I feel like I've graduated from a club and become an alumna--in the Mother of Twins club. Of course, I still have the twins, but it's not obvious anymore. Because they aren't in front of me in a double stroller or beside me one in each hand. It's odd. People can converse with me, even know me some, without realizing that my daughter and son are twins. And not just because the kids are usually in school and not with me during outings. People can even see us all together and never guess, even though the kiddos are almost the same height and weight and clearly not nine months or more apart.
So it's odd not to be the mom with twins anymore (though, I think I still stick out as the white lesbian with a Chinese wife and biracial kids!). No one has said, "Oh, double trouble!" or the even more ubiquitous, "I'm glad I don't have twins!" to me in such a long time. I still get, "Ah, the perfect family--a boy and a girl!" but not because they're twins (funny how so many people think that a boy and a girl is perfect. I just can't agree. I think family can come in many shapes, sizes, and genders, with or without kids). In fact, the question I field most often now is "Oh, are they twins?"
Even if their twin-ness is not so readily apparent anymore, Sis and Bud are still very much twins. They are almost inseparable, even when they are fighting. When they do different activities, they still keep tabs on exactly where their sibling is and what their twin is up to. They are usually content to be alone together without other playmates. They can't imagine not being in the same class or the same bedroom. And when they are apart--for Girl Scouts, kung fu, separate birthday parties--they generally have a moment or two of thinking of their twin, asking questions, wanting to share.
I meet adults who are twins and always find myself looking for the other one even though I intellectually know that twins do go their separate ways, and rightly so. It just seems odd to have just one twin, counter-intuitive when mine are still very much a pair. Because even though I'm not so clearly a MOT, they are still very much twins to me and to each other.
Showing posts with label motherhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label motherhood. Show all posts
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Friday, April 20, 2012
In the Trenches
I'm in the trenches of the Mommy Wars.
SAHM vs. working moms.
Ann Romney vs. Hilary Rosen.
Mother vs. child, sister vs. sister, neighbor vs. neighbor.
But are we actually fighting?
I've written before about my choice to be a SAHM (here and here): how it wasn't a path I would have ever chosen for myself until I was already on it and didn't want off, how I've been repeatedly told that I am too smart to stay at home, how I realize that my ability to stay home is as much a result of white, educated, upper-class culture and privilege as personal choice (though I'm learning that now the majority of SAHMs are working-class Hispanic women. Also here.), and the like. And I've read so much about the Mommy Wars--how working hurts kids and how working encourages kids; how staying home encourages kids and how staying home hurts kids. Pick a side and find a study.
Is it cliche to say that some of my best friends are working moms? It is equally true that the majority of my friends by virtue of having the same schedule I have are SAHMs. I don't choose SAHM friends because I value them more or believe we are "right." They're who is around when I want to play. And because our lives are similar, we can discuss and debate choices. But the friend I speak to the most works full-time and has a life-structure totally different from mine. Yet we still find mutual support, value, respect, inspiration, and enthusiasm. We just have to work harder to schedule talking about it! And any bittersweet cravings for the other way of life are met with knowing nods. It does not, however, make us enemies.
But I'd be naive not to admit that the groups are different--not so much from the outside or in any tangible child-rearing way, but in what we worry about when we discuss some of our fears. And mind you, these worries about ourselves come behind our worries about our children and school, behavior, development, friends, etc. Then it's our marriages/relationships. Or maybe our houses/housework. And finally, only after we get all that out, stereotypically, do we talk about ourselves. And even then it's about our work/not work as it affects our children.
My working friends, if I may speak for them, feel disconnected from the community of the playground, mourn their inability to attend all of the school-day functions or volunteer their time regularly, stress about the double workload of home and profession squeezed into the same 24-hour day, and envy the more relaxed days of the SAHMs. At the same time, they also feel great pride in their professional accomplishments, are happy to model their work ethics and feminism, and not-so-secretly glad to escape the tyranny of the home at least part of the time.
Similarly, my SAHM friends, if I may speak for them, worry about their languishing professional skills and declining ability to re-enter the workforce anywhere near where they were, wish they contributed in a tangible economic way to the family especially in these challenging financial times, wonder if their children will understand or respect their "opting out," and miss intellectual and professional stimulation. However, they also generally love their time with their kids, at their kids' schools, and in their homes, creating enriching activities and environments, and in many ways are grateful to have escaped the less-glamorous aspects of working (office politics, long hours, bureaucracy, whatever your bugbear was). But neither group seems hostile to the other, even if at times the grass sometimes seems greener in our neighbor's yard (especially if the neighbor is child-free!).
Actually, the majority of my SAHM friends work part-time, either because they want to or can't find full-time to compensate for childcare (or even at all). They squeeze in work in their fields off-hours--library work at night, social work during school hours, substitute teaching, real estate. And a few are direct marketers for products like WildTree and Tupperware, those uniquely mom jobs. And I think, perhaps, these part-timers embrace many of the positives and few of the negatives in my list above. Some of us--mainly me--are volunteering in our field, which provides the intellectual stimulation without the economic benefits while still affording flexibility.
All of us roll our eyes at specifying "works outside the home," recognizing as few of the pols or pundits did in the recent skirmish, that the accepted cultural definition of work implies for pay (now, we can get into value and free-market economics some other time), even if what SAHMs do is work of a different kind. We don't get hung up on those semantics when we're hanging out. If I say, "Mama Teacher works," I don't have to say "for money." I've noticed that the only times my SAHM friends protest that they work is when they're talking about tasks they don't like; curious, no?
I think, however, speaking for myself, what I see in these Mommy Wars is the fight for respect, support, and choice for all women. Neither side feels helped, valued, or even heard. Working moms don't want to be demonized by the "if you wanted to work, why did you have kids?" brigade. They want equal pay. And, most likely, affordable childcare and maternity leave, maybe even public preschool. And co-parenting and co-houseworking, which is still not the national norm, even if it is increasing. Similarly, SAHMs do not want to be judged as lazy or stupid just because they made the choice to stay home. They want tax breaks for caregivers. They would like affordable child care and preschool, too. In fact, if there was more governmental support, more SAHMs might work and more working moms might stay home, because their decisions to do either are not always free but determined by economic factors often outside their control.
And when women, both SAHM and working, don't get to choose at all, they want the power to do so.
So maybe we've misunderstood the meaning of "Mommy Wars." Maybe it's the battle women with children wage against the forces that demean, denigrate, and deny them choice, power, and respect. Maybe if we all had those, we wouldn't be fighting.
SAHM vs. working moms.
Ann Romney vs. Hilary Rosen.
Mother vs. child, sister vs. sister, neighbor vs. neighbor.
But are we actually fighting?
I've written before about my choice to be a SAHM (here and here): how it wasn't a path I would have ever chosen for myself until I was already on it and didn't want off, how I've been repeatedly told that I am too smart to stay at home, how I realize that my ability to stay home is as much a result of white, educated, upper-class culture and privilege as personal choice (though I'm learning that now the majority of SAHMs are working-class Hispanic women. Also here.), and the like. And I've read so much about the Mommy Wars--how working hurts kids and how working encourages kids; how staying home encourages kids and how staying home hurts kids. Pick a side and find a study.
Is it cliche to say that some of my best friends are working moms? It is equally true that the majority of my friends by virtue of having the same schedule I have are SAHMs. I don't choose SAHM friends because I value them more or believe we are "right." They're who is around when I want to play. And because our lives are similar, we can discuss and debate choices. But the friend I speak to the most works full-time and has a life-structure totally different from mine. Yet we still find mutual support, value, respect, inspiration, and enthusiasm. We just have to work harder to schedule talking about it! And any bittersweet cravings for the other way of life are met with knowing nods. It does not, however, make us enemies.
But I'd be naive not to admit that the groups are different--not so much from the outside or in any tangible child-rearing way, but in what we worry about when we discuss some of our fears. And mind you, these worries about ourselves come behind our worries about our children and school, behavior, development, friends, etc. Then it's our marriages/relationships. Or maybe our houses/housework. And finally, only after we get all that out, stereotypically, do we talk about ourselves. And even then it's about our work/not work as it affects our children.
My working friends, if I may speak for them, feel disconnected from the community of the playground, mourn their inability to attend all of the school-day functions or volunteer their time regularly, stress about the double workload of home and profession squeezed into the same 24-hour day, and envy the more relaxed days of the SAHMs. At the same time, they also feel great pride in their professional accomplishments, are happy to model their work ethics and feminism, and not-so-secretly glad to escape the tyranny of the home at least part of the time.
Similarly, my SAHM friends, if I may speak for them, worry about their languishing professional skills and declining ability to re-enter the workforce anywhere near where they were, wish they contributed in a tangible economic way to the family especially in these challenging financial times, wonder if their children will understand or respect their "opting out," and miss intellectual and professional stimulation. However, they also generally love their time with their kids, at their kids' schools, and in their homes, creating enriching activities and environments, and in many ways are grateful to have escaped the less-glamorous aspects of working (office politics, long hours, bureaucracy, whatever your bugbear was). But neither group seems hostile to the other, even if at times the grass sometimes seems greener in our neighbor's yard (especially if the neighbor is child-free!).
Actually, the majority of my SAHM friends work part-time, either because they want to or can't find full-time to compensate for childcare (or even at all). They squeeze in work in their fields off-hours--library work at night, social work during school hours, substitute teaching, real estate. And a few are direct marketers for products like WildTree and Tupperware, those uniquely mom jobs. And I think, perhaps, these part-timers embrace many of the positives and few of the negatives in my list above. Some of us--mainly me--are volunteering in our field, which provides the intellectual stimulation without the economic benefits while still affording flexibility.
All of us roll our eyes at specifying "works outside the home," recognizing as few of the pols or pundits did in the recent skirmish, that the accepted cultural definition of work implies for pay (now, we can get into value and free-market economics some other time), even if what SAHMs do is work of a different kind. We don't get hung up on those semantics when we're hanging out. If I say, "Mama Teacher works," I don't have to say "for money." I've noticed that the only times my SAHM friends protest that they work is when they're talking about tasks they don't like; curious, no?
I think, however, speaking for myself, what I see in these Mommy Wars is the fight for respect, support, and choice for all women. Neither side feels helped, valued, or even heard. Working moms don't want to be demonized by the "if you wanted to work, why did you have kids?" brigade. They want equal pay. And, most likely, affordable childcare and maternity leave, maybe even public preschool. And co-parenting and co-houseworking, which is still not the national norm, even if it is increasing. Similarly, SAHMs do not want to be judged as lazy or stupid just because they made the choice to stay home. They want tax breaks for caregivers. They would like affordable child care and preschool, too. In fact, if there was more governmental support, more SAHMs might work and more working moms might stay home, because their decisions to do either are not always free but determined by economic factors often outside their control.
And when women, both SAHM and working, don't get to choose at all, they want the power to do so.
So maybe we've misunderstood the meaning of "Mommy Wars." Maybe it's the battle women with children wage against the forces that demean, denigrate, and deny them choice, power, and respect. Maybe if we all had those, we wouldn't be fighting.
Friday, March 16, 2012
What Do You Think?
Another poem . . . .
Handwriting On The Wall
A weary mother returned from the store,
Lugging groceries through the kitchen door.
Awaiting her arrival was her 8 year old son,
Anxious to relate what his younger brother had done.
While I was out playing and Dad was on a call,
T.J. took his crayons and wrote on the wall
It's on the new paper you just hung in the den.
I told him you'd be mad at having to do it again.
She let out a moan and furrowed her brow,
Where is your little brother right now?
She emptied her arms and with a purposeful stride,
She marched to his closet where he had gone to hide.
She called his full name as she entered his room.
He trembled with fear--he knew that meant doom
For the next ten minutes, she ranted and raved
About the expensive wallpaper and how she had saved.
Lamenting all the work it would take to repair,
She condemned his actions and total lack of care.
The more she scolded, the madder she got,
Then stomped from his room, totally distraught
She headed for the den to confirm her fears.
When she saw the wall, her eyes flooded with tears.
The message she read pierced her soul with a dart.
It said, I love Mommy, surrounded by a heart.
Well, the wallpaper remained, just as she found it,
With an empty picture frame hung to surround it.
A reminder to her, and indeed to all,
Take time to read the handwriting on the wall.
--Anonymous (but quoted here)Lugging groceries through the kitchen door.
Awaiting her arrival was her 8 year old son,
Anxious to relate what his younger brother had done.
While I was out playing and Dad was on a call,
T.J. took his crayons and wrote on the wall
It's on the new paper you just hung in the den.
I told him you'd be mad at having to do it again.
She let out a moan and furrowed her brow,
Where is your little brother right now?
She emptied her arms and with a purposeful stride,
She marched to his closet where he had gone to hide.
She called his full name as she entered his room.
He trembled with fear--he knew that meant doom
For the next ten minutes, she ranted and raved
About the expensive wallpaper and how she had saved.
Lamenting all the work it would take to repair,
She condemned his actions and total lack of care.
The more she scolded, the madder she got,
Then stomped from his room, totally distraught
She headed for the den to confirm her fears.
When she saw the wall, her eyes flooded with tears.
The message she read pierced her soul with a dart.
It said, I love Mommy, surrounded by a heart.
Well, the wallpaper remained, just as she found it,
With an empty picture frame hung to surround it.
A reminder to her, and indeed to all,
Take time to read the handwriting on the wall.
A friend sent me the above yesterday because she loved the message.
It made me cringe. I know I'm supposed to be touched that the mom regretted the yelling and framed the art as a reminder, but it's just too--real? reminiscent? sappy or maudlin? Perhaps I like my reminders couched positively, you know, if the mom looked before she yelled and put it in the frame, missing her mistake just in time.
What do you think?
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
A Different Kind of Mommy Blog
In reflecting on how I see my blog, about which I just posted, I find myself reading blogs more than ever before. Sure, I have more time on my hands now than I have since I was pregnant (when I read infertility-turned pregnancy-turned mommy blogs like So Close, A Little Bit Pregnant, and Here Be Hippogriffs), but I enjoy following blogs and also want the information they contain--either updates on RL (for Gommie: that's "real life") friends or family or recipes, craft tips, household management info, inspiration, etc.
Over and over again these days I'm drawn to one type of blog: professional organized mommy-homesteader blogs! Okay, I made up the category myself, but I don't know how else to describe usually SAHM and homeschooling (frequently rural) moms who are dedicated to natural living, all things homemade, beautiful photography, and often some kind of blog-based business. Now, that doesn't describe all of the blogs below, but it's close (and for those it doesn't apply to, my guess is the greater part of the readership is in this category). Of course, I'm not quite in that category--a SAHM but not homeschooler, not rural but interested in DIY and natural living, and not a member of the Church of the Latter-Day Saints (LDS) or a Christian church (yep, that's another big part of it sometimes, the glorification of motherhood and the Proverbs 31 wife. See this NPR feature on "Biblical Womanhood" and the blogger who tried to live it.), but I like is the general interest in family, home, homemade, and doing everything as efficiently and mindfully as possible. Not because it is biblically proscribed, but because I enjoy it and find value in it and am good at it. As one feminist, non-LDS writer in Salon described of her Mormon Mommy Blog obsession,
Over and over again these days I'm drawn to one type of blog: professional organized mommy-homesteader blogs! Okay, I made up the category myself, but I don't know how else to describe usually SAHM and homeschooling (frequently rural) moms who are dedicated to natural living, all things homemade, beautiful photography, and often some kind of blog-based business. Now, that doesn't describe all of the blogs below, but it's close (and for those it doesn't apply to, my guess is the greater part of the readership is in this category). Of course, I'm not quite in that category--a SAHM but not homeschooler, not rural but interested in DIY and natural living, and not a member of the Church of the Latter-Day Saints (LDS) or a Christian church (yep, that's another big part of it sometimes, the glorification of motherhood and the Proverbs 31 wife. See this NPR feature on "Biblical Womanhood" and the blogger who tried to live it.), but I like is the general interest in family, home, homemade, and doing everything as efficiently and mindfully as possible. Not because it is biblically proscribed, but because I enjoy it and find value in it and am good at it. As one feminist, non-LDS writer in Salon described of her Mormon Mommy Blog obsession,
But the basic messages expressed in these blogs — family is wonderful, life is meant to be enjoyed, celebrate the small things — are still lovely. And if they help women like me envision a life in which marriage and motherhood could potentially be something other than a miserable, soul-destroying trap, I say, “Right on.”
And that's how I feel about my recent blog reading, too, which includes these new additions:
- Unplugged Sunday is one of my new favorite blogs. It contains essays by contributing writers who relate how they spend their time "unplugged." A recent favorite was "Journaling the Seasons"
- SouleMama, written by Amanda Soule Blake; I like her books on creativity and family
- Fimby, or Fun In My Backyard.
- Weaving with children (a Pinterest collection from Mariah Bruehl, who blogs and authored Playful Learning)--ideas for hula hoops, sticks, and other projects
- SimpleBites, a new food/recipe site I'm watching (along with its parent site, SimpleMom)
- Eating Rules, which is sponsoring "Unprocessed October." I like the simple food rules: 100% whole grains, no HFCS, no hydrogenated oils. Add organic and that almost covers it. (Mmmm, Maple Apple Chips!)
- Plan to Eat sells a meal-planning service, but I'm more interested in the recipes (like Almond Butter Balls) and tips (DIY goldfish cracker cutter!)
- Mom Kids Books
Next up, Lesbian Mommy Blogs!!
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Two-in-One
I've had two social gatherings in 24 hours, which has been a sheer delight (and no pain in my back). Last night, my moms' group had its final meeting. After more than a year discussing motherhood, goals, obstacles, everything about ourselves, we met for the last time to create vision boards for the future. But mostly we chatted and pulled pictures from magazines, without too much organizing or gluing. Still it was fun to meet with friends, after these last months of isolation. And I realized something later about being in a moms' group like that: right now, the "mom" part of me isn't the most challenging or interesting or pressing issue (I'm guessing that health, especially functionality, and spirituality are). I don't need to talk about my life as it relates to motherhood right now. Of course, everything is intertwined--I will always be a mom and it is a blessing--but after six years, it's no longer that new or overwhelming; that identity has merged with all my other ones, even if it is still dominant. Perhaps that's why I also enjoy spending time with older women, with older kids--it's a different perspective, even a reassuring one, about how life evolves.
This morning I explored one of the other facets of me: I attended a meeting of the historic house's educational committee to work on the third-grade curriculum. In researching my part of the project, that of domestic life, I came across a wonderful website about "lies my docent told me" (see also here and here, based on exhibition here). You know, "people were smaller then," "without fire screens, women's wax makeup would melt off," and why old houses have separate kitchens. And woe be to me, I had bought one of these myths, the one about the blue paper of sugar cones being used by thrifty goodwives to dye fabric. The blogger, with an MA in history and experience at Colonial Williamsburg, says there is no proof of this. I'll be making our docents a special "historic house myths" handout for our first training session!
So, a pretty enlightening 24 hours. . . .
Monday, June 30, 2008
Evening
i see the moon and the moon sees me
and the moon sees somebody i want to see.
god bless the moon and god bless me
and god bless the somebody i want to see.
god looked down on me from above
and gave you to me just for me to love,
he picked you out from all the rest
because he knew i'd love you the best.
My mom sang me a version of the song above--but more like "I see the moon and the moon sees me. I smile at the moon and she smiles at me"--and I sing it to my kiddos. Mama had never heard the song except from me, but tonight we heard it in a movie, Evening.
The movie, apparently based on a book by Susan Minot, had several of our favorite actresses: Meryl Streep (and her daughter), Glenn Close, Vanessa Redgrave, Eileen Atkins. Wow. I didn't know the plot until we started watching it and, while I found some of it pretty predictable, the themes of motherhood, mistakes, and regret really resonated with me.
Indeed, the last half an hour really spoke to me. I can't summarize the plot well enough here to make sense--and I understand from some reviews that the movie made a hash of it compared to the book. Anyway, in the present, a woman is dying with her two daughters nearby. It is clear from her flashbacks that she has regrets about an early love and the choices she made. Similarly, her two daughters have struggled with some life choices (well, one has anyway). They are coming together here at the end trying to reconcile all their own memories of each other: the dying mother regretting how she was a mother, the daughters coming to understand who their mother was, the daughters coming to understand who they are (specifically as mothers themselves).
In a pivotal scene (for me), the daughter with children talks to her sleeping mom (and it's very powerful that it is a pair of mother-daughter actresses, I think): "And I didn't really understand . . . about, well, how it seems like you break your children's hearts no matter what you do, whether you sing in clubs at night or just stay at home. And you start to wonder which mistakes of yours they're going to forget and which ones they'll still be talking about for years after your gone."
I think one of the complicated processes of motherhood is reviewing and reliving your own childhood and your own mother's motherhood, in light of a much better view and understanding of her position. My mom once said to me that she had her own list of mistakes she has made as a mother and she imagined it wasn't the same as my list of mistakes she had made. I now have my own mental list of mistakes I've made as a mom (and I do worry about the list my kids will compile) and the list I compiled of perceived wrongs my mom did me as a child has gotten shorter in light of it. In the movie, the dying mom concludes that there are no mistakes. I'm beginning to see how that can be true.
In the end, the dying mom is shown as her younger self having trouble cooking dinner with the little girls around. She gives up on doing both and starts to sing them the moon song, with a shot of the stove in complete disaster.
Not a mistake at all.
Time after time
written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne
I tell myself I'm so lucky
To be loving you
I'm so lucky to be
The one you run to see
In the evening
When the day is through
I only know what I know
The passing years will show
You kept my love so young
So new
And time after time
You'll hear me say that i'm
So lucky to be loving you
I only know what I know
The passing years will show
You kept my love so young
So new
And time after time
You'll hear me say that i'm
So lucky to be loving you
and the moon sees somebody i want to see.
god bless the moon and god bless me
and god bless the somebody i want to see.
god looked down on me from above
and gave you to me just for me to love,
he picked you out from all the rest
because he knew i'd love you the best.
My mom sang me a version of the song above--but more like "I see the moon and the moon sees me. I smile at the moon and she smiles at me"--and I sing it to my kiddos. Mama had never heard the song except from me, but tonight we heard it in a movie, Evening.
The movie, apparently based on a book by Susan Minot, had several of our favorite actresses: Meryl Streep (and her daughter), Glenn Close, Vanessa Redgrave, Eileen Atkins. Wow. I didn't know the plot until we started watching it and, while I found some of it pretty predictable, the themes of motherhood, mistakes, and regret really resonated with me.
Indeed, the last half an hour really spoke to me. I can't summarize the plot well enough here to make sense--and I understand from some reviews that the movie made a hash of it compared to the book. Anyway, in the present, a woman is dying with her two daughters nearby. It is clear from her flashbacks that she has regrets about an early love and the choices she made. Similarly, her two daughters have struggled with some life choices (well, one has anyway). They are coming together here at the end trying to reconcile all their own memories of each other: the dying mother regretting how she was a mother, the daughters coming to understand who their mother was, the daughters coming to understand who they are (specifically as mothers themselves).
In a pivotal scene (for me), the daughter with children talks to her sleeping mom (and it's very powerful that it is a pair of mother-daughter actresses, I think): "And I didn't really understand . . . about, well, how it seems like you break your children's hearts no matter what you do, whether you sing in clubs at night or just stay at home. And you start to wonder which mistakes of yours they're going to forget and which ones they'll still be talking about for years after your gone."
I think one of the complicated processes of motherhood is reviewing and reliving your own childhood and your own mother's motherhood, in light of a much better view and understanding of her position. My mom once said to me that she had her own list of mistakes she has made as a mother and she imagined it wasn't the same as my list of mistakes she had made. I now have my own mental list of mistakes I've made as a mom (and I do worry about the list my kids will compile) and the list I compiled of perceived wrongs my mom did me as a child has gotten shorter in light of it. In the movie, the dying mom concludes that there are no mistakes. I'm beginning to see how that can be true.
In the end, the dying mom is shown as her younger self having trouble cooking dinner with the little girls around. She gives up on doing both and starts to sing them the moon song, with a shot of the stove in complete disaster.
Not a mistake at all.
Time after time
written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne
I tell myself I'm so lucky
To be loving you
I'm so lucky to be
The one you run to see
In the evening
When the day is through
I only know what I know
The passing years will show
You kept my love so young
So new
And time after time
You'll hear me say that i'm
So lucky to be loving you
I only know what I know
The passing years will show
You kept my love so young
So new
And time after time
You'll hear me say that i'm
So lucky to be loving you
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Let's Go Fly a Kite
You might think that Mother's Day in a house with not just one, but TWO, mothers would make it double the pleasure, double the fun.
Well, we're still figuring it all out (I think next year, one of us will get Saturday and the other Sunday).
See, for Mother's Day, it means both of us are trying to put on a holiday for the other one and no one really gets a break or spoiled much (no one got breakfast, no one slept in, no one got downtime). Not that it wasn't fun--we had bought Mama two puppets, a penguin and harbor seal, because she loves puppets and the kids are starting to get into them (They each picked one. Guess!). And Mama had made me a homemade CD, which brought tears to my eyes with each playing of another of my favorite songs (she made me one last year and it is a time capsule of memories and feelings from a year ago--I hope I get one every year.)
And then, after church, Mama surprised us all--let's go kite flying! At the beach! And have lunch! And we did. Sis really liked helping put together and launch the kites but Bud was more interested in throwing rocks in the water. We had a pretty typical rainbow kite and then a marvelous dragon kite complete with fire breath and talons. I don't know when we got the kites--we had gone kite flying years ago in Chicago and always meant to do it again but Mama must have picked these up another time, planning for a day we could take the kiddos.
It occurred to me as I watched the kites dip and soar, and watched Sis hold on for dear life, with Mama helping her, while Buddy hurled shells in the waves and I sang the kite song from Mary Poppins that, if we hadn't had kids, we would've just called our own moms and then wasted the day.
Life is much better now.
Well, we're still figuring it all out (I think next year, one of us will get Saturday and the other Sunday).
See, for Mother's Day, it means both of us are trying to put on a holiday for the other one and no one really gets a break or spoiled much (no one got breakfast, no one slept in, no one got downtime). Not that it wasn't fun--we had bought Mama two puppets, a penguin and harbor seal, because she loves puppets and the kids are starting to get into them (They each picked one. Guess!). And Mama had made me a homemade CD, which brought tears to my eyes with each playing of another of my favorite songs (she made me one last year and it is a time capsule of memories and feelings from a year ago--I hope I get one every year.)
And then, after church, Mama surprised us all--let's go kite flying! At the beach! And have lunch! And we did. Sis really liked helping put together and launch the kites but Bud was more interested in throwing rocks in the water. We had a pretty typical rainbow kite and then a marvelous dragon kite complete with fire breath and talons. I don't know when we got the kites--we had gone kite flying years ago in Chicago and always meant to do it again but Mama must have picked these up another time, planning for a day we could take the kiddos.
It occurred to me as I watched the kites dip and soar, and watched Sis hold on for dear life, with Mama helping her, while Buddy hurled shells in the waves and I sang the kite song from Mary Poppins that, if we hadn't had kids, we would've just called our own moms and then wasted the day.
Life is much better now.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Pie Served Here
Last night, we watched the movie Waitress, about a small town, pie-making waitress who becomes unexpectedly pregnant by her awful husband and how she transcends her unhappy state. Once you realize it isn't a romantic comedy of the usual kind, you know she won't end up with the OB with whom she begins an affair. Indeed, looking back, it was patently predictable, from the death of her grumpy beneficiary to her declared independence from men (both husband and lover) on the birth of her daughter. The only unexpected thing was her anti-pregnancy, anti-motherhood stance which was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise mother-obsessed popular culture. Now, as many of you know, I had a difficult and relatively miserable, though entirely wanted, pregnancy. I was very glad when the babies were born, if only because I was so relieved not to be pregnant anymore. Those first 3-6 months of twins were very hard and I'm sure we seemed like grumpy moms. Even though our situation was different than the waitress's, it was refreshing to see something besides angelic, beatific pregnancy and dreamy, romanticized thoughts of motherhood. But this movie is a fairy tale (I'm not being sarcastic, I'm talking genre)--with the heroine held captive by a evil man and difficult circumstances and, in the end, despite all her protestations, she saves herself, through motherhood.
I loved the pie! I liked her creativity with pies, from ingredients to titles ("Bad Baby Pie" or "Naughty Pumpkin Pie" or "I Hate My Husband Pie"; her devotion to pies, an art passed down by her mother; her love of pie, and dreams to win a contest and open a pie shop. It reminded me of a more cheerful celebration of pies, Humble Pie, a great treatment of an author's devotion to pie and its role in community. Both the book and the movie made me want to bake pie. Now, I make a decent apple pie, pecan pie, and berry (either blue or mixed) pie, but with storebought crust. Which, in my heart, I feel is cheating. I would love to perfect my own crust. And then make my own fillings. Perhaps even with great titles, like "It Was Raining Today Pie" or "We Were Out of Ice Cream Pie." I think it would be such fun. Especially, if like the last scene of the movie, I made them with my kiddos, sharing the love and joy.
Maybe motherhood saved me too.
"Baby don't you cry,
gonna make a pie,
gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle.
Baby don't be blue,
gonna make for you,
gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle.
Gonna make a pie from heaven above,
gonna be filled with strawberry love.
Baby don't you cry,
gonna make a pie,
and hold you forever in the middle of my heart. "
--Adrienne Shelly (who acted in, wrote, and directed the film and was murdered before it was released, I think)
I loved the pie! I liked her creativity with pies, from ingredients to titles ("Bad Baby Pie" or "Naughty Pumpkin Pie" or "I Hate My Husband Pie"; her devotion to pies, an art passed down by her mother; her love of pie, and dreams to win a contest and open a pie shop. It reminded me of a more cheerful celebration of pies, Humble Pie, a great treatment of an author's devotion to pie and its role in community. Both the book and the movie made me want to bake pie. Now, I make a decent apple pie, pecan pie, and berry (either blue or mixed) pie, but with storebought crust. Which, in my heart, I feel is cheating. I would love to perfect my own crust. And then make my own fillings. Perhaps even with great titles, like "It Was Raining Today Pie" or "We Were Out of Ice Cream Pie." I think it would be such fun. Especially, if like the last scene of the movie, I made them with my kiddos, sharing the love and joy.
Maybe motherhood saved me too.
"Baby don't you cry,
gonna make a pie,
gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle.
Baby don't be blue,
gonna make for you,
gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle.
Gonna make a pie from heaven above,
gonna be filled with strawberry love.
Baby don't you cry,
gonna make a pie,
and hold you forever in the middle of my heart. "
--Adrienne Shelly (who acted in, wrote, and directed the film and was murdered before it was released, I think)
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Gnothi Seauton*
As you know, I've been thinking quite a bit about the meaning of motherhood, both in the abstract definition and to myself in particular. I read a lot about it in my magazines--Kiwi, Parent & Child, Mothering, Wonder Time, Family Fun (okay, the second title from Disney, but they create great magazines), Parenting, and my new favorite Brain, Child--and think about it regularly. But they don't much help me define motherhood and my relationship to/experience with it, though they give me great techniques and exercises to utilize as I actually perform "motherhood." Nor do the thought-provoking essays of modern mother-writers like Judith Warner or Ayelet Waldman. Not enough of a philosophical paradigm to guide my thoughts or actions. I also talk (and email) to my friends and my mom about their ideas of motherhood and it is mostly through those discussions that I have had some amazing insights.
Anyway, I think I've been having an identity crisis. It was something a friend said, that she had always known that she wanted to be a mother, that it is who she was always meant to be. Not me. I never really thought of myself as a mom. I didn't play with dolls too much (except my Star Wars action figures). I didn't like babysitting. I did love being a counselor at camp for children with special needs, though. Why not children? Was it the need of a man (because of course I didn't know you could have kids without one, figuratively speaking, when I was a teenager)? I didn't often picture myself married either. All of my self-definitions and predictions revolved around academic achievement. I wanted college then a career. When I got to college, I went on to graduate school and then a career. My entire sense of self was defined in a very professional, fairly academic, mostly intellectual way. Achievement could be quantified with grades or degrees or titles.
Which is the direct opposite of my mom. My mom was (is? are you a SAHM if there are no kids at home anymore?) a stay-at-home-mom. She had been a teacher but left her career to have children and never went back. She did an immense amount of volunteering--with a domestic violence shelter, as a museum docent--and sometimes worked in my dad's business. And as a career girl, I just didn't understand. And I remember thinking, and probably even saying to her and to my career-oriented sister, that she probably didn't quite understand our workaday world either. Neither of us had really done what the other had. She always said that being a mom was the best thing in the world. And I didn't get it.
Until now. Because, after growing up surrounded by SAHMs, with my own SAHM, I am one. And I think it is because of that experience and background that I am good at it. It's in the training. Not that my mom reared me to be a mom, just that it's what I saw and know, even if I spent the first 15+ years of my adult life doing the exact opposite. And I think it's why I'm good at "it", at motherhood, even though I don't always know what it is or what I'm doing. My mom was fun. Is fun. Okay, let's just use the past tense, even though she is still very much alive and will be reading this soon (and crying, a trait I laughed at as a child but have fully inherited as a grown up), but I'm talking about the mom of my childhood here and my childhood is very much not in the present tense (unless that you follow the belief that in mothering we fill the holes of our own childhood; this doesn't work for me--I don't see any holes. So maybe I'm just revisiting it? We didn't have this many cool toys.) She was fun. She would play with us, be silly, as she likes to note, she was the mom on the floor doing stuff. I try to do that. She also loved to give us different and new experiences. Ditto. She was pretty relaxed and laid back. I struggle at this but am getting there. We felt comfortable talking to her about anything--did your mom tell you masturbation was okay when you were 11? Mine did. And that homosexuality was okay? Didn't think so. Well, my kids aren't there yet, but they do know the proper names of their bodies parts and use them without any self-consciousness. And there was/is still unconditional love all of the time.
Thank goodness for the wonderful examples she gave me because I now find myself where I didn't ever expect to be. Not that I didn't want to be a mom. Duh. I didn't accidentally become a mom. Lesbians don't. It was months of infertility treatments (and we were lucky that it was only months) and then, let's just call it, a challenging pregnancy. It wasn't enough time for the change in my thinking though. A friend of mine, from graduate school actually, said you need all that time to really get used to the idea. Well, she was always a more efficient worker than I was because I'm still working on it. I'm having to rearrange what I had learned to be my whole sense of self. Nothing is the same--not my daily routine, not my body, not my goals, not my priorities, not my values, not my obsessions, not my worries, not my self-examination. And I don't know how to understand this new me. It's not the me I knew. Gone are the good grades as a benchmark; motherhood is only ever judged negatively as far as I can gather--what you're not doing right, what you didn't do--if it is judged at all. It's certainly not rewarded in any way I'm used to--there's no money, no degree, no honor society, no raise, no nice word from the boss. (Let's not get me started tonight on the professionalization of motherhood, with all of us career women becoming moms and bringing with us heightened organization, competition, focus on status and achievement, etc. I don't really like it one bit). The only proof of what I'm accomplishing is sleeping in two cribs in the room next to ours. And, well, we won't truly know how they'll turn out for years. And that's not even in my complete control, as they came to us as already unique people--all I can do, as my friend Lambeth rightly reminds me, is try to guide their path and warn them of the pitfalls.
Motherhood is very much an ongoing process with no end. Even my dissertation had an end. Eventually. I used to joke that writing a dissertation was very much like having a baby. Of course, that was before I had two babies, because what I didn't count on was what happened afterwards. My dissertation is on a shelf, the Ph.D. I could post behind my name is rarely seen. Not so the kiddos. The work has only just begun. Which is something my graduate school advisor alluded to once. She said that once you receive your Ph.D. you enter a whole new playing field where everyone has advanced degrees so the degrees just don't count anymore; it's what you do with your career that matters. Just like it is what I do as a mom that matters.
I even get caught up in what "mothering" is. It's not "fathering," which is traditionally the physical act of creating a child. But what is it? Oddly, I'm not an academic-achievement oriented mom (yet)--I don't stress about counting or identifying letters like some of my friends do. I figure the kids will get it when it's time. I'm much more interested in personal, emotional development--taking turns, expressing emotions, caring and loving, exploring both independently and together. Sometimes I confuse motherhood with homemaking. And I'm not a great homemaker in a few senses of the word--I don't keep an especially neat or clean house and I don't always have a well-rounded meal on the table. But my own mom laughed at me and said those things really weren't what being a homemaker was about, that it was about creating a warm and loving and welcoming home for family and friends. I often get caught up in the mess and the lack of a great meal, though, forgetting that my children like the stuff all around and prefer rice krispie treats for dinner once in awhile (it's only happened once). Maybe even in being a mediocre homemaker (or whatever word my mom would use for house-cleaner and food-provider--my dad would say "mopswinger"), I'm being a better mommy (though of course, all this philosophizing--perhaps a vanity of my own motherhood--belies a certain insecurity about the whole experience and my abilities).
Which is why I think it's funny that when I express some SAHM stress (for instance when I list the three little things I miss as a mom: listening to the radio as loudly as I want in the car, going to the bathroom by myself, and, the one I realized this week, being the one to choose when I'm done reading something), working moms (including my doctor) tell me to go back to work--get this, that I'm too smart to stay home with kids. What does that mean?!? I stress about this as well. Would I be a better mom if I went back to work now? What is "better"? I do plan to go back, eventually, because I like my work and am good at it. I just consider myself extremely fortunate that DP's career doesn't make this a necessity now (and talking about DP and her own relationship to motherhood, as a working mom, is a whole other post). And I know that staying home is the right choice for me, for us, especially when I practically hyperventilate thinking about them going off to school in 9 months. But I've written about that before, I think.
And so, even in loving motherhood and my children, I search to understand who this new me is who is "mommy." I think the search makes me a better mommy, which in turn, I hope/I guess, makes them "better" children. Socrates told the Athenian jury that "the unexamined life is not worth living." I think that's how I feel about motherhood--if I don't think about it, really deeply think about it--I'm not really living it to my fullest.
Besides, it allows me to do what I used to do best, which is research and study and think.
(Though, ironically, I think I am a much better mom than I ever was a scholar).
-=-=-=-
* "Know thyself." From the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Gotta use those 8 semesters of ancient Greek and that degree in classical studies sometime.
Anyway, I think I've been having an identity crisis. It was something a friend said, that she had always known that she wanted to be a mother, that it is who she was always meant to be. Not me. I never really thought of myself as a mom. I didn't play with dolls too much (except my Star Wars action figures). I didn't like babysitting. I did love being a counselor at camp for children with special needs, though. Why not children? Was it the need of a man (because of course I didn't know you could have kids without one, figuratively speaking, when I was a teenager)? I didn't often picture myself married either. All of my self-definitions and predictions revolved around academic achievement. I wanted college then a career. When I got to college, I went on to graduate school and then a career. My entire sense of self was defined in a very professional, fairly academic, mostly intellectual way. Achievement could be quantified with grades or degrees or titles.
Which is the direct opposite of my mom. My mom was (is? are you a SAHM if there are no kids at home anymore?) a stay-at-home-mom. She had been a teacher but left her career to have children and never went back. She did an immense amount of volunteering--with a domestic violence shelter, as a museum docent--and sometimes worked in my dad's business. And as a career girl, I just didn't understand. And I remember thinking, and probably even saying to her and to my career-oriented sister, that she probably didn't quite understand our workaday world either. Neither of us had really done what the other had. She always said that being a mom was the best thing in the world. And I didn't get it.
Until now. Because, after growing up surrounded by SAHMs, with my own SAHM, I am one. And I think it is because of that experience and background that I am good at it. It's in the training. Not that my mom reared me to be a mom, just that it's what I saw and know, even if I spent the first 15+ years of my adult life doing the exact opposite. And I think it's why I'm good at "it", at motherhood, even though I don't always know what it is or what I'm doing. My mom was fun. Is fun. Okay, let's just use the past tense, even though she is still very much alive and will be reading this soon (and crying, a trait I laughed at as a child but have fully inherited as a grown up), but I'm talking about the mom of my childhood here and my childhood is very much not in the present tense (unless that you follow the belief that in mothering we fill the holes of our own childhood; this doesn't work for me--I don't see any holes. So maybe I'm just revisiting it? We didn't have this many cool toys.) She was fun. She would play with us, be silly, as she likes to note, she was the mom on the floor doing stuff. I try to do that. She also loved to give us different and new experiences. Ditto. She was pretty relaxed and laid back. I struggle at this but am getting there. We felt comfortable talking to her about anything--did your mom tell you masturbation was okay when you were 11? Mine did. And that homosexuality was okay? Didn't think so. Well, my kids aren't there yet, but they do know the proper names of their bodies parts and use them without any self-consciousness. And there was/is still unconditional love all of the time.
Thank goodness for the wonderful examples she gave me because I now find myself where I didn't ever expect to be. Not that I didn't want to be a mom. Duh. I didn't accidentally become a mom. Lesbians don't. It was months of infertility treatments (and we were lucky that it was only months) and then, let's just call it, a challenging pregnancy. It wasn't enough time for the change in my thinking though. A friend of mine, from graduate school actually, said you need all that time to really get used to the idea. Well, she was always a more efficient worker than I was because I'm still working on it. I'm having to rearrange what I had learned to be my whole sense of self. Nothing is the same--not my daily routine, not my body, not my goals, not my priorities, not my values, not my obsessions, not my worries, not my self-examination. And I don't know how to understand this new me. It's not the me I knew. Gone are the good grades as a benchmark; motherhood is only ever judged negatively as far as I can gather--what you're not doing right, what you didn't do--if it is judged at all. It's certainly not rewarded in any way I'm used to--there's no money, no degree, no honor society, no raise, no nice word from the boss. (Let's not get me started tonight on the professionalization of motherhood, with all of us career women becoming moms and bringing with us heightened organization, competition, focus on status and achievement, etc. I don't really like it one bit). The only proof of what I'm accomplishing is sleeping in two cribs in the room next to ours. And, well, we won't truly know how they'll turn out for years. And that's not even in my complete control, as they came to us as already unique people--all I can do, as my friend Lambeth rightly reminds me, is try to guide their path and warn them of the pitfalls.
Motherhood is very much an ongoing process with no end. Even my dissertation had an end. Eventually. I used to joke that writing a dissertation was very much like having a baby. Of course, that was before I had two babies, because what I didn't count on was what happened afterwards. My dissertation is on a shelf, the Ph.D. I could post behind my name is rarely seen. Not so the kiddos. The work has only just begun. Which is something my graduate school advisor alluded to once. She said that once you receive your Ph.D. you enter a whole new playing field where everyone has advanced degrees so the degrees just don't count anymore; it's what you do with your career that matters. Just like it is what I do as a mom that matters.
I even get caught up in what "mothering" is. It's not "fathering," which is traditionally the physical act of creating a child. But what is it? Oddly, I'm not an academic-achievement oriented mom (yet)--I don't stress about counting or identifying letters like some of my friends do. I figure the kids will get it when it's time. I'm much more interested in personal, emotional development--taking turns, expressing emotions, caring and loving, exploring both independently and together. Sometimes I confuse motherhood with homemaking. And I'm not a great homemaker in a few senses of the word--I don't keep an especially neat or clean house and I don't always have a well-rounded meal on the table. But my own mom laughed at me and said those things really weren't what being a homemaker was about, that it was about creating a warm and loving and welcoming home for family and friends. I often get caught up in the mess and the lack of a great meal, though, forgetting that my children like the stuff all around and prefer rice krispie treats for dinner once in awhile (it's only happened once). Maybe even in being a mediocre homemaker (or whatever word my mom would use for house-cleaner and food-provider--my dad would say "mopswinger"), I'm being a better mommy (though of course, all this philosophizing--perhaps a vanity of my own motherhood--belies a certain insecurity about the whole experience and my abilities).
Which is why I think it's funny that when I express some SAHM stress (for instance when I list the three little things I miss as a mom: listening to the radio as loudly as I want in the car, going to the bathroom by myself, and, the one I realized this week, being the one to choose when I'm done reading something), working moms (including my doctor) tell me to go back to work--get this, that I'm too smart to stay home with kids. What does that mean?!? I stress about this as well. Would I be a better mom if I went back to work now? What is "better"? I do plan to go back, eventually, because I like my work and am good at it. I just consider myself extremely fortunate that DP's career doesn't make this a necessity now (and talking about DP and her own relationship to motherhood, as a working mom, is a whole other post). And I know that staying home is the right choice for me, for us, especially when I practically hyperventilate thinking about them going off to school in 9 months. But I've written about that before, I think.
And so, even in loving motherhood and my children, I search to understand who this new me is who is "mommy." I think the search makes me a better mommy, which in turn, I hope/I guess, makes them "better" children. Socrates told the Athenian jury that "the unexamined life is not worth living." I think that's how I feel about motherhood--if I don't think about it, really deeply think about it--I'm not really living it to my fullest.
Besides, it allows me to do what I used to do best, which is research and study and think.
(Though, ironically, I think I am a much better mom than I ever was a scholar).
-=-=-=-
* "Know thyself." From the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Gotta use those 8 semesters of ancient Greek and that degree in classical studies sometime.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
That be Fun
I thought we were going to the Laurie Berkner concert for the kids. But I realized today that I wanted to go for myself. This became abundantly clear when DD had a breakdown 20 minutes into the show and wanted to go home. DP took her into the lobby to recover, though she was calling for me, but I stayed behind with DS. He quickly decided that he couldn't be without his sissy. So we left. And I didn't want to. I like Laurie Berkner. She's pretty much the only music I listen to these days and I like it. She's kinda like a silly Indigo Girl. Maybe a little funkier. And I wanted to see her. And I didn't want to go home. This was my day in the city, something wildly different from my usual suburban day, and I wanted it to be perfect, transcendant, even.
Let me start from the beginning.
The inspiration came to me as I was checking out the LB website for upcoming tv appearances. There was a concert. In the city. "That be fun," as DS says. We liked her CDs, watched her DVD, and saw her on Noggin and Jack's Big Music Show. Everytime we passed a certain clump of trees outside the library, DS would sit down and start singing, "Under a Shady Tree." I always invoked the dinosaur song, with "stop and take a rest," during naptime. We loved to play chase to "I'm Gonna Catch You," ever since we first heard that song at a church playgroup. Surely we were old enough to sit and listen to our favorite musician for an hour.
Let me start from the beginning.
The inspiration came to me as I was checking out the LB website for upcoming tv appearances. There was a concert. In the city. "That be fun," as DS says. We liked her CDs, watched her DVD, and saw her on Noggin and Jack's Big Music Show. Everytime we passed a certain clump of trees outside the library, DS would sit down and start singing, "Under a Shady Tree." I always invoked the dinosaur song, with "stop and take a rest," during naptime. We loved to play chase to "I'm Gonna Catch You," ever since we first heard that song at a church playgroup. Surely we were old enough to sit and listen to our favorite musician for an hour.
I told my friends and my playgroup, and three other families thought "that be fun" too. On the day the tickets went on sale, DP was charged with securing the best seats. Then the Carnegie Hall website crashed, sending panic throughout tristate suburbia and preschooler parents everywhere. But got the tickets we did, eventually. DP swore she wasn't going to be the one parent to turn up ticketless. I think it took her an hour. By then, we had balcony seats, but all the way at the front. This made me a little nervous, given our propensity for throwing things and climbing, but surely there would be enough distractions.
For weeks, we discussed ideas for the day (being the New Yorkers in the group--her by birth, me because we were living in the city on September 11. Yes, Mom, I'm still a Texan. It's a paradox. And another post.): driving, train, or a combo? Would we travel together as a group and have lunch? We learned it was NYC Marathon day. Hmmm, that made driving a challenge. So we were going to drive halfway and take the train the rest of the way. But the availability of seats on the way in and the traffic on the way home squashed that. So, train all the way it was. Where to eat? Something toursity and predictable like Hard Rock? Or take our chances with local cafes. Finally, we decided Carnegie Deli would work for our allergies, with turkey and matzo ball soup.
The day arrived--beautiful, especially after the hurricane that was Day out with Thomas--and the kids were excited. They loved the train ride in, even enjoying playing "fort" in the shelter on the platform with DP as we waited for it to arrive. Perfect facing window seats let each of them have a window and they looked out excitedly identifying clouds, trees, cars, trucks, boats, and bridges. And talked about all the people and what they were wearing--the man behind us, fully decked out in Redskins paraphenalia for the game, was the "Red Man." Apropos, no? Actually, looking around the train--with the orthodox Jewish family next to us, several Asian men, and several African Americans--reminded me of the importance of leaving our rather uniform small town (where we are the diversity for others) and visiting the menagerie of the city. Though, I soon became rather uncomfortable with the "talk about the people" game and issued a "it's not nice to talk about other people" edict. I could just hear them saying something about someone being big or old.
They loved walking off the platform into the giant space that is GCT. DD just stood there, mouth agape, spinning around looking at the stars and all the people. DS was a little overwhelmed and needed us in hand for the walk to the subway. Which they loved. DP let DD hang from the overhead bar, the city's littlest straphanger. DS followed suit and they (and the other, probably out of town, riders) laughed all the way to Carnegie Hall.
And we got out in the crisp, cool air of a beautiful fall day, surrounded by imposing, impressive skyscreapers. The sidewalks were full of cops and pedestrians heading to the marathon, with taxis and buses and cars heading away from the closed streets. And, oh, that NYC smell. We walked towards CPS and got lots of orange doo-dads from the ING people--hats, glasses, and pom pons--to cheer for marathoners. We didn't see too many, just a few men and women in the wheelchair cycles. But DS wore his hat and waved his pom pon each time they passed. DD was more interested in the smell. I had realized I could smell horses and so she started sniffing and then kepty asking where they were. A pile of manure proved they had been there recently.
Lunch was at Carnegie Deli--corned beef for me and DP, turkey and matzo ball soup for the kids--though both ate more pickles than anything else. And DD liked the corned beef more than the turkey; she is DP's daugher, afterall. And as lunch ended, DP realized the waitresses were talking about the twins in Thai, so she interjected and suddenly we had a whole coterie of waitresses admiring their skin color and wider-than-almond eyes--"not the slit eyes of the Chinese''--DP held her tongue. And the kids said "Sawadee" to them all.
And it was time for the concert. At Carnegie Hall. Ironically, it was my very first concert there. And it's beautiful, even filled with crying toddlers missing their afternoon naps. We got two "Shaky Eggs" to play with and then tried desperately to wait for the doors to open. The poor house staff; I'm not sure they're used to preschoolers running and climbing everywhere and they were so flustered. They even opened early, I think, because of the mounting chaos in the lobby.
Our seats were frightening--first row, top balcony--perfect for dropping shaky eggs or programs on other preschoolers, or whole toddler bodies. Did I mention I don't like heights? I'm sure I scared the kids with the death grips in which I held their little excited bodies.
And then some guy talked. Yadda-yadda-yadda. We need Laurie! Don't you understand we were up an hour early because of the time change? That we walked and left strollers at home? That we didn't nap yet? This concert needs to start and finish before BREAKDOWN time.
Later, DD told us that Laurie wore yellow and Susie wore brown. DP didn't even know Susie's name. But then she doesn't know all the words to "I'm a Mess" either. And they played guitars. And the piano. DD sat mesmerized and stared at it all. DS did too, as I bounced him on my knee and sang the songs. Most of our favorites.
But we lost it before "Pig on Her Head." And I could see the pig sitting on the prop table so I knew it was coming. But DD was done. And then DS didn't want to be there alone. And we quickly took a cab to GCT, where we caught the same train we would have if we'd seen the whole thing.
And I cried all the way there, just as they cried all the way home on the train. I was disappointed. I wanted to see the concert. I wanted it to be this memorable, amazing experience. And we didn't get to see it all. And they weren't happy; indeed, they were miserable. And it was my fault. I had dragged us to this concert, thinking it was such a good idea. With no strollers, with no nap. And I was embarrassed, ashamed even, in front of my friends, not because the kids were upset but because it hadn't gone well, because somehow I had done something wrong, because I had failed my kids.
The next day, all they remembered was how much fun they had. That Susie had worn brown. And Laurie had played the guitar. That we had sung and danced. And they had ridden in a taxi. That be fun.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)