I realize that there isn’t a need for moms to keep up with the fashion trends of the day, but I’d seen my children roll their eyes a few too many times when I wore my Levis that fit quite comfortably around my waist.
“Mom, your pants are so high, that’s embarrassing!”
And I had thought low-rise pants were the fashion mainstay only of plumbers.
So I decided it was about time I tried a pant that hit closer to my hips. My first pair worked fine. Okay, I felt a little exposed at first, but I soon learned that keeping up with another trend—wearing my shirt untucked—had the pleasant side effect of covering my exposure.
Boldly, I order a second pair from a catalogue; I was on a roll. The day they arrived I tried them on. They were certainly a bit lower than the first—the ‘waist’ hit three full fingers below my belly button. I suppose it’s no longer called a waistband at that point. However, with the right length top to cover, they actually looked good. Of course, seeing as I was now wearing all of my shirts over my waistband I couldn’t see how my children knew where my pants hit—belly button, hips, wherever, but they seemed less embarrassed, at least by how I wore my pants.
Well, looks isn’t everything, because while they looked good, they felt… insufficient. Or I should say, I felt insufficiently covered. I tried washing them and drying them, working to shrink the waist enough to have it take hold a bit higher on my waist. No such luck. Today as I walked through the grocery, I found myself hitching up my pants. Perhaps one needs to start this fashion at a younger age so one acclimates to the pants-on-hips feel before stretch marks need concealing.
When I got home I tried taking the waist in with a binder clip, so they wouldn’t slip down quite so low. That worked pretty well for awhile, but in time the clip started to poke into me— especially when I sat down. Somehow having a sharp implement in my hip bone didn’t seem a good trade off to cover my exposure.
Now I’m trying one of the most versatile of products—duct tape. I’ve cinched in the waist and taped it with duct tape so the pants fall only 2 fingers below my belly button, a definite improvement and actually not uncomfortable.
I’ve learned a valuable lesson; I shouldn’t buy pants that hit more than 2 fingers below my belly button. Oh right, and I shouldn’t succumb to my children’s pressure to wear fashion that just wasn’t meant for post-pregnancy bellies. Time to pull my Levis back on.
P is for Patience
Patience doesn’t come naturally to many people. Certainly I know some people who seem to be able to wait calmly as if in an ethereal trance. They can watch as their spouses drive into the longest lane at the toll booth and not even notice that every other lane is going faster, let alone mention this fact to the driver. These serene individuals would never consider rudely making a strategic dash for the far lane which appears to be moving along quite nicely. I’m not in that category. But parenting requires patience. A conundrum? Not quite— I mimic patience.
- Time builds patience. Adding 15 minutes to the start of any outing is one very good way to make it appear as if you are patient simply because you aren’t rushed.
- Preparation builds patience. This one I dusted off from my Girl Scouting experience. Pack the snack, sign the notes, locate the homework the night before and maybe you won’t find yourself yelling up the stairs, “The last place I saw your orchestra folder was under the chair!"
- Hunger erodes patience. Your or theirs. Nothing wrong with munching on some baby carrots or cheese cubes while you drag out…, I mean inspire your daughter to write that opening sentence for her essay due tomorrow.
Now if I can just find similar precepts to mimic patience on the computer so I don’t continually open new windows to start new tasks as I am unable to wait patiently for the results of a search!
Small Boots, Medium Boots
“Mom, let’s say you have a person who needs a small pair of boots and a person who needs a medium pair of boots and you have a medium pair of boots and a large pair of boots, what would you do?”
My initial reaction, “well it depends on who the people are”, was quickly countered by the more expansive response from my husband, “You have just hit open one of the fundamental dilemmas of social policy. Sometimes it’s hard to know whether to do some good for the most people, or if it’s better to completely solve some people’s problems and leave others with in inadequate solution.” And yet still it depends on whose feet are without boots.
The public education system in Massachusetts can be compared in many ways to the pair of people needing boots. Whether you consider the two bootless people to represent the financially poorer school systems and the richer school systems or the students receiving standardized instruction and the children needing Individualized Educational Programs (IEP) or the children needing honors class and those working at an average ability level, the metaphor can be played out.
Let’s consider that the students needing IEPs require medium boots and the students who receive standardized instruction require small boots. From a Massachusetts outlook, which in the public school system requires the maximum possible development of students with disability, the disabled students don’t have any footwear at all, while the other students all have at least one pair of shoes. Consequently, the education system in the state is crafted to meet the individual needs of the disabled students while leaving the remaining students to manage with a one size fits all approach—trying to put a large boot on a small foot, or worse, fitting a large foot into a small boot. In the case of disabled students and non-disabled students the cost of making the boots is not commiserate. So far more properly sized boots can be made for non-disabled students than can be made for disabled students for the same cost.
Hypothetical musings of a child are quick to capture fissures in social policy. I hope that as parents we nurture this thinking so that in time, she can be the one to find a plan to repair the cracks as well, where we have a system where everyone can get a pair of boots sized to fit.
My initial reaction, “well it depends on who the people are”, was quickly countered by the more expansive response from my husband, “You have just hit open one of the fundamental dilemmas of social policy. Sometimes it’s hard to know whether to do some good for the most people, or if it’s better to completely solve some people’s problems and leave others with in inadequate solution.” And yet still it depends on whose feet are without boots.
The public education system in Massachusetts can be compared in many ways to the pair of people needing boots. Whether you consider the two bootless people to represent the financially poorer school systems and the richer school systems or the students receiving standardized instruction and the children needing Individualized Educational Programs (IEP) or the children needing honors class and those working at an average ability level, the metaphor can be played out.
Let’s consider that the students needing IEPs require medium boots and the students who receive standardized instruction require small boots. From a Massachusetts outlook, which in the public school system requires the maximum possible development of students with disability, the disabled students don’t have any footwear at all, while the other students all have at least one pair of shoes. Consequently, the education system in the state is crafted to meet the individual needs of the disabled students while leaving the remaining students to manage with a one size fits all approach—trying to put a large boot on a small foot, or worse, fitting a large foot into a small boot. In the case of disabled students and non-disabled students the cost of making the boots is not commiserate. So far more properly sized boots can be made for non-disabled students than can be made for disabled students for the same cost.
Hypothetical musings of a child are quick to capture fissures in social policy. I hope that as parents we nurture this thinking so that in time, she can be the one to find a plan to repair the cracks as well, where we have a system where everyone can get a pair of boots sized to fit.
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