At no point are my creative juices so stirred as at the moment when I am replying to Kindly Parenting Emails from my various and sundry Kindly Mother Figures.
No, seriously.
Think about it...each response must conjure up all of the following: gratitude for the concern/advice/questions, a sense that I have done my research and know what I'm talking about, and the feeling that I'm confident of my choices and happy in my current role as Mommy-first.
And at the same time this same response needs to avoid the following: making the reader feel like I'm telling them to mind their own business, making them think that I'm a) miserable b) insane c) requiring excessive amounts of pity for any other reason, inspiring them to offer parenting advice (unless I, you know, want it).
It's a delicate process requiring finesse, subtlety, and I-can't-think-of-another-synonym-for-taking-great-pains. When I write these emails my senses are finely tuned to nuance, innuendo (no, not that kind), an any possible misinterpretation/argument so I can circumvent it preemptively. See? After an hour of writing these emails my powers are so highly attuned that I'm using words like "circumvent" and "preemptive"!
Papa Bear thinks I take too much time making sure no one thinks I'm making a mistake. He thinks I should just live my life and who cares what other people think. I don't roll like that. I wish I did, because it would save me a lot of painstaking email-writing. But then again, how else am I going to hone my skills?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment