Originality

Today was a sunny and beautiful day. In the late afternoon after Winston's long siesta (and mine as well as I was so utterly exhausted) my mom and I took Winston to Elizabeth Gamble garden for a stroll. Looking at the flowers, feeling the breezy air and bathing in the soft late afternoon sunshine, I felt a wave of relaxation and joy, after a whole week of preparation for my mom to take over while I am gone to China for my business trip next week. I sometimes would wake up up feeling anxious and guilty about leaving Winston behind, and even more anxious and guilty about sending him to daycare upon my return from China. But somehow this stroll in the garden really relaxed me and made me feel that life was good.

Michael said that what he likes about me is my originality. But I am totally unoriginal - I went to the famous schools and majored in something as pedestrian as chemistry, so there is nothing original about my education. I worked for some well-known companies - again nothing original. I started a company adopting a sensible business model creating next-generation therapeutics, instead of founding a company with bleeding-edge technology working on novel targets - so even my entrepreneurial efforts belong to the most "risk-adverse" types out there, instead of blue sky concepts. Regarding how to raise Winston, I pretty much follow whatever I have been told/advised, and have never attempted anything original. I would admit that I did once harbor a dream of spending every single Thanksgiving holiday outside of the United States to avoid the horrific turkey meal and to have some exotic fun, but I can now see that I will never hear the end of complaints from not only Winston but also other well-meaning family and friends for denying Winston the quintessential American experience. So there - the only thing that may be original about me is not going to happen either.

So many people told me that it would be bad for Winston's development if I kept him at home for much longer. So of course, without much originality, I decided to cave in and send him to daycare around the age of 2. Yes, he is a bit pampered at home because he's still fed his dinner and put to his crib for sleep, although I like to think that I do try to enforce discipline. At daycare, he will have to go hungry and maybe thirsty for a few days and feel extraordinarily frustrated for not being understood (he speaks a lot in Chinese but his baby accent is not always easily understood even by me).

Now that my trip is happening soon, and Winston's first day of daycare will happen right after I come back from China, I have felt more and more anxiety about both leaving him behind and sending him to daycare right afterward. Am I a particularly selfish mother? Or is it because I am so unoriginal that I always end up doing what everyone else does even when I initially don't feel like it?

Originality, I think, is a luxury that most of us cannot afford.