Maternally Challenged

And Why Should You Escape?

So today we are sending out the last of the Christmas cards, some of them with a letter enclosed, and it occurred to me that all four or five of my readers out there might be interested in our Yearly Recap, too. Hell, it took  me a WHOLE DAY to write:

At this house, our motto for Christmas letters is “All the news that fits, we print,” but we still pledge to keep it relatively short. For 2007, this will be no problem because, frankly, there are a few stretches of 2007 you wouldn’t want to hear a lot about. 

The bad news first. Tracy underwent some ECT treatments last winter for a severe depressive episode and we’ll spare you the details because, actually, we don’t remember them. ECT is known for doing a number on one’s memory of recent events, so it’s been a year of surprises: outfits we don’t remember buying, e-mail correspondents we don’t remember having met… On the plus side, it also wiped out the memory of several really bad Disney movies, and it helped Tracy recover. ECT is very effective that way—but then, amputation is effective on gangrene, too, and there are good reasons why neither treatment has ever really caught on. Still, while humans can’t sprout grow new limbs, they can and do grow new brain cells. It was a long haul, but we are pleased to report that things are now back to what passes for normal around here. Work-wise, Tracy has several projects going: you’ll see her in the Civil War Times soon, she’s working on something for the NYU Law Journal which will involve traveling to The Hague to interview an eminent judge who sits on the World Court, the paperback edition of her book came out this summer, and there may be another book idea out there somewhere. Life goes on.

In extraterrestrial news, David’s working on a NASA project that would, if funded by the Powers that Be, map the universe’s distribution of Dark Energy. What is Dark Energy? you ask, to which the brightest minds at NASA would answer: We dunno. All scientists know is that it is a mysterious force which accounts for about 25 percent of the energy in the universe, and it is, like, totally awesome, dude: it sends stars careening around galaxies, it can bend space and time, and it keeps that donkey kid in back of you kicking your seat for the entire duration of a trans-Atlantic flight. The official name for the project is ADEPT (Advanced Dark Energy Physics Telescope), but around here we just call it The Map of Where Is, Is. 

On the kid front: Rebecca is now 11, making her officially a ‘Tween, and so we have been introduced to the Great Big Honkin’ Attitude years. Not that Rebecca has ever lacked an Attitude, but up to now she had not brought it to bear on clothing. All that changed when she and Tracy went shopping for back-to-school clothes this year, and Tracy’s idea of fashion (subdued things with interchangeable components) fell victim to Rebecca’s fashion vision (spangles, sparkles, sequins and drapey things cut on the bias, all in hues unknown to nature).  Compared to this kid, Porter Waggoner would have looked like a funeral director. Well, okay, maybe that’s exaggerating a bit, but still: you see the potential for conflict. Rebecca is also deeply into the Cat Warriors books, and can diagram all the cat clans and interconnections thereof for anybody who displays the faintest interest, as well as for lots of people who don’t. (Our advice: don’t.) She has also caught the Horse Virus from her Aunt Nonny, and as any parent knows, “adolescent girl” + “horse” = “second mortgage,” so thanks a lot, sis. Rebecca takes riding lessons once a week at a nearby stable, where, besides learning how to ride, she is also learning to work with an implement known as a “pitchfork.” Our hope is that not only will she learn some horsemanship but that her expertise may someday transfer to using implements known as a “yard rake,” a “mop” and a “broom.”

Suzanne started first grade this year and has already won two professions of love from little boys in her class, which puts her one up on mommy at the same age. But then, Suzanne has these adorable freckles, which gives her an unfair advantage. She is a bundle of spontaneous bursts of enthusiasm (told for the fourth time to get out of the bathtub one night, she replied, “Okay, Mommy, but first I have to DO THE WET NAKED DANCE YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! BABY!!”—and there went another 10 minutes) and non-stop creative energy. At home, this means piles of paper, markers, paint, clay and other art projects in various stages of completion all over the place. At school, this recently resulted in a phone call from the vice principal informing Tracy that Suzanne and an unnamed male co-conspirator had been thwarted in their plan to tie each other up during recess. Suzanne has been banned from even touching a jump rope until after the first of the year; fortunately, the school supply list does not include "whips" or "chains." Otherwise, she keeps us busy with Inscrutable Questions (“Who invented broccoli?” and “How dark is pink?”are a sample) and creative manglings of common expressions (notably, “Fruit of the Loo,” which Tracy is thinking of marketing in the U.K. as a new brand of toilet paper).

No exotic vacations this year; we spent ours this summer a whole 100 miles from the house, at a mountain cabin in the Shenandoah Valley, where we went to a county fair (lots of fun, and who knew pigs could be so squeaky clean?), spent the day at a water park, did a bit of hiking (which prompted another Inscrutable Question, this from Rebecca: “Why is the Appalachian Trail so steep?”), and learned that a tiny little mountain chalet is way too small for three high-maintenance females and one outnumbered husband/father about two millimeters from the end of his rope. The kids had a blast; Tracy and David survived.

So that’s the year. And now that we think about it, it hasn’t been dull at all. Really: how many people get to map the universe? Or get paid for putting words on paper, for pete’s sake? So, as usual, once we look at the big picture we realize the good vastly outweighs the bad, and that goes triple since the recent pathology report came back marked "benign." (See previous posts.) Compared to 99 percent of the world, we are filthy rich; by any measure, we are incredibly blessed. We hope this finds all of you similarly situated. Merry Christmas.

A Prayer for My Daughter, with Apologies to Yeats

Is hell-fire religion encoded in your genes?

I am wondering about this, because I was raised in a Bible-thumping, sinners-are-going-to-hell kind of religion. It's something I left without a backward glance when I was old enough to vacate the parental home, but by then it was too late. Take it from an authority: if you want to raise a really anxious, guilt-ridden girl-child with major self-esteem issues, the kind of kid who is primed for illnesses like depression the way easy-light charcoal is primed for the match, Fundamentalism is the way to go. Maybe the Taliban could do a better job in this department, but I'm not so sure.

Consequently, I have been scrupulously careful about not teaching my kids that a) they are sinners or b) that God is sitting up in the sky running a tab on their every infraction or c) that they will go to hell if they don't Measure Up. I have, in fact, not even pushed my kids to go to Sunday School or church, being opposed on principle to intellectual force-feeding of any kind. My husband and I have gone out of our way to explain that the world is full of people who have all kinds of beliefs--atheists and Buddhists and Muslims and Baptists and so forth. So explain to me why my 10-year-old announced to me last night, "Mom, I've figured it out."

"Figured what out?"

"I've figured out why I feel so anxious and sad. It's because God is mad at me. I've done something wrong, but I don't know what it is."

Travel back with me in time, to College Park, Georgia circa 1965, and this would be me, saying the exact same thing. Except that I had people telling me this kind of thing three times a week, and my daughter does not and never has. So what gives here? Does bad religion leak out of your pores or something? Do you impart it to your kids with your DNA, along with a tendency to chew your nails?

Aside from assuring my daughter that God is not mad at her, and that perhaps her general anxiety has more to do with starting middle school than with some horrible sin she has committed (and, by the way, do any ex-Fundies out there remember the Unforgiveable Sin? It was "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit," whatever that is, and I was always petrified that I'd done it without knowing it)--aside from this, I have no idea of how to disabuse her of this notion, or whether I should even try. Perhaps she'll figure out for herself that fear is not a healthy basis for any kind of spiritual life. Perhaps she will, as William Butler Yeats said, discover that

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

("A Prayer for My Daughter," June 1919)

Come to think of it, this is something I'm still learning. Maybe we can learn together.

One Minivan 4 Sale

Somewhere, buried deep in the Federal Civil Code, there is a statute that says, "Upon the arrival of any child subsequent to the first, all U.S. citizen family units must purchase a minivan."

At least, that must have been what we were thinking, because when our five-year-old was born we bought a minivan. At the time, it seemed like a must-have: we were four now, a real family, and the old Saturn station wagon just wouldn't do. We needed Space. We needed Cup Holders. We needed a fold-down back seat and doors that would open and close with the touch of a button. All this, and more, we got.

Now that 2001 Dodge Caravan seems like a dented two-ton tin can on wheels. It takes $50 to fill the sucker up, and every time I pull out on the road I look in my rear view mirror at at least three empty seats and think about the hole in the ozone layer they are going to name just for us. All that space hasn't done us any good; my two girls each have their own Captain's Chair (that's what the brochure called it) and still they fight like two cats in a sack.

Did I mention that it weighs two tons? This fact took a long time to percolate into my forebrain and before it did, I had managed to sideswipe one car, back into another car, take out a pole at the post office, run down a gas pump and back into somebody's mail box. State Farm dropped me. The mail box dent is still there because at this point I can't afford to file any more claims and the $800 it would take the fix the door just ain't worth it. It's proved useful, in a way: there are so many silver minivans in the world that on some days the dent is the only way I can find my car in the goddamn parking lot. The dent identifies it--that, and the "It's Up to the  Women--Vote Kerry/Edwards!" bumper sticker. (Yeah, that really worked, didn't it?)

People with three kids probably need a minivan. People with two kids, like me, should be locked up for even thinking about buying a vehicle the size of a Dempsey Dumpster just to go to the Safeway.

So here it is, folks--an authenthic Suburban Mommobile. Make me an offer. 64,000 miles,  new tires, has had regular oil changes and comes with an interesting smell in the back seat I have never been able to identify. I'll throw in a ten percent discount if you take the two hellions in the middle section, too.

The Latest So-Called Research

This just in--a news tidbit forwarded to me by my friend Sarah, who works at Radio Free Asia when she is not working to raise two lovely daughters. Sarah gets these things off the wires.

"Researchers"--I use the term loosely--at University College London said this week in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health that women who were stay-at-home mothers were more likely to be fat than women who work outside the home, and that a long-term study had shown that they consistently gained more weight than women who "occupied multiple roles over the long term."

Okay, so....A) staying home all the time makes you fat. Or, B) juggling (there's that cheerful, circus-y word again) successfully makes you fit. Or--could it be--that C) being fit in the first place makes it possible to juggle?

I don't know from reading this brief news story. But I will bet one crisp $50 bill with anybody who wants to engage in online gambling with me that all the news stories will play it as options A or B, not C....thus piling on more angst and guilt on mothers who a) have health problems or b) face employment discrimination because of being overweight or c) were just born chunky or d) have found it damned hard to work exercise into daily routines that center around taking care of everybody except themselves.I'd also love to see a longitudinal study of what happens to workers whose desks are located right next to the break room, which essentially describes the "workplace" of every stay-at-home mother I know. Do they tend to put on pounds? Hmmmm....

But wait! There's more. An Australian professor is quoted in this story as saying, "We think that women learn skills in juggling roles and one of the important things about having multiple roles is you have multiple sources of satisfaction.I wouldn't want to say that women at home are missing out but generally women who manage several roles have more sources of support and satisfaction."

Holy cow. Who would have known that being lucky enough to find a job that pays enough to cover childcare AND gives you enough flexibility that you actually see your kids once in a while is an incredible find? I wonder if these people have noticed that being beautiful is more rewarding than being ugly? That being rich is more rewarding than being poor?

The research vistas stretch out to infinity...and beyond...

True Grit

I'm the mother of two highly intelligent girls. With their high IQs (both clearly in the "superior" range), I don't have to worry about their success in life, right?

Oh, but I do. With my oldest, particularly. The fact that she's smart means that she catches on quickly to things. It also means that she's easily discouraged if she doesn't "get" it the very first time. This is especially true in math, where I've heard a couple of thousand times by now, "I DON'T WANNA DO THIS!!!!" (accompanied by kicking, tearing of homework sheets, hurling of pencils, etc.) My girl has smarts, but in the persistence department she needs some work. I was the same way. I distinctly remember throwing my algebra book through my bedroom window (which was closed at the time) when I was first introduced to the preposterous idea that letters and numbers could coexist in the same sentence. I shattered the windowpane that night, but it took quite a while for an essential truth to penetrate my somewhat thicker skull: sometimes you just have to keep trying, and trying, and trying....until you understand.

What made me think of this was an article in the November/December edition of Psychology Today, in which writer Peter Doskoch explores the topic of "grit" and the role it plays in a person's success. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center (headed by Dr. Martin Seligman, one of the world's best interviews--I know, because I've interviewed him) have done some analyses that suggest that only about a quarter of the differences between persons in job performance can be attributed to intelligence; the rest can be attributed to personality factors, creativity and luck. And the major factor in personality, they say, is persistence-i.e., grit. Being able to keep hammering away at something, it turns out, is just as important, maybe more so, than any innate gift. Most important, Doskoch writes, "helping children find their passion may turn out to be more important than addressing their academic weaknesses." Sometimes passion fosters perseverence, and sometimes it's the other way around, but however you get there, grit is an essential part of any successful person''s personality.

How do you teach this? Wish I knew. Role modeling helps, obviously, but other than that, I'm open to suggestions. With my oldest daughter, I know that the more I try to force her to go back and try something, the more resistant she'll become. But the other night, when she was clearly unable to figure out how to use a protractor, I let it slide until after she went to bed. Then I sat down and figured out a) the instructions her teacher had given her were confusing and b) the instructions on the little plastic protractor itself were quite simple. The next morning I took 30 seconds and said, "Look at this again," and showed her one example. "Oh," she said. Bingo. I had to lure her back into looking again, but when I did--she got it.

Maybe someday she'll learn to come back on her own.