Dooce, babies, tzedakah, selfishness and loneliness

I'm not really a regular reader of Dooce. Sometimes Allison sends me particularly cute photos or posts there and, like 500 other some-odd blogs, it's in my bloglines and I peruse it. But cozy on my couch after my spicy Boca chikn patty, I read this post and it brought tears to my eyes. Not tears of...sadness or joy per se, just the kind of tears where they come out because you're alone and don't have another way of exlaiming to yourself, "Wow, that really made me feel something." Maybe tears because I want to someday be the kind of caring, loving, attentive, interested mom Heather shows herself to be in this post. Plus, she's funny:

Your love for yourself, though, hasn’t diminished your love for Elmo one bit. During one sequence of video you saw yourself walking around hugging Elmo to your chest and I think you thought he might be trapped in the television. You threw your body against the screen and pounded it with both of your open palms as if he were being carted away to the gas chamber. FREE ELMO! FREE ELMO! We had to fast forward through that whole sequence so you didn’t have a heart attack...

You often sing your ABC’s and stop after T because the rest of the song doesn’t interest you. I don’t blame you, after T it’s all down hill and one of the last lines of the song? Hello? “Now I know my ABC’s?” Why do you have to point that out when you just SANG THE WHOLE ALPHABET. If people would pay attention they would come to that conclusion ON THEIR OWN.

It's not even the details so much as the fact of parenthood, and realizing that I don't just want some adorable tiny helpless little baby who'll cry and need me to feed and change him or her, but that I want the whole thing, a child who will grow from an infant to a toddler to a real little person, who may be nothing like me, or, even scarier, exactly like me. It's weird the way even contemplating having kids, even years down the road, brings out so many of my insecurities, and then I worry about passing those on, though deep inside, rock bottom, as Ms. Schaefer would say, I know I'll be a good mom. And right now I'm just focusing on being good to myself and being a good person, and putting as much of myself into my writing as I can, into doing what I want to be doing.

So, this isn't totally related to having kids, but in my head it kindof is. I've always kept in touch with my family, and they are scattered all around the tri-state area, some on the West Coast, but the ones I'm closest to are in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut though we mostly keep in touch via phone and email. I've always been close with my grandmother though don't get to see her as often as I'd like. Anyway, I try to do what I can, and it's always amazing how the little things mean so much to them. My grandmother was telling me how her bank had run out of calendars, and when we got off the phone, without even thinking about it, I just went online and found a place that sells Martha's Vineyard (where she grew up) calendars, and ordered one for her. I then forgot about it, but it arrived quite promptly, and she was thrilled. On the other side, my grandfather had been talking about Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, which I just read, and I wasn't sure if he had it already, but took a chance and sent it, and I know he was very pleased. And those very little gifts made me feel good, just as all my card-sending makes me smile, because I know when I drop them in the mail slot that in a day, or two or three, someone's going to open their mail and get a card from me. It's really as simple as that. I'd do it all the time if I had more money and didn't want to be a pest. Seriously, when I'm dating someone, it's card city for them. I miss that-not just the card sending, but the sentiment behind it. It's why I like bringing cupcakes, it's the exact same thing-I like to feel needed. I like to feel like I'm a good friend, like I have something to offer. It makes me feel like even if I fuck up my own life in all kinds of ways, at least I can do something nice for someone else.

Anyway, I was thinking about this and remembering probably the only lesson I still recall from Hebrew school, about Maimonedes's hierarchy of tzedakah: (check out this site for an interesting etymology and rundown of charity vs. tzedakah)

Jewish tradition considers certain kinds of tzedakah to be more meritorious than others. The Talmud describes these different levels of tzedakah, which Maimonides organizes into a hierarchy. The levels of tzedakah, from the least to the most worthy, are:

Giving begrudgingly;

Giving less than one should but giving it cheerfully;

Giving after being asked;

Giving before being asked;

Giving when one does not know the recipient’s identity, but the recipient knows the identity of the donor;

Giving when one knows the recipient’s identity, but the recipient doesn’t know the donor’s identity;

Giving when neither party knows the other’s identity; and

Enabling the recipient to become self-reliant.

Now, it's not that I feel guilt for giving when I know the person knows who I am, because I recognize that it's totally selfish giving. This kindof goes back to the baby thing. Yes, there are perfectly selfish reasons I want to have a child, but those are not the only reasons. I do see how it is with my baby cousin, how I'm totally taken with him, how all he really has to do is exist and he makes me smile and coo and dote all over him, and I can only imagine what that's like when you're someone's parent - that heart-bursing love times a million, times infinity. But I think, and I hope, that I have something to give back, to counteract the selfishness part. I guess lately I've sortof come to this crossroads with myself where I'm dedicated to this month of being alone, of thinking and writing and all that (and I am going to break it a little for certain events), but I also see how easy it is to get used to being alone. I do really treasure time by myself; I get extremely antsy if I have to be around people 24/7 for extended periods of time. Even a few hours on my own helps me recharge. But there's another kind of alone, too. The kind that I'm starting to realize means that I do strive for something more. It's a very tricky thing to admit, even to myself, because the instant I allow myself to want someone, to want to open up my life, I immediately feel like I'm open up this huge door in my heart, holding up a sign that says "hurt me," and I know all too well how thin of a skin I have. It's much easier to stay away, to just close that door before even a moment of doubt creeps in, especially when you're not sure if you can deal with anything going wrong, ever. And yet, clearly, if I just keep the door sealed shut, I not only won't grow as a person, I cut off the possibility of meeting someone who might not only not hurt me, but might, dare I even say this, love me.

I don't like to be the most cynical person in the room but I feel like slowly this very core, deep-down self-doubt has just settled inside me so that I question whether that's even possible, beyond a fairy tale type "someday I'll fall in love and be rich and have kids" kind of way. I know in part that it's a cycle - if I don't think it will happen, it won't, of course, the logical part of me knows that, but that very tiny part that wants to believe sometimes feels like she's believing in Santa Claus. I've never been good with the abstract, could never read science fiction because I'm just too damn logical. That's why I have trouble with religion too. The concept of faith is hard for me because I want to see results, I want to see and know for sure. So to conceptualize something that I can't even really even start to draw the faintest picture in my mind of? Fairly impossible. "To witness a beginning you could almost understand" is this line from Ida's song "The Morning" and I think I've said this before-I don't know exactly whether that song's about the beginning of a relationship or a human being, but in a way, for me, with neither on the horizon any time soon, they're both as faint and blurry as a mirage, the kind where your eyes keep checking and you move your head and strain your vision one more time to make it out, to see if you can decipher what's happening or whether it really is all smoke and mirrors. The problem is, I'm not in a car where I can race ahead and go check it out; I have to just wait it out like everyone else, and for a girl who's so impatient she has to check to see if the train is coming, that's, well, not an easy thing to do.