Susan Senator

Life is too short to worry about how I appear to others. Or how focused my blog is. The fact is, I put myself out there because I get something out of it. I get interesting and life-infusing feedback. Sometimes I get hurtful stuff. But mostly not. So I write the blog because sometimes I need an outlet and I need the response. I have found from time to time that people get annoyed at me for including other aspects of my life, like the bellydance, like the bellydance photos of myself, as if somehow the pride I take in them is inappropriate.

I don’t really go for that kind of judgment. I am finding, the longer I live, that people’s lives take so many different shapes and forms, that appropriate is a very narrow path. Sure, I would never want to be inappropriate when it comes to my kids or my students, for example, but, otherwise, what, exactly is it about?

The “self-absorbed” accusation I sometimes hear is similar to the “stuck-up” one I heard in high school. It is an outsider looking at my outside and pronouncing me somehow not good enough, even though the form of the insult is an inversion of that.

I really like the admonishment of Voltaire, which is to tend your own garden. I am trying so hard to create garden here, my own Eden, where I can live happily with my loved ones. Sometimes my happiness is as simple as seeing myself in a sparkly outfit, with perfect bellydance form. Sometimes my happiness is a six-month stretch with no outbursts — for Nat, that is. Sometimes my happiness is realizing that Max is succeeding in school in a way that makes my breath catch in my throat. Sometimes my happiness is about predicting exactly when my lowest point of the month is going to be, so on that day I will just pull out all the chocolate I can find. Sometimes it is about Benji asking me about the “vengeful Hebrew God;” or about Ned looking at me that way of his — knowing and sexy — across a tiny candelit table in a beautiful French restaurant that makes me feel like an inexperienced college girl again.

The book I just finished writing is about how we adults — parents of complicated children — need to figure out how to be selfishly happy at times. We don’t just hang up our fun in a back closet once we start changing diapers and holding onto small hands. I think that the trouble with so many adults is that they no longer know how to have fun. But many parents don’t allow themselves so many forms of fun because of that awful word, “Inappropriate.” But people should really think about what truly is inappropriate and what is something okay but they’re scared of doing for fear of looking silly.

I think it’s okay to look silly sometimes. Goofy in love with my husband of nearly 25 years. Dancing alone in my crazy ornate gowns. But to me, it is all a dream come true.

This blog is another dream come true. It is a way to write, but not in a vacuum. I don’t like to write privately. I feel that writing is another kind of relationship, where you put something out there that you have crafted so that it thoroughly expresses what’s on your mind or in your heart, and then it lands on someone else’s consciousness, and stirs their thoughts. A conversation comes out of that, albeit a distant and syncopated one. But a conversation, nonetheless. I like conversations, though not always face-to-face or on the phone. I like knowing what people think (I don’t like getting my feelings hurt, but I do like hearing another person’s thoughts). That is the beauty of this blog. It lets me do just that, and I don’t have to convince an editor somewhere before it gets to happen.

I really think that there are far worse things than being inappropriate or self-absorbed. Like living your life just skimming the surface. Unless that makes you happy, then by all means. If your boat floats that way, I won’t be the one to scuttle it.