Torn Debate

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/introducing-the-motherlode-book-club/

Torn: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood is the first book in the Motherlode Book Club hosted by Lisa Belkin (see link above.) I’m a contributor; read my essay, When I Sneeze, I Pee a Little, and you might laugh a bit. And maybe pee.

Comments are coming in on the NY Times site like crazy, and I find myself not really wanting to jump in the fray. The comments range from SAHMs (Stay At Home Moms) – apparently we are labeling EVERYTHING with acronyms these days, making it that much easier to stereotype people – to die-hard career women who feel they’ve sacrificed nothing as moms in high-powered jobs.

Daycare bad
Daycare good
“Daycare at 4 months old? Why don’t you just take your kid from the hospital straight to daycare?”
Contributors are a bunch of whiny rich mothers
Quit yer bitchin’
Etcetera.

Here’s the deal. Each to her own. What works for you doesn’t work for me. Vicey versey. This is a time in history when a large number of women are the primary breadwinners (especially now in the bad economy, look it up) and are mothers with responsibilities at home.

And here’s the other deal. Women’s work is this:

Laundry

Dishes

Dinner

Diapers

Bedtime

Grocery store

Dry cleaning

Vacuuming

Calendar items, including doctor and dentist appointments, financial planner, vacations

Emotional health of entire family, including remembering birthdays, hugging children when they are crying, planning family events, sympathizing with sick kids, knowing when to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em, when to walk away

Etcetera.

It’s being charge of my own emotional health plus the mental health of the entire family that is the honest-to-goodness straw on the proverbial camel for me.

Of course not every woman feels this way. But the debate obviously goes on (86 comments on the NY Times blog) and some women, like me, feel divided, feel torn.

I do feel like the story of dads is missing in the book. These days young dads like my husband juggle work and family right along beside us. But my husband doesn’t feel torn. It’s not an identity crisis with him.

By the way, the name of this blog was almost Identity Code Red, which is highly dramatic but illustrates the point.

In this time of social change when both moms and dads are going through a redefinition of roles, why the hell wouldn’t we write about it?

By the way, there’s a need for more books like this, from fathers’ perspectives. Someone write that down and go make some money off the idea. Peace out.

Slow It On Down, Baby

Shave your beard and moustache
Move your truck over so I can get by on the driveway, would ya
Don't forget the papers
You'll have to look in the filing cabinet all by yourself
Be there at one or else
You punk-ass husband

Through the rain

I heard singing

And the croak of frogs

And then

silence

And I no longer wanted to put vodka in my Orange Julius
Maybe we can knock boots instead

Book review

Of all the reviews of Torn, and wow, there have been many, this is the one I identify with the most: http://bioblog.biotunes.org/bioblog/2011/05/03/the-conflict-of-modern-motherhood-is-all-about-guilt/

It is as hard for dads these days as it is for moms. The Old Man took two months off when Baby Girl was born. He's the one who usually takes time off of work when they're sick. He picks up the kids four days a week from daycare.

In some ways, we won't ever question men's decisions on how to craft their work days as much as we'll question women's. But it is also not a mainstream idea for a man to take major time off for his family. There's less leeway and the tacit assumption that the man's wife will be at home while he works long hours or drives two hours for an emergency work call.

The Old Man and I both keenly feel pulled in too many directions - there's got to be an easier way.

Meetings

I'm new at running meetings at work.

I asked a co-worker, our Public Involvement specialist, about an idea I had to curb sarcasm during meetings.

I buy a Nerf gun.

When I hear sarcastic or negative comments, I shoot the offender.

He pointed out that I was answering an indirectly aggressive tactic with an overtly aggressive tactic. And how does that further my goal of mutual respect and an atmosphere of collaborative problem-solving?

Still, wouldn't it be fun?

For Cathy

Women will always be defined
by the people they surround themselves with.

It's always been this way.

From the first cave chick who scrambled
vulture eggs

to the next Prime Minister of Country So-And-So
to wear heels.

The only difference between then and now
is that we have a choice.

Imagine three paths:

Path One: You don't get married, you don't have kids,
you surround yourself with intellectual coworkers
and young urban friends. You drink every Friday and Saturday
night, and you read. And because you read so many interesting
articles and blogs and books, you know everything. Including
how to parent.
(You are a career woman.)

Path Two: You have a husband for a while. Maybe he dies. Maybe you
don't like his sorry ass, and you leave him. Maybe you realize you're
a sista. You travel. A lot. You know where the best restaurants are and
the bookstores with the biggest self-help sections.
(You are a spinster.)

Path Three: You go to college and major in something incredibly impressive,
like biology or computer science or engineering. You get married. You have a kid.
You are stripped of your dignity the first time your kid pounds on the door
and screams while you try to go the bathroom alone. You do not keep long hours
at work, which clearly exhibits a lack of commitment to the older folks. It amuses you to pick fights with your husband, just to keep life interesting.
(You are a mother.)

(If a salesman came up to you
and told you that he had a
once in a lifetime
experience
to sell you, and that this experience
would provide a concrete moral compass
for your life
so that deep in your bones
you would know
what is right
and what is wrong
what matters
and what is fluff...
and that this experience
would provide periodic waves of euphoria
and unbelievable feelings of gratitude,
but that in exchange,
you would question your very identity,
your energy would drain from your body
as if a vampire was sucking your blood
constantly
and that you may not ever again have
time to pluck your eyebrows -

would you buy it?)

So what's it gonna be?

Path One, Path Two, Path Three?

We chose Path Three. We bought motherhood, and maybe because our kids are small and helpless and need us for every basic human function, we have no other identity.

We'll raise our daughters. And one day our daughters will choose.

So what's it gonna be?

Path One, Path Two, Path Three?

Bedtime

dark, quiet, peaceful
i watched them
my four year old
putting my baby to sleep
they held hands
he smiled

a neon sign was above their heads
green and pink
blinking the message
"Duh, this is life's most important thing. Right here. Duh."
with a neon arrow pointing down
to my kids

she reached up to his nose
hooked a finger in his nostril
and yanked
he said ouch
she smiled
giggled a sleepy laugh
they're fighting already

Detour

Does God care more about the piss-ant town in the desert or the city, where the full-on press of people touch shoulders while their eyes bore into the sidewalk?

Fran wondered. Her husband's mind was closed to her. If she had to say whose mind she knew better, Oliver's or God's, she would say God's. She couldn't imagine Him up in the sky inhabiting every mind at once, shifting from Japan to China to Utah, and then deciding after weighing all the options to settle His gaze on her.

She sat on a cliff above the town, shoes off, toes in the grit and pebbles. It was noisy, but it wasn't. She thought she heard the highway twenty miles north, maybe a jake brake every once in a while. Western Kingbirds rushed the sun and lingered in the shade.

She smelled sage and sneezed.

If she were a betting woman, she'd put money on Him checking in on New York City, or at least somewhere on the East coast. She pondered the things all women ponder when they have a free moment:

apples
bananas
spaghetti (if she were back in New York the Italian deli would have the fresh pasta and marinara and she'd pick up some bread to go along with it)
but canned is fine, just fine
iron that shirt (and why Oliver started wearing plaid is beyond her)
organize the cupboard above the stove
send her daughter a birthday card (thirty two years already?)
psyche herself up for time with Oliver on the sofa tonight (she'd try not to be obvious about the fact that she'd rather be in the den reading a book)
butter
lemon
coffee cake
provolone
rye bread
batteries.

She traced a message for God in the sand, in case He happened to look there, then slipped her shoes on and walked to the grocery store.