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What Are Mothers Not Saying?

2012-01-28T20:53:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, a dear friend and her husband visited my husband, children and me in New York City. We met them for a lunch of lobster rolls on the Upper East Side. After hugs and cheek kisses, we asked how each other were. My husband said, “We’re good!” just as I said at the same time, “we’re hanging in there.” My friend laughed knowingly, of how it’s tiring with a new baby (even if we are all sleeping through the night), while the men understand that for months after giving birth, women are tired, without really knowing just how tired we are. Our husbands played chase with my son. My son instantly claims any kind man as his play gym, even if the last time he saw the man was when he was baby. My friend took the baby from me, as I threw our coats, hats and gloves over my son’s stroller.

My friend took the natural segue of our greeting and began telling me her three worst moments of motherhood. Often the worst moments, people say, are the ones that make you laugh when you look back at them. Nonetheless, my friend still had a moment – when she kicked her 8 year old out of a car on a city street and made him walk the rest of the rest way home after he called her names – when she caught herself thinking, “Crap. This just became a Social Services issue.” She then stopped the conversation and asked, “Why am I telling you this?”

I was listening rapt, as if she had been telling me about her personal encounter with aliens that landed in her yard.

“Because no one talks about these things,” I answered. I had just thrown my first temper tantrum in front of my son that week. I had just had my first experience of wondering if I had crossed into Social Services territory. I had just had my first realization that there is a whole other world of parenting that people don’t talk about. Or at least I don’t hear them talking about this underbelly of parenting - the days we think about sending ourselves to the looney bin, the days we don't want our children to crawl into our laps because we're tired of them touching us, the days our children disappoint us, but we don't say so because we think we're supposed to be accepting and free from expectations.

My friend's son walked home. And now, when someone in the car puts down his mother, he says, “We are too far from home for you to be talking like that to her.”

My son survived my temper tantrum too, and now greets my exasperated groans with, “You’re frustrated, Mom?”

This week, I was talking with my neighbor who, like me, is adjusting to life with two children. Her second child is three months old. We wondered at how some parents sail through the adjustment, while we found it so exhausting and so much work.

She then said, “I don’t enjoy motherhood as much as I thought I would.” She looked at me, “I know. I’m not supposed to say those things.”

“Why not?” I asked. “Not all of motherhood is enjoyable.”

But I know why we don’t usually say these kinds of things. When I’ve mentioned in conversations our adjustment growing pains, I’ve been advised to just take better vitamins. I’ve been on the receiving end of that stern matronly that says: “Woman! Make an effort!” I’ve been told that if I had my own interests, it’d be easier (I swear.). I’ve been asked if I had Post-Partum Depression.

No, I said, but thanks for the reminder that the thinking of the Victorian era is still with us, that if a woman finds mothering hard, she must be sick.*

I’ve also received notes from friends wondering how to stay on top of it all, or if they made a mistake in having children, or friends who love their careers, but find their children drive them crazy simply because they are worn out from work. They have it all, but if they admit their exhaustion, some one tells them to quit complaining. There’s a recession.

It’s had me think, if motherhood is so hard, why is it so taken for granted? Why is it so undervalued? Why are women feeling guilty and isolated for not loving it as much as they think they should? Social Services exists for a reason, but should we fear its existence on our bad days? And why are women such harsh judges of each other, when we do open up about the raw, ugly, and authentic moments of parenting? What are mothers not saying about mothering?

*Please don’t get me wrong: I greatly appreciate that women can talk about having Post-Partum Depression openly and we can know it strikes any one from Gwyneth Paltrow to the young woman in the Walt Whitman Projects who threw her baby down the trash chute. Being able to talk about it makes a difference for women, their partners (especially now that we know men can also suffer from Post-Partum Depression), and their children, and we’re also now dealing with a kind of backlash – that if we take too long to recover from giving birth, or have too many hard days or what have you, we must be depressed. Rough spots don’t necessarily mean illness.

A Sunday Morning Story

2012-01-15T09:17:00.000-08:00

1. Our new fridge was delivered first thing this morning, however, we discovered they sent the wrong fridge. It's a third smaller than our old fridge, so most our food doesn't fit inside.

2. Because most our food doesn't fit inside the fridge, Fyo used it as building blocks on the kitchen table.

3. On a side note, Fyo found the Moses action figure. He deduced rather quickly that Moses is like Jesus and that Jesus and Moses could be friends. (Let's be honest, in a facebook world, Moses and Jesus would be friends. The fact that they lived hundreds of years apart from each other and figured prominently in two different books is besides the point.)

4. Jesus and Moses used our food as a pretend mountain for this morning's sermon. Husband tried to explain that Jesus was busy in a church in Texas, while Moses was hanging out in Williamsburg, but Fyo thought they played nicely together despite all this. Until Moses smote Jesus and kicked him off the mountain. (Didn't quite know what to do on this one. Moses is Moses, but we have a very clear No Smiting rule in our house.)

5. Thankfully, it's cold enough outside that our uninsulated pantry is working as our back up fridge, and Jesus and Moses are napping during Fyo's self declared resting time. Happy endings abound.

More Thoughts On Santa

2011-12-20T08:26:00.000-08:00

Last week I wrote about Santa, about how I hate the whole, "You better be good for Santa" part of the Christmas season. It's grating on my nerves more than ever, that even if my husband and I don't say these kind of things to our son (our daughter at 5 1/2 months obviously could care less), other people do. Yesterday, as we were waiting for the subway train, an older man bent down to my son's level, and asked him, "Have you been good? Is Santa coming to your house?"

The man opened his jacket, pulled out an imaginary piece of paper out of his inside pocket, looked at it, then said, "Here's your name. With three stars. You've been very good. He's definitely coming to your house."

I have been trying to explain the whole notion of Santa to our son. And I have been finding that really, without the notion that Santa only comes if one has been good kind of takes away his power and allure. When we walked by a Santa recently, I pointed him out to Fyo and I said, "That's Santa. He brings presents and good cheer to children at Christmas."

Fyo said, "No, Mommy. Presents come from the post office. And sometimes the UPS brings them to our house."

I couldn't argue with him on this one. If I had replaced, "Santa" with "Amazon.com" it would have actually made sense to him.

I realized that untangling the conditional quality of Santa will be something I deal with year after year. I've learned that pointing out to other people that Santa visits children regardless of whether they've been bad or good doesn't exactly make you popular with other parents or people who rely on this in the month of December. Not that I was all that popular with those parents anyway.

A friend of mine shared another essay with me about a parent who divulges the truth about Santa to her daughter. I'm reprinting it simply because I think she's dead on. It is one of those essays that I wish I had written.

The Truth About Santa
by Martha Brockenbrough

A few months back, the Tooth Fairy got busted. She left a note for Alice up on her computer, and Lucy figured the whole business out. The Tooth Fairy cursed her need to write notes in elaborate fonts and tried to come up with a cover story, but it didn’t fool Lucy.

To her credit, Lucy has kept the secret from her little sister, who still hasn’t lost a tooth and deserves to wake up with money under her pillow.

But the Tooth Fairy knew it couldn’t be too long before Santa was similarly unmasked. She didn’t know when or how, but she knew the days of magic in her house, at least magic of a certain sort, were coming to an end.

And the Tooth Fairy—by which I mean myself—was pretty darned sad about the inevitable, which finally arrived last week.

Lucy and I have been exchanging notes since the school year started. We’ve talked about all sorts of things—sports, books we’d like to read, adventures we’d like to have, even stories from when I was in third grade. For the most part, though, it’s been light, casual stuff. Until last week.
I NEED TO KNOW, she wrote, using capital letters for emphasis. ARE YOU SANTA? TELL ME THE TRUTH.

What do you do when your kid asks for the truth?
You tell it, of course, doing your best to figure out a way that keeps at least some of the magic intact.
Here’s what I wrote:

Dear Lucy,

Thank you for your letter. You asked a very good question: “Are you Santa?”
I know you’ve wanted the answer to this question for a long time, and I’ve had to give it careful thought to know just what to say.

The answer is no. I am not Santa. There is no one Santa.

I am the person who fills your stockings with presents, though. I also choose and wrap the presents under the tree, the same way my mom did for me, and the same way her mom did for her. (And yes, Daddy helps, too.)

I imagine you will someday do this for your children, and I know you will love seeing them run down the stairs on Christmas morning. You will love seeing them sit under the tree, their small faces lit with Christmas lights.

This won’t make you Santa, though.

Santa is bigger than any person, and his work has gone on longer than any of us have lived. What he does is simple, but it is powerful. He teaches children how to have belief in something they can’t see or touch.

It’s a big job, and it’s an important one. Throughout your life, you will need this capacity to believe: in yourself, in your friends, in your talents and in your family. You’ll also need to believe in things you can’t measure or even hold in your hand. Here, I am talking about love, that great power that will light your life from the inside out, even during its darkest, coldest moments.

Santa is a teacher, and I have been his student, and now you know the secret of how he gets down all those chimneys on Christmas Eve: he has help from all the people whose hearts he’s filled with joy.
With full hearts, people like Daddy and me take our turns helping Santa do a job that would otherwise be impossible.

So, no. I am not Santa. Santa is love and magic and hope and happiness. I’m on his team, and now you are, too.

I love you and I always will.

Mama

Tis The Season For Santa

2011-12-20T07:59:00.000-08:00

When my son was six weeks old, my mother-in-law visited and my husband thought it would be fun for her if we took our newborn to see Santa Claus. Indeed, seeing a grandchild visit Santa and having an opportunity to take as many pictures as possible is the kind of thing that is right up my mother-in-law’s alley. She loved it.

I, however, did not. Santa Claus, when he doesn’t live at the North Pole, happens to live at the mall. He also brings lots of elves with him that shake jingle bells in your face. The mall provides him with loud piped in Christmas music and quartets of percussion playing carolers throughout his line. The line to see Santa Claus is full of overdressed children and parents all making their lists of what they really want (American Girl dolls, quiet non-whiny children, just one good picture before they can get out of there.). It was too much. Between all the people, various forms of music, overdressed children and elves shaking jingle bells in my face, I got overwhelmed. I haven’t taken my son to see Santa since.

But this year, my son is three. He loves looking at Christmas trees. He loved decorating our tree. He’s already seen the Christmas exhibit of trains in Grand Central station three times. We started talking about Christmas and what we would eat and do what we wanted. I asked him what he wanted.

“A basketball, Mommy,” he said. “Not two, just one. And a taxi car.”

My husband and I started talking about what we would tell him about Santa. We were clear that Santa is a fun idea that lots of people participate in. While neither of us fully believed in Santa as children, we both loved the magic of Santa. We loved those childhood Christmas mornings when we woke up early and walked into the living room with the tree lit, Christmas music softly playing, and our overfull stockings laid out next to our Santa gift. We loved waking up those Christmas mornings and finding a Christmas tree lit transformation in the living room. I still love Christmas because of the Santa Claus inspired magic.

But I don’t have a problem with Santa. What I hate about the whole Santa myth is the socially accepted form of manipulation that gets used on children. I cringe when I hear people ask children if they’ve been “good” this year. I cringe even more when I hear parents or adults tell children that if they’re good (and don’t argue with their brother, or do as mommy asks, or make their bed in the morning or whatever it is that the parent wants) Santa will come and bring them what they want. Occasionally, I hear older generations throw in that if they’re not, they’ll get a lump of coal. I’ve never actually heard of a child getting a lump of coal on Christmas, which to me, makes it the worse kind of manipulation, as it’s the kind where parents don’t actually follow through. The parent’s word is meaningless; whether the child is good or not, Santa comes and leaves behind a full stocking and gifts.

No wonder children don’t trust adults. The adults lie to get what they want in the short term just as much as children do. And some parents swear by it for younger children, which, for me, is exactly the problem with the whole mess to begin with: it’s not sustainable parenting. It’s trick parenting that makes the parent-child relationship a power struggle and whoever has the better trick wins. Rather than offering children meaningful and authentic guidance for living life and getting along with others, parents instead are always looking for the next manipulation scheme to give them the upper hand in the relationship.

Except the use of Santa is not just between parent and child, it’s society wide. The carolers stand outside of Macy’s and sing “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” and “to be good for goodness sake.” I get emails from various Moms groups or event notifications telling me about the Santa hours around town and all of them ask if my child has been “good” and knows what he wants Santa to bring him.

Needless to say, while I love the magic of Santa, it’s another year where I can’t bring myself to dress my son up and take him to see Santa. I tell him that Santa is coming to him, that he doesn't have to be good. He can just be himself.

10 Things This Parent Is Thankful For

2011-11-27T06:19:00.001-08:00

The Thanksgiving tradition in my family is that instead ofsaying grace before dinner, we go around the table and each person says whatthey are thankful for. This year, however, we spent the holiday with myhusband’s family and my father-in-law said a traditional grace. It was a nicegrace, but as I was falling asleep later that night, I felt a little sad thatwe all didn’t get to say what we’re thankful for and I said so to my husband. Imissed that yearly tradition of my family’s. And, being a list maker, I can’thelp but make my list of the things I’m thankful for.

In no particular order, I’m thankful for:

1. The health of my family and the things that go to sustainthat health: clean water, good quality food, organic fruits and vegetables, anddaily exercise.

2. Laughter and especially the laughter of my children. Isthere a more beautiful sound than your children laughing? Or the sound of yourchildren laughing because they are playing together, even if one is three andone is 4 months old?

3. Being a breastfeeding mom, I’m thankful for thebreastfeeding laws that protect my right to live my life and breastfeed at thesame time, whether I’m grocery shopping, taking my son to the playground orworking.

4. Having a marriage where my husband and I communicate andare on the same page when it comes to parenting, education, nutrition, andother values. Whenever I get worn out I think of my friends who are singleparents – and still stellar parents – and wonder how they do it, not just doingit all themselves most the time, but doing it without having someone to talkthings through with, whether it’s the choices for schools or how to handlecertain situations. Having someone to share the wild ride of parenting with,for me, makes it far more fun and easier.

5. That my husband and I have chosen to parent in a way thatreflects our values – even when it goes against the grain, is different frommany friends and extended family members, and even causes concern in some(“What? You don’t punish your children? How do they know right from wrong?”).I’m also thankful for how much we’ve already seen the benefit of this, of howmuch our three year-old son communicates his feelings and what’s okay with him,that while he may get scared at a puppet show, he doesn’t get scared ofpotentially getting in trouble for expressing himself.

6. I’m thankful for Roe v. Wade, not just because it makes arelatively simple procedure safe and available for women or has the side effectof greatly lowering the number of children that are abused yearly by parents,but because it protects all reproductive rights, including my right to chooseto give birth at home with a midwife.

7. My children aren’t school age yet, but whether we choosepublic school, private school, or home school, I’m thankful for the publicschool system and that we have choices when it comes to our children’seducation. Waldorf? Charter? Montessori? The neighborhood public school?Private? We get to choose. And I’m thankful for all the people who commit theirlives to serving children. Having taught, I know what a hard and time consuming job it is.

8. Parks and playgrounds. I was grateful for the nationaland city parks before I had children, simply because of how much they improvethe air quality and our quality of life, but after children, I am especiallythankful for city parks and playgrounds. With an active preschooler, I think mysanity and his happiness depends on our daily walks to the park and time spent at the parks andplaygrounds. He gets his exercise and to play with other kids. I get to playwith him or meet other moms. The park is one of the first places children getto experience community, and it’s a benefit that’s available to all children.

9. Museums, public libraries and the arts. I’m an addict.And I’m raising my children to be addicts too. Yesterday my son begged to betaken to the Children’s museum, and while we didn’t have time (he instead spenthis afternoon rolling down a hill in a park with his dad), it made my heartsing every time he asked.

10. The Internet. As a parent who’s still relatively new tothe city I live in, I am thankful for the wealth of resources available everytime I open my computer. Within minutes, I can find kid friendly eventshappening in the city, where to take kids apple picking, or directions to a newfriend’s house. I can also instantly research tips for flying with children,order groceries, put library books on hold, or contact my favorite mom friendswho are spread out across the globe. I feel slightly shallow saying it, but Ithink the Internet makes parenting easier for my generation.

And you? What are things you are thankful for as a parent? In general?

The Good Baby And The Challenging Child

2011-10-29T03:05:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I attended a conference. While I was allowed to bring a babysitter on-site to care for my nursing newborn, I wasn’t supposed to bring my baby into the conference itself. Or that was the rule until I cited New York’s Civil Rights Law that said I could breastfeed a baby in any public or private location. Period. I cited the law for a variety of reasons from the fact that I believe in my right to breastfeed and feed my baby without having to hide in some back room to that I want to have my cake and eat it too: attend my conference and nurse my newborn who needs to nurse roughly every 30-45 minutes (neither one of my children seem to be the kind of babies who nurse every two hours.).

But I also cited the law because I knew it could work - that I could have my baby nestled in her Ergo carrier as she nursed and napped while I learned all kinds of new things and talked to all kinds of people. I didn’t say that I carry her all over town not disturbing fellow subway passengers or New York Public Library patrons. I didn’t mention that I did the same with my son, even taking him to midnight Christmas Eve Mass where he slept the entire time and most people didn’t even realize he was there. I didn’t mention that in our society, we seem to have an idea about babies and it’s that mainly they cry a lot in movie theaters and on airplanes and in general, disturb the peace. I have taken my babies to movie theaters and on airplanes – a lot of them actually – and generally, my babies nurse and nap.

So I attended my conference with my daughter in her Ergo carrier where she nursed and napped and was her content little self. Sure enough, many people didn’t even realize she was there. And many people did. Many of these people came up and told me what a good baby I had. I know they meant it as a compliment, but it bothered me. I said thank you, because I knew they meant it as a compliment, but I said it with a sinking sick feeling in my stomach. They meant well, but they had labeled my daughter nonetheless.

When you attend a conference about anything, the people are there to discuss whatever the conference is about. It isn’t the time to launch a discussion about the labels we give children. Or maybe I should have. Maybe I should have pointed out, that my newborn daughter was just doing what babies do: nursing, napping, and dirtying her diaper. When she wakes up, she coos, smiles and laughs. When she’s had too much stimulation or noise or elderly ladies with too much perfume who stick their face next to hers, she cries and fusses. She’s a baby. She does the things that babies do and she communicates in the ways that babies communicate. It doesn’t make her good.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t think she’s extraordinary. But I’m her mother. If she fit the description of a “bad” baby – which seems to be the baby who is not quiet or asleep – I’d still think she was extraordinary. I couldn’t help but feel for the babies who have reason to cry, who suffer from colic, allergies, or eczema or are just uncomfortable babies who express their discomfort. Would that make those babies bad or difficult? It seems ludicrous to label a baby bad, but I’ve met the people who have done it – who have called their three month old naughty because he wouldn’t go to sleep in his crib by himself and wanted to be nursed to sleep. But he wasn’t naughty. He was a baby. And his parents had expectations that he didn’t meet.

Which is often the case when we label children. It isn’t about the child; it’s about the parent’s unmet expectations. Children just express themselves in the only way they know to express themselves: they cry, yell, throw things, hit, kick, get silly, make faces, smile, laugh, and often do all of it in a matter of minutes. If we don’t like the way they are expressing themselves, then it’s our job to teach them age appropriate ways to do so, meet their needs and often times, get to the source of the behavior. But labeling – even positive labels like being a “good” baby – only creates a vicious cycle where no one wins.

Not that we haven’t been guilty of it in my house. My husband one night when he wasn’t feeling well told my son, that he was making too much noise. Except my son wasn’t, I pointed out to my husband. My husband just wasn’t feeling well. I’ve caught myself too – battling my own hunger and fatigue at the end of the day, but telling my son he’s challenging and then having to apologize. Because he’s not challenging. He’s three and doing what three year olds do. And as his tired and hungry parent, I’m the one who’s challenged. I’m the one who in that moment feels unprepared and unable to handle a variety of moods and sudden shifts in behavior.

I realized then that labels are projections, not descriptions, whether it’s calling a baby good, a preschooler challenging or a teenager difficult. It’s irresponsible. It makes parents the victims of their child’s behavior, and it doesn’t teach the child to be responsible, just to blame the difficulty of the situation on the behavior of another human being. If we as parents can remember to take a step back and say, “Okay, I’m hungry, tired, low on patience (or whatever the case may be) and you clearly need something. Maybe we can have a do over or brainstorm other ways to handle this situation” then we’re honest and can avoid falling into the trap of playground name calling behavior, which is all labeling is after all.

What Steve Jobs Taught Me About Pre-School

2011-10-08T07:05:00.001-07:00

When I taught my college English classes, I’d begin my semester with the ritual of the syllabus and handing out Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford University commencement address. Jobs’ address remains my favorite speech of all time, but I handed it out partially because Jobs was talking to students their age and in an age where much of education focuses on standardized testing or having students behave and memorize what is handed out, I wanted my students to think about finding what they loved and to think about what they loved. This wasn’t just for their sake, but for mine. Honestly, students who have found what they love and what they are interested in and then write papers about those topics write better and more interesting papers. They write the kind of papers I like to read because I learn things from them. I also handed out Jobs’s address because it’s the kind of thing I wish one of my professors had handed out to me when I was starting college. My students of course didn’t see it this way. They thought I was an idealistic sap.

This week, when Steve Jobs died, I went back and reread his Commencement address. It still moves me and makes me tear up. It makes me think about how much time I have spent listening to my fears rather than my heart and intuition and how some people spend their entire lives only listening to fears, unaware they have a heart and intuition.

Yet, something changed for me when I became a mother, maybe thanks to oxytocin and all those mothering hormones, but mostly, I realized with a clarity I couldn’t deny that I was my child’s role model, and I would demonstrate living a life I loved and was proud of for my son. And as a mother, I have relied on my instincts, even when I can’t find research to back me up (though every once in awhile the research catches up with me and I nod that satisfying I-knew-it nod).

This week I also signed my son up for playgroup. We opted out of traditional pre-schools because we live in New York and when we moved into our Brooklyn brownstone in February, we had already missed the deadline for fall pre-school programs. Throw in that out of all the pre-schools I researched, there was something I didn’t like about each of the programs. Throw in that each application required me to write various essays about my child or how my parenting lined up with their educational methodology or what have you plus the application fee and inevitable waiting list – and well, it all required far more work than either my husband or I had put in to get ourselves into college. I also think our college educations were cheaper.

Pre-schools are serious business in New York. The thinking goes that if you get your children into the right pre-school, the rest of their education and their brilliance will fall into place. Parents on the playground have worried conversations about which pre-school will prepare their child for kindergarten, reading and Harvard, as if failing to read by age 4 dooms their children to a life of minimum wage servitude. Parents can spend up to $38,000 on private Pre-K to ease their anxiety about such things. Whereas my husband and I shrug and figure, given how much we each read and write, it’s just a matter of time and our children will learn when they’re ready.

Our decision to not send our son to a traditional pre-school whether it be the YMCA or a Montessori or Waldorf type has raised the eyebrows of some family members and friends, as if we were denying our child key childhood experience, denying him the alphabet itself or guilty of negligent parenting, as if I haven’t spent years researching education or reading up on the crisis in the current education system that has trickled down into some of the country’s pre-schools. But rather than stress about son’s future SAT score and if it could be predicted by his pre-school attendance, we found like-minded parents whom we could do a pre-school home school coop kind of thing with because we do want our son to play with other kids, to make friends, and to learn the kind of social problem solving that happens in groups of people. Except our pre-school-home-school-coop-kind-of-thing won’t start until January. Playgroup, we thought, would fill in the gap, especially since in my mind pre-school should be about playing anyway. Except upon arrival, we discovered that while the playgroup advertised itself as up to age 3 ½, only kids under 14 months had come. My son looked out at the sea of babies and asked, “Mommy, where are all the kids?” My heart broke. I asked for my money back. As we left, the woman said, “You know the kids his age are in school, right?”

I spent the next day questioning myself, and our decision to forgo the traditional pre-school and education route. I google-ed things like, “what’s the point of pre-school anyway?” “home school pre-school” and what have you. I registered my son for art class at the Children’s Museum of the Arts. Then I shut my computer. I realized I parent my children the way I wished I had been parented. Maybe it was the same with education, and maybe I just had to think about how I wish I were educated and that would inform my decisions about my son’s educational future.

All things considering and even though I wasn’t the best student, I received a pretty strong education in the Portland Public School system, and as I bounced the question around with my husband and my other most trusted confidant, my sister, we realized we all at some point in our public school educations had experienced following our instincts, our guts, our curiosities, our hearts and not only getting in trouble for it, but also getting labeled.

My husband, sister and I also realized that we wished we had been taught to follow our instincts, and have our perspectives, ideas, and insights –even the childish ones – respected and taken seriously. We pondered what would it have been like to have someone as excited about our creativity and curiosity as we were, or interested in how we formed our thoughts and perspectives. We wondered what it would have been like to have been raised in an education system where the focus was on learning how we learn and how to think. In having taught college students and asked them their opinions, only to receive the deer-in-the-headlight stares, I also had reason to suspect that much of education is actually trying to educate the curiosity, the instinct, the heart and even the creativity out of students.

At my son’s art class, he played with clay, he made a mural with other kids, he listened to a story, he hid behind an easel during songs (then sang the songs the rest of the day), and at one point he stacked stools, while the other kids colored with markers. The teacher jokingly called him a troublemaker for stacking stools. Jokingly, but still. I refrained from saying that Maria Montessori would point out that he was not trouble making, he was stacking stools for whatever reason that was important to him, because I didn’t want the teacher to snap back with a suggestion to stick him in Montessori then (as if that wasn’t a long waiting list).

My son didn’t notice the label. Art class was fantastic despite the label, but I felt that I was right to question my son following the standard educational route where many educators are mainly interested in how well children behave.

Later that day, Steve Jobs died.

In rereading his 2005 Stanford Commencement address, it’s hard to pick a favorite part of that speech, but in light of spending the week obsessing about my son’s educational future, two parts stuck out:

1) “You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

2) “Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma —which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

I listened to my son in the bathtub bellow songs he learned in art class while hiding behind an easel. My son then asked to have his boat book in the bath. My husband explained it was paper and couldn't go in the bath. My son asked, “What happens to paper in the bath?” My husband and he then dumped a good portion of the recycling bin into the bath to find out what happens to paper in the bath.

I realized I didn’t have to worry about pre-school. My son is learning from living because that’s what kids do. Other people have different priorities for their children’s education whether it’s that they be high achievers in hopes it will grant them job security or that their children do well just so as parents they look good (we know these kinds of people, but they rarely admit such things) while others want their kids to just have good experiences of school and childhood.

I can understand these priorities for our children’s education, but I want my kid to take a page from Steve Jobs book and that means I too have to trust my heart and instincts and not live with the results of others’ thinking. I want my son to do great work simply because he loves what he’s doing (and not because it will earn him a good grade). I want him to know what it is that he loves. I want him to think for himself, and to trust his heart and values. And most of all, I want him to love learning and stay curious and to trust that curiosity. I don’t know exactly what his education will look like or where he’ll get it, and I don’t know the answers for reforming the education system or if there’s one system that will work for all children and learning types. But the life of Steve Jobs shows me that what I want to nurture and encourage are not my son’s abilities to behave, take tests, or learn by memorization, but his curiosity, his ability to ask questions (and tough questions), his natural love of learning – even if it takes nontraditional routes – his instincts, and his perspective that is his and his alone.

Me and Ira Glass

2011-10-03T07:22:00.000-07:00

Someday, I will be friends with Ira Glass of WBEZ's This American Life. He will come to our house for Sunday brunch with his wife. He will bring his friends David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, David Rakoff and for the first time in my life, I will keep my mouth shut because what can you say with those guests? You can't talk about the upcoming Christmas holiday because David Sedaris will lament the plight of Macy's elves. You can't talk about family because Sarah Vowell will talk about how when her dad gets mad, he goes and sets off one of his cannons. Meanwhile, David Rakoff will mutter about how his glass is half-empty and that his life is all the better for it. I simply can't compete with this level of conversation (even if my family is so nutty that yesterday when a friend asked after them, and I told him the latest events in my family (that so-and-so swore and hung up on so-and-so, someone else sought revenge by redoing their will and so-and-so is no longer speaking to so-and-so) he asked in all earnestness, "Is your family Greek?").

Still, I want Ira Glass and his friends to all be my friends simply because they are smart and funny people with introspective and enlightening things to say. I'd like them to send me copies of their books and invitations to their parties. In the meantime, I have this little tidbit from Ira on my fridge.

Ah, fall has started and just because we no longer start school as the weather turns crisp and chilly, we do relish the season of new projects and weekly deadlines.

Respect for Women from Father to Son

2011-10-02T07:28:00.000-07:00

Sometimes Husband teases me about my feminist leanings - like when I say I'm taking Fyo to the Brooklyn Museum for the Mary Wollstonecraft exhibit as well as the Judy Chicago Dinner Party exhibit to begin his feminist education or like yesterday when we took a car and behind the driver's seat was a copy of "Ms. Taxi" magazine. Husband pointed to Ms. Taxi, and said, "I'm afraid you have an uphill battle."

It's true. It seems like society is on the backlash side of the feminist pendulum swing at the moment.

"You can still win," he added.
"I win with you and Fyo," I said.
"Yes," he said.

I do spend a lot of time of thinking about how to raise my son in a sexist society - my daughter too. I don't want my daughter playing with princess dolls, but I don't want my son playing with them either. I don't him to treat women like princesses, or put them on pedestals or think that women have to be pretty all the time or that their looks are more important than what they say and do. And he learns as much about how to treat women from his father as he does me, but it seems many men (and women) forget this small detail, which is why we need occasional reminders like this:

And respect for women takes many forms from how men treat women in conversation to what men do around the house and how they interact with their children. This morning, I walked into the kitchen to see Husband cooking with my son (and without even thinking about it that my son is learning from him cooking is a family activity). Glorious!

How I Got On National Television With A Placenta Preparer

2011-09-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

No, really I did.

It was a fluke really. And only because I had had my placenta encapsulated.
Yes, my placenta encapsulated.

(Before you judge, do you really know what you're consuming in that DietCoke? That hot dog from the corner? Most processed foods that millions ofAmericans consume daily? )

This was really one of those things that I didn't think was any big dealbecause I have known so many other women that have done the same and reaped thebenefits.

Except in New York, when I talked to my midwife about doing the same thing,she struggled to think of someone who encapsulated placentas. The woman sheused to refer new mothers to had moved out of state. My midwife gave me thename of another woman, except she was still learning how to prepare placentas.Then I found myself calling people who were referred to me who might know ofsomeone. I began to feel like I was looking for an abortion in the sixties aseach reference was someone who might know of someone who knows of someone whocould help. It was also another moment when I realized yet again how muchdifferent the East coast is from the West, or at least from the LiberalRecycling Portland of my childhood and the LA of my first home birth.

At the birth of my daughter, my midwife put the placenta in the freezer, forwhen the placenta preparer came over. Except that 8 weeks later, I was stilltrying to find someone who did such things in my Brooklyn neighborhood. Just asI was about to give up hope and considered contacting my midwife who did it forme in LA (and asking about the logistics of shipping a frozen placenta acrossthe country - which I admit now that I think about it is a bit much to ask fromthe postal service). Then the answer was literally delivered to me in mymailbox - in New York magazine (theAugust 29th issue if you want to check it out) as it featured an article aboutplacenta eaters. Once in the hands of mainstream media, the things I kind oftake for granted as normal or "just how we do things because it works forus" do look pretty out thereto the mainstream world. But New York magazine's article featured the Brooklyn based placenta preparerJennifer Mayer. So I googled her so she could prepare my placenta too.

Jennifer Mayer it turns out was getting calls for follow up interviews, butshe hadn't gotten any other calls from women who just happened to have aplacenta in their freezer, so she was able to come over that week and prepareit for me. As we exchanged emails, she mentioned that she got a call fromAnderson Cooper's show who wanted to do an interview with her and maybe ask acouple questions of someone who had such a thing done about why or what hadthem decide to do such a thing and so on and she asked if I'd be willing totalk to them. I said sure as long as I could bring my baby, not thinking muchabout it (just as a reminder, this was also the week my husband was out of townand New York City was battering down for a hurricane - so you know, with twokids I was a little distracted). Or that is, I didn't think much about it untilin conversations with Jen, and Jesse, of Anderson Cooper's people, it dawned onme that the interview was with Anderson Cooper on national television. At whichpoint I ran down to J. Crew and bought a pencil skirt.

Check out the clip from Anderson Cooper's website:
video platform video management video solutions video player

(The photo is terrible. Note to self: Never laugh again on nationaltelevision)

Anderson Cooper did his best to keep an open mind. And in talking with Jessein the pre-interview, I did have to stop and think about it. Because when youstop to think about it, it is, well, something to think about.

My family spent a good chunk of my childhood vegetarian, and eventhough now I eat meat, I do get squeamish preparing it. So yes, when in myfirst pregnancy my midwife strongly recommended it, I did get a littlesqueamish. But I also really trusted my midwife, and she gave me her reasons:it prevented postpartum, helped the body recover from labor, and leveled outthe hormones after giving birth.

I had had a bad run of depression in my twenties, and at the time, I hadbeen told I had a 75% chance of developing postpartum depression because ofhaving suffered from depression once before and having it run in my family(disclaimer: I don't know if this stat still holds true). I admit, Prozac savedmy life once, but I have no wish to go on it again because of the side effects,and even though they say there are antidepressants that they say breastfeedingwomen can take, that too makes me squeamish. ( There's been too many times inhistory when it's been discovered something is dangerous after it's been givento thousands of breastfeeding or pregnant women that it makes me nervous). Butthe placenta? How could that have side effects?

After the birth of my son, I didn't get postpartum depression. I didn't evenget the baby blues kind of weepy. I nursed. I napped. I fell in love with mybaby and with my husband all over again. When I received my placenta pills (ormy encapsulated placenta) I put them in the freezer thinking maybe I wasted 300dollars having them made and then I forgot about them.

Until my in-laws visited. My mother-in-law visited first, for a week. Shehad said she was coming to help and hold the baby. Upon her arrival, I handedher my baby. She held him five seconds, then put him down, clapped her handsandasked, "What's next?" like Jed Bartlet on the West Wing. "What are we doing? Where are wegoing?"

I picked up my baby, explained how we were raising our baby and that we heldhim. We didn't put him down and just leave him around the house as if he was apotted plant.
"Well, rules are meant to be broken," shesaid. "What did you say we were doing?"
The entire week went like this. She'd do the dinner dishes, but the mealplanning, shopping, cooking, cleaning, baby care as well as itinerary andentertainment planning once it became clear there needed to be things to seeand do? Oy veh. Throw in the advice andcriticism that older generations feel entitled to bestow upon the young or thatwhen she got in the car she'd yell, "Pray for your life Fyo! Your mother'sdriving!" and it wasn't long before I was calling my lactation consultantbegging her to please say it was okay for a breastfeeding new mother to have amartini.

Then I remembered the placenta pills in the freezer, and while they didn'treplenish my nerves or give me the strength of someone who just lets thingsroll off her, they did boost my mood and energy and show me the light at theend of the in-law visitation tunnel. And three months later, when I visited thein-laws and my mother-in-law talked about how her daughter was struggling withher children and fatigue and how she needed a break and how my mother-in-lawhad compassion for her because she remembered what it was like to be a new mom,I can say those placenta pills prevented me from reaching over and stranglingher.

I can also say that when I took one daily until I got my strength back thedifference was noticeable; one that I could even compare to the feeling of whenan anti-depressant kicked in or waking up from a good night's sleep. It wasenough of a difference to make a believer out of me and to know I wanted themfor after the birth of my second child.

My in-laws haven't visited since the birth of my daughter. We all now knowbetter and needless to say, when anyone says they're coming to visit I havethem clarify what they mean by the word "help."
(My in-laws have also improved immensely. They no longer offer criticism oradvice and they compliment my cooking - they might even respect my parenting.)But I am thankful I have the placenta pills anyway. I have an energetic toddlerwho still requires a lot of my attention. Life still happens. I'm stillrecovering. This time around I have felt some of the weepiness and moodinessthat women report feeling after they give birth. Even the days I feel great, Istill know that it's a good number of months that my energy will ebb and flowand that I'll still feel sensitive or vulnerable.

And sure, the research on placenta encapsulation is still only anecdotal,but of the twenty or so women I know who have ingested their own placenta, Ihave yet to hear of any negative effects. It's also used in traditional Chinesemedicine (which I also find squeamish if only because of the smell of theherbs, but it is rather effective). The cost is also reasonable (especiallycompared to the cost of most pharmaceutical drugs). Jennifer Mayer charged me$250 for the entire process that yielded 120 capsules (some placentas can yieldup to 200). Jen is also a doula and does in-home massage. She in herself is aNew Mom resource. She's also one of those people who is easily approachable,even though she possesses a daunting amount of knowledge.

Women get a lot of information about the ups and downs of pregnancy, butafter the birth of my son, I felt blind sighted by the ups and downs ofrecovery from labor and birth. Some studies show it can take some women up to ayear before they feel fully themselves after giving birth (take note; rationthose pills!) and I didn't remember anyone telling me what it would be like, orhow I should take care of myself emotionally. Sure, I had a heads up about thefirst six weeks. But I had no idea that two months later I'd have the potentialto sob to my husband about why didn't his mother want to hold my baby longerthan five seconds. So while Anderson Cooper was clearly squeamish aboutingesting placentas (though he could get that when it's in a capsule, you canpretend it's like any other supplement), he tried to stay open minded andif anything, I applaud his approaching the topic on his show and giving Jen andI the chance to say that as a new mom, you need all the help you can get.

Finally, here's Anderson with my gorgeous girl:

Baby Bird's First Pair of Shoes!

2011-09-15T19:59:00.000-07:00

In honor of Fashion Week, Baby Bird's first pairs of shoes courtesy of my sister's lovely friend and talented shoe designer Keiko. They are super soft, lined in feminine, but not over the top girly, madras plaid or floral fabric, and well designed for baby as they are easy to put on, and stay on the happy dancing feet they inspire!

Lyv dancing! And she's only ten weeks old!

Also, if you are looking for a new accessory for Fall, and want to celebrate Fashion Week DIY style, my sis Phaedra and Keiko are teaching a Fascinator Workshop tomorrow! Fascinated with Fascinators but don't know what they are? That means you should go! Details here.

Of Course We Can Update

2011-09-11T12:55:00.000-07:00

Husband's trucks about to hit the streets! Gorgeous aren't they?

Of Course We Can

2011-09-11T09:54:00.000-07:00

Husband's project that is starting a new conversation for 9/11 literally in the streets of NYC. Check it out! Send your support and keep the conversation going!

My Girl Isn't Too Dumb For Homework

2011-09-05T08:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm late coming to the table on this one given the Maternity Leave From Life rock I've been living under, but the JC Penny website this week released a girl's sweatshirt - apparently in honor of the back-to-school time of year - that said, "I'm too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me." Change.org circulated a petition demanding JC Penny remove the shirt from their site, and within hours enough people had signed it, that JC Penny removed the sweatshirt from their website.

It's not because I have a daughter that this sweatshirt pisses me off.

It pisses me off because it's one more sign of the sexist trend (or backlash from the feminist movement?) currently underfoot impacting girls, teenagers and young women.

Women have made amazing gains in the last fifty years. If you don't believe it, one episode of Mad Men will have you building an altar to Betty Friedan on your living room mantle by the first commercial break. Girls now outperform boys in elementary, middle, and high schools. The top one-third of graduating high school classes are women - and their male counterparts now need affirmative action to get into college otherwise the incoming freshmen classes would be 75% female. (And while we're ranting - isn't it funny that affirmative action is no longer controversial or a big deal when white men need it for college? Has JC Penny considered a sweatshirt for teenage boys that says, "Affirmative Action. Don't leave for college without it"?) Women now outperform men in employment in urban areas for the first time in history.

Yet from the time they are infants and toddlers in pink princess outfits, butterfly wings, and bedazzled Mary Janes, they are being taught that what their mind is capable of matters some, but their appearance is the primary concern. I'm not suggesting that women and girls shouldn't focus on their appearance at all - we all like nice clothes and shoes, as does my husband and most men I know - but our appearance shouldn't come at the expense of our intelligence.

JC Penny isn't the only one at fault or the only ones sending the message to girls that if you look good, your mind doesn't matter. Indeed, it comes from all levels of life, from Disney and the American Girl doll to candidates for office and the world within the television set - even the previously innocent Sesame Street has been prettified and princessed. In her campaign for Vice-President, Sarah Palin's make-up artist was the highest paid person on her staff. Who better to send the message that you can say any idiotic thing you want, as long as you look good? But it didn't take Sarah Palin to convey this message. At a party a few years ago, I met a friend's daughter who had just graduated from high school. I asked her what she wanted to do for a career. She said she didn't care what she did -as long as she could wear stilettos.

I wanted an anti-depressant after she said this. In a world and life where you could do anything, why would you just focus on your shoes?

Needless to say, I won't be shopping for my children at JC Penny - not that I shop there anyway. Nor do I shop at Forever 21 after their magnet that said, "I'm too pretty to do math." (and because I'm not 21). But such things have me sigh a deep sigh, and wonder what lays ahead for me as I attempt to raise feminist or non-sexist thinking children in a sexist dumbed-down world.

Recommend Reading for this and the related Princess trend that has contaminated girls across the land?
Lisa Bloom's Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed Down World and Peggy Orensteins' Cinderella Ate My Daughter.

Peggy Orenstein was recommended to me by a friend and mother of two daughters. I haven't read it yet, as I'm waiting for it from the library. I've read Bloom's Think. I can't say it's the best writing, but she makes some excellent points and she's done her research.

Surfacing & The Naming

2011-08-26T06:45:00.000-07:00

Because of this little beauty, I've been on a bit of a blog hiatus. Now I'm beginning to get my head back above water for some catch up.

Some of the catch up:

We named our little bird Lyv Eyre Lindis Corbell. It took us a month, much to my mother's irritation. She wanted us to name her Tallulah. I had a few rules about our girl's name. One of them being that the name not end in -ah or -a. (90% of girls' names right now end in a. It's a bit much when you spend time on the playground and only hear ValeriaJuliaStefanaIdaMikaLilaLula so on and so forth. Not that each isn't pretty in its own right). Also no names that Demi Moore used on her own children. No names in the top 100. No names that happen to be names of any of our former pets. No names of Disney princesses or heroines. No names that rhyme with Corbell or Fyo (obviously). Also hesitant of alliterative names because it doesn't take much to go over the top (Coco Corbell? Corbett Corbell? Ick) In short, a unique name that's cute and sounds smart.

Tallulah happens to be rather common in Brooklyn, so it didn't make the list. The names that did?

Aerin
Quin
Gwen
Prue
Tru
Tucker
Calder
Ansel
Ari
Roan (as in The Secret of Roan Inish)
Blythe (Bly)
Skaadi
Blix
Astrid
Hazel
Maris/Meris
Marin
Meryl
Mer
Elan
Erwin
Pip
Quindalin
Luv
Quil
Cody
Lil
Bronwyn
Taavi
Tate
Oiseau (since we call her Birdy anyway. but this one took Husband 30 minutes to grasp the spelling)
Agnes
Iris
Io
Ione
Hero/Hiro
Aerwyn
Yves
Lin

just to name a few.

Ironically, Husband thought of Lyv the first week, but the night before the birth certificate was due, he got cold feet. So we filled the birth certificate with the mundane Baby Girl Lindis Corbell. Except that if you don't give your child a first name, they don't let you give your child a middle name. Rascals. So then. Baby Girl Corbell. On the official certificate, this translated to "No Name Given Corbell." (They could have added "Not For Lack of Trying"). Almost a month to the day after she was born, Husband was ready to commit to Lyv.

I had the middle names Eyre Lindis picked out months before. Because yes, Jane Eyre is my most favorite book ever. I would have made her first name Eyre, but couldn't imagine shouting it on the playground and having it sound like "air".

In the end, we think Lyv is perfect and gorgeous and fits her.

And my mother who so hoped we'd name her Tallulah?

She hates it.

(oh well. What are you going to do?)

Lost Photos Found!

2011-07-20T19:09:00.000-07:00

Six months (or so) along in pregnancy, we had our ultrasound done - the one where I learned the sex of our unborn baby girl, but Husband did not (at his insistence - not because I was being mean as my grandmother accused me of). I was rather excited about our ultrasound photos and was eager to post them. Husband took them upstairs to the desk, so he could scan them in later, and that was the last we saw of them. I was not the most graceful with this development and had more than one frustrated tantrum about it - and more than one protest about how maybe we need to rethink our organizational systems? hmmm?

During one of my tantrums, I threw up my hands and said, Fine, we'll fine them when the child was ten and they'll be completely faded and it will be completely anti-climatic.

She wasn't ten. They weren't completely faded. She was ten days old, however, when Husband found the two books on the bookshelf that Fyo had shoved the pictures in between.

So here's our baby girl in utero. She was just as gorgeous inside as she is out. The above is the first glimpse I had of just how much she would look like her brother and how little she would look like Husband or I.

Baby Girl Lindis Corbell

2011-07-10T05:44:00.000-07:00

Born at home on July 4, 1:30pm. 7lbs and 21 inches long. She is gorgeous, healthy and perfect; she's sleeping and nursing well (ie all the time), and I'm resting, and trying to honor the very sage advice of not getting out of my pajamas for 2 weeks, not just for recovery purposes (though I certainly need it for that) but mostly because I will never have the chance to spend two weeks with my new born love sleeping on my chest again.

Both Husband and I look at 32 month old Fyo and think, oh, it goes by so fast, doesn't it? 32 months is not very long, and he is a walking talking independent little boy. He takes himself to the toilet, he gets his noodles out of the fridge, he's learning how to put his underwear and shorts on, as well as his button up shirts (without putting them on upside down) - pretty soon Baby Girl Love won't be far behind him.

We're still working on/sleeping on her name - much to the chagrin of our mothers who are rather anxious to find out, but are at least trying to get into the spirit of it by suggesting a name here and there.

Just look at her - we are over the moon - in love and in new born bliss and so very very very blessed.

How to Like and Other Things I've Learned From My Toddler

2011-06-28T10:14:00.000-07:00

I reworked my post on liking for Connected Mom. Here's the amended/reworked essay:

How to Like and Other Things I've Learned From My Toddler

The other morning, my husband and I woke up to our son listing off the things he likes: "I like guacamole [he says huacadole]. I like fire truck. I like Finn [our dog]. I like playgroup. I like Oma." And so on.

Later that same day, a friend of ours commented, "You know, when someone sits next to me on the subway or in a meeting, I can instantly think of something I don't like about that person before they even open their mouth. But it's rare for me to instantly think of something I like about someone I don't know. And it's rare for me to even tell my friends the things I like about them."

I agreed with what he said. I too am guilty of finding myself next to someone on the subway and finding something I don't like about them. While I often give compliments I don't know that I make a point to tell the people in life what I like about them. And I rarely ask the people in my life what they like.

I started to wonder, when it does switch from waking up as a two year old already thinking of the things you like to adulthood when you wake up thinking of the things you don't?

So chalk this up as another lesson I learned from my toddler. As a result, I too started listing the things I like about my life: my marriage, the gift of ease and communication I have with my husband, that my sister lives around the corner from me, that rhubarb is in season and that I know how to make strawberry-rhubarb pie, that every day my toddler son surprises me with the things he says, the things he’s learned to do for himself, or the experiences he remembers, that I’m pregnant with our second child, and oh, once I got started, I had a hard time stopping. Continuing to follow my son’s example, my husband and I started asking the people in our life what they like about their life.

And I started thinking of some of the other things I have learned from my toddler:

- He is growing and changing literally every day, and every day he becomes even more independent and self-sufficient – as long as I grant him the space to do so. It’s when I insist on doing something for him that he wants to do for himself that he gets frustrated and I see the seeds of a potential power struggle, so I back off. When I let him try to do more and more things for himself, and he does, the sense of accomplishment that I see lighten up his face makes me realize that doing too much for one’s child only disempowers them in the end. I realized – not for the first time – that most children are far more capable than we give them credit for.

I also realized though, that while I relate to my fast-growing son as someone who can do something new or who changes each day, I don’t grant the same gift to other people in my life. I assume everyone else stays the same; I forget or I don’t think about that they too are growing, learning, evolving, human beings. My parents, for instance, are getting older and they have different concerns than they did ten or fifteen years ago. Or I assume that some people in my life will always say and complain about the same things, but what if I approached them the way I do my son, like they may have something new to say?

- My son is an adventurous sort. He tries new foods (sushi! calamari!) and he tries to do things at the playground, even things that as a parent I might think still may be above him for a bit. He tries them anyway. And he keeps trying, over and over and over again. Sometimes he gets frustrated; sometimes he didn’t. But watching him, I realized I don’t keep trying over and over again. My son keeps trying just to try and because he thinks it’s fun, while I give up out of frustration because I’m attached to the outcome I see in my head. But what if I too just kept trying new things just because – and not to achieve a particular outcome?

-I can give my son space, compassion, and patience for a lot of his behavior –or what some other people would call misbehavior – because I know that as a toddler he is driven not by thought and reason, but by emotions and he is just doing what toddlers do at his particular age. For me to expect him to do or be something different or not age appropriate (ie to sit quietly in a fine dining restaurant while my husband and I enjoy a multi course meal) would just be, well, dumb. So I don’t and consequently, I don’t get as frustrated with him.

It occurred to me that other people in my life are very similar, in that they are just doing the thing that they do, that it’s just who they are, and like my son, their behavior actually has very little to do with me. My grandmother giving me unsolicited advice because she gives everyone unsolicited advice? It’s just the thing she does. My neighbor who sits on his stoop and daily tells me the weather and that my son will either be too hot/cold/wet in what I have him dressed in? He does the same thing to everyone and it’s just his thing. I don’t take my son’s behavior personally; why should I take anyone else’s quirks and habits personally? (Do I still struggle with this one? Absofrickinglutely. But when I start to get irritated with my grandmother or other loved ones, I am better able to talk myself off the ledge.)

I’ve learned several other things from my son in my short life as a parent, but what do I learn every day? Be open - to who he is, to what’s next, to what’s possible, to what he needs (vs what I think or when I think his nap should be), to the unexpected, to play, to laugh, to life.

Street Fashion Vanderbilt Ave

2011-06-28T07:21:00.000-07:00

If I was a street fashion photographer a la The Sartorialist or Garance Dore, today's post would feature Fyo on his way to the park this morning.

Granted, if I was a street fashion photographer, when I took the dog to the park for morning off leash time and Fyo for morning playground time, I'd take the Nikon SLR instead of relying on the iPhone to take my pictures. (I'd probably actually also know how to use the Nikon SLR in all it's capabilities instead of relying on sheer dumb luck to get good pictures.)

Connected Mom Post

2011-06-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

For this Saturday's Connected Mom post, I amended/revised my Liking blog post from this blog. Check it out here.

Finn's Latest Early Morning Antic

2011-06-16T10:40:00.000-07:00

This dog. She looks sweet and innocent here. Really, she is rather sweet and mostly innocent. Or sweet with occasional mischievous tendencies.

Thanks to Finn, how did Husband wake up this morning? With a chicken carcass shoved in his face.

How did that happen? Like this.

Yesterday afternoon, we did our massive grocery shopping trip where we get a zip car and go to Costco and Fairway and stock up on a couple months worth of staples. The trip means a skipped nap for Fyo, though he generally hangs in there pretty well as long as we keep feeding him with the groceries that we put into the cart.Yesterday, he did especially well considering he was also fighting a sniffly nose and some congestion.

We came home, unloaded the car, and Husband went to return the car while I cleaned out the fridge to make enough space for all the food. I condensed the latest strawberry-rhubarb pie from pie plate to container. Last week's chicken carcass that sat on a plate waiting for Husband to turn it into stock, I tossed in the trash reasoning if he hadn't done anything with it yet, nothing with it was going to happen. An old lemon went into the compost. I stacked all the remaining containers, we had enough space for Fyo's green juice stash, my lemonade stash, the orange juice and all the rest. We had dinner, started Fyo's bath, put him to bed. He ended up going to bed later than usual despite not having a nap.

This morning Fyo woke up his always chipper self, no longer sniffly (though he was throughout the night), got out of bed and wandered around the bed. It took Husband and I a bit longer to wake up thanks to a solid out-of-the-ordinary two hour period that Fyo was awake in the middle of the night. He started saying, "There's a chicken on the floor. Mommy, there's a chicken on the floor." And again, "there's a chicken on the floor."

Sometimes, Fyo says things out of context like, "I like your party hat." when I am not wearing any kind of hat. It will take a moment for me to realize he is quoting one of his favorite books, Go Dog Go. So as Fyo declared that there was a chicken on the floor, I tried to think of what book we have that possibly involved chickens. I couldn't think of any. Or if he had a chicken toy I didn't know about? Do we suddenly own the Fisher-Price Little People Farm? No. Had he seen the film Chicken Run? No. He eats chicken; we had chicken less than a week ago. He knows about chickens - thanks to Bali where one of our favorite activities was chasing chickens on our motorbike (It's true - chickens running due to being chased is one of the most hysterical things on the planet. Does it fall under unethical treatment of animals? Maybe. But I'm not a PETA member.) (Yes, I do believe in treating animals very well). I just kept brainstorming, maybe now he's decided upon an imaginary friend and it's a chicken? Has he seen that episode of the Muppet Show with the Swedish Chef?

Fyo caught on that I was doubting him as I continued to shift from sleep to consciousness. Which may be why he picked up the chicken carcass off the floor and shoved it into his father's face.

Finn, that beast, had gotten into the trash in the night and brought the chicken carcass up during the night and left it, as Fyo had said several times, on the floor.

Waking up this morning became something out of a Monty Python skit, thanks to the amazing Finn and Fyo duo.

Liking - Another Lesson I Learned From My Toddler

2011-06-15T03:48:00.000-07:00

2. Living around the corner from my sister. Do you know we don't even have to cross the street to get to each other's house?

3. My morning cup of coffee. Especially when I can enjoy it in bed or alone while the rest of the house is still sleeping and quiet.

4. Stacks of library books. Even though I never get around to reading all of them, I just like to have them around.

5. My current bedside table that Husband found on the street for free (with my stack of books on top).

Other cool items we've recently found for free that I also love: a cool vintage lamp from the 30s, Husband found a brand new pair of Puma sneakers in my size (crazy, huh?), trucks for Fyo to play with in the yard and boats for him to play with in the bath. I can't help but love the hand-me-down. I find it satisfying for some reason.

6. These last few weeks of pregnancy I like/am grateful for yoga, cooler weather so we can actually enjoy outside and walking, our new organic mattress (it's so comfortable!), my latest haircut, hot bathes, my hot water bottle, popsicles, sparkling lemonade, and long afternoon naps.

7. I like that my child still takes naps, and when I nap with him, we can sleep up to three hours. What a lovely way to spend an afternoon!

8. Long meals with friends and good conversations.

9. Our garden

10. Finishing satisfying projects (finishing unsatisfying projects is a relief, the satisfying ones, I enjoy the sense of accomplishment.)

35 Weeks

2011-06-11T14:23:00.000-07:00

Baby is 6 pounds-ish and 18 ish inches long.

On one hand, pregnancy is the most mundane thing on the planet. On the other, it is utterly surreal to have another person almost 20 inches long inside of you.

I have noticed that as long as I walk/ have regular yoga, I feel great. Though I admit a time or two of nausea that suggest we're in the final stretch. Oh, and that major hormonal mood swing (e.g. hysterical tears; "We have no names! What if it's Baby X Lindis Corbell FOREVER?!?!?!).

(Husband loves these hormonal highlights)

Pregnancy- why does it make us sick?

2011-06-02T12:14:00.000-07:00

In general, as a pregnant woman, I'm that woman who doesn't talk about her experiences being pregnant because it generally causes other women to hate me. I can't help it. I have stellar pregnancies. Part of this may be genetic, but I also think the fact that I heard positive things about pregnancy from my mom and aunts has something to do with it. My mom didn't talk so much about enjoying her pregnancy, but I never heard her talk about the endless list of suffering that people associate with pregnancy (varicose veins, swelling, back pain, being so sick and so tired that you can't decide if you should throw up or go to bed, and all the rest). One of my aunts absolutely loved being pregnant despite having a few issues; another aunt still tells me how much she misses the feeling of a baby inside her.

So it never occurred to me that when I got pregnant that I might actually be hopping on the roller coaster of hell. And when I told my aunts I was pregnant, they were thrilled, not just for the arrival of a baby, but for me and that I got to have this experience that they so loved and cherished. One of my aunts instantly pulled out a post-it and made me a list of her favorite pregnancy foods (she's the one who gave me the tip about popsicles - except her favorite flavor was banana. Mine ended up being those lemonade ones from Trader Joe's).

And then we told the world at large I was pregnant.

And I had my first encounter with how the rest of the world views pregnancy; mainly that it is actually a roller coaster of hell.

My husband and I went to a friend's wedding, and when I went to the bathroom in between the wedding and the reception along with every other woman who was attending, I found myself surrounded by what felt like a gaggle of chickens. I felt like the unfortunate soul who finds herself in the girls' bathroom in high school and surrounded by the mean girls who proceed to beat the crap out of her. It was there that I was stormed like the Bastille by pregnancy horror stories of the women present.

First, they asked how terrible I was feeling, because I must be so sick I could hardly see straight and so tired I could hardly stand.

I said I felt fantastic. I mean it took me seven months to get pregnant. By achieving pregnancy, I felt like I had won the Tour de France.

But no, I was informed that actually, pregnancy meant the end of my life. My feeling great would be short lived. Because essentially, I would be miserable and uncomfortable the last four months, I wouldn't be able to sleep or find enough pillows (I still don't know what pillows have to do with anything), I would swell up like a balloon, my shoes would never fit again, my legs would be covered in varicose veins that would end up looking like the Mississippi River after all the swelling, I would hate my husband, and my entire body would ache, then my beautiful baby would arrive after a hellish labor, I would never sleep again and I would certainly never lose the weight I had gained, and my beautiful baby would grow into a child that would proceed to wreak havoc on my entire life.

According to these women, a seasonal bout with cancer would be preferable to pregnancy and the children it results in.

Maybe I have good genes. Maybe because I ate well. Maybe because I took hour long walks with my dogs through Griffith Park and did yoga four to five times a week. Maybe I’m in denial about being Pollyanna. Maybe I won the pregnancy lottery, but none of the predicted horrors happened to me. I felt great, until the day my son dropped and wedged his head into my pelvis. Three days later, I went into labor.

My labor was like my mother’s, which was predicted accurately by doctors and midwives alike, in that it was six hours long.

I have been told that my pregnancies (and labor) are abnormal, atypical, and not real. Yet my abnormal, atypical and not real pregnancy produced a baby who’s turning into a pretty cool kid (as we say in our house). My abnormal, atypical, and not real pregnancy didn’t actually result in medical intervention or treatment. It didn’t have some tragic or horrific ending.

It turns out my pregnancies are normal, typical and real for me.

What I find baffling about this (because I do have a point – I’m not just bragging about finding pregnancy lovely) is that the women who get so angry at those in medical community for viewing pregnancy as an illness often end up being the very same women who tell me that my experience is abnormal, atypical, and not real.

If pregnancy is not an illness, why am I supposed to feel so flippin’ awful? Why is there the social assumption, that when you become pregnant, you become the victim of your monstrous body and the only thing you can do about it is suffer?

For the most part, in my second pregnancy, I have avoided the horror-and-death predictions. Occasionally, when I’m by myself out in public, a woman will lean over to me and say, “You know, first borns are always late.” To which I then say, “My son was actually three weeks early.”

Except recently, as I’ve been in my third trimester, those closest to me, i.e. my husband and sister, have recounted to me that when people ask them about me and my pregnancy, they don’t ask, “Is she getting excited?” they instead ask, “She’s not too uncomfortable and miserable, is she?” or “Is she so ready to be done being pregnant?” Or people say to me, “How do you wear heeled sandals in your condition?” (I know – if we’re talking social assumptions, I’m not actually supposed to wear shoes) or “How are you doing in this heat in your condition?” (pregnant or not, I don’t do well in the heat). I often want to point out that I’m pregnant; I haven’t had a leg recently amputated.

And I admit, I am really excited to meet my new baby, so in a way I am looking forward to the end of my pregnancy.

And I also admit, that this baby started off lower and dropped into my pelvis sooner, resulting in some uncomfortable pelvic pressure and lower back ache. But I also realized that what worked so well in my last pregnancy – walking and doing yoga fairly often – I wasn’t doing. As soon as I went back to a regular yoga and walking habit, the aches no longer ached.

And yes, I have had some rather extensive and painful contractions that fall outside the norm of run-of-the-mill Braxton-Hicks, but my midwife said to take these as a sign my body is telling me to maybe relax, have a sip of wine, take a bath, and maybe instead of walking to yoga, I could take the subway.

And I still like being pregnant.

There’s a funny phenomenon, that’s rather effective in the treatment of many ailments. It’s called the placebo effect, in which a person perceives whatever they are suffering from to improve when they haven’t actually been given anything to improve their condition. It has one think about how the mind can determine or alter one’s experience. I don’t want to suggest that a simple placebo can lessen the pain of a baby pushing its way through a woman’s pelvis, but I do have to wonder if the few of us who have positive experiences in pregnancies (aka abnormal, atypical, not real pregnancies), how much of it is related to our expectations of the experience that we will have or our attitudes about pregnancy? I know quite a few women who did in fact have complicated pregnancies with loads of things to deal with, but still had positive experiences and never let on that they felt miserable if they did. It’s a wonder, isn’t it?

Thanks to the social assumption that pregnancy is a miserable and uncomfortable experience, we can’t really be surprised that many in the medical community still do view pregnancy as an illness. I just find it funny that we blame them for it, when women are also the ones who perpetuate it.

I'm Obsessed

2011-05-30T03:32:00.000-07:00

with rhubarb.

I thought popsicles were the perfect pregnancy food, and they are still a close second, but then I made Strawberry-Rhubarb pie. Granted, the popsicle people are on my side with the rhubarb addiction. Sara Newberry, of Cold Ones in Austin (follow them here on twitter. They're also on facebook) told me a few weeks ago that she had been brainstorming a rosewater-rhubarb popsicle, which instantly made my knees weak and hating that she was in Austin while I was in Brooklyn. People's Pops at the Brooklyn Flea had a Rhubarb hibiscus popsicle, which my son and husband loved, but I have to say it wasn't my favorite flavor of the People's Pops inventory, though I've loved everything else of theirs. I found it too herb-y. My favorites of theirs tend to be the berry variety flavors.

But then after the Strawberry-Rhubarb pie, I think I might just have to take Strawberry-Rhubarb pie filling and shove it into a popsicle mold. Except rhubarb requires knowing and understanding and cooking in some way so that it doesn't end up too tart, and while I can make a pie, I've never actually made pie filling without the actual pie.

I've spent a bit of time thinking about this as with Strawberry-Rhubarb pie being the perfect pregnancy food, I've realized I might need to make a S-R pie every week this summer. Except the week I give birth when I'll be in bed in my pajamas with my lovely newborn, at which point, I'll need to fall back on the popsicle for my nutritional needs, and I may need to do some experimenting to fully master the Strawberry-Rhubarb popsicle.

The rhubarb at the market is so pretty, even when I had a pie at home, I couldn't help myself but get another pound and a half. I rationalized thinking, "Maybe I'll make jam?" (uh-huh, because that's fun to stand in front of a stove stirring cooking fruit and then sealing all the jars in between chasing a toddler and trying to transcend the New York mugginess that has descended).

Then we were invited to a friend's barbecue on Monday. What to bring? Pie.

Whenever you show up at a someone's house with pie, you get instant huge karmic payoff.

Unless you forget the ice cream to go with it.

*For the record, I used the Strawberry-Rhubarb pie recipe here with some changes. I scraped the pie dough recipe part, because I'm a dedicated James McNair fan as his pie crust has never failed me (3 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 teaspoons of sugar. Blend for a second in the food processor. Add two cold sticks of unsalted butter - I always cut them into small pieces before adding. Blend until bread crumb consistency, then add 1/2 cup of cold/ice water. Chill in two batches wrapped in wax or parchment paper before rolling out the top and bottom of the pie.) For the pie, I had way more rhubarb than 2 1/2 cups - I had closer to 5 cups, but I still threw it all in. I'd cut the sugar to 1 1/4 cups or 1 1/3 cups as mine was a tad too sweet. By far the best pie I've ever made. Yum!

Pressure Schmessure

2011-05-26T10:26:00.000-07:00

I keep meaning to write about something other than parenting related things, but I can't help it. I keep finding myself on these themes. I've started to wonder, what will I write about when my children are grown? Is that when I'll finally settle down to write a short story collection?

In the meantime, today's theme? Parenting Pressure.

Inspired by two things: 1) Lisa Belkin's post on parenting by location and the idea that parenting differs not so much by choice or values, but by neighborhood and what your friends are doing. She refers to Claire Dederer's Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses in her post. I admit, I haven't read Dederer's book, if only because I heard the review and interview one Saturday morning on NPR and before it was finished I was yelling at Dederer (via yelling at the radio) for her complaining about all the "rules" she encountered in her Seattle moms' group. From the way she tells it, the rules were strict and if you violated any of them, you risked being exiled - but in reality, it sounded like she could use being exiled to find new friends who parented in a way similar to her own thinking. I mean, Seattle is not a small city; surely there's a different moms group to be found? That said, having done yoga for 7 years, I'm totally envious of her narrative structure and wished I thought of it.

2) The statistics for breastfeeding came out a few weeks ago, and while moms the world over, but especially in Western countries, love to complain about how much pressure there is to breast feed, it turns out that the number of breastfeeding mothers is going down. When my son was born in 2008, 20% of babies were breast fed after six months, while now, only 13% are breast fed after the first six months.

When I read the recent numbers on breast feeding, I was going to jump in and write a post about what seems to be the myth of pressure to breast feed. I've wondered about this a lot, when I hear women complain about how much pressure there is to breast feed. Generally I want to respond in two ways:

1) Breast feeding burns 1000 calories a day. How much pressure do you need? Spend a fun filled sweaty hour on a treadmill trying to burn a decent 500 calories or sit on your couch in your pajamas and nurse your adorable, soft and sweet smelling newborn while relishing in the blissful release of the hormone oxytocin and burning away that pregnancy weight? I mean really. In my first pregnancy, I gained 30 pounds and lost 42 thanks to breastfeeding. I weighed less than I did in high school. I can't think of a better weight loss plan, but that's just me.

2) 13% of babies are breast fed after the first six months. That means 87% of babies are getting formula from six months on. If there is indeed so much pressure, it clearly isn't working.

Yes, I understand there are women who can't stand breast feeding, have physical issues that limit their ability, encounter nothing but problems or whatever the case may be. Most women I suspect that encounter problems end up not simply because they don't get the support or education they need whether it's from doctors or lactation consultants or their own research. I've met lactation consultants who give out bad advice simply because they don't know any better. I've heard of doctors so worried about the supposed pressure to breast feed that when they encounter patients still breastfeeding at 6 or 8 months, they tell them that they don't have to continue if they don't want to (never mind that WHO recommendation to breast feed 1-2 years). I suspect most women don't continue because they don't get the support they need when they go back to work.

But 87% of babies on formula after the first six months? Really, only 13% of us women have fallen victim to the pressure to breast feed?

Huh.

Maybe I'm sensitive to this, because I did breast feed. My son didn't take a bottle. He didn't have much occasion to as I've been very fortunate in that I didn't have to go back to work (and I didn't find the work I did before my son satisfying enough to go back to). But when I've said that my son didn't take a bottle or even know what one was, what I encountered was not high fives from the breast feeding pressure police but stares and looks of disbelief that maybe I was from another planet or maybe I was one of those women who had no personal boundaries and let her baby manipulate the crap out of her or maybe I had no sense of self etc.

Or my son wanted a doll (this probably should go in the gender neutral parenting post), but the dolls I found for him mostly had those creepy mouths so they could feed from the bottles they came with. It took me a year to find a baby doll that didn't come with a bottle (granted, I was in Singapore and Bali where the selection was not at its best).

Or while my sister and sister-in-law on my side of my family do breastfeed their babies, on my husband's side of the family, my son is the fifth grandchild and the only one who breastfed past 12 weeks.

Or when we lived in Singapore, I was literally one of four women on the entire island who breast fed their baby into toddler hood. Once when I breast fed my son in public, the daughter of the friend we were eating with asked, "Mommy, what is she doing to her baby?" simply because she had never seen a woman breast feed her baby.

So pardon me if I declare the pressure to breast feed a myth. But stand up and question why do people in our culture assume that having a baby means you need bottles and pacifiers? Oh lordy.

But really, after reading Lisa Belikin's post, I think we should declare all parenting pressure a myth. Because, honestly, who does it serve? And what does it make us sound like? We're grown ups, but as parents, when we complain about whatever the pressure we think we're receiving (in our case, I got an insane amount of strangers and family telling me to swaddle my baby even though it gave him a fever or to not hold the baby so much) and we sound like teenagers, stuck in high school and surrounded by cliques of witchy teen- aged girls who only care about expensive name brand clothing.

David Elkind, in his book, The Power of Play discusses parent peer pressure, and suggests that when some parents engage in hyperparenting, overprotection, and overprogramming it is simply because they are concerned with how they look as parents to other parents. He further suggests that when we become parents, something happens in our brains that takes us back to adolescence when we were oh so concerned about what others thought of us. Part of this is because new parents are in a new social and emotional life situation. They are in unfamiliar territory, much like teenagers, and assume that others are judging and evaluating their parenting (to be fair, some people are) while they are also looking for clues they are doing things right or for ways that they should be doing things.

Elkind says the parents who don't fit this model, tend to be parents who move a lot from location to location whether they just traveled a lot or had jobs that took them overseas. These families, in his experience, were less likely to be influenced by peer pressure or media pressure about how to parent, and rather, the family grew closer and more secure in their values and beliefs about parenting and what was right for their family.

Reading through the comments on Lisa Belkin's post on parenting by location, I found this to be largely true. And it fits my husband and I. Though, I think we were on this path anyway. Even before we moved from Denver to LA then from LA to Singapore, we knew there were things we were going to do. We didn't want a bunch of baby things that we'd use for a week or two and then would have to pass along. We knew I'd breast feed, and that we'd co-sleep. But those things we chose not because we were following other's examples. We just did a lot of reading and out of the reading we did, those things lined up with who we are and our values. Just like we prefer organic half and half and fruits and vegetables, because we like knowing our food doesn't have a bunch of unknown ingredients in it, not because we think it makes us somehow better or superior people.

We have made choices when it comes to our parenting and we continue to whether it's about sending our son to pre-school and what we think about education in general or how much time we should let him watch television and movies. I do come from Portland, OR which, from what I observed and was told, is the most friendly place to nurse a toddler. And we do parent in very similar ways to my siblings who live in Portland, but we do a lot of things differently too. My husband's family is from Texas. We are on the opposite end of the parenting spectrum from how he was parented and how his siblings parent. Husband has said that some consider me a controversial mom. I find this baffling, because I think, we just do what works for us - how is that controversial? But sure - to his family and to others who think along the same lines - breastfeeding, co-sleeping, not punishing your child, whatever else we're doing, is controversial.

I don't know - maybe I'm lucky, because in traveling the world with my child, I did see a wide variety of parents, and while some did things radically different from how my husband and I do them, all of them were still good parents and the right parents for their children. Even in my mom's group in LA, where we all largely did mother in similar ways, we still did things differently - some used strollers, some didn't, some had cribs, some didn't, some vaccinated, some didn't, but the message in our mom's group was always to just do what works, different things work for different families, and parenting is about choices, and just like anything, you should be informed about the choice you're making, whatever they are.

But parenting is too important (as is our peace of mind) and our children are too valuable to sacrifice our individual values and sense of self for the sake of some made up groupthink exercise. There are enough parents out there, that if for some reason, we do find ourselves in a situation where we do feel pressure or don't feel like we fit in because of our choices, then we can just find new friends - and the friends who are true friends love us and adore us no matter what we choose or what kind of parents we are. I mean, isn't that what we would tell our kids in a similar position?

So why all the whining and complaining?

Wordless Wednesday - Mapping out the Garden

2011-05-25T18:24:00.000-07:00

The Lack of Safe Haven in New York

2011-05-25T03:11:00.000-07:00

Sunday night Laquasia Wright, age 18, was arrested for attempted murder and endangering the life of a child. That morning, she had dropped her twelve hour old infant son down the trash chute of her building in the Walt Whitman Housing Projects in Brooklyn, just four or five blocks from where I live. Wright lives on the eighth floor. Thanks to the pile of trash bags that cushioned the baby's fall, the baby survived, was heard crying by the building's superintendent and was then rushed to the nearest hospital where he is in stable condition and expected to make a full recovery and live a healthy life - in an adopted home.

This story is heartbreaking on so many levels. As a pregnant woman who tears up at hearing a song from her childhood played in a grocery store, it's hard to maintain one's composure at the truly tragic stories like this one.

From what I have noticed, the knee jerk reaction at hearing this story is to judge Laquasia Wright, to assume she's out of her mind, or to immediately condemn her and her actions as absolutely unforgivable and she herself must be some kind of monster.

Yet take into consideration that her actions come just two weeks after another young mother from Queens, Dawa Lama, age 23, threw her newborn baby girl into the trash in a hospital bathroom. She was charged with reckless endangerment and first degree assault. Except that her baby died as a result of her actions and Lama could now face more serious charges.

The actions of these young women cannot be condoned by any stretch of the imagination, yet, criminal prosecution doesn't rectify either of these tragic situations. To me, their actions reflect panic and ignorance. These are actions of someone who did not know the state's Safe Haven laws, of someone who was not talked to about the option of adoption during her pre-natal care, of someone who received little - if any - pre-natal care, of someone who perhaps should have had an abortion but didn't have the resources.

Take into consideration the exhaustion that follows labor, and the hormones that flood the system - that Wright or Lama may or may not have been educated about (even if they had been, you forget minor details like that after labor), and we might begin to understand what had them panic. Up to 80% of women experience varying degrees of irritability, sadness, anxiety, or crying after birth as a result of hormones and exhaustion, while 10-25% suffer from postpartum depression. This side of birth is just biology and doesn't take resources into account. But from what little we know of the circumstances of these women, that both were alone when they acted, that Wright lived in the projects and was home alone just 12 hours after she gave birth suggests that these women lacked good quality care and education as well as an adequate support system in their personal lives, like someone who would tell them of the Safe Haven laws.

To me, the actions of both of these women just two weeks apart, indicates that New York should be doing more to educate young women about the options of adoption and Safe Haven centers. Most assume the Safe Haven laws are common knowledge, but I think this assumption is a dangerous one. Given that Lama was in a hospital -the safest of Safe Haven centers - when she decided she couldn't parent her daughter would indicate to me that she didn't know such a law existed.

New York’s Abandoned Infant Protection Act is very generous in allowing up to thirty days for a new parent to surrender her baby to a trusted official at a hospital or fire station while remaining anonymous and free of prosecution. Sadly, this wasn’t common enough knowledge to prevent Lama or Wright’s actions, though they will undoubtedly be the ones who pay the price for not knowing it.

It is tragic all the way around - for Wright and Lama, their babies, as well as for all of us as it reveals quite a few cracks that these women fell through. But I don't see what good comes of prosecuting these women. A woman who throws her baby away? That's a woman who needs help, therapy and education.

Week Wrap Up & Highlights

2011-05-22T19:20:00.000-07:00

1. We did not get raptured. (Sadly, the ants that have infested our house after an intense week of rain did not get raptured either. Cheeky bastards.)

2. My Sis guest blogged on growing up dyslexic. (Click here if you missed it - it's fantastic and worthy of discussion.)

3. In between all the rain, we had a few bursts of sun where Fyo and I could play outside.

4. Sis then did a post on Husband's and my wedding, gorgeous, perfect and impromptu event that it was and invited me to guest blog for her too. Such fun! (But I haven't done it yet. This coming week! )

5. Husband and I ordered a new organic bed (!!!) - king size to accommodate our growing family and our big dog Finn. Then we had a lunch date in Madison Square Park and appreciated the public art on display in the park. I didn't take a picture of the art because I was distracted by my fantastic lobster sandwich that I think was my best meal this week.

6. My Saturday post for Connected Mom. (Yes, I did. I wrote about the in-laws, but somebody has to - when I was looking for helpful perspectives to get me through some of the relationship rough spots I found nothing on that particular relationship).

7. Gender neutral baby clothes (though I discovered most gender neutral clothes are actually in the boys' section).

8. Such good books from the library - I also picked up David Elkind's The Power of Play and Fyo picked out A Hole is to Dig by Ruth Krauss with illustrations by Maurice Sendak.

9. Husband cleaned out and organized the pantry

10. We had a day of napping and going to bed easily (after two days of no nap). Ah bliss!

Reading up on Gender-Neutral Parenting: It Started with the Clothes

2011-05-19T04:15:00.000-07:00

I came home last night from the library with such good books, I didn't know what to start with. I ended up starting with Lise Eliot's Pink Brain, Blue Brain for the simple reason that the librarian had placed it on the top of the stack. I've read Dr. Eliot before, in her book, What's Going on in There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years which began my phase of geeking out with baby neuroscience books. I found What's Going on in There? fascinating, but also dense and a bit scholarly, which is why I tend to recommend Jill Stamm's Bright from the Start. It's more accessible and easier reading - especially when most your reading time is on your side while you nurse your newborn to sleep.

But in this pregnancy, as I've mentioned, I've spent much more time thinking about gender and gender neutral parenting. It started with the clothes, and me wanting to dress my unborn baby in red, and not in pastels as if my baby was actually an Easter egg. When my search for bright colored baby clothes became harder than I ever thought it would be, I started wondering why I felt like the only parent who wanted to dress their child outside of the pink-blue-last resort-yellow/green color scheme.

If only for the reason that I know the sex of our unborn child and my husband does not. It's an experiment on our part. My husband wants to be surprised. But I'm a planner and have nesting hormones taking my body hostage. Given that my son was born three weeks early and we were so unprepared, so that my husband had to run out for diapers early in my home birth labor, well, when second arrives on the scene I don't want to have to worry about clothes.

In my first pregnancy, we found out we were having a boy and between the two of us, we had four nephews and their hand-me-downs. Two of those four were twins. I can't tell you how many clothes we had. Or shoes. We didn't have to buy a thing.

And I'm realizing now, we were fortunate to have good hand-me-downs. Thankfully, my sisters-in-law feel the same way I do about not wanting footballs all over their baby boy's clothes. Most our hand-me-downs were greens, oranges, yellows, jeans, stripes, blues, reds and the like. Our hand-me-downs were covered in animals - yes, they were the kind of animals that if you met them in the jungle you'd be dead, but on baby pajamas they were cute. And they were clothes that would not be inappropriate on either sex (orange and white striped pants with a white t-shirt - that kind of thing).

Then one of my sisters got pregnant with a boy and my sister-in-law with the twins had a friend who was also having twin boys and we did what you do with hand-me-downs: we handed them down. We were also packing up our house for storage before we set out for our year abroad, so it didn't make sense to save a lot of baby stuff when we were paying for storage. I picked out my very favorite of my son's clothes - and ones that happened to be (I thought) gender neutral - and kept those. Essentially, I had a shoe box of baby clothes for our much desired second child.

And I thought it would be easy to replace them with equally free and fantastic hand-me-downs.

No such luck.

In the time since my son, or rather my nephews, were born, the clothes have changed. I got two bags of "gender-neutral" clothing off craigslist. We don't own a car, and in Brooklyn, if I go to the trouble of taking the subway over to someone's house to pick something up, I'm not going to change my mind about wanting to buy it or take it home once I get there. But when I got these bags home and opened them up? Essentially the mother had had a boy and a girl and shoved everything into the same pile. The boys clothes were camouflaged and covered in football helmets. And the girl's? I had never seen so many rosebuds, butterflies, or pink in my life. Seven and half months into pregnancy and my first bit of nausea came when looking at all that pink and all those footballs.

This will make me sound like a witch, but I hate football. I hate pink (except in small doses or next to colors like brown, black, grey, or navy.) Rosebuds and butterflies are fine - but outside where they belong.

Out of two bags of clothes I found two white onesies. I also snagged some awesome winter sleeper pajamas and white bunting that I actually love. Everything else went back into the bags to go back on craigslist.

I told my mom, my step-mom, and my mother-in-law, that I think the clothes are far more sexist than they were when I was a kid. I don't remember having my first pink dress until I was six. My three mothers agree and say that I am correct.

Indeed. Lise Eliot writes, "Unlike a generation ago, when parents actually worried about stereotyping their children, the new focus on nature seems to be encouraging parents to indulge in sex differences even more avidly...The more we parents hear about hard-wiring and biological programming, the less we bother tempering our pink or blue fantasies, and start attributing every skill or deficit to innate sex differences. Your son's a late talker? Don't worry, he's a boy. Your daughter is struggling with math? It's okay, she's very artistic."

Personally, I find this troubling. Maybe because I was raised by feminist leaning mothers, maybe because I went to college reading Gloria Steinem and Ms. magazine and Susan Faludi's Backlash without ever taking a Women's Studies class, but I'm constantly shocked by how sexist our society still is - and how even male friends of mine - seemingly enlightened and in some cases married to very strong women - still think nothing of referring to women as girls or talking about their bodies as if they were chickens to roast for dinner. Given the disparity just in baby clothes and the current mode of socialization for kids being born today, I'm scared to think of the implications. You can buy heels and bikinis for three year old girls. Isn't that disturbing?

Eliot's writing again is fascinating -and a bit dense - (She does her research and she thinks things through) but well worth it. So far, I mean. I read the first fifty pages before passing out last night, but so far, I can tell it will be a book I refer to often, if only because she points out and demonstrates that while yes, there are differences in the sexes, but mostly, actually, we're the same. Biology-wise anyway. Everything else is essentially socialization. This makes it a book that I wish those giving us gifts would read, (I know this too makes me sound witch-y) if only so they knew where we were coming from.

This of course only increases my search for gender-neutral clothes. And I admit, it doesn't make me the most popular with my mother - who while she dressed my sister and me in reds, browns, greens, and blues is so peeved that I won't tell her the sex that she insists she isn't buying my child anything until it's born. When I say I want gender neutral clothing - even after the child is born - she tells me of the cutest rosebud outfit she found in Macy's. When I say I don't want rosebuds? She tells me how the woman she bought it for loved it. What do I tell her? Send the receipt.

My in-laws this last weekend indulged me, as we shopped for both children and I rummaged through the boy/girl racks at a consignment shop trying to find all the gender-neutral clothes. My father-in-law congratulated me on all the good deals I had found, but then said, he now agrees with my mother - nothing else until the child is born. Because apparently you can only buy so many gender neutral clothes.

I should tell them all what store clerks tell me, stay in the boys clothes. For whatever reason, the bright colors and safer things go there. Because God forbid someone dress their boy up as a rosebud.

Wordless Wednesday - Just In From the Library!

2011-05-18T19:01:00.000-07:00

I Am Dyslexic

2011-05-17T09:38:00.000-07:00

Today I have my first ever guest blogger! Yes my very own sister! Sis (because she is sis to me, but Phaedra to the rest of the world) indulges me often by listening to me talk through my ideas on education, what I want for my children in their education, researching pre-schools, wondering if the experience I want for my children actually exists within a school building, etc. I also spend a lot of time ranting to Sis about the pre-school programs I find - that brag about how they will prepare my child for kindergarten by teaching him phonics and letters - when I think (after reading Mem Fox's Reading Magic) guessing how words is just as important (just watch a small child try to sound out the -tion sound). Because Sis is dyslexic, she too rants about the over-emphasis on phonics and how she always found it frustrating in learning foreign languages.

Sis started thinking about her experience growing up dyslexic and asked if she could write an essay for my blog as part of my ongoing considerations about education (and had me think about spending my entire blogging week thinking and writing about education). So here she is, my fantastic dress making sister, who made my wedding dress (in eight days and made it so it fit inside a Priority Mail envelope) and who I think in all ways is a genius and certainly the (first) best thing to happen to me (second and third of course is husband and son and fourth the soon to be baby). You can see her blog and work here.

I Am Dyslexic

By Phaedra Elizabeth Paulson

I am dyslexic.

When I was about 6, my dad pulled me out of one elementary school where my 1^st grade teacher wanted to hold me back a year, and put me into an elementary school where the school principle (Ms. Betty Campbell, you were an angel) had me tested for all kinds of “learning disorders”. It was her that got me the early diagnosis of dyslexic.

So really, I’m a lucky dyslexic.

The diagnosis of dyslexic I imagine was a relief to all my parents. From my dad and my step-mom it seemed like their mentality was: okay, this is the problem, we can address that. And they did. I was taken weekly to a tutoring company (called Learn to Learn, no judgment there) that apparently specialized in kids like me, “Bright kids that are ‘slow learners.’’ From this company I had nearly an hour of tutoring every night from my dad and step-mom, after school and through the summer.

By the time I was in the 4^th grade, I was pulled out of class for my remedial spelling lessons, where I was tutored one on one with a special ed teacher. Then later, I was pulled out of class for my reading lessons, again, one on one. (oh, public school system of 25 years ago, how we miss you.) It wasn’t until the end of the school year that I was told my reading lessons were actually above my grade level. I was reading for comprehension above the rest of my class, just spelling below my grade level. I was main-streamed the next year.

Technically from the fifth grade forward, I was a “normal” kid, just a really bad speller.

Like I said, this makes me a lucky dyslexic.

What’s interesting to me looking back, is how often I have been labeled by others and labeled myself as a “slow learner” without thinking for a second what that actually means.

What is actually true is I struggled with reading and languages. In other areas I actually learn very quickly.

Years ago, someone asked me how I felt about the label, of learning disabled that is applied to dyslexia and I said, that label gets schools money to help the kids that are.

But it’s not that simple.

At the time, it never occurred to me that I had any negative repercussions on my psyche. Now I’m not so sure.

While I did fairly well in school, I definitely started to give up by high school. Yes, I’m sure normal teenage angst and rebellion played a part in my disinterest in school. But so did feeling like I’d never be put in an advance class due to my “issues” and that I had to sit through my English classes with my fellow class mates, that somehow never seemed to be able to remember what they had read and understand it. And yet, they had never had their own special ed teachers.

While my high school teachers likely didn’t know I was a “slow learner” or “learning disabled”, I think I had a fair chip on my shoulder that academia had given up on me. Or, at the very least, had let me down.

So then, the sewing.

Once I had taught myself how to do this thing, that was to make the things in my head, well, I guess you could say I was hooked. I was 15 and it’s been a life long love affair ever since.

Sewing, pattern drafting, building the garment was something that came easily to me and I think my relief at having found something that I could excel at was actually profound.

What is curious to me, is there are designers and highly skilled seamstresses and engineers and carpenters and makers of all things on both sides of my father’s family. My dad and uncle have built and rebuilt airplanes. My uncle IS an aeronautical engineer. The similarities in the problem solving that gets a dress or a corset built is not dissimilar to my way of thinking then what gets an airplane or a house built. It’s almost like “thinking as an engineer” is a genetic trait. So is dyslexia. Dyslexia gets passed down, while a daughter can get it from either parent, a son will only get it from his mother. From the experience of my dad teaching me how to drive, I promise you, I got this genetic trait from my dad. Neither one of us seemed to be so solid with our right and left. But they didn’t have this diagnosis when he or his brother were kids. That the family stories were about how neither of them seemed to do well in school despite clearly being bright and capable is, well, curious.

Last night, my sister was relating a story at her dinner party of how when we were kids, she thought I was being difficult or lazy, maybe that I was just trying to get attention with my reading struggles. The discussion got me to thinking. (hence this essay) Am I still nervous about this kind of judgment? Even though I have no fear that she thinks this now?

In this climate of our currant education system, my heart breaks at the idea of all kids being pushed into this box of teaching to the test and that all intelligence is based on reading and language and math. I never would have survived school like that. I love learning. I love working on challenging design projects and figuring out new ways of solving design problems. All of this I learned outside of my public school education. But I did learn it.

25 years after being labeled “normal”, I am still grateful everyday that I found something that proves those other labels wrong. I don’t think anyone in my life needs me to be a talented designer to be reassured that I am not a slow learner, I’m sure my siblings and all my parents think I am quite bright. When I tell people that I am dyslexic they often ask, “really?”So it’s interesting to me that my natural tendency is to do what I do out of the sight of others. I did not thrive in the corporate design world, yet, people like, even love what I design and make. This last year I quit my corporate design job to finally focus on what I really wanted to do, to work for myself making custom things, to work one on one with my clients. I know this is the right place for me to be, working with my hands, bringing my ideas to fruition, working with a client to create the best thing for her and her event. There are so many things about this job that feels like it’s a good fit for my skill set. However, there is a part of me that wonders, am I, maybe a little, hiding from the judgment of those labels? Do I still feel that fear of people thinking I’m stupid? And the best way to hide from that is to work on my own, behind closed doors? Where I can’t be judged? Where what matters is the end result, not how I got there, not how I figured it out?

I think so, a little bit, yes.

People often seem to be uninformed about what dyslexia is. They think it means I can’t see the letters on the page or that I just, still as an adult with 2 college degrees, can’t read. They think it means that I am actually learning disabled.

I’ve met parents of young children that share stories that they fear their kid might be dyslexic, it’s an odd conversation that follows when I say, ‘your kid will be fine, I’m dyslexic’. “But did you recover? Are you still dyslexic?” . Um, yes. but you memorize the letters and use spell check and move on. It comes out really, like an old accent, when I’m really tired or drunk (If your kid is writing school papers while drunk you have bigger problems.) or when I’m trying to learn second languages, oh so help me with the foreign languages.

Now I wish I could reverse the label. I can’t speak for any other kind of “learning disabilities” or “learning disorder” but those categories really piss me off.

I didn’t fit into the box that said, I should have been a lawyer or professor, or any other kind of reading focused career. But I do belong in this box, the one about working with shapes and materials and the physics of how x will effect y if I do this. None of that makes me learning disabled. Clearly, I have learned to read and write. Clearly I have learned how to learn.

Like I said, I am lucky. I’m lucky for 2 reasons. The first being that Ms. Betty Campbell said, “there is nothing wrong with that child”. And the second is that my dad as a (highly likely) undiagnosed dyslexic himself, understood exactly the way I understand my world and believed and agreed with her.

There’s room for all our learning. We need both people like me and people like Tara, my writer and English professor sister that didn’t get it then, but knows now, I wasn’t being lazy. I just see things from a different point of view.

And I am thriving in my skill set.

Sunday on the Brooklyn Bridge

2011-05-16T08:06:00.000-07:00

My in-laws are in town (not to worry - it has surpassed expectations and been a lovely visit) and my FIL (father-in-law) wanted to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.

The last time I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge was September of 2008. I was visiting my sister from LA with my husband, was seven and half months pregnant with my son and had literally just started to show (thanks to the stomach muscles that come with 25 years of ballet).

And now-

We measured him Saturday night. At 2 1/2, he's 40 inches tall. He was born at 19 1/2.

Husband says I can't call him a baby any longer - because he is now all little boy.

And again, 7 1/2 months pregnant.

The Business of Education

2011-05-14T05:29:00.000-07:00

Last night, I read this disturbing Editorial in the New York Times on Scholastic's Big Coal Mistake - where they produced a fourth grade lesson packet on energy paid for by the American Coal Foundation. This lesson packet mentioned the benefits of coal but failed to mention things like toxic waste and gee, I don't know, things like Black Lung or the people who we hear about every year or every other year who get trapped inside a coal mine and die.

Last year, Scholastic also encouraged schools to have classroom parties with and to collect labels from the sugary drink, Sunny D.

As I researched pre-schools in my neighborhood, I was relieved to find the school here and there who didn't give the kids juice. My son, like me and many in my family, is a bit sugar sensitive - not that we don't have it, but we use organic free-trade non-bleached good quality sugar (which I have to say has actually increased the quality of my baking) and we eat sweets sparingly. In the past, we've given my son a half a cup of diluted orange juice and he turned into a demon. I know some doctors say that sugar does not contribute to hyperactivity, but I don't think they have children.

Anyway, in reading this editorial yesterday, I added another strike in my list against the public school system. I have a lot of concerns about the schools, education in general, kids getting what they need in the classroom, and so on. I haven't researched education as much as parenting, but almost - and it's slow reading on my part. Mostly because I get depressed. I read the fantastic Diana Ravitch's Life and Death of the Great American School System (which I highly recommend), and while I think she is right about a lot and found it an eye opening read, it left me completely hopeless about the future of education in this country, and even around the world.

This morning I woke up thinking about Scholastic's stunts and thinking that now in addition to having to worry about my son getting too much homework (as I also read yesterday here) in subjects where homework is useless (all of them except math) (for some of us who remember our school experience this may strike us as one of those moments where we say "duh"), or over tested for statewide standardized tests that have nothing to do with the curriculum he's getting in the classroom, or that he could get a really good teacher who loves teaching and loves his/her subject matter, but somehow fails to produce good test results in his/her students and ends up fired, or whatever else, but now I also have to worry about my child being advertised to - not just in school hallways as he walks past vending machines full of junk food, but in his lessons and school books? Great.

By the time I was sipping my coffee, my head was spinning with the realization of all the vested interests in our so called public education system, from the companies who write the standardized tests and textbooks and compete for school districts and teachers' attentions, to school lunches, city and state governments, teachers unions, school buses (dare we dream of the hybrid bus or would that threaten oil interests?), and well, the list goes on.

I started to ask myself, who really is teaching our children? Can we begin to see why the interests of our kids has gotten lost, when public schools are now as much a business as anything else in the marketplace?

I see stacks of library books, new research topics and a new series of blog posts in my future as I think about untangling this knot.

Rhubarb!

2011-05-12T11:57:00.000-07:00

Growing up, we had an enormous rhubarb plant, and we never did anything with it - because my parents complained it was too tart to eat and there was nothing good to do with it. Then just a few years ago, a friend in Denver harvested the rhubarb from her yard, made pans full of rhubarb crisp, and then had a bunch of us over. I discovered my parents were wrong. I could have devoured the entire pan. I didn't. I stopped short of a plate.

Only because I was worried what people would think of me if I did finish an entire pan by myself.

This past week, I saw the season's first rhubarb and its glorious red stalks at the Farmer's Market. I took a pound and a half home for my first ever rhubarb crisp. Mine didn't come out as good as my friend's, but still with a scoop of Coconut Bliss Vanilla ice cream, it was delicious. I think next I'm going to attempt the classic Strawberry Rhubarb pie. Yum!

They Mean Well But...

2011-05-12T06:34:00.000-07:00

In Monday's Motherlode, Lisa Belkin asks what do you make of parenting advice from people who aren't parents?

I said (because you know I commented) that in my experience, advice from parents who were a generation or two out of date was far more dangerous than from people who weren't parents at all, like, say, my sister, who knows my husband, son and I inside and out, has the same values as we do, but still has astute observation skills and picks up on things that we don't see, like, "Gee, ever since you quit buying yogurt, Fyo doesn't always have snot pouring out of his nose." How do I miss that I'm suddenly not always wiping my kid's nose? I don't know, but that's another post.

When my son was born, like all new parents, the advice poured in from people who meant well. My family, for the record, was amazing in refraining from advice for the simple reason that they believe the first few months of parenthood is all about the parents figuring out who they are as parents as well as who their baby is and what their baby needs. They assumed (rightly) that if we needed help or advice, we were capable of asking.

Even my grandmother, who completely disagrees with most my parenting, commiserated that when my dad was a baby, her mother-in-law told her to only feed him every four hours, which my grandmother did (because apparently my great-grandmother was so mean and bossy that if you disobeyed her you then committed yourself to a life of hell). Shortly thereafter, my grandmother's mother-in-law informed her that she should take her baby to the doctor because he was crying all the time and must be colicky.

My grandmother didn't take her baby to the doctor. She instead fed him when he cried and soon learned he wasn't colicky at all. He was just hungry.

People - even mean bossy people like my great-grandmother - do mean well. They also want to feel validated by you following their advice. It reassures them that they made the right choices in their own parenting.

And some people say things they've heard their entire lives without ever questioning them or realizing there's not an ounce of truth to them. The ones we heard the most?

-"Let the baby cry. It's good for its lungs." Really. It's an old wives tale. Just like leeching strengthens a person's veins, vitality and immune system. Why leeching fell out of favor but this saying didn't, I know not.

-"You know, if you're always holding the baby, it's always going to expect to be held." At the time, I had no way to deflect this other than, "but it's such a short time in the long run." Now that my son is two and a half, I can honestly say that he does not, in fact, always expect to be held, and actually, if you tried to hold him all the time, you'd end up injured. I don't know why people say this. Why have a baby if you don't want to hold it?

And along the same lines-

-"If you always nurse the baby to sleep, it's never going to learn to go to sleep on its own." I know it seems like babies have "to learn" how to go to sleep, but sleep is actually a human instinct, not a learned trait. Which is why babies have no issue at all putting themselves to sleep while they're in the womb. The difference? They're putting themselves to sleep when they're tired, not on your schedule. Babies do have different sleep habits and schedules and circadian rhythms than adults, and yes, there are habits and routines that help them learn how to organize themselves so they sleep at night, and less in the day (which is the opposite - near as I can tell in my current state - of their life in the womb), but babies fall asleep in a myriad of ways. Yes, I usually nursed my son down to sleep, which generally worked when we were ready for him to sleep, and yes, he also fell asleep in his sling or Ergo carrier when I was just walking around. Husband too put him to sleep by walking around with him. Sometimes he fell asleep in the car (but I can't say that worked for us they way people told us it would - I think the car actually made him car sick), sometimes he fell asleep by simply being held, and sometimes he fell asleep when I held him while bouncing on a yoga ball.

And again, now at two and half, he sleeps just fine on his own. And when we struggle with putting him to bed? It's because he's not tired and he's not ready to go to bed (though we are tired and ready for him to to bed). We're not the types to adhere to a strict schedule or who think that come hell or high water, the child needs to be in bed at 8pm - because on the days that he naps until 6pm, this would be stupid.

In lieu of advice, people also pass along the books that worked for them and their babies. (I admit my family and I do do this - but only after we realize that we have similar values and want similar things for our children. I've learned a lot from other who are also parents and love the library and research as much as I do.)

And sometimes they pass on books that really should be tossed in the trash.

The first one that falls into this category?

Yes, indeed. The What to Expect When You're Expecting series. I know. The second you tell anyone you're pregnant, you find yourself with three different copies from three different people. I did anyway. And every midwife I've ever talked to has told me to toss it. Mostly because the advice about breastfeeding is off. Also, I found it to be really negative, in that while it tells you a little about what is happening with your baby, it mostly tells you what can go wrong or what you will suffer from. You encounter women who do nothing but complain the entire ten months of their pregnancy and it is like they read this book cover to cover so they knew what to complain about when. The Baby Center website also follows this pattern: "Congratulations! You've reached the third trimester! Your baby is now the size of a watermelon and it feels like it. Things you can expect to suffer from the next ten weeks include retaining water, varicose veins, sleepless nights, memory loss, back pains, leg pains, foot pains, cramps, nausea, fatigue, an apathetic spouse, insatiable appetite but only able to eat a bite, kicks to your ribs, jerks on the bus who won't give up their seat, men who say you're fat, leaky breasts, sore breasts because they too are the size of watermelons, mood swings, wild cravings to clean your entire house in the dead of night..." You get the idea.

I had a teacher in high school who always said that attitude determines altitude. It was a common saying long before the film The Secret came out and told us essentially the same thing, that what we think determines the experience we'll have. Not that women who exercise and eat well don't still come down with gestational diabetes or what have you. But there is so much in our culture that treats pregnancy as a disease and tells pregnant women to be scared of everything (mostly because people are scared they'll get sued - I can't even take a yoga class without being told what not to do. Like hello? I have a belly the size of Rhode Island. Do I look like I'm at risk for twisting myself into a pretzel or standing on my head?), do we really need more? I'd rather live and enjoy my life and my pregnancy. If something arises that I need to deal with, whether it's a health issue or an issue with my baby, I'll deal with it then. Stressing out about potential issues isn't good for me or the baby.

The other is the BabyWise series. Steer clear of it. Most pediatricians agree it should be trashed. The AAP discredited it (I think) about ten years ago. At the time, babies were ending up with failure to thrive issues and women were complaining that they couldn't make enough milk (which is what happens if you breastfeed your baby on a schedule or every four hours). Some people claim it has since been massively revised and the author no longer claims to recommend only feeding a baby every four hours or other ideas in his original book. Still, a book that advises not to hold your baby because it's letting your child manipulate you? Well, I like Jane Nelson but when she said that I told her to pack it, and I say the same to BabyWise. But I say that to anything that tells mothers not to follow their instincts. There's a famous article about it, (albeit dated) here. I imagine it was this article, as well as being discredited by the AAP, that led the author to revise his book, but to my knowledge, the AAP has yet to reinstate it's support.

In general, I think part of becoming a parent is finding what resonates with you and what doesn't and a good chunk of it is listening to your baby and being connected enough to read your baby's cues. But it does help to have helpful and supportive resources when you need them.

Wordless Wednesday In Our Backyard

2011-05-11T19:28:00.000-07:00

Playground Etiquette: The Apology

2011-05-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

It's inevitable. Hang around on the playground (some of us spend a lot of time at the playground) and at some point, one child will bump into another, take a toy, push on the slide, or in some way will do something inappropriate to another child. A parent will rush over and demand, "Now say you're sorry."

I've done it.

And I have a pet peeve with apologies. When I was teaching, students would walk in late, it would disturb the entire class, the offending student would mutter "sorry" while looking at the floor, and we'd continue the lesson. Until one day, when I couldn't take it anymore and launched into a lesson about apologies, accountability and responsibility. Because to me, this kind of apology is useless. It isn't about apologizing for anything; it's about getting off the hook or out of trouble. The student who walks in late, apologizes to the entire class and me for disrupting the lesson and discussion, in my experience doesn't exist. Yes, the lame apology is common to children, teenagers and college students. And yes, I've been guilty of doing the same thing - especially in my teenager and college years. The other apology sin I committed often as a teenager? Saying sorry just to make the other person (my mother) shut up.

For years, while I was teaching and shortly after, I said often that I hated apologies, because they didn't do anything. People generally apologize when they find themselves in socially awkward situations. Or when they're actually being dismissive (ie "I'm sorry you feel that way.").

Somewhere along the way, our apologies have lost the accountability that goes along with them.

And somewhere along the way I changed my mind about hating them. I instead regretted that more people don't find value in them.

Sunday night, in a comment string on Dominique Browning's blog Slow Love Life, a reader lashed out at another reader. The lashing reader then apologized and somewhere along the way, everyone participating in the comment string ended up apologizing whether they needed to or not. At one point, one reader, said to not apologize. He gave the example of his grandmother who wrote him a letter telling him to never apologize, because it makes you look weak.

My tendency is to suggest that this kind of belief is more generational and cultural than insensitive- especially at the time when most of our grandparents were living and/or young and it was socially weird and awkward to talk about emotions or one's personal experiences or engage in any kind of interaction that might be confrontational in any way at all.

I couldn't help myself. I had to throw in my two cents (surprise surprise). I said something along the lines of that I have far more respect for people who apologize. And I don't mean people who merely say or mumble an "I'm sorry" to get themselves off the hook or out of trouble or to make the other person shut up (my poor mother I know...), but when people are accountable for their actions and the impact of those actions, I have far more respect for them.

To me, an apology isn't about shame or regret or being wrong or at fault - even if you were in the wrong or at fault. It's about being responsible and accountable for your actions and the repercussions of those actions. Just because you're the one apologizing doesn't mean you're a bad person. Generally, (I'd like to think) people have good intentions, and there's nothing about an apology that negates those apologies. Personally, I admire people like Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson, who years later in his book, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam admitted that he was "wrong, terribly wrong" for his actions that contributed to and escalated the Vietnam War. It demonstrated a self-awareness and personal reflection that we rarely see in politics. It was refreshing. And it's human. And in some cases, an honest authentic apology can be profoundly healing for those wounded.

So with children?

When I was questioned about not punishing my son or not giving him time-outs? I said, I think kids learn the most from their parents example. The person I was talking to said, "but that's unrealistic. It means parents have to be perfect all the time."

But I don't think so. Because parents aren't perfect (though I hate this word and think we need to redefine it when it comes to the world of parenting and children). How better to show your child that it's okay to make mistakes, apologize and try again? Honestly, I'd be scared to death of the parent who never apologized to their child. How does that child learn empathy or accountability?

And on the playground?

My son is 2 1/2. He's at the age that if he hurts someone, it's by accident. He's at the age that it's useless to demand he apologize without further explanation. So I replay the scene for him, that he was doing whatever he was doing, in doing so, he bumped or hurt someone by accident, but he should still say he was sorry even if it was an accident, because he needs to be responsible for his body.

I don't ever want to simply demand he say he's sorry. I don't ever want him to say he's sorry to get out of an awkward situation or off the hook or to make someone else (his mother - me) shut up. But I do want him to be aware that his actions have repercussions, whether he thought them through or not.

Because I think honest and real apologies are courageous.

Quitting: The Ideal Celebration of Mother's Day?

2011-05-09T05:50:00.000-07:00

Throughout the week last week, I encountered a new high of articles and emails about what to get mom for Mother's Day or suggestions from other moms on how to celebrate it. Some were nauseating and completely off base if only because they were the usual marketing shenanigans - my personal favorite being the email I got from the Brooklyn Children's Museum offering that if I didn't know how to celebrate Mother's Day, I should bring my family to the Brazilian dance fest at 10:30 in the morning at the Children's Museum. Because clearly what mothers everywhere want is to get up early and drag their families to places where they will be surrounded by hundreds of other people's children throwing their bodies around.

The irony of course is that my active dancing toddler son loves a dance fest and probably would have had a blast at such an event. I just don't think moms on Mother's Day should be out of their pajamas at 10:30am. I actually think that moms should be in bed with a good book and a mimosa on Mother's Day, but that's just me.

The suggestion I thought about the most for Mother's Day came from Lisa Belkin, the New York Times author of Motherlode: Adventures in Parenting blog. Her piece, "Why Moms Should Quit" suggests that this year for Mother's Day, moms around the world should stand up at their dinner tables and give their notice and declare the end to their infinite list of family chores.

At first reading her piece, I was appalled - not by what she was saying, but that she had to say it. I admit, I looked down on the women that would need to be told such a thing - and even, I'm sorry, but if you're a mom who does all the housework, seeping in resentment for your family - husband included - taking advantage of you, it's your own fault. And I only mean that you teach people how to treat you, so if you're raising your children to think you'll always be there to pick out their clothes and do their laundry, whose fault is it when they complain they have no clean clothes? Honestly, in this day and age? Are mothers really doing everything?

Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963. It is now 2011. Do we really need Belkin to write such a piece?

Given that her piece resulted in 73 comments, all of them fascinating in themselves as little microcosms of what people think the role of women and mothers should be, I quickly realized that yes, sadly, we do need Belkin to write such a piece.

Seriously. Read through the comments. When I did, I felt sad. It's like Betty Friedan and the Women's movement never existed. Or it did out in the world, but women forgot to bring it home, though you would think that while we were out bringing home the bacon, we'd stop to pick up a cleaning service on the way. And take out. Unless of course we had thought to marry someone who had already thought about and taken care of dinner.

And I realized what a gift I got from both my mom and step-mom, because I wasn't raised that women should do everything. Simply because women can't. Men can't either.

Which I think is why I find Belkin's piece so disturbing, that in almost fifty years after Friedan's wrote The Feminine Mystique our culture still links - without even thinking - motherhood to housework. That in our culture - and in many around the world - by definition, motherhood means laundry, making lunches, cleaning, scheduling play dates and all the rest. While the same culture expects rather little of fathers, as Michael Chabon points out in his book of essays, Manhood for Amateurs where he says that he just takes his kids to the store and strangers beam at him and tell him what a good father he is. The last time I took my son to the store and a stranger told me what a good mother I was? Never. But on the way to the store, when my son insisted on walking instead of sitting in his stroller, and I let him, and he then saw that he could climb an 18 inch high iron gate around a tree planted in the sidewalk, a stranger had no issue telling me I was the most irresponsible mother who ever lived, letting my child playing where clearly he could hurt himself or expose himself to germs she felt certain would cause the next bubonic plague. That my son is 2 1/2, as tall as kids a year older, has the physical strength and agility of some five year olds, and regularly climbs things far more daunting at the city's playgrounds was besides the point. But I digress.

Both my mom and step-mom worked. And in the case of my step-mom, she came home to four kids due to the combined nature of the family. Our parents raised us to be independent out of pure self-defense. I was eight, the oldest, while my brother, the youngest, was three when my dad and step-mom married. Nonetheless, Sunday evenings were spent with all of us at the dining room table making our week's worth of lunches that then went into the freezer with our initials marked in a sharpie on the outside of the plastic bags. When we were younger, my step-mom did the laundry, but we had to fold it, and it wasn't long before we did our own laundry. We even had our own sheets and towels, and it was our responsibility to keep them clean. We each got to pick out what we got to have for dinner, but that meant it was our night to help cook the meal. We had a rotating list of chores, whether it was cleaning the bathroom or sweeping the floors or washing windows or whatever.

My mom didn't have four kids in her combined household, still, by the time I was eight she had taught me basic cooking and baking skills - that didn't involve a box or mix. She had taught me basic chores at five. By the second grade, it was my responsibility to get myself to and from dance class (granted, that was the seventies - when kids could walk through neighborhoods without helicopter parent supervision).

It wasn't just about making the life of our parents easier. It was about raising us with the skills that we would need to be competent adults. It was about having pride in one's home. To me, this all seems common sense, so I am shocked when I talk to moms on the playground, when they say how their son loves to help them in the kitchen and they then shrug and say, "I guess he can help his wife make dinner."

Really? What about cooking for himself? Don't men need to eat before they get married, or do they just gain appetites after they say their vows? Is that the real reason receptions and buffets follow ceremonies?

I end up wondering if it would be rude of me to point out to the mom I am talking to that she is raising her son to be sexist. I don't actually point this out. I just say, "He'll have to cook for himself too..."

As a parent now, I see more than ever that catering to children doesn't teach them anything - that it actually only cripples them. I realized in reading Belkin's piece that I take this idea for granted. I have realized it before too, aside from playground interactions, when a friend complained about how much she hates making her kids' lunches. Her youngest was four. When I suggested that her kids were actually old enough to make their own lunches, with supervision of course, you would have thought I suggested she move to the moon. But why not include them? Why not teach them where lunches come from?

And given how many mothers do do everything and end up seeping with resentment, wouldn't it be better for one's entire family dynamic to from the get go just not do everything? I can't imagine it's much fun being a child or a spouse in a household where one parent is constantly bristling and resenting as s/he folds yet another pile of laundry.

My son has recently taken over feeding the dog. If my husband and I try to do it, Fyo will throw a tantrum. If he spills the dog food, like he did yesterday, he declares that he needs the broom. He then sweeps the food up and dumps it in the dog bowl. He thinks it's a game, but when he's done he beams, "I did it!" When he plays in the back yard, he insists he needs plastic bags so he can clean up the dog poo. Obviously we supervise this activity as well as the hand washing that follows, but as a pregnant woman I'm happy to let him clean the yard. If he's thirsty, he goes to the fridge for his favorite green juice. When I pour it in the cup, he then puts it away. He helps me unload the dishwasher - every time he hands me a dish to put in the cupboard he says "thank you." When my brother was three, he too unloaded the dishwasher, and to accommodate him, my parents moved all the dishes down to the lower cupboards. We don't have the lower cupboard space to follow suit, but if we did, we would (except for my very favorite dishes). He loves our kitchen appliances as much as I do - he insists on grinding our morning coffee in the grinder and blending our morning breakfast smoothie. He loves to put the clothes and soap in the washer and then the wet clothes in the dryer. The only thing my son is lousy at in this regard is folding laundry. He thinks stacks of folded clean clothes are like blocks and meant to be knocked over.

But so far, I don't think I'll need to be a mom who quits. Because I'm not a mom who feels she needs to do everything, and as a wife, I'm blessed with a husband who does a lot around the house. I'm blessed that we got married in our thirties - and that my husband spent a considerable number of years living alone and knows that he prefers a picked up house and well-prepared food - and that he thinks the investment in household help is a wise one. We each have things we'd rather do than wash floors (and yes, I realize that household help to many is a luxury).

In our house, we say often that things have to work for everyone. Everyone gets their needs met, but everyone contributes.

For Mother's Day, my husband did make me brunch, he did bring me flowers and he did give me a thoughtful gift of a vintage gorgeous nightgown. Sadly, he had to spend the afternoon away at a course he is taking, but I still have a rain check for what I really did want for Mother's day - a day spent alone in bed, with neither husband nor child, reading a book and drinking (decaf) coffee in my pajamas. It's the one indulgence I'm craving before second child arrives on the scene. Funny - none of the emails or things I read in anticipation of Mother's Day mentioned what I think most mother's want, aside from acknowledgement - and that is just a bit of quiet.

Amoskeag

2011-05-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

I had an essay recently published in Amoskeag, and this week, my contributor copies came in the mail. Thankfully, I got two of them, because Fyo quickly declared one of them his. I admit, I had never heard of Amoskeag - I just had a list of places to submit and I went through it alphabetically. When they accepted my essay, I then looked them up wondering if I had just been accepted into some undergraduate journal (I have a bad habit of quickly being suspicious of good news - must rewire this part of my brain immediately). Turns out I'm in the same journal as Donald Hall. That rocks.

You can read the journal and my piece here.

(Just for the record, while Fyo, above, read "his" upside down, I read mine right side up.)

Reading: My Favorites on the Parenting Nightstand

2011-05-05T10:58:00.000-07:00

Part of my pregnancy nesting habits includes doing vast amounts of research. Truth be told, I can't even really blame this on pregnancy. I just am one of those people who leaves the library with a dozen books at a time and researches everything. But in pregnancy and motherhood, my research and reading habits hit a new high. Partly because my husband and I had vastly different experiences in our childhoods (i.e. His parents never talked about sex. They popped a Focus on the Family tape into the car tape deck and considered their job done. My parents, on the other hand, talked about sex, religion and politics so often at the dinner table, we habitually had friends over as dinner guests so they could get the scoop on what no one else was talking about.) and partly because we're the types of people who spend a lot of time, thought, and energy on creating what experience we want, it made sense to make a list of the qualities we wanted in our parenting experience (mainly fun, play, and respect for every family member, not just the parents) and then explore the options. Now that I'm pregnant again, I'm revisiting my favorites.

Also, I was one of those kids who wrote in her journal incessantly, particularly when I was angry at my parents. Consequently, I have a series of journal entries throughout my childhood entitled, "Things I SWEAR I WILL NEVER do to my own children." You might say I had a promise to my younger self to keep. Not that my parents didn't have a lot of good ideas or things they did that worked. They did.

But there were also a lot rules that didn't make sense, a lot of times I got in trouble without understanding why or what I was supposed to do to behave, or a lot of times I was accused of being manipulative when I was just asking for what I needed or was just doing what kids do, and there were a lot of things that didn't work. At the time it felt unfair - that instead of being the given the tools to succeed, I was constantly getting in trouble or being accused of being difficult. Now as an adult, I can see the greatest thing about my own childhood is that it is a gift, in that because I don't revere the way I was raised, I essentially have a blank slate to work with in creating what kind of parent I want to be.

So I did - and do - a lot of reading. When I was recently asked for my reading list and I looked over the list of the books I had read, I got nervous. I was worried I would look neurotic. Then I realized I was neurotic and made my peace with it, and then just picked out the books I refer to the most and wish everyone had at their disposal. Granted, the ridiculous thing is that my guiding principle in child-rearing? I treat my child the way I want to be treated - with compassion and respect. Pretty simple really. Nonetheless, I have found the following immensely helpful and know that my good friends have to - as I've often followed their suggestions. And of course, if there are others please let me know! (I'm currently waiting for Alfie Kohn's Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason from the library. I can't wait!)

Parenting for a Peaceful World by Robin Grille

I think everyone should read this book – it’s by far my most favorite book and Grille is my personal hero. He goes into parenting practices of the past and explains the evolution of how one generation improves upon the other, and he does so in a way that is compassionate without placing blame on previous generations for child rearing ideas that now would be considered abusive or just plain whacko. He also links shifts in parenting to shifts in philosophy and world events (ie why the Holocaust started in Germany, not France or England). It's absolutely fascinating and eye opening. This is the book I cite when I get lectured on why I should teach my child to obey (because when the Nazis come to town, I want my kid to be the one speaking up, not following orders.)

You Are Your Child’s First Teacher: What Parents Can Do With and For Their Children From Birth to Age Six by Rahima Baldwin

I read this book when my son was two, and it’s the one book I wished I had read before he was born, if only because of her insistence that you trust your instincts and your connection to your child. It’s a fantastic reminder to just relax and BE with your child – rather than rushing them off to some overpriced nonsense that advertises to increase your child’s aptitude for music, math and the arts and have them reading by the time they are done with diapers.

Bright From the Start by Jill Stamm

I’m not one of those moms who wants her children reading by the time they turn three or is especially focused on future academic achievement. Mostly, I want to encourage my child’s natural curiosity and creativity, and Stamm offers the tools for this while also explaining developmentally what’s happening in the baby’s world. I find the more I understand the developmental phases, the easier it is to not take some of the difficult moments personally, since I know that whatever my child is doing is exactly the appropriate thing for him to be doing.

The Philosophical Baby by Alison Gopnik

I’ve long been a fan of Gopnik’s brother Adam and his New Yorker articles, but after this book by Alison Gopnik, I’d honestly do anything to be a guest or a fly on the wall at a Gopnik family Thanksgiving. Gopnik illustrates that babies are more conscious than we think they are, and even more conscious than adults are. They are busy little scientists and explorers, and while I was always in awe of my child, this book left me even more so – and just marveling at my son’s mind and in profound respect for his process.

NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman

Not necessarily a book that needs to be read before the arrival of baby, but definitely by the time a child enters pre-school. My husband teases me how I have my instincts about things, do a bunch of research until I find the people that agree with me, and then armed with their book in hand, I feel empowered enough to talk back to the people that suggest I’m off my rocker (my grandmother, an in-law or two or forty, etc). This is why I love Bronson and Merryman: they did all the research that I didn’t have to to know I’m making the right choices for my son (and baby to be). I have a huge pet peeve when adults accuse children, toddlers and even babies (!) of being manipulative or lying, (especially when kids are actually just asking to have their basic needs met), now I can confidently talk back and point out that they probably are – because they learned it from their parents. They also deal with why praising backfires, and why the evaluations for giftedness are actually off.

The Aware Baby by Aletha Solter

Awesome. Essentially a great book for how to raise children that are valued and respected, rather than controlled (ie finishing their meal for approval’s sake rather than satisfying their own appetite, doing homework to avoid getting in trouble rather than for their own pride in their work and love of learning, etc.)

The Politics of Breastfeeding by Gabrielle Palmer

I love this book even as Palmer gets on my nerves. She’s done an amazing amount of research and raises some really good points, mostly in pointing out why we in Western or more Industrialized countries have more issues with breastfeeding and it’s mostly because of the assumption that breastfeeding is time consuming and difficult and an inconvenience – an assumption that derives largely from advertisements from formula companies but now pervades society at large (as evidenced by the low rates of breastfeeding).

Palmer gets on my nerves only because she comes across as rather positional, and I have a hard time with it, even as I know formula companies have pulled some pretty evil stunts around the world and gotten away with it. Still, it’s a book I think all mothers, OB-GYNs, mothers, midwives, lactation consultants should read, if only to begin to get that to some degree the hardships new mothers face in breastfeeding are largely society’s psychosomatic disorder (not that actual issues don’t exist, but I continually found it fascinating that traditional societies have a fraction of our “common” issues.)

I Was A Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids: Reinventing Modern Motherhood by Trisha Ashworth

Necessary for every mother at whatever stage she’s in. It should automatically show up on baby registries for new parents or be handed out at birth. Moms/women end up on the receiving end of so much pressure and expectations from all directions, and Ashworth – while not offering her own stance of how we should raise our kids – deals with the pressure and expectations. It’s a refreshing read – one you want handy when you’re feeling overwhelmed, behind on laundry and maybe feeling guilty for ordering take-out again. Also for the valuable reminder: if you want to be a good nurturer for your bundle of joy, you have to nurture yourself first. (Because it's no fun being a martyr or having one as a parent (or in a marriage)).

The Baby Book: Everything you need to know about your baby from birth to age 2 by Dr. William Sears and Martha Sears, RN.

Necessary in life. A resource for everything. Also good for the very wise advice that should be stamped on bumper stickers all over the world: If you resent it, change it.

Positive Discipline by Jane Nelson (She has a whole series – for toddlers, the first three years, for pre-schoolers, teenagers, etc. She has yet to write one for family members, in-laws or grandparents though I wish she would because I could certainly use it.)

I’m reading this now as my son hits some of those tantrums that I know are largely because he feels disconnected or tired, but I don’t know what to do in the moment (you know those ones? “I want this. (flail) I don’t want this. (flail) I want this." etc) and Nelson has gotten us through and reaffirmed my husband’s and my choice to not “punish” our child or even give him a time out (though I had also read the research on how ineffective time outs are – and Nelson essentially explains why with reason, not with the statistics I had read earlier.) I don’t agree with everything she says (I think her perspective on breastfeeding is weird as are her ideas that a 4 month old can be spoiled or manipulative (see above), but overall, she’s got some good ideas. As always, take what works, chuck the rest.

What is Justice?

2011-05-03T09:44:00.000-07:00

If I was still teaching, this - and yesterday - would be one of those days when the planned topic and lesson would be tossed out the window, and we would instead talk about current events, but within a particular framework of course. I'd probably start by asking about justice, if only because since the news of Osama Bin Laden's death broke, it's been a term that has been thrown around amidst much celebration and flag waving. Yay for us Americans! We got him! (wave flag) Justice has been served! Go team!

And I'd ask students to write on the notion of justice, even while knowing it in itself justice is a word that upper level philosophy classes and seminars focus on as well as law school classes. It's a question that could start many a research paper, and I imagine if I was still teaching composition, I'd receive a whole lot of papers on justice and the death of Osama Bin Laden. I might even be tempted to write one.

If only so I could begin to reconcile the questions it has me go back and grapple with - what is justice? Has it been served? And if yes, now what? And what difference does the serving of justice make in this case? Wikipedia explains that understandings of justice differ in each culture, as cultures are dependent on a shared history and mythology and/or religion. And it goes on to say, that each culture's ethics create values which influence the notion of justice.

But I have to wonder - especially after yesterday - if we don't have some expectations linked to the notion of justice. I think of one of the last scenes of Sister Helen Prejean's Dead Man Walking. In the film based on the book, as Matthew Poncelet is executed, he tells the victim's parents that he hopes his death brings them peace. In the last scene of the film, as Prejean visits the victim's father, the father confesses that his death did not bring him peace - that he feels just as empty after the loss of his daughter.

Monday morning, my family woke up to the news reports of Bin Laden's death and the celebrations at Ground Zero, where people were cheering and popping champagne. A glance on facebook was the Internet equivalent - there was much God Bless America and our troops and thank God he's dead brouhaha. I found it sickening. It made my skin crawl. I felt like I do when I watch movies like Dead Man Walking where I see someone put to death. And of course, like everyone writing these kind of statements, I have to say that I didn't like the man, and obviously - even though assassinating him has questionable legal issues - killing him was the preferred way of capturing him - if only, as the New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin points out in "Killing Osama: Was it Legal?" what were we going to do, put him on trial? With who representing him? And who would? Let him represent himself? And how much would that cost in the security it would require?

No. I have no issue with his death, and even if the killing of him was illegal, it may be one of those necessary evils like so much within the operating of a military is.

It's the champagne popping. It's the celebrations. The skyrocketing of American flag sales at Ground Zero. The shouts of "justice was served" across the land that made my stomach ill, my skin crawling with unease and my heart wishing that I was once again an expat - and preferably an expat in France where in a pinch I can pass as a native.

I'm an NPR addict and can listen to the radio all day. I check facebook all day via the iPhone. But yesterday was a day that I had to turn the radio off, get my son and I out of the house for an all day excursion away from our beloved technology. At ten am EST, the shouts of "Justice was served" were slipping into propaganda, which especially makes me ill, and I didn't feel comfortable saying, Isn't it kind of twisted to rejoice over someone's death, even the death of an enemy? It was my own cowardice that sent me out of the house, I admit. I was too much of a chicken to be the one in the town square to stand up for the human dignity of the executed to be respected - or to be the first one on facebook to admit I wasn't celebrating. And if I had, I would have taken the easier route - of asking is this really what I want to teach my son? That this is how we end the show - by singing, Ding Dong the witch is dead? When someone hurts you, you shouldn't rest until he's dead?

In my own personal failings, I'm working on gaining the confidence to speak when my gut instincts are itching - and not like I did yesterday in the safe company of my husband and sister who happened to agree with me. By the time I went back to the Internet in the late afternoon, I sighed relief as I saw facebook posts, New Yorker blog posts and other parenting articles that felt what I did.

And this morning it seems the pendulum has swung the opposite way, that instead of champagne popping, people are now sharing a reluctance to partake of celebrations, with a lone voice or two saying, "But justice was served."

Yeah, so it was - as much as it could be, even as it is a necessary act for the overall good in the long term. But don't we have unrealistic expectations of justice? I mean, really, what is different about our lives now than two days ago?

Are we safer? No. Can we now meet people at the gate at the airport? No. Can we now say the military has been so effective it's made itself obsolete and we can now put those funds into education? No. Does it change that since 9/11 we've lost tens of thousands of lives? No. Or the ones that have fought and survived come home with such severe PTSD and depression they have a 50% chance of dying at home but by their own hand? No. Or that we've invaded two countries and left them no closer to safety or stability in terms of their government?

And is this what I'm supposed to tell my son when that 4 year old brat bully on the playground gets punched by a bigger kid, that justice was served? Or that he should deal with problem kids the way the government deals with its enemies? By engaging in assassinations that technically are illegal, but that Bush said were legal when it came to Bin Laden?

After yesterday, I'm starting to realize that "justice" is as much a created myth as "truth." So justice was served and Bin Laden is dead. But what again does "justice was served" mean? The Old Testament "eye for an eye"?

In the end last night, we turned the news off again. It was all more of the same, so that Husband finally asked, "What were they going to talk about today?" Husband got a new guitar that he doesn't actually know how to play. But Fyo and I watched him as he practiced in the living room, which took on the look of a coffeehouse.

By the time he was done, he had worked out the first few chords of "Chariots of Fire" and Corey Hart's "I Wear My Sunglasses at Night." Fyo and I played photo booth with the iPhone.

In the years to come, I imagine this week's death of Bin Laden will take on the significance of the Rosenberg Trials or Germany's Nuremberg's trials, and that it will be an event talked and written about at length, that Obama will get credit for it, much like Reagan got credit for the fall of the Berlin Wall and Communism. Obama may even get re-elected in its afterglow.

And if I was teaching this week, I don't know how I'd wrap up the class, or answer the meaning of serving justice. Only that it's something we do and that the notion of fairness is something wired into our brains. And even as I can see its necessity, it doesn't make me feel good. Or safer.

Royal Wedding Hype

2011-04-28T07:55:00.000-07:00

Yes, when I was seven years old, my sisters and I sat plastered to the TV watching Diana marry Charles. I don't remember getting up exceedingly early to do this. I suspect we watched the rerun version on the major networks. We absolutely loved it and spent years reenacting every detail in games of dress-up and pretend.

I love a lot of things about the Brits, like they do have the better flag, and tea time, Charlotte Bronte and Dickens, dang good fish and chips, Cadbury machines in the Metro stations, martinis and so on. They also have a frickin' lot of mushy peas with everything, and other than the fish and chips and any other menu item brought in by immigrants or citizens of former colonies, I can't say the Anglo-Saxon nations are exactly known for their food.

But they do have royalty, and we do not. I mean, that's kind of the point of America. We were founded on notions of religious freedom and being anti-royalty and anti - the accompanying class system (not that we were very successful on avoiding that last one). And while I know the Royal family has fallen out of favor with a good chunk of the British population, I can't say I have much of an opinion on them.

So as the Royal Wedding hype has circled around, from friends touting the Royal Wedding Blog, or other friends flying to London just for the event, or others saying they just don't give a damn, I've felt a bit like that a middle school pre-teen faced with peer pressure - is this a bandwagon I want to jump on?

I've hesitated, remaining curious, but not wanting to get swept away by the hype- as I sit with child, with a certain degree of anxiety of if it's a girl, how do I raise her and not get overwhelmed by all the pink and princess crap - it's even invaded Sesame Street. What if I can't find shoes that don't have glitter on them? Will I be like other moms of girls that I see on the playground, reading Peggy Orenstein's Cinderella Ate My Daughter on a park bench, while their pink sequined off-spring skips about with a tiara on her head and demanding some poor innocent boy child to be her frog? If I have a girl, how many princess dress-up costumes am I going to have to make?

I love fairy tales and mythology. Fairy tales with their happily ever endings and their dark under bellies of dungeons and histories were my first choice subject of study in grad school for English Lit, but I like these stories firmly between the two covers of a book. When they seep into the mentality of girls who think they don't have to work hard or push themselves intellectually because they'll simply marry well, or will just grow up to be a princess just like Kate did or grown single women who view themselves as "less than" simply because they haven't gotten married, I start to have a problem with fairy tales and princess endings.

While keeping in mind, that I loved watching the Royal Wedding of my childhood, and that a certain degree of make believe and pretend is fine and healthy, and even keeping in mind that I do love that the Queen always wears a hat and that she makes her own tea for tea time, I don't know how to reconcile these simple loves with the explosion of pink princess that has splattered into the socialization of little girls.

But Kate Middleton? I can't help it. I like her. And I love that this wedding isn't so fairy tale - that Kate and William have known each other and even lived together (gasp!) almost 8 years. Granted, once she marries, her primary goal is the same as every other woman who marries into the family and that is to reproduce (but at least her in-laws are honest about it. Many in-laws act nice when really they're just interested in your womb and its potential and how soon they'll see the fruition of that potential). Still.

So will I get up hours before sunrise to gallop into the city for an elaborate celebration in some fancy hotel with bunting and clotted cream and tea to watch the Royal Wedding?

No.

But when I do get up, will I enjoy the scones and clotted cream I made the day before and Google images for Kate Middleton's dress and flowers?

Abs-a-frickin-lutely.

Easter

2011-04-25T03:57:00.000-07:00

This week, my husband and I had our first discussion of how we should - or if we should - celebrate Easter. We've been married almost 6 years, but of course, this year is different because our son is now old enough to participate in Easter related activities. This in itself isn't a big deal. A couple weeks ago, I signed my 2 1/2 year old active explorer up for the neighborhood yearly Easter Egg hunt in Fort Greene park. He had a great time looking for eggs (I thought he would, which is why I signed him up) and even got his picture in the neighborhood paper.

The issue was more about what would we do at home. Before having children, we didn't celebrate Easter at all, except for one year when we stayed with my aunt shortly after my uncle's death and we all went to Easter morning Mass in his honor. Honestly, Easter is one of those holidays I love simply for the reason of its brunch potential. I also, I admit, love Easter baskets. I love them so much I wish my mother still sent me one. I don't even like candy. I just like the idea of a pretty basket full of small gifts inside.

It's my love of the Easter basket that had me assume, that while we would do nothing else for Easter, of course, we would color eggs, have Fyo search for them, and give him a non-candy oriented (aka sugar sensitive child friendly) Easter basket.

My husband disagreed.

"Easter? Why?" He demanded. "The commercial aspect doesn't resonate with us and the religious aspect doesn't resonate with us at all."

This is true. Of all the holidays in the Christian calendar, Easter is the hardest for us to wrap our heads around. I'm all for the Pagan origins of the celebration of the Spring Equinox (which is kind of how I was raised in my untraditional-question-everything-Liberal-Portland household) and love the idea of new beginnings and celebrating blooms emerging on tree branches after many months of being submerged under snow. It's the crucifixion of Christ for the sake of your sins that my husband and I have a hard time with.

I know. This is one of those things you aren't really supposed to admit in mixed company. And yes, I know, if I was a member of the Puritan clan on the Mayflower, my disbelief in this seemingly minor detail that actually is fundamental to all of Christianity would have me condemned as a witch or heretic and I'd be burned at the stake, drowned, or beaten with stones like Asian village laundry. But really, the whole died for our sins thing, I can’t even begin to grasp the interpretation.

Not that it matters, I wasn’t raised in a church going family, and while my husband was, he is like many friends of ours where they don’t identify with the religion they were raised with. Still, even as living as secularists, it can be a challenge to not bump our heads on the origins of holidays, and to question our celebration of it.

And Husband is right, we’re not the types to trade in the religious significance for the commercial aspect, especially when it entails loads of cheap hydrogenated palm oily cancer causing sugared treats. And it can be hard to ignore the holiday all together. And do we really want to, given its brunch potential? And given that it could actually be warm enough for some quality time outside searching for eggs or just playing in the yard while enjoying good food? And honestly, I love holidays. I love celebrating and I love doing things to get ready for them.

So what did I say to my husband? Simply, that I thought it would be fun to color Easter Eggs with Fyo and I think it will continue to be in years to come, even all the potential there is now in terms of coloring Easter Eggs (did you know that Martha Stewart alone has 43 pages of ideas of how to color eggs?). I even think it could pass as educational in a pre-schooler elementary home-school chemistry kind of way.

Husband agreed. “Oh,” he said, as if he had never encountered the notion of coloring eggs before, “it would be fun.”
I realized we do this with all the holidays. That most the holidays on the calendar have origins in things I don’t necessarily believe in. Columbus Day has been used to celebrate and promote such patriotic ideals as supporting war, the importance of the loyalty to the nation and celebrating social progress, though the arrival of Columbus essentially resulted in the European colonization of continent and the death of 99% of the indigenous population either through wars or diseases. Not that we do much to celebrate the holiday, other than marvel at the skewed US history that gets fed to school children in the production of Columbus Day plays. Thanksgiving is seemingly benign as it essentially celebrates a bountiful harvest at the end of the growing season, but again, it’s the mythology around it that we celebrate in elementary schools when we depict the Indians and the Pilgrims having a potluck, and the Indians teaching white people how to fish and grow corn. Right before, the white people killed them all of course. July 4^th again, is a great excuse for picnics and barbecues, but yearly I get turned off by how it gets spun into the patriotic-why-we’re-so-superior-brouhaha.

Near as I can tell, the best way to reconcile myself to all these holidays is to stay focused on the food – the brunch potential, and the enjoyment of partaking of such feasts in the lovely lively company of friends. You know, as the Bible says, “Eat, drink, and be merry.”
Easter morning? We colored eggs and made bread pudding. I even made fresh challah (a nod to Passover in the name of religious diversity) the day before for the cream soaked dessert-y tasting lush brunch we enjoyed. My husband and son worked in the yard on our raised beds, so we can plant our garden. Over brunch with friends, we got tips for gardening in Brooklyn, in our yard, with our amount of light, the things that grew the best and so on. We stayed focused on the aspect of the holiday that does resonate with us, the one of new beginnings, of potential, the opportunity in all things growing.

Spring!

2011-04-19T18:54:00.000-07:00

When Husband and I were living at the equator and in the tropics, the thing we missed the most were the seasons. When the weather is essentially the same everyday and the sun rises and sets at the same time everyday, it starts to grate on you. At least it did on us. We found it oddly disconcerting and noticed that we'd forget a month had gone by, just because all the days were the same.

In December, we moved to New York, just in time for the very beginning of the Winter season. When we got off the plane at 5 in the morning, and stood outside waiting for a cab, the weather was all of 19 degrees Fahrenheit. By the time we got a cab, I had a long list of things to knit before next Winter.

Still, we loved the snow, that quiet that descends when it falls, and that feeling of magic, when you wake up early to see everything white - before anyone has gone outside to walk their dog or plow a street. It's still one of my favorite moments in life to look out the window after a snow storm or blizzard.

While New Yorkers around us complained about the weather, Husband and I glowed, layered in sweaters, wool socks and boots. We soon noticed that New Yorkers didn't really appreciate our appreciation of the weather, and that we were better off keeping our seasonal jubilation to ourselves.

Then on March 1st, I decided I was done with Winter. I was ready for Spring. I planted vegetable seeds in pots along our indoor windowsill for our outdoor summer raised beds. I started knitting baby sweaters. I started writing new stories. And I started baking. I thought I was celebrating Spring and all it represented in new beginnings: a new home in a new city, new projects, new recipes to try, new libraries and museums to explore, a new baby on the way...

Really, my husband pointed out, it was just pregnancy nesting hormones finally kicking in. It took the weather six weeks to catch up with my declaration of Spring's arrival. But this week, all the trees look like this:

The weather is still getting used to the idea - I moved some of my seeds outside a tad too early and they drowned in a rainstorm or two. But we've had some gorgeous days. On one of them, we drove up to Beacon to see the Richard Serra sculptures at the Dia: Beacon museum. My son found the weather too enchanting to be inside, however, so he and I spent some time outside watching trains go by.

My Aunt Cleo Retires

2011-04-19T18:25:00.000-07:00

Thanks to my cousin Kevan, our self-declared family chronologer and geneologist, who keeps us in the loop on important happenings in the family, we were able to follow the events around Aunt Cleo's retirement, from her utter dread (she wanted to drop dead in the middle of her job, as Kevan said, her hair perfectly done, her scarf just so, and of course, in her signature 5-inch heels) (I think actually once Cleo hit 85 her heel height dropped three inches) to her gradual acceptance and welcoming of a new chapter of her life opening up.

No one in our family actually thought Cleo would retire. We did think she would die doing something she absolutely loved, and even the joke went around the family that we would all know Hell had frozen over the day Cleo retired.

Alas, worry about the future of your soul no more. Hell has frozen over. Cleo has retired and is taking a day off. After 73 years. Her parting gift from Macy's? A framed copy of her application from when she was sixteen, and a framed copy of her letter of recommendation from her grandfather, Joseph Hutchinson.

There are many ways that Cleo is an icon in our family: her red hair, her heels, her short skirts, her refusal to discuss her age. Some have thought she was a bit childish to not want to talk about her age, but I have to say as I grow older, I totally get it. That if you're doing what you love and have a life you love, your age doesn't matter and it doesn't describe who you are - especially if you can pull off a mini skirt and heels. Her age has never been relevant to who she is. Just an example, ten years ago at a family wedding, we all danced until one in the morning, and Cleo was the last one standing. She had danced us all under the table.

I also admire her because she is unabashedly herself and always has been. When I graduated from high school, she pulled me aside to give me her view of life: your hair could never be too red (and my natural red could use some highlighting, she pointed out in her way), too thin, or too rich. She also told me, that those who got me, got me, and those who didn't didn't and to forget the rest. At Fyo's baby shower, she came up to me with tears in her eyes and said honestly, "For the life of me, I can't remember your son's first name, but I love that his middle name [Harrison] was my dad's. It's so beautiful." And then she turned around and flirted with my husband.

She's also an icon as she is a rare bird of her generation, in that she didn't see what she wanted, so she blazed her own trail and created her own position.

Style and wardrobe consultants that are all the rage these days? Yeah, she invented that. And she did it in Portland, Oregon, which isn't exactly known for its fashion. We should all be grateful for her services and should even consider her a public servant given the usual fashion in Portland. The Oregonian wrote a fantastic article on her, click here for the ariticle on the woman who was so determined to wear silk through the Depression, that she got herself a job (she was never one to let circumstances like an economic slump to get in her way.)

I think we should all be so lucky, to have something we love doing so much, that we never want to quit. What a gift of a life-

Pre-School In New York

2011-04-14T05:06:00.000-07:00

http://www.slate.com/id/2288402/Even before I moved to New York, I had heard about over the top the search for pre-school is in New York and the lengths that parents go to in order to ensure the future of their child's education, whether it's giving their 3-4 year olds IQ tests or just the number of applications one has to fill out and the inevitably of waiting lists. I admit, when I heard that mothers were putting their unborn children on their child's potential school's waiting list, I thought they were exaggerating.

It turns out they weren't exaggerating.

We moved into our house in Fort Greene, Brooklyn on the first of February. I immediately started researching pre-schools in our area, having heard that it was not something to wait until the last minute for. I quickly found - by the middle of February - I had missed all the deadlines for Fall 2011 pre-school classes for 3 year olds (or those almost 3). I protested at the school I had found I considered completely ideal, but the coordinator insisted that she had already made the roster for Fall. She left me standing and stammering in the hallway, "But this pre-school, not early admission for the Ivy League's."

I have since joked that I'm just going to enroll my child into Columbia University in Manhattan, that I think it would be easier. I have been told, that actually, it would be.

But the obstacles to my son's potential Fall pre-school education had me start thinking. I'm not one of those parents who has a house full of Leap Frog DVDs, so my infant could learn the alphabet and numbers (in English and French and Spanish). We have loads of books and read to him a lot, but we don't push the alphabet or intend him to read by the time he's three. In general, I think there is something bizarre about Americans that push their kids to read by the time they're three, but don't toilet train them until four.

And my son - from interactions with us, other kids, and as we go around the city - picks this stuff up. He's learned letters and numbers from the subway trains. I started to realize that I shouldn't even worry about it. That honestly, he's learning things on his time line, and honestly, I want him to play and interact with kids. I started to realize that in his education in general, I want him to learn how to learn, what his interests are, what his process is, and that he can learn just as much from himself as the mentors he finds in life.

I started to relax about whether or not he'd be in Montessori, Waldorf, or the school down the street that's based on the philosophy of Gandhi. And I started to realize those schools aren't really for us anyway, that ideally, we wanted a school that was 3 hours a day. For us, five days a week, from 9 - 3 seems like too much school for our child and our family - and given we don't need the childcare, we were hoping to find a school that had hours closer to what we envisioned. Brooklyn Waldorf is the only one, and it looks fantastic, but it breaks down to $30 an hour for pre-school.

I'd rather save the money and just stick him in a play group.

And then this article from Slate. It sealed the deal. I no longer feel any pressure to engage in the bizarre conversation around pre-school in New York. I'm now busy - taking my kid to the park.

Self-Soothing

2011-04-13T03:33:00.000-07:00

I was recently in the midst of a conversation with a friend where we were talking about a variety of things related to parenting - co-sleeping, baby/child sleep in general, setting boundaries, indulgent parents who don't, strict "discipline" vs talking to children about consequences - the whole spectrum.
While we were in the sleep portion of our conversation, my friend said something along the lines of that children at some point need to learn to sleep on their own and to self-soothe. This we've all heard a million times before - that it's important for children to learn to self-soothe and to put themselves to sleep. It's one of those things that permeated my own childhood, that generations of parents have just assumed to be true without ever questioning it.

In the conversation with my friend, I even agreed to a certain extent with, "Sure kids need to learn to self-soothe, but why not let them do it on their time line, instead of the parents forcing them to learn on the parents' time line?" (meaning when parents let their kids cry it out or send them to their rooms with their "negative" emotions). But as soon as I said it, it didn't feel right. I even immediately wondered if I had said it just so my friend didn't think I had gone entirely off the deep end - as I am kind of known for questioning everything when it comes to parenting, and my friend and I - while we adore each other - are very different parents with very different circumstances and lives and I sometimes do wonder if she thinks I have already gone off the deep end.

Nonetheless, I caught myself afterward, repeatedly thinking, "Really? Kids need to self-soothe? And is that what we are really teaching them when we put them to bed by themselves or letting them cry alone in the dark?" I even wondered if there had been studies done on if children had actually learned to self-soothe - and doubted it, given how many teen-agers "self-soothe" by drinking, drugs, stealing a credit card and maxing it out, cutting themselves, binging and purging etc. Then I even considered that if I had the credentials of a child psychologist or pediatrician, I might suggest or assert that most issues that crop up in the teen age years stem from NOT having successfully learned to self-soothe. And that when kids are left alone to deal with their feelings - or their fears - I suspect what they are actually learning is that it's not okay to have those feelings or fears. Or that they can have them, but those around them aren't interested in them.

Whether they do or not, what I came back to is that while -as an adult - I am able to comfort myself in a myriad of ways - usually by writing in my journal, walking or yoga, a hot bath - and the ways I comfort myself are pretty much the same as when I was a teenager, my favorite place to comfort myself is in conversation with someone I trust, and isn't that what I really want to teach my children? To talk things through with someone they trust and respect? And when they do this, doesn't this have them learn to be comfortable with their feelings and working through things, so that they are better able to comfort themselves when no one is available?

My son is two and a half, and at the age when his emotions can become a lot for all of us to deal with, but we've been talking a lot about emotions, when he's scared, when people get angry, when people cry because they're sad or frustrated, and when people are happy or affectionate. More often than not, when a kid is mean to him on the playground (sadly, we've already encountered bullies), my son balls up his fists, stomps, says he's angry, and then he's done. That's his "tantrum" or reaction. Then we talk about it, and dealing with what it feels like when people are mean, and that generally, when they are, it has nothing to do with us personally and so on.

It has been in these conversations, though, that I've come to realize that I really do think parents and culturally, we expect children to self-soothe far too young and that it's not because we think they need to comfort themselves, but more often because we're uncomfortable or don't like the emotions they're experiencing - which is typical of people who were taught it's not okay to have negative emotions (or any for that matter). Just like babies and children don't necessarily need to "learn" how to go to sleep (given that it is human instinct), children will learn what comforts them as they grow up. But in the meantime, it's just as important for them to learn to talk about their feelings and experiences and what's bothering them.

This Week in Education

2011-04-08T09:18:00.000-07:00

This week started out with the release of School Chancellor Cathie Black's approval ratings - which hovered around the astonishing rate of 17%. Mayor Bloomberg's response? The approval ratings don't matter or reflect what is important in the schools - that what matters is that people are moving into the NYC school system instead of out of it like they were ten years ago. I don't know what people he's talking about - I meet a lot of people who are actually moving out of NYC because they don't want to send their kids to NYC's public schools. I love living in Brooklyn, but my husband and I agree that our children will not see the inside of the public school building.

And when I heard Bloomberg's response to the approval ratings, I thought, oh crap, that man is firmly entrenched in denial and there is really no hope of him ever getting a clue.

Lo and behold, yesterday, when NPR's regularly scheduled programming was interrupted for the resignation of Cathie Black. My husband sent me a text message: "Black was fired! Happy Birthday!"

I was surprised as anybody that Bloomberg actually got a clue. I still think there were better ways of handling it, but I'm glad he didn't follow in George Bush's example of making a mistake and stubbornly sticking by it. I agree with one commentator (sorry - I didn't catch which one otherwise I'd post the link) who pointed out that Bloomberg missed a valuable opportunity for an educational moment for school kids across the country - that adults make mistakes, and it's best to take responsibility for it and even ask for help in moving forward. Instead of making Dennis Walcott (who also needs an exception and consequently can't start immediately) School Chancellor, Walcott should be the interium, while Bloomberg asked for everyone's help in conducting a nation wide search for the right candidate for the largest school district in the nation, and that local home grown Walcott stood a good chance for the job.

Walcott is profoundly more qualified than Black. Though, let's be honest, it wouldn't take much to have more qualifications than - nothing. I do hope he's able to make a difference for public school kids, teachers, and parents.

However, we're still not sending our kids to public school. For a variety of reasons. That would take up a whole other series of blog posts.

Where we would send our kids to public school, however, is in Finland. I have long idealized the Scandinavian notions of education (it's mostly Steiner/Waldorf & Montessori oriented), but this article in Time again makes me wish for dual citizenship with Finland. I don't know that what has Finland succeed in education would work in the states. While in theory we have rather democratic notions and would like to think of ourselves as ingrained in the ideas of equality, spend a little time on the playground - or applying to pre-school or pre-K programs in New York where you have to prove why your child would make more of worthwhile contribution to the potential pre-school class over someone else's kid - and it doesn't take long to realize that we are almost as obsessed about our kids getting ahead of their classmates as the Chinese.

My Messy Day

2011-04-06T03:54:00.000-07:00

This is my dog, whom I took to the park with Fyo for morning off leash time. For reasons only known to her, she rested and played in one whopper of a mud puddle. (Yes, Beth Hayden, I thought of YOU and how glad you would be you gave us this lovely, sweet pup.)

I told Sis that Finn looked like one of those shortbread cookies that is partially dipped in chocolate. Except that Finn smelled far worse. Far, far, worse. I think she rolled in compost. I'm not sure. But she smelled like a pig sty and, after having spent time in Bali, this city girl knows what that smells like.

But oh, the fun she had. Luxuriating in her own spa mud treatment.

I'm not quite sure how I got her in the house without getting mud everywhere. But I did. And I got her into the tub. Lucky for me -as a 6 1/2 month pregnant woman- she doesn't mind bathes. (When I was seven months pregnant with Fyo, I had to wrestle Zoe into a bath and it was rather un-kosher behavior for a pregnant woman. We both ended up on our tailbones.)

However, it took so long to bathe her, Fyo and I had to break for tea.

And you know of course, before we finished, she jumped out of the tub, and shook her filthy soapy self all over the bathroom.

Oh, Finn. You are lucky I love you.

In the afternoon, I had promised Kent I would make him chocolate chip cookies (it is his birthday month after all). We mixed the dry ingredients first, as Ghiradelli directed (because the recipe on the back of the Ghiradelli bag is the best recipe). Fyo then mixed and stirred the dry ingredients. He sifted and re-sifted. Then he created stacks of flour on the counter. He was having so much fun playing with the flour, that I didn't bother to stop him. But when it came time to add the flour, I had to measure new flour from the bin - as the one we had measured was evenly divided between the bowl, the counter and the floor. Halfway through his flour play, Fyo asked to take off his shirt. Not long after, the doorbell rang. We went to see who it was just as I noticed the state that Fyo was in.

He had a fine dusting of flour from head to toe, front to back. And at the door? The UPS man. The UPS man has this knack. The first time he met us and delivered a package to us, Fyo had discovered his love of green juice (the juice full of vegetables like broccoli & spinach, apples, chlorophyll, spiralina, blue green algae, barley grass, wheat grass - things that are amazing for you except that they most likely taste disgusting - except to my kid who loves the stuff), So Fyo's entire face was green from his juice. Fyo loves the mail man and the UPS man, so he always runs to meet them. The next day, the UPS man came, and Fyo had been playing in the back yard, so he was covered in dirt. The UPS man said, "He was dirty yesterday too."

Yes, yes, he was.

Sure enough, on our messy day, Fyo greeted the UPS man half-naked and completely covered in flour and the UPS man just laughed and laughed and laughed. He said, "Your kid's cute, but he's always dirty."

Good thing he didn't see my dog.

Fortune Cooke on Education

2011-03-29T09:27:00.000-07:00

I'm working at my sister's house. She sits at her table by the window in her studio, while I sit at her dining room table in the other room, and we can each work on our own thing, but together. Sometimes, we take a break for a few seconds and chat.

Just now, she came over to her dining room table, picked up a fortune cookie from her lunch out the other day, and ate the fortune cookie. She read her fortune:

"The aim of education is to teach us how to think, not what to think."

Yes. Exactly.

Now if the fortune cookie could just convey its wisdom to President Obama, Arne Duncan, Mayor Bloomberg, Cathie Black...

How do you know Easter is around the corner in our neighborhood?

2011-03-18T07:50:00.000-07:00

Because Jesus has risen in the neighbor's window box.

Rascally Oregonian

2011-03-17T11:09:00.000-07:00

I can't explain why - insomnia most likely - but I was up late one night googling my own name, not because I'm vain, but to see if my name did indeed lead to my blog or other lovely things I had written.

In the process, I discovered that one day last September, while I was staying with my grandmother who is completely blind but continues to receive the newspaper nonetheless, I read the headline article about education in Oregon and had one of those days where I couldn't think straight until I had fired off a letter to the Editor.

I thought it was rather a good letter, if only because it was laconic for someone who tends to be a bit wordy and ranty. But I didn't hear from the Oregonian about publishing my letter. I admit I was a bit wee disappointed and maybe even placed a small hex on them.

Turns out - as I learned the other night - the rascals at the Oregonian did publish my letter. They just didn't call me. Jerks. As it's not like I can post it all over facebook or brag about it now. I mean it'd be silly, like hey, I made a really good smart point FIVE months ago...

But I'm posting the link anyway. Because it relates to education and some of the issues I'm coming up against now as I try to plan my son's education or at the very least get him into a decent pre-school this fall. Given the state of New York's schools, I can't say he'll be attending any of the public variety. My husband and I may have to get creative, as we don't really want him to be a good "worker"; we want him to be a good thinker, to be creative, to learn how to learn and what his interests are.

And I still like my letter. One of the responses is a little bizarre; I, of course, like the one that starts "Great letter..."

The Importance of Being Measured

2011-03-07T04:29:00.000-08:00

Seth Godin asks if something is important because it's measured, or is measured because it's important?

It's one of those chicken/egg type of questions.

He continues, are we giving weight to things merely because we've measured them?

I fell asleep last night thinking about how much of this applies to education reform (especially those with business minds like Mayor Bloomberg), student's performance, the potential of children, teachers' ability to not just educate but leave their students with their curiosity intact and a love of learning.

How do we measure artistic ability? By how realistic the art is? But some studies show the more realistic the art, the less imaginative the mind. Picasso mastered realistic art by his teen years, but spent the rest of his life trying to attain the level of creativity he had as a three year old.

How do we measure ability in math? By how many problems you get right in a specific period of time? What if a student attempts the more difficult problems and gets fewer done? What if a student gets problems wrong, but understands how to apply the problem solving skills in the world at large?

Or English? By the ability to say something predictable well (which can be boring. As a former English Prof let me tell you...)? Or the student that says something that's well reasoned, intelligent, a new perspective on an old topic, but with atrocious grammar?

And how do we measure the student's ability to make connections between all the various subjects in addition to the aspects of knowledge we expect people to know out in the world but don't include in any school curriculum?

And because we can measure some things, does that make them more important? And the things we can't measure not important? Can we measure how much that limits the potential of what's possible in the world?

Do We Exaggerate the Joys of Parenting?

2011-03-06T03:57:00.000-08:00

I admit, I'm a distracted sort. One who sometimes gets more done without an Internet connection. I even know this about myself, and try to limit distractions. I love facebook, but know that while it keeps me connected to people I've met while living everywhere, it can also largely be a time waster.

But sometimes I see things there that I have to respond to, in which case, I rationalize, makes facebook much like NPR or the newspaper when I can't start my day until I've written a letter to the editor to give him a piece of my mind.

Today, it's this article from Time, on how raising kids makes us all delusional, or at the very least we over exaggerate the joys and satisfactions of parenting. Its theory comes out of cognitive-dissonance theory, and the idea that the more things suck, we have to pretend like they don't. The whole thing simultaneously rubs me the wrong way and gets me thinking, so that I wonder if it's perception. Mostly, I hear people exaggerate the horrors and hardships of parenting. I rarely hear - sadly - people talk about how much they love parenting.

There's no denying that one's plate gets considerably bigger when a child is born. Yes, you sleep less. And I say this as someone who slept a lot after my son was born. For the first year of my son's life, we wondered what people were talking about or why they were all asking if we were sleeping. We'd point out that babies sleep 18 hours a day - if you can't work out a 2 hour nap or a shower during those 18 hours, your priorities are off. But we co-slept - getting up to nurse baby in the middle of the night simply meant rolling over without fully waking up.

No, no. I sleep less now that he's a toddler. And admittedly, I sleep less only because I get up early to write and get work done. And I admit, Husband and I sometimes miss the days when we slept in until 9 or 10. Last week, Husband took Fyo out for an outing. I crawled into bed for a nap, and as I did so, it occurred to me that I didn't remember the last time I had been in bed alone, without husband or child.

And yes, there's more to manage with a child and everything takes longer, from getting out the door to preparing a meal. A forty-five minute subway ride is still forty-five minutes, but with a child you have to allow at least an hour. And while I love love love my collection of vintage handbags, I don't know when I will ever use them again, simply because I can't leave the house without an array of snacks, water bottles, an extra pair of pants, a book or two, and a collection of small cars. Yes, there are diapers and runny noses. Yes, you will have to toilet train your child at some point and inevitably, will have to clean up wet pants. (But if we end up caring for elderly family members, we run the risk of having to do this for them too.)

But the nightmares of screaming fits or wars over bedtime? You hear a lot about these aspects of parenting. I think these aspects, though, stem more from parenting styles, and expectations of what is normal or how one is supposed to raise a child. Some of this is to be expected - many of us were raised this way, and so many assume it's just how parenting is done. As my dad said of his own parenting, that while he hated how he was raised, it didn't occur to him he could do it differently (until he thankfully met my step-mom).

Husband and I recently had dinner with a friend who admitted he and his wife were in such a "war" with their daughter over bedtime. As he summed up, the daughter wouldn't stay in her bed, and eventually it became a game, which sent his wife to the point of proving that she was the one in control and this led to his wife locking their daughter in her room. This sent the daughter into a (nightly) forty-five minute tantrum of crying that (of course) woke up her baby sister, and the next night, (predictably) the daughter didn't want to get ready for or go to bed.

Well, why would she?

Our friend admitted the whole thing wasn't working. He asked what we do. How do we get our child to bed without crying?

Well. Huh. I admit, I think the whole expectation that a child as young as 2 (or 6 months or even as old as 3) should be able to be tucked alone into bed with a kiss on the cheek and expected to fall asleep quietly while the rest of the house is up is unrealistic. The dark is scary for kids and being alone can be scary for kids. And sometimes - depending on any number of variables - the kid might not be ready for bed at the prescribed bed time. In my view, whether a child goes to sleep at 8:00 or 8:15 or 8:30 - is it really worth a power struggle? Who cares?

The tired parent who has been fighting with a child all day and needs a break at whatever the cost is who.

So, I said, we have a different view of parenting, that rather than the "us vs. them" mentality (which gives families the air of constantly being in civil war, ie we're a family divided into sides constantly trying to overpower the other side) we approach parenting like a partnership, like we're a family, so how can we make it work for everyone? We just noticed that the times when we try to overpower our toddler (generally when we're tired and have to get somewhere) are the times that end up in tantrums, and I get it - because toddlers (like the rest of us) are exploring being independent and want to feel in control of their environment. If we take away the dynamic of a power struggle, then there's little for our son to resist. We rarely tell him what to do. We ask him. (I admit. I'm still recovering from my childhood. We parent him the way we want to be treated and the way I wish I was raised.)

Our friend's response: "But if you take away the card of the power struggle, the kids always have another card."

We love our friends, we love their children, and we know they love and adore their children and are absolutely committed to them. Still, like after reading this Time article, we walked home wondering not so much about them as parents, but about this mentality that raising a child is war and all the little details are battles to be won or lost, or that every single thing is a power struggle and we wondered, if this is your idea of raising a child, why would you want one? Or why would you go to extreme lengths - like people we know - of paying the equivalent of a house for multiple attempts at in vitro, when as soon as the child is born, it is going to be your opponent in life, always out to thwart and manipulate you?

So to some extent, the article makes a valid point: people feel compelled to have children and they have them, and many of them do not explore why they want them. They don't consider the costs financially or in time or in energy. There are things that people don't think about before they have children. Most people actually don't comprehend that when they want a baby, that the will baby will grow up. Or that the baby will learn to climb - or as my son did last week, shove everything he can get his hands on into the toaster oven and set the whole thing on fire. He's not yet 2 1/2. At some point, I imagine the baby grows up into a smart aleck-y sort (if he follows his mother's example) and will probably tell me that I've utterly lost my mind and he's going to put me in a home.

I sometimes make fun of the people who didn't think about what having kids meant. I have a category of "Things you should have thought about before you had children." A woman on the playground told me of her battle with her kids - they wanted to do creative art projects that created messes and she hated the mess. She was trying to discourage me from continuing the homemade play dough and finger painting efforts I had recently done with my son when the weather got too cold to go outside.
"It makes such a mess," She said. "Save it for Montessori."
I laughed it off and said, "Childhood is messy. It's how they learn. I don't mind." But in my mind, I thought, "You hate messes and you have three children? Did you not think about this before you conceived them?

On more than one occasion, Husband and I have left an interaction with fellow parents, and wondered why they procreated. Or when a fellow couple admits that they are thinking about having a third, and I'm tempted to point out that they don't like the children they have.

Parenting can be hard. Biology knows this. It's why we have hormones like Oxytocin that give us that happy blissed out feeling and has us fall head over heels in love with these little creatures. And we mommies get a shot of oxytocin not just when we nurse our babies, but a little when we just look at them too.

And I admit, while comparatively, my husband and I have less challenges than some parents in child rearing, there have been things that I have been grateful for on a daily basis: that we have a strong marriage with good communication and we try to see things from the other's point of view, that we had a good solid three years of marriage before having children so our child came into a family with a strong foundation, that we waited until we were both ready and our child was 100% consciously conceived (because when I get tired or it gets hard, I remind myself, I chose this, and I chose it with my eyes open.) I'm grateful my husband doesn't mind that I tend to go over the deep end and research everything, and when I come to a conclusion about whatever - vaccines, pre-schools, nutrition, toys, my husband backs me up, trusting that I've done the research and have thought things through. And I'm grateful we have the ability to talk about all of it, and that we've put a lot of thought into what we want for our children, and how we want to raise them - and there's no aspect of our parenting that we do as knee jerk reaction (or on the rare occasions there are, we apologize to our son) or simply because our parents did something.

But for the point that parents end up finding the time spent with their child disappointing and less satisfying than doing other things? Several have pointed out that this is the selfish point that underlies the entire article, that it's selfish of parents to want rewards, when parenting is all about the child.

It is and it's not. We heard this constantly after son was born, that life was no longer about us anymore. It was about our child. But I disagreed with it then, and I do now. We have another's needs to meet, but this doesn't mean ours fall by the wayside. If I'm breastfeeding and I don't eat, I can't meet my son's needs. Even if I'm not breastfeeding, if my blood sugar is through the floor, I can't see straight let alone parent a child. If I don't do the things that nurture me (reading, hot bathes, walks outside, writing, daily journal time, time with my husband etc) I can't nurture another human being.

I will say the article has a very limited view of how he views satisfaction and rewards. Human beings are complex and multi-dimensional creatures. No one thing can fully satisfy us or give us all the rewards we need. For me, when I finish a story or essay, there's no better feeling than the satisfaction I feel, but yet I can't compare it to when my son sees me, squeals, and runs towards me with open arms, or when we have conversations on the subway and make each other crack up or when we spend an hour in bed reading every book we just got from the library three times. Just like I can't compare the connection I have with my husband with the connection I have with my son. They are completely different and they meet different needs. If they weren't and didn't, it'd be whacked.

And I don't think one need should replace the other. Writing became much more a necessity for me after my son was born. Before he was born, I had five months off when I didn't have to work; I had all day every day to revise my novel. I spent the five months banging my head on my desk and frustrated. Since he was born, however, I've gotten more stories and essays finished and revised and just more done. The gift of parenting for me has been that I've had to focus and prioritize my time - and my life - in a way I didn't before. My husband too. As parents, we're role models, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let my son see us living lives we don't love.

The author writes that the national fantasy about the joys of parenting permeates the culture. I disagree with this too. When we got pregnant, we heard nothing about the horrors about it. We wondered if people had ever heard of birth control. After my son was born, women asked me if I was going to go back to teaching or back to work. I said, no, I had decided I was done with teaching. I was going to focus on my child and on my writing (since that was what I wanted anyway). The women almost always told me I'd be sorry, that I'd miss the adult conversation. I said, I don't know who these women work with, but at three months old, my son made far better conversation than anyone I had ever worked with.

He still does. Spending my day raising him, and getting up daily at 4 to write - sure I'm more tired, and once in awhile I think I might want to go back to work for 60 hours a week, but mostly, I wouldn't. Walking home from the store the other night, I was struck with the thought that I absolutely love my life. Maybe it's delusion. Maybe it's happiness.

Ode to Auntie Sis

2011-03-04T03:37:00.000-08:00

The house we moved into is right around the corner from my sister's house. We don't even have to cross the street to get to each other's house. It's one of the best things about our house. When Sis and I were in our twenties, we were next door neighbors in Portland and even though it was the year I suffered from a wicked case of depression, it was one of my happiest living situations I've ever had. But now, we have the added bonus of being close to Sis not just for me, but for her to be an Auntie.

Several people talk about the necessity of being close to family once you have kids, and I have friends who only use family for their childcare purposes. I admire families that can make this work, as often cases just because you live in the same city as family, it doesn't mean they are close or convenient. You can still end up spending 45 minutes in the car one way to drop off your child. Or like some of us, we have family members, where just because they are family, it doesn't mean they get to watch our child, either because it's inappropriate (like my mom after the death of my step-dad went into such shock that we all agreed it was just not a good idea) or because we have such different views of child rearing or appropriate discipline, that it's best to not even bother.

But Sis we use for occasional childcare or Auntie time, as we say. She watched Fyo on my birthday when my husband took me to dinner and when my husband arranged for a surprise date. Mostly, we love the Auntie-ness and the Sis-ness on the day to day interactions. That even if we're not spending the afternoon together, I can call her and say, "We're walking a few blocks to the store. Do you want to come?" She'll meet us, walk with us to the store, and then afterward go back home. Or I can call her and ask, "Can we come over for a cup of tea?" And we'll go over for half an hour, the tea will never get made because we didn't stop talking long enough to make it, and then we'll come back home for Fyo's nap. Fyo then gets sad for a minute because he wants Sis to come and nap with us.

It's the small day to day interactions that are such gifts.

Yesterday, Sis had talked about coming over to do her laundry, but she also had a dress to finish. She thought she might make it at five. She didn't. She called and said, " I can't come for dinner. I'm battling sleeves."
I said, "I'm making Spinach-Ricotta pie."
She said, "I'll be over in an hour."

Yesterday was also a day that Husband worked late. I've been doing rather well with nights that Husband works late this week - and in between nights where I have the dinner meal already planned, I've gravitated to eating with my son as if we were bachelors. I had a friend who pointed out that my stupidly simple meal of one pot pesto wasn't as stupidly simple as say, opening a can or a box of Annie's Mac & Cheese. Or as is the case this week for Fyo and I, fruit smoothies with protein powder and a bowl of guacamole. (In my defense, we're not total bachelors. I do make him turn off Pingu. No TV during dinner. No exceptions.)

But last night I was feeling energetic and I wanted comfort food. Or I was feeling energetic until about 7:30. Then I expired. I didn't just turn into a pumpkin. I expired.

We didn't even have a bad day; it was just two year old busyness of playing, a trip to the park, and a small dose of trying to continue to unpack boxes. Nonetheless, when I'm on duty into the nighttime routine, I expire. I don't know how single parents do it, unless they have their child in daycare during the day. I even wonder if Crack mothers deserve more compassion, if they're just doing the crack to keep up with their child and they don't know of any other coping mechanisms (not that I'm excusing the use of such things - or parents who give their kids Benadryl at 6 o'clock in the evening just so they're asleep by 6:30. Yes. I am talking to you Betty Draper.).

I got Fyo in to the bath, and into his pajamas. Sis came over bringing my New Yorker, like some gift bearing fairy. I went to take my pie out of the oven only to discover that the oven had shut itself off. It had to bake for another half an hour. Another half an hour before dinner.

Fyo had eaten. Technically, it was his bed time, but I was too tired to put him to bed. If that makes sense. But I was. I was wishing Husband would come home and do it for me, because I just didn't have the energy for reading stories and the routine. I knew if I tucked my son in, I'd fall asleep right there with him, and I wanted my dinner. So against the advice of every parenting book in the world, I kept him up past his bedtime until I could gather the strength to brush my teeth and find my pajamas.

The pie finished baking in a rather quick 30 minutes (funny how quick time goes when you have someone else playing Ring-Around-the Rosy with your child). We ate. It was delicious. Fyo, having had his own dinner, asked for some. Then he went and got his favorite books of the day and asked for Sis to read to him and crawled into her lap. I sat at the table unable to move.

Sis looked up at me and said, "Go take a bath. We're going to read in bed." She took Fyo upstairs to tuck him in.

After Fyo was born, Husband and I learned the hard way, that friends and family who say they are coming over to help, aren't. Generally, they are coming to eat your food and hold your baby while you do the laundry. Some don't even bother to hold your baby. There are rare exceptions; friends who show up on your door with a lasagna and a pie plate of apple crisp, or people who show up only to ask for your grocery list because they are going to the store.

But I have to say, last night Sis won the prize. She tucked Fyo in, read him stories, found his bear and object du jour (Fyo doesn't have a security object per se. He has a list of favorite things, and essentially he falls asleep holding any number of things, or whatever caught his fancy. Last week, he fell asleep holding an apple.) She let herself out of the house.

That is what I call help. And the kind of help that is an absolute gift.

Confessions: Meal Planning Has Saved My Life

2011-02-22T12:08:00.000-08:00

When my dad and step-mom got together, they had four children combined (of which I was the oldest)(not that I acted like it). With four kids, there were several things they did to keep or manage what they had left of their sanity.

My dad happens to be not just a computer programmer who thinks best in neat little categories of things, but also a former Eagle Scout. He is meticulously organized in his own way, and a bit - even self-admittedly so - neurotic. Most of this he came by honestly and I can say this now after I spent two weeks living with my grandmother in Portland after we arrived back in the country. But, this meant as kids, the four of us had routines and checklists for absolutely every thing. We had checklists for our bedtime routines (we even laid out our clothes for the next day before going to bed) and star charts if we completed every thing on the checklist. We had packing checklists for vacations and weekends away. All of our checklists were typed up on the computer and printed out on my dad's dot matrix printer.

(My dad - I should point out - is still this way even with no children in the house. He still uses this grocery list and check list system.)

For meals, the family was just as organized. School lunches were made on Sunday afternoons at the dining room table, with all of the kids and their chosen sandwich ingredients, and a week's worth of sandwich bread before us. The sandwiches were then placed in the freezer with our initials marked on the plastic sandwich bags in black sharpie, and in the mornings, each child just grabbed their sandwich.

Even my little brother, who was 4 at the time. (When Dad and Karen got together, he was three. Just so we older kids didn't think he was being favored for being young, all the dishes were moved to the lower cabinets, so he could unload the dishwasher as one of his chores.)

For dinners, once every two weeks, we sat around the dining room table, at one of our numerous family meetings, and each of us got to pick a dinner each night of the week. Six people in the family total meant that we each got to choose the family dinner one night a week and we had one night of each week, where we either had leftovers or it was fend for yourself night. (This was also how my parents handled the issue of us not liking the food they served us - if we chose what we ate and helped make it, then there wasn't much to argue about - and we chose the night's vegetable as well as the main dish.) The ingredients for two weeks' worth of meals then went onto the printed off copy of the family grocery list. Yes, of course. The grocery list was in the order of the store layout.

There was a lot of this that worked. While we were in Bali, we met a family, whom we became dear friends with, who had four children. My friend, Ginny, the mother, after some family melt down that generally happened either around mealtimes or bedtimes, would inevitably grab me by the elbow, and ask, "What was it your parents did again? How did they handle this? Hold on while I write this all down..."

As a kid, I sometimes found it a bit over the top, and thought it was one of those things that made our family less like the families of my friends, and even a little weird. On the fridge, we had our star chart, a calendar of the month with all meals written on in pen along with whichever kid was helping to make dinner that night, and the grocery list (so we could mark in pencil on the line next to the pre-typed item that was needed), so our fridge looked more like the bulletin board of a well managed boarding house or institution than the fridge of where children lived and brought home paintings and homework. I don't remember where artwork went, or A papers, or successful spelling tests.

But as an adult, I can get it reduced a lot of stress, and in the long run, saved a lot of money (the family budget was a whole other animal). Occasionally, if an ingredient was needed for dinner, a quick trip to the store could be made, however, on the whole, you didn't want to get through a day of work only to come home to four children, who may or may not need help with homework, and still have to get dinner on the table. With four children, you didn't want to have to open the fridge door, peer inside and wonder, "What on earth can we pull off? We have half a gallon of milk, and a bottle of ketchup..."

As a parent now myself, I can appreciate the organization, and I have been grateful I haven't had to resort to the same level of charts and lists.

Until now. And, I only have one child. But now we live in Brooklyn, and Brooklyn (and I imagine New York City) require new levels of organization. We don't want to own a car in Brooklyn for various reasons. Our neighborhood is full of cute little grocery stores; we even have a lovely organic grocery store just a few blocks away that has good quality organic meat for a surprising good price (compared to how expensive the rest of the store is). Yet, the neighborhood stores can be a bit expensive. Trader Joe's isn't far away at all - we could walk there and often, Fyo and I will take the bus there, load up the stroller with groceries and walk home. Except such trips to Trader Joe's take up an entire morning, and it's still just four days worth of groceries. I don't want to spend several mornings each week grocery shopping.

We did sign up for a Zip Car for three hours, so we can go to Fairway and stock up on groceries. I didn't want to waste the trip and not get absolutely everything we needed. I thought of all the things I didn't want to carry home via bus, subway, or walking. Also, I have noticed, with Husband working long days, life is so much easier when I have thought ahead and planned dinners in advance. The day - and the Witching Hour - are much less witchy when you have a way to combat dropping blood sugars.

So how did I spend yesterday - the eve of our much anticipated grocery shopping trip? At the kitchen table, with my favorite cookbooks spread open in front of me and my calendar and my notebook open, as I planned the next two weeks of meals. I even planned how leftovers from dinners could go in the freezer or for lunches the next day, or how I could roast a chicken one night and use the leftovers for chicken quesadillas. I made the grocery list.

Yep. I made the grocery list in order of the store. (I defended this - that Fairway is much like Ikea, where if you forget something it is a pain to have to back track for it.) It was all I could do - as if I was arguing with my own hard wiring - to keep from typing it up.

Afterward, I felt oddly productive. I felt organized. I felt relaxed despite the chaos of moving boxes we still have to unpack. I felt like I had one small clearing of clarity. And I was slightly embarrassed - that one successful housewife task could have me feel not just satisfied but victorious.

I told Husband, I could see having a month's calendar on the fridge door with all our dinners mapped out on it. Husband said he'd be down with that.

But I didn't put one up. (Yet.) Immediately, the thought of having so much of my own childhood in my kitchen makes me slightly queasy.

Some Meanderings - From the Popover, to Home School, to Ansel Adams

2011-02-20T04:42:00.000-08:00

My son's love of the kitchen and all its glorious appliances has begun. First, it began with our one dish meal of pesto (I guess it's two if you count the pot for pasta) where we threw everything into the food processor. As mentioned, I did so merely to distract him from his asking for the TV. Also, at 2, he seems pretty capable of standing on a chair and pushing the pulse button. He loved it. Now he walks into the kitchen and points to the food processor on the shelf and says, "Make something!"

So, the next day we made play dough. In my own childhood I couldn't stand the smell of store bought play dough. It made me sick. But I remembered my own parents making an odorless homemade version from flour, salt and water (2+ flour, 1/2 cup table salt, 1 cup hot tap water), so Fyo and I mixed a batch in our trusty Cuisinart (perhaps it's appropriate that I don't have a gorgeous new Cuisinart food processor, but the old standby from my own childhood-) like we would any kind of dough, first the dry ingredients then the wet.

He loved it. We turned the dough onto his place mat to knead in more flour to get it the right consistency. He enjoyed playing with it and making circles (a recent love of his), but by far his favorite part was the making and the kneading.

I thought, Glorious! Bread making is next.

Except, yesterday, rather than the lovely Spring like 60 degree weather that we had the day before, we had cold, cloudy weather with gusts of winds up to 60 mph. After a short trip to the morning farmer's market and playground, we (I) resolved to spend the rest of the day inside - not go to the store for yeast and whole wheat flour. So we entertained ourselves by making popovers, which, I discovered, are perfect for the two old attention span. You have a simple ingredient list (flour, milk, egg, dash of butter) to mix, you ladle this thin batter into your muffin tin et voila! You have this perfectly browned piece of magic in your oven. Fyo turned on the oven light, peered in inside and gasped like it was Christmas morning.

I used the recipe from one of my favorite blogs, Notes on Dinner. The title of her popover post is Impress Your Friends - I thought, hell, impress your two year old, or any child really. I remembered loving them as a child but only getting them on rare and unpredictable occasions (odd considering they are in the same family as Dutch Baby pancakes which we had practically every weekend).

At the end of Sarah's post on popovers, she writes she doesn't know the science behind the popover, which is just fine with her. I can totally get this, being one who does not naturally have a scientific mind.

But maybe because I was making with it my two year old, or maybe because I've spent a lot of time researching public education (this seems like a tangent - but I swear it's not) and talking with Husband and each of us concluding that we don't trust the current public schools to give our child an education, or maybe because I'm out researching pre-schools for my son and discovering that while it is only February 20, I have missed the application deadlines for Fall 2011 pre-schools. Not just at one school, but at several. I was told to apply by the end of the month for his Fall 2012 pre-K school year.

No, it's not early admissions at the Ivy League universities; it's pre-school in New York.

This has left Husband and I brainstorming, coming back to that in the beginning we hadn't really planned on sending him to school -well, ever, really. Even before we had a child, my husband talked about wanting to home school. I was more reserved - because you know who would end up doing the home schooling, and while I love the idea of it, I just have lots of other things I want to do with my time. I also want a break. The first year of my son's life we were in LA; I had a great group of similarly minded friends and we talked endlessly about forming our own home school co-op, and just hiring a couple of teachers or taking rotations so we could still get a parenting break. I have heard from a few fellow moms on the playground that some parents in Brooklyn are doing this - getting four or five kids/families together and hiring a couple of teachers to teach their kids pre-school. Just having moved here, I have yet to meet these families.

Then, watching my son in the kitchen and watching him love the process of making something and watching it change through the oven door as it bakes and transforms into something he didn't even know was possible, I found myself taken - inspired even - marveling at his marvel - and wondering precisely about the science behind it. I grew up baking with my parents (cookies and cakes with my mom, bread with my dad) and my mom always just simply said that Chemistry was easy - it's just like baking. She even predicted that I would find Chemistry easy because of all the baking I had done growing up. But in high school, I did not find Chemistry easy. There was no mention of what happens when you mix a cake and forget the salt or the baking soda. It was about atoms and molecules and protons and electrons and neutrons - things I couldn't see. And I am one of those people that if I can't see it I don't know it exists, whether it's a gang of atoms making up the chair I'm sitting on or a sweater I forgot I owned.

So I started wondering about the science of popovers, and I started wondering what if someone had started talking to me about the science from my son's age, would my heinous experience in Chemistry have been different? And I think it would have - because the science of it would have been relevant.

I looked it up. The science behind the popover is actually really interesting. The proteins of the flour (aka the glutens) along with the proteins from the egg form a web that traps the steam from the eggs and milk, consequently, you need high heat to create the ideal environment for steam. You drop the temperature mid-way so it traps the steam where it is, once it's "popped" your popover.

I know. I can't see the glutens or proteins either. But now I find it magical in its own right. Probably because it's relevant.

I struggled a lot in high school, even though I loved reading and writing. In small doses, I didn't even mind math (and oddly have always tested higher on math tests than language tests). As a good friend pointed out, I just wasn't interested. I think his assessment is right. I don't think I was interested because I failed to see how it was all relevant. Even when my dad said I would use math every day of my life, I'd ask in return, "Where? When will knowing the cosign of an angle save me?" (It hasn't yet.)

I found myself coming back to the notion of home school. Some of my favorite former students were home schooled, and by far they were far more prepared - and just more interesting as people - for college than their public schooled counterparts, partly because they were taught to think for themselves and mainly, they were allowed, and encouraged to find their interests and have their entire education wrapped around their interests. The home schooled kids had a sense of self I rarely saw in public schooled kids. So I know home school can be successful. My main concern is I want my time. Currently, I get up at 4am to write while my family sleeps. As some point, I'd like to sleep in knowing I'd have my time to work during the day like other people. And I have read blog posts and articles by moms who do in fact work at home and somehow home school their children. Sometimes people forward me blog posts about how these Wonder Women do it. More often than not, the posts about how they get it done are essentially "Six electronic educational things I dump my kids in front of while I work." No offense to these women and more power to them if this is in fact how their kids learn, but I want my son to enjoy learning, to have fun, to find it interesting, and I want him to learn from interacting with other people.

Baking with my son, researching the science of it, I started wondering, what if "this" could be his school? What if that's all it is? Looking deeper and exploring the world around him and then getting how it all is related and interconnected? And wouldn't that be more interesting than rote memorization? Or being test prepped two months of the year for state standardized tests?

Then this morning, I got up, put off writing for a few minutes by reading Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac and found myself reading about Ansel Adams' education experience. Essentially, he was home schooled/self-taught. He didn't understand how school was relevant either.

I like hearing these kinds of stories; I like knowing I'm in good company. And it has me think, maybe my meanderings on the popover are leading me in the right direction as I consider what to do about my son's education. In the meantime, I have several books on hold at the library about the science of cooking.

The Sins of the Tired Parent

2011-02-17T03:42:00.000-08:00

As a former college professor and as a child of computer programmers, I have noticed for a long time the ability of people to be so absorbed in their computers or phones or various forms of technology that they literally do not hear someone who is speaking directly to them - even when the interlocutor is in their face. Recently, I have noticed adults either around my son or around their own children on the playground being so absorbed in their iPhones that their child has to repeat what they are saying or ask several times for what they need before the adult realizes the child is talking to them. Even more recently, I have noticed that I have been the guilty adult so absorbed in my iPhone that my son had to repeat what he was saying several times before I realized he was asking me for something.

I try to stay conscious of my use of my computer and phone around my son. Mainly, I don't want him playing with my computer or my phone. Secondly, I don't want to be one of those parents who is always absorbed in technology rather than the living breathing person in front of me that I wanted and created. I don't want my child to be one of those kids who's so absorbed in his iPad or video game - thanks to the example I set for him - that he's oblivious to the world around him. I don't want him to value his gadgets more than his friends or family.

Also, I try to save my computer and phone for when I really need them, i.e. when I need him to be fascinated by the Dr. Seuss's ABCs app because we're at a doctor's appointment or in a restaurant or when I need him to watch a movie on my computer because my husband has worked twenty-seven sixteen-hour days in a row and I just need ten minutes when I am not being asked for food, or toys, or the park or to take my son to pee or something else.

Except that currently my husband really has worked twenty-seven sixteen hour days in a row and I am needing an instant queue Netflix movie download around 6pm every night (aka the Witching Hour in our house. Sometimes it applies to the child. Sometimes the adults.) just so I can get dinner made with some degree of peace of mind. I have fallen into the trap of the tired parent.

My husband and I don't own a television, because we don't like it. We do watch a few select shows that we download or Netflix (Mad Men, The Wire, and alas, I'm a sucker for re-watching the West Wing), but generally we find it a depression inducing time waster. Having geeked out on baby brain research, I am not a fan of television for small children. There's no movie watching or Seseme Street viewing before 6pm (Witching Hour). I don't let him watch more than an hour because it turns him into a slug. I don't like television as an everyday thing; I like it as a sometimes thing - when we're having a snow day or when we're sick.

Also, I agree with the studies that show over time - especially in children under three - it lessens creativity as well as the ability to entertain one's self or use one's imagination and these are all skills I want my son to have. I'm not against television all together. I do think there are some quality shows, and as he gets older, I look forward to discussing with him what makes a quality show or movie.

But now -again because my husband has worked twenty-seven sixteen hour days in a row - I am that tired parent. I am that tired parent in survival mode trying to get through the day and remember my own name at the same time. Not to mention we just moved into a new house in a new city and I am also researching the pre-schools in the area, trying to find periodic childcare and playgroups as well as unpack enough boxes so I can wear something different than the select few items that have been in my suitcase the last 8 weeks. I'd also like to find the blender so I can make my son and I a smoothie.

So, alas, I'm that tired parent who reaches for her computer at 6pm so he can watch a movie, and so I can get dinner on the table, and maybe I can take a turn at online Scrabble.

I should state I'm still neurotic about what my son watches. Old Sesame Street episodes are okay in small doses, but the newer Sesame Street episodes are heinous and I want no part of them. We have a children's stage production of Shakespeare's A Comedy of Errors that we love and have watched at least a hundred times. Finding Nemo, Toy Story, Wall-E are also favorites (but they were before my son was born). Lately, we've been watching a lot of Pingu the Penguin and Kipper. (My husband finds Kipper annoying. I like Kipper because he's quiet.) These have been our rotation the last week or so when I - not my son - hit the 6 o'clock witching hour.

Except the other night, because my son and I had eaten our way through a Trader Joe shopping trip, we weren't hungry for dinner. We only snacked. I still was tired enough I put Pingu on for my son. I wanted that few minute break - when nobody asked anything of me and when I could just flip through a West Elm catalog on the hunt for bookshelves or make an online Scrabble play on my iPhone.

But my son told me to put my book away. He crawled into my lap at the table where he was watching Pingu. I looked at Scrabble.
"Mommy," he said, "Put the phone away." He didn't want food. He didn't have to pee. He didn't want a particular toy. He just wanted me to watch a movie with him and hold him.

Needless to say, while I do have some degree of compassion for myself as my husband is working non-stop, I felt like an ass.

Here I was worried my son could become one of those boys who's so obsessed with video games, he fails to notice there's a world to explore, I was that parent absorbed in her iPhone, failing to notice my son just wanted to be held.

And I have to say, I felt relieved my son - at 2 years old - feels comfortable asking in a nice tone of voice no less for what he needs and for telling me to put away my phone and pay attention to him.

The next night we approached the Witching Hour differently. Sure enough, at ten minutes to 6, my son started asking for a movie (How do toddlers to that? They can't tell time, but they're like clockwork.). I said, "No. I don't want to watch movies every day." He didn't start to throw a tantrum (though he easily could have) but he did his I-want-a-movie dance. Instead, I distracted him. I had him pull up a chair to the kitchen counter and help me make dinner. We were just having pesto (we keep it stupidly simple when it's just the two of us). The entire thing could be made in the food processor, so I had him put all the ingredients into the food processor and push the pulse button after each ingredient. By the time, the water for the pasta was boiling, he had found a toy to play with.

Oddly, I finished the day much less tired than I have been.

Unpacking Home

2011-02-12T03:05:00.000-08:00

In September of 2009, we packed up our dogs and took a field trip to San Francisco to drop them off to their foster parents. After our weekend away in one of our favorite cities, we went back to LA and packed up the rest of our things. Many of our things we sold - every single bookshelf we owned, our couches, the wicker chair and ottoman that had sat on the porch in Denver and LA. We passed on the small amount of baby things we had for our then 10 month old boy, except for the cradle my step-dad made. That we disassembled and stored, unable to part with it so soon after his sudden death a few months before.

What remained we stored. Some things got stored by accident, like a box of old New Yorkers that was supposed to go in the recycling bin, but one of the moving guys loaded into the truck. Over the last 17 months, when the topic of our stored belongings came up, I have wondered how much money have we spent storing our recycling?

No matter, Husband points out repeatedly - as an avid and addicted fan of the purging process - that there will be many things we wondered why we kept.

I can't imagine there will be much of that though. We kept only the furniture we absolutely loved, that were antiques or family heirlooms. Scratch that actually. Some of the family heirlooms we gave back to the family. Or to a new family.

17 months later, we have finally landed in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, New York, in a cute brownstone (with yard!) around the corner from my sister. We don't even have to cross the street to get to each other's house. We moved in on the first, and given that we found the apartment only a few days before the first, we moved in with a borrowed air mattress, borrowed sheets and towels, and borrowed dishes. We called my cousin in Portland whose always game for a road trip, and hired him to bring us our dog and belongings. It took him longer to get across the country thanks to a short jaunt into the Colorado mountains to visit friends where he promptly got himself snowed in. We originally expected him Thursday. We amended it to Sunday. Late yesterday, my cousin called my husband and said he's just outside the city.

Last night Husband and I sat at the kitchen table the previous renter left behind in shock that our things were actually coming. We tried to remember what furniture we still owned. My cousin has reassured us that we still have an unbelievable amount of crap. (Thanks for that.)

We made a list of what we'll be the most glad to see:

1) Husband's beard trimmer and razor. He's not an everyday shaver. He regularly oscillates between clean shaven and short beard. Except with no beard trimmer, his short beard has quickly become an overgrown thick mess reminiscent of the 70s. Kissing him, I feel like I might as well kiss the latch hook rug I made at the same time such scruffy beards were the fashion.

2) Our coffee cups. Oh the pleasure of the little things- over the last year and a half, having stayed in I don't know how many places, we have had our morning coffee in I don't know how many cheap Ikea cups, or cups that came free from a random bank when someone opened an account. We like mugs of coffee. Those small bank cups require constant refilling.

3) Our bed. I've slept on leaky air mattresses before and so I don't want to complain about the current leak-free air mattress we have been loaned. All things considering, it's not so bad. Over the course of our travels however, we have slept on some sad beds, so oh, our double sided pillow topped loveliness, I can't wait to have a good night's sleep with you.

4) Our kitchen. Our cookbooks. Our Kitchen-Aid mixer. Our baking pans.

5) Clothes. We've spent the last two months wearing the same five outfits. In Winter, I don't know that this matters much. It's all boots, trousers and sweaters. Still, my vintage dresses and jackets, my hats, my spare pajamas, and I'm sure I own more trousers...

6) I have bags of yarn stashed in storage - even after I donated a lot to schools and kids' groups that needed it for knitting projects, but I have to say I feel mixed about seeing my yarn. When it's in storage, I have an excuse to buy more (which I did - and knit my son a rather nice sweater if I say so). But I didn't get through all the yarn I bought rationalizing I needed more knitting projects, so now, I just have more stash. It may be time to plunk my child down in front of a movie or two and get some knitting done...

7) Our (my) collection of oddities and curiosities - a giant piece of coral, framed butterflies, a collection of cool old doll hands that I love but that freaks my husband out. Those kind of small things I've picked up at garage sales and flea markets over the years that end up making our house a home.

8) We bought an amazing dining room table in Bali and had it shipped home. It's gorgeous. It's long enough to host a quality Thanksgiving meal. We don't actually know where we will put it, but we're looking forward to seeing it.

9) We also bought a statue of Buddha in Thailand. We don't know where we're going to put that either.

10) My vintage crystal martini glasses. I bought them at an estate sale at the beginning of the recession. They hold four shots of gin each. The woman was selling them because of the vast amount of gin a batch of martinis required, she could no longer afford to host parties. In actuality, these will probably stay packed given the active running and climbing toddler boy in our house, and our martinis will be served in tumbler glasses, but still I miss seeing them in my cupboard.

As for the cradle, my step-dad made, we realized we can now part with it. Fyo is now almost 28 months - 2 1/2 is just around the corner. While we loved the cradle, and the thought, time, and work my step-dad put into it, we didn't realize until our son was born that we are baby holding types. Instinctively, we somehow knew how fast that initial baby phase goes, so we always held him. I put him in it once, so I could run out and move the car for street cleaning. My step-dad was this way too - he always wanted to hold the baby. He made the cradle because he loved wood working and projects, but when he saw how little my son slept in it because some one was always holding him, he shrugged. "Ah well," he said, "You don't know until they arrive what you'll actually use." Indeed. Last night, husband and I agreed that even with plans for a second child, we don't need the things that are essentially baby storing devices.

Oh, and the recycling will finally be put on the curb.

Thou Shall Share Space

2011-02-08T11:58:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Fyo and I were up and out of our new Brooklyn brownstone (!) early for a trip to our favorite grocery store, Trader Joe's in downtown Brooklyn. Walking from the bus stop to the store and pushing Fyo in his stroller, a parade of ambulances and paramedics with flashing lights and sirens flew down the street and then came to a halt. Then right in front of us on the sidewalk were paramedics pushing what I swear looked like a wheel burrow with a woman inside of it. The woman was skim milk blue-white, mostly naked except for a t-shirt and underwear. Except for a few bruises on her face and here and there across her body, her skin had that other worldly look of marble statues in museums. She was conscious, but drugged beyond coherency.

I'm a thin skinned sensitive sort, and instantly started to cry at the sight of her as I thought, oh heavens what have you been through and what are you about to go through? Indeed, the mind can spiral out considering the possibilities of how she ended up where she did - and none of the possibilities are nice or pretty. It was warmer out; a balmy Spring like 40 degrees compared to the weather we've been having, but still way too cold to spend the night out doors half naked on the sidewalk.

Looking at her, I couldn't help but think: You are someone's daughter. Someone must be worried. I think such things now that I am a parent.

There's something about seeing another human being - even a complete stranger - in extreme vulnerability that punches me in the gut and instantly makes me feel vulnerable too. Maybe I'm reminded of my own humanity, or that another place, another time, another set of circumstances, another set of choices, it could have been me or anyone else I know and love. Indeed, I had a distant cousin who met such a fate and now lies in the family plot in a Portland cemetery, despite her having had an advantageous childhood.

Husband has a favorite quote from the Ric Burns documentary on New York, that the unspoken commandment of large cities like New York is thou shall share space. And this is true in many cities, where we see much more of each other's lives, even the moments you usually assume happen behind closed doors in the privacy of one's own home. I think of a friend from college who one day sat in his office in a building downtown when a man walked in the entrance and took a gun to his own head. Or even the smaller moments, when sitting on a bus and listening to a stranger argue with her mother on her phone or that strangers on the bus and subway watch me give Fyo his crackers and biscuits while in Portland, I'd do the same thing in the privacy of our own car. When Fyo drops his cracker onto the floor of the bus, he gets down to pick it up and eat it, another woman tells me he's eating his cracker off the floor and that I shouldn't let him do this. (I don't know that this is what Hillary Clinton meant when she said it takes a village...). I shrug and say, "I'm not worried about it. His immune system is stronger than all of ours." She rolls her eyes at me, and I can see the words "Bad Mother!" cross her mind from one ear to the other.

In cities, you do share space, and you witness -to some extent- more of the private moments of people, even the ones that punch you in the gut. But I like it. When I'm on the subway and even if all the other passengers are absorbed in books, magazines, knitting, Kindles, iPhones and iPads and so forth, or even walking down the street with my son in his stroller, I am always reminded that there's more than just me and my family in the world, and there are bigger concerns in the world than mine.

My heart breaks for the woman we saw yesterday as well as for the people who love her, and the sight of her moved me. I can't say it moved me to a Buddha like moment of giving up all my earthly comforts and loves to dedicate my life to the end of suffering, but it moved me enough to remember that when we share space, a little concern, compassion and "good thoughts on the wings of fairies" as my great-grandmother used to say when we saw an ambulance drive by, doesn't hurt.

I have a fear of the suburbs, and my fear stems from the very thing that some people seek when they move to the suburbs: that you can seal yourself away into your house, yard and car. Get into your car while it's in the garage with the doors shut and you will never have to meet your neighbors. You can forget - except when you see them on the news - that anyone different from you exists. In the city, at least in this one, you can't and I think that's a good thing

On the Creating Home Front

2011-01-04T02:48:00.000-08:00

In January, we start looking for a place to live. Having a place of our own will be a very welcome thing as we are all a little tired of living out of suitcases. At Christmas, my sister gave me a whole stack home decor books to indulge in for inspiration and ideas for the kind of space we want to find and create. I had a heavenly afternoon of couch sitting and flipping through every single page of every single one.
In the meantime, until we start looking for our own space, I have acquired an obsession with homes and houses to such an extent that even when I see a doll house, I swoon, and want to buy it, and even carry it from house to house the way my son carries his Fisher-Price Little People House around that he inherited from my childhood. But I didn't. We have five suitcases the three of us were living out of, and we soon realized that moving five suitcases around as we switch between house sitting and sublets -in the snow and up flights of stairs - was a pain. We packed Christmas presents away, switched out the son's toys and books, and committed to wearing the same sweaters until we find a home, and stored two suitcases away in a friend's closet. No room to lug around a dollhouse or model-home-I-wish-was-mine. Not that I don't see old ladies with bags and carts around Brooklyn who could show me how to do it.

Ode to Husband

2010-12-27T05:31:00.000-08:00

Some of my favorite writers have sadly lost their spouses, and as writers, part of their grieving process involves writing a memoir of losing their spouse. I have nothing against this whatsoever, and actually love these memoirs. I love histories of marriages (of good marriages I should stipulate having seen enough bad ones in my life). So I generally pick these stories up - Joyce Carol Oates's recent piece in The New Yorker on becoming a widow and the last week of her marriage, to Calvin Trillion's About Alice or Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. Must You Go? by Antonia Fraser is the next one on my list (I hear it's one of those books that you don't want to end) as Fraser tells the story of her life with Harold Pinter.
      With the death of one of my uncles and my step-dad within the space of a year, and then the death of another favorite uncle a month ago, I've been thinking about the stories that get created and told within marriages, the kind of stories that end up as family legends and myths, as well as the stories that don't get told - or not until both respective parties are dead in some cases. After reading Oates's piece in the New Yorker, followed by the article in the New York Times on civil unions replacing marriage in France, I started wondering who cares what we call it? Whatever it is, it's sharing a life with someone, and whether it's marriage, being civilly united, or sinful as some conservative consider it (not that it's any of their business), it is significant. I decided it's significant enough that I might not wait for my husband to die before I started commemorating my life with him. I might start celebrating those moments I share with him, when I fall in more love with him, when he surprises me, when he makes me laugh, even when he flips out in asshole mode, storms out of the room slamming the door behind him only to walk back in two seconds later with an apology (well, I don't know if I have to share all those...).
      When I met my husband, he wasn't funny and I considered it too bad. While we were dating, I'd have those moments when I think, we get along great, I love being with him, but he's not funny. Then somewhere along the way, he got funny. He even got funny in that way that sometimes can be inappropriate, in that way that points out a truth that people know or do, but don't necessarily admit.

       We went out yesterday, while the snow was still pretty and ignoring all blizzard warnings about how we should stay inside, or rather, we were heeding the warnings as we were going out to stock up on groceries while we still had the use of a car. Then we decided to drive around a neighborhood or two to help our brainstorm about where we want to live, we stumbled past Grimaldi's Pizza which is notorious for its line down the block and there was no line. We weren't that hungry, but we stopped and ate anyway simply because there was no wait. Then as we drove home (or where we're staying for now) we saw the decreasing visibility, and the beginning of the blizzard. On the radio, we listened to the news, which interrupted the weather warnings to share the story of the Pope's Christmas message and how he condemned the Christmas Day violence in Nigeria and the Philippines. The Pope called the violence "absurd." I asked, is there a kind of violence that is not absurd?
      The Pope then called for an end to senseless violence and declared that today, Christians are the most persecuted group on the planet. Somewhere along the line, my husband picked up a dry sense of sarcastic humor.
     "Well, you know, what goes around..." He said. "You notice he didn't mention the Spanish Inquisition. Or that they KILLED SOUTH AMERICA."

My husband didn't used to say things like this. But now that he does, I love it. It cracks me up.

To Give or Not to Give

2010-12-24T10:02:00.001-08:00

Christmas hovers at the end of the week. While this year my husband and I are rather impressed with ourselves for having gifts bought for all of our extended family members and shipped enough in advance that we didn’t have to worry about shipping the boxes priority – in the same week we got ourselves packed to move across the country no less - we haven’t bought a thing for our two-year old son. We’ve barely bought anything for each other.

Every year at Christmas, we have the same conversation regarding gift giving with slight variations depending on our circumstances. Mainly, that we don’t want to give gifts merely because we think we have to, or it’s expected of us, or because the calendar says it’s what we do on this day. We revisit the rules we have for each other when it comes to gift giving occasions: we don’t buy crap or just anything for each other so there’s something to open under the tree, and, if we don’t like what we have given each other, we have to say so, not lie and shove the item into the back of the closet until the next move when we can quietly slide the item into the donation pile.

We have reasons for these rules. One is we have both been the victims of bad gifts, not so much from each other (because we honor the second rule of telling the truth) but from well meaning friends or family members, who do not have our rules, but other rules. Mainly, no matter how bad the gift is you lie and say thank you, and that you absolutely love it. If you tell the truth – so we have learned – the giver accuses you of being ungrateful and rude. Usually a big display of pouting, offence taken and hurt feelings follows after telling the giver in the nicest way possible that their gift, while well meant, was just not your taste or style.

We have a couple of instances that fall into our family Hall of Fame for bad gifts from people who prefer you to lie as you express your gratitude. One year for Christmas, we had friends give us an item for our home, the kind of thing they would expect to see prominently displayed when they came over for a visit. They loved their gift to us, they gazed at it, delighted in it, were awed by it. At one point, after we had done our duty and put it on display, the wife said, “Oh, we so love the traditional styles.”

“Oh, interesting.” I said. “We’re more mid-century modern people.”

“The back of it is really nice.” My husband said, “Mind if I turn it around?”

After the couple left, we talked about what we should do. The gift was one of those items that the couple said over and over we would be able to enjoy for years, it could become a fixture in our home, something our children would remember being present in their childhoods. We considered our fate of displaying somebody else’s tastes in our home. My husband and I then did what anyone else would do in our position; we put all of our things into storage, and left the country. Our hope of course is that when we have a home again and our friends visit, they will have forgotten what they gave us or that we can easily claim it got lost or broken in the move.

We have a few other of instances in our Hall of Fame that generally go along the same lines. Every time after we say our obligatory thank you and we hang up the phone, I turn to my husband and say, “Don’t you ever – and I mean EVER – lie to me the way we just lied to them.”

Sometimes my husband defends the lying and the fake gratitude. “We have to say thank you and say we like it. It’s a gift. They don’t have to give us anything.”

Honestly, I’d rather receive nothing.

There’s disappointment in a bad gift, not just the let down of not receiving something you like, or that someone took time and effort to shop or even make your gift, only to have you not like it, but also the disappointing realization that the person who gave you the gift doesn’t really know you, and because they get offended when you try to convey your preferences, they aren’t really interested in getting to know you. Rather, they prefer their version of you, the person they think you are and the image of you they see in their minds when they think of you. They don’t like it when you try to swap the person they think you are for the real one.

Alas, my husband and I now bear the task of raising our son in the sticky dance of gift giving and thank-you-saying and even I-know-I said-it’s-wrong-and disrespectful-to-lie-but-this-distant-relative/friend-honestly-prefers-it or this person is okay with you telling the truth and here are a couple of ways to say that you appreciate their effort, but it wasn’t in your style.

I actually really love giving good gifts, and while the art of receiving bad gifts is kind of one I routinely fail at, I do love spending the time and energy to give a good gift.

This art is one I look forward to raising my son in, because like so many things in parenting, it comes down to compassion and the ability to put one’s self into some one else’s shoes. Giving a good gift means you don’t buy things you like for yourself, but with the other person in mind. I can easily say to my son, “Yes, we now live in Brooklyn and we love it, but that doesn’t mean we should buy Grand Dad that Yankees baseball cap. Grand Dad actually hates the Yankees and is obsessed with the Boston Red Sox. No, we shouldn’t buy that cap for Auntie. While she has lived in Brooklyn for eight years, she rarely watches baseball and has never in her life worn a baseball cap or any article of clothing with a logo.”

Still, Christmas is just a few days away. While my son has boxes of gifts from grandparents, aunts and uncles, my husband and I have decided to wait on his big gift. Last night, we went to the Brooklyn Holiday Flea Market and bought stocking stuffers for all of us, and engaged in the yearly habit of shopping with the person you’re buying for - waiting until the other had turned their back, realizing we didn’t actually have cash on hand, having to borrow the spouse’s wallet to buy the spouse’s gift and laughing about it all the while. Afterward, with Auntie, we planned our Christmas all day menu, so we can squeeze in all our favorite traditional foods and favorite activities (mainly the Christmas afternoon nap). With less gifts – but good gifts – bought, we’ll have plenty of time and space to enjoy the time with each other.

Home is Where We Are

2010-12-24T10:01:00.001-08:00

My two-year old son has the most amazing and endearing trait of honoring his body’s internal clock, so daily around 11:30 am and around 7:30 pm, he tells me that he’s tired and ready to go to bed. Except on this particular night, as my husband loads our suitcases into the car, when my son tells me he wants to go to bed, I have to say no. For mothers, telling your child that he can’t go to sleep is completely counterintuitive. But on this night, we are taking the Jet Blue red eye from Portland, Oregon, to Brooklyn, New York. We are moving. Again.

Three and a half years ago, my husband and I stood in our kitchen in Denver, Colorado sharing an afternoon coffee press of coffee and talked about what we wanted. We didn’t want to live our lives by default; we wanted to live our lives intentionally, lives that we created. We wanted a child; we wanted to live abroad and travel; we wanted careers we loved.

“Alright” my husband said. “Let’s go live abroad.”

And with that, we began our nomadic phase. My husband found work on a project in Singapore. I got pregnant. We moved to Los Angeles for the Research and Development phases of the Singapore project. Our son was born. When our son was 11 months old we moved to Singapore. When the project ended six months later, we moved to Bali. Five months later, we went back to LA, and then up to Portland for an eight-week stay with my family. My husband found a series of projects to work on in New York City beginning in December. We packed our bags once again, having traded our summer Bali clothes in our storage unit for our winter sweaters, boots, and coats.

So when my son asked to go to bed, and I saw the puzzled look on his face when I told him that we’re not going to bed, I instead asked him if he wanted to go on a plane.

“Yeah!” He hollered and ran for his coat.

On the plane, he sat excitedly in his seat, buckled in and announcing to all his fellow passengers that we were all on a plane and that we were going to go up up up. As soon as the plane took off and the seat belt light turned off, my son turned to me and said, “I want to go home and I want to go to bed.”

This began a refrain that echoes over our first week in Brooklyn. As I put him to sleep the first couple of nights in Brooklyn, he said again, “ I want to go home.”

It is one of those moments that as a parent, I don’t know what to say. I loved our time abroad, the people we met, the experiences we had, and the things we learned – about ourselves, and the world in general. I loved our time in Portland and with my family, but I too want to go home. I want a home; I want our home.

I try to explain that it will be awhile yet, that we are subletting then we’ll be house sitting for friends, then subletting, then house sitting again, and subletting again. After that we will find a place to live that will be outs. It turns out this isn’t the thing to say.

“Home.” He said again, starting to cry.

“I know,” I said. “This is home for now. Mommy is here, daddy is here, and you’re here, so we’re home. Home is where we are.” I think of the joke that my husband and I have, that home is where our luggage is.

But I start to tell my son the things we do to create home where ever we are - that at night, we have a bath, a book and bed. In the morning we’ll have breakfast and play, and before nap time we’ll go to the park or library or children’s museum. I tell him we will play trains and when we go for a walk, we will count the trains, buses and dogs we see just like we did in Portland. I tell him that after nap we will have snacks and teatime.

This recitation of our routines becomes the lullaby that ends up lulling both of us to sleep, and I realize too before nodding off, that while I miss my things, my coffee mugs, my books, and the ability to have a magazine subscription, that home is where we are, and the routines and rituals we create with each other.

Dancing*

2010-12-24T09:58:00.000-08:00

Outside it was raining. Because we live in Portland, it had been raining for weeks. Rain is just what winter looks like in the Northwest. Consequently, chidren in the Northwest don’t spent as much time making snow angels as they do splashing in puddles. Which is what I had planned for the day, that my two-year old son and I would get some much needed exercise, don raincoats and galoshes, take the dog to the park and indulge in the very old Oregon tradition of walking in the rain, jumping in the rain, and getting soaked.

Yet by 11am, I had gotten distracted. My son and I were still in our pajamas; he played trains on the living room floor while I attempted to catch up on the laundry and clean up the state of general disarray that the house had fallen into. But I was beginning to get stir-crazy. I told myself that I would do as much as I could in ten minutes and then we could go.

My son had other ideas. He pushed his trains aside and stood up.

“Dance.” He demanded.

“But we need to fold the laundry, so we can go.” I said. “I want to get out of the house.”

“Dance.” He demanded again.

I looked at him doing his in-place-skip-hop-prance-dance-move-thing as he pointed to the stereo.

“Okay,” I said. “Laundry can wait.”

I turned on the stereo, and we danced. Some of our favorites songs came on the Pandora station we were listening to. Songs that I sang to him when he was in my belly, songs my husband put into the mix of music that played in the background when I gave birth at home, songs that my son was born to: The Flaming Lips, Do you Realize, Coldplay’s Strawberry Swing, The Beatles, Here Comes the Sun. As we dance around the living room, I sing to him again.

He is right, I think. We should dance. Someday, he will be at school and not with me during the day. Someday, he will go racing out the front door to play with friends and not with me. Someday, there will be a second child that requires my attention. Someday, his schedule will be more full than mine. Sometimes, I look forward to these somedays. The someday when I can work and write during the day and not at 4am when my family is sleeping. The someday when I can sleep in and spend the day in bed with a book. The someday when I can take a shower and not have to tell anyone because I am no longer responsible for all of their needs.

But now, in this moment, as he literally dances circles around me, I am glad those somedays have not arrived yet. I am glad we have chosen to dance.

Half an hour later, my mom calls to tell me that my uncle has died. He was sixty. The news hits me hard, not just because he was one of my favorite uncles and a person whom I admired, or that with my aunt, he had a marriage that inspired me when the marriages of my parents crumbled and I saw other couples constantly bickering, but because he was sixty. And someday I will be forty, and sixty is not much older than forty. Life just got much shorter and much more urgent.

It occurs to me then that the songs I sing to my son are about just this, about how fast life goes, that you never have forever. But I don’t sing then. Instead, I look at my son, and quote Mary Oliver: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

*This article got picked up another website, the The #life Daily! Yay for me!

After My Piece on Education

2010-12-24T09:43:00.000-08:00

One of the things I love about writing in general and writing a weekly article for a website is the discussions or exchange of ideas that come after or in response to what I wrote. I was a bit nervous writing about education, because while it is something I have grown passionate about, I have no formal schooling on the topic. I got my Master's in 19th Century British Literature. I got my Master's partly because I wanted to teach college (at the time I thought I'd go straight for the Ph.d), but mostly because I wanted to spend my weekends in bed in my pajamas reading books that only people in academe cared about. I took one class in pedagogy and sadly, it was rather a waste of time and largely based on the notion that if we just had students free write enough, they would learn how to write coherent paragraphs and papers and so on and so forth. I can't say my experience proved this theory.
        After my son was born, I started researching and reading up on education for his sake. Somewhere along the line I got as concerned about the bigger picture as I was about his education. I started talking to other parents, learned we're all worried about our children's future in the education system, no matter where we're living in the world. I also realized that having received a good education in the public school system as well as college and having taught, that I have high standards. After my education post, a friend of mine who works in education pointed out that the education and curriculum I hope my son to have doesn't exist anywhere in the world. Sadly, she is right.
       Singapore has high scores and is often referred to as having a top education system, but having lived there, I wouldn't put my son in Singapore's schools either. They're heavily focused on math and reading. The notion of the arts is one that is very young in the culture - all the museums are only ten years old. Granted, the country is only forty, but as a result, they are still creating their cultural identity. What they come by naturally follows most Asian cultures- math, competition, pushing children really hard, teach them to mind. Beginning in pre-school, children get an hour of Chinese a day. They place a lot of emphasis on teaching "real life skills" which sounds like the toddlers learn to balance check books. Really, they learn animals, number, shapes, letters, but on a strict schedule. If at two, your child cannot identify an animal that starts with the letter A, expect a parent-teacher conference. In many of the public schools, children are not allowed to ask questions. If a child asks a question, their parents are called because their child is being disruptive. Culturally, their strength is and what they bump their heads on, is doing things by the book, not cutting corners, following the rules.
        Western parents often scoff at the notion that Singapore children are not encouraged to ask questions. "How are they supposed to learn?" they protest and rightfully so. What I've come to appreciate about Singapore's system is that at least they are straightforward about this, so if your child is an inquisitive sort, they recommend private education. What I've noticed about Western parents - and schools - is that we say one thing and do another. One mother was so appalled when I told her about the no question thing, she threw a fit. Ten minutes later, she offered me a glass of water and got up to get me one from the kitchen. My son started to squirm in my lap because he was hungry and I started to nurse him. My friend's daughter asked, "What are you doing? Why is doing that?" (Illustrating nicely the lack of breastfeeding around the world but that's another rant), I started to answer when my friend poked her head out of the kitchen and snapped, "Did I just hear you be rude?"
      Alas, it is a sad truth about many parents and schools. We say we want our children to be curious, creative, and know that it's okay to express their emotions, but what we don't say is that most days, whether at home or in the classroom, it'd make our lives easier if kids didn't think for themselves, sat still, behaved, and kept themselves quiet. Ken Robinson asserts that schools educate creativity out of our children. I think he's right and I'd add that I think they also educate curiosity out of them as well.
        Anyway, my husband haven't decided exactly what we're doing for our son's education, except that we're considering all the alternatives before the public schools. In the meantime, I've enjoyed the conversations that have come out of my piece and discussing what we really want for kids. And Cathie Black's fate is in the hands of an Albany judge who's hearing 3 different lawsuits charging that state education Commission Steiner was wrong to grant Black her waiver - you know, the one that said while we require our education Chancellors to have Master's in Education, somehow we'll skip that part because of your publishing history (???).

Public School Heartbreak

2010-12-23T02:56:00.000-08:00

The last week of October, the New Yorker featured a cartoon of two moms sitting, with a child in each of their laps, as they sat on a park bench. One was saying to the other, “We believe in the concept of public education.” Like all cartoons, it is meant to be funny while revealing something honest, something most of us aren’t willing to admit even though it is completely obvious by our actions that we do indeed feel that way.

However, I didn’t find the cartoon funny because it captures exactly how I feel. I believe in the concept of public education. I want to believe in it; I want public schools to work. Public education is a cornerstone of democracy; to create well educated citizens and voters, we need good viable public schools. Free good public schools, like good health care, good nutrition, and stable shelter, I believe, is a human right.

Yet with public education in its current state, I can’t help but want to keep my son as far away as possible from it. In a February 2009 New York Times Op-Ed, Nicholas Kristof called our public education our greatest national shame. I think he’s right. The emphasis in reading and math simply to meet No Child Left Behind testing demands, and the lack of emphasis on the arts, music, science, and individual creativity is just the least of it. I shudder at the competitive nature, that to get into the desired schools requires either an IQ test taken by a four year old or luck in a lottery, or, as my brother did in Portland, moving to the desired school’s neighborhood when his son failed to win the lottery. I hate that when one child gets into a good school, it displaces another student, potentially into a school that can’t afford to meet his/her needs. I hate that as parents we cannot take for granted that our children will get the education that will nurture their intellectual and creative selves at the public school down the street.

I have taught University Composition and Literature classes. I know first-hand how ill prepared our students are for college. I used to ask my Freshman writing classes to write a one page free write response to the editorial in the morning’s paper; in response I got blank stares and dilated pupils as anxiety attacks kicked in, even as I remember my eighth grade English teacher Mrs. Larkin asking the same thing of me. I taught Developmental (aka remedial) English classes where I asked students to identify the noun, verb and adjective in the sentence – a skill that is generally taught in the third grade – and was appalled (but sadly, not that surprised) that my students had no idea what I was talking about.No doubt about it: the public schools are failing in a myriad of ways.

My frustration and concern with our public education was exacerbated In November by New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg’s choice of Chancellor Cathleen Black. I heard the news on NPR as I drove my two year old son home from the park. I walked in the house holding my son’s hand but fuming and ranting. My husband suggested I take a deep breath, that maybe I was knee-jerk reacting.

I can’t say this comment went over well with me.

My husband generally tries to see the positive in things. He suggests, that maybe I haven’t considered this from all angles.

I can’t say this comment went over well with me either.

I explain that Cathleen Black is the chairwoman of Hearst magazines. She hasn’t been anywhere near the public schools not just recently but ever. My husband suggests that in such positions, much like the President, sometimes the skill isn’t so much in having the actual knowledge of what you are supposed to be the expert of, but the ability to have the best and most knowledgeable consultants and experts to advise you on what you need to know. He suggests that those who come from business know this.

Just then, the story comes on the NPR evening news playing in the house. My husband calmly walks over to the stereo and turns up the volume. Cathleen Black is asking parents and teachers for patience and compassion as she gets up to speed on the issues facing public education.

“I’m sorry,” I hollered at my husband, “but that comment doesn’t exactly boost my confidence in the woman!”

“I have to agree you with there.” He said.

That night I went to bed and thought of how when I was younger I wanted to teach college because of how much I loved my college classes. I thought of how when I was pregnant and found out I was having a boy, I immediately started planning his high school and Liberal Arts college education, that I wanted him to have art classes, world history classes, Women’s Studies classes. I wanted him to have classes that challenged him and taught him how to think. I thought of how while traveling abroad we met other parents from other countries and talked a lot about what we wanted for our children’s education. I realized then that the US is not the only one struggling with finding a system that works and that can possibly meet the needs of all its students. I realized that my heartbreak over the public schools and Bloomberg’s choice comes from the American belief I was raised with: we are the wealthiest nation on the planet; we can have it all, but we have a responsibility to set an example because people look up to us. With the current emphasis on scores in education, this may be what influenced Bloomberg’s choice. He wanted someone to manage the schools like a business; raise scores, cut losses, make the schools look good on paper and in charts.

But the public education I want – and the parents I talk to want - prioritizes students. It sees our children as what they are: children. Not a potential score that influences funding.

Catching Up

2010-12-23T02:48:00.001-08:00

And adding in my recent parenting related posts...

Other People's Houses -Brooklyn

2010-12-16T08:45:00.000-08:00

When we were looking for a place to live in Bali, we easily looked at twenty different places to live. When I walked into the house that had an oven, I said we'd take it. It was the first oven I had seen in any of the houses we had looked at; indeed, it was one of two ovens on the entire island I heard of. I was thankful for my choice over the next few months as I baked loaves of pumpkin bread, zucchini bread, muffins, and roasted vegetables. Though the house did have its drawbacks: when we took our son to the healer for his chronic constipation that had not responded to ridiculous amounts of fiber, water, prune juice, or rounds and rounds of nasty ass-ed smelling Chinese herbs or homeopathic treatments (though the homeopathics did improve things a little), we learned that his constipation was due to a lack of phosphorus and salt. Oh, and thanks to the house, he had disturbed sleep. Our house was full of wayward spirits. And she didn't mean the rats I caught scurrying in the kitchen. Consequently, part of our bedtime routine became to walk through out the house shouting: "DISPERSE YOU WAYWARD SPIRITS!"

It is baffling for all the ceremonies and offerings purely for the purpose of appeasing and pacifying spirits, that indeed the waywards found their way into our house.

The house we're currently subletting in Brooklyn has no wayward spirits near as I can tell. I suspect this is because the house has its original windows complete with drafts and the waywards have been frozen out. So we're not haunted. The price we pay for this little luxury is the gusts of air that blow past our heads as we sleep.

Yet, this apartment has been meticulously restored. The crown moldings, the chandeliers, the hard wood floors, the porcelain bathtub that is the perfect width and length - Edith Wharton or any of her characters could have lived here. I have realized I grew up spoiled in that I grew up in old turn of the century houses, but the first thing my parents did was update the windows for the sake of their heating bill. In this apartment, you have to stand back from the window, otherwise you get the chill. You shudder, the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end, and well, the house might as well be full of wayward spirits skittering about.

This apartment does have an oven, but I don't think it's ever been used. For the life of me I can't figure out how to turn it on. I'm not even sure it's hooked up to the gas line. Not that it matters because there's no pans for baking or roasting anything. At our culinary fingertips, we have a crock pot, a saute pan and a soup pot. I looked up recipes for the crock pot and came up with little more than recipes for pot roast and chili. For some reason, I thought crock pots were making a come back, but I was wrong about this. It seems outside of the Midwest, people don't really use them or devise new recipes for them.

So I face a new challenge when it comes to meal planning. But if Anthony Bourdain can make risotto in a hotel room with nothing more than an electric tea kettle, well, then, I probably have enough kitchen accouterments to whip up a Christmas Eve feast. Except by then, we'll be staying somewhere else.

Other People's Houses, But Closer to Home

2010-12-10T17:14:00.000-08:00

Or a home.

Like millions of immigrants before us, we have arrived in New York, but via JFK Airport, not Ellis Island.

We flew in on the red eye with five bags for the three of us (JetBlue thankfully did not charge us a dime for the extra bags. They were phenomenal.) and showed up at our sublet for a hot bath and sleep.

Yep. A sublet. We're not home yet. But I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel to this year and a half of living out of suitcases. We're about six, maybe eight, God forbid twelve weeks away from finding our own home, and having our things actually move there with us.

However, we are subletting a beautifully restored brownstone from a very nice fellow who happens to have a very monkish ascetic aesthetic. There's very little furniture, yet what there is is good quality mid-century modern. He has two twin beds - one in his bedroom for him to sleep on and one as a day bed in the living room. He said, "Two people can snuggle in and be comfortable in a twin bed, but I can bring in a full size if necessary."

Yes, please.

My sister Briana's response was very similar to mine: Yes, but if you're not twenty years old and in your first serious relationship, who would want to? And even at twenty years old in your first serious relationship, sleeping with two of your skinny selves snuggled into a twin bed yielded neck cramps and sore backs.

The other details of the monkish ascetic aesthetic? Communist sand papery one ply toilet paper, thin covers, scratchy towels. I am eternally grateful for this sublet and the beauty of the space, yet my instant reaction this morning while tired, cold, and craving a hot bath and down comforter the way alcoholics crave gin was, "It's beautiful, but it's not home."

As always, it takes a bit to settle into a place, for it to sink in that we're actually here to live, and not just visiting one more place, even if we are literally living out of suitcases (no dressers in this apartment).

As always, I travel with my favorite things, so I can pull them out and place them on shelves and feel a little familiarity in my new surroundings. I lost my truffle salt somewhere along the way (This is kind of tragic given that salt is my drug of choice and I have yet to find a salt shaker in this place, but I learned that the Portland based salt store The Meadow opened a Manhattan store a month ago! How lucky am I?) but of course have my creepy yet cool hands that I love. I pulled them out and placed them on the mantel. After my delicious hot bath and five hour nap. It's home for now.

The Lovely Mix of Old & New

2010-11-21T08:37:00.000-08:00

I confess a wicked love for old typewriters. I received my first typewriter as an eighth grade graduation gift from my mother, who thought of the practical uses, that I would use it for all my papers in high school. I did. But I also spent most my free time - when I wasn't in dance classes or rehearsals or reading British novels - sitting on my bedroom floor and typing poems and stories and journal entries and who knows what all else. When I was angry at my parents ( a good chunk of the time like most 15 year olds) I typed list after list of things I hated, things I wouldn't do to my own children (which would be interesting to see now that I am a parent), the qualities I wanted to have when I was a parent. When I was exhausted from venting and ranting, I'd type a list of the things I loved and was grateful for. It was one of my better self-devised coping mechanisms. There's something gratifying and satisfying about the click-tap-taping sound of typewriter keys. Something about it always makes me feel better.

So being from Portland, where DIY and hacking are both long standing lifestyle choices, it's hard not to love this anachronistic steampunkish mix of old typewriter and Apple computer. When I saw it this morning on NPR's website, I instantly swooned. If I had a home, maybe an office with an old oak desk that would go with my old oak library chair I picked up at a yard sale for $3, then maybe I'd recreate the above.

Somewhere along the line I loaned my typewriter to a friend, and I never got it back. I still miss it. Even though it's too heavy to put in my suitcase as we travel from place to place as we find a home. Of course now, I want a Olivetti Underwood Manual Typewriter. They sound delightful.