Those words were first uttered in my hearing by a small boy, shopping with his mother for school supplies. A tight budget meant that this was an annual ordeal. I wanted to provide what our children needed. I also didn’t want them to be mocked or disdained by other children for their failure to meet whatever standards were in place that first week of school before the usual breakages and losses evened out differences. I had myself once endured the scorn of classmates and of the bigger bullies from the higher grades.

“There has to be something better” struck a nerve deep down and made an already fraught task downright awful. As I recall, my patience was inadequate. I can only hope now that my frustration didn’t cause lasting emotional damage. What crayons or other tools of education we eventually bought, I don’t remember.

            Why this particular small incident has stayed with me is puzzling. There were enough other conflicts along the way that my memory could have preserved, other heated exchanges, all the normal trials of parenting three small children. Was it that that one querulous sentence prodded me into some creative thinking about how to teach children to make decisions and then live with the consequences? That would have been a positive outcome. Or was it that our child had unwittingly named a flaw in my own character?

 If I didn’t recognize then how familiar that attitude was to me, I certainly have since. Making decisions has always been my Achilles heel. My childhood was rigidly controlled, and the only way that I could practice the art of choosing was by going against (most often in secret) what was already decided for me. Not until I earned my first paycheck, post high school, could I choose any of my clothing, with the result that for years every purchase was made only after endless dithering and intense anxiety. It was like learning to swim by being tossed into the pool’s deep end with no flotation device.

Recently, as that memory of “there has to be something better” surfaced yet again, I connected it with something besides the difficulty of making decisions. That problem I had more or less understood long ago and learned to manage, admittedly with the help of a more flexible budget. Were I put back into circumstances of financial distress, I daresay that shopping would once again become a horror instead of just an unavoidable nuisance chore.

            But that childish complaint was a signal of something more troubling, in the long run, than not wanting to make decisions. Our child was mimicking a character trait of mine that I had not seen for what it was until probably many years later. Perfectionism: that’s the underlying force that drives “there has to be something better.”

 I have neither the knowledge nor the will to explore fully the sources of perfectionism, certainly not here. However, memory provides me with snapshots of perfectionism in action. I remember watching my mother in the kitchen over many years, fussy about techniques, forever gathering more recipes, experimenting, re-doing old favorites. When I sorted through her store of recipes, as part of cleaning up my parents’ estate, I found multiple recipes for pancakes: always there had to be a better way of making them. I remember also her reluctance to serve guests, her repeated apologies for a meal that wasn’t absolutely perfect. And the meals were never perfect, in her view.  

Was it insecurity? Possibly. Was it that she had so often been judged herself and found wanting that she couldn’t avoid spilling the same displeasure over others? Very likely. It is not my place to play counselor/evaluator for my ancestors.

            What I have learned over the decades—yes, my age is making me reflective—is that what children absorb of the atmosphere in a home is longer-lasting than we might imagine, perhaps much more so than whatever conscious, verbal teaching is given. Without knowing it, without wanting to do so, I had unwittingly and unwillingly absorbed my mother’s perfectionism and doubtless, I let it spill over onto others, especially our children.

 Awareness of one’s attitudes matters, and behaviors can be changed, although it takes much work and persistence, not to mention some painful apologies and the disciplined practice of gratitude. If behaviors and attitudes couldn’t be changed, we would have little hope. Fortunately, we are all exposed, not only to our families of origin, but to many other influences, from friends, work places, books and education, and especially from our partners who cannot help but see our weaknesses and are close enough to help us change. I will be forever grateful to my husband (and his family) and to various friends along the way, who taught me that the mantra of “there has to be something better” needs to be managed with care and often dismissed altogether.

            On the other hand (isn’t there always that ‘other hand’?), I will declare that precision in our work and a desire to do well are assets, not a disadvantage. Conscientiousness doesn’t have to turn into perfectionism. Also important is the ability to recognize when it may, indeed, be time to say, “there has to be a better way to do this” (whatever “this” might be). In my mind, though, there is a difference between “something” and “a way.” That is a huge discussion on its own, which I will leave for another time.

            Meanwhile, my warmest thanks to the small son who held a mirror up to my face somewhere in the school supplies aisles.