Pop Culture wisdom

Last night The Old Man cut me loose at 6:00 pm, probably because I was horizontal and half-lidded on the couch. While he and The Kid played and continued the potty training downstairs, I went upstairs to read and write and sleep. I did sleep, starting at 7:00 pm, but during that hour of reading/writing time, I discovered something.

I had been thinking about Shelly from Northern Exposure because reruns are playing on PBS. Season 5, Episode 11: Baby Blues. Shelly has a baby shower which reminded me of mine. Incredibly awkward and horrible. When people try to guess how big around you are, it's never a good thing. Shelly takes off from her baby shower and meets a circle of women in the woods, including Regina King as Mom Nature. Mom Nature gives her a dose of reality. She's not going to tell her it's all rosy, but it's not all bad either, being a mom. It's real talk - no horror stories, but no denial either that it's an incredibly difficult time in a woman's life. Acknowledgement that if it weren't for the cuteness of kids, parents would likely throw them out a window.

(And yes, I do get my wisdom from pop culture. You should see my dog-eared copy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy).

Shelly got me thinking about my aversion to advice. She was navigating two different kinds of advice. One kind was poison and was making her baby blues worse, and the other kind was a group of women sharing the reality of momhood.

I know the advice to discount off-hand:

You should quit your job. Oh yeah, genius? And then where will we live? In a trailer home in Dacono?
You should give up your officer's commission. I would want my wife to stop doing law enforcement. It's just too dangerous. Well, old white guy, I've got some news for you. Husbands don't run the world or makes decisions for their wives. Now get out of my face.
Children in daycare are raised with substandard values. Only a man whose wife stopped working when they had kids could sit there and smugly say this. (I happen to like The Kid's daycare. The teachers are awesome and The Kid learns and plays and is exposed to a healthy routine every day.)

I'm worse at listening to the good advice. I think I should be super-woman, and not need to hear guidance from anybody. Since when in the history of the world have women raised kids on their own? Only in this current, rich, developed society (particularly white culture) are women isolated and expected to do it all - although in our household it translates to two parents expected to do it all, because my husband is a full-time dad as well as a full-time game warden.

So, thinking all these things, I cracked open Women Who Run With the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, and she set me straight:

p. 179 "The older women were the arks of instinctual knowing and behavior who could invest the young mothers with the same. Women give this knowing to each other through words, but also by other means....The instinctual self always blesses and helps those who come after. It is this way among healthy creatures and among healthy humans. In this way the child-mother is swept across the threshold into the circle of mature mothers, who welcome her with jokes, gifts, and stories."

And mature mothers can be of any age, and don't even have to have kids. Annie's a mature mother, because she has this uncanny ability to read people and understand their particular psychic/spiritual predicaments.

p. 181 "Even if you had the most wonderful mother in the world, you may eventually have more than one. As I have often told my own daughters, "You are born to one mother, but if you are lucky, you will have more than one. And among them all you will find most of what you need." Your relationships with las todas madres, the many mothers, will most likely be ongoing ones, for the need for guidance and advisement is never outgrown, nor, from the point of view of women's deep creative life, should it ever be."

I have mastered the ability to sift out the negative, judgmental advice. But I am a novice when it comes to opening myself to wisdom from the people around me, especially the women.

Crazy how when Shelly or Buffy tell me something from the television, I internalize it, but when women I know and trust try to do the same, I reject it.

Hey baby in my belly. You have no idea how much you're shaking up your ma's head.