Archive for the ‘Holding forth’ Category
September 15th, 2007
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 starting the whole parenting gig (hence even the attempt to write regularly!)
More rigorous self-scrutiny. I’ve wondered if this comment bugs me because it re-opens old wounds of feeling like people are putting me in this “other” category so they don’t have to address me as a person, can dismiss my feelings. Many years ago I took a prenatal yoga class which involved a lot of support/sharing before we got into the moving our bodies — and I remember talking in the group about flylady.net, which, I told another overwhelmed expectant mother, may look like it’s packaged for someone you’re not, but contains tools, like building routines, doing things fifteen minutes at a time, breaking overwhelming jobs into small steps, that are useful to anybody trying to maintain a home. Two years later I was back in prenatal yoga, the teacher had suddenly become all evangelical about the flylady, and she as much as told me that when she’d first heard about it she’d assumed it was for people like me, you know, housewives, and she had dismissed it.
But you know what? I’m over that, actually. If this were all the “you must just be a natural born mother, unlike me” comment was, I’d just file it under the “dumb, insensitive things people say.” Yeah, they’re missing a whole lot of who I am, my other talents and abilities and interests. Their loss. I am proud of the job I am doing and believe that it does matter. A lot. And it feels good to write that because one of the ways I would magically change the world is to make the idea that the work of making new people and keeping households running matters universally acknowledged and so fundamental to everybody’s world view that it started affecting national policies and the way we run our society. And I realize that I am starting to truly internalize it, the way I want to internalize the “health at every size” ideas so eloquently set out at Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose. And internalizing it is, no doubt, necessary before I can do anything to make it real in the world.
So I hate the idea that motherhood is this in-born, natural capacity one either has or one doesn’t. Because it gives people who are finding it hard an out — an excuse. Maybe the most useful aphorism I’ve gotten from my twelve stepping friends is “You cannot judge your insides by somebody else’s outsides.” I’d like to suggest that a little intimate conversation would quickly reveal that we all find it hard, though we are encouraged to make it look easy and natural and not let the fraying seams show.
If I consider myself a pretty good mother, most days, it’s because I’ve done work at changing behaviors of my own that weren’t working, done work at finding models of connecting with little kids and gently getting them to do the things you need them to. I’ve read carefully, and, dammit, I’ve practiced and practiced and practiced.
Have I experienced some ‘natural’ advantages? My parents were pretty good models, though I don’t do things exactly the way they did. I’ve been pretty confident about the whole project, some lucky combination of faith and temperament. I’m married to someone who is supportive, and shares my vision of how our family is going to work, most of the time. That all helps, along with the willingness to look for the resources we need. But I think the single thing that made a difference was a sense of the importance of it. You meet people all the time who are great parents even though their own were everything from apathetic to abysmal, people who seem to have been told by the whole world that their efforts are worth little, people who haven’t had a lot of models for the kind of parent they want to be, people with crappy partners or no partners at all, but they’ve decided that bringing up their kids well is the most important thing they can do, and they work to do it well.
I am surprised, writing this at the size of this soapbox I’ve climbed up on. I don’t think of myself as a judgmental person. All the issues that news stories and magazines have told us divide mothers, work or stay home, breast or bottle, co-sleep or cry it out, I advocate for people figuring out what works for them. I think it’s really arrogant to presume one solution would work for everyone.
If a friend wants advice, I usually ask a lot of questions, trying to figure out what their own gut feeling is, because trying some solution because somebody else tells you should even when you’re not sure is generally courting disaster. If it’s something like “How long should I let a baby cry before picking it up” you can get “expert” answers from all over the spectrum, but the baby will pick up on ambivalence if you’re feeling conflicted about the answer. Honestly, lots of different approaches work, but they work best when you’re confident and consistent in them.
I try to be a friend the way I try to parent, calling out the strengths, the things I appreciate, because if we build each other’s confidence we are bound to be better parents, better people. And I don’t really believe in criticizing or pointing out failings, because people are aware of those themselves when they’re ready to deal with them. So it is startling to have this judgmental thing bubbling up. I feel strongly about people who just give up on themselves, on their kids. There is no such thing as a natural-born parent, and if you are finding it difficult, if you are having issues, it is your responsibility to start looking for some answers.
September 10th, 2007
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?
August 2nd, 2007
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 religion so potentially uncomfortable, because conviction clashing with conviction has an inevitable outcome, and conviction clashing with anything other than conviction either makes the person not holding the conviction look indecisive or the person with the conviction seem like a blowhard. But I am completely in favor of convictions. And I am completelly in favor of open-mindedness. Damn, I am waffling again!
There is a book of art projects for preschoolers titled “It’s the Process not the Product” and that’s sort of where I come out on the question of the nature of truth — we are all pretty much blind, and arguing tends to favor the good arguers, who are not necessarily the possessors of truth. I am sure my Philosophy 101 survey textbook responded to the question of absolutisim vs. relativism with the story of the blind men and the elephant, but it works for me. If you don’t give primacy to the trunk, to the tail, to the tusks, if you don’t try to persuade other people they’re not experiencing what they are experiencing, if you can put aside the apparent contradictions for awhile and accept them all, you can get on with the deeply rewarding and very important work of trying to figure it out — and understanding where another person is coming from, having your own ideas handed back to you enlarged but still recognizable, just, that’s better than chocolate.
Of course, if the story of the elephant seems like a cliched response to the question of absolutism vs. relativism, wikipedia offers this:
A joke exists in which three blind elephants argue what a man looks like. The first one feels the man with his leg, and says that the man is flat. The other elephants touch the man as well, and agree.
July 26th, 2007
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 ok?” (scratch this if the answer is obvious: blood, broken bones, and destruction of irreplaceable heirlooms are, more or less by definition, not ok. If the answer is obvious, you acknowledge what the other person is feeling and express the hope that they feel better soon.)
2) Express remorse. While elementary school metaphysics is a lot concerned with the intention (but I didn’t mean to do it! It was an accident! I shouldn’t have to apologize!) you can express remorse for carelessness, or for losing your temper, for not seeing your friend’s nose by your elbow, for being seized by jealousy. You must understand the difference between taking responsibility for your failure and excusing it — I was overcome by covetousness the sight of your shiny new bauble and seized it, and I was wrong… you don’t get to blame covetousness, the sun in your eyes, haste, anxiety or low blood sugar, even if they were contributing factors in your wrongness. You neeed to acknowledge that you were wrong, and too much explanation of why you were wrong pretty much dilutes the apology to meaninglessness.
3) You need to let the other person what you’re going to do to make it right, if it’s possible, saving your allowance until you can afford a new Ming vase or wiping up the mud you tracked onto the floor your mother just mopped.
4) It never hurts to express the measures you will go to to ensure that this doesn’t happen again, to promise to ask before borrowing, to take off your shoes in the hall when it’s muddy, to remember not to run in the house…
I know that number two is the hardest one for me; I have ancient memories of an apology not accepted because it was all about me. I really don’t like being wrong, and have urges to hide it or explain it away, when sometimes it’s simple wrongness. One of the things that has always impressed me about my husband is how he can cheerfully admit to being wrong, to making a mistake, without it seeming to crush his self-image… he has no expectations of being perfect, and his willingness to admit to mistakes is one of those paradoxical secure-people-are-so-surprisingly-humble-about-it things — it makes it impossible not to forgive him, and I try to learn from it, hope the kids inherit it.
July 25th, 2007
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 easy numbing of the edge. I think, since my parents’ visit, I’ve been aware that as tough as this year has been for feeling isolated, not having my best friend eight minutes away, nor the casual, easy contact of the same group of mothers whose children started kindergarten when mine did, standing and chatting every day at pick-up time, of just not having the ease with familiarity of old friends. I have to keep working at building our life here, extending myself in small ways, going to parties I might blow off for not knowing enough people, showing up and talking to new people, remembering to smile and make eye contact (but hopefully not in a creepy way, right?) to keep trying new things when my natural inclination is to hide in a book, in a corner. There have been a handful of small victories, and even the most awkward evening out came with compassion for others more socially awkward than me, but the resultant ups and downs are not totally real, and it’s odd tonight o be sort of savoring the emptiness a little, that it’s — safe? I can turn and confront it here. No one is going to save me, after all, this is not about anyone else.
Somehow being alone is precious, and I have been holding it at bay for so long with superficial comforts! and still I will be glad for the company of my husband when he comes home and the way we can be side-by-side doing rather separate things and still be companionable, sharing the things that are interesting to us, but also being completely ok not talking. I think about my father’s state at the airport waiting for my mother’s flight to arrive after they’d been apart five days, how anxious he was to see her. I touch my grandmother’s wedding ring and think of how she never spent a night alone in her own home until the night my grandfather died.
The Epstein book has me thinking about non-materialistic acquisitiveness. I suspect it’s creeping back into the music lessons, my hopes for the kids’ educations, generally, the trying to read more books at a time than is reasonable, even the craving for connection and the good writing experiences where words just pour out, showing relationships between ideas, and the epiphanies are tangible. I suspect that acquisitiveness corrupts or perverts even these things that are good in themselves, and I have to face their absence to let my life be whole. Tonight’s emptiness is a gentle one, in a small enough dose not to be accompanied by vertigo or nausea, using a dental mirror on my imperfections rather than dressing room full-length mirrors under fluorescent lighting. And with that, I am going to go to bed, and wake up well rested so I can be patient with the little darlings.
July 21st, 2007
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 older son who wouldn’t qualify for a kid’s meal. It’s weird overharing the conversation, and since you have no choice in the matter, just plain eavesdropping, and getting, with terrible clarity, from this single conversation, empathy for every point of view in the family. In the car afterwards, my husband expressed a real aversion to this woman, because she was so controlling. She was making some point to her daughter about what she should and shouldn’t eat, dutifully passing on the message women give their daughters about their bodies and food, and yet, I was sitting there and couldn’t help observing this girl was skinny and her younger brother had the physique of those kids you see in video game stores…
What was worse, was when the 10 year old went to the hall right outside this room, leading to the lavatories, and started a video game on one of the arcade machines parked there, only she dragged him back into the room and looks over at our table, to tell my kids there’s a ‘free’ game out there, that they should hurry and go play it. The she lays into him about the ‘little kids’ at the other table getting to play his game he spent his money on and how tomorrow, when he’s at Disneyland, he’s going to be drinking water when everyone else is drinking soda because he spent his money on a video game. Between these two incidents she held forth on nutrition and energy in food in what I am guessing came from the Omnivore’s Dilemma, the way she kept citing the book she was reading, but I don’t think I heard her husband’s voice at all. I thought the girl was sweet, finding me to hand me a small toy my youngest had dropped, and I got the feeling she was embarrassed by her mother.
The thing is, I am not unsympathetic to this woman. I know how polarizing it gets, feeling like you have sole responsibility for nutritional consciousness, fiscal lessons, long-term thinking. I know what it is to try whatever tactics you can to persuade your offspring to do what you need them to — that she wouldn’t have heard the belittling, controlling message that was being served with it. She had this sense of humor with a sharp blade buried in it, like the Halloween apple of urban legend, but this probably was more comfortable than outright authority. Sometimes I have these Carol Gilligan moments of believing I have been socialized to ask for things only indirectly, to always bury the lead under frills and ruffles of nicety and others-pleasing pathology, and it is a huge impediment to the sort of communication that is essential to marriage.
The silent dad reminds me of the formula in the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle stories Soren can’t get enough of right now: sweet child displays a bewildering new awful behavior, mother turns to father frantic with worry, he raises a sharp eyebrow and retreats with his pipe behind a newspaper, mother helplessy calls all her friends who declaim the behavior, their own child is SO well-behaved! But Mrs. Blank did have that problem with little Timmy, and she called Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. That is definitely what you should do, call Mrs. Piggle Wiggle!
The polarization of parenting roles depresses me, and I get all sensitive and it seems to be close to universal, the story of husbands as big children that practically need raising themselves — and if this story creeps into your marriage/relationship it is used to excuse/absolve with a shrug or a sigh, “Men!” followed by increasing shrewishness under the growing weight of being the worrier, the long-term thinker, the responsible ‘Angel in the House’ (the Victioran representation of women as the moral heart of the home who must be protected from the external world and its pressures and realities). And I don’t know of a magic cure for it.
I have as much sympathy for the father, who gets told over and over again that the way he is pareting is wrong, until he abdicates. There is a terrible bind of neither having the model of previous generations of fathers being more than breadwinners and disciplinarians, stoics with deeply buried inner lives, nor of getting the intensive early time as primary caregiver, sink or swim, when you have to learn for yourself by trial and error what works and what doesn’t.
As the mom, with what feels like a God-given responsibility to protect and guide my kids, it is one of the most difficult things in the world to stand back and allow the other relationships in their lives to happen without interfering, whether it’s the musci teacher on a grouchy day, or the father who wants to splurge on candy at the movies, when I have histories and reasons that this is a Bad Idea. (It occurs to me I should be grateful not to have anyone watching over my shoulder on the bad days when I make my multitude of mistakes too). Yet, again, and again, I must confront that this relinquishing of control, trusting my raising of them is what I must do. I have already had a chance to drill in the messages I want them to have: that they are fine people, that life is an act of balancing discipline and enjoyment of pleasures, that stuff is not what makes you happy, that respect, courtesy, and consideration are all very important in interacting with each other and the world.
Sometimes, the compromises, the video games they’re allowed to play, the delight in boyish things I just don’t GET, projectiles and sticks, shiny warrior avatars — feels unbearable, like an abdication of my pacifistic values and maternal responsibility, especially because I know sometimes the compromise is about the learning experience they’ll get and the balance they need between discipline and fun, and sometimes it’s about my being exhausted and wanting time in my own head and it’s easier.
I have spasms of envy of people bringing up theeir kids without television, or the idealistic new parents who resist any toys made of plastic, or my cousin’s wife, whose baby shower was all children’s books. But maybe in the end I do believe that the little indulgences haven’t created children who are hopelessly spoiled, but children with some information to make better decisions: that the toy they pined for for three months turned out to be made of rather flimsy plastic and fell apart after only a couple weeks, that it offered less joy than a family bike ride or the feeling of being service.
I hope to never see the look of terror in my families eyes as I lecture them as a captive audience in some restaurant (that’s why I have a blog!) and I think part of the key to not hitting that point is to not simplify the polarizing roles my husband and I get into, but to keep reminding myself of how we’re complementary, we balance each other. I have the discipline to get my kids practicing their stringed instruments (nearly) every day, he has translated his strengths in technology and communication into a career he enjoys that supports me staying at home with my kids. I can remember to be grateful for that.
