Tension Tightrope: A Contradictions Story

Sometimes I feel like a hypocrite.

I stand on my soapbox and tell the world to get offline. Get your kids outside. Slow down, stop spinning, start noticing. And yet my soapbox is an HP Pavilion with an Intel Core processor.

Am I pretending to be something I’m not?

As I settle into life on the Eastern Shore – homeschooling, engaging with the nature around me, planning for my future – I contemplate the contradiction often.

Nature Unnaturally

To design the life I want for my son, I write my essays in a home governed by an HOA that quite literally forbids most of what I’d consider to be an ideal upbringing for my child. There are limits on our outdoor play spaces, our garden beds, and our grass.

It was the only way my partner would go along with the vision. We agreed we needed something different. We were no longer thriving in the Philadelphia suburbs among all the expectations of a life that has known you forever. But it turns out that my capacity for discomfort is roomier than his.

Yes, we get outside every day. But I’m lugging a tote of toy stepping stones, balance beams, bats, and balls out my glass slider every morning. We ride our bike on paved sidewalks to a man-made park to play.

If I’m lucky, it’s rained and we can pull on our waders and stomp in the deep mud puddles at the edges of the in-progress homes. The ones with no occupants, no grass, and no agendas yet.  I let my son throw rocks in them, all too aware that it won’t be long before the houses are done and fresh sod covers up our natural playground.

We see deer every night from his bedroom window. Five or six at a time in the woods across the street. “This will be a trail one day,” they told us at the beginning. It will lead to the clubhouse with the playground and the pool and the sports courts. I wonder what the deer will think of that.

Still, I point them out. I want him to see. To notice who lived here before we did.

Once we saw a fox bounding down the road right between the houses as if being chased. It crossed into our backyard and ran down the drainage ditch that separates our house from the row behind us. He asked where it was going. “To find a new home like we did,” I say.

And while I’m appreciative for the experience, to get to show my son in real time what is happening to nature all around us, I am ashamed of the part I play. I could have said no. Put my foot down. Chose a different neighborhood or no neighborhood at all.

I didn’t, though. I let my partner make the choice so there’d be less resistance to other lifestyle changes…like me not working, for example.

But I am working. I run a local media/advertising business with a family-friendly focus as an independent contractor. Which means my online presence – especially on social media – is far more pervasive than I’d like.

There are no newspapers to scour for local events and very few publications make it to print these days. I need to be digitally present…and digitally aware.

I see my son watching me on my phone, clocking the minutes that pass. I feel the guilt creeping in when I spend his nap time emailing clients and researching articles. Garnering social media engagement.

How strange it feels to teach him how to be happy without these things I rely on daily.

I try to compensate of course. For him and for myself. The intention is there. I know what aligns with the life I am creating. The execution is imperfect.

So, I create systems to combat my insufficiencies. I set screentime limits on my phone, and I’ve saved countless bricks and lockbox devices to order when the funds are there. Our days are scheduled out in a rhythm that allows me to work online and mother offline.

I am, all at once, systems-critical and systems-dependent as are so many other mothers out there, raising a generation of humans capable of altering societal trajectories for the better. We tell our children about the dangers of technology then post on Instagram to pay our bills.

And yet imperfection is kind of the point. It’s the antithesis of social media and the counterpoint to all the checkboxes I’ve spent my life chasing. I don’t have to be any one type of perfect.

Not the perfect businesswoman. Not the perfect daughter. Not the perfect nature-forward mother. I am free to choose what works for me as I design a life of intent

Which is exactly what I want for my son – to be able to choose a path that fits him rather than driven down one that will tame him.

So maybe my conclusion is that I am contradictory, yes, but not hypocritical. Perhaps, I am just a beautiful hodge podge of yes and no. The quintessential version of personal choice, using what I know to attract what I need.

I choose when to engage and when to avoid, what to include and what to ignore, and whether I care about the contradictions that define my imperfection.

I still scroll through my notifications when I drink my coffee every morning and say no to 98% of the Paw Patrol requests that leave my son’s lips. I watch the woods through my son’s window and turn on his wi-fi-connected sound machine at bedtime.

I can write for you on my laptop and for me in my journal. The deer and the HOA will come by either way.