What Did You Expect?

Recently I was visiting my parents and was helping them load some awkwardly shaped items into a car.   When I succeeded, my mother and I had a conversation about why I had never become an engineer, because clearly I have a proclivity for spatial awareness.   I was a child of the 70s, when Gloria Steinem was in her heyday screaming for women's lib and creating Ms. magazine.   You would have thought that little girls would have been encouraged to be engineers.   But, nope.

I blame my parents for many things, but not this.  In the 70s and 80s people just didn't think about little girls growing up to be engineers.   Even little girls, like me, who spent their summers and afternoons building all sorts of things in the backyard with the boy next door.   We re-purposed an old wooden refrigerator carton so many times that eventually it just fell apart.  But not before it was a working car, club house and row boat.   In the winter we fashioned giant multi room forts in the snow with built in supports and escape routes.   But why on earth would a girl want to be an engineer?
My father had studied electrical engineering in college and I distinctly remember it being discussed at the dinner table that my brother who spent his days and nights locked in his room reading Homer, Twain and Shakespeare might not actually be meant to be an engineer.    That made sense.   But nobody ever looked at the other kid at the table, the one with the grubby fingernails, with the permanent-skinned knees, who was always up to date on her tetanus shots because she needed to be, and said, "Now this girl has engineer written all over her."

Again.  I don't blame them.   It was how things were back them.   These were the days when people threw their kids outside in the morning and hoped they didn't return until dinnertime.   It was the 70s. People didn't overthink their children.

I've never understood why engineering isn't part of most public education curriculum.  Maybe if it had been I would have made the connection between building a car out of scrap wood in my back yard and putting together a real car.  But, alas, I wasn't one to put those things together on my own.    So, I didn't become an engineer and honestly I don't really regret it.   There are women my age, and older,  who actually are engineers and I admire them greatly because I know it probably wasn't such an easy track.

When I did go to college I became a psychology major which I quite enjoyed.   Actually, I enjoyed it so much I was thinking of going on to graduate school and becoming a psychologist.
One day (or maybe more than once) my Dad jokingly said to me that psychology was "witchcraft" and I quickly lost interest in pursuing an advanced degree.   I thought the expectation was that I find a less "kooky" path and maybe a more lucrative one.   Does being a stay-at-home mom fit that bill Dad?

Again, I don't blame my Dad. I don't think he realized the power of his words, I'm sure he was (sort of) joking.

This is all my very long winded way of saying that the power of expectation, or lack thereof, can have a huge impact on what we do, and who we choose to be.

Of course, parental expectations can have the opposite effect as well.
My daughter is an EMT in her "spare time" at college.   This is the same daughter who to this day screams and goes running at the idea of a shot or a blood test.   In fact, I'm sure if she's reading this, she has become squeamish at the mere mention of shots and blood tests.    I recently learned that when she initially told me that she wanted to be an EMT my response was barely contained laughter and "No way.  You?  You could never be an EMT!  You are scared of needles and blood and everything that an EMT does."

She became and EMT to spite me.
She told me this.
Yup.
She dealt with her worst fears to prove me wrong.
Well played.

Now, of course, I tell her that she "can't" do things that I want her to do, so it might have been a mistake to tell me this story.   She doesn't buy it when I tell her "there's no way you can shovel the driveway" anyway.

Of course, this daughter does things daily that surprise me and amaze me and that I would have NEVER EVER expected of the shy, scared kid she was just a very few years ago.

I honestly think in the moment that she became an EMT she severed some kind of fishing line that was attaching her to us her parents.   It's like she cut herself free of all expectation.   If she can do this, what else can she do?

She shows us every day.

Now I will give her the credit she deserves for being a pretty amazing person but I won't go as far as to say we are spectacular parents for giving her this freedom.    She demanded it and our hand was forced.   And now her expectations of herself have far exceeded what we could have ever thought up.   And she has unknowingly given a great gift to her younger sister because she now has the freedom to expect the absolute most from herself and not to be as concerned with what our expectations are of her, and we can see that internal power beginning to take hold and we know it will take her to magnificent places.  But, it's okay if it doesn't.  No expectations here :)

But enough about them.

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about how expectation effects us (or is it affects us, which is it?) and I've gone back and read many things by many women writers (no offense to the men out there but I am a woman).   I've read numerous articles by the time honored Erma Bombeck, powerhouse writer/columnist Anna Quindlan, and the modern women writers/bloggers such as Elizabeth Gilbert, Kelly Corrigan and Glennon Doyle, and I keep hearing the same message across the generations -"Women are trapped by expectation."  "Don't be trapped by expectation."

And here I am.  Me.   Not my kids.

I am totally trapped by expectation.

Everything I am, that I have become, is pretty much to please or displease someone else.

And that is ridiculous.

So how do I change this?

And what does that look like?

I'm not sure.

Nothing radical.

I mean I love my family and I have a pretty good life.

But I constantly worry about what others expect of me and I act accordingly, for the most part.

I think many women are guilty of this.  I am not alone.

This is even true with my writing. 

My beloved writing.

I worry all the time whether people will like what I have to say and it keeps me from truly expressing myself.   I worry if people think I am writing too much or too little or if what I say is too personal or too impersonal.  I don't want to write anything that might hurt anyone's feelings or might make someone think less of me.

So I don't write.   

And people stop expecting me to write.

I stop expecting me to write.

And where does this leave me?  

Meeting everyone else's expectations but not my own.

And even as I finish this blog entry, as I write these very words, I find that I am doubting myself.   I am wondering if I should send this blog to a friend to assure me that it is worth publishing.   Perhaps I should shelve it like many other things I have written.   Perhaps I should delete everything I have done and start again?  Yes.

Yes.  Yes.

Or No.

What did you expect?