Maternally Challenged

Origami Can Wait

    My kids are at camp today. So are everybody else's kids. Which, whenever I think about it, is just weird. In the space of one generation, "summer" has taken on a whole new meaning. When I was a kid, summer was three full months of pure bliss--nothing to do, nowhere to go, endless hours to sleep or play house in the back yard or watch "Hollywood Squares." These days, any kid who is not in summer camp--or some kind of structured summer program--is either a) Amish or b) one very lonely kid. My kids would not know what to do if they were at home all day every day during the summer, but that's how my summers were, and I loved it. I am convinced that all that down time--and yes, there were boring stretches, too--fostered creativity in ways that kids today aren't getting.

    One contemporary author (okay, it's me, and yes, I know this is gauche) put it this way:

   "When we got in [my mother's] way, she shooed us out the door to play with the neighborhood kids, whose mothers had done the same with them, and the only rule was 'Be home by suppertime.' …This was not the manicured world of some affluent suburbia, either; we lived in a once-rural area that had almost, but not quite, been swallowed up by industrial development. My sister and I used to spend hours exploring the abandoned Aarmco Steel Plant not far from our house, poking sticks into vats of God knows what kind of toxic sludge....Mothers who would choose such an approach today—assuming they are not poor—would be viewed as being seriously inattentive to their children’s mental development. Which is just as well, because in practical terms, it’s no longer possible for most of us to take this approach. I can’t shoo my kids out the door to play with other kids because there are no other kids out there to play with. Every child in the neighborhood is booked in advance with play dates, museum trips, soccer, Tae Kwon Do, calligraphy classes, ballet lessons—you name it. In the afternoons and during the summer, the streets in my neighborhood are bereft of children except for those who pass by looking out the back windows of minivans, on their way to some appointment." (From The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children and Struggling with Depression , HarperCollins, publication date Aug. 1 but you can pre-order now on Amazon.)

     Was I becoming another John Muir, cataloguing birds in all my leisure time? I was not. I saw a lot of  second-rate movies on "Armchair Theater,"  which  came on just after the noon news on WSB-TV (this was Atlanta);  for awhile, I got engrossed in "Days of Our Lives," but lost interest when  Doug and  whatsername could never get out the door to Porto Fino, wherever that is. I made mud pies. I did some filing at the florist where my mother worked. I went to Vacation Bible School and made complicated structures with popsicle sticks. I watched thunderstorms. I disrupted anthills. And one afternoon, moved by some mutual sadistic impulse, my sister and I brewed some catnip tea (which was awful) and then tied the used teabag to the neck of the cat, who went beserk. Very few people have ever seen a cat climb a tree backwards, but I'm here to tell you it can be done.

     Would it have been better if I had learned Drawing 101, which my nine-year-old is doing at this moment? I know what the Responsible answer is. Still, life is long, and drawing classes will always be around. But watching the cat go up the tree backwards--now, that's a once-in-lifetime thing.  And I'm sorry my kids are missing it.

 

A Change of Scene

We've been off for a week, spending my inheritance.

My mother died last December, leaving me a little nest egg. After tucking it away in carefully selected mutual funds etc., it dawned on me that it's been 10 years since I've been out of the country, and the kids have never traveled abroad. So I took part of the money my mom had left us, and booked us a posh holiday at a "beach villa resort" (which, to be honest, sounded a little redundant) in Saint Lucia.

So here I sit, scratching my sunburned back with a hairbrush (it feels soooo good), thinking about the past week and what I've learned. In no particular order, they are:

1. Saint Lucia is a hilly place. A couple of million years ago, an unimaginably huge volcano erupted from the seabed, leaving today a series of small mountain peaks covered in lush rainforest vegetation. It is beautiful beyond belief, vivid beyond belief, and poor beyond belief. Outside the
hermetically sealed confines of our resort, people lived in shacks made of corrugated tin and concrete blocks, or just plywood, or--if they were lucky--concrete covered with stucco. Many houses plainly had no indoor plumbing.
2. An entire week of being waited on and pampered to the nth degree by people who are all black, down to the last laundress, is, in the end, a little creepy. I kept looking around for Scarlett O'Hara....and seeing her. Saint Lucia is a favorite destination for newlyweds, and some of the brides definitely had that Bridezilla look.
3. With kids, the term "vacation" must be used with some reservation. Parents are never off duty. There is never that luxurious sense of a unbroken time laying before you, hours and days on end, to ponder, to think, to sketch, to read good books, to take long afternoon naps or long beach walks. You are much too busy negotiating sibling wars and tracking down those goddamn black shorts.
4. My mom would have loved it.

Linda Hirshman Has a Point...I Hate to Admit

Everybody else is writing about Linda Hirshman. Why shouldn't I?

For anybody who hasn't heard about this, Linda Hirshman is a Brandeis University law professor who set the blogosphere aflame last year when she wrote in the American Prospect that educated women were doing feminism a disservice--in effect, creating a glass ceiling for all mothers--by "opting out" to go home and raise kids. So far as it goes, this is a perfectly sensible argument. You can't change the world of work by dropping off the radar screen for 10 years, expecting to reappear and be greeted by a chorus of, "Hey, where ya been?" The working world does not operate via absentee ballot. She also had some pretty provocative things to say about stay-at-home moms: namely, that their are forfeiting their own intellectual development by abandoning the hurly-burly of real life and the marketplace of ideas for the aisles of Wal Mart. Here, too, she has a point, much as I hate to admit it. It's easy to get lazy. I know a lot of mothers who do not read the daily paper (which in my area is the Washington Post--as good a newspaper as you are likely to find outside the NYC metropolitan area), and who limit their curiosity about the world to local school and zoning issues. Running a family can be an all-absorbing endeavor; it's hard to do that, keep up an exercise regimen, eat right and read intellectually stimulating things without letting something fall between the cracks. (In my case, it's the exercise program--I'd rather read than go to the gym, and it shows.)

I have two problems with Linda Hirshman, though. One is her "opt-out revolution" argument--that the fact that elite women are dropping out of the workforce in increasing numbers (let's assume, for the moment, that this is true) bodes ill for feminism. It's a tiny, tiny demographic slice she's talking about, first of all--to which she would respond, and has, by arguing that yeah, but it's an extremely influential demographic slice. This is a good argument when you are dealing with the world of ideas--the original suffragists were all educated, elite women who had the leisure to agitate for social change--but it falls apart when you apply it to economics. The lady cashier at Target is not going to "opt out" of the working world because those New York Times brides are doing it; she doesn't give a rat's ass what those women are up to. She works because she needs the money. Nothing Linda Hirshman says has much relevance to her, except insofar as she perceives a patronizing attitude toward women who do what she might ardently desire to do--i.e., stay at home and "not work."

My second problem with Linda is that her argument against women who "opt out" places the blame squarely on the women themselves, not the rigid requirements of the working world they "opted out" of--but my friend Sandy D. has already done a very nice job of summing up my objections there. Suffice it to say that lots of us don't feel we "opted" out of anything; we felt pushed out of the working world by its all-or-nothing attitude of "be in the office all day every day, or forget it."

Hirschman reminds me of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the feminist writer of about a century ago, who came up with the idea that the solution to the whole problem of integrating home and work would be to create apartment/communes, where the mundane matters of cooking and cleaning could be subjected to an economy of scale: women wouldn't have to cook, because meals would be communal; women wouldn't have to clean, because there would be maid service for all. Yeah, but who would those cooks and maids be? In Perkins' day, they'd probably be Irish girls; today, you'd get somebody from Antigua or the Phillipines or China. Either way, whether you follow Charlotte's thinking or Linda's, there's still that nagging little issue that somebody is going to have to scrub the toilet. And who's it gonna be? Work that's too mundane and intellectually stultifying for the educated feminist elite in this country is just fine for...well, other women. From other places.

What I'd like to see is a stimulating discussion about these issues that involves two groups of people currently getting a free pass: employers, and husbands/fathers. You haven't heard either group commenting on Linda Hirschman's very provocative arguments, and there's a good reason for the resounding silence. They are laying low--hoping, desperately hoping, all us women will be so busy gouging out each others' eyeballs that we will forget that they are there.

 

Baby Birds

Yesterday I was working in the yard, the cat stretched out on the driveway in front of me, when a horrible racket happened behind me. I turned to see two baby robins on the ground (I knew the nest was in the dogwood tree). The cat, moving faster than Hammie, the manic squirrel in "Over the Hedge," was on top of one of the nestlings in less than a heartbeat; just as fast, what seemed like a whole squadron of robins (probably only two, but flying like Blue Angels) were dive-bombing the cat. While all this was going on, every bird in a four-block radius set up some kind of alarm, and one of the nestlings decided it was a good idea to hop across the lawn and sit in the middle of the street. I picked up the cat, threw her inside the house and called for the kids. We spent the next hour chasing down the baby robins, improving a nest for them in a cardboard box and (for the kids, anyway) digging for worms to feed them. (The babies opened their little beaks imploringly whenever we came around.) The whole time, Mama Robin was perched in a tree--threatening, I imagined, to call her attorney if we didn't leave her babies alone.

And then, when nobody was looking, one of the nestlings discovered--hoorah!--it could fly. And a few minutes later--whaddaya know?--the other one did, too.

And then, belatedly, it occurred to me: they didn't fall out. Mama pushed 'em. It was time. And she wasn't protecting her babies; she was telling us to keep our grubby mitts off 'em, they were just fine. Which indeed they were.

The other day--no, I'm not changing the subject, bear with me--my nine-year-old came home from camp in a foul mood. Some kid had said something mean to her: "Look at you, trying to fit in." My first reaction was to go to camp with her the next day and snatch him baldheaded (as my Southern mama used to say). I stewed. I thought about her fragile ego. I thought about what a pissy thing that was to say to a kid who was indeed trying to fit in, and anyway, what's so wrong with that? And then it occurred to me to say, "Hey, the next time he says something nasty, just say to him, 'Are you this mean to everybody, or are you making a special effort just for me?'" My nine-year-old grinned. She liked it.

There are mean cats in her neighborhood, too, and I need to help her out from time to time. But she's like those baby birds: she only looks helpless.

Cognitive Dissonance

Got an e-mail this morning from a journalist friend who refers to my book as "brilliant." (For the five or six persons in the Western Hemisphere who I haven't e-mailed already, it's called The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children and Struggling with Depression, HarperCollins, due out Aug. 1, and you can order it now from Amazon)...and the remark is, of course, a nice little upper. "Thanks," I replied. "My children think I'm dumb as a rock." (This is true. My nine-year-old was grilling me on French phrases--Chick-Fil-A is giving away Learn to Speak French CDs in their kids' meals this week-- and was shocked! SHOCKED! to learn that I knew some French.) I signed off e-mail and started getting the kids out the door--one to summer camp, one to a doctor's appointment followed by summer camp. During the tumult I made an appalling discovery: no purse. Not in office, not in car, not in family room, not on top of hutch in kitchen....nowhere to be found. Cellphone (just purchased, cost $400, replacing one I'd recently lost), money, credit cards, checkbook, driver's license--all AWOL. The kids are in the car, the clock is ticking, I'm getting madder and madder. I storm through the house one last time and then race out to the car, nearly in tears. My five-year-old starts babbling happily and I say, "Shut up!" Although I apologize immediately, this makes me feel even shittier. Not only am I too dumb to hang onto my purse--Alzheimer's is setting in already--not only am I driving illegally without a license, but now I am picking on a five-year-old. The kids are very, very quiet. I drop off the five-year-old, who makes a point of giving me some art work she made from yesterday. I know she wants me to feel better, but that very fact makes me feel worse: I was rude to her, I misused the Awesome Power of Mommy against my own small child, and SHE wants ME to feel better. The nine-year-old reacts similarly, trying to make me laugh by reminding me of funny movie scenes we have watched. "Remember, Mom? 'Scawy clown...'"   "Yeah," I reply, smiling grimly. Where is my goddamned purse?  I drop her off, get home, start looking again. No luck. I've been known to leave my purse in the car on more than one occasion; now I figure the odds have caught up with me, and somebody has stolen it. I'm heading into my office to call the credit card companies when I spot my stuff...scattered all over my five-year-old's bedroom floor.

No, I'm not stupid. Nor am I brilliant. I am just one highly imperfect, stressed-out mom.

FUBAR

Tonight I realized I don't deserve a vacation.

That is, this is the conclusion I reached about why, a week before vacation, I suddenly start coming up with reasons not to go. Reasons which, when put down in black and white, look ludicrous. We will have to go on airplanes, which may crash. The kids might get sick. I might get sick. There might be bugs. Maybe we won't like the hotel room. Maybe we will all fight like cats the whole time. Maybe the house will burn down while we are gone. Why are we spending all this money anyhow?

This, my husband knows, is my standard pre-trip anxiety phase, which is all about control. Slide me one millimeter out of my comfort zone and I start reeling. As if I were ever in control in the first place.

When my oldest daughter was about two months old, David and I had a chance to go to Florida to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle, which carried a project he'd been working on. Frantic about leaving the house to even go to Safeway with this new baby, deep in the hole of postpartum depression, I couldn't imagine what it would be like taking a baby to Florida. We declined. It was probably the only chance we will ever have to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle. I was such an idiot. No, make that present tense. I am FUBAR, and for those of you who are not familiar with this expression, go look it up.

So: on to Vacation Planning Week, followed by Vacation Week. If I can make such a production out of unbelievable good fortune (i.e., getting to go on a nice vacation), just imagine what I could do with a real catastrophe. Will somebody please come slap me? (Okay, keep the line orderly....)

Self-Esteem, Smelf-Esteem

Today I went through my nine-year-old daughter's backpack and found an award certificate "for achievement in the recorder." Something about having gotten to "orange level," whatever that is. My daughter can no more play the recorder than she can play the flugelhorn. What the---? I thought. And then I thought about the awards assembly I went to yesterday at her school. It was interminable. If there was any kid there who did not get an award for something, it had to be because he or she did not have a pulse.

Now, my daughter got on the honor roll, and I am really proud of her for that. She's struggled with math, so to bring her grades up to all A's and B's is a real achievement. But this goopy talk from educators about how "awesome" and how "special" all these kids were kinda made me queasy. When the principal told the student in syrupy tones that "we will never ever ever forget you," I thought, Puh-leeze. At the very least, we are raising a generation of kids who have no bullshit meters if they believe every word like that they hear. At worst, we're raising kids who are going to needs all kinds of strokes just to show up for work every day.

Schools have got it backward. Self-esteem doesn't produce achievement; hard-won achievement produces self esteem. 

What Not To Do.

One of the dubious benefits of dealing with a mental illness for much of your life is that your life is likely to have more than the usual number of rocky patches, which are rich with learning potential.  Today my hairdressertold me her 21-year-old daughter had just moved back home after living with a boyfriend for awhile. The boyfriend was mentally, physically and emotionally abusive. "So she has no self-esteem whatsoever," my  hairdresser said. I wanted to say: She didn't have any to begin with.

I can't tell my daughters how to find true love. I was miserable at that, until one day True Love found me. I can, however, tell them What Not To Do.

If he hates all your friends and says he wants you just for himself, do not tell yourself that your judgment up to now has been faulty. If he wants to know where you are every minute of the day, do not put yourself at his beck and call. If he ever belittles you, even in private, do not tell yourself that you deserved it. If he ever pisses on your achievements, do not tell yourself that you have finally found somebody smart enough to notice you're a fraud. If he ever accuses you of infidelity, do not attempt to reassure him. Men who are obsessed with infidelity are not capable of being reassured. If he ever hits, pushes or punches you, do not accept excuses. Even four-year-olds know not to hit.

Oh, yeah, and one last thing: don't think that smart women don't fall for these things. They do.

Mom to the Max

There's an article in the Post this morning about the life of a harried room mother at the end of the school year, and the to-do list of this particular room mother is truly formidable: fill water balloons for Field Day; hand-stitch 18 home-made storybooks together for first-grade "authors' tea;" plan end-of-year party; buy gift for Teacher Appreciation Day; buy gift for Bus Driver Appreciation Day; costume child in medieval garb and send "medieval" food for 12 to school tomorrow....

Some of this is real. I told a childless friend about having to come up with the deed to our house in order to register my child for kindergarten, and she e-mailed back: "Do you live on the same planet as me??" Nope. I live on Planet Mom. Getting the kids signed up for summer camp, registered for after-care for next fall, filling out medical history forms--all that took me roughly a solid day's work. Maybe two. Stretched out over two or three weeks, as these tasks tend to be, will drive a model of mental health to the brink, and I am not a model of mental health.

But how much of this is froufrou? How about, instead of running around buying perfume for the teacher at the end of the year, we actually PAY the teacher a better salary, and she can buy her own damn perfume? Do those first-graders actually need hand-stitched copies of their "books"? I think not. If we had Field Day when I was a kid, it certainly didn't feature a rock-climbing wall. As for end-of-year parties, I think maybe we had cupcakes. If there was more, if some poor room mother (and it might have been my mother) went to more trouble than that, it was sure wasted on me. I vaguely recall a Hawaiian luau in fifth grade for which my mother made a paper maiche pig--it was actually one of her greatest achievements, she even made a fake apple to go in the pig's mouth--but I'm pretty sure I would have been fine without it.

How much of this vast busy-ness is actually necessary? How much is actually for the kids, and how much is for us--to assauge some kind of inappropriate guilt, to compensate for some societal neglect (i.e. abysmal teacher salaries), to just....fill up the time?

Speechless

My daughter's softball coach has a son who is going to be deployed to Iraq in the fall. He'll be guarding a dam up in northern Iraq--just the kind of place the insurgents like to try to blow up.

I want to raise my kids to question authority. At the same time, I stand in admiration of the people who have taken an oath and who follow through, no matter what. Their lives are infinitely dear, and a President who takes that lightly--who doesn't go to funerals, who doesn't allow pictures of military coffins, who would rather that we all forget the price some are paying for this war--does not deserve to be in the White House. Especially not if he is a rich frat boy who never showed up for Guard duty.

But in the presence of my daughter's coach, I will keep my mouth shut. It's the least I can do.