The Luxury of Vanity

Earlier today, a friend of mine had a quick chat with me, and mentioned that due to the fact that they could not refinance their home right now, she could not go out and furnish their house nicely and buy a great wardrobe. She honestly added that it was perhaps not important after all, and as usual, she added some self-criticism, "it might be due to my insecurity about not looking good in front of others."

I thought to myself - I have not bothered to nicely furnish the house or to buy new clothes for as long as I can remember - which was right before Winston's birth. But does it reflect a sense of security or lack of vanity on my part? Actually, no. It is really only because I have had no mental or physical bandwidth to even worry about those things.

When another friend in Boston wrote me to complain about work and challenge of raising a teenage daughter, we had a conversation on mid-life crisis. She asked me if I had any sense of mid-life crisis. I wrote back, and tried to be funny - not exactly my area of strength.

"I totally feel like I am in a middle-age crisis, except that I don't have the curiosity for a fancy car, an affair, or an exotic adventure.

I just want a regular, boring, and reliable Japanese car in which I can drive without worrying about whether there is enough electricity left to go to the destination (Michael bought this all electric Nissan Leaf and it can only go for about 80 miles on one charge - mind you, there is no gas station on the way where you can gas up so i have to calculate and plan well ahead of time and it takes overnight to charge it up). BTW, I drove that electric car into the bushes right in front of Winston's daycare center, ruining the bushes and knocking off a post, making me a notorious mother at this Stanford daycare center - I was previously utterly obscure in that circle.

I just want a husband who makes plenty of money to provide security and does all the housework plus at least half of childcare, while having to work at most five days a week (instead of at least 80 hours a week), and utterly devoted to his wife, because he wisely knows that "anyone I think that may be better for me out there is definitely going to be much worse than my wife".

I just want to have a peaceful routine life without any trips that require planning and extra work, in which Winston is always happy, healthy and developmentally on track and normal (none of these sicknesses, allergies, or obsessions with a certain pattern of playing that make me wonder if he's developing early OCD), and Michael and I do not argue over utterly petty things while resorting to big and lofty principles in the arguments."

So there, I probably have more vanity than my friend, but I have not had the luxury to showcase it! :)