Natural Born Mothers

Lately I’ve been sensitive to this sort of back-handed compliment, “Wow, four kids. I’m sure I could never do it, it would make me crazy. You must just be a sort of natural at it.” It’s not just the assumption of what four kids is like — I think that as we are reaching certain hallmarks of self-sufficiency — all of them able to eat by themselves and out of diapers, getting closer to the fourth being able to dress himself (and brothers able to help him through the tough spots), two of them able to do their own laundry, prepare lunchboxes, read out loud to the younger ones — and their all getting along pretty well most of the time, well able to entertain one another, this is the least work I’ve had to do since...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Sep 15, 2007 | 1 comment

Rantiness

Stuck behind a minivan yesterday with two bumper stickers:  ”Pray for the USA” and “If you’re going to burn our flag, wrap yourself in it first.”  Suspect these people may be praying to Cthulhu.  I try to feel compassion, Portland must be a hard town to be all conservative in.  On the other hand how does one fit a good retort to that on the fender of one’s bike?

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Posted by Mara Collins on Sep 10, 2007 | 1 comment

Truth is an elephant…

It’s one of those side benefits of parenthood, getting asked the big questions and dusting off the undergraduate philosophy books, and answering, wait, this really is what I believe. And your answers hopefully don’t sound tired and clichéd to a ten-year-old, right? So the question of the day is what is there between the absolutist rock and the relativist slippery slope? I am so uncomfortable with worldviews that hold that only this one version of the truth can be real, the arrogance of believing you have access to capital T Truth that others don’t, that one arrow alone is hitting the bullseye; at the same time, I have this horror of a nihilism that denies that there is any absolute truth to get at. Maybe this is what makes discussions of...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Aug 2, 2007 | 0 comments

The Satisfactory Apology

Leaving behind, for the moment, the proposition that forgiveness does more to comfort the forgiver than the forgiven, there is nothing like the eye-rolling “sor-reee!” of a six year old to make you think about the neccessary and sufficient conditions of apology. There came a point when I had to lay out for a child, given to unrepentant and insincere sounding apologies, the things I needed to hear in order feel apologized to… I realize that one has to spend only a short time on any playground to hear mothers and other caregivers demanding that their charges “say you’re sorry!” but I want my kids to get the art of the apology: 1) It helps to express concern for the person you’re apologizing too — an “are you...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Jul 26, 2007 | 1 comment

thinking about it…

In Western theories, the hope is always that emptiness can be healed, that if the character is developed or the trauma resolved that the background feelings will diminish. If we can make the ego stronger, the expectation is that emptiness will go away. In Buddhism, the approach is reversed. Focus on the emptiness, the dissatisfaction, and the feelings of imperfection, and character will get stronger. Learn how to tolerate nothing and your mind will be at rest. — Mark Epstein, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart The house does feel really empty after the kids are in bed, and I am not finding easy comforts, too late for phone calls to anyone east of here, I am really not hungry, nor interested in television nor reading nor… in any...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Jul 25, 2007 | 1 comment

Tragedy of the American Mother

Ok, y’all, bear with me as I launch into what I hope is as close to a rant as I get on what is really important to me… At dinner last night we were in a restaurant crowded with families and so we ended up in a back banquet room where another family was already eating, and so we sat, relatively quiet trying not to listen to them, a dilemma of not wanting to invade their privacy, but not wanting to talk because we realized how little privacy there was, and their conversation was… invasive. Except it wasn’t even a conversation, it was a mother holding forth to a captive audience. I know the ages of the kids in the family because the buffet charged by the age of the guest, so there was a 10 year old son, an 11 year old daughter, and another...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Jul 21, 2007 | 2 comments