Dancer or Cook?

Trying to figure out how to raise children, especially those of the opposite sex can be both puzzling and challenging.  What should you raise them to be?  What if they don't want to be that?  Are you teaching them how to survive and prosper in a world that won't exist when they reach adulthood?  Are you, in fact, teaching them to fail?  Are you raising them to be what you -- perhaps even unknown to yourself -- wished you had become rather than what you did? How can you know for sure?  

I'm in the midst of that stage of my life, a time when shaping the lives of my children is the most important job I have, and I don't know if I'm doing a good job or not.  Fortunately -- although sometimes I think unfortunately...kidding...sort of -- my mother is here to help me and give me advice.  Maybe her best advice was telling me that she didn't know if she was doing right by us kids, either, but she did the best she could to inculcate us with the basics of living a decent, productive, rewarding life.  Other than that, there's not much you can do and soon enough your children will have minds of their own, and their own lives to live the way they choose to live them.

Well, here's an episode of The Great Guildersleeve, broadcast over the NBC radio network on Veteran's day (I think it was still called Armistice day then), November 11, 1945.  Guildy wants Margery to prepare herself for marriage and being a good wife by learning to cook and clean house. Margery wants to have a career as a dancer.  Guildy tries to change her mind.  I think it's a charming episode and goes to show that nothing ever changes in child-rearing.  Ultimately, you have to let go of their hands and watch them walk away into their own lives, leaving you behind.

For the record, by nature and inclination, I was a dancer not a cook and that's what attracted el jefe to me.  But here I am, thoroughly familiar with the kitchen -- and a broom.  And happy to be so -- though I am certainly no June Cleaver!