Option C
January 20, 2013
In my last post I wrote that Caden (8) was the son of two "Option C" parents. That's how Dan and I describe ourselves - Option C people. Life is often like a choose-your-own adventure book. (Or a box of chocolates.) You go through an experience and at some point you come to a decision-point usually life presents you with two "easy" or "conventional" or "normal" options - A or B. Dan and I have been known to choose neither and create our own option or take the path least traveled; there is good reason that A and B are the most commonly selected, but sometimes, often, Option C presents unique experiences.
In high school, option A and B for foreign languages were Spanish and French and all but 6 of the 800 students at our school chose one of those languages. I didn't want to take Spanish - everyone did that (probably with good reason living in Southern California), while 20% or so of the students took French - I didn't see the purpose in that, so as one of 1% of the student body, I chose Option C and my foreign language was Latin. Yes, Latin. Ok, not quite as useful on the United States West Coast as Spanish, but a good basic foundation for many languages and sciences - not that I am linguistically talented nor excel at the sciences.
When Dan and I were dating, he decided he wanted to take a bike trip somewhere. He saw a flier for the first ever Pallotta Teamworks Alaska Aids Vaccine Ride. So he filled out the paperwork, set to commit both of us to a 540 mile bike ride through Alaska on our tandem. I convinced him we at least needed to go to the meeting about the ride and find out a little more information.
So to downtown Los Angeles we drove. Twenty minutes into the meeting, Dan asked, “Now can we sign up?” In the months between signing up and riding, we got married, I quit my job and started a new one, I graduated with my MBA, and we moved into a new house. Oh, we also practiced biking - we rode a whole 50 miles along the coast in Santa Barbara and had a proper fit kit done on the tandem. That and a whole lot of packing were our entire prep before flying to Fairbanks and riding from Fairbanks to Alaska on a ride that turned out to be closer to 530 miles. Did I mention that prior to this ride, our entire tandem mileage was 62 miles? Did I also mention that before that I hadn’t ridden a bike regularly since I was 7? Most people would consider training and preparation a good precursor to riding 530 miles and sleeping at the base of a glacier. Not us - Option C.
When we decided to have kids, instead of choosing to either have me (mom) be either a stay-at-home mom or work full time and have a day care option. We chose Option C - I created my own company and worked from home, balancing breastfeeding and conference calls - I was actually in labor with my first while leading a conference call on integrating quality - Option C.
According to the Center for Disease Control, as of 2009, less than 1% (0.72%) of all births in the United States are out-of-hospital; that means that in 2009, out of all of the babies born that year, only 29,650 babies were born at a birthing center (non-hospital birthing center) or at home. Guess where our kids were born. Caden was born at a beautiful Victorian-style birthing center in Ventura, CA, Sunrise Birthing Center, while Logan was born at home - Option C.
When Dan was laid off while working in the automotive industry in Southern California, corporate employment was hard to come by, so Dan created his own job, first working for free while learning a new skill, while growing it into a new position and becoming a partner in a new company - Option C.
One year ago we chose to leave beautiful San Diego, an unlikely choice to many, and move somewhere we had neved even visited. Perhaps not the most brilliant seeming of ideas, but it has worked out brilliantly for our family - Option C.
When then public school system was not providing our kids with optimal results (a good education), we looked at our options and then dove head first into homeschooling, along with 2.7% of the US population, according to the National Bureau of Education Statistics (2007) - Option C.
While creating an Option C life, sometimes intentionally, sometimes by happenstance, has been interesting for Dan and I, it has also had a interesting effect on our children- like Caden creating outsourcing options at the age of 8 and Login renaming himself (Logan to Login - because we had obviously spelled it wrong, so he informed us) at the age of 6.