A little bit of everything

The daylight hours are growing shorter but the days are no less full nor any cooler here in Southern California.  The trees and hills are brown, but from the drought, not the change in seasons.  Yesterday I watched from the corner of our street as helicopters doused a brush fire in the hills on the other side of the highway. It was contained and didn't threaten any homes, but the sirens, choppers, smoke, and flames were intimidating - and exhilarating: drama in the 'hood!

Though the days are shorter, they are no less full. The past week was full of sporting events.  In the past all the kids did the same sports at the same time, mostly soccer, although they tried swimming and baseball. Then the girls did gymnastics. Now they've begun to differentiate: everyone has a different activity.  It's interesting to observe the parent culture that surrounds each of these sports.  I have to admit to preferring the Cross Country crowd because that was my own beloved sport of choice (it's co-ed! No other teams get to ride buses with boys), but it's also a sport that encourages friendly conversation, because you only get to watch about 20 seconds and the rest of the time you stand around and wait for your runner to come by.

Soccer is also conducive to friendly conversation if you come to all the games and your kid isn't overly competitive. I sometimes want to remain anonymous among the soccer parents because my son is a bit of a ball hog.  He's working on it, but he really doesn't like to lose, and he really is a pretty good soccer player, so when the team falls behind, he acts on a driving urge to dribble the ball down the field and score.  If he does score, then he backs down and lets the other kids play forward, but it can be a little embarrassing when you hear other parents yell "Pass it!" at your kid.  I also got in trouble this weekend for harassing a ref - he DID make a bad call, though. He told my husband, the coach, to ask the parents on the left of him (me) to respect his calls. Oops.

On the other hand, football parents are known for being involved, loud, and obnoxious. Since my son on the football team plays benchwarmer, I go to the games looking for conversation, but everyone else watches the game, even my husband. So I watch our third son play in the band.  This is a new pursuit, and I'm just realizing that band parents are pretty fun.  They cheer "Go Band!" during the moments when play is stopped on the field, and applaud and shout whenever the band plays the theme to Ironman. Since the group is small, the kids don't march and don't wear uncomfortable uniforms which we don't have to fundraise for. This makes me happy.  Another good thing about Friday night football games is that the younger kids, who complain about going to cross country meets and soccer games, are happy to come along and watch. They spend a couple hours strolling around the stadium with their friends and begging for dollars to spend at the concession stand.  A good time for all.

Our oldest daughter is playing middle school volleyball, which would be more fun to watch if they won sometimes.  It isn't too painful to watch, though, and this year I finally know some of the other moms to chitchat with, as opposed to last year, when I knew no one because it was the beginning of the year in a new school.  The school volleyball team is a mix of girls who just play after school and girls who play together on a club team. Fortunately, these club girls are not clubby and it's actually hard to tell who is getting coached for free and who is paying $$$ for coaching at the club.

The youngest two girls are purely spectators.  Baby is learning to clap. Her other exercise is rolling and sitting.  The 8 year old wants to do dance or gymnastics, but right now she's stuck doing cartwheels on the sidelines because the parks and rec gym class is only offered on Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings. Horrible times.  Fortunately, she's a good sport about getting left out.

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I was saddened to see that D. G. Myers died last week.  I enjoyed reading his blog A Commonplace Blog for his book reviews that were both scholarly and personal.  He often examined the treatment of faith in literature and seems to have been an influential teacher and a voice of reason on the internet.  He will be missed, as the Image blog indicates. RIP.

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I myself have done little reading the last month. I did finish a couple read-alouds with the two younger elementary kids, Stuart Little, Matilda, and now Ella Enchanted. Favorite of those three is Matilda, the reading genius. She was also the kids' favorite. We also finished listening to some James Herriott stories on CD. James Herriott was a favorite author when I was younger.  Listening to his stories makes me still kind of wish I could be an Irish vet 50 years ago.

I finished reading Alan Sillitoe's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, which I had never read.  It's about loneliness, not running, or perhaps I would have read it sooner. A collection of short stories about the slums of London in the 50's, it's very dark and depressing, but short, so I finished it.  It's been awhile since I read something so bleak.  Each story focuses on a lost soul, someone who has been downtrodden and can't quite get back up. Sometimes the narrator is like the voice of the author, who grew up in the slums but got an education and moved away, but the voice seems to have guilt about having left and criticizes his books as decorations. Why did I stick with this book? Perhaps because these lost souls are so human. Did I read with a sense of "Thank goodness, I'm not like that, except sometimes"? Or a sense of "Fascinating look at aberrant human nature"? A bit of both. I can't say I'll become a Sillitoe fan. I can only stomach so much of unrelenting human distress, without needing a little joy for balance.
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A tonic: I liked this quote below about small joys, because that is what our lives are all about in this season of busyness.  We have lately experienced the small joys of brownie fudge sundaes on a Saturday evening with the cousins, a lobster fishing escapade, small successes at school (A's in math for the 7th grader at last!), sports fan happiness, coffee in the morning with the WSJ, which was on sale recently for $5 for two months, (now this deal), and best of all, sweet, chubby baby kisses. Softest cheeks in the world are found right here.  Now that Baby is no longer in that fragile newborn stage and has begun to chortle at silly antics performed for her delight by brothers and sisters, I find myself wallowing in intense moments of mothering contentment in a way I didn't have confidence or time to experience very often with the other kids. A pleasure of being an older parent.

Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. 

Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness. 

Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. 

Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples, pears. 

Show them how to cry when pets and people die. 

Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. 

And make the ordinary come alive for them. 

The extraordinary will take care of itself. 

- William Martin

linked at hopeinbrazil

Catching up with old news

I'm a good week behind the times here, or more. Presidential politicking is blessedly far away.  I know that it is civicly irresponsible of me to be ignoring the big decision coming up in November, but I'm grateful to be far from the throes of angst and mudpie slinging.  Big issues are at stake, but I keep hoping some perfectly awesome philosopher-king will ride up on a white horse and save the day. (I was just talking with my mom this morning about the crusade to redefine marriage. If marriage eventually is redefined, then perhaps the Church should come up with a new name for marriage, something to indicate its sacramental and procreative nature. A question of semantics, but semantics matter.)

I've also been catching up with blogs, after a respite from reading them because of travel and school.  Lots of mother-issues under discussion, provoked by Time's nursing toddler cover and CNN's Mother's Day  anti-mothering defense. Both seem deliberately delivered to provoke controversy.  The editors probably love the backlash, so I won't add my two cents.  

Along similar lines, Clare Coffey’s article about the glorification of domesticity and mothering (in response to political jabs that I missed) also generated some interesting discussion.  I probably don't need to comment on this either, but to silence the circulating thoughts, I'm writing them down. I read Coffey's article after I read Sally’s remarks, which seemed convincing, and then the comments, which was probably a mistake, because my reading was a bit biased.  My impression was not so much “what naivete!” but “what a difference a generation makes!” I know few real women who claim to find complete fulfillment, or a sense of glorious martyrdom, in being a mother, but blogs may give that perception. It also seems to me that a lot of men are doing a lot more parenting than they used to do.  And does the generation just below mine perhaps put more emphasis on doing things "right"?  

Most of the women I grew up with had good paying jobs lined up to begin after they picked up their college diplomas, unless they were going to spend a year or two doing service work (seeking cheap adventure as well as global peace?), going to graduate school, or traveling. I was the first of my college friends to get married, and my wedding was a whole year after graduation because my future husband was still in school and I was going to grad school. Being a stay at home mom was a little counter-cultural and crunchy, but none of my immediate acquaintances said anything of praise or blame when I left my parttime, stopgap job to have a baby nine months after we married.  Most of my small group of college friends married, had children, and now are raising their children, some while working either parttime or as volunteers, and some full time.

Being a liberal arts major, I never anticipated having a high-paying career, nor believed that fulfillment was to be found anywhere but in the search for Truth.  Nor have I ever cared enough about fashion consciousness to put effort into looking cute at the playground where I might be critiqued by other people's nannies.  I've probably perpetuated the stereotype of the frazzled mother, but if I weren't the frazzled mother, I'd probably be the frazzled schoolteacher or librarian, or whatever. I have that kind of hair.

Admittedly though, I have glorified the idea of motherhood to a certain extent, but this glorification, and ideas about education and fertility and nurturing, were based a good deal on books like Love and Responsibility and Familiaris Consortio, which made my decision to stay home seem noble rather than sacrificial. I’d had a lot of babysitting experience, too, like Coffey, so I thought I knew how to take care of kids, but babysitters don’t have to stay up nights nursing or calming sick kids or worrying about all the ways they are messing up their children psychologically. Plus, I had my brief taste of graduate school and working life, and then happily settled in at home. It wasn’t until a couple of years into it that I realized how hard it was to give up worldly things, like work that wasn’t undone within 2 minutes, adult conversation, reading late into the night, etc. But I never really completely gave up those things, so I've never really felt like a true martyr. And a part of me suspects that the internet artificially inflates the number of people who actually fit the mold that Clare describes.

Since I’ve had paying jobs and I’ve sent my kids to school at different times, I don’t exactly fit the stereotype that Coffey seems to be rejecting.  Have I missed out on something by not working regularly? I’ve made sacrifices, but I’ve also been able to do a lot. I’ve loved being able to take field trips and spend time volunteering and hanging out at parks and libraries.  I’ve also loved my little parttime jobs. I’ve always kind of assumed I’d go to work when the kids were older, but to be honest, I’ve gotten a little lazy. I like being able to volunteer, and workout, read, go to daily Mass, grocery shop during the day, bake every once in awhile, take trips without taking leave, - all those humane perks that make being a stay-at-home mom less of a martyrdom. Working fulltime doesn’t sound so appealing any more.

I don’t suppose it’s surprising that Coffey’s generation should start to backlash against the “it’s good to stay home” mentality.  I am practically old enough to be her mother. Homeschooling/staying at home are no longer new and unusual. What was counter-cultural to my generation – rejecting our mothers’ rally to join the women’s lib movement and be career women – is now what the youth are rebelling against.

The other essay Pentimento linked to was the Charming Disarray one about homeschooling. Again, what a difference a generation makes. When I was datable, most guys my age had never heard of home schooling, let alone thought about asking their potential wives to do it. Granted, I didn’t exactly hang out with the orthodox Catholic crowd back then. It was still pretty fringe movement-ish.

I can understand her objection to it being a marriage criteria.  I probably wouldn’t have dated a guy who asked me to home school either. But I might have dated one who wanted to live in a tent. I like camping.  So I have to disagree with her argument that both home schooling and camping are emergency-only options, because some people, like myself, actually enjoy both of these pursuits.  (And I had an "Ideal Man List" also - created sometime in early adolescence, which included things like "Likes outdoor activities".)

I suppose my own decision to home school took root in small increments – starting with a sense of disappointment with my own education, moving on to idealistic solutions based on reading classic novels and conservative books and periodicals of my grandfather’s. And I liked the people I met who homeschooled. I liked their kids. My college theology teacher’s kids were probably the biggest influence on my decision to home school. I loved that family.  Finally, in our early marriage, my husband didn’t make a lot of money for private school tuition, nor did I think many private schools were worth the money. 

Now that we’ve had a chance to experience a variety of educational options, I have to say, I can see comparable goods in all of them. Thus, my decision about next year is hard.  The number of things I like about home schooling and about regular schools are pretty close to equal. There are also a nearly equal number of things that I don't like about both options.

Both young bloggers are good writers: a part of me felt tempted by their arguments to chuck my ideals, put the kids in public school, and go back to work.  But there are no easy answers. I don’t know where we’ll be living in two years, let alone what my career plans are.

I do know I’m glad I’m not in the dating scene. Yikes. It all seemed so much simpler before the internet.

No longer a baby

Saturday morning I woke up and found a little face pressed into the pillow next to me, soft breath undisturbed by the movement of my eyelids. Noted freckled nose, rosebud mouth, flyaway blond wisps. Should have let her sleep, but had to wake my youngest with five kisses on the morning of her birthday, even though she had overtaken my bed, her long legs sprawled across its width, while I was scooched over to the far side. How could my baby have gotten so long? She has stretched out over the spring, and now is suddenly in the league of bigger kids.

I miss having a baby to cuddle, but I am also enjoying having children who are more self-sufficient. I like that they come to me because they want to, not just because they need something from me, although that is the usual reason. I think I thought life would be easier when the kids were bigger, but the parenting challenges are no less rigorous even though these more independent children don’t need to be held all the time. Only on the morning of their birthdays.


I wasn’t planning to have a birthday party for this young lady turning five, but a friend was packing out, so I invited her two girls over, and then figured why not invite a few more? So five little girls, aged five, came over for an impromptu tea party. I wasted a bunch of time debating whether or not to use my grandmother’s pink china, but figured I might as well use it if I’m going to store it. And then I wasted more time making pink cream cheese sandwiches on thin white bread cut into hearts, cucumber squares, jello shapes, scones, fruit with pink marshmellowy dip, and flower cupcakes, all of which were thrown over with a request for peanut butter and jelly from one young lady, and then from four more. The tea was passed over in favor of lemonade. The cupcakes were fingered and mouthed and then thrown away – probably a stick and a half of butter and 3lbs of confectioners sugar in the trash. But the girls smiled and shrieked and chased each other around the house and no one got hurt and nothing got broken and everyone had a marvelous time. Not so much wasted after all.

The table with PB & J, fine china, silver, cloth napkins

The cupcakes. Meant to make little bees out of lemon drops and almond slivers but lost the black icing. One mom asked if the girls decorated them - humbling.

Untouched food at the end of the meal.

Happy Flag Day, too! This one flies over Ft. Massachusetts on Ship Island

A belated Mother's Day thought

I am 38 years old, and still I wake up some mornings thinking “I want my mom.” I wanted my mom when I was sick (with mono it turned out) while working as a camp counselor while in college, when I was pregnant, nursing and chasing a toddler all at once, and later when my kids were giving me trouble of the emotional variety and their dad was 10000 leagues away. Now I want my mom to come and help me pack and tell me what I need to do to move, even though I’ve done this 8 or 9 times now. My husband is a great help and efficient at getting things done. But there’s a different kind of comfort that Mom provides. I don’t think I will ever stop wanting my mom to tell me everything is going to be okay.



When my siblings and I hit adolescence and were relentless in giving our mom a hard time, not just with our bad behavior but with our catty comments about her appearance and actions, we secretly still wanted her to come and tuck us in at night. Or at least to come in and announce “Lights out means no talking.” My kids are starting to tease me in a similar fashion. They love to point out signs of aging and to comment on what a nerd I was in school and how out of touch I am now. We called my mom chubby and old and mean. We liked to catch her in small acts of hypocrisy. We worked on her weaknesses. Meanwhile she overlooked ours – or rather, loved us in spite of them.

In reality she was the prettiest mom around. Even now, when she come to visit and help out (thanks, Mom!), she still gets compliments from my friends about how pretty and put together and cheerful she is. She may have affected a different voice for certain company, but who doesn’t? Now I wonder if what really pained her was not the direct teasing, but the meanness we wrecked on each other. As a mother I finally understand how the daily antagonism between siblings breaks your heart.

I wonder if I lived closer to my mother if I would wake up and think “When can I get away from my mother?” which is what I thought when I was an teenager and yearned to go far far away to college. I imagined living in a garret with the rats and my books after college, part Sarah Crewe, part … Jo March? Jim Burden? I wanted to distance myself from the person I was and take on a new identity independent of my roots. I wanted to be someone interesting and clever, not someone from a small town with a relatively normal, uninteresting family.


I outgrew that dream pretty quickly. And now I envy those African mothers from Babies and the Asian mothers like Amy Tan’s who shoehorn several generations into one home. Someone else around to remind the siblings to be kind to one another, to say someday you’ll all be best friends, would be nice. A book review in the WSJ a couple weeks ago described the importance of a mother to different siblings. (May 28-29) Please Look After Mom by a Korean, Kyung-Sook Shin, is the book. The review by Pico Iyer, who lives in Japan, makes the point that the book is topically about a Korean siblings whose country mother gets lost when she comes to visit them in the city, but the theme of our relationship to the past and to tradition is what is at the core. The siblings have left behind their past and mocked their mother, but when she is missing they realize how dear she is, or what an effect she has had on the people they have become – or so I assume, not having read the book. This is one of Iyer’s closing thoughts: “The largest split across the globe today is not between Islam and the West, or between China and the United States, but between cultures of the future and those of the past, often within the same country (even within the same family).”


Without mothers nearby, physically or in spirit, the connection between past and future is lost. And with it, a surfeit of love and assurance that only mothers can provide

Parenting and Education

I've come across some more articles on parenting styles with regard to education:

That piece in the Wall Street Journal about Chinese mothers stirred up a lot of emotions in other readers – upwards of 5700 comments, more than any other article they have printed. On Saturday WSJ printed a response from Ayelet Waldman, the new voice of contemporary mothers, although I’m not sure she’s who I’d pick to represent my views.  In this piece, though, she makes some good points about parenting to the needs of your child.

Then yesterday NPR had an interview with a mother, Vicki Abeles, who has made a documentary film about how stressed out kids are called “Race to Nowhere.” Her preteen daughter was suffering from sleeplessness and anxiety because she felt so much pressure to perform and excel.

So on the one hand you’ve got the tough Chinese mothers saying “Push your children!” and on the other hand some softhearted ones who say “Don’t push your children too much!”

I asked my middle school sons if it seemed kids were stressed at their school. They couldn’t think of anyone, except some friends who get worked up with they aren’t doing well at their video games.

Third article: a book review about a book about social media  called Alone Together: How We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. The reviewer made the point that Holden Caulfield, with his hatred of phonies, would be appalled at how authenticity is no longer a virtue; everyone is now more concerned about how to make their online/social media self more attractive than about being authentic. A couple of kids were quoted about how they prefer to text than talk on the phone because they don’t want to show their emotions.

Combine that with an article a couple months ago about the amount of texting kids do. Somewhere I read about a 14 yr old girl who sent 25000 texts in a month. I asked the college kids last semester how many texts a month they averaged, and it was around 2500-3500 – about 100 texts a day.

And then this piece about how little some college kids are reading.

It would be pretty easy to make the argument that kids aren’t under pressure to excel at academics, but to keep up with their social personas. Compare the number of times you see a preteen/teenager with a book with the number of times you see one with a phone. How many know who Holden Caulfield is? (Not that he’s the ideal character, but he’s an icon most teens probably don’t recognize.)

I wonder if the mother who made the documentary might find that if kids cared about learning – if their imaginations were ignited – they might not feel so stressed out.  Get those kids interested in reading.

Neighbors

Last week, a couple of kids from down the street came over every day after school to play and then came over on Sunday, too. I should be happy about this because one of my quibbles with our house is that our neighborhood doesn’t have many children. But of course, not only did I just read about Chinese mothering and feel guilty about how little oversight I give my kids’ school work, but I also don’t really have much affection for these particular kids, a brother and sister aged 5 and 9.

Not that these are bad children; they just lack imagination.  We have some friends who have kids who are full of ideas, who never ask to watch tv or play video games, who my kids love to have over.  But that's not these kids.  One day I returned home from picking up my younger kids a few minutes after my older sons had been dropped off by their afterschool ride, and my boys had let these kids in and turned on the Wii for them, even though we have a no-Wii on school days policy.

I don’t know these kids well, or their family at all, but the fact that they wander the street every day after school and that one day their mother was driving down the street at 7 looking for them, doesn’t give me a very good impression of their home life. I lectured my sons about letting them in when I wasn’t home, but I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty for doing so.

That particular day the brother and sister showed up because they were locked out of their house and the babysitter, who lives a few doors down, wasn’t home. When dinner time rolled around, we sent the kids home, but still no one was there, so they came back and ate dinner with us. Apparently, the mother and the babysitter had a miscommunication. But now these kids keep asking if they can eat dinner with us. It’s like we’ve fed stray dogs. They come over after school, play a couple minutes, and then ask for snacks. A lot of snacks. I remind them to say please and thank you to slow them down. Then they stay until we send them home.

So one minute I’m irritated that I’m feeding these mannerless children. The next minute I’m feeling guilty for my resentment and reluctance. My lack of charity. We watched The Blind Side not long ago, and it had its intended effect – it made me feel that I need to do more for the poor. Since I don’t have a class at the community college this semester, I keep meaning to volunteer at St. Vincent de Paul - another resolution I need to act upon.

But here are these kids: I don’t know if they are “poor;” their mother has a job; I haven’t asked if they have a dad around, but they don’t mention him – and I want them to go away. They obviously are less well off than us, because they like our boring house so much. I am embarrassed to mention my coldheartedness. I want to help faceless people. I don’t want to be inconvenienced by children who may not be a good influence, who want to eat the food in my pantry, not what I bought to give away, who interrupt me when I’m trying to make dinner for my own family.  I know I need to be generous to them, but I also want to protect my own children. 

Is setting a good example of generosity and hospitality more important than protecting?

Chinese mothers

Several months ago I received a flyer for a special subscription rate to the WSJ. At the time I was feeling adrift from news, and so I signed up. I only read about 20% of the paper, but what I read is 90% of the time interesting. My oldest also comes straight home for school and sits down with a couple sections to peruse while he eats his after school snack.

Saturdays have the best articles; this Saturday, the controversial “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” appeared. Author Amy Chua, a law professor at Yale, mother of two girls, one a concert pianist pictured playing in Carnegie Hall, throws down the gauntlet, bluntly asserting that Chinese parenting, with its emphasis on achievement in academics and music, is better for children and society.(Pentimento also has a note about it.)

At first glance, the standards Chua lays out – no playdates, no drama, no grade less than an A, no complaining, no exception to being number one in every class except gym and drama, no less than three hours at least of music practice a day – seem unattractive and untenable. A Chinese child who receives an A- is rebuked and shamed. You can’t help but wonder what happens to the Chinese child who isn’t a musical prodigy or who has a learning disability, or who is number 2 in his class. I suppose those children become laborers.

Even though my first response to the article is “How extreme,” this article is provocative because much of what Chua writes rings true. Self-esteem does come from success, not from being told you’re good enough, you’re doing fine. Who wants to do fine? When I think about some of the students who were in my class last semester, who didn’t turn in ¾ of the assignments because they were too busy keeping up with facebook and texting, who didn’t care if they failed, I wonder what they think they are going to do with themselves. Live with mom? Sell cable tv? Meanwhile, their Chinese counterparts are preparing to take over the world.

On the other hand, I failed these students. I didn’t motivate them. I didn’t encourage them. I didn’t goad them to work. I am guilty of laissez-faire parenting and teaching. Almost is good enough for me. You tried? Great. In the flurry of after school activities, I don’t care that my younger kids are running around with kids from down the street. They’re running! They’re burning off energy! I can start supper! I like to think they are being creative, but actually I think they spend most of their time arguing about rules and teasing the youngest kid.

I’ve spent a lot of parental energy encouraging my kids to become good readers and hoping they’ll become thoughtful, imaginative, empathetic, judicious, as a result. We’ve put time into catechesis and faith formation, music lessons, and sports. I usually worry that they don’t have enough free time for imaginative play. But while my kids may think I am stricter than most of their school friends’ parents because of the limitations I put on media use, I am less strict than many home school parents, and don't compare to the Chinese model of parenting. And I haven’t encouraged my children's growth in creativity or artistic ability like some of the more free thinking home school parents. I am not an enforcer OR a facilitator. Reading Amy Chua’s article adds to the mother-guilt-load, the “I’m not doing enough for my kids!” fears. Are my kids going to be underachievers?


Chua’s article was matched with an article about how some Chinese parents are beginning to encourage their children to be more creative. They are beginning to read American parenting books. And there are American parents who follow the Chinese model. But I wonder how much this philosophy of demanding high achievement is incompatible with Christian faith. Certainly hard work and perseverance are nondenominational virtues, but if the goal of life is to know, love and serve God in order to be happy with Him for eternity, how much emphasis does a Christian parent put on worldly success? Chua claims that Chinese parents are motivated by the desire for what is best for their children, but they also believe that children are indebted to their parents. My parental ambivalence stems partly from the belief that my children are a gift from God who have a free will that I can't compel or form to my will.

This is my out, right? My reason for not emulating the model of Chinese mothers: I want my children to love God and neighbor more than I want them to get all A’s.

But how have I modeled and encouraged that life? Poorly.

On the bandwagon

Everyone else has probably moved on to new topics, but I meant to say something in passing about the Erica Jong editorial and the accompanying essay by her daughter that were in the Wall Street Journal this past weekend. Although a few years ago I might have been more offended by Jong’s denigrating remarks about attachment parenting and “motherphilia,” now that my youngest is school aged, I feel no personal offense, and instead wonder more about Jong’s own feelings toward the article written by her daughter. Jong’s fiery comments can be dismissed as a reaction against the political implications of attachment parenting. She sees it as a tool of the right-wingers to keep parents too tired to protest, although it seems to be a parenting style that appeals to the extremes of both political stripes. The voices of pro-lifers, who are sometimes attachment parenting proponents, raised in protest certainly belie this claim, while the environmentalists and celebrity moms she mentions (Madonna and Angelina) don’t seem to be paragons of conservatism.

She seems to be setting herself up for controversy. Maybe she has a new book coming out and needs some press.

But the more dramatic story is the subtext in the pairing of the two essays: Erica Jong criticizes women who give up work to stay home with children, breastfeed on demand, and make the choices that she encouraged their mothers to reject. Then her daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, who stays home and helicopter parents, writes about her mother’s ambivalence toward parenthood. She says her mother wasn’t a bad mother, BUT her mother was “as good a mother” as she could be.

So is Molly Jong-Fast suggesting that there are better mothers, or that her mother could have been a better mother? That some women are temperamentally better suited to motherhood than others?

I have to admit I agree with that statement with qualifications, and wouldn’t hesitate to say that I’m not one of the better mothers out there. I’ve said before that I am not a cuddly, crafty type. But I followed some of the practices of attachment parenting, in a large part to delay the return of fertility. And unlike the many women like Molly Jong-Fast whose parenting style represents an implicit rejection of the way their mothers parented, I admired the example of my own mom who stayed home while we were little, nursed us, shopped at the co-op, and made yogurt and breads from the Tassajara Bread Book. She also went back to work when we were school-aged and let us listen to Marlo Thomas sing about how mommies can be anything. So I grew up thinking girls could do anything boys could do, but better, and I still wanted to stay home with my kids while they were babies. I didn’t think about not breastfeeding. I used cloth diapers to be green, but also because I was cheap. Of course, I had high-minded ideals about why I should stay home to devote myself to my babies, but I was also a little bit lazy and lacking in ambition. Fortunately, my husband had a job with benefits that accommodated our cheap standards of living, so I didn’t have to work.


I’m also aware of how parenting practices don’t work the same way for every kid, so our parenting style shifted a little with each new baby. Each child has needed something a little different from me. And they don’t stay needy babies very long. So Jong’s rant against attachment parenting as a step back for feminism hardly seems relevant, since for many women this stage lasts only about three to five years. And it wouldn’t surprise me if the generation that is growing up nurtured by doting mothers returns to a more detached style of parenting.

These are rambling thoughts. I don’t have parenting all figured out. And perhaps Erica Jong is really ranting against the attitude of knowing the secret to perfect parenting that can be present in attachment parenting craze and causes some women to feel like they will fail as mothers if they don’t nurse or carry their babies around. Other women haven’t pressured me to parent a certain way, but I haven’t really hung out in high pressure groups. My guilt is all self-inflicted.


If I felt peer pressure, it was not from proponents of attachment parenting; it was from the “Why aren’t you using your degree?” types like Erica Jong. I still remember the hurt feelings caused by a college professor I bumped into one time with the four kids I had then, even if I don’t remember the exact words he used to suggest I was wasting my education by staying home.

The real influence on why I chose to parent the way I have would have to go to J P II’s Familiaris Consortio. Before my husband and I were married, we studied up on all the marriage and family encyclicals and church documents and were bombarded with the message that love and self-sacrifice go hand and hand, the same theme that ran through the literature I was reading. I’m not sure what Jong would think about that, but her editorial doesn’t seem to consider self-sacrifice much of a virtue.



Not that I’m good at self-sacrifice, either. This blog is an indulgence. My children will probably grow up and criticize me for being too emotionally detached, and they already decry my heavy handed censorship of what they watch and read. Some kid is always accusing me of favoritism. Since every one of the kids has said this, I feel pretty certain that I’m equally unfair to them all. I’m aware of my shortcomings as a mother. But my goal isn’t to be a perfect mother, but to help point my kids toward God, their origin and their ending. Being the best mother I can be, like Molly Jong-Fast says, is enough if I can help the kids see that love and self-sacrifice are entwined.

So in the end, I feel sorry for Erica Jong, rather than irritated by her, because she obviously has had some painful relationships in her life. And perhaps her relationship with her daughter has been one that has given her pain. I hope the pairing of the two essays is a sign of the strength of their relationship instead of a weakness.

Practice makes perfect?

No.

No, thank you.

No, I’m sorry.

I’m practicing.

I am not going to let my children bully me into uncomfortable social obligations anymore. Please remind me that I said this in case I forget, or if, in a moment of pity, I feel tempted to cave in to their relentless requests.

That said, I probably also need to remember to say no every once in a while to my own desires, especially my deep and abiding love for my routines, and instead learn to enjoy spontaneous events.

I didn't forget

Blessings on all the mothers out there, especially my own mother, my mother-in-law, my grandmother and grandmother-in-law - soon to be 90!, and my sister and sisters-in-law, all of whom are wonderful mothers, even if sometimes they think they aren't. 

Personally, I'm sometimes embarrassed by the fuss of Mother's Day.  I don't like to be the center of attention - and gift giving isn't my love language.  But my kids are telling me to sleep in, don't get up early, don't spy around my desk -- and I'm happy they are plotting some act of generosity like breakfast in bed - which is probably as much or more fun for them to make than it is for me to eat it, while trying to avoid having my coffee jostled and my juice sloshed as they hover on the bed, craving my compliments.

In case they get up early and read my blog, here's what I want for Mother’s Day:

  

• Immediate Obedience
• Cheerful demeanours
• Helpful Attitudes
• Respectful manners
• Cooperative Play
• Unsolicited tidying up
• Unhurried time to read aloud and play outside together
• World Peace – so my kids’ dad and all those other deployed parents could come home

No jewelry, no spa treatments, no flowers, no new appliances, no thank you.


A few happy Mother’s Day memories:

Maitre'd and wait staff of Chez Cuire, fancy restaurant:

On St. Johns, VI, after one of the most inspiring Mother's Day masses ever: we're all smiling so grandly because the priest preached so stirringly about remembering to "Celebrate, Gratitude, Hope"

A picnic and hike in the woods, a favorite family activity (I think this photo is from my birthday, actually)

 With cows and cousins in Lancaster last year:

On Breath, Eyes, Memory

After the lachrymose ending of The Farming of Bones, I hesitated to open another book by Edwidge Danticat, especially after my sister warne d me that this one also ended with tears. But I had Breath, Eyes, Memory from the library, and it’s short. I started paging through, I couldn’t stop. The characters are again thin and shadowy instead of fully formed, and the plot, well, the plot is more anecdotal memories than action – Danticat’s writing is more lyrical than narrative, but perhaps she is trying to draw attention not to the people but to their relationships – in this case 4 generations of Haitian women.



Sophie, the third generation, is the central character. She is the child of an act of rape, raised by her aunt after her mother went to America to avoid going mad, Sophie goes to America at the beginning of the book while the aunt returns to her home town to be with her mother, Grandmother Ife. The aunt mourns the loss of Sophie and the occasional brushes with the married man she is in love with but does her duty and encourages Sophie to do the same, even though both of them have suffered from abandonment by Martine, Sophie’s mother/Tante Atie’s sister, and the actions of their mothers: “I must tell you that I do love your mother. Everything I love about you, I loved in her first. That is why I could never fight her about keeping you here . . . It would be a shame if the two of you got into battles because you share a lot more than you know.” says Tante Atie to Sophie.


The rest of the book is mostly vignettes of mother/daughter/sister relationships showing how these tightly knit women hurt and cling to each other. Sophie’s mother struggles to make a living, while Sophie falls in love. Danticat gives the impression that Haitian mothers are very concerned with their daughters’ virginity. Various violations – testing, the rape, betrayal – cause the women of the story to be haunted by ghosts and self-loathing, but they keep clinging to each other. On Sophie’s first night with her mother, Martine has a nightmare because Sophie has the face of her father, the unnamed rapist.


When Sophie finally does leave her mother for her husband, it is only through an act of violence after her mother continually antagonizes her, while saying things like “the love between a mother and daughter is deeper than the sea. You would leave me for an old man who you didn’t know the year before. You and I we could be like Marassas (doubles). You are giving up a lifetime with me. Do you understand? … There are secrets you cannot keep.” But Sophie can’t have a healthy relationship with her husband until her relationship with her mother and her mother’s past is healed. She even goes to therapy, which was surprising when she at one point seems to live on the edge of poverty, while her mother never gets help exorcising her demons, but finally runs back to her aunt and grandmother in Haiti.

In Haiti, we find out how difficult mothers can make life for their daughters, but also how strong the ties between them are. The grandmother looks at Sophie’s baby Brigitte and comments on connection between generations: “’Do you see my granddaughter?’ she asked tracing her thumb across Brigitte’s chin. ‘The tree has not split one mite. Isn’t it a miracle that we can visit with all her kin, simply by looking into this face.’”

This reminded me of how my family acts when a new baby is born: everyone sits around looking at this scrunched, red face making pronouncements about whom the newborn looks like before his face even has time to recover from a trip down the birth canal that makes him look like everyone other newborn, not great-uncle Joe or whomever. Brigitte is an older baby, though, a quiet, good baby, and she acts as a bridge between the previous three generations, pulling them closer so they can heal.




Later Sophie’s grandmother says “Your mother is your first friend.” – to which there is an unspoken “although” – although she left you with her sister, although she tried to kill you in utero, although she would make you feel guilty and dirty for leaving her to marry. Martine shows up in Haiti, too, and Sophie begins to understand how her mother’s behavior towards her was formed by her past, by her culture, by her own sufferings. There is no sobbing lovefest reunion, but Sophie and Martine go back to New York together with baby Brigitte reconciled to their fuller understanding of each other.


Sophie is also able to reconcile and continue in her relationship with her husband, largely because she realizes how her mother was formed by her mother and her mother before that. She holds no anger toward her Grandma Ife, but appreciates her many stories, one of which is about the people who carry the sky on their heads “They are the people of Creation. Strong, tall, and mighty people who can bear anything. Their Maker, she said, gives them the sky to carry because they are strong. These people do not know who they are, but if you see a lot of trouble in your life, it is because you were chosen to carry part of the sky on your head.”


(That sounds like my Bible study leader, who was sexually abused by her stepfather, has been in more than one near fatal accident, nearly died of blood clots, has a mother who had a brain tumor, a brother who is a drug/alcohol abuser, and now just found out her husband has a brain tumor. Yet she remains generous and cheerful with others. She certainly carries a bit of sky.)


But Martine is unable to get over her past, even though she too, has a man who wants to marry her. She can’t accept the love of him or of his child and finally gives into the demons that have haunted her since her rape. So Sophie has to go back to Haiti, this time for a funeral, so her mother’s spirit can finally rest, so she can finally be a grown woman herself.

The book seemed to leave a lot of holes, and sometimes it seemed that these women shouldn’t have been so damaged by their mothers’ attempts to keep them pure. But then passages like this made me want to keep reading:

“Listening to the song [at the wake] I realized that it was neither my mother nor my Tante Atie who had given all the mother-and-daughter motifs to all the stories they told and all the songs they sang. It was something that was essentially Haitian. Somehow, early on, our song makers and tale weavers had decided that we were all daughters of this land.” and “I come from a place where breath eyes, and memory are one, a place from which you carry your past like the hair on your head. Where women return to their children as butterflies or as tears in the eyes of the statues that their daughters pray to. My mother was as brave as stars at dawn. She too was from this place. My mother was like that woman who could never bleed and then could never stop bleeding, the one who gave in to her pain, to live as a butterfly, Yes, my mother was like me.”



And then the grandmother asks, to Sophie, to Martine, “Ou libere? Are you free my daughter?”


Perhaps it is not just in Haiti where mothers and daughters comfort and torment each other. I remember wanting nothing more than to get away from my mother when I was a teenager. She never did anything to deserve my scorn – just danced when it embarrassed me, punished me when I was smart alecky, made me brush my hair and dress neatly when I thought I was being stylishly unkempt. I wanted independence, not from an abusive, clinging relationship, but freedom nonetheless.



And what daughter doesn’t want to be free of her mother’s judging eye? I can already see that I hold my daughters to a different standard than my sons: their misbehavior angers me more, like I expect they should never misbehave. I take a stronger hand with them, trying to mold them into the young ladies I want them to be, but I feel like I have less influence with them than with my sons.



Or perhaps I find fault with Sophie’s suffering because I sympathize with her mother too much – and thus my mother too. What mom doesn’t want her daughter to remain pure, not just physically, but emotionally, too, so she will not have to know the pains of love, only its joys. Both my girls are very much themselves, not similar to me, but perhaps because it is so clear how easy it is for girls to fall into trouble, I don’t want them make my mistakes. And I appreciate more fully how my mother must have felt when I betrayed her as an adolescent.



I may have pushed her away at that age, but now I’m trying to make up for it. Maybe it is because I am a mother myself – the first and each subsequent time I headed to the labor unit, a part of me repeated “I want my mom, I want my mom,” with each contraction (sorry, husband, I wanted you, too, on one side, and Mom on the other…).



And that refrain still comes to mind when life becomes difficult, and becoming childlike is the only way to approach some struggles. Thanks, Mom, for hearing it.