This morning I scored a mother’s trifecta:
1. Uninterrupted night of sleep
2. Time to myself in the morning to read
3. Got to drink my coffee and eat my pastry while they were still hot
It was great, and I was grateful. Funny, the things I used to take for granted.
Our little family is still in the throes of last week’s nasty virus. Right now, I’m thankful for Jello, PBS kids shows, and magazines.
Last week, another mom and I were congratulating each other on making/taking time for a shower.
“I have to remind myself,” she said, “a shower is not a privilege. It’s a SOCIAL CONTRACT.”
Amen, sister.
and sisters, and aunts, and grandmothers, and all those who will be, or want to be, and anyone who has ever taken care of another:
May this day bring moments of peace and joy, as well as a cessation, however brief, in the neediness of others.
From a friend, via Clean Water Action
Minnesotans, please give Governor Pawlenty’s office a quick call and let him know you want him to support the SAFE BABY PRODUCTS legislation. His number is: 651-296-3391.
It has safely made it out of conference committee with the phthalates language intact. Unfortunately, the Bis-Phenol A language was removed as a compromise. We expect the legislation to be on the Governor’s desk by Thursday or Friday. The American Chemistry Council has been lobbying hard so we are concerned the Governor may oppose all or some of the bill — so your support really matters.
You can simply say, “Please ask Governor Pawlenty to support the Safe Baby Products Bill for the well-being of Minnesota’s children. Thank you for your consideration.”
Mother’s Day in the USA is this Sunday. Mothering Day started in England as a day off for servants to visit their mothers/see their kids. In America, it was transformed to celebrate the homemaker/nanny, perhaps just putting a gloss over Sisyphean attempts to stem the tides of snot, poop, and dirt.
So here are a few ideas, in case you haven’t gotten something for the mothers in your life.
Spring flowers. Narcissus are pretty and have a lovely, delicate scent.
Treats. Raspberry-flavored cherries taste like red Swedish fish! And _good_ chocolate, from near (Legacy) or far (Maison du Chocolat’s plain truffles), is always in good taste.
A spring bag. Candy-colored, croc (mock or not), and black/white bags are in.
Unguents. It’s been a long, hard winter. Good lotion, like Golden Door Eucalyptus, is a soothing, smoothing indulgence.
Rest, peace and quiet. Good luck with this one.
Related reading: This article from the Atlantic on mother-centered architecture. We live in a four-square bungalow similar to those described in the article.
Tom Hodgkinson, editor of The Idler and father of three small children, is a proponent of what he calls Idle Parenting. (Link from Game Theorist, a blog on economics and child rearing, a la Freakonomics.)
He claims it’s a win/win strategy. Parents get more enjoyment time for themselves, and kids develop self-sufficiency, and aren’t smothered by hovering parents.
I was entertained by the article, and in it I recognized my occasional flailings at non-idle parenting. My elder son is in preschool 3 days a week. He and his 2yo brother also have a music class and a public-schools family class that they take with my husband G. Grod. We’re hardly an overachieving family. But that’s not to say that I don’t feel guilt over this; I do. Every time I hear some other mom talk about the sports class her kid is taking, or the museum they visited, or the whatever the heck it is, I feel like I’m dropping the ball. Really, I’m beginning to think we all just have too much time on our hands, and should figure out how to use it usefully, rather than by competing in Olympic level parenting one-up-mom-ship.
Hodgkinson’s advice is refreshing for its stance against the status quo. He’s hardly the first to suggest that the current parenting climate is overzealous. There’s Confessions of a Slacker Mom, and The Three Martini Playdate. And one of my regular readers, Lazy Cow, who blogs at Only Books All the Time, is a staunch believer in what she calls “slow mothering.”
I’m not sure that slacker parenting is the ideal, but certainly a movement away from the over-scheduled, competitive kid world is a move in the right direction. I do want more time to myself for things I enjoy. That doesn’t mean ignoring the kids, just trying to be present when we’re doing things together, and taking some time to be not together. (I type this as Guppy naps and Drake watches “My Neighbor Totoro”.)
Hodgkinson has a bi-weekly weekend column on idle parenting, too. Here are a few excerpts.
From “Tom Hodgkinson Reads on”
By extending the family, creating a network of mutually supporting friends and neighbours, in short, by helping each other, family life could be made very much easier. Let’s give each other a break and open our doors.
On avoiding competitive sports:
Give me instead a child who can ponder and dream, sit under the oak tree and read, talk and think.
And a recent bout of family illness teaches the astonishing lesson that resting and taking care of oneself is good, and that kids don’t self destruct when left to themselves.
From the Consumerist, 8 Worst Foods in America. (Link from The Morning News.)
From Best Life, 8 Foods You Should Eat Every Day (long-ago link from Blogenheimer.)
As Drake approaches age 5, and Guppy advances past 2, I’ve considered returning to the corporate world. There are many benefits: intellectual challenge, salary, healthcare, an excuse to get dressed in clothes that won’t get smeared with snot or drool, people to talk about Project Runway or Top Chef with, and not least, the ability to eat and go to the bathroom by myself.
Yet there is one aspect of stay-at-home-hood, one I’m fortunate to have, that I’m unwilling to give up: my afternoon nap. While Guppy naps, I lie down, read a chapter in my book, and take a short nap. Drake hasn’t napped in years, but he kindly plays quietly while I do this. More often than not, my nights are interrupted by the needs of one child or the other, so I began to nap after having kids out of need and desperation. I am still needy and desperate, but I nap by choice. I can tell it’s a healthy habit, like eating well and doing yoga, and scientific evidence continues to support naps, like this recent piece on power naps in Scientific American (link from The Morning News.)
When I was younger, I thought I couldn’t nap. I was always too busy and had too much to do. Such is the life of an anxious person. I don’t think I was incapable, though. I think napping is a skill, and I just needed more practice.
At the Atlantic, Christopher Leinberger, a professor of urban planning, predicts dire things for the suburbs, and forecasts a shift back to urban, walkable living.
For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s–slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay.
Leinberger also notes how this move away from the suburbs is reflected in the media:
These days, when Hollywood wants to portray soullessness, despair, or moral decay, it often looks to the suburbs–as The Sopranos and Desperate Housewives attest–for inspiration.
This is in contrast, and a reaction to, the forces behind the birth of film noir in the 40’s, captured by Richard Schickel in his Wilson Center article, Rerunning Film Noir, which I’ve linked to before:
After [WWII], however, the city’s glamour became much darker and more menacing. Noir quickly noted the gathering flight to the suburbs and the countryside. Or, at least, the desire of many people to join that flight. The genre began to offer this dichotomy: the suburbs as a clean, spare, safe, if not very interesting place to love a plain little woman and to raise healthy, normal children, versus the city, whose glamour was at once more menacing and more tempting than it had ever been.
Back in real life, Leinberger doesn’t think there will be a total reversal, but he does see it moving more towards equilibrium:
Despite this glum forecast for many swaths of suburbia, we should not lose sight of the bigger picture–the shift that’s under way toward walkable urban living is a healthy development….I doubt the swing toward urban living will ever proceed as far as the swing toward the suburbs did in the 20th century; many people will still prefer the bigger houses and car-based lifestyles of conventional suburbs. But there will almost certainly be more of a balance between walkable and drivable communities–allowing people in most areas a wider variety of choices.
I find Leinberger’s article interesting, both because of the media reflections, and because our family lives in a small city house, within a mile of many things. Due to circumstances, we had little choice but to buy our house at the top of the bubble, but this gives me hope that we’ll eventually recoup at least some of that value, as well as continue to cultivate a one-car, walkable lifestyle.
(I thought the Leinberger link came from Arts & Letters Daily, but I can’t find it there. Apologies for the lack of proper linkage.)
I’m afraid I draw a blank when I try to remember how I celebrated my 20th birthday. 19 and 21 were sloppy, exuberant affairs, though, so it was probably similar. Two decades later, things have changed. I called family the day before my birthday and asked that they not call on the day; what I wanted for my 40th was some peace and quiet, which is hard to come by with two small boys. I turned off all phone ringers and took the boys for a playdate at a kind friend’s house. Then I had several hours to myself, and did the things that are important to me, now. I showered, read my book, took a nap, and did some writing.
The next night, girlfriends and I went out to a new neighborhood restaurant, The Red Stag Supper Club. I had a fabulous meal–chop salad, pork chop over barbecued cheese grits with shrimp/bacon succotash, and a truffle tort–accompanied by my favorite tap beverage: root beer, from the Sprecher Brewing Company in Wisconsin.
And this week I’m going on a date with my husband G. Grod. We were going to go tonight, but Guppy woke us with croup in the night, and Drake woke this morning hollering with pain from a high fever, so we changed the plan. Thus far, it’s been a lovely, quiet, quality celebration, which nicely reflects life in general.
Today I turn forty. I feel mostly calm and good about it. I think the number embodies a sense of gravitas and power. I’ve been around a bit, but still have a ways to go, I hope.
Any regrets I have tend to be wishes that I’d gotten to things that bring me joy and balance earlier in my life–yoga, motherhood, writing, reading to learn, resting. What can I say; I’m a late bloomer and a slow learner in some ways. It’s a heartening regret, though, because it means I’m doing what I want now, which is better late than never.
The groundhog saw his shadow, so we’re in for six more weeks of what feels like the longest, coldest, darkest winter ever. To bolster my flagging spirits, I have a new bulb in my sun box, a new journal to write in, and a new edition of a favorite book to re-read.
The suicide-awareness billboards are everywhere in the Twin Cities. Take care of yourself. If you’re feeling blue, check out an online screening test like the one from NYU Medical Center, and contact your health care provider if you’re worried. And if you’re worried about someone else, say so, or ask if you can help.
Robert Fulford, at the National Post (link from Arts and Letters Daily) skips the whole religion is bad/good dichotomy in defense of art. Loving great art does not make you good, neither does creating it, he notes. So, he asks,
What, then, does it guarantee? Those who give it their time and love are offered the chance to live more expansive, more enjoyable and deeper lives. They can learn to care intimately about music, painting and books that have lasted for centuries or millennia. They can reach around the globe for the music, the images and the stories they want to make their own.
Fulford’s is a short piece, and he’s probably singing to the choir. Yet it’s a good reminder to give a piece of art more than a few seconds of your time. Really look at it, don’t just take a picture or videotape it to consider it later. Read a book, then read another book related to it; come at things from a different angle. Do the same with a film. Listen to music and don’t do anything else. Put aside multi-tasking for the moment. As the author of Mental Multivitamin continually exhorts us, “Read, Think, Learn.”
My anxiety tendencies are directly proportional to my caffeine intake. I love coffee, but I limit myself to the two cappuccinos my kind husband makes for me every morning. Last week, though, I had friends coming over for a playdate. I made a pot of coffee. I had one cup beyond my usual. I told myself that was it. But when they left, I found 12 ounces left of coffee. And because nothing succeeds like excess, I heated it up, added a tablespoon and a half of the fancy French cocoa mix a friend gave me, and I enjoyed every drop.
I also enjoyed how energized I was that afternoon. I wrote entries for this weblog. I read all my feeds. I did the dishes.
And then I crashed, just as 22mo Guppy woke from his nap, and 4yo Drake finished preschool. I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening in a post-sugarbomb fugue. I was so fatigued I felt ill. So I’m back to two capps a day. I’ve learned my lesson. But I can’t promise how long I’ll remember it.
From my struggles with post-partum depression and anxiety, I learned I’m not well suited to caring for small children all day, every day. I’d probably not even be much suited to it as an 8-hour-a-day job with regular breaks. I dislike noise, mess, and chaos. I like to focus on one thing at a time; I don’t pretend to like or practice multi-tasking. I prefer reading and writing to playing. And, let’s face it, no one likes crying, diapers, or snot.
Several thing I read at the end of last year reinforced my growing desire for professional work instead of childcaring.
Kyra Sedgwick, quoted in a feature in Newsweek 10/15/07 on Women and Power:
I had this dream that when I had my children I was just going to want to be with them, and I wouldn’t want to work. And that was sort of this ideal, in a way, based on nothing, because my mother always worked.
I had this dream that somehow I’d be so fulfilled, and I wouldn’t need to work. I bought into this ideal that one should just stay home and be with one’s children, that that should be enough. It’s taken me a really long time to embrace my ambition and to embrace my need to express myself and to accept it in a loving way as part of who I am, instead of putting myself down for it.
From “The Whole ‘Working Mother’ Thing Actually Works,” by Carol Lloyd at Salon:
Based on surveys of 10,000 individuals, the British study found that mothers with jobs are significantly happier than their nonworking counterparts….The evidence paints a bleak picture of the toll that a stay-at-home life can takes on a woman’s satisfaction….working outside the home seems to improve the level of satisfaction among women with children. Moreover, it seems that women experience improved satisfaction associated with having children only when the kids go off to school (i.e., when their mothering job becomes a little more part time).
And a slightly different view, from a post at Mental Multivitamin:
I’ve learned that many women, homeschooling and not, feel all but enslaved to their homes and their families — even women who are also working traditional jobs!
Simply put, even as they acknowledge that they have good husbands, nice homes, and decent kids, they also admit that they feel like it all falls to them to keep it going. This, I think, is one of those gender-specific issues. I have never met a man, for example, who frets, “How will I get all of the laundry done!?”….I don’t know how other women escape the malaise that can suck the color from their lives, but I have always clung to the conviction that while I am a wife and a mother, I am also me first.
I wonder at the serendipitous synchronicity that brought all three of these pieces to my attention within a short time. They affirm my experience that motherhood is not fluffy bunnies and sunshine, and go a long way to breaking down that romantic stereotype and re-humanizing mothers, much as Marrit Ingman did in her funny, brutal memoir Inconsolable, which I read last year.
And from the same post at Mental Multivitamin, some practical advice for emerging from the day-to-day grind, and to reclaiming work and joy for oneself:
I have always made time to pursue those things which contribute to my self-definition, including work, yes, but also things like music lessons, reading (and I don’t mean books for the kids), ornithology, and more.
Finally, is it ironic, or merely interesting, that it has taken me weeks to write this post, since I have been so consumed with childcare and my Christmas cold since Thanksgiving?
Spring has sprung
Autumn has fell
It’s winter now
And it’s colder than….
Minus 3 is what our thermometer said this morning, which reminds me that we’re past due to put together an emergency car kit. About 4 years past due, since the last time we did it we had no kids.
Road and Travel has a good, brief list, via AAA:
* flashlight
* flares or reflective triangle
* distress sign
* telephone change
* first aid supplies
* basic tools
* a fully charged cell phone
Other recommended items are:
* boots
* hat
* coat
* gloves
* jumper cables
* carpet strips, sand or kitty litter for traction
* ice scraper and brush
* blanket
* chocolate candy (my favorite part)
Might I suggest a bag of Dark Chocolate M & Ms?
Everyone in our family is in some stage of whatever virus is going around. Today, I stayed indoors with 4yo Drake and 21mo Guppy, so we could keep quiet and rest. But whenever I sit still, I look around and see something that needs to be done. I either go do it, which isn’t restful, or I fret that I’m not doing it, which isn’t really restful either. I think the solutions are either to be too sick to notice anything, or to lie in bed with an eye mask. The latter doesn’t seem like a sensible choice, what with two small kids and all.
#51 in my 2007 book challenge was Marrit Ingman’s Inconsolable: How I Threw my Mental Health out with the Diapers.
To borrow her phrase, reading this book made me wonder if Marrit Ingman had been reading my mail.
A good friend, and post-partum depression survivor, lent it to me in the wake of my own struggle with PPD after the birth of Guppy, now 21 months old. Ingman is smart, funny, and often brutally honest about the often ugly underbelly of new motherhood. From a birth that deviated from plan to a rash-y, colic-y infant, Ingman’s experience was so physically and emotionally exhausting that I can’t imagine anyone going through it and NOT becoming depressed. Shifting hormones, sleep deprivation, and the bewilderment of breastfeeding are just a few of the circumstances that make new motherhood less than idyllic.
Ingman details the exhaustion, the ambivalence, the recurring regrets, the suicidal thoughts, and the waves of anger that were all part of her experience. I empathized, I laughed, and I cringed at various points. The book sometimes felt a little disjointed; it’s more a collection of essays than a linear memoir. But the insights into the struggle, and the importance of surviving, are present throughout.
It is taboo for mothers to confess their anger, their confusion, their frustration, their resentment…Looking back now from a place of relative sanity, I see maternal anger everywhere, bubbling through the veneer of politesse, reaching out from inside the platitudinous language we turn to when we are confounded: “I thought I was going to lose my mind.”
I kept taking the Paxil. I started writing and here I am. I woke up to a rash and a screaming kid this morning at 3:30. It’s more manageable most days. You could say it’s better.
I’d discovered from my own experience socializing with other mothers that we could talk about just about anything other than mental illness. We could eat braised puppy and defecate on each other before the topic of PPD would come up.
You have become the person you sneered at when you were young and single and knew everything. You are That Mother.
“You’re very judgmental, you know,” The Good Therapist had pointed out one time. “Do you realize how critical you are of others? You think you’re smarter than everyone else.”
In the end, she reminds us of something I’ve written about many times. Mothers don’t need judgment, especially from other mothers; we need help. When you feel that snarky comment coming on, ask if there’s anything you can do, instead.
Mothers of the world, we’ve got to have each other’s backs. Without working together, we literally cannot survive. Because we are divided–into “working” and “stay-at-home” parents, into “natural” or “attachment” parents and “mainstream” parents–we remain marginalized as a group. We just haven’t noticed because we’re too busy shooting each other down, trying to glean little nuggets of self-satisfaction from an enterprise that is still considered less significant than paid work
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is one of my favorite books I read this year. I recorded her appearance on Oprah. It was mostly Oprah gushing about the book, and an appearance by Richard from Texas, whoEat, Pray, Love was almost completely ignored. I was feeling especially bad about having wasted an hour (and tricked 4yo Drake into watching it with me) when O asked EG for ideas. Gilbert offered these three pieces of advice, not from the book:
1. Begin the morning by asking yourself (and possibly writing in your journal), “What do I really, really, really want?” She was firm about the need for three “really”s.
2. End the day by writing down a short description of the happiest moment of the day.
3. Change your mantra to something positive.
I know it sounds cheesy, but I’ve found that #3 is a big deal. When I was floudering in my post-partum depression I had a discouragingly wide repertoire of bad messages for myself, which included, but are not confined to: I suck at this; I can’t stand this!; I could kill myself; Oh, shoot me now; I hate my life; I’m a moron…
Lather, rinse, repeat.
In April, I attended an outpatient program for my depression, and my mantras have improved dramatically since then. Negative ones still creep in, but I notice them now. Instead, the one getting the most play in my head lately is the chorus from the Disney Cinderella: You can do it. Fortunately it’s not in the squeaky mouse voices.