Maternally Challenged

News of the Weird, News of the Wired

In an attempt to put off working as long as possible, I was trolling through my inbox this morning and found this article on a new Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky. I read it (it's on Salon.com) with fascination, since the idea that God created the earth in, literally, six 24-hour days a couple of thousand years ago is the kind of thing I was taught as a child in Sunday school. Well, okay, it wasn't, strictly speaking, taught--but it was heavily implied, and people who believed in Darwin's theory of evolution were misguided sinners who clearly not going to Heaven when the Rapture happened, which was likely to be any day. This is your basic Southern Fundamentalist mindset, and if you think I am making this up, or that I grew up in some obscure, incestuous Appalachian redneck cult, just go read the article, because there are people out there who believe this stuff right this very minute. And you thought Mormons were weird.

Anyway, there were a couple of questions I had in reading this article, and one of them was about a reference made by one Creation Museum enthusiast, who said, "As scripture says, 'They are without excuse' who do not believe"--believe, that is, every word of the Bible as the literal truth. This one really interests me because, as a good little Fundamentalist, I was required to spent a lot of time reading the Bible and memorizing great big chunks of it. (In fact, in Sunday school, the standard procedure was that when the teacher called the roll, instead of answering "Here" you had to answer with a Bible verse you'd memorized. This was how I came to know the shortest verse in the Bible: "Tracy Thompson?" "Jesus wept.") Anyway, while I do not claim to be a Bible scholar, I feel pretty sure that, given the circumstances, this particular verse was one that would have been pointed out to me, and I don't remember it. In fact, I strongly suspect that it's not the first time that people who quote "Scripture" are making it up as they go. My second question concerned the "Biblical" explanation for the Grand Canyon: it was created by the rushing away of all the water after the Great Flood--you know, the one survived by Noah and his family and all those animals in the Ark. But, and excuse me if I am being slow here, if water covered the earth, and then somehow dry land reappeared, where did all that water go? Did the oceans just get deeper, or something? Or maybe it dripped off the earth into space...except that there's no gravity in space. Hmm. Then again, gravity is just a theory.

The next story, which I ran across in the online edition of the British newspaper The Guardian takes us to the other end of the scientific spectrum--if, that is, the Creation Museum exist on a scientific spectrum at all, which I suspect it doesn't. Anyway, this concerns a study done by British scientist Vivette Glover (who is the real thing--I know her to be a respected authority on the subject of maternal depression and its effects on children) which shows that stress during pregnancy--specifically, levels of the stress hormone cortisol--found in the maternal bloodstream during pregnancy can harm the developing brain of the fetus as early as 17 weeks' gestation. That much we pretty much already knew; I think this particular study probably pinpointed the timing of the potential damage, or something. (It's hard to tell from the article itself.)  But here's the kicker: Glover's study was released about two days after the British government issued an advisory telling pregnant women they should not drink at all during pregnancy. Previously, the standard advice in the U.K. was that pregnant women could safely indulge in a glass of wine or two per week. Now it's nada. None. So: just in case you haven't followed the logic here, it's this: don't stress out, and don't drink wine. That's like saying don't get hungry and avoid food, but whatever.

I'm pretty sure, though, that if I'd knocked back a few stiff ones during my first pregnancy, my oldest (now a high-maintenance 10-year-old) might have come into the world strung a little less tightly. As it was, putting her to sleep as a baby was like defusing a live hand grenade, and now that she's a preadolescent, her brain runs on a frequency only dogs can hear. The summer I was pregnant with her was, just coincidentally, one of the most stressful in my life, due to a variety of circumstances I won't go into here. So there you go.

Yeah, I know: I'll never be able to actually prove any connection. But maybe I don't need to. I can always  just make up a verse of Scripture that proves me right.

The Martyred Mom Resigns Her Post

I loved my mother dearly, we were in some ways soul mates, but in the interests of journalistic objectivity I am obliged to report that at times she could be a real pain in the ass. One of those times was when she would walk around the house with her hand on her back (it was hurting), with a vertical crease between her eyebrows (that meant a migraine), heaving heavy sighs (that meant she was being Taken Advantage Of). She was a True Martyr, and we were all to blame. No amount of compensation could lighten the load. My mother leveraged her martyrdom to the hilt. She got a lot of mileage out of it. It was, in some ways, the most potent form of power she had.

At some point this past weekend, it occurred to me that I was following in her footsteps.

I think it was as I was walking home from the pool, after having asked my husband to drive me (it's half a mile to our house) and having met resistance to this idea ("Can't you walk?"--well, yes, but I'm in flip flops, and its hideously hot...). This was after I had a) mowed the lawn; b) trimmed the hedge; c) swept the driveway; d) put together a meal for seven members of his side of the family; e) arranged three playdates; f) made four trips to the grocery store and g) endured one half-hour meltdown from my high-maintenance 10-year-old when she was prevented from going to the pool right at dinnertime.

I absorbed. I dealt. I refereed. I put everyone's needs ahead of my own....until this epiphany, about five blocks from my house, when I suddenly decided: this sucks. It sucks not just for me--though especially for me--but it also sucks for everybody. What kind of example am I setting here for my daughters--that being a wife and mother means being everybody's Step-n-Fetchit? This is the maternal version of "shufflin' and grinnin'." In fact, if I were a black person, and white people were treating me like this, I would file an employment discrimination claim so fast it'd make your head swim. But no, I am a mom, which means I'm supposed to absorb the shocks. I'm supposed to deal, and look happy doing it.  It also puts me in a rotten position in my marriage; it makes me resentful, which makes me distant, which erodes the bond that is marriage. Admittedly, there are short-term pleasures to being a Living Saint. It can be perversely intoxicating---addictive, in fact, which is why so many of us get into the habit. But those pleasures are like benzodiazepines: in the long run, you pay a price. And it's a bitch of a habit to break.

Having decided to do just that, however--break the martyr habit, I mean--I was left with the question of exactly how. For the time being, I sulked. The emotional temperature of our home hovered around -14 degrees Celsius last night. My husband left for work with a cursory goodbye; one of my children left for school in tears. The whole family was out of kilter, and after awhile, when the basic chores were done, I fired off an e-mail to my husband listing my grievances. It was a looooonng list. It was, in many ways, unfair to unload on him all at once, including my feelings about events that took place weeks ago. No doubt there was a better way of going about this, but hey: I'm new to this. I couldn't see any middle ground. It was either unload with a mighty thud or....be a martyr.

I didn't see him until after softball practice tonight. Part of me was bracing myself to hear, "I'm filing divorce papers tomorrow." But no: he said, "You're right. I didn't answer because I have a hard time hearing this, but I know you're right." (Being on the receiving end of an e-mail from me when I am pissed is apparently not for the faint of heart; I write really well when I'm mad.)

This learning to take care of myself is a skill I'm coming late to. I am not good at it; nursing grudges is never good. But at least I can say I'm not nursing them anymore. They're out there, in the open, and now that they are out there in the open they don't look nearly so big. I will, no doubt, screw this up again sometime, but at least by making a note of this I will have some reference point--some way of saying, "You know, standing up for yourself is a good thing." And no, my husband is not henpecked or pussy-whipped or any of those other unflattering terms men apply to these things; he's my partner again. I'm not Harriet and he's not Ozzie and we are a lot better off being who we really are. I only wish I'd done it sooner. I wish I'd learned how to do this from my mother; I wish she'd known how to teach me. But we learn what we can, when we can, and do the best that flawed humans can do. And that's enough, because it has to be.

I Am Woman, Hear Me....Squeak?

"You don't cut ME much slack," my husband is pointing out.

He is talking to me on the phone. I am standing on the family room sofa, where I ran a few moments earlier screaming like a little girl because when I came downstairs just now a) I realized the door to the deck had been pushed open by the cat; that b) the cat had a mouse (or chipmunk or mole or some kind of rodent) with her when she came inside and that c) the two of them are currently playing cat-and-mouse in the living room.

In many contexts, I think I could describe myself as brave. I have gone to talk to strange men in parking lots in order to get a story. I have cruised around seedy neighborhoods looking for drug dealers for the same purpose; heck, I have cruised around seedy neighborhoods with drug dealers. I have even ventured into the halls of Congress! But mice freak me out, big time. So I did what any modern, independent feminist woman would do: I called my husband at work, to ask him to come home and get rid of this rodent. And for some reason, he won't. Something about a meeting. Pfffft! He can have a meeting any day. This is an emergency.

"Aren't I allowed to be ridiculous in just one area of my life?" I ask.

"Sure you are," he says, generously omitting to mention that maybe there is more than one area in which I indulge in being ridiculous. "And now that you're done being ridiculous, go put on some shoes, get the broom, open the front door and sweep it out."

So: the latest news is that the cat is sitting in the middle of the living room, looking bored, which means that whatever it is has found a safe hiding place, probably in the sofa cushions. Lovely. So I sneak through the living room, grab my sneakers and put them out, prop the front door open (axe murderers, c'on down!) and lock myself in my office. Maybe when the kids get home from school, they'll find the rodent. That' way, I won't have to deal with this problem, plus it's a great way to hand an irrational phobia down to the next generation, doncha think? Yeah. Finally: a plan.

Someday, This Could Be You. Or Me.

Hear the one about the 19-year-old girl in Atlanta from a nice middle-class family, with a college scholarship no less, who decided to become an exotic dancer? Wait: it gets worse. At her workplace, she met another girl, who had a boyfriend, who had a friend, who worked as a bank teller. So the two girls--our middle-class college scholarship winner/exotic dancer and her friend--decided to rob the bank where their friend-of-a-friend, the bank teller, worked. With the teller's cooperation, of course.

It's true, at least according to the Associated Press, which dubbed the pair the "Barbie Bandits" after they were caught on a surveillance tape wearing tight jeans and designer sunglasses, and giggling, as the teller turned over the cash. The robbery last February happened in Acworth, one of your basic big-city suburbs outside Atlanta. The girls got away with $11,000 and went straight to the mall, where they got highlights done. (Well, isn't that the first thing you'd do?) It's a wonder they ever pulled off the heist, since at first they couldn't find the right bank; they wound up at the wrong branch and had to call the teller to figure out how to get to the correct one. They've since been charged with felony theft and marijuana possession and are out on bond, which explains, I guess, why they were on "Good Morning America" this morning. (It sure is a good thing there was no other news happening.)

But here's the reason the story really grabbed me: the quote from mother of the Barbie Bandit, who wept as she recalled how she tried her best to instill solid values in her children by doing something special with them every day. "I hoped that would instill and pretty much guarantee me wonderful adults," she said. "But I guess there's no guarantee."

A sobering thought. Because all of us really, in our heart of hearts, believe that our kids will never commit such an act of Felony Dumbness--that it's just impossible, because after all we're giving them ballet lessons and math tutoring and trips to the natural history museum and Tae Kwon Do and....No, our kids will never pull a stunt like this. And it's true, that this particular crime was unusual in its spectacular stupidity. But still: you never know. Scientists now tell us that the human brain doesn't really finish its maturation process until a person is in his or her early 20s, and obviously with some people the maturation process takes longer than it does with others. My oldest daughter will be 11 this November; the teenage years loom.

It's gonna be a long decade.

I Would Like To Thank The Academy...

Tonight at dinner:

Me: So who did everybody dress up as for Celebrity Day at school?

My 10-year-old: Oh, Hannah Montana. Raven. Hillary Duff. Lindsay Lohan.

Me: Oh, yeah. Lindsay Lohan.

My 10-year-old (incredulously): You know who she is?

Me: Yes, unfortunately, I do.

My 10-year-old (indignantly): Lindsay Lohan is a great actress!

My husband and I both choke on our food.

Me: Compared to what?

My 10-year-old: Compared to Hillary Duff.

And, you know, she may be right.

My Six-Year-Old Don Imus

It seems like everybody nowadays is getting in trouble for saying the wrong thing. First Don Imus, who deserved it; Oprah's taking heat for telling Howard University graduates she has some "really nice white folks" working for her (the context was the fact that her grandmother was a maid who worked for white folks; she advised her granddaughter to find some "nice white folks" to work for...hilarious and not offensive in the least). But this pales in comparison with what my six-year-old said the other day.

It's my fault. I rented "Blazing Saddles" because I thought my kids would enjoy it--especially the bean scene around the campfire, that is definitely 10-year-old humor--and because Madeline Kahn's performance in that movie is a comedy classic. As movie fans know, Cleavon Little plays a man who shows up as the new sheriff in a 19th century Western town; the white townspeople greet him with utter consternation and horror because he is (gasp!) black. They are about to ride him out of town on a rail but, thinking fast, Little pulls a gun, puts it to his own head and says, "Stay back! Or the (n-word) gets it!"--which is at once a biting social satire and also a gut-busting funny moment. When we got to that part I paused the movie and went to a lengthy explanation to both kids (my six-year-old didn't appear to be paying attention to the movie but I told her anyway) about the N word, its history, why it was used in that scene and why they should never, ever, ever allow it to pass their lips, even if they heard other people using it. Just: never.

We live in a majority-black county. My 10-year-old has no recollection of the civil rights era and her knowledge of Martin Luther King is a little spotty (she told me once that he freed the slaves), but basically she got the message that this was a word with a history and a lot of baggage. My six-year-old, however, went to school the next day and, attempted to relate that scene in the movie to one of the after-care staff because she thought it was funny. You guessed it: she used the N word. Oh sweet Lord in heaven.

The staffer she said this to is black. I think (I hope, I pray) that this person understood what happened and is prepared to let it slide. My daughter volunteered this information; when I asked, "What did Miss Marjorie (not her real name) say to you?" my daughter said, "She said that was a bad word and she didn't want to hear it." I then reiterated my talk about never using that word. So far, I've heard nothing from anybody.

I can't decide whether to bring this up, and potentially make things worse, or let it pass, and potentially leave people at my daughters' school with a distinct misapprehension of who this family is. I'm also kicking myself for letting my six-year-old watch this movie; I should have known she wouldn't grasp the nuances. But I needed a laugh myself, and sometimes Mel Brooks' brand of silliness is just the thing. But, man, sometimes the dumbest things can just rise up and bite you in the ass.

Redefining Success

There's this great Bonnie Raitt song called "What Is Success?"--Is it doin' your own thing/Or to join the rest?/Truly believing, and trying over and over again/Living in hope that someday you'll be in with the winners..."--which pretty much sums up my own ambivalent attitude toward this subject. It's been on my mind a lot lately, because there been much talk in the blogosphere and in the major media too, about Leslie Bennetts' book The Feminine Mistake, and other books which take various judgmental tones regarding the "choices" mothers make. I put quotation marks around that word because very few of our choices are really freely made; most of us who had careers didn't opt out when we became mothers--we were pushed.

Be that as it may...it's been discouraging to me to see writers like Bennetts and Linda Hirshman and Caitlin Flanagan get reams of publicity and TV time, while the writers out there who have attempted to do a serious job of looking at the subject of motherhood and work in today's society--people like Joan Williams, who wrote Unbending Gender, or Ann Crittenden, who wrote The Price of Motherhood, or Miriam Peskowitz, who wrote The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars, couldn't seem to buy, beg or steal any national publicity. My discouragement has extended to my own book, The Ghost in The House, which attempts to take a serious look at the subject of how depression affects mothers. Ann's book couldn't get any national exposure because TV people told her it was "too complicated." My book couldn't get any excerpts printed in national magazines--even magazines like O, The Oprah Magazine, which had helped me reach my 400-plus survey participants--because it was "too depressing." I have felt, at times, like a failure--not least because I suffer sometimes from the illness I wrote about. (It's okay--nobody has to write and tell me I'm not; part of this illness is distorted thinking.)

But a couple of things happened recently. Motoko Rich of the New York Times interviewed me about a piece she was writing about Leslie Bennetts' book, which prompted me to look up my own book's sales figures and those of the books that have gotten so much publicity. I found, to my astonishment, that my book has sold 600 copies more than Linda Hirshman's book, even though hers got tons of publicity and mine got none. Both of us have dismal sales figures, but still: wow. It makes you wonder--how do books get sold? Maybe standard publicity isn't all it's cracked up to be; maybe word of mouth really matters.

The second thing that happened recently was that Ann Crittenden appeared as a guest on the Power Loop of Mothers and More, which I belong to, and she talked about her own feeling about being an author whose book never seemed to make it to the national radar--but which is considered a modern classic now among those of us who are seriously interested in the whole issue of how women and procreation and work are going to be integrated into society in the 21st century. Ann is proud, and rightly so, of having said something thought-provoking and gotten her message out in spite of many obstacles; she spoke of that knowledge as "gold in the spiritual bank."

That phrase stuck with me. It made me realize that my own perceptions of what I've tried to do have been so limited, so confined to whether I get my three minutes on "The Today Show" or make it to the pages of the New York Times Book Review...when in fact there's evidence, considerable amounts of it, that I managed to write something useful to people, who are finding the book and reading it and getting some help from it. Which is why I wrote it, after all--that, and the urgent feeling that I had something worth saying.

So on this Mother's Day I'm not feeling like a failure; I'm feeling like somebody who has done something useful for other mothers, which is what I set out to do. Don't get me wrong: I'd love to make some money, and if "The Today Show" calls I sure won't say no. But do I need them to be successful? I think we all know the answer. And, oh yeah, I have these two gorgeous daughters who make me feel like a goddess, at least sometimes.

Happy Mother's Day, all you moms out there.

OK, YOU Answer This One

Suzanne, my six-year-old, looking at a Washington Post picture of Queen Elizabeth II at a White House state dinner:

"How come SHE gets to be queen and I don't?"

The Points System, Explained

Nobody in my teensy universe of readers is going to hear me going off like Dr. Phil on the subject of childrearing--on the contrary, I solicit advice and suggestions from anybody and everybody--but in my last post I mentioned the Points System, and it strikes me that this is something we've come up with around here that really works, and that maybe I could share it.

It's really simple: whatever a kid wants to do around here that is at all pleasurable--watching TV, having a friend come over, getting an ice cream treat, whatever--costs points. Points are earned by good behavior. Things like cleaning one's room do not earn points, because cleaning up after yourself is simply what's expected of any civilized human being, but things like tidying the living room, or making a sandwich for your little sister, or being quiet for half an hour while your big sister does her homework--stuff like that--do earn points. You can always invent new ways to earn points. One a friend suggested the other day: refraining from complaints about the dinner menu and at least trying one bit of everything on your plate. Brilliant. I never would have thought of this.

And here's the key: kids cannot lose points. Points are only used to reward desirable behavior, not to punish undesirable behavior. If a certain someone, say, lies about having done her homework when she hasn't, she does not lose points. Other consequences will ensue (and the consequences are up to you), but once a kid earns 'em, points are there forever.

The reason that last part is key is that it ensures the kids will buy into the system. Let's face it: kids are gonna misbehave. We know this, and, most importantly, kids know this. If they know that misbehaving is going to lose them points, they will opt out of the system because it has ceased to be something they feel in control of. This way, the kids are totally in control (at least, from their point of view). If they want a sleepover, all they have to do is look at the Big Board and see whether they have the Points (sleepovers cost 100 points at our house)--subject, of course, to normal scheduling concerns. A half-hour of TV or computer costs 20 points. If you use up your points, the solution is easy: just do something that will earn more.

From a parent's point of view, the Points System is flexible (as I said, you can always make up new ways to earn them) and it's also a good way to keep things within limits. While I'm sure my kids slip an occasional half-hour of extra TV past me from time to time, I also know that if they've been glued to the Boob Tube watching cartoons from 9 to 11 a.m. I can say, "Well, I see you've used up 80 points on TV this morning, and you are out of points. Sorry 'bout that"--and the TV goes off. There is no power struggle; it ain't Mom saying this, it's the Big Board. And if the kids are determined to rot their brains with TV that day, you readily agree, while making it awfully inconvenient: "Sure, after you can earn some more points. You'll have to do it by sweeping off the patio, and carrying the garbage to the curb, and going through your clothes to pull out stuff that doesn't fit anymore, and..." six or seven other things that occur to you. And by the time they finish all that, it will be 4 p.m. and time to go to the library. Or something.

By the way, when we were evolving this system, we started out not with Points but Kid Money, which I made by printing copies of some Monopoly money with a picture of the kid in question superimposed in the middle. Kids had to literally "buy" what they wanted with "money" they earned. That works well with really young ones...but after awhile, you can dispense with the props and just keep track of points.

No system is perfect. But this one's pretty good.

If Every Day Was Like This The Human Race Would Die Out

Hellish. That's the only word to describe my day. The kids had half a day of school, so they walked in the door at 12:30 p.m., and I was ready with my Plan. Rebecca was going to do a little lawn mowing to earn some Points (at our house, you have to have a certain number of Points to do fun things like sleepovers, etc.); Suzanne was going to help here and there with yardwork; the two of them were going to help me move stuff out of the workroom to take to the church for the Boy Scout yard sale tomorrow; I had a healthy snack recipe ready for Rebecca to make, with all the ingredients on the kitchen counter--I was ready.

Rebecca hated the recipe; she wanted to make smores, and guess what I forgot to buy at the grocery store: graham crackers. Not only did I not get an A for effort, I got an evil look. She stomped outside and after five minutes announced she was done mowing the lawn. When I checked and saw weeds knee high and told her to mow some more, she kicked the lawnmower and stormed inside. Suzanne was suffering a severe Mommy Deficit and I could hardly make a step without her wrapped around my leg. They fought like two scorpions in a bottle and when they weren't fighting or clinging or giving me evil looks they were whining--I swear Suzanne could easily make the Olympic Whining Team, no coaching required. Hell, she could be the coach.

Somehow we got all the castoffs to the yard sale dropoff point and then went by my friend Ann's house. Ann's daughter likes to play with Suzanne but today for whatever reason she was Rebecca's acolyte, her adoring slave; whatever Rebecca said, she did, and Suzanne was chopped liver, which of course made Suzanne more miserable. Late in the day, they decided to put caterpillars in jars, which was fine....but then a jar got misplaced and I thought Suzanne was going to have a stroke: a little red face, tears streaming over the freckles, and every nerve in my body ready to shred into little bitty pieces. When David got home I went for the Xanax.

And then tonight, just before bed, Suzanne is curled up on my lap, and I say, "Sweetie, I'm sorry Mommy was so grumpy today," and she looks at me in genuine surprise and says, "You weren't grumpy, Mommy," and I feel my heart crack. Either grumpy is S.O.P. around here, or she has a sweet and forgiving nature, or maybe it's a little bit of both. I am left to ponder.

And as I do (it's late now), I have this overwhelming desire to pick up the phone and talk to my mommy--to say, "Were there ever afternoons you just wanted to kill us?" and to hear her say, "Oh, yeah, honey," and to compare notes on who was worse, her kids or mine. It's little things like that you miss when people die. I know she would have enjoyed it; she'd have chuckled at her granddaughters' misbehavior, and advised me to slack off a little, not to be so uptight about everything, because they're only little once. (Even though she never followed her own advice; she was plenty uptight.) But I missed her. So I went to the closet and got out the lotion I smoothed on her face as she lay dying, which I saved for times like these, because the sense of smell is one of the most primitive memories; the brain remembers scents long after other details are gone. I smoothed the lotion on my own face, and the sweet fragrance brought her to me for just a nanosecond.

So now the kids are upstairs sleeping, and tomorrow we start over. There are days when being a parent makes coal mining look easy, but the good thing is that you do get to keep trying to get it right.