All my life, I have had trouble with decisions.
When I was little, I couldn’t even decide on my own favorite flavor of ice cream.
Every time dad took us out for a treat, I held everyone up trying to narrow my choices down to just one. Eventually, dad got so tired of this, he let us all have two scoops. But that only made things worse, because once I’d narrowed the field to chocolate-chip and raspberry, I still faced the vital question: would I rather eat through the ice cream and get to the sherbet?
Or, once I got there and it was too late, would I wish for the other way around?
My teen years were no better. Take the time I tried to pick a shawl for my dress for the Junior Prom. I stood in the store, immobilized, unable to choose between two white shawls which not even the saleswoman could tell apart.
My mother gave up after half an hour of this and went to do the week’s grocery shopping. When she came back I was still standing there, unable to decide. As the frozen foods began to drip, Mom cast the tie-breaking vote: We got a green one. It didn’t go with my dress, but it was the only green thing in the shop.
My indecision may have actually helped when I applied to college. Most applications had essay questions, and I could do those all right. (“The only college I want to attend is YOUR NAME HERE because…”). But one school was different. Circle, they said, the attributes on this list that describe yourself. No sweat, I thought. I circled “Articulate,” and “Gregarious.”
Then I came to “Decisive.”
“I’m sure they want someone decisive,” I said to myself. So I circled it.
“But I’m not decisive.” I erased the circle.
“But now I look like someone who can’t decide if they’re decisive or not, which just looks stupid.” So I circled it again.
“But anyone who knows me knows I’m indecisive. What if I go there for the interview and they ask me something and I can’t decide what to say? They’ll know I lied on the application, and that’s worse than being indecisive!”
So I erased the circle once again. Or rather I tried to, but couldn’t, because all that was left was a big greasy hole in the paper.
The result? Let’s just say I had one less school to decide about.
Neither time nor experience helped me much. After five years of dating, it only took me one more year to answer when my husband finally proposed. And that wasn’t even multiple choice!
Happily, some years later, I found myself pregnant without needing to make a decision. And as it turns out, motherhood was what I finally needed, to become decisive.
Parenting is full of decisions. There are the big ones – like when to start solid foods, or which outfit to use for the holiday photos – and the hopefully rare ones, like when to take the baby to the Emergency Room.
But mostly, there is the constant barrage of life-or-death choices, like “What is the one thing you will do when the baby finally takes a nap?” It might be taking a shower; it might be re-arranging the soup cans.
All that matters is that, whatever you decide, you do it, the instant those little eyelids are closed.
Otherwise, you’re nowhere when that baby wakes up and stays up, cranky and impossible – just like you – for the rest of the day.
That’s how I finally learned to make decisions. And life recently gave me a second crack at one of them. On a trip to visit my mother, I found myself mesmerized, in a gift shop at Union Station, staring at a rack of gorgeous Kashmiri silk shawls. They shimmered at me, in an iridescent rainbow of colors. After half an hour, I had finally narrowed down my first fifteen choices to two. Two shawls.
But I was in danger of arriving late for my dinner with mom. How could I tell her, after all these years, that I was late because I couldn’t choose between two shawls?
So I did the only rational thing. I whipped out my credit card and bought them both. And when I finally got to her place, I made her decide which of the two would be hers.
Who says you can’t teach an old girl new tricks?
