Ch-ch-ch-choices

When it comes to parenting, I am a firm believer in doing whatever works. I find it ludicrous to assume that this theory or that about sleeping, feeding, discipline, or the availability in one's house of playthings from China are objectively right or wrong. Show me a co-sleeping mother with a blissed-out baby in a sling, and I'll show you a sleep-training mother with a four-month-old cooing from the stroller. We all make the choices that are right for our family, but there is no set path to great parenthood. We all stumble and weave our way, whether in hemp sandals or Jimmy Choos. Yep, one of those. PICK ONE. Because it's just too tiresome to consider a mom who chose New Balance sneakers because they're vegan, but bought them at Famous Footwear because that's where they were the cheapest.

Yes, that's me standing there, waving at you with a bellyful of tofu and a shopping bag full of regular lightbulbs, meat, and Yerba Mate. Who will be driving the minivan home from the store to rendevous with her husband, biking home from grading papers in a coffee house that does not serve Fair Trade coffee, but to which he took his own mug. Later on, I'll make baby food from the organic apples procured by using too much gasoline to drive ten miles out of the way to buy.

I'm serious. Our family is really, actually like that. I was having a conversation with a friend about food choices and prices the other day, confessing to her my worry about that moment when, in the future, Eva's appetite outruns our financial ability to keep her solely in organic foods. She's done quite a bit of reading on the subject and could understand, as she herself is concerned with being thrifty, but feels guilty about choosing thrift over the well-being of the earth that produced the food and the workers who cultivated and harvested it. Should she buy the white cane sugar containing bone chard and which little children were underpaid to pick, or should she blow the grocery budget for a more responsible choice?

"I know!" I cried, leaping up to show her the bag of Whole Foods Fair Trade Vegan Cane Sugar in our pantry. I then considered confessing that the tea she was drinking was purchased at Wal-Mart, but I didn't say anything. Even I felt uncomfortable with my recent decision to buy staples there in order to ease the burden on our bank account, and couldn't look her in the eye when I'd mentioned it earlier as a source of some of our groceries. But still, there you go. Child labor and fairly traded, fairly compensated labor, steeping together in the same green mug. That is, right now, quite literally my cup of tea.

*****

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes)."
--Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

*****

Despite the fact that I am mostly at ease with my choices, there are still many moments when I keep my mouth shut rather than owning up to exactly how much of a mixed bag we are at our house. If I had the money, I am absolutely positive I'd buy more organic food. I am equally as convinced that I would take more trips either my car or plane to visit family in Virginia. There's just not going to be complete consistency to my carbon footprint, no matter what brand of shoes I'm wearing when I make it. And while I work to embrace Whitman's carefree attitude about his ability to swing both ways-- and will forever loudly proclaim the right of each and every mother to choose whatever works-- forgive me if I spend a little too much time agonizing over how to come clean to the friend that recently asked my advice on cloth diapering. Cloth diapering, alas, I know nothing about. But if you want to know which Big Box store is having a sale on Pampers, I'm your girl.