The Process vs. Product Garden (Blog 1)

This is a long one (but you already expect that from me!). I’m going to muse for the next three days about process vs. product work. (Totally appropriate for Labor Day weekend.)

I have three jobs in my life- wife, mother and teacher.  I list them in that order because if I deal with them in that order, I find that I am a happier, more balanced person, and do all of my jobs better.  Interesting enough, all my jobs are process oriented jobs; there is no product at the end of the day.

Marriage, especially, is process-oriented work.  Both my husband I know that we will never stop working on our relationship and that some days the work is easy and other days the work is hard.  We are not striving toward any goal, but rather going forward as a team, counting each blessing on the path, and slaying the dragons that we inevitably meet; standing back to back with our swords drawn.

When my marriage is in order I am a better parent. I am more patient and tolerant of the idiosyncrasies that come with raising a house of teenage boys. (Why do they have to drink ALL the chocolate milk on the same day I went to the grocery store? Can’t they at least make it last 2 or 3 days?) I am also a better teacher when my marriage is in order.

Neither parenting nor teaching have short-term goals.  While raising and teaching children who become responsible, happy adults who participate in our society and contribute to the betterment of the world is my long-term goal, I don’t get to see the end result (the product) right now.

So I have a whole lot of process in my life, and very little product.  My sister and my mom (who approach marriage and parenting as I do), have goal-oriented jobs.  At the end of the day they have a product to show for their labors.

My sister is a novelist.  At the end of her day she has pages of words, and in a few months, finished stories.  When I open a book my sister has published, I feel a surge of joy and pride at her accomplishment, and revel in the product of her labor.

My mother builds really big things like skyscrapers and malls and university buildings.  When I drive through Denver with my parents (she’s in business building things with my Dad and my brother) she points the finished projects out.  She didn’t drive the nails, but she managed the guys who drove the nails and glazed the glass, and caulked the seals so they wouldn’t leak.

At the end of my Kindermusik year, I have happy kids, who have grown and developed and learned in my classroom. They are on the road to the goal of being responsible, happy adults who participate and contribute to our society in a meaningful way. I would say, in own defense, that they are now farther down the road to towards the goal, but right now they are just blissfully happy kids.

This does not mean that I am in any way dissatisfied with my jobs. I love them all fiercely and passionately.  I’ve never wanted to be anything other than a wife and a parent and a teacher.   It is a calling.  But I need a little product in my life, too.  Sometimes I need more than happy kids at the end of the day. And my mom and my sister need a little process in their lives, I’ve noticed.

Interestingly enough, all three of us have chosen the same activity to fill this void in our lives- gardening.

-posted by Miss Allison, who will tell you how she actually feels about gardening tomorrow.