomorrow.

I am so very contented, taking care of my children, home with them, gardening, cooking, reading aloud and cooking, along with a nice, side career, and it is a lucky, blessed life indeed. Choices have been made and whether or not others could have been made is irrelevant.

The universe if falling into place as it should. 

And look who came to explore my knitting the other night! Arachne herself! (This is where the spider-fearers may look away. I think she is very elegant. I am honored!)