Dear Editor

The newspaper in this small town is truly a must-read each week. I've read a lot of small town papers but this one seriously takes the "are you serious?" prize. It's thoroughly Yankee, in that insider-y, kinda distant kind of way. The police blotter is laugh out loud funny (most of the time) as if the person who writes it is in on the joke. The columnist with the pseudonym (though pretty much everybody knows who she is) spends paragraphs describing the cars of drivers she feels have violated some ethical or legal code, lists all the errant yard sale signs that people have forgotten to take down, and is consistently irritated by misbehaved children in public places like restaurants or sidewalks. She hates cell phones and SUVs, not for environmental concerns, but just because she hates them. And the people who have them.

But the Letters to the Editor are serious important reading and sometimes all that anyone reads. Which makes sense really, because pretty much all you need to gauge the heartbeat of the town is what's in those letters. And right now, it's sheer venom.

The nastiness has reached brave new heights. The personal attacks and the name calling are so vicious that I'm sure I'm not the only one who has shook the paper out and thought, "oh no they did NOT." But they did, and they do. Like weekly. Like for paragraphs and paragraphs. About an ousted Head of School, about the construction plans of a local business, about the trash someone left in someone else's barrel.

We take our history seriously here which might explain why this underbelly of American democracy and culture thrives so well in the newspaper (and at Town Meetings and Zoning Meetings and Historic Commission meetings). Everybody's gotta an opinion and everybody's right. And I like that to some extent and I get it too, but the meanness and the dog-with-a-bone mentality and the public-ness of it all seems more like embarrassing shenanigans right now. And it's depressing really.

Last year when things got similarly cranked up, I wrote an op-ed in which I reminded letter-writers and smear-campaigners that while passion and commitment are commendable, they lose their good intentions when ugliness erupts. And I reminded them that despite their so-called concern for the community, children were watching and in a lot of cases reading and how, ewww, bullying, dudes! We don't do that.

And it's completely shocking to me that NO ONE LISTENED TO MY SHEER BRILLIANCE but instead IGNORED MY RIGHTEOUS REASONING and CHOSE NOT TO FOLLOW ME INTO THE SUNSET OF PEACE AND HARMONY.

But I digress.

Tonight after coaching soccer, and pulling a muscle trying to out-cool myself, and in which not one but both daughters cried, and then later the Giant Four Year old (good times), I sat down on the porch in a lump of aching aches and crabbiness and cracked a beer (sweet relief). The garden looked pretty awesome, which it better after three hours of weeding its sorry ass, and I got a wee thoughtful.

A flicker flickered to my right. A hovering, fidgeting tiny little fast thing. And because of all the doom and gloom around these parts, I thought "great! now we've got hellish cicadas! end times cometh."

But it was not a noisy flying bug. It was a humming bird. A humming bird! In my garden!

I am not a bird watcher. I know blue jays and cardinals and pigeons and doves and sea gulls and that's about it. But I am pretty damn sure, that sweet, hovering, wing-flapping, nectar-drinking bird was of the humming variety, and either way, I don't really care. It was a good omen, at least I'm taking it that way, so I recycled the newspaper and I moved on.

Take My Wife, Please

With all the hullaballoo in Texas and the creepy allegations against the even creepier FLDS and Warren Jeffs, it's not just Barack and Hillary and Myanmar and earthquakes that keeps me all news-houndy and obsessive. Polygamy is the kind of cultural news that really gets a girl all thoughtful. And mildly squeamish.

I watched a few episodes of Big Love and I've seen their real-life counterparts on Oprah: the soccer-mom polygamists next door. Well, they're not next door to me actually, but they could be, they look the part, and if I could get past the whole one husband-three wives thing, we might even be friends. And dare I say it, I kind of, sort of, a little bit see the upside to their "arrangement."

Because I could really use a wife. And though the joke's presumably been played out, there is a lot more I could get done with another wife around the house. We would never run out of milk for one or forget to pick up the dry-cleaning/mail the package/bring in the trash cans, but mostly I think we would blow off all that boring crap and instead dig around in the garden, trade books and magazines and clothes, and take turns playing Wii with the kids. Upsides galore!

It's the whole sleeping with the same husband thing that kind of freaks me out. Which is very likely the upside for the husband. That, and the harem of house-cleaning, kid-having, dinner-cooking babes to make a dude feel all King of the Castle. Do you think the sister-wives (with 22 children to raise) feel like Queens of the Castle, or do they have to take turns with that too?

I'm being judgy and icky on this issue perhaps but the whole thing just smacks of men using God and the Bible to shore up their hyper-exaggerated 1950s-esque pre-Betty Friedan version of marriage. It's seems a little too perfect that God's word would make it so men can enjoy a steady stream of younger and younger wives while the women's reward for such faithfulness is to be crowned "First Wife," which is pretty much a dressed up version of "Old Maid," emphasis on the maid part.

All this ranting aside: to each their own, as long as the rape of children is kept of out it. I honestly do hope there is an upside for women who choose a plural life (beyond the solace their faith allows). Because while I can see the potential benefit of having a live-in, unpaid helping hand and playmate, I am quite sure I can manage with my own (albeit non-live-in) version: my friends and neighbors, the same sistahs who would surely respond to The Stud's taking of another wife with a loud and unanimous, "oh no he didn't" and then help me beat him up with a broom.

And Then I Was a Crazy Person

There I was, minding my own business, sucking back ice coffee, zooming down the road at a safe yet swift pace, a few hours of sweet alone time ahead of me. The Man on the Radio starts ranting about Barack Obama and more specifically his lack of shall we say -- oh hell, let's just say it -- his lack of balls. I'm used to this tirade from the dude so I carry on. No running of red lights, no swerving, just more of the perfectly sane and anonymous me in my car.

Start ticking through my to-do list. Check my teeth in the rear view mirror. Notice how very blonde I look on a sunny day. Too blonde, I wonder? The Man on the Radio keeps ranting. To emphasize his balls-less opinion of Obama, he calls him a "girl."

Did he just say girl, I thought, turning it up. Did he go there? (Note to future self: turn DOWN the volume on relentless muckrakers.)

He says he looooves woman, but girls? There the whiny, bitching ones on the playground. They're the annoying, clueless, crybabies that well.. are so annoying and clueless and crying. Barack Obama is a girl. A girl! Not a wimp or a loser or a dork or a Democrat. He is a GIRL, the insult of all insults.

And then I became a crazy person. Then I became that insane woman screaming in her car. Then I was that woman waving her hands all around, grabbing for her phone so she could call out this a-hole, dropping her phone, nearly driving off the road trying to find her phone, getting a grip of the wheel and of her civic duty (not to crash) but still, but still... that insane lady you saw on the road? That was very likely me.

In some miracle of auto safety, That Man called just as I was seriously considering embarrassing myself on the radio and/or driving straight into a wall. So I parked instead. And I vented to him. Which was safer and probably wiser, but he was busy and just needed my license plate number (why? had someone phoned me in?) and while he was empathetic, he also really, really had to go. So I sat there in the parking spot all pissed and vinegar and just let the "girl" comment resonate. I listened a little more. I tried to be zen. I sipped my coffee. I grabbed the edge of my sanity and yanked it back in.

And after some thought, this is all I have to say:

Listen mister, I've spent some time on playgrounds and from my perspective, crybabies come with penises too. And as for whining and crying? They don't discriminate based on gender either. And bullies wear pigtails sometimes. A "girl" after all is just a woman who hasn't grown up yet. And with some luck (thanks to all us "girls"), the "boys" won't grow up to be you.

It's For the Children (I Swear)

After the crazy auction busy-ness of the last week, I decided that today would be all about being Fun Mom. That Man is in Hollywood for the week (surely spotting a variety of reality TV stars that will have me in a tizzy), so the timing was right for us four to re-bond. I promised them an awesome day out, so after a little tidying up (as always, bribery worked), the house was squared away, vacuumed even, and we loaded out.

Stopped by a few friends' houses, had a "fancy" lunch (at the Mall) and hit the movies for "Horton Hears a Who." I admit to getting a little post-feast sleepy, but there were fine parts to the flick, cute ones and funny ones and all three of those kids were completely engrossed -- no kicking of the seats in front of them, no begging for treats, all good. At one point in the movie, a mob is out for Horton (who they perceive as a threat to the community belief system) and the jungle animals are chanting in G-rated violent fury, "It's for the children! For the children!"

I got the joke -- and after all the ways the auction affected me and my family, I wonder if maybe the joke was intended for me.

I took my kids out today because I have virtually neglected them for a week (or more, dare I say). I covered their basic needs -- mac and cheese, sleep, boo-boo kissing -- but more often than not, I was asking them to wait, to hold on, clamoring for ONE MORE MINUTE. The Giant Four Year Old sees papers on the counter, decides not to draw on them, and says to the air, "Fer da auction" but hours later, while his mom is on the phone (again), uses a pencil to decimate an entire cabinet door. B awakes me on the day of the event with "Happy last day of the auction!" which I know she is saying to the both of us. R does her best to do her best because she is a lay-low kinda girl and it seems sensible for her not to rile me now. These little moments, upsetting at best, kicked off the mantra for me: this is all for them, this is "FOR THE CHILDREN."

And I know it is, I do.

So when I skipped folding laundry for 10 days straight, and when That Man gently reminded me that all we had to eat was hard-boiled Easter eggs (and only pink ones), I took it with the "it's all gonna be worth it and I'll be back to normal when it's over" attitude. As if normally, there is always a healthy nutritious meal on the table, never a washing machine mildewing clothes that someone has forgotten to dry, always well-behaved children singing songs in a circle with a well-meaning Mother who has just finished making their clothes out of old curtains and tidied up the flash cards she created from recycled cereal boxes.

At lunch today, each of them in such delighted delight to be there with just me (and with cloth napkins to boot: ooh la la, and with a movie in a movie theater in their future), I felt so entirely redeemed. Maybe I was right! Maybe now that the auction was over, I would return to the former self I figured must be lurking somewhere. Maybe I was the mom I imagined I was when I'm not doing all this other stuff.

Then B said, "Mommy, you have no meetings this week!", and I lied with an emphatic yes, yes, isn't that great (as it seemed the wrong time to bring up the one I did have) and, all excited about this good news, R chimed in with, "Now you can just listen about presidents and look at the computer!"

Oh! Yes! THAT.

Point taken.

Woe is the MCAS

In B's class this morning as usual to offer "writing" help, which basically means I'm there to tutor kids on their MCAS answers. The most recent practice test was a story about Harriet Quimby, a woman who boldly flew across the English Channel when only men were doing so. The students needed to write what Harriet's goals were and how she achieved them.

One particular boy failed this task miserably it seems, and so is sent to my table to re-do his answer. Why does he fail? He does not quote directly from the text as required. Instead he writes, "She wanted to prove that women were as capable as men" (words found nowhere in the story). How did she achieve this goal? "She flew across the English Channel."

A perfect answer in my opinion, as it thoughtfully and rightfully summed up the text. It was hard to tell him to erase what he had written, harder to explain why he had to.

Why I'll Never Get Elected

Should I count the ways?

As far as religion goes, I have members of my family who are Wiccan and atheist, born-again and Catholic. As for politics, I have members who are Socialist and isolationists, neo-cons and Democrats. As for sexuality, excluding transgender-ism (as far as I know), I think we cover every base. We’ve got a lot of social sins wrapped up too: adultery, teenage pregnancy, divorce, drug abuse, alcoholism, lying, swearing, name-calling, and even cheating at Trivial Pursuit -- blatently.

Let’s imagine for fun that my personal history, separate from my families', is as bland as the dry toast most of the media thinks we want in a leader. Let’s just pretend that I am that person with no skeletons, no impurities.

It would not matter how pure or profound or meaningful or possible my ideas might be.

Someone would find my socialist uncle or my drug addict cousin or any other of the people I love who have impacted my life. They would find them and I would be done. Finished.

I sat at a dinner table only a few short weeks after 9/11 with a family member whom I adore who spoke for at least an hour about how we deserved that attack. He talked about how our own tyrannical, capitalist ways – our seething arrogance – caused this horror show. With that, he gestured to the ruins, smoldering still, only miles beyond the glass door that separated us from what the whole world was still watching on TV. He said we had nothing and no one to be sorry for, except for the ENTIRE SCOPE of humanity that we had already ruined.

The burning dead in our own back yard would not change that man. The vitriolic response from his family would not change what he thought: the tear-stained arguments, the facts and figures, the proof of what we knew and of all the things we couldn’t prove: none of that would change what that man believed. He believed it.

I sat in semi-silence, a child in that moment amongst the grown-ups of my life, and I regret that. Later I expressed my outrage to anyone who would listen. Maybe I was afraid of being called a complacent participant, but mostly it was because that no matter his elder-status, I knew that I was grown up enough to shout that he was wrong.

Do I still love this man, despite what he said? Yeah, yes I do.

Does that make me as complicit as he?

I had to make a choice with him – to let go of who he is, or to love him anyway. I made a choice to never forgive what he said, but to get to know him better: to weasel in my ways, my ideas, to prove him wrong.

There is hope for us all, and enough compassion in me to love him still.

Can I count on your vote?

Ferraro

Listen, I'm all Barack Me Like a Hurricane, but you'ld be an ass to not realize that what Geraldine said was the straight on truth. In fact, you'ld be an insecure, way too PC, slightly obsessed, dare I say, douche, if you felt the opposite. C'mon!

He's black. That matters. Deal with it. Get over your own guilt and deal with it.

Would a woman with his resume get this far, even if she could talk like him? Um, let me think.. NO!

Could a white man? Probably, maybe; but not as easily.

If you are big enough to know that his skin color doesn't matter, then you are smart enough to know that it does.

Don't Cry For Me

There are two parts to this. The first part I was anticipating (and writing in my head for a week), but the second part came to me as an unexpected, unwanted reminder that I am not, as much as I might wish, the ruler of my universe.

This is Part One.

Don’t cry for me, Hillary.

Which is not to say I am not for crying. I think every human being should enjoy a snot soaked sob at least once a month. A movie can do it (Walk the Line had me hiccupping, I wailed so much), a good read can do it, my children do it to me all the time, someone else’s sorrow or joy, my own. All of these things inspire the kind of delicious boo hoo that I consider the ultimate detox. I cry in public (at school performances always; in front of friends sometimes after a particularly bad day); I cry into my pillow; I cry on my husband’s shoulder.

And I will confess this: he cries too. My dad did before him -- phone commercials always found him sniffling, always, and he still cries now. My huge mountain man husband weeped at the end of the Bridge to Terabithia. He cried when the babies were born (does any man not do that?) and he cries when they fail or succeed. He cries when I’m upset sometimes and when he lost his cousin. It’s a more quiet kind of thing for him, but he does it. I am used to men crying. Big boys do cry, after all.

But when Hilary had her sniffles, broadcast countless times, even in slo-mo, I knew something big would shift – and not in the way I wished. Her “emotional moment” flooded the dam of feminism in this election, and what a freaking shame that it took that to do it. For days the talk was about her rarely seen sensitivity, her suddenly apparent femininity (uh? wha? has no one noticed she has a vagina?), and what that meant to the voter, particularly the female voter.

She claimed it was “personal” and maybe it was for a minute there, but everything after – the way she shifted the tone of her voice seconds into her victory speech in New Hampshire (google it), the way her entire team has redirected their management and marketing of her – all of everything that resulted from that moment has been plotted, exploited, and sold.

I wish instead what was caught on a film was her in the midst of a screaming, plate-throwing tantrum. I wish we caught her sweat-dripping, head-swooning, mid-heat flash, and still talking. I wish we saw her sneaking a cop at her horoscope, while also reading the seven or eight papers she reads in day. Or plucking a split end while making a deal. Or telling her husband, once for all that “when this whole thing is said and done, you can take you and your penis and stick it somewhere else.” I wish we could see that -- that Woman.

Because that would make great TV (natch) but also spark the great feminist debate we deserve. Crying? Not so much.

Everyone cries (even politicians apparently), and don’t we know by now that tears are not the domain of women? But if the country could see a real woman, the way she really is – plate-throwing passionate, birth-giving strong, multi-tasking amazing – we might have a real idea of what the benefit of gender might mean, if it means anything at all.

For my daughters, old enough to know something is happening in government, but young enough to not understand nor care, I am buoyed by the fact that the choices for me – despite all the nonsense – are as good as they have ever been. I only wish that the first legitimate female candidate for President was not someone who made a deal with a chronically cheating man (disrespect to both she and they) to further her financial and professional gain. I wish she was not someone who now, even after having made that sacrifice, is beholden even less so to herself and more so to the pollsters and managers and voice coaches.

A politician, especially one running for the highest office has to do that, I know. But – wait: sexist remark coming – I wanted more from a woman. I expected more because of the women I know and see and live my life with everyday.

Women who cry, take shit, hurl it back, throw out cheating husbands, take care of kids and parents and grand parents while organizing fundraising walks or runs, who do the walking and the running, who can network in an hour forty people to help somebody in need, who scream and yell to make it right, who advocate for hours to deaf ears about sick kids, who make money and still make time, who make change, real change, every day in sweats or $300 jeans, it doesn’t matter. I know women who never alter the way they talk or think to do the right thing. And I know a lot of them.

Don’t cry for me, Hillary. Please.

Politics and Gossip

That Man and I went out for dinner tonight with a couple who are among our closest friends in town. I have recently fallen in love with the curling iron and so left the house looking like a cracked-out Jessica Simpson.

We met them at their house and toured their newly renovated basement fitted with a bar and all. Within minutes of arriving for all this grown-up-only fun, I had an attack of panic. I had forgotten to set the TIVO to tape the debates!

That Man laughed, "Are you serious? Who cares?"

But I was serious and I do care. Maybe too much, and maybe to the point of obsession.

To be clear here and honest, I alternate my TV and web surfing between news on the election and news on Britney. I am as up-to-date on polls as I am on what that poor girl is doing. And I check in on both at a pace that some might consider unhealthy. I know which is more important. I put my money where my mouth is and also on the back of that sad minivan, my mobile counter-revolutionary kid mover.

But truth is, I find all of this "news" to be equally relevant. My fascination with politics (as if that might matter) and my obsession with Britney (as if that matters at all) are pretty much part and parcel of the same thing: I want something to inspire (Obama!) and something to fascinate (Britney!) to entertain me... I want to be entertained.

Politics and celebrity gossip are working. I am ashamed to admit that, and also proud that I have.

Tomorrow I will scope the TV and Internet for news about what happened in the debates I didn't see. I will also check for news on Brit. Without shame.

You want to know who someone is? Ask for the ugly bits first. As for me, I just give it up without being asked. Lucky you. Lucky me, too.

And Now, Politics

My sister lives in New Jersey. (I no longer hold that against her.) Her youngest child is the same age, give or take a week, as my oldest; she has a kid in high school and one in between. Despite our age difference, the physical space between us, and the fact that we only have one child to link our day-to-day experiences, we remain very close. As in, on the phone 4 or 5 times a week close. I love my sisters, both of them, but me and she do the grunt work of living together. We check-in.

She checked-in today. It’s election day, after all, and in our family, casting a vote starts as a right of passage and become as natural – and important – as breathing. In my sister’s district, there were a few piddly seats to be filled, all mostly unchallenged, but there were also a handful of important ballot questions. (Oh, how we love ballot questions!)

She admitted to having researched only two of them beforehand: an open-space initiative (she’s for it) and a stem cell research bill (she’s for that too). The open-space question would preserve undeveloped landscapes in her town. The stem cell bill would allow New Jersey to commit tax payer dollars (and lots of them) to the controversial research (bias coming) that could save countless lives.

She was psyched to fill in those affirmative circles, and since she had time, she figured she would read and digest the other questions and make her decision on the spot.

The third question read (in part) as follows:

"Approval of this amendment concerning the denial of the right to vote would delete the phrase 'idiot or insane person' and replace that phrase with 'person who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting' in describing those persons who shall be denied the right to vote."

My sister told me she read it twice, laughing out loud both times behind the curtain. She is normally the kind of bleeding heart liberal my husband has come to distrust. She said, “I usually vote yes down the line.”

But in this instance, the “idiot” instance, my sister voted no. She voted for the word idiot to stay.

She said, “We’re talking about a cure for diabetes or cancer or MS and quibbling about language at the same time? What the fuck? Yeah, keep “idiot”, keep it.”

I reminded her that if I lived in New Jersey, I could technically sue the state to prove that my own husband has “idiotic” political ideas that are sometimes “insane” and that he shouldn’t be allowed to express them with a vote.

She thought for a minute, and said “Cure for cancer, or your idiot husband? No brainer.”

I love my family.

Jury Doody

It was a painful seven hours.

One might think being without kids in a quiet room for an unlimited time might be a good thing. It’s not so much; at least it wasn’t so much for me.

In a crowded room of a cross-section of people hearing the dire and depressing tales of criminals and supremely unhappy people, one really gets the message: count your fucking blessings.

Count 'em. Right now.

Your life is good.

On Whining

I once knew a woman who halted her kids’ bratty chat with the simple phrase: “I don’t speak Whinese.” Sadly, this one liner never worked in my house. My kids would mostly look at me with this “what kind of nonsense are you sputtering now” kind of look, and go right back to whining. Ignoring them when they talk that way has worked, which I guess is the more literal form of “I don’t speak Whinese.”

As in, “Huh? Wha? Are you talking to me?”

I’m not sure exactly what the topic on the radio was today – maybe it was Britney Spears or something about how marriage can be hazardous to your health – but for about an hour or so, the banter seemed to center around our “whining” culture. There was a constant train of conversation about how we as modern Americans have become so weak in our ways, so entitled, so… whiny. (I was ready to agree even before I started watching Ken Burns’ “The War,” but I am completely down with the idea now… to a degree.)

At some point in the radio show, a mom of three junior high school boys with the crabby husband who was spending all their money called in say her a marriage was affecting her health. I listened when she explained that after so many years working outside the home, she had recently decided to work from the home (mostly to watch her boys and the father-in-law who was living with her family) and that now, she was suffering from high blood pressure and panic attacks. I listened to this woman, who described how her husband would rage at their financial problems (mostly caused by him), and how she worried she wasn’t cut out for the job she seemed to be assigned. All I could think was, damn, I hope this woman has some friends and also, how brave to share her problems with everyone ON THE RADIO.

The host responded in the way that she usually does, mildly catty, mostly benign and repetitive, but then, unhalted by her, caller after caller proceeded to destroy this woman, this “whiner.” One said, “Why did she have three kids if she didn’t want to stay home with them?” with no regard to her financial situation or her own desires. The next, unmarried and older, couldn’t understand why married women could bitch so much – her mother, who raised her in the ‘50s, never complained after all, not ever ever, never, not once.

Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she never read Betty Friedan either.

Do we "modern" women whine more now than the women, the wives and mothers who came before us? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just that we have a louder voice and the confidence to use it. Is burning your bra “whiny”? Or something else entirely?

Let’s be clear to ourselves and the culture around us: there is a big difference between whining and complaining.

Whining is a negative, desperate lament, which at the root implies -- why me, woe is me, oh poor me – as if that lament could change an outcome. (It shouldn’t.) A complaint is an aggressive acknowledgment of something wrong, or a wrongdoing, or of a problem that needs attention. Generally speaking, complaints get action. (And they should.)

Look at it this way: children who whine never get cookies. Children who complain about earaches get the care they need and deserve.

People whine when they are powerless and can do little else to reach an end result.

People complain to point out a problem, to spark debate, to force change.

I complain all the time. I complain about my kids, about That Man, about my kids’ schools, about speeding on our street, about our community in general, and about all the other (much bigger) problems in the world. I complain all over the place: here, in this virtual space (what a relief!), and with my friends and family when the shit comes up, and even to the powers that be in my town and my state and even my country.

Sometimes complaints rebound in helpful advice from another who knows better or more. Sometimes complaints create pacts and plans and petitions, and lo and behold, you get Stop Signs. And sometimes complaints change laws (think: the 19th Amendment) or governments (think: the future).

Women DO complain more now than they did in the 50s, that’s for damn sure, and I am proud of that, and I am grateful for that.

I wish I had a cell phone with batteries that always worked because I would have called into that radio show to defend that woman, who though probably reaching out in the wrong direction, was reaching out nonetheless. She was expressing a legitimate complaint and she needed and deserved some help, or at least, a friend.

When you feel the urge to whine coming on (which hell knows, I have had), please think of this man, Professor Randy Rausch, whose words are such a beautiful testament to “no whining allowed” and also, “what really matters.” And I bring some of his words to you, in this link, courtesy of Margaret, who by the way knows her way around a complaint and the difference between that and a whine.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2007/09/018520.php

And if you want more of what he says, make a complaint here, and you know, see what happens.

It's War Too

I am an admitted pop-culture junkie. Love the reality TV, the celebrity gossip, music, film and most everything else that sweeps up the masses. So while I didn’t watch it all (I swear), I did check in with the Emmy’s the other night and saw Sally Field get bleeped.

If you don’t know what I am talking about – good on you for reading literature or meditating or sleeping through it – but basically, she was censored for saying a bad word.

Sally said some compelling things in her speech which most of the media is NOT talking about. She said or something like: "May (mothers) be seen, may their work be valued and raised... especially the mothers who stand with an open heart and wait -- wait for their children to come home from danger, from harm's way and from war."

And then she said (and even though it was not aired, you could have guessed it): “If mothers ran the goddamn world, there would be no wars.”

I like Sally Field, I really do. (I once watched her dance -- with Andy Garcia -- to a Cuban band I was working with in LA and she looked great enough for me to be alternatingly jealous and happy.) And I don’t like war, I really, really don’t. But with regard to that one line, that news-ticker money maker, I gotta beg to differ.

I know what she was implying: it's beyond words the pain of a woman who buries her son or daughter killed in combat. But there's more to it than that.

If she was suggesting that women are better mediators or negotiators, that might be true. God knows, we chicks like to talk. We are experts at saying aggressive things to one another in about a thousand friendly ways – and we almost never come to blows afterward. We are all for non-violence: just think about how many times we say “hands are for holding.”

But have you seen a mother bear defend her cubs? Usually someone dies. Threaten our kids, our homes, our everything? Most mothers will fight like the crazed Ninja killers they never knew they were.

Engage us en masse? We can organize in a second. Consider the moms with sick kids who team up over broadband with other moms to advocate for and actually make change in the medical community. Consider the moms in crime-ridden neighborhoods who raise fists to the infiltrators killing folks in their communities. Consider the moms with children in foreign conflicts who fight for effective battle armour in the military community. Consider how quickly you can figure out childcare for a mom who’s sick in your OWN community.

Do we start conflicts? Not so much, at least not so much historically, but history also has many examples of fierce and blood-thirsty warrior women, many of them mothers. Motherhood is not for wimps. And when one of us loses one of our own to war (or Autism or cancer or drunk driving) we rage against the machine with such a ferocity, the entire world feels it.

That’s war too. And a good and worthy fight for sure.

MOMifesto

Before I leave for three weeks, I send this along: something to ruminate on and debate. I've been sitting on this group of sentences for a while, but it still makes a hell of a lot of sense to me. Maybe it will to you. Forget the stay-at-home vs. the working mom fight -- this is where the good punches fly.

****

PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD

This is what I have learned so far about the world from children: it is tiny and enormous. There are bugs more interesting than great books, and questions about bugs and eyelashes and sadness and electricity are never-ending. It’s all or nothing, and also all and nothing. It changes daily. You learn to go with it.

This is what I have learned about motherhood, stay-at-home motherhood: it’s a jungle in here.

As it was in the office, so it is behind the picket fence. The geography has changed but the scene is the same. The playground has become the office cooler, the PTO meeting has become the company picnic, and there is jockeying and one-upmanship all over the place. I never knew that when I left the career I built to stay at home with my kids that I would have to contend with another world of professionals. My greatest nemesis is no longer The Man, but The Mom: the Professional Mother.

The Professional Mother has a lot of company. She is one of the millions of women who benefited from every wave of Feminism. She picked a job she wanted, or thought she wanted, and she succeeded. When they told her as a little girl that she could be an astronaut, she believed them. She never got a free pass. She worked her ass off every step of the way and she became whatever her heart desired: a marketing director, a teacher, a filmmaker, a lawyer, a business owner, a nurse, a doctor, a banker, and even sometimes, an astronaut.

Maybe because she could do it all, or because she wanted so badly to do it, she became a mom.

Who knows what happened next? Either she couldn’t or didn’t want to keep doing what she was being paid to do, or maybe it was hormones or finances or love or who knows what, but she decided to quit. She gave it all up for the kid, the brood, the life.

As it turns out, the everyday life with kids is a sneaky life. It is mostly boring and rarely rewarding. For the most part, it’s spit up, crapped diapers, Legos all over the place and getting dinner not only made but also eaten. It is not like the magazine pictures or parenting books, or art: it is getting through one long endless day without going crazy.

The Professional Mother takes it all very seriously. Turning down a lucrative career, earned and fought for, is ridiculously hard for anyone. Why not make a career out of the life chosen at home? Why not up the ante on what you do, so that it’s easier to answer the question of old friends and colleagues: what do you do?

So, the Pro Mom engages her newborn in sign language, music classes (I did this once: it was mostly toddlers, always mine, running into padded gymnasium walls), and potty training before they can sit up. She considers co-sleeping, attachment parenting, and nursing on demand not an option but a requisite. She relishes an entire Baby Bjorn culture that literally glues the baby to the bod.

The Professional Mother of a pre-schooler or grade-schooler engages in activities so numerous that there are children less than six years old who have tried more hobbies in one week than I have tried in my whole life. There’s Spanish, team gymnastics, travel soccer, tennis, baseball, painting, ice hockey and lacrosse all weekend. And it’s not just one of these things – it’s all of them, at once. Her multi-tasking is without limit.

It wasn’t long after I became a full-time mom in the suburbs that I realized there was a pace out there that I couldn’t keep. As much as I desired, needed, craved to be busy, expressing that through my kids and with my kids was a disaster – for them and for me.

Don’t get me wrong, pre-school is a life saver and we’ve dabbled in soccer and ballet and the dreaded music class, but never more than one of those things a week. Truth be told, it was way too much work for me to drag a baby and a pre-schooler to stand outside a 45-minute “class” for a 1st grader. Instead, I just blare the IPod at home: dance, gymnastics, music class. There you go.

Did I nurse each child for fewer months than the one before? Yes. Do I consider crayons and construction paper and pretty much no guidance about what to do with those things (‘cause Mommy’s on the phone) a good, learning day? Yes. Do I make cereal and cereal bowls accessible to my tiny kids and expect them to make due some mornings? Yes, I do. Do I feel bad about all of that? No, I don’t.

I think.

My soapbox is wobbly I admit, and the doubts creep in. I doubt my exhaustion after a day of homework and housecleaning. I wonder since I didn’t drive to five activities is my tiredness, well, less than? Will Harvard reject my child because she didn’t speak French fluently by 9? And now that I don’t have a nursing baby to lean on (literally), is it my convictions that still make me pass on more than one activity per week? Or my laziness?

The Pro Mom exacerbates my undoing. Even on the days when I’ve whipped up homemade play dough or read the same book six times in a row – at dinnertime! -- she is out there. She is out there tapping endlessly into her Blackberry the schedules of her accelerated children to remind me that no matter what I do, or don’t do, I am not doing enough.

The Professional Mother doesn’t aim to be mean spirited. Maybe we brought this culture of competition onto ourselves. When I was in college, we good, smart feminist girls waged a minor rebellion – one of many that stood to pit us against old-school feminism. It was okay to be sexy, we said, to like men and wear mascara and short skirts. We were confident in our sexuality as a tool, not a limitation, and we took advantage. Marriage was okay and motherhood too. We would indeed have it all: respect and hot pants, babies and promotions. It would be different for us. And it is.

We forced ourselves over the line in a lot of ways. We supported each other, hired each other, built businesses, built networks, made changes and money together. But when we made the biggest decision of our lives, to trade the cash and achievement of our former selves for a colicky, bundle of ridiculously cute panic, we forgot in the process where we came from. Maybe it was the distance from the shackles of our past or the cool comfort of our modern success, but somewhere along the way we forgot what essentially gave us the idea that we could be superwomen in the first place: each other.

Our mothers before us? They shoved us outdoors, they handed out hot dogs like vitamins, and they never attended or arranged a single pre-school graduation. The lucky ones schemed a life for themselves in between the wife-being and the child-rearing so that when the chance came, unexpected or anticipated, they seized it. If there was a bad guy or a naysayer, he lived in the house or on the TV. For her, the girl next door was a partner and confidante. A lot times, she was the one whispering, “Go, girl, go.”

For me, the girl next door is confused a lot of the time. Her degree on the wall and a gaggle of kids in her hallway, a husband late to dinner, a house half done, a host of parties to attend, she is never quite sure if she lives in world of content or discontent. She is never quite sure that any of the rhetoric is true: that she is indeed doing the most important job in the world.

The Pro Mom implodes her doubt and confusion. She creates a coping mechanism that is a schedule so mercilessly rigorous, so chock full of child work that her billable hours far outnumber any corporate power player. She doesn’t so much swallow her resentment and isolation, she creates it—and passes it along like some grown-up girl game of Telephone. The Pro Mom creates a culture of perfection, a stratum of achievement, that is impossible to maintain. Mostly, it’s not a lot of fun.

Where did our girl network go? Why does it only seem to exist in dinners dropped at the door when a new baby arrives? Why does it evaporate when the real work begins? Why has the camaraderie of our earlier feminist experiences backfired in the moment of our most feminine experience?

Maybe feminism has failed. There are those among us who still don’t truly value the role of Mother, plain old just getting the job done Mother. And most of them are mothers.

If I “missed” the registration date for a camp I can’t afford anyway, then I apologize to my children in advance. If I avoided the countless other activities that might make my kids smarter or nicer or better, than I apologize for that as well. But if the proof is in the pudding -- my daughter does a perfect cartwheel, self-taught in the grass, the other not only marches to her own beat, but bangs the drum herself, and my son, he can make friends with anyone -- then the pudding is all right with me. I know I am qualified and educated: I have no need to prove that through my kids. They are not, never were, never will be, My Job.

There will never be a moment when I see the world as unwritten upon as I used to when I was a kidless kid. But when I find the calm in the middle of my amateur mom day, in between the heart attacks and heart aches and volunteer work and laundry and the guilt about never quite doing enough for any body at anytime that is so much a part of that day, I don’t use up the peace and quiet on my kids. I do the best that I can do – for me.

With Kidz Bop in the background and a plastic golf club in the gut, there are not a lot of thoughtful silences anymore. Most of the poetry I write is cheap haiku – but write, I do. I make business plans after midnight all the time. I try to have reasonable conversations about politics when I find something newsworthy on the ‘net. I gripe to my sisters and my friends about the drudgery of everyday doing and I hope against hope that I will find one open ear who will honestly gripe back to me.

I am grateful that I made my new girl network, all the ones who tell their truths, who cry sometimes, who whine even, who make plans like me, schemes like me, and the ones who have come to believe that this life, after all, is good enough. I am grateful for those who give me who they are and take me as I am.

But I regret that this loose knit web of secret holders, who for the most part don’t even know each other, is such a small part of my life. I regret that this is who we seem to be now, a disparate coffee klatch endlessly seeking a home.

Still, I have a great suspicion that secrets like mine are being shared all over the place, on streets like mine, in towns like mine, with friends like mine, even by Professional Moms.

In the end, the world remains tiny and enormous. Children ask a million questions because there are that many. There is more than one answer. You don’t need to be a Pro to know that.

It's War

We are about to engage in a tussle, my neighborhood gals and me. We are taking on the big guns in the small town to raise a ruckus for positive change. We are activists all, ready to rally ‘round a good and decent cause, to stand together in protest of a wrong. We have a letter of petition; we have a plan, a committee, and a mission statement.

We want Stop Signs. (Maybe speed bumps, but stop signs --much much better.)

Lest you think I am being slightly, somewhat, perhaps a little ironic or shall I say, cheeky, I am, and also I am not.

Stop signs are good! Slowing the speeding cars on this street that is overflowing with kids (who like to play outside, who’d a thunk) is good! Getting flipped off by those in said speeding cars is bad! Very bad, and we are coming for you.

Give me Stop Signs!

The cheekiness lingers, I know. It comes from the same part of me that smiles when I am carded. It comes from the part that still does not believe I pay a mortgage. Or bills. Or have a Will. (I will die you say? With something to leave behind?) It comes from the part of me that still chuckles a little at titles hurled at me like Mrs., like M’aam, like Mom.

This is not the protest of my youth. That was the early 90s and the first Gulf War and, um, grapes and laborers, but this is now. This is Stop Signs, motherfucker, and I want some.

I do my best to meditate on the Big World problems. I actively engage in all elections, contribute money to Veterans causes, and argue effectively with my NeoCon husband my opinions and beliefs. I hang an American flag (because I still believe in this place) and remind people to oppose the war and not the warrior. I am encouraged and delighted and surprised even that our next president might be a woman, or a black man. I ordered a bumper sticker, and when the time comes, I’ll stand on a street corner with a sign.

But I am not, like many of us, walking on Washington in protest. Truth be told, I am not affected daily by the war (though I bawled my eyes out at the funeral procession for a fallen father and son from our town, to which I hauled my kids, all under five at the time, because it was important) and I doubt you are either. Most of you. The Big World problems exist around my dinner table, but sadly, ashamedly, I have not, as of yet, taken it to the streets.

For now, it’s Stop Signs. On my street. Which will become I hope, a kindler, gentler, safer kind of street.

Think globally, act locally.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

A recent Boston Globe article sparked a furious debate about breast-feeding and parenting when it printed a story about women who nurse their children well beyond the recommended one-year mark -- and instead on and on for years.

In the aftermath, the radio airwaves burned with opinions of parents on every end of the spectrum. They seethed with sure-ness: it’s natural -- it’s vile -- it’s to each her own -- it’s abusive.

As for me, I don’t bother to take sides on this matter, maybe because my own attempts at nursing three kids were complicated at best, and maybe because honestly, how can I be riled by one family’s choice and expect them not to be riled by mine (aka: Cheezits for breakfast sometimes.)

But I will say this -- and any honest parent should be able to relate: parents are sometimes other parent’s worst enemies.

Recent dramas in this town, many of them splayed out in the pages of our local paper, have pitted parent against parent. Who’s right about the Charter School? Who was right about the lights at the Seaside Park? The nasty letters to the editor make one think we are a community of feuding rivals.

And maybe we are, but c’mon now. The difference between a debate and a fight is huge. Maybe we all need to attend (or at least support) more efforts like Marblehead’s Team Up lectures, because as parents in this community, our conflict resolution could use some work.

Opinions matter of course and vary to great degrees, but in the end, we all have the same goal (I hope): happy kids, a nice school for them to learn, a nice place for them to live, a decent place for them to play. No matter how divergent our opinions on other matters may be, this remains one that is unchangeable.

I will never suggest that “we all just get along” – the best part of living in a small town lies in the freedom that people have to complain about it -- but I remain inspired by the fact (a wish?) that we have a common ground: our kids, this town.

Say what you will about breastfeeding a child until six, about how your school should be run, or about how the parks should be lit, but remember this:

Your children are watching.

Quote Un Quote Parties

My neighbor, one of my best friends, coerced and all but forcibly made me come to her house tonight for one of those "parties" where another woman tries to sell you something. I won't say what it was for fear of incriminating the innocent, but I am not afraid to say this: aren't these "parties" the ultimate in suburban wife bullshit?

I hate them more than I do baby showers and bridal showers. I hate them more than air kisses with women who don't know me yet squeal with gushing fondness when they see me at cocktail parties. I hate them more than I hate women like that.

Only because another neighbor offered up her 11 year old daughter to babysit for an hour or so, I went. I didn't buy anything. I admit I heckled the seller. I was not supportive; I rolled my eyes. I feel guilty about it now.

That poor girl, she was just trying to make an extra buck (and get me to sign up to shill this crap to my friends so she could make more bucks... But I digress.) I mean, we're all together, enjoying a cocktail and some crudite, just, you know, CHATTING, and why shouldn't we, why wouldn't we, SHOP?

I love shopping. I love bargains. I love the feeling of unpacking my finds at home and congratulating myself for covering all the bases: dish soap, a new centerpiece, underwear. What I don't like are these shopping parties: I guess I prefer to do my spending in private.

It's really more than that. These gatherings make me feel like my network (the official term), my posse (my term) is being infiltrated and tainted, and worst of all, used. I conjure up meetings in corporate headquarters that go something like this: "Yes! Con the lonely suburban ladies into thinking it's a night out and gosh darn it! They'll buy, buy, buy!"

So I resist. I don't need these goods (no matter how cute they may be) to get together with friends. We do fine by ourselves. God knows, we don't need alchohol to buy stuff.

I am in a nasty mood -- maybe because I had to come home early from the "party" (I hate that) -- or maybe because the teenage rebel in me snears at the grown-up me and says straight to my aging face, "You must be kidding." But who am I to kid? Truth be told, that hour (and 15 minutes) I spent there tonight was actually, well, mildy fun. I wanted to stay longer. I could have done without the balloon blowing up and popping contest (which I won), but clever women exist everywhere. And they were there tonight too: the woman married 35 years who loves the loud chaos of my kids as they scramble across her yard, the woman with the big job I never knew she had, the friend, who like me, is suffering the side effects of a loved one with cancer.

We women, we have our ways. We sneak around the selling. We interrupt the seller: we find our ways to connect.

And the woman, that mom, moving her product? She made a killing tonight.