Finally, after nearly eighteen years of anticipation, my daughter Clementine is getting a job. This is incredibly exciting for me, and not just because she will finally learn the meaning of hard work. I have never doubted that she knew the meaning of hard work, and I’m sure all of the groups and organizations she has volunteered with over the years would agree with me on that score. No, the reason I am so happy about her finally achieving gainful employment is because I absolutely can’t wait until she brings home her first paycheck. I can’t wait to snatch it out her hands, rip it up into tiny little shreds, throw it on the ground and then jump up and down on it for good measure, all the while gleefully chanting, “Welcome to MY world!” That will be one of the happiest days of my life.
Okay, so I might have a slightly unhealthy fixation with revenge. But in this case I think it’s justified: Clementine and I have always fought about the best way to spend my money. As in, she just can’t understand why I am so reluctant to spend it. Or rather, why I am so reluctant to waste it. Why I get so mad over little things (in her view) like leaving a brand new box of Cheez-Its out in the rain. Granted, I may have gone a little overboard in my response to that one. Taping up a picture of the ruined box inside the cabinet with “This is the only way you’ll ever see crackers in this house again,” written across the bottom in red ink might have been just a little too Mommy Dearest. But still. A brand new box of Cheez-Its. In the rain. Of course I needed to get revenge for that. And with the introduction of a paycheck into her life, hopefully she will begin to understand that feeling.
Hopefully she will understand exactly why I kept muttering, “Cheez-Its. Real Cheez-Its. Not even the store brand.” Now maybe she’ll understand her father’s oft repeated lament of “Do you know how many holes I had to dig to buy that (fill in the blank)?” (Although in her case she’ll have to translate it to “burgers I flipped, macchiatos I made, or pizzas I tossed.”)
After all, it wasn’t until she got a car of her own and started giving her friends rides that she understood why I didn’t want to drop her off in Baderville “on my way” to picking up her brother from a sleepover in Kachina. Or why I was so irritable when I had to make five trips in one day between our downtown home and her school in Cheshire after she forgot both her lunch and her homework, but didn’t realize she had forgotten the one until forty-five minutes after I had dropped off the other.
Hopefully the same sort of epiphany will occur to her after she realizes, viscerally, that Cheez-Its (and other luxuries) cost more than just money—they cost time. More than that, though, they represent choices about how to spend your time: the choice about how much of your time you are willing to spend doing something you don’t really love in order to get the things the things you want. I know, I know: it’s just a box of Cheez-Its. (Trust me, I heard that plenty after making that box the star of my kitchen’s “Most Wanted” poster.) And yet, it’s really never just a box of Cheez-Its. Because it is what we choose to spend our money on (as opposed to our parents’ money) that defines who we are. And Clementine will finally have the chance to start filling in that definition.
I’m guessing already that her part of that definition won’t include too may boxes of rain-soaked Cheez-Its.