I wrote a book as a gift for my nieces and nephews by this title. In the story, the Realisphere is threatened by a tear that they must find and repair. Feels like the realisphere is now actually fraying. I can't get my head around the meaning of all of this, can't spin it into a story with a conclusion, hopeful, despairing, or other -- so I just want to record a few events, impressions, fragments of reality. Maybe I'll come back to this time from a safe distance later.
********
I failed to get the bulbs in the ground before it froze.
********
December 5th, Central Park, 8:00am, a stranger dropped of a heart attack (I'm guessing) as I waited, corralled with 6,000 other runners, for a race to start.
Friend from Hanover lost father and father-in-law in same week.
High school principal died last weekend.
A holiday card from our dentist includes news that the friendly receptionist who always took pictures of our kids died "suddenly and unexpectedly" (at age 44). Two of the four fish from our Hanukkah gift fish tank to the kids have died.
My neighbor and friend killed last week by her mentally ill son. Her husband struggling to recover from life-threatening injuries. Son jumped in front of a G train. He is now blind.
*********
What are you supposed to do when you are present, watching, at the moment someone dies?
*********
We say "break my heart" without ever imagining actually breaking another's heart, opening it, draining the life.
**********
When a son kills his own mother, there is no one left who will ever visit him in prison.
When a mother is killed by her son, he can't attend her funeral.
********
It is possible to lose two wives, one while she is pregnant (and lose the child too), and another at the hand of one's son, and physically survive. What can one possibly do now with the life that remains? How does the heart keep beating?
*********
Death can open door for estranged fathers & daughters. Then the harder part.
*********
Peggy's holiday decorations on her new staircase, visible through the open door as EMTs departed and forensic team poured in.
*********
Hannah's toy stroller on the front porch.
*********
Joe's house is dark, no Santa on the porch roof this year. He's in Tennessee with stage 4 lung cancer.
*********
A full moon on the winter solstice. Too strong. The forces that make it all cohere are strained.
********
Why did the Vermont X-mas tree guys leave so early this year? I miss their lights on 16th Street on night dog walks. Their scruffy beards and familiar accents.
********
A wordless chant from the kids' Music Together class CD drums in my head all week.
********
A beloved friend's daughter suddenly struck with relentless seizures.
********
Reeve doesn't like riding the train suddenly. The platform terrifies him. He clutches my hand, yells if we lose contact. He is fascinated by the succession of days, before/after, the weeks "going around." (Is time linear or circular?) He checks the clock. Suddenly he wakes up to Time, and so to death?
*********
"Reeve, do you want to wear a hat?"
"No, because the wind of the train will blow it."
********
Peggy's electric Christmas candles still flicker in the windows of the dark empty house. No more sirens, no more banging, so more screaming of living obscenities.
********
A sonogram. Technicians who don't even say good morning, who don't introduce themselves, whose first words are, "Pull your pants down below your pubic bone." Then squirt cold gel on one's abdomen and start pressing a wand around. Silent and mechanical.
A hand waving to his mommy! A heart beating purposefully! 29 weeks of existence. Where from? Where to? A spirit, a human being, a life. A mother, anxious for her baby's well-being, afraid to speak, ratty pop music playing on a computer speaker in the corner of the holiest of places.
*********
The sun isn't even strong enough to power the Home Depot garden lights in the backyard.
*********
Chocolate-covered pretzels and Diet Coke can make the difference between getting through the day and not.
*********
Thank god for a boiler that works.
*********
Duncan - "When you're alive, you don't need your spirit, because you're alive, you can move, you can do what you want, so it just, like goes. But when you die, your spirit comes back, to be here and all around, because your body can't be any more."
*********
First day past the nadir. Sunny and tolerable to be outdoors.
Reeve's "chicks" (pigeons) fed on bread crumbs scattered by a homeless-looking woman in the center of Bartel-Pritchard Square. The flock pecked, tossing bits back and forth at each other. "Look at the baby, Mommy!" Reeve pointed excitedly - scruffy little brown birds of another unglamorous variety. A truck's engine sent them flying en masse, more balletic than the Blue Angels, streaks of gray careening around the traffic circle in a blur over bare sharp black tree limbs against cold sky, then back to their crumbs.
*********
A single brown bird has taken up residence on top of one our columns, huddling there at night, leaving by day, returning, leaving a comforting pile of poop below.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
A Walk in the Park
in which I get into my own dog fight
Our first day in the city upon return from New Hampshire is often tense. The senses quickly forget how to filter the onslaught. Confined spaces drive little boys into frenetic states, like a gas under compression. The best cure is always a walk in the park.
Yesterday was Monday, Day 1 back in Brooklyn, back to school for D-man and work for Daddy. Distractions from necessary tasks (eat, get dressed, make lunches) included: The Tooth Fairy's first delivery ($5) and Chess (a theoretical match between Duncan and Reeve in which Duncan makes the moves for both parties, magnanimously allowing Reeve to win every now and then to keep him interested). At last, Jordy and Duncan got out the door to the subway for school/work. Time to walk the dog.
Suiting up for a dog walk is not a simple process. First, one must configure the no-pull contraption on the dog, whose poor old hips are likely to splay out in the process. Then one must dress Reeve in parka and helmet for riding scooter. Then one must affix baby to back, which requires months of yoga training to perform back-bend on couch to secure straps before springing upright with confidence that baby will not fly off. Getting out the door is a Three Stooges routine, the stooges being Me (with Papoose), Reeve, and Wiley T. Dog, in which our efforts to circumambulate strollers in the front hall leads to entanglement by dog leash. We unwind ourselves, make it as far as the front porch and down to the sidewalk when I realize I've forgotten plastic bags. I coax the 3-year old back up to the porch while I race inside, get bags, then down and off we go.
The trash trucks have just passed, so the sidewalk is a slalom course of garbage can tops. Reeve weaves deftly among them on his scooter; I step on one and nearly go over, but regain my balance. We reach the end of the street, whereupon Reeve requests mittens. A Reeve request is not negotiable, and what kind of lousy mother makes her child go bare-knuckled when she herself has gloves, so back we go, in and around garbage tops, hook dog to the fence, back up the stairs, get the mittens, and back out for take 3.
Let it be said: Wiley T. loves trash. Its absence (as in rural New Hampshire) makes his heart grow only fonder. Despite a hearty breakfast at the house, this morning he lunges lustily at every possible scrap. If it's a napkin or paper towel, I let him have it. If it's foil, he will sometimes reject it. (The dog has standards.) This morning he rejects nothing. In broad view of Billy the Whippit-Sniffer and the merchants opening shops, I must wrestle a cigarette box out of his mouth, but his locked jaws require me to straddle his body. Tucker must find this amusing as he finds himself upside down on my back. Meanwhile, Reeve on his scooter whizzes up to Farrell's Bar where he will wait for me, though concerned passers-by don't share my confidence and yell both at him and me.
Somehow we survive the traffic circle, street cleaners and garbage trucks and all -- pteradactyls in Wiley's dog brain, requiring vicious defense. At last we enter the park and I take a deep breath. The sun streams through the bare limbs. The last of autumn's splendor has fallen during our absence, and we are returned to the capacious views all the way up the Great Meadow to the museum. Wiley hunkers down and drops a poop beside the magnolia tree, an odd poop no doubt from all the odd scraps we gave him over Thanksgiving. Nonetheless, our mission is now accomplished and the rest of this walk will be, simply, a walk in the park.
Baby, Wiley and I walk twenty paces when Reeve goes down. "Carry me." I look back at the boy sitting on his scooter. I tell him I can't possibly carry him, a logic that holds no interest for him. "I want a gwown-up to carry me!!" he demands. I offer to carry his scooter and let him walk. No go. I confess I resort to the, "Bye Bye!" trick of walking off. It works. He catches up with us on his scooter like a shot, and I'm relieved. We pause for one fatal moment to let Wiley roll around in the fallen ginko leaves (which I will pay for later in sour stench), and Reeve goes down again. "Carry me!" It turns out that analysis of regressive behaviors is of very little use for convincing a three-year old to walk or scoot home. I was stuck. Had to resort to the "Bye-bye" technique again, which feels exploitative at best, but it worked. We made it back out to the street where Reeve wanted to stop and "warm up" on a bench in the sun. Having no appointments to keep, I agreed.
Reeve produced a lizard from his pocket, green and rubbery. As the lizard crawled and flew among the slats of the bench, Wiley took an interest in something buried under the fallen leaves. I spaced out for a critical millisecond in which Wiley got the coveted item in his jaws. At first I could see only yellow cardboard. Let him have it, I thought. But then as he worked on it I heard a familiar jangle -- the sound screws make in a little plastic package from the hardware store. I have experience authorizing (and paying for) surgery to remove a lethal doorpost from an animal's intestine. My mind raced forward to the X-Ray of Wiley's gut, screw shrapnel every where. I could hear my dear husband, who tolerates all these animals I take in off the street, reasonably weighing the cost of Wiley's surgery, no doubt with slim chances of survival, against tuition and taxes. There was no time to waste.
Like John Wayne leaping on his steed to catch escaping Indians, I throw myself onto Wiley again. My urgency must have told him this was a treasure worth fighting for; he no doubt thought I wanted to eat it myself. He dug his heals in, writhing left and right to avoid my grasping arms. Baby must have felt like he was riding two bucking broncos. Reeve and his lizard ceased from their adventures to watch the epic battle. But I would not be defeated. Yank his mouth open, I did, and toss box of screws beyond the fence of the park. "Time to go home," I panted.
Weaving between parked cars to cross Prospect Park Southwest without a crosswalk, four mortals and a scooter made the passage without getting hit by a bus. Reeve declared he was miserably cold, though he resisted my logical encouragement to "walk faster" in order to get home "sooner." (Lizard was busy checking out each wrought-iron fence post along the way.) Ahead my Doggie-Radar honed in on a large one on approach with an owner on a cellphone. My cortisol spiked a bit -- inattentive owners may not notice how I hold my own dog on a short leash to the side as they pass. She might think nothing of letting her dog run out for a quick butt sniff greeting with Wiley, but Wiley T. can be unpredictable on a leash. As I huddled with Wiley to the side, gauging the in-coming canine's trustworthiness in relation to Reeve, now alone at a significant distance behind us, lo and behold, Wiley starts to take a second dump. I wait a beat to clean it up to let the dog pass to a safe distance. I begin untying a plastic bag from my retractable leash when-
"Don't let your dog poop on my yard!!!" At first I cannot identify the source of the shrill voice. I am totally confused. I look down at the non-descript 3 foot-by-3 foot patch of dirt permitted in this New York City sidewalk for a tree, where I have just removed all traces of canine feces. Is she speaking to someone else? Then I see her, an older lady on a ladder behind a thicket. She was cleaning her windows, or else on high -altitude border patrol. "You are disrespecting my property! You have to stop that dog, and I mean it! These dogs ruin my yard!"
My heart rate leaps to about 300 bpm. This lady picked a fight with the wrong little Mamma. I lunge right back at her. "I am cleaning up after my dog. That is the law. This is a public sidewalk, not a yard!"
"This is my yard, and you are disrespecting! You have to take that animal to the park!"
"We just returned from the park where he went poop!" (Am I really shouting these words to a perfect stranger?) "And while we're on the topic, you shouldn't let your dog sit at this chain link fence barking and intimidating my children and other dogs!"
Which is true. We have been ambushed a number of times when passing this house without noticing the sleeping dog behind the chain link fence. Like dog like owner.
"I cleaned up after my dog, that's the law!" And we walk away. Wiley's and my heads down. Receding behind us -- "It's my private property and I'll do what I want! You can't just let your dog poop wherever he wants! ... No respect! ... Ruining my yard! ... My dog has a right to bark at whoever he wants! ... No respect! ... Woof woof woof! Woof woof! ... Woof woof!"
Our first day in the city upon return from New Hampshire is often tense. The senses quickly forget how to filter the onslaught. Confined spaces drive little boys into frenetic states, like a gas under compression. The best cure is always a walk in the park.
Yesterday was Monday, Day 1 back in Brooklyn, back to school for D-man and work for Daddy. Distractions from necessary tasks (eat, get dressed, make lunches) included: The Tooth Fairy's first delivery ($5) and Chess (a theoretical match between Duncan and Reeve in which Duncan makes the moves for both parties, magnanimously allowing Reeve to win every now and then to keep him interested). At last, Jordy and Duncan got out the door to the subway for school/work. Time to walk the dog.
Suiting up for a dog walk is not a simple process. First, one must configure the no-pull contraption on the dog, whose poor old hips are likely to splay out in the process. Then one must dress Reeve in parka and helmet for riding scooter. Then one must affix baby to back, which requires months of yoga training to perform back-bend on couch to secure straps before springing upright with confidence that baby will not fly off. Getting out the door is a Three Stooges routine, the stooges being Me (with Papoose), Reeve, and Wiley T. Dog, in which our efforts to circumambulate strollers in the front hall leads to entanglement by dog leash. We unwind ourselves, make it as far as the front porch and down to the sidewalk when I realize I've forgotten plastic bags. I coax the 3-year old back up to the porch while I race inside, get bags, then down and off we go.
The trash trucks have just passed, so the sidewalk is a slalom course of garbage can tops. Reeve weaves deftly among them on his scooter; I step on one and nearly go over, but regain my balance. We reach the end of the street, whereupon Reeve requests mittens. A Reeve request is not negotiable, and what kind of lousy mother makes her child go bare-knuckled when she herself has gloves, so back we go, in and around garbage tops, hook dog to the fence, back up the stairs, get the mittens, and back out for take 3.
Let it be said: Wiley T. loves trash. Its absence (as in rural New Hampshire) makes his heart grow only fonder. Despite a hearty breakfast at the house, this morning he lunges lustily at every possible scrap. If it's a napkin or paper towel, I let him have it. If it's foil, he will sometimes reject it. (The dog has standards.) This morning he rejects nothing. In broad view of Billy the Whippit-Sniffer and the merchants opening shops, I must wrestle a cigarette box out of his mouth, but his locked jaws require me to straddle his body. Tucker must find this amusing as he finds himself upside down on my back. Meanwhile, Reeve on his scooter whizzes up to Farrell's Bar where he will wait for me, though concerned passers-by don't share my confidence and yell both at him and me.
Somehow we survive the traffic circle, street cleaners and garbage trucks and all -- pteradactyls in Wiley's dog brain, requiring vicious defense. At last we enter the park and I take a deep breath. The sun streams through the bare limbs. The last of autumn's splendor has fallen during our absence, and we are returned to the capacious views all the way up the Great Meadow to the museum. Wiley hunkers down and drops a poop beside the magnolia tree, an odd poop no doubt from all the odd scraps we gave him over Thanksgiving. Nonetheless, our mission is now accomplished and the rest of this walk will be, simply, a walk in the park.
Baby, Wiley and I walk twenty paces when Reeve goes down. "Carry me." I look back at the boy sitting on his scooter. I tell him I can't possibly carry him, a logic that holds no interest for him. "I want a gwown-up to carry me!!" he demands. I offer to carry his scooter and let him walk. No go. I confess I resort to the, "Bye Bye!" trick of walking off. It works. He catches up with us on his scooter like a shot, and I'm relieved. We pause for one fatal moment to let Wiley roll around in the fallen ginko leaves (which I will pay for later in sour stench), and Reeve goes down again. "Carry me!" It turns out that analysis of regressive behaviors is of very little use for convincing a three-year old to walk or scoot home. I was stuck. Had to resort to the "Bye-bye" technique again, which feels exploitative at best, but it worked. We made it back out to the street where Reeve wanted to stop and "warm up" on a bench in the sun. Having no appointments to keep, I agreed.
Reeve produced a lizard from his pocket, green and rubbery. As the lizard crawled and flew among the slats of the bench, Wiley took an interest in something buried under the fallen leaves. I spaced out for a critical millisecond in which Wiley got the coveted item in his jaws. At first I could see only yellow cardboard. Let him have it, I thought. But then as he worked on it I heard a familiar jangle -- the sound screws make in a little plastic package from the hardware store. I have experience authorizing (and paying for) surgery to remove a lethal doorpost from an animal's intestine. My mind raced forward to the X-Ray of Wiley's gut, screw shrapnel every where. I could hear my dear husband, who tolerates all these animals I take in off the street, reasonably weighing the cost of Wiley's surgery, no doubt with slim chances of survival, against tuition and taxes. There was no time to waste.
Like John Wayne leaping on his steed to catch escaping Indians, I throw myself onto Wiley again. My urgency must have told him this was a treasure worth fighting for; he no doubt thought I wanted to eat it myself. He dug his heals in, writhing left and right to avoid my grasping arms. Baby must have felt like he was riding two bucking broncos. Reeve and his lizard ceased from their adventures to watch the epic battle. But I would not be defeated. Yank his mouth open, I did, and toss box of screws beyond the fence of the park. "Time to go home," I panted.
Weaving between parked cars to cross Prospect Park Southwest without a crosswalk, four mortals and a scooter made the passage without getting hit by a bus. Reeve declared he was miserably cold, though he resisted my logical encouragement to "walk faster" in order to get home "sooner." (Lizard was busy checking out each wrought-iron fence post along the way.) Ahead my Doggie-Radar honed in on a large one on approach with an owner on a cellphone. My cortisol spiked a bit -- inattentive owners may not notice how I hold my own dog on a short leash to the side as they pass. She might think nothing of letting her dog run out for a quick butt sniff greeting with Wiley, but Wiley T. can be unpredictable on a leash. As I huddled with Wiley to the side, gauging the in-coming canine's trustworthiness in relation to Reeve, now alone at a significant distance behind us, lo and behold, Wiley starts to take a second dump. I wait a beat to clean it up to let the dog pass to a safe distance. I begin untying a plastic bag from my retractable leash when-
"Don't let your dog poop on my yard!!!" At first I cannot identify the source of the shrill voice. I am totally confused. I look down at the non-descript 3 foot-by-3 foot patch of dirt permitted in this New York City sidewalk for a tree, where I have just removed all traces of canine feces. Is she speaking to someone else? Then I see her, an older lady on a ladder behind a thicket. She was cleaning her windows, or else on high -altitude border patrol. "You are disrespecting my property! You have to stop that dog, and I mean it! These dogs ruin my yard!"
My heart rate leaps to about 300 bpm. This lady picked a fight with the wrong little Mamma. I lunge right back at her. "I am cleaning up after my dog. That is the law. This is a public sidewalk, not a yard!"
"This is my yard, and you are disrespecting! You have to take that animal to the park!"
"We just returned from the park where he went poop!" (Am I really shouting these words to a perfect stranger?) "And while we're on the topic, you shouldn't let your dog sit at this chain link fence barking and intimidating my children and other dogs!"
Which is true. We have been ambushed a number of times when passing this house without noticing the sleeping dog behind the chain link fence. Like dog like owner.
"I cleaned up after my dog, that's the law!" And we walk away. Wiley's and my heads down. Receding behind us -- "It's my private property and I'll do what I want! You can't just let your dog poop wherever he wants! ... No respect! ... Ruining my yard! ... My dog has a right to bark at whoever he wants! ... No respect! ... Woof woof woof! Woof woof! ... Woof woof!"
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
"Professional" Parenthood - Take 2
Dear readers, I thank you for wading into the riptide-laden waters of topic:parenthood on the last entry. If you will bear with me once more, I'd like to try again. This time I will drop the ruse and get more directly to my point.
I bet historians would verify that parenting small children has never been the most relaxing stage of life. (I think of Abigail Adams administering small pox puss on the blade of a knife to her own children, praying they will develop immunity rather than perish.) However, I want to make the case that our generation finds itself in a particular squeeze because, among other forces, we inherited a culture that does not value the work of parenting highly.
Because it's as hard to "see" our own culture as to see the air we breathe, it's helpful to encounter parents of other cultures who approach the role otherwise. I get this chance on a small scale when I drop my kids at preschool. There I've had the chance to befriend several orthodox Jewish women. They view their work as mothers as nothing less than fulfilling God's commandment; the children they bring into the world, raised well, will help deliver the Messiah, the final era of peace. I imagine this confidence in their mission must help when babies don't sleep or children quarrel: The task to guide new little people toward good and purposeful lives is the foundation of the culture and the bedrock of its survival. The secular world can make easy mockery of this sense of divine purpose, or criticize the strict gender roles that come with it. I would rather choose to take inspiration and figure out how to infuse it into the secular world.
So how does the secular world value parenting? With anxious consumerism, apparently. A number of cultural commentators such as Judith Warner and Erica Jong offer similar theories -- generally, that our generation of "organic-food obsessed" parents (especially mothers) are trying to achieve "perfection" in our roles as a "defense" against the forces of the world that feel "out of control," and that as a result we are riddled with "anxiety". I understand the book PARENTING, INC. (which I haven't yet read) makes the case that our generation is prey to corporate profiteers who make billions on our insecurity from such quack goods as Baby Einstein DVDs. Another band of commentators call us the generation "that doesn't want to grow up."
Hm. I'm interested in the words "control" and "defense" and "anxiety". I am not convinced that the world is a more dangerous place than it ever has been. Perhaps what is more dangerous now, however, is simply the fact of sticking your neck out to become a parent. Our parents' generation broke the mold of traditional parenting, but we haven't yet agreed what a better one looks like. So we are trying to reinvent the airplane while flying it - and taking a few surface-to-air missles in the process, often from each other.
From what I see, most of us are striving to be conscientious - not perfect - parents in a confusing time and place. Where there are two parents, most couples seem to be trying to balance parenting roles between the spouses more evenly than in the past, even when one (more often the mother, but not always) takes time off to parent full-time. We are trying to build on the best of what our mother's generation bled for -- more career options, equal pay, removal of judgment on women who work -- and take it to the next level, to share parenting roles more equally. But we are far from finding a peaceful equilibrium, with discontent more often turning inward toward self, spouse, kids than outward to our culture, where "family values" are claimed by a fundamentalist right and the rest of us are left, in the other great American tradition, to go it alone.
A working hypothesis: this belittlement of the value of parenting is the price we pay for advances made for women toward the outside working world a generation ago. Most employers do little to help new families; weakened extended family networks don't, or can't, do much either. Add the pundits making careers of critiquing the way we parent, then subtract the church or other religious belief systems that uphold the centrality of the job, and parenting can indeed feel like a sentimental exercise in folly. Also, the beautiful price many women pay for higher education is heightened expectations for career advancement, which most of my friends have discovered is unachievable -- even with great, supportive partners -- without paying the price of feeling like one hasn't been the parent one wants to be. Or for those who postpone the career, there is a gnawing feeling of professional inadequacy without the counter-balancing sense of achievement on the family front -- because, we learned, we mustn't "count" our work there or derive identity on the homefront lest we get stuck in that ghetto. Who wouldn't feel anxious?
The result, I fear, is that we are too often overwhelmed, distracted, discontented to respond as calmly and creatively as we might to what children, being children, bring up; moreover, we miss out on too many of the pearls our wee ones are offering us. Why? This state of mind is not dictated, in my observation, by whether one works outside the home or not; it's a pervasive stress on young families. Parenting tiny ones productively takes enormous emotional and physical energy, which is in too short supply because of the many other demands on our attention. (See NYTimes: "When the Mind Wanders, Happiness Also Strays" 11/15/10) It also requires a learning curve that we often miss. Instead of giving little ones the protected space to live in their Time, we push them to hurry up into ours because we feel like we have to -- a loss for everyone who bypasses a fascinating bug or doesn't stop to hear how the snow crunches under boots.
Our pre-verbal children absorb not only the words we use, but the tone and intention with which we use them, as we've learned to our horror in our house when they come back at us later! (Once again, see NYTimes "Ability Seen in Toddlers to Judge Others' Intent" 11/16/10). The earliest years are a precious and scarce time when not only is a child discovering who he/she is, but families are discovering who they are. We can accept that this is just "the way it is" in the early years, but couldn't it be better? When I float on my lotus blossom and consult the Dalai Lama, he smiles patiently and reminds me, "You and I and all beings were each other's mothers in previous incarnations." The whole karmic evolution of compassion in the universe depends on the experience of being a mother! It must be a job worth doing well.
My playful proposal to MPa/PaD degrees for parents of small children has attracted outstanding critiques that reveal the point more plainly: Do we want academic institutions judging our parenting performances? No. Do we need added academic requirements atop our stretched schedules and psyches? Definitely not. To the extent I have a serious intent, it is to give "credit" for the parenting as it happens and recognize role models in the field in order to do for the secular world what a religious culture does reflexively: To sanctify the work of making families and help us find ways to do it better.
Herein lies the poorly played joke: Graduate and Professional schools are modern secular temples where the upwardly mobile seek instruction and accept evaluation; invest money, time and effort in exchange for "credit"; and reach a place of standing in the economy and society. It is the final preparation for a productive, fulfilling professional life. The word "professional," afterall, comes from "profess," meaning to declare one's religious devotion." Parenthood lacks an equivalent preparation and elevated standing -- and yet what work requires more patience, knowledge, wisdom, giving, and commitment to the world beyond oneself?
My immodest proposal is that we declare the value of being as "good" (not perfect, not moralistic, but patient, loving, present) parents as we can be without making any apologies; we demand that our economy re-shape itself to pace careers more humanely, both for parents and young kids alike; and that we challenge our critics to come up with something encouraging to say about our efforts or creative to do on our behalf - or else stuff it!
While I've been writing, I could hear my neighbor through the wall rocking out on his guitar to the screaming delight of his two-year old. It must be Tuesday, his day "off" from "work" to take care of his son. Seems like a pretty holy way to spend a day to me.
I bet historians would verify that parenting small children has never been the most relaxing stage of life. (I think of Abigail Adams administering small pox puss on the blade of a knife to her own children, praying they will develop immunity rather than perish.) However, I want to make the case that our generation finds itself in a particular squeeze because, among other forces, we inherited a culture that does not value the work of parenting highly.
Because it's as hard to "see" our own culture as to see the air we breathe, it's helpful to encounter parents of other cultures who approach the role otherwise. I get this chance on a small scale when I drop my kids at preschool. There I've had the chance to befriend several orthodox Jewish women. They view their work as mothers as nothing less than fulfilling God's commandment; the children they bring into the world, raised well, will help deliver the Messiah, the final era of peace. I imagine this confidence in their mission must help when babies don't sleep or children quarrel: The task to guide new little people toward good and purposeful lives is the foundation of the culture and the bedrock of its survival. The secular world can make easy mockery of this sense of divine purpose, or criticize the strict gender roles that come with it. I would rather choose to take inspiration and figure out how to infuse it into the secular world.
So how does the secular world value parenting? With anxious consumerism, apparently. A number of cultural commentators such as Judith Warner and Erica Jong offer similar theories -- generally, that our generation of "organic-food obsessed" parents (especially mothers) are trying to achieve "perfection" in our roles as a "defense" against the forces of the world that feel "out of control," and that as a result we are riddled with "anxiety". I understand the book PARENTING, INC. (which I haven't yet read) makes the case that our generation is prey to corporate profiteers who make billions on our insecurity from such quack goods as Baby Einstein DVDs. Another band of commentators call us the generation "that doesn't want to grow up."
Hm. I'm interested in the words "control" and "defense" and "anxiety". I am not convinced that the world is a more dangerous place than it ever has been. Perhaps what is more dangerous now, however, is simply the fact of sticking your neck out to become a parent. Our parents' generation broke the mold of traditional parenting, but we haven't yet agreed what a better one looks like. So we are trying to reinvent the airplane while flying it - and taking a few surface-to-air missles in the process, often from each other.
From what I see, most of us are striving to be conscientious - not perfect - parents in a confusing time and place. Where there are two parents, most couples seem to be trying to balance parenting roles between the spouses more evenly than in the past, even when one (more often the mother, but not always) takes time off to parent full-time. We are trying to build on the best of what our mother's generation bled for -- more career options, equal pay, removal of judgment on women who work -- and take it to the next level, to share parenting roles more equally. But we are far from finding a peaceful equilibrium, with discontent more often turning inward toward self, spouse, kids than outward to our culture, where "family values" are claimed by a fundamentalist right and the rest of us are left, in the other great American tradition, to go it alone.
A working hypothesis: this belittlement of the value of parenting is the price we pay for advances made for women toward the outside working world a generation ago. Most employers do little to help new families; weakened extended family networks don't, or can't, do much either. Add the pundits making careers of critiquing the way we parent, then subtract the church or other religious belief systems that uphold the centrality of the job, and parenting can indeed feel like a sentimental exercise in folly. Also, the beautiful price many women pay for higher education is heightened expectations for career advancement, which most of my friends have discovered is unachievable -- even with great, supportive partners -- without paying the price of feeling like one hasn't been the parent one wants to be. Or for those who postpone the career, there is a gnawing feeling of professional inadequacy without the counter-balancing sense of achievement on the family front -- because, we learned, we mustn't "count" our work there or derive identity on the homefront lest we get stuck in that ghetto. Who wouldn't feel anxious?
The result, I fear, is that we are too often overwhelmed, distracted, discontented to respond as calmly and creatively as we might to what children, being children, bring up; moreover, we miss out on too many of the pearls our wee ones are offering us. Why? This state of mind is not dictated, in my observation, by whether one works outside the home or not; it's a pervasive stress on young families. Parenting tiny ones productively takes enormous emotional and physical energy, which is in too short supply because of the many other demands on our attention. (See NYTimes: "When the Mind Wanders, Happiness Also Strays" 11/15/10) It also requires a learning curve that we often miss. Instead of giving little ones the protected space to live in their Time, we push them to hurry up into ours because we feel like we have to -- a loss for everyone who bypasses a fascinating bug or doesn't stop to hear how the snow crunches under boots.
Our pre-verbal children absorb not only the words we use, but the tone and intention with which we use them, as we've learned to our horror in our house when they come back at us later! (Once again, see NYTimes "Ability Seen in Toddlers to Judge Others' Intent" 11/16/10). The earliest years are a precious and scarce time when not only is a child discovering who he/she is, but families are discovering who they are. We can accept that this is just "the way it is" in the early years, but couldn't it be better? When I float on my lotus blossom and consult the Dalai Lama, he smiles patiently and reminds me, "You and I and all beings were each other's mothers in previous incarnations." The whole karmic evolution of compassion in the universe depends on the experience of being a mother! It must be a job worth doing well.
My playful proposal to MPa/PaD degrees for parents of small children has attracted outstanding critiques that reveal the point more plainly: Do we want academic institutions judging our parenting performances? No. Do we need added academic requirements atop our stretched schedules and psyches? Definitely not. To the extent I have a serious intent, it is to give "credit" for the parenting as it happens and recognize role models in the field in order to do for the secular world what a religious culture does reflexively: To sanctify the work of making families and help us find ways to do it better.
Herein lies the poorly played joke: Graduate and Professional schools are modern secular temples where the upwardly mobile seek instruction and accept evaluation; invest money, time and effort in exchange for "credit"; and reach a place of standing in the economy and society. It is the final preparation for a productive, fulfilling professional life. The word "professional," afterall, comes from "profess," meaning to declare one's religious devotion." Parenthood lacks an equivalent preparation and elevated standing -- and yet what work requires more patience, knowledge, wisdom, giving, and commitment to the world beyond oneself?
My immodest proposal is that we declare the value of being as "good" (not perfect, not moralistic, but patient, loving, present) parents as we can be without making any apologies; we demand that our economy re-shape itself to pace careers more humanely, both for parents and young kids alike; and that we challenge our critics to come up with something encouraging to say about our efforts or creative to do on our behalf - or else stuff it!
While I've been writing, I could hear my neighbor through the wall rocking out on his guitar to the screaming delight of his two-year old. It must be Tuesday, his day "off" from "work" to take care of his son. Seems like a pretty holy way to spend a day to me.
Friday, November 5, 2010
MPa/PaD - or the Case for Professionalizing Parenthood
Any other parents out there with young children feel any stress? Ever feel like you're doing the hardest job you've ever had with no pay check, no promotions? If you've taken time off to parent, do you stress about your options upon re-entering the "work force"? (loss of position, loss of pay, loss of options?) Ever feel like you should be enjoying life more than you are?
A team of world-class mathematicians came up with the following equation:
Contentment with Life = 1/(Financial responsibilities x [# of Children/Ages] x Principal owed on mortgage) + (Career Ambition/Frustration) + (Spousal Delight/Frustration x Expectations/Reality of Parenting Roles) + (Joy in Time with Kids/Ambivalence+Confusion about Value of Parenting)
In my playground poll of our generation, our scores are pretty low right about now. This is not good for us or our kids and begs the question, why is it so? Some people call this period "the tunnel" - very young children, financial stress, marriages strained. We are the first generation of parents whose own parents divorced at a rate of 50%, most of them in the first 9 years of their marriages -- i.e. when they were "in the tunnel." We were going to study and avoid their mistakes. Wait longer to marry. Pick better partners. Share the loads of work/family more evenly. Etc. But as my older sister reports from the front lines of Parenting Adolescents, a lot of our marriages are cracking up too.
Not that the fate of a marriage is driven solely by the stress of parenting, but there is mounting evidence that it's a -- if not the -- major force. And not that the success of a marriage is the sole factor in determining a happy life, though there is mounting evidence that it does -- on average -- make people happier. My purpose is not to save marriages, or even assume partnership (married or not) as necessary for raising a family. I am just pointing to the strain on marriage as further evidence of how hard it is to parent young children.
An obvious solution: Stop procreating. There are many intelligent people who have chosen this path with great results. I couldn't have made that choice for myself, and I think even those happy child-free couples agree that we need some suckers to keep falling for the baby trap if we want Future Workers to support the Social Security System and perpetuate the race. So we've got to figure this thing out.
First, a quick survey of some of what's wrong with Parenthood in America according to Me:
* Right now, we treat parenthood as if it were an extra-curricular activity, something to take up after a full day of work like you might Squash or Photography lessons. Our maternity leave policies are barbaric, paternity leave worse to non-existent. We internalize this economic paradigm, as if somehow we should fit all the effort of building a family into the M-F 6-7:30pm and Sat/Sunday slots. This is absurd. Building a family well requires more time and energy than many of our day jobs.
* "Sharing the work/family" load equally between partners made a lot of sense in an undergraduate feminist studies seminar. In reality I think our generation inherited a half-finished revolution. Our parents' generation opened doors for women to work outside the home but didn't fight for the value of work that happens inside the home. Work traditionally done by women is routinely de-valued... Teaching, nursing, child care, stay-at-home parenting. Rather than fight for the value of this work, we've shifted the low wages down to nannies who are generally inadequately compensated and must lean on their (unpaid) family members to care for their own children.
* We jump into parenthood with no training, little support, and no manual other than what a Google search offers. Many find that parenthood isolates, which propels some people back to work for fear of "disappearing" into parenthood. More on that later.
* We penalize people who "take time off" (revealing language) of jobs to parent, even when they do so without compensation, by making it hard to re-enter the work force and by stifling career advancements when they return.
* We stigmatize people who take time off to parent and indulge in false dichotomies to handle the neurosis of it all. For e.g. a friend who works full-time recently let slip a comment about how she would be bored to death with "those stay-at-home moms with their tennis dates." Is that what women who are at home with kids do? Not in my experience. Dig deeper and most women who are at home are actually doing outside work while most women who work "full-time" are doing a lot of care-giving. I wager that the caricaturing of people "on the other side" is a defense mechanism. I want us all to get beyond it. I also know a number of stay-at-home Dads who fend off even greater caricatures.
* Ageism and the Time Crunch. Related to all of the above: Most career paths expect maximum performance in the exact same age range (30s-40s) as when we are trying to give birth and raise little people. This is insane. Most of us are going to live into our 80s. Why should we not consider our 50s-60s to be Peak Performance years, when kids are in their teens or beyond? We'll still have 2 more decades to ease out and hit the putting green. (See Laura Carstensen's A LONG BRIGHT FUTURE for a much more thorough argument on this point.)
Rewind to that newborn baby who captivated your whole attention, who re-defined the axis around which the world rotates. Imagine yourself in Baby's shoes (or booties). Your parents gaze at you with ultimate adoration. Every poop is perfect. Every coo is an aria. Every smile transforms the world. Then you begin to grow, to discover your powers just as you are supposed to, to climb stairs, to pull every book off the shelf, to pitch a fit at the post office. Gradually, your frazzled parent holds you at a greater and greater distance until s/he pleads, "You take him."
This progression makes me as sad for parent as it does for baby and reveals how outside forces crush the tender regeneration that family life can offer. Baby doesn't understand that you've had a long hard day. She can't understand our fear. Our kids' clumsy first steps toward the outside world are exactly the moments when we can both teach and learn from them -- but for most kids, we will already be gone during most of their waking hours. These will not be their first clumsy strikes outward, and how much better they -- and we as parents -- would fare come adolescence if we had taken the chances to learn now? To know each other better? To conquer that fear most of us first felt the moment we took Baby home from the hospital? ("You're just gonna let me drive out of here with him?") Why do we flee our children so soon?
My sister-in-law got to the point (or one of them anyway). We were discussing that panic shared by parents of small children when the weekend arrives -- 48 continuous hours with offspring. She said, "I felt incompetent. The babysitter knew how to get them down for naps, their rhythms, better than I did. By weekend's end I was exhausted. I felt relieved to go back to the office where I felt competent, successful."
Which leads me to the point: Parenting takes practice. It is learned, not innate. Many parents never get on top of it -- rather they endeavor to get through it. The more "accomplished" the parent, perhaps the deeper the humiliation! Moreover, the critters change at a blinding speed, so the requirements of parenting are constantly shifting. No wonder we feel awful much of the time. For many, jobs necessitate hired caregivers, but it goes beyond that. Who wouldn't want a "professional" to present a bathed smiling child at day's end, allowing us to return to jobs where we feel (and are treated) like professionals?
Except that many of us find ourselves plagued by a sense of loss, torn by seemingly irreconcilable impulses to be with the kids we worked hard to make and the jobs we can't afford/don't want to lose. Guilt and feelings of failure linger, which we (especially women?) add to our private list of self-criticisms, bringing our Contentment Scores even lower despite the sizable budgetary line dedicated to Child Care. How can we boost our scores?
Which brings me to my immodest proposal: Let's professionalize parenthood.
There is a Buddhist idea that a sapling needs a little fence until it grows strong enough to withstand blows from the outside world. I used this image to explain why I went to graduate school. I could battle it out on my own with no skills and various economic (and gender) forces arrayed against me. Or I could seek a few years of shelter to grow in strength and expertise among peers and mentors, earning a credential to show for it. Kids and parents need a little fence around their early years together.
Imagine graduate level credit given for time spent primarily parenting, available to mothers or fathers. (Let's offer an added certificate for the breastfeeding mother.)
For parents who choose to work home for 2 years, we'll offer a Master of Parenthood (MPa). For parents who choose to stay home for 4+ years, let's offer a Doctorate (PaD). We can imagine all kinds of flexible variations for part-time dedicated parenthood/work. No one has to do this, but for those who do, there is a vessel that they (and the outside world) recognize as having validity.
Graduate school offers an appropriate model because it assumes maturity and relevant background without assuming expertise. It is organized to move from greater structure (courses) to independence (original scholarship). It depends on mentorship under faculty solicited by the student, allowing for student choice and philosophical differences. It culminates in thoughtful original work evaluated by peers. It motivates funding streams. It takes seriously its subject matter. It creates a professional community. It gives students a label for what they do all day, and why it is important. It leaves students with a degree to show for it.
Help me flesh this out. What could coursework look like? We could make use of online options for seminars on topics like "Sleep," "Language Development," "Nutrition," or "Marriage and Family Dynamics." It would be student-driven and derive from day-to-day life with Tots. Parents could keep journals or blogs. PaD candidates could do longer-term projects, perhaps supporting the work of scholars in fields related to issues arising in their families, such as allergies, tantrums, illnesses, marriage roles, or autism. Advanced work could reach into academia in fields such as Linguistics, Anthropology, Psychology, Neuroanatomy. WIKI could come up with a WIKI-PARENT site to organize the ideas and insights of thoughtful parents, much like the CDC and SETI organize the inputs of ordinary people to search for meaningful patterns. Parents might work on it as a team, dedicating different stretches of time to parenting.
Who could the mentors be? Help me think about this. This could be a chance to recognize people specifically for their good parenting, a category that garners no formal recognition or particular respect, even if they were not literally parents themselves. A grandparent, a nanny, a neighbor, one's own parents, a sister or brother, a pastor, one's former high school teacher or coach. It would give people of other generations and stations a stake in supporting the new family.
The timetable of graduate study also lines up with dedicated parenthood. It is my unsubstantiated view that many new parents feel like Early Childhood Will Never End. My doctor friends describe the sleeplessness of residency in similar terms, but they knew exactly when it would end. But when you are in the tunnel of early parenthood, it can feel like you've lost your life and will never get it back. (We don't get the same "it" back, but we often can't yet see how the alternative can be better.) Lacking outside validation, compensation, or recognition, it's reasonable to question the worth of the effort. The graduate degree model both affirms the time-limited nature of the work and the importance. Knowing that this intensive early stage passes can also relieve pressure on couples, who often feel like weary roommates more than the amorous hopefuls who once made these little beings.
Imagine if volunteering at a child's pre-school, serving on a board of directors for athletics or the arts, or writing letters to elected officials on behalf of legislation affecting kids and families were part of an internship? The point is not "credit" but rather to value these activities.
There is abundant research underway about the intellectual, emotional and social development in children ages 0-4, and yet there is evidence that children are entering school with far less developed verbal skills than previous generations. Could it be because we are simply not talking with them enough? Explaining? Asking questions? Entering their worlds? It amazes me how often I see little kids alone in strollers with nannies or parents on cellphones. I want to be clear: I am very much in favor of both professional caregivers and cellphones! (In fact, I think nannies should be better paid and better recognized.) And sometimes a phone call must be made. But more often, the behavior is part of the same problem: A mindset that caring for small children is something to be gotten through rather than engaged. The most valuable thing we can offer our children is exactly what we place the lowest value on when we spend it with them: Time.
After 6 years with little ones, I'm finding one similarity between parenting and squash or photography after all: the better one gets at it, the more enjoyable it is. As the competence gap closes, parents can find new delight in their children - and each other - that makes weekends less arduous and more restful. A virtuous cycle kicks in. We no longer crawl toward Monday morning. I can't help but believe that kids can feel the difference.
Am I serious about graduate degrees for parenting? I am serious about changing the way we value the work all parents do. Help me think of even better ways to do that.
A team of world-class mathematicians came up with the following equation:
Contentment with Life = 1/(Financial responsibilities x [# of Children/Ages] x Principal owed on mortgage) + (Career Ambition/Frustration) + (Spousal Delight/Frustration x Expectations/Reality of Parenting Roles) + (Joy in Time with Kids/Ambivalence+Confusion about Value of Parenting)
In my playground poll of our generation, our scores are pretty low right about now. This is not good for us or our kids and begs the question, why is it so? Some people call this period "the tunnel" - very young children, financial stress, marriages strained. We are the first generation of parents whose own parents divorced at a rate of 50%, most of them in the first 9 years of their marriages -- i.e. when they were "in the tunnel." We were going to study and avoid their mistakes. Wait longer to marry. Pick better partners. Share the loads of work/family more evenly. Etc. But as my older sister reports from the front lines of Parenting Adolescents, a lot of our marriages are cracking up too.
Not that the fate of a marriage is driven solely by the stress of parenting, but there is mounting evidence that it's a -- if not the -- major force. And not that the success of a marriage is the sole factor in determining a happy life, though there is mounting evidence that it does -- on average -- make people happier. My purpose is not to save marriages, or even assume partnership (married or not) as necessary for raising a family. I am just pointing to the strain on marriage as further evidence of how hard it is to parent young children.
An obvious solution: Stop procreating. There are many intelligent people who have chosen this path with great results. I couldn't have made that choice for myself, and I think even those happy child-free couples agree that we need some suckers to keep falling for the baby trap if we want Future Workers to support the Social Security System and perpetuate the race. So we've got to figure this thing out.
First, a quick survey of some of what's wrong with Parenthood in America according to Me:
* Right now, we treat parenthood as if it were an extra-curricular activity, something to take up after a full day of work like you might Squash or Photography lessons. Our maternity leave policies are barbaric, paternity leave worse to non-existent. We internalize this economic paradigm, as if somehow we should fit all the effort of building a family into the M-F 6-7:30pm and Sat/Sunday slots. This is absurd. Building a family well requires more time and energy than many of our day jobs.
* "Sharing the work/family" load equally between partners made a lot of sense in an undergraduate feminist studies seminar. In reality I think our generation inherited a half-finished revolution. Our parents' generation opened doors for women to work outside the home but didn't fight for the value of work that happens inside the home. Work traditionally done by women is routinely de-valued... Teaching, nursing, child care, stay-at-home parenting. Rather than fight for the value of this work, we've shifted the low wages down to nannies who are generally inadequately compensated and must lean on their (unpaid) family members to care for their own children.
* We jump into parenthood with no training, little support, and no manual other than what a Google search offers. Many find that parenthood isolates, which propels some people back to work for fear of "disappearing" into parenthood. More on that later.
* We penalize people who "take time off" (revealing language) of jobs to parent, even when they do so without compensation, by making it hard to re-enter the work force and by stifling career advancements when they return.
* We stigmatize people who take time off to parent and indulge in false dichotomies to handle the neurosis of it all. For e.g. a friend who works full-time recently let slip a comment about how she would be bored to death with "those stay-at-home moms with their tennis dates." Is that what women who are at home with kids do? Not in my experience. Dig deeper and most women who are at home are actually doing outside work while most women who work "full-time" are doing a lot of care-giving. I wager that the caricaturing of people "on the other side" is a defense mechanism. I want us all to get beyond it. I also know a number of stay-at-home Dads who fend off even greater caricatures.
* Ageism and the Time Crunch. Related to all of the above: Most career paths expect maximum performance in the exact same age range (30s-40s) as when we are trying to give birth and raise little people. This is insane. Most of us are going to live into our 80s. Why should we not consider our 50s-60s to be Peak Performance years, when kids are in their teens or beyond? We'll still have 2 more decades to ease out and hit the putting green. (See Laura Carstensen's A LONG BRIGHT FUTURE for a much more thorough argument on this point.)
Rewind to that newborn baby who captivated your whole attention, who re-defined the axis around which the world rotates. Imagine yourself in Baby's shoes (or booties). Your parents gaze at you with ultimate adoration. Every poop is perfect. Every coo is an aria. Every smile transforms the world. Then you begin to grow, to discover your powers just as you are supposed to, to climb stairs, to pull every book off the shelf, to pitch a fit at the post office. Gradually, your frazzled parent holds you at a greater and greater distance until s/he pleads, "You take him."
This progression makes me as sad for parent as it does for baby and reveals how outside forces crush the tender regeneration that family life can offer. Baby doesn't understand that you've had a long hard day. She can't understand our fear. Our kids' clumsy first steps toward the outside world are exactly the moments when we can both teach and learn from them -- but for most kids, we will already be gone during most of their waking hours. These will not be their first clumsy strikes outward, and how much better they -- and we as parents -- would fare come adolescence if we had taken the chances to learn now? To know each other better? To conquer that fear most of us first felt the moment we took Baby home from the hospital? ("You're just gonna let me drive out of here with him?") Why do we flee our children so soon?
My sister-in-law got to the point (or one of them anyway). We were discussing that panic shared by parents of small children when the weekend arrives -- 48 continuous hours with offspring. She said, "I felt incompetent. The babysitter knew how to get them down for naps, their rhythms, better than I did. By weekend's end I was exhausted. I felt relieved to go back to the office where I felt competent, successful."
Which leads me to the point: Parenting takes practice. It is learned, not innate. Many parents never get on top of it -- rather they endeavor to get through it. The more "accomplished" the parent, perhaps the deeper the humiliation! Moreover, the critters change at a blinding speed, so the requirements of parenting are constantly shifting. No wonder we feel awful much of the time. For many, jobs necessitate hired caregivers, but it goes beyond that. Who wouldn't want a "professional" to present a bathed smiling child at day's end, allowing us to return to jobs where we feel (and are treated) like professionals?
Except that many of us find ourselves plagued by a sense of loss, torn by seemingly irreconcilable impulses to be with the kids we worked hard to make and the jobs we can't afford/don't want to lose. Guilt and feelings of failure linger, which we (especially women?) add to our private list of self-criticisms, bringing our Contentment Scores even lower despite the sizable budgetary line dedicated to Child Care. How can we boost our scores?
Which brings me to my immodest proposal: Let's professionalize parenthood.
There is a Buddhist idea that a sapling needs a little fence until it grows strong enough to withstand blows from the outside world. I used this image to explain why I went to graduate school. I could battle it out on my own with no skills and various economic (and gender) forces arrayed against me. Or I could seek a few years of shelter to grow in strength and expertise among peers and mentors, earning a credential to show for it. Kids and parents need a little fence around their early years together.
Imagine graduate level credit given for time spent primarily parenting, available to mothers or fathers. (Let's offer an added certificate for the breastfeeding mother.)
For parents who choose to work home for 2 years, we'll offer a Master of Parenthood (MPa). For parents who choose to stay home for 4+ years, let's offer a Doctorate (PaD). We can imagine all kinds of flexible variations for part-time dedicated parenthood/work. No one has to do this, but for those who do, there is a vessel that they (and the outside world) recognize as having validity.
Graduate school offers an appropriate model because it assumes maturity and relevant background without assuming expertise. It is organized to move from greater structure (courses) to independence (original scholarship). It depends on mentorship under faculty solicited by the student, allowing for student choice and philosophical differences. It culminates in thoughtful original work evaluated by peers. It motivates funding streams. It takes seriously its subject matter. It creates a professional community. It gives students a label for what they do all day, and why it is important. It leaves students with a degree to show for it.
Help me flesh this out. What could coursework look like? We could make use of online options for seminars on topics like "Sleep," "Language Development," "Nutrition," or "Marriage and Family Dynamics." It would be student-driven and derive from day-to-day life with Tots. Parents could keep journals or blogs. PaD candidates could do longer-term projects, perhaps supporting the work of scholars in fields related to issues arising in their families, such as allergies, tantrums, illnesses, marriage roles, or autism. Advanced work could reach into academia in fields such as Linguistics, Anthropology, Psychology, Neuroanatomy. WIKI could come up with a WIKI-PARENT site to organize the ideas and insights of thoughtful parents, much like the CDC and SETI organize the inputs of ordinary people to search for meaningful patterns. Parents might work on it as a team, dedicating different stretches of time to parenting.
Who could the mentors be? Help me think about this. This could be a chance to recognize people specifically for their good parenting, a category that garners no formal recognition or particular respect, even if they were not literally parents themselves. A grandparent, a nanny, a neighbor, one's own parents, a sister or brother, a pastor, one's former high school teacher or coach. It would give people of other generations and stations a stake in supporting the new family.
The timetable of graduate study also lines up with dedicated parenthood. It is my unsubstantiated view that many new parents feel like Early Childhood Will Never End. My doctor friends describe the sleeplessness of residency in similar terms, but they knew exactly when it would end. But when you are in the tunnel of early parenthood, it can feel like you've lost your life and will never get it back. (We don't get the same "it" back, but we often can't yet see how the alternative can be better.) Lacking outside validation, compensation, or recognition, it's reasonable to question the worth of the effort. The graduate degree model both affirms the time-limited nature of the work and the importance. Knowing that this intensive early stage passes can also relieve pressure on couples, who often feel like weary roommates more than the amorous hopefuls who once made these little beings.
Imagine if volunteering at a child's pre-school, serving on a board of directors for athletics or the arts, or writing letters to elected officials on behalf of legislation affecting kids and families were part of an internship? The point is not "credit" but rather to value these activities.
There is abundant research underway about the intellectual, emotional and social development in children ages 0-4, and yet there is evidence that children are entering school with far less developed verbal skills than previous generations. Could it be because we are simply not talking with them enough? Explaining? Asking questions? Entering their worlds? It amazes me how often I see little kids alone in strollers with nannies or parents on cellphones. I want to be clear: I am very much in favor of both professional caregivers and cellphones! (In fact, I think nannies should be better paid and better recognized.) And sometimes a phone call must be made. But more often, the behavior is part of the same problem: A mindset that caring for small children is something to be gotten through rather than engaged. The most valuable thing we can offer our children is exactly what we place the lowest value on when we spend it with them: Time.
After 6 years with little ones, I'm finding one similarity between parenting and squash or photography after all: the better one gets at it, the more enjoyable it is. As the competence gap closes, parents can find new delight in their children - and each other - that makes weekends less arduous and more restful. A virtuous cycle kicks in. We no longer crawl toward Monday morning. I can't help but believe that kids can feel the difference.
Am I serious about graduate degrees for parenting? I am serious about changing the way we value the work all parents do. Help me think of even better ways to do that.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Smashing Pumpkins
When I was about 11, my pumpkins suffered a fate shared by many of their gourd brethren -- an untimely end on the asphalt of Maple Street. We had grown these pumpkins ourselves in our little garden, and like other things in which eleven-year old girls invest human attributes (horses, unicorns, fairies), these round-faced smiling vegetables felt like friends. Not knowing how to console, my mom suggested I write a note telling the offenders how insensitive it was to smash our pumpkins. I wrote it with a Sharpie pen in bold bubble letters and taped it to the fence. Boy, did I tell them!
Over the decades my heart went the hard way of adulthood, accepting the essential vegetative nature of a pumpkin. Yet my depravity has gone further - I admit a secret pleasure, envy perhaps, for the expression of destructive impulses, at least when contained to pumpkins. (My mother used to name her misbehaving students before hurling glass bottles at the recycling center.) Maybe over the years I've gotten in touch with my inner anarchist. Pumpkin parts smeared among fallen leaves expressed an honest impulse.
But I am also now a parent to young children who renew a bit of that old pumpkin magic for me. So a few weeks ago when we visited New Hampshire for the weekend, my father and step-mother took us to their pumpkin patch at Hilltop Farm. For the big boys we selected two perfect pumpkins as big as Reeve. For Tucker we chose one barely bigger than a grapefruit. Reeve and his grandfather hoisted their harvest into my dad's tractor front-loader and drove them back to the waiting station wagon with New York plates.
You might think - what kind of idiot leaves precious homegrown Hilltop pumpkins out on the front stoop in NEW YORK CITY? As a child of the country I believed all cities were thick with thieves in every shadow. After moving to Brooklyn it took us a while to leave strollers on the front porch; now we have to remind ourselves not to leave laptops, or small children. The neighbors all put their pumpkins out, even those who remember twenty years ago when a pumpkin wouldn't last an hour out there. It's the post-Giuliani New York, a softer city, safe even for a gourd.
So at first I thought maybe we had misplaced it. It was Saturday morning and I was getting my bike out to go to my painting class at the Botanic Garden (talk about a softer New York, geesh) when I noticed one of the pumpkins was gone. It was the one with the dimple near the bottom, which made it roll back too easily, so I looked down the basement stairs shaft to make sure it hadn't rolled to an untimely demise. No. Then I called to Jordy to ask if he'd moved it. No. My eyes darted to the street in search of pumpkin guts. I would enjoy the fantasy that a teenaged Banksy had made protest art from our raw material. Nothing. This was insult to injury -- had someone stolen our pumpkin to put on their own front stoop, passing off their petty thievery as legitimate Halloween decor?
Three small boys in pajamas awaited explanation on the porch. "Someone took our pumpkin, guys," I said. They took it like little men, lots of unanswerable questions (who? why? what did they do with it? but it's ours), sad but no tears (and no impulse to write moralizing notes to the perpetrators). We agreed that we would move the remaining pumpkin onto the porch itself, far enough from the stoop, we hoped, to dissuade another theft but asserting our determination not to let these marauders intimidate us into hiding our pumpkins behind glass. Duncan and Reeve honorably agreed to share the remaining big pumpkin, and we voted to table the decision whether or not to tell GrampaDicken and GrammaGhee of their pumpkin's uncertain end.
The decision was made for us Sunday morning. It was barely seven o'clock. The big boys and their dad were running out the door to meet a boat for an off-shore fishing trip. I was running alongside them, holding Tucker on one hip while zipping jackets, when the whole moving Green Bean train ground to a sudden stop and nearly derailed.
At the foot of our steps sat our stolen pumpkin. I knew it was the one from the dimple near the bottom. From our vantage point it looked intact save for a circular incision around the stem.
There was a note on the pumpkin itself. It was written in black Sharpie ink.
"Sorry for taking your pumpkin.
We just wanted the seeds. So we carved it and
brought it back to you.
Happy Halloween!
P.S. Look for me on Halloween. I'll be dressed
as a Vampire."
We spun it around to find our pumpkin laughing, eyes spinning wildly as if from some thrilling, dizzying ride.
Over the decades my heart went the hard way of adulthood, accepting the essential vegetative nature of a pumpkin. Yet my depravity has gone further - I admit a secret pleasure, envy perhaps, for the expression of destructive impulses, at least when contained to pumpkins. (My mother used to name her misbehaving students before hurling glass bottles at the recycling center.) Maybe over the years I've gotten in touch with my inner anarchist. Pumpkin parts smeared among fallen leaves expressed an honest impulse.
But I am also now a parent to young children who renew a bit of that old pumpkin magic for me. So a few weeks ago when we visited New Hampshire for the weekend, my father and step-mother took us to their pumpkin patch at Hilltop Farm. For the big boys we selected two perfect pumpkins as big as Reeve. For Tucker we chose one barely bigger than a grapefruit. Reeve and his grandfather hoisted their harvest into my dad's tractor front-loader and drove them back to the waiting station wagon with New York plates.
You might think - what kind of idiot leaves precious homegrown Hilltop pumpkins out on the front stoop in NEW YORK CITY? As a child of the country I believed all cities were thick with thieves in every shadow. After moving to Brooklyn it took us a while to leave strollers on the front porch; now we have to remind ourselves not to leave laptops, or small children. The neighbors all put their pumpkins out, even those who remember twenty years ago when a pumpkin wouldn't last an hour out there. It's the post-Giuliani New York, a softer city, safe even for a gourd.
So at first I thought maybe we had misplaced it. It was Saturday morning and I was getting my bike out to go to my painting class at the Botanic Garden (talk about a softer New York, geesh) when I noticed one of the pumpkins was gone. It was the one with the dimple near the bottom, which made it roll back too easily, so I looked down the basement stairs shaft to make sure it hadn't rolled to an untimely demise. No. Then I called to Jordy to ask if he'd moved it. No. My eyes darted to the street in search of pumpkin guts. I would enjoy the fantasy that a teenaged Banksy had made protest art from our raw material. Nothing. This was insult to injury -- had someone stolen our pumpkin to put on their own front stoop, passing off their petty thievery as legitimate Halloween decor?
Three small boys in pajamas awaited explanation on the porch. "Someone took our pumpkin, guys," I said. They took it like little men, lots of unanswerable questions (who? why? what did they do with it? but it's ours), sad but no tears (and no impulse to write moralizing notes to the perpetrators). We agreed that we would move the remaining pumpkin onto the porch itself, far enough from the stoop, we hoped, to dissuade another theft but asserting our determination not to let these marauders intimidate us into hiding our pumpkins behind glass. Duncan and Reeve honorably agreed to share the remaining big pumpkin, and we voted to table the decision whether or not to tell GrampaDicken and GrammaGhee of their pumpkin's uncertain end.
The decision was made for us Sunday morning. It was barely seven o'clock. The big boys and their dad were running out the door to meet a boat for an off-shore fishing trip. I was running alongside them, holding Tucker on one hip while zipping jackets, when the whole moving Green Bean train ground to a sudden stop and nearly derailed.
At the foot of our steps sat our stolen pumpkin. I knew it was the one from the dimple near the bottom. From our vantage point it looked intact save for a circular incision around the stem.
There was a note on the pumpkin itself. It was written in black Sharpie ink.
"Sorry for taking your pumpkin.
We just wanted the seeds. So we carved it and
brought it back to you.
Happy Halloween!
P.S. Look for me on Halloween. I'll be dressed
as a Vampire."
We spun it around to find our pumpkin laughing, eyes spinning wildly as if from some thrilling, dizzying ride.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
STAR WARS, or, When should I introduce my child to Pure Evil?
I have probably already subjected you to my diatribe. A few years ago on Halloween I noticed the preponderance of Darth Vaders, Darth Molls, etc. against a severe dearth of Obi Wans, Luke Skywalkers, Princess Leahs, and the like. The trick-or-treaters who visit our block number 500 to 600, which must constitute a statistically significant sample size, so I figured this trend indicates something meaningful about our culture and the world as a whole. My question: Where did all the good guys go?
The battle between good guys and bad guys is, of course, as old as time. Cowboys v. Indians, Allies v. Hitler, God v. Devil, Red Sox v. Yankees. Occasionally, in liberal pinko commie crowds, the contest allows for moral ambiguity, and history often inverts the designations. But the essential struggle endures in stories that reflect outwardly our inner conflicts. I want the last cookie; I contemplate my temptation to grab it from weaker hands through the moral lens of European conquest and I am ashamed. I share the cookie. If dressing up as Darth Vader helps my almost-six year old son get in touch with his dark side, I'm down with that. Assuming, of course, he concludes that earning his candy the old-fashioned way is better than terrorizing younger kids on the block into relinquishing theirs.
And herein lies the rub, and my gripe with George Lucas. Jordy and I grew up on the original trilogy - a classic hero's journey wherein Luke Skywalker discovers that he is not who he thought he was, that he has the force within him, that an estranged relationship with his father tempts him to the very anger that turned his father away from the jedi's path, and that he must find the strength to devote himself to the light. It ends with the ultimate father/son reconciliation and a giant Ewok barbecue. Moral order is restored.
But "these kids today" (!) are growing up with a very different part of the story - the fall from grace, the embrace of evil, the surrender without the redemption. Of course they are supposed to go on to watch Episodes IV through VI in order to end where we did, but as my clever film history professor friend points out, the change of film aesthetics from the '70s to now mitigates against that identification. The video games feature exciting races and inter-galactic dog fights in which Anakin Skywalker is the hero. Yesterday when my little round-faced, towed-headed Duncan pushed his Darth mask up for a breath of air, our little neighbor Charlie exclaimed, "He looks just like Anakin!!" It was true. Unnerving for a mother.
I already accept the Wet Blanket Award for Taking Pop Culture Too Seriously, yet I will go a step further. I don't know what makes one person's moral development proceed toward Ghandi-status and another toward Hitler, or of course, like most of us, to the mostly law-abiding vs. law-defying shades of gray in the middle. I imagine a complex interaction of innate, primate, and cultural forces. But on the cultural part - I have to believe that we play a role in teaching our kids something about morality, starting by showing them love and respect, then helping them imagine the inner lives of others. Is it possible to exert your greatest parental effort and end up with a Hitler? Maybe so. This question is way beyond the scope of this wee blog. I don't believe shielding kids from evil characters is the way to go, nor would I advocate banning play-acting the part. (I loved being a pregnant witch last Halloween.)
But what if the moral growth of children happens like the zippering and unzippering of DNA, with moments when the introduction of an idea has the potential to weave itself in -- or bind with a pre-existing template -- in more and less powerful ways? If so, how do we judge the right moment to introduce such stories and characters? (And if this seems like a nerdy line of inquiry, isn't it telling that we don't introduce our kids to real-live monsters like Hitler until "a certain age"?) Duncan knew a boy who began watching Star Wars at a particularly vulnerable moment, it seemed, judging from his bullying behavior on the playground fortified with Star Wars re-enactments. It can't be a matter solely of chronological age. There's something else I'm looking for... Some kind of contextual understanding in the child's life experiences up to that point... An ability to look at the daily opportunities to exercise exploitation vs. fairness -- grab-the-cookie-from-the-weak v. there's-only-one-left-let's-share -- wherein moral and physical power separate... Or a child's dawning recognition, after cooling off, of anger's roots in hurt feelings...
Although his 6th Birthday Party will have a STAR WARS theme, Duncan has not actually ever seen "Star Wars" -- with the exception of a clandestine partial viewing of "The Empire Strikes Back" when he manipulated a babysitter into showing it to him and his then 2-year old brother. (Useful material for moral explorations.) However, he has heard the story the Homeric way, i.e. as an oral epic enacted by his parents during long car rides. This telling allowed us to stop, answer questions, re-tell confusing or exciting parts, and reconcile differences between his parents' versions. At age 4, driving in the dark one night, Duncan already perceived the essential question: Why did Darth Vader turn to the dark side?
In an attempt to answer the unfathomable, I drew from tragedy close to home. At the time Duncan was also just beginning to understand the death of his beloved cousins' father, Gary Lehmann. It is one thing to say a drunk driver hit Gary's car, taking his life. It is another to make sense of the vast chain of substance abuse and suffering behind that driver's behavior. Was it an accident, or was it a crime? What is the difference for the survivors? What do we do with our feelings of anger and sadness? Do we punish? Seek revenge? Or do what we can to mend the chain of brokenness? And if so, what is that? I asked him to look at his Aunt Kristin's example. Does she still love her children? The world? I explained to Duncan the efforts Kristin had made, despite her clear conviction that this was a crime and not an accident, simultaneously to confront the man who killed her husband, form her own impression of his efforts to reform and recover, and ultimately support his parole in the interest of his being a better parent to his own son. It took Aunt Kristin a lot of strength to let her sadness be stronger than her anger, and out of sadness to keep loving the world in spite of how it hurts us. Darth Vader (in my version) did not find this strength. Instead he gives in to the anger of his wife's death and cuts himself off from his heart. Our conversation stuck. Two years later Duncan still refers to how "the Lehmanns chose the light, even though they miss their dad."
Yet and still... This summer Duncan couldn't make up his mind between the myriad of Star Wars Lego kits, mostly destroyers for the Republic, advertised in his Lego magazine. At one point, already in debt to his parents for an earlier impulse buy, Duncan begged for the Death Star Lego kit -- a mere $400 item. Death and destruction, it turns out, is expensive. (Am I hopelessly uncool if I register my opinion that the mechanized space warfare of Star Wars looks and feels too much like our unmanned and, ahem, also expensive drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan?) And what am I to do with my little Darth Vader, whose light-saber swashbuckling knocks over his toddling baby brother and harasses a poor old dog with hip displasia?
Maybe I should take comfort from a variation on the Banality of Evil, otherwise known as the Cuteness of Evil. When we forget to put up the gate to block baby Tucker's ascent of the stairs, our little Darth leaps up to spot him. At Family Swim at the Y, our Darth offered the soft swim cap to brother Reeve unprompted, knowing the plastic one pulls Reeve's hair. And when he leaves for school, little Darth drops his mask and light saber in a heap on the bathroom floor, eager to see what games they will play in gym today. Maybe he is ready for Star Wars after all.
The battle between good guys and bad guys is, of course, as old as time. Cowboys v. Indians, Allies v. Hitler, God v. Devil, Red Sox v. Yankees. Occasionally, in liberal pinko commie crowds, the contest allows for moral ambiguity, and history often inverts the designations. But the essential struggle endures in stories that reflect outwardly our inner conflicts. I want the last cookie; I contemplate my temptation to grab it from weaker hands through the moral lens of European conquest and I am ashamed. I share the cookie. If dressing up as Darth Vader helps my almost-six year old son get in touch with his dark side, I'm down with that. Assuming, of course, he concludes that earning his candy the old-fashioned way is better than terrorizing younger kids on the block into relinquishing theirs.
And herein lies the rub, and my gripe with George Lucas. Jordy and I grew up on the original trilogy - a classic hero's journey wherein Luke Skywalker discovers that he is not who he thought he was, that he has the force within him, that an estranged relationship with his father tempts him to the very anger that turned his father away from the jedi's path, and that he must find the strength to devote himself to the light. It ends with the ultimate father/son reconciliation and a giant Ewok barbecue. Moral order is restored.
But "these kids today" (!) are growing up with a very different part of the story - the fall from grace, the embrace of evil, the surrender without the redemption. Of course they are supposed to go on to watch Episodes IV through VI in order to end where we did, but as my clever film history professor friend points out, the change of film aesthetics from the '70s to now mitigates against that identification. The video games feature exciting races and inter-galactic dog fights in which Anakin Skywalker is the hero. Yesterday when my little round-faced, towed-headed Duncan pushed his Darth mask up for a breath of air, our little neighbor Charlie exclaimed, "He looks just like Anakin!!" It was true. Unnerving for a mother.
I already accept the Wet Blanket Award for Taking Pop Culture Too Seriously, yet I will go a step further. I don't know what makes one person's moral development proceed toward Ghandi-status and another toward Hitler, or of course, like most of us, to the mostly law-abiding vs. law-defying shades of gray in the middle. I imagine a complex interaction of innate, primate, and cultural forces. But on the cultural part - I have to believe that we play a role in teaching our kids something about morality, starting by showing them love and respect, then helping them imagine the inner lives of others. Is it possible to exert your greatest parental effort and end up with a Hitler? Maybe so. This question is way beyond the scope of this wee blog. I don't believe shielding kids from evil characters is the way to go, nor would I advocate banning play-acting the part. (I loved being a pregnant witch last Halloween.)
But what if the moral growth of children happens like the zippering and unzippering of DNA, with moments when the introduction of an idea has the potential to weave itself in -- or bind with a pre-existing template -- in more and less powerful ways? If so, how do we judge the right moment to introduce such stories and characters? (And if this seems like a nerdy line of inquiry, isn't it telling that we don't introduce our kids to real-live monsters like Hitler until "a certain age"?) Duncan knew a boy who began watching Star Wars at a particularly vulnerable moment, it seemed, judging from his bullying behavior on the playground fortified with Star Wars re-enactments. It can't be a matter solely of chronological age. There's something else I'm looking for... Some kind of contextual understanding in the child's life experiences up to that point... An ability to look at the daily opportunities to exercise exploitation vs. fairness -- grab-the-cookie-from-the-weak v. there's-only-one-left-let's-share -- wherein moral and physical power separate... Or a child's dawning recognition, after cooling off, of anger's roots in hurt feelings...
Although his 6th Birthday Party will have a STAR WARS theme, Duncan has not actually ever seen "Star Wars" -- with the exception of a clandestine partial viewing of "The Empire Strikes Back" when he manipulated a babysitter into showing it to him and his then 2-year old brother. (Useful material for moral explorations.) However, he has heard the story the Homeric way, i.e. as an oral epic enacted by his parents during long car rides. This telling allowed us to stop, answer questions, re-tell confusing or exciting parts, and reconcile differences between his parents' versions. At age 4, driving in the dark one night, Duncan already perceived the essential question: Why did Darth Vader turn to the dark side?
In an attempt to answer the unfathomable, I drew from tragedy close to home. At the time Duncan was also just beginning to understand the death of his beloved cousins' father, Gary Lehmann. It is one thing to say a drunk driver hit Gary's car, taking his life. It is another to make sense of the vast chain of substance abuse and suffering behind that driver's behavior. Was it an accident, or was it a crime? What is the difference for the survivors? What do we do with our feelings of anger and sadness? Do we punish? Seek revenge? Or do what we can to mend the chain of brokenness? And if so, what is that? I asked him to look at his Aunt Kristin's example. Does she still love her children? The world? I explained to Duncan the efforts Kristin had made, despite her clear conviction that this was a crime and not an accident, simultaneously to confront the man who killed her husband, form her own impression of his efforts to reform and recover, and ultimately support his parole in the interest of his being a better parent to his own son. It took Aunt Kristin a lot of strength to let her sadness be stronger than her anger, and out of sadness to keep loving the world in spite of how it hurts us. Darth Vader (in my version) did not find this strength. Instead he gives in to the anger of his wife's death and cuts himself off from his heart. Our conversation stuck. Two years later Duncan still refers to how "the Lehmanns chose the light, even though they miss their dad."
Yet and still... This summer Duncan couldn't make up his mind between the myriad of Star Wars Lego kits, mostly destroyers for the Republic, advertised in his Lego magazine. At one point, already in debt to his parents for an earlier impulse buy, Duncan begged for the Death Star Lego kit -- a mere $400 item. Death and destruction, it turns out, is expensive. (Am I hopelessly uncool if I register my opinion that the mechanized space warfare of Star Wars looks and feels too much like our unmanned and, ahem, also expensive drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan?) And what am I to do with my little Darth Vader, whose light-saber swashbuckling knocks over his toddling baby brother and harasses a poor old dog with hip displasia?
Maybe I should take comfort from a variation on the Banality of Evil, otherwise known as the Cuteness of Evil. When we forget to put up the gate to block baby Tucker's ascent of the stairs, our little Darth leaps up to spot him. At Family Swim at the Y, our Darth offered the soft swim cap to brother Reeve unprompted, knowing the plastic one pulls Reeve's hair. And when he leaves for school, little Darth drops his mask and light saber in a heap on the bathroom floor, eager to see what games they will play in gym today. Maybe he is ready for Star Wars after all.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Are you Jewish?
The Jewish Festival of Sukkot has just ended, leaving me wistful for a few reasons. One, it means winter is lurking just around the bend. Two, we have to take down our sukkah, which I love like I loved my cousins' backyard "Fort Apache." But most of all, because it means we leave that special time when any Jew is Jewish "enough" to shake a lulav.
Brooklyn puts the divisions among Jews on display in full color. Drive on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway past Williamsburg and you will see Ultra-orthodox men in tall, furry hats and black overcoats crossing a pedestrian bridge overhead, apart from their wives and numerous children. Pack a picnic in Prospect Park and you will see tattooed, tongue-pierced Ultimate Frisbee-playing Jews eating ham sandwiches on Shabbos. There are many shades in between, but for the most part, the religious and non-religious Jews of Brooklyn mostly look at each other as if through panes of glass, such as when the private charter bus shuttles orthodox Jews from Williamsburg to Borough Park at blinding speed. I watch them pass me on Prospect Park West, feeling myself an earthbound muggle among wizards on blazing broomsticks. And feeling a bit judged, as if contact with me might sully their purity.
But during the 8 days of Sukkot, something unique happens. Rather than maintain their customary separation, young men in black fedoras and overcoats can be seen approaching strangers everywhere -- on the train, in the park, outside Starbucks -- offering a long grassy bouquet and something like a lemon. They speak to women, even women in tank tops like myself. Always their first question:
"Excuse me, are you Jewish?"
As if it were a Yes-or-No question.
The first time this happened, Jordy and I were on the subway. Two Hasidic men asked Jordy first. We assumed a kind of racial profiling, not to mention sexism and evangelism, so Jordy politely said, "I'm not interested." A few days later, though, two young Hasids approached me outside the public library as I pushed sleeping little Duncan in a stroller. They were very young, pimply, and eager. I was touched. Out of context, people don't assume I'm Jewish. I was glad to be asked. And I was curious to explore this ritual, one that begins with a lovely prayer of thanks for bringing us to this moment - an unlikely one in my life for sure. So I said, "Yes."
But what I wanted to say was, "How much time do you have?"
And then I wanted to tell them the story of how I became Jewish, a tale years in the making and by no means finished. I was sure they didn't have years to spend with me -- in fact, I knew the spell that bound us would be broken in just 8 days -- but I would have liked to compare the paths that brought us to this moment when we claimed, together, to be Jewish. I would offer them just these trailer moments:
* me, age 12, sitting in Hebrew classes in Hanover, New Hampshire with my best friend Anna Roland, the daughter of Brooklyn Jews with socialist tendencies who inspired me with their vision of Judaism as a religion that had moved "beyond belief in God"
* my mom and Dad, two goy refugees from the New York country club suburbs, on vacation in Israel in 1965 - why?
* my mom, age 7, passionately in love with a little boy named Johnny Kaplan but advised by her mother that "people need to stick to their own kind, for the sake of the kids"
* mom again, age something like 30, post-divorce, being told by her shrink that she has a "Jewish soul" (By that logic, if my mother is a Jew trapped in a shiksa body, can I claim to be, spiritually speaking, born Jewish? ;-)
* me, age 7, gluing macaronis on Christmas tree ornaments
* me, age 11, in my small New England town reading THE CHOSEN with fascination at such a foreign world
* me, age 14, baking Challah for a school project about "other cultures"
* me, age 16, writing my first piece of fiction about a daughter of Christian Science parents who wants to go to Medical School
* me, age 18, in various Humanities seminars at Stanford agreeing vigorously with Freud that "God is a projection of the father figure," with Marx that "Religion is an opium of the masses," and with Nietzsche that "God is Dead" while watching with sympathy as my poor classmates of faith crumbled under the challenge to their universe.
* me again, age 19, alone on a dark cold night in rural Japan. Writing letters to friends and family back home that reflected the unraveling of everything I thought I knew. Lots of darkness. A letter back from friend Elizabeth to the effect that I was "going places" she couldn't go with me. And from my Dad suggesting that there are contradictory paradigms of reality that one might go crazy trying to reconcile, with recommended reading: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
* me again, age 20, at a Zen temple, eyes half closed, contemplating the possibility that "I" do not actually exist.
* me, still 20, on the Tibetan plateau, spinning the Dharma wheel at a Tibetan temple, contemplating the possibility of reincarnation, or at least the limits of my material view of reality and gingerly giving credence to people who seemed at the very least to have a deeper understanding of their own minds, if not Reality.
* me, still 20, back in Japan before boarding a plane for LA, my sense of myself pulverized and fearful of how I would put the pieces back together.
* me, age 21, having abandoned my pre-med major in favor of the Humanities where I found stories and art that touched on the other realms of reality - or at least human experience - that spoke to me.
* me, age 22, in Mississippi following a love affair with the fiction of William Faulkner. In a Bible study group, eager to plumb the roots of my own tradition better, arguing in very un-Southern-ladylike way with my faithful classmates.
* me, age 23, choosing to have an adult baptism while conferring with Jesus on the side that, while I believed he was a son of God, I actually believe all people are a mix of divine and mortal and that I hoped he was cool with that. One might conclude that I am a joiner, and so I probably am -- I have always found I am pushed further when I jump in than when I watch from the sidelines.
* me, age 24, commissioning a Menorah by an artist in the Mississippi Delta for my boyfriend, one of two Jews from Enid, Oklahoma (the other was his brother). I had our initials cut into the metal. I have always wondered whether he got my initials cut off after we broke up and he married someone else, or just threw the thing away?
* me, age 26, now in San Francisco, clapping and crying at Glide Church. Flash forward two years and I am now up with the gospel choir - among gays/lesbians/bi & transgendered/and a few straight people, blacks/whites/asians/etc., dot.commers and homeless, Christian/Jew/Muslim/Yogis/agnostic, etc.
* me, all ages, in downward facing dog, seeking inner peace/strength/flexibility, etc. through the Yogi philosophy du jour.
* me, age 30, now in film school in Los Angeles. Filming everything from faked car crashes to faked love-making everywhere from borrowed mansions in Chicago to crack alleys in downtown LA, trying to capture essential truths through constructed realities.
* me, age 31, back in touch with childhood friend Jordy Green, now in London. It started with a very vivid dream in which I was wandering the snowy roads of New Hampshire at dusk. I couldn't go home until I found Jordy, and I couldn't remember his long international phone number. Ours is a much much longer story, but let's cut to the chase: August, 7, 2001 I boarded a plane to London to go find out whether our on-again off-again friendship of years had grown into more. I believed I would know when I saw him at Heathrow Airport, and I did.
* me and Jordy, 31, in London, at orthodox Shabbat services at "Cool Shul" with Rabbi Pini. Then later, at Pini's home with delightful wife Sabine and their kids, candles everywhere, lots of cranberry & vodkas, Shabbat dinner. Split frame: Pini at the table telling me Judaism discourages conversion// Pini later, in the kitchen, telling Jordy to marry me and not to worry about the Jewish part because "she can just convert"
* me, lightheaded from my first Yom Kippur fast, looking at the sun setting over the Santa Monica hills on the phone with Jordy, still in London but getting ready to move to LA.
* us, engaged, drinking wine and eating challah until we made ourselves sick, every Friday night without fail.
* me, producing film THE SHABBOS GOY, entering, through fiction, into the bedroom of an Orthodox Jewish couple pained by their infertility and learning on a movie set how to "kosher" a chicken.
* me and Jordy, searching for a rabbi who will marry a Jew and non-Jew, and being rejected by all - even reform rabbis.
* us, age 32, married in a field in New Hampshire by a renegade former orthodox cantor. Our families roasting in the August sun as the ceremony goes on & on. A rabbi would later tell me we are still not legally married, but we disagree.
* me, age 35, pregnant, at Dohány Synagoge, deeply moved by the place and the history.
* a month later, in classes at the University of Judaism in LA, my life and my home becoming more centered in Judaism. Preparations to convert come with my belief that identity evolves. And - as un-American as it sounds - we do not construct it alone. There is a negotiation, and this is OK.
* a few more months, October 2004. I am big as a house with baby. The Red Sox have just won the ALCS. I go before the Bet Din to answer questions such as, "What is your favorite Jewish holiday?" and "Do you promise to raise your children as Jews?" These questions are easy.
(OK, way too many moments to fit in a trailer.)
But before the mikvah bath that will immerse me (and unborn Duncan) and certify us as MOTs (members of the tribe), the harder questions -- "When did you realize you had a Jewish soul?" and "Do you swear to abandon all commitments to other religions?"
To which I smile and offer answers with lots of footnotes, which I justify as some evidence of Jewishness itself.
To be Jewish, as I understand it, is to wrestle with God - the literal translation of the name "Israel." I wrestle with God, but I experience divinity daily. The story of Judaism is one of seeking continuity within change. This too I do. I will never have my friend Anna's beautiful dark corkscrew curls, my friend Mike DeWitt's sense of humor, or my in-laws' taste for Tongue. I will speak Hebrew with a bad accent, get lost in the Siddur on High Holidays, and continue to love mayonnaise and pastel colors. I will not give up my yoga practice or visiting the churches of my loved ones and finding inspiration and beauty there (though I have no hesitation giving up Christmas). I will continue to find art and love the bravest of enterprises, as they lead us into the infinitely specific experiences of being human. Is my soul Jewish? Are not our souls, if anything, beyond categorization?
But Judaism is and will remain my home base. The tradition gives beautiful form to the weeks and seasons of my life and my family's life. It reminds me to sanctify Time when it would otherwise spin by in a tangle of emails, laundry, and playdates. There is no end to what I want to learn about Judaism - from modern Hebrew to the history of Israel to Kabbalah. Living Jewishly pushes me, makes me ask more questions, and introduces more tensions, than not. A stringed instrument depends on tension to make music. I cherish Judaism with the freedom of one who has chosen it, and I practice it with the grateful enthusiasm - and imperfection - of a new immigrant.
We return to the library where my bewildered young Hasid friends listen, Lulav slack in their hands. Next time I will ask, "So, how about you? Are you Jewish?"
********
Watch the kids shake it at the Sukkah party:
Brooklyn puts the divisions among Jews on display in full color. Drive on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway past Williamsburg and you will see Ultra-orthodox men in tall, furry hats and black overcoats crossing a pedestrian bridge overhead, apart from their wives and numerous children. Pack a picnic in Prospect Park and you will see tattooed, tongue-pierced Ultimate Frisbee-playing Jews eating ham sandwiches on Shabbos. There are many shades in between, but for the most part, the religious and non-religious Jews of Brooklyn mostly look at each other as if through panes of glass, such as when the private charter bus shuttles orthodox Jews from Williamsburg to Borough Park at blinding speed. I watch them pass me on Prospect Park West, feeling myself an earthbound muggle among wizards on blazing broomsticks. And feeling a bit judged, as if contact with me might sully their purity.
But during the 8 days of Sukkot, something unique happens. Rather than maintain their customary separation, young men in black fedoras and overcoats can be seen approaching strangers everywhere -- on the train, in the park, outside Starbucks -- offering a long grassy bouquet and something like a lemon. They speak to women, even women in tank tops like myself. Always their first question:
"Excuse me, are you Jewish?"
As if it were a Yes-or-No question.
The first time this happened, Jordy and I were on the subway. Two Hasidic men asked Jordy first. We assumed a kind of racial profiling, not to mention sexism and evangelism, so Jordy politely said, "I'm not interested." A few days later, though, two young Hasids approached me outside the public library as I pushed sleeping little Duncan in a stroller. They were very young, pimply, and eager. I was touched. Out of context, people don't assume I'm Jewish. I was glad to be asked. And I was curious to explore this ritual, one that begins with a lovely prayer of thanks for bringing us to this moment - an unlikely one in my life for sure. So I said, "Yes."
But what I wanted to say was, "How much time do you have?"
And then I wanted to tell them the story of how I became Jewish, a tale years in the making and by no means finished. I was sure they didn't have years to spend with me -- in fact, I knew the spell that bound us would be broken in just 8 days -- but I would have liked to compare the paths that brought us to this moment when we claimed, together, to be Jewish. I would offer them just these trailer moments:
* me, age 12, sitting in Hebrew classes in Hanover, New Hampshire with my best friend Anna Roland, the daughter of Brooklyn Jews with socialist tendencies who inspired me with their vision of Judaism as a religion that had moved "beyond belief in God"
* my mom and Dad, two goy refugees from the New York country club suburbs, on vacation in Israel in 1965 - why?
* my mom, age 7, passionately in love with a little boy named Johnny Kaplan but advised by her mother that "people need to stick to their own kind, for the sake of the kids"
* mom again, age something like 30, post-divorce, being told by her shrink that she has a "Jewish soul" (By that logic, if my mother is a Jew trapped in a shiksa body, can I claim to be, spiritually speaking, born Jewish? ;-)
* me, age 7, gluing macaronis on Christmas tree ornaments
* me, age 11, in my small New England town reading THE CHOSEN with fascination at such a foreign world
* me, age 14, baking Challah for a school project about "other cultures"
* me, age 16, writing my first piece of fiction about a daughter of Christian Science parents who wants to go to Medical School
* me, age 18, in various Humanities seminars at Stanford agreeing vigorously with Freud that "God is a projection of the father figure," with Marx that "Religion is an opium of the masses," and with Nietzsche that "God is Dead" while watching with sympathy as my poor classmates of faith crumbled under the challenge to their universe.
* me again, age 19, alone on a dark cold night in rural Japan. Writing letters to friends and family back home that reflected the unraveling of everything I thought I knew. Lots of darkness. A letter back from friend Elizabeth to the effect that I was "going places" she couldn't go with me. And from my Dad suggesting that there are contradictory paradigms of reality that one might go crazy trying to reconcile, with recommended reading: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
* me again, age 20, at a Zen temple, eyes half closed, contemplating the possibility that "I" do not actually exist.
* me, still 20, on the Tibetan plateau, spinning the Dharma wheel at a Tibetan temple, contemplating the possibility of reincarnation, or at least the limits of my material view of reality and gingerly giving credence to people who seemed at the very least to have a deeper understanding of their own minds, if not Reality.
* me, still 20, back in Japan before boarding a plane for LA, my sense of myself pulverized and fearful of how I would put the pieces back together.
* me, age 21, having abandoned my pre-med major in favor of the Humanities where I found stories and art that touched on the other realms of reality - or at least human experience - that spoke to me.
* me, age 22, in Mississippi following a love affair with the fiction of William Faulkner. In a Bible study group, eager to plumb the roots of my own tradition better, arguing in very un-Southern-ladylike way with my faithful classmates.
* me, age 23, choosing to have an adult baptism while conferring with Jesus on the side that, while I believed he was a son of God, I actually believe all people are a mix of divine and mortal and that I hoped he was cool with that. One might conclude that I am a joiner, and so I probably am -- I have always found I am pushed further when I jump in than when I watch from the sidelines.
* me, age 24, commissioning a Menorah by an artist in the Mississippi Delta for my boyfriend, one of two Jews from Enid, Oklahoma (the other was his brother). I had our initials cut into the metal. I have always wondered whether he got my initials cut off after we broke up and he married someone else, or just threw the thing away?
* me, age 26, now in San Francisco, clapping and crying at Glide Church. Flash forward two years and I am now up with the gospel choir - among gays/lesbians/bi & transgendered/and a few straight people, blacks/whites/asians/etc., dot.commers and homeless, Christian/Jew/Muslim/Yogis/agnostic, etc.
* me, all ages, in downward facing dog, seeking inner peace/strength/flexibility, etc. through the Yogi philosophy du jour.
* me, age 30, now in film school in Los Angeles. Filming everything from faked car crashes to faked love-making everywhere from borrowed mansions in Chicago to crack alleys in downtown LA, trying to capture essential truths through constructed realities.
* me, age 31, back in touch with childhood friend Jordy Green, now in London. It started with a very vivid dream in which I was wandering the snowy roads of New Hampshire at dusk. I couldn't go home until I found Jordy, and I couldn't remember his long international phone number. Ours is a much much longer story, but let's cut to the chase: August, 7, 2001 I boarded a plane to London to go find out whether our on-again off-again friendship of years had grown into more. I believed I would know when I saw him at Heathrow Airport, and I did.
* me and Jordy, 31, in London, at orthodox Shabbat services at "Cool Shul" with Rabbi Pini. Then later, at Pini's home with delightful wife Sabine and their kids, candles everywhere, lots of cranberry & vodkas, Shabbat dinner. Split frame: Pini at the table telling me Judaism discourages conversion// Pini later, in the kitchen, telling Jordy to marry me and not to worry about the Jewish part because "she can just convert"
* me, lightheaded from my first Yom Kippur fast, looking at the sun setting over the Santa Monica hills on the phone with Jordy, still in London but getting ready to move to LA.
* us, engaged, drinking wine and eating challah until we made ourselves sick, every Friday night without fail.
* me, producing film THE SHABBOS GOY, entering, through fiction, into the bedroom of an Orthodox Jewish couple pained by their infertility and learning on a movie set how to "kosher" a chicken.
* me and Jordy, searching for a rabbi who will marry a Jew and non-Jew, and being rejected by all - even reform rabbis.
* us, age 32, married in a field in New Hampshire by a renegade former orthodox cantor. Our families roasting in the August sun as the ceremony goes on & on. A rabbi would later tell me we are still not legally married, but we disagree.
* me, age 35, pregnant, at Dohány Synagoge, deeply moved by the place and the history.
* a month later, in classes at the University of Judaism in LA, my life and my home becoming more centered in Judaism. Preparations to convert come with my belief that identity evolves. And - as un-American as it sounds - we do not construct it alone. There is a negotiation, and this is OK.
* a few more months, October 2004. I am big as a house with baby. The Red Sox have just won the ALCS. I go before the Bet Din to answer questions such as, "What is your favorite Jewish holiday?" and "Do you promise to raise your children as Jews?" These questions are easy.
(OK, way too many moments to fit in a trailer.)
But before the mikvah bath that will immerse me (and unborn Duncan) and certify us as MOTs (members of the tribe), the harder questions -- "When did you realize you had a Jewish soul?" and "Do you swear to abandon all commitments to other religions?"
To which I smile and offer answers with lots of footnotes, which I justify as some evidence of Jewishness itself.
To be Jewish, as I understand it, is to wrestle with God - the literal translation of the name "Israel." I wrestle with God, but I experience divinity daily. The story of Judaism is one of seeking continuity within change. This too I do. I will never have my friend Anna's beautiful dark corkscrew curls, my friend Mike DeWitt's sense of humor, or my in-laws' taste for Tongue. I will speak Hebrew with a bad accent, get lost in the Siddur on High Holidays, and continue to love mayonnaise and pastel colors. I will not give up my yoga practice or visiting the churches of my loved ones and finding inspiration and beauty there (though I have no hesitation giving up Christmas). I will continue to find art and love the bravest of enterprises, as they lead us into the infinitely specific experiences of being human. Is my soul Jewish? Are not our souls, if anything, beyond categorization?
But Judaism is and will remain my home base. The tradition gives beautiful form to the weeks and seasons of my life and my family's life. It reminds me to sanctify Time when it would otherwise spin by in a tangle of emails, laundry, and playdates. There is no end to what I want to learn about Judaism - from modern Hebrew to the history of Israel to Kabbalah. Living Jewishly pushes me, makes me ask more questions, and introduces more tensions, than not. A stringed instrument depends on tension to make music. I cherish Judaism with the freedom of one who has chosen it, and I practice it with the grateful enthusiasm - and imperfection - of a new immigrant.
We return to the library where my bewildered young Hasid friends listen, Lulav slack in their hands. Next time I will ask, "So, how about you? Are you Jewish?"
********
Watch the kids shake it at the Sukkah party:
Shake Your Lulav from Samantha Davidson Green on Vimeo.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The Mermaid Returns
Almost a year had passed since the final slap of Ariel's emerald tail. The mermaid had taken a dive to the depths of Reeve's infant pre-memory. Our car, bedtimes, and heads were Little-Mermaid free. We had gotten as close to forgetting her as Disney lets anyone forget.
Reeve had undergone many changes. He busted out of his crib to a big boy bed in a room shared with Duncan. "Scooby Doo" and "Tom and Jerry" now reigned as monster antics ran roughshod over delicate watery longings in my 2-year old's heart. This made sense: Reeve had just solidified his physical powers and wanted one thing -- to run. Scooby and the Gang's encounters with monsters resembled, almost exactly, our house just before dinner when Daddy was required, arms raised, to give chase to little boys with throaty grunts promising doom. As a "Free To Be You and Me" Mom with Jungian tendencies, I sighed quietly as my son's tender anima seemed to follow the mermaid under the sea.
It was around Memorial Day this year when we drove to New Hampshire to open the house for the summer. Maybe the spring green leaves out Reeve's window brought him back to the season when she departed. Maybe he spotted the royal blue CD in the case. Maybe it was the rock where water and shore meet at his grandparents' cabin on the edge of Goose Pond, which Reeve declared out of the blue to be "just lika Awiel's wock!" But there is no doubt: As mysteriously as she disappeared, Ariel is back.
With one important clarification: I (mother, putter-of-children-to-sleep, karaoke-max qualified singer, etc.) am NOT the mermaid. I certainly may not sing her song. I may not even sing along to the CD in the car. (See Rickety Ladder "My Run As a Mermaid," Oct. 2009.)
Reeve alone sings now. And it is abundantly clear that I never was the star, my spotlight the delusional fantasy of a sleep-deprived parent. I was has-been teacher to the prodigy. I was Bette Davis' Margo to Reeve's Eve. And I couldn't be more delighted to cede the part.
OK, I do not delight that the CD is back on endless loop in the car, but I tolerate it because Reeve's performance is ground-breaking. In the early weeks of the return, Reeve's powers of speech had not yet caught up to the tempo and vocabulary; hence, the early performances consisted of loud, undifferentiated open-mouthed signing, punctuated by outbursts of confidence:
"Uhnnn -uhhhnnn -- uhnnn ---
And why does it Uhnn uhhn uhhn BURN?!
Uhhn uhhn uhhn TURN?
Uhhnn Uhnn Uhhn LOVE?"
Bit by bit the words have filled in, sometimes with astonishing articulation. What do you say to your toddler staring you down in the rear-view mirror as he intones:
"I'm weady to know what da people know, aksing my questions 'n get some ansahs!"
Sometimes, when he's sleepy, Reeve will go into a silent trance as he listens. Thus is it all the more startling when he suddenly wails: WISH I COULD BE PART OF YOUR WORLD!
Reeve has moved beyond Ariel's aria of longing too, a welcome development. He now sings along with Sebastian about how it's "hotter under the water!" and the sadistic French chef as he consoles the "leetle feeshes" that "it won't hurt 'cause your dead!" Best of all are the instrumental passages during which he relives the entire operatic narrative, singing with the strings section, "SIMM SIMM SIM-SIM-SIM SIMM SIMM SIM-SIM-SIM!" He'll interrupt to ask: "Mommy, is this when the BIG storm hits Eric's ship?" (I have no idea.) And he'll require re-play of certain tracks when a narrative element grips his attention, such as, "Play the one when Ursula comes to the ship!" Jordy and I look at each other, "Uh, honey, is that track 17 or 18?" "I don't know, try 17." We try it. From the back seat,"NOT THAT ONE!!!" And the clock is ticking -- track 18? NO! We try 19. NO! We must find it before Reeve breaks down in hysterics. It must feel to him that the story goes on without him, the way it felt before On-Demand TV when you had to choose between peeing and missing part of your favorite show.
To ease the transition back to Brooklyn after a free-form summer in New Hampshire, I bought each of the boys the toy of their heart's desire. Duncan got two packs of "Yugio" cards. Reeve chose, of course, an Ariel Barbie Doll.
She's exquisite. Like her Barbie sisters, she has an impossibly hot figure. Her hair is an eruption of red lusciousness (it is actually red, not "red" as in orange) that is particularly gorgeous to watch swirl in the bath water. Her "mum-mums," as my boys call breasts, are covered by a little purple bikini top that is wont to fall off. Her eyes are blue "just like Baby Tuckah's!" and she is possessed of a smile that never dims. She eats breakfast at the table with Reeve. She sleeps with Reeve. The mermaid who once longed simply to walk on a (what's that word again?) street now goes everywhere.
Ariel's most arresting feature, however, is her removable mermaid tail. OK, the sexual overtones and undertones of The Little Mermaid tale (and tail) are ridiculous and fascinating, above all because Disney chose to amp it to the max and got away with it under its brand of wholesome family fun. (We visited Ariel in her grotto at Disney World with Duncan at age 3. It was a bit creepy as she tickled him, calling him her "little Flounder" while her purple-conch covered breasts thrust themselves at him. Duncan was terrified. Jordy concluded that the "Ariel Exhibit" was Disney's enticement to Dads to suffer the rest of the theme park.) Really, where to begin? And I don't want to become an arm-chair neo-Freudian deconstructing my child's beloved plaything. Truthfully I don't know what Reeve's 3 & 1/2-year old mind makes of female bodies or his own.
What I see is that he wants to change her -- then change her back. Again and again, to the point where the shine of her little fabric tail is losing its luster. He can deftly remove the tail, but putting it back on still requires help.
Maybe this metamorphosis speaks to Reeve's inaccessible, though recent, memories of learning to walk. Maybe it speaks to the thrill and terror he feels now as he learns to swim, revisiting the strange boomy, inchoate underwater realm of an even more inaccessible memory. Since he was 14 months old Reeve has enjoyed standing by the water's edge, fishing pole (denuded of hook) in hand, contemplating the realm beyond water's surface. This summer, with hook, he caught his first fish to the shock of us all. Reeve's jumping body bespoke the awe he felt in discovering the power to extract a living creature from the water. As he watched it swim frantic circles in its tupperware tank, Reeve declared "I'm gonna keep it forevah! I'm gonna cook it for suppah!" -- a logical impossibility with which his elder brother confronted him. Reeve thought a moment, then rejected such stuck-in-the-box thinking. "I'm gonna keep it forevah! I'm gonna cook it for suppah!" he declared as if Duncan simply didn't get it.
Sometimes Reeve's passion for Ariel looks like pure devotion: He gazes at her with the wonder of a little man in love. Other times his passion looks like pure identification; they are one and the same. Maybe passion is exactly this convergence.
Yesterday as Ariel rode with us to Costco, Reeve pulled her tail off for the umpteenth time. "Mommy, Look!" he announced, as if this were a novel event. But then, and this part was new, "I made her human." Not a person. Not a girl. Not even "a" human. Just, human. In the rear view I watched him watch her seriously, as if trying to figure out what that meant.
Then, "Can we get Scooby Doo yoguhts at the stowah?"
Reeve had undergone many changes. He busted out of his crib to a big boy bed in a room shared with Duncan. "Scooby Doo" and "Tom and Jerry" now reigned as monster antics ran roughshod over delicate watery longings in my 2-year old's heart. This made sense: Reeve had just solidified his physical powers and wanted one thing -- to run. Scooby and the Gang's encounters with monsters resembled, almost exactly, our house just before dinner when Daddy was required, arms raised, to give chase to little boys with throaty grunts promising doom. As a "Free To Be You and Me" Mom with Jungian tendencies, I sighed quietly as my son's tender anima seemed to follow the mermaid under the sea.
It was around Memorial Day this year when we drove to New Hampshire to open the house for the summer. Maybe the spring green leaves out Reeve's window brought him back to the season when she departed. Maybe he spotted the royal blue CD in the case. Maybe it was the rock where water and shore meet at his grandparents' cabin on the edge of Goose Pond, which Reeve declared out of the blue to be "just lika Awiel's wock!" But there is no doubt: As mysteriously as she disappeared, Ariel is back.
With one important clarification: I (mother, putter-of-children-to-sleep, karaoke-max qualified singer, etc.) am NOT the mermaid. I certainly may not sing her song. I may not even sing along to the CD in the car. (See Rickety Ladder "My Run As a Mermaid," Oct. 2009.)
Reeve alone sings now. And it is abundantly clear that I never was the star, my spotlight the delusional fantasy of a sleep-deprived parent. I was has-been teacher to the prodigy. I was Bette Davis' Margo to Reeve's Eve. And I couldn't be more delighted to cede the part.
OK, I do not delight that the CD is back on endless loop in the car, but I tolerate it because Reeve's performance is ground-breaking. In the early weeks of the return, Reeve's powers of speech had not yet caught up to the tempo and vocabulary; hence, the early performances consisted of loud, undifferentiated open-mouthed signing, punctuated by outbursts of confidence:
"Uhnnn -uhhhnnn -- uhnnn ---
And why does it Uhnn uhhn uhhn BURN?!
Uhhn uhhn uhhn TURN?
Uhhnn Uhnn Uhhn LOVE?"
Bit by bit the words have filled in, sometimes with astonishing articulation. What do you say to your toddler staring you down in the rear-view mirror as he intones:
"I'm weady to know what da people know, aksing my questions 'n get some ansahs!"
Sometimes, when he's sleepy, Reeve will go into a silent trance as he listens. Thus is it all the more startling when he suddenly wails: WISH I COULD BE PART OF YOUR WORLD!
Reeve has moved beyond Ariel's aria of longing too, a welcome development. He now sings along with Sebastian about how it's "hotter under the water!" and the sadistic French chef as he consoles the "leetle feeshes" that "it won't hurt 'cause your dead!" Best of all are the instrumental passages during which he relives the entire operatic narrative, singing with the strings section, "SIMM SIMM SIM-SIM-SIM SIMM SIMM SIM-SIM-SIM!" He'll interrupt to ask: "Mommy, is this when the BIG storm hits Eric's ship?" (I have no idea.) And he'll require re-play of certain tracks when a narrative element grips his attention, such as, "Play the one when Ursula comes to the ship!" Jordy and I look at each other, "Uh, honey, is that track 17 or 18?" "I don't know, try 17." We try it. From the back seat,"NOT THAT ONE!!!" And the clock is ticking -- track 18? NO! We try 19. NO! We must find it before Reeve breaks down in hysterics. It must feel to him that the story goes on without him, the way it felt before On-Demand TV when you had to choose between peeing and missing part of your favorite show.
To ease the transition back to Brooklyn after a free-form summer in New Hampshire, I bought each of the boys the toy of their heart's desire. Duncan got two packs of "Yugio" cards. Reeve chose, of course, an Ariel Barbie Doll.
She's exquisite. Like her Barbie sisters, she has an impossibly hot figure. Her hair is an eruption of red lusciousness (it is actually red, not "red" as in orange) that is particularly gorgeous to watch swirl in the bath water. Her "mum-mums," as my boys call breasts, are covered by a little purple bikini top that is wont to fall off. Her eyes are blue "just like Baby Tuckah's!" and she is possessed of a smile that never dims. She eats breakfast at the table with Reeve. She sleeps with Reeve. The mermaid who once longed simply to walk on a (what's that word again?) street now goes everywhere.
Ariel's most arresting feature, however, is her removable mermaid tail. OK, the sexual overtones and undertones of The Little Mermaid tale (and tail) are ridiculous and fascinating, above all because Disney chose to amp it to the max and got away with it under its brand of wholesome family fun. (We visited Ariel in her grotto at Disney World with Duncan at age 3. It was a bit creepy as she tickled him, calling him her "little Flounder" while her purple-conch covered breasts thrust themselves at him. Duncan was terrified. Jordy concluded that the "Ariel Exhibit" was Disney's enticement to Dads to suffer the rest of the theme park.) Really, where to begin? And I don't want to become an arm-chair neo-Freudian deconstructing my child's beloved plaything. Truthfully I don't know what Reeve's 3 & 1/2-year old mind makes of female bodies or his own.
What I see is that he wants to change her -- then change her back. Again and again, to the point where the shine of her little fabric tail is losing its luster. He can deftly remove the tail, but putting it back on still requires help.
Maybe this metamorphosis speaks to Reeve's inaccessible, though recent, memories of learning to walk. Maybe it speaks to the thrill and terror he feels now as he learns to swim, revisiting the strange boomy, inchoate underwater realm of an even more inaccessible memory. Since he was 14 months old Reeve has enjoyed standing by the water's edge, fishing pole (denuded of hook) in hand, contemplating the realm beyond water's surface. This summer, with hook, he caught his first fish to the shock of us all. Reeve's jumping body bespoke the awe he felt in discovering the power to extract a living creature from the water. As he watched it swim frantic circles in its tupperware tank, Reeve declared "I'm gonna keep it forevah! I'm gonna cook it for suppah!" -- a logical impossibility with which his elder brother confronted him. Reeve thought a moment, then rejected such stuck-in-the-box thinking. "I'm gonna keep it forevah! I'm gonna cook it for suppah!" he declared as if Duncan simply didn't get it.
Sometimes Reeve's passion for Ariel looks like pure devotion: He gazes at her with the wonder of a little man in love. Other times his passion looks like pure identification; they are one and the same. Maybe passion is exactly this convergence.
Yesterday as Ariel rode with us to Costco, Reeve pulled her tail off for the umpteenth time. "Mommy, Look!" he announced, as if this were a novel event. But then, and this part was new, "I made her human." Not a person. Not a girl. Not even "a" human. Just, human. In the rear view I watched him watch her seriously, as if trying to figure out what that meant.
Then, "Can we get Scooby Doo yoguhts at the stowah?"
Thursday, September 16, 2010
The View from the Treehouse
Somewhere in the woods of New Hampshire stands an empty treehouse. Its bunks have yet to give slumber to small people, its spy holes yet to detect enemy advances, its shingles yet to gray from their first winter. Completed at summer's end, the treehouse remained fixed to its pines as the family station wagon disappeared down the road on Labor Day, taking hostage its little residents.
It is said that, on top of its obvious altitude advantage, this treehouse confers extraordinary sight to anyone who peers out from within. Much like the wise worm in "The Big Brag," the visitor to the treehouse finds her vision able to bend with the curvature of the earth in any direction. Early this morning a Monarch has fluttered into the treehouse for a rest. The butterfly remembers the kindness of the little people who once climbed here when they caught her but decided to let her go. She looks down the road in the direction of their departure. With dizzingly clarity, she finds she can see for hundreds of miles, past bridges, highways, commuter rails, barges and skyscrapers...
Their green car comes into view first. Double-parked for street cleaning in Brooklyn, New York, the car wears a rubber "Bumper Badger" against urban assault. It appears the little people have abandoned their leafy residence for a brick one wedged among matching ones. The brook where the little people caught fish and frogs has given way to concrete sidewalks that pinch the roots of trees.
She finds the little people sulking at the breakfast table. Sweaty, shaggy heads are now washed and shorn. Bare feet now wear new school shoes. No meandering this morning -- it's all rush rush rush to meet the F Train. The little people look stressed as they join the jostle. On closer look, the big people look a little stressed too. Even the four-legger looks bewildered, overwhelmed by a million smells he'd forgotten during his country sojourn.
Their migratory distress fills the Monarch with dread. This is more than she wanted to see. She has never known anything but the drifty days of summer in New Hampshire, but she knows she too must migrate. She flutters out of the treehouse and the vision is gone. Overhead the great blue heron soars from the pond to Blow-Me-Down. Wild turkeys nibble in the grass. The Monarch nibbles some milkweed to calm herself. But a breeze brushes her wings and she knows its time. She lets go and it lifts her.
All day she flies over green hills giving way to gray grids. The sun rolls over her from port to starboard. As night approaches the wind dies and she drops, exhausted, into an endless tangle of lights and piercing sounds. She doesn't smell milkweed anywhere. At last she finds a honeysuckle bush clinging to a chain link fence where she stops to rest and drops off to sleep.
As the sun rises again, a familiar sound awakens her: The voices of her little people! In helmets, they fly down the sidewalk on shiny metal scooters ahead of the four-legger, who is unhappily tied to one of big people by a harness contraption. The butterfly flutters her wings with excitement. They see her too!
"Mommy, it's the Monarch! Let's catch it!"
We don't have a net, the big person explains, and we don't want to damage its wings. Let's just say hello.
"Hi, butterfly! Hello!" they shout. The Monarch and the little people gaze at each other for a single moment that holds every happy memory of summer.
Then the busy little people scoot away, chattering, "Mommy, why do they call it a butterfly anyway? That's a dumb name. She doesn't fly butter, does she? We should call her a Flutterby..."
The Monarch opens her wings and lets the wind carry her away.
It is said that, on top of its obvious altitude advantage, this treehouse confers extraordinary sight to anyone who peers out from within. Much like the wise worm in "The Big Brag," the visitor to the treehouse finds her vision able to bend with the curvature of the earth in any direction. Early this morning a Monarch has fluttered into the treehouse for a rest. The butterfly remembers the kindness of the little people who once climbed here when they caught her but decided to let her go. She looks down the road in the direction of their departure. With dizzingly clarity, she finds she can see for hundreds of miles, past bridges, highways, commuter rails, barges and skyscrapers...
Their green car comes into view first. Double-parked for street cleaning in Brooklyn, New York, the car wears a rubber "Bumper Badger" against urban assault. It appears the little people have abandoned their leafy residence for a brick one wedged among matching ones. The brook where the little people caught fish and frogs has given way to concrete sidewalks that pinch the roots of trees.
She finds the little people sulking at the breakfast table. Sweaty, shaggy heads are now washed and shorn. Bare feet now wear new school shoes. No meandering this morning -- it's all rush rush rush to meet the F Train. The little people look stressed as they join the jostle. On closer look, the big people look a little stressed too. Even the four-legger looks bewildered, overwhelmed by a million smells he'd forgotten during his country sojourn.
Their migratory distress fills the Monarch with dread. This is more than she wanted to see. She has never known anything but the drifty days of summer in New Hampshire, but she knows she too must migrate. She flutters out of the treehouse and the vision is gone. Overhead the great blue heron soars from the pond to Blow-Me-Down. Wild turkeys nibble in the grass. The Monarch nibbles some milkweed to calm herself. But a breeze brushes her wings and she knows its time. She lets go and it lifts her.
All day she flies over green hills giving way to gray grids. The sun rolls over her from port to starboard. As night approaches the wind dies and she drops, exhausted, into an endless tangle of lights and piercing sounds. She doesn't smell milkweed anywhere. At last she finds a honeysuckle bush clinging to a chain link fence where she stops to rest and drops off to sleep.
As the sun rises again, a familiar sound awakens her: The voices of her little people! In helmets, they fly down the sidewalk on shiny metal scooters ahead of the four-legger, who is unhappily tied to one of big people by a harness contraption. The butterfly flutters her wings with excitement. They see her too!
"Mommy, it's the Monarch! Let's catch it!"
We don't have a net, the big person explains, and we don't want to damage its wings. Let's just say hello.
"Hi, butterfly! Hello!" they shout. The Monarch and the little people gaze at each other for a single moment that holds every happy memory of summer.
Then the busy little people scoot away, chattering, "Mommy, why do they call it a butterfly anyway? That's a dumb name. She doesn't fly butter, does she? We should call her a Flutterby..."
The Monarch opens her wings and lets the wind carry her away.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Vanilla
It's just past sunset, and five years ago today at exactly this time my brother-in-law died. I have no idea how to observe this moment. I spent the day simply, at home and with my children in the park. I resolved to enjoy the existence of this day, my existence, to notice and feel everything, to take nothing for granted. I walked around the baseball fields of Prospect Park while my two little ones fell asleep. I played with the kids in the fountains at the playground. I felt the humidity wrap my body. I noticed the pendulous clouds over treetops dense with peak of summer leaves. I didn't dwell on the specific memories of this day five years ago. It took me three years not to flinch physically when recalling my sister's voice on the other end of the phone. Now I mostly just miss Gary. I remember how much I wanted to sit on a porch with him on a hot summer night, drinking beer and laughing at the absurd enterprise that is parenthood. My eldest Duncan is five, so his age will always mark the number of years we live on without Gary. They never met. I wish I had a ritual or some other guide for this day. I'm too recently Jewish to know how to mark a loved one's yartzeit, though I'm grateful at least for a Hebrew word since our language lacks one. So, upon my sister's suggestion, I am eating vanilla ice cream, lifting my spoon to Gary.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Through a Lens Brightly
My last conversation with my grandfather was a production call. Picture me on my cellphone, pacing my garden in Venice, California, toddler on hip. Picture him (whom we called "Gar"), in his assisted living apartment in Essex, Connecticut. I briefed him on our 2 options: Cheap($600)= projecting the films at a wall to be videotaped and burned onto DVDs. Expensive ($2400)= a "telecine" transfer and shot-by-shot color-correction by a skilled technician. You know which one Oliver Stone would have picked. Gar would have no less for his version of history.
Gar was not a filmmaker. He made his long and successful career in insurance. But he was a notorious shutterbug and archivist. In retirement, he made an album for each year in the life of the family. The winter before he died, he asked me to help with a project. In selling their home to move into their assisted living apartment, my grandparents unearthed their disintegrating 8mm family movies. Would I help him transfer them to a more permanent format? I was finishing film school in LA and had contacts who could do the high-end transfer at a cut-rate.
Thus, with the Disney studios next door in the San Fernando Valley, do I owe my punk telecine operator Kevin for revealing the true magic of movies to me. My grandfather's first film dated to 1941, just a year after their marriage, and features my grandparents as newly weds visiting Hanover, New Hampshire for "Green Key Weekend" at Dartmouth College. It was faded and scratched, a visual distance to match the temporal. But in Kevin's skilled hands, my gorgeous 24-year old grandparents (younger that I was by this time) were suddenly bright and unmarred by time, walking the streets of what would become my own hometown. Smiling coquettishly to camera, my grandmother Memar's newlywed adoration for the camera operator made my own heart skip. In 6 hours of footage my grandfather himself appears in less than 30 minutes, and yet he is everywhere, deciding what will be framed and in what spirit... The family dressed to the nines for Easter. Kids running the waves of the Long Island sound. The Big One caught in Card Sound off Key Largo, Florida. Mule rides in the Grand Canyon. The last film was shot in 1964. Gar was in fact, if not in title, a filmmaker to rival Frank Capra. Through his hopeful eyes, it was indeed A Wonderful Life.
When my mother got wind of our project, she asked to throw our Davidson family movies into the batch for transfer. In contrast to my grandfather's footage, which I was eager to see, the prospect of my mother's made me anxious. Hers pick up in 1966 and end in 1974. In other words, I would have a glimpse into life B.D. and A.D. -- Before the Divorce and After the Divorce. If there were happy images B.D., I wouldn't trust them. If there were happy images after, I also wouldn't trust them. I wanted to see images of my father as a part of my household, since I was 14 months old when he left and had no memories, and I dreaded the prospect. Did anyone catch on film the moment our original family ended, which I understood to be when my mother received a letter from my father over Christmas 1970? I put the films in the telecine batch for transfer, but I let Kevin do those on his own.
If my grandfather was the family Shutterbug, I am the Shutterfly of my generation. I clog cyberspace with yet another photo or video of my kids. Duncan was not even a month old when I bought his first album, and I get itchy when my albums fall more than a year behind. My eye is always lusting for the picturesque frame, always editing. My husband thanks me for documenting our family's lives. Other relatives undoubtedly groan when "Shutterfly.com" cheerily announces that "Samantha has shared some pictures with you!" I am victim to the parental delusion that every single second (=frame) of your child's life is momentous and worthy of record. And what I can't catch on film, I write in their little books. Or blog about.
As I write this I am backing up 28 hours of video shot over 8 years, and I am racing against time. The electronics of my camera, once state-of-the-art for documentary filmmaking but now obsolete even for home videos, are nearly shot. In this footage, I am watching Jordy and me get married; our children are born and are growing up. Baby Duncan's hands wave in the air like a conductor's; Reeve jumps wildly in his bouncy chair; Tucker gets tossed in the air by his exuberant brothers. My pleasure in filming them is palpable in the images.
But I also notice that the shot often cuts out precisely when the fun and love turns to sadness. Tucker tires of the tossing and cries. Reeve and Duncan's game of chase ends up in a collision. In truth, my displaced attention through the eyepiece seems to precipitate -- or at least fails to ward off -- the meltdowns. When the hard things hit, the screen goes dark. It occurs to me that the dark gaps may contain the parts of the story we most need to understand.
The most important gap in my photographic record spans June to August, 2005. On June 25, 2005 my brother-in-law Gary Lehmann was killed by a drunk driver. I remember at the time feeling that it was inappropriate, even sacrilegious, to film anything, and it didn't seem necessary. Images and feelings from that summer are burned vividly in my memory. But now I wonder about my nephews Christopher and David and niece Katie, who were 8, 4 and 2. Will they wish I had kept the camera rolling?
Less than a year after their father died, Christopher and David came down with the chicken pocks. It was mud season in Binghamton, New York, which tries the spirit in the best of times. I did the only thing I could think of -- Home Video Therapy. I edited a special episode of "Sesame Street", re-titled Duncan Green Street, of goofy vignettes intended to make them laugh. My good-sport husband submitted to a time-lapse of sticker "chicken pocks" appearing and disappearing on his face. Baby Duncan in the bath turned into "The Creature in the Tub." The Lehmann kids make an appearance as a mariachi band from video shot earlier that winter in Arizona. The episode ends with a montage of all the cousins to a folk song -- "There's a dark and a troubled side of life... But there's a bright and a sunny side too!"
The other day my oldest, Duncan (now 5), wanted to clarify that the movies I make are "real" versus Scooby Doo and the Cyberchase, for example, which is "just a story." This led us to a discussion of "Duncan Green Street". Duncan was emphatic that they are real. I tried to reveal my hand in spinning the story a bit. He rejected the idea that this makes them in any way "just a story." Worthy ethical questions arise from my editing of my children's, nieces' and nephews' memories, not to mention questions about my own character and courage. But if I could make these kids laugh, ethics be damned.
By the time I looked at my mom's family movies, it was two years later. We had left California and lived in Brooklyn. I had begun a new feature screenplay about a couple with two kids fighting to save their marriage. I was aware of the intersections of art and life: Jordy and I now had two kids under age 3 and our marriage was strained. The photo record wouldn't reveal this fact; stunning photos from a family trip to Jones Beach on June 7, 2008 belie the fact that Jordy and I fought most of the car ride home, for example. As I sat at the Lonelyville Café one morning struggling to craft the courtship of my fictional couple in such a way as to plant the seeds of their relationship's demise, the bomb of awareness went off. Duncan was nearing 4, Reeve nearing 14 months. I was fast approaching the exact point in the life of my new family when my original family died. More than anything in my life, I was determined to give the story a different ending.
I decided to watch at last my mother's 8mm family movies as research for my script and for my life. It was impossible not to look only for clues in absolutely everything leading up to the end of 1970. Lots of Springer Spaniel puppies. My older sister as a newborn in my father's arms on a sunny July day. Stunning vistas of the Rockies. My mother and little Kristin feeding ducks. A few years later: Memar and Gar take my mom and Kristin to a zoo in Colorado. Then I appear in a crib. Kristin grabs a zipline and fearlessly flies across the back yard. My father smiles encouragingly at Kristin as he teaches her to ski in the driveway. I wish I could hear. I search my parents' faces. I search Kristin's. I find no clues, no foreshadowing. Baby me appears again in my crib; clothed, unclothed, rolling, on my tummy. I assume my mother is filming. I can feel her eyes on Little Me through the lens, craving these fleeting moments the way I crave my kids'. My father makes a goofy face at toddling me, then breaks into a big smile. The camera tells something very true but also feels as if it is trying very hard. Taking turns filming, my parents never appear in the frame together at the same time.
Suddenly it is Christmas, 1970. A Christmas tree hemmed with packages. In our pajamas, Kristin and I gorge on gifts. The camera follows us for several minutes. My father is gone from the frame. Our toy-drunk little selves are oblivious. But then suddenly he is there, helping us to blow up a punch-dummy toy. I am totally confused. How can this be? The story I remembered was that Mom, Kristin and I flew back to New York to be with my grandparents for Christmas while Dad stayed back in Colorado to work on his dissertation. Then my mother received the letter in the mail that it was over. But here we are together, sharing the most normal of American Christmases. Dad helps me get on a little ride-on toy. Kristin tries to make her new bicycle go.
Cut to: Easter. My hair is longer, my walk more steady. The wrapping paper is cleaned up. And he's gone. I am carrying a little Easter basket. Maybe I was looking for eggs? Now I am looking for those missing three months between the Birth, the Death, and the Resurrection.
My mother kept her wedding photos in the closet; I've never seen one at my dad's. My grandparents' houses were purged of images of my Other Parent by the time I was conscious. This always made me very sad in a child's inarticulate way. A lot of my own childhood must have been edited out in the process. But I got used to it. I assumed what had been erased was too painful to re-visit.
So I was wary of my mother's nostalgia in asking me to transfer these films; I felt she was never been able to accept fully that things happened as they needed to, whereas I had had to craft my own version of the tale that made the divorce inevitable. I was fearful of opening mine to question. But as I watched, I felt a growing strain. I was imposing the narrative of divorce over delicate images trying to reveal other things to me.
Through her lens, my mother lingers lovingly on my little waving hands -- exactly as I once lingered one morning in Los Angeles on Duncan's little hands. She captures a quizzical look on my face that could be my own son Reeve's. She zooms in on my little feet, a shot I could match cut with Tucker's just this winter. I get to see myself crawling across the grass, then attempting a first step. Her camera must have had an on-board spotlight, as it literally lights up its subject while the corners of the frame sink into shadow. As I am watching, I let down my guard. Whatever else was going on between my parents, she captured my father's loving eyes on Kristin as they watch a 4th of July parade together, and on little me as I deliver a present to him in his arm chair. I let myself begin to trust these tender moments as also true.
My grandfather's home movies can seem naive to suffering, but he was not. Gar's mother died suddenly when he was two years old. I imagine his first memories were of his grief-stricken father and his own grief, both for his mom and for any conscious memory of her. It is probably true that Gar's impulse to film his family in the cheeriest light was a sales pitch, even to himself. (After taking a good snapshot, he used to exclaim, "That one'll cost you a million bucks!") But it does not follow that what Gar filmed was a lie; rather, they reveal how he too enjoyed the parental delusion that his kids' (and grandkids') lives were momentous and worthy of record, come what may. So too for my mother. Perhaps she rolled camera in hopes that the film itself would hold the family together, but maybe she just responded to the poignant moments that are the gifts of parenthood without knowing how the story would unfold. It wasn't until I became a parent and looked through the other end of their lenses that I understood.
Now I am eternally thankful for my mother's few captured frames from a past that resists retrieval. I forgive the eternally hopeful eye for any fictional license taken in her efforts against what I imagine was a bleak emotional backdrop for my parents. My mother's determination not to leave our past on the editing room floor, whatever discomfort it may cause, gives evidence of the greatest force in the universe, more powerful than divorce or death: A parent's love.
Postscript
By some mysterious orchestration, my universe pulled back together two years ago when my father and step-mother moved back to the New Hampshire valley where both my mom and step-father and my in-laws live. From my boys' perspective, not only don't they travel between houses to see their parents, but they get six adoring grandparents in one place. This winter during a rowdy lunchtime visit of cousins and various grandparents I was captivated by a loving conversation my father was having with my 3-month-old Tucker. I framed them up and rolled camera. After our return to New York, I got an email inviting me to view my sister Kristin's "Kodak Gallery album." As I clicked through her photos, I came upon a mirror image of Dad and Tucker, with me in the background behind my video camera. We caught the same moment, or it caught us. The kids hold the camera now, and the dad stays in the picture -- illuminated by the bright reflection of sun on fresh February snow.
Gar was not a filmmaker. He made his long and successful career in insurance. But he was a notorious shutterbug and archivist. In retirement, he made an album for each year in the life of the family. The winter before he died, he asked me to help with a project. In selling their home to move into their assisted living apartment, my grandparents unearthed their disintegrating 8mm family movies. Would I help him transfer them to a more permanent format? I was finishing film school in LA and had contacts who could do the high-end transfer at a cut-rate.
Thus, with the Disney studios next door in the San Fernando Valley, do I owe my punk telecine operator Kevin for revealing the true magic of movies to me. My grandfather's first film dated to 1941, just a year after their marriage, and features my grandparents as newly weds visiting Hanover, New Hampshire for "Green Key Weekend" at Dartmouth College. It was faded and scratched, a visual distance to match the temporal. But in Kevin's skilled hands, my gorgeous 24-year old grandparents (younger that I was by this time) were suddenly bright and unmarred by time, walking the streets of what would become my own hometown. Smiling coquettishly to camera, my grandmother Memar's newlywed adoration for the camera operator made my own heart skip. In 6 hours of footage my grandfather himself appears in less than 30 minutes, and yet he is everywhere, deciding what will be framed and in what spirit... The family dressed to the nines for Easter. Kids running the waves of the Long Island sound. The Big One caught in Card Sound off Key Largo, Florida. Mule rides in the Grand Canyon. The last film was shot in 1964. Gar was in fact, if not in title, a filmmaker to rival Frank Capra. Through his hopeful eyes, it was indeed A Wonderful Life.
When my mother got wind of our project, she asked to throw our Davidson family movies into the batch for transfer. In contrast to my grandfather's footage, which I was eager to see, the prospect of my mother's made me anxious. Hers pick up in 1966 and end in 1974. In other words, I would have a glimpse into life B.D. and A.D. -- Before the Divorce and After the Divorce. If there were happy images B.D., I wouldn't trust them. If there were happy images after, I also wouldn't trust them. I wanted to see images of my father as a part of my household, since I was 14 months old when he left and had no memories, and I dreaded the prospect. Did anyone catch on film the moment our original family ended, which I understood to be when my mother received a letter from my father over Christmas 1970? I put the films in the telecine batch for transfer, but I let Kevin do those on his own.
If my grandfather was the family Shutterbug, I am the Shutterfly of my generation. I clog cyberspace with yet another photo or video of my kids. Duncan was not even a month old when I bought his first album, and I get itchy when my albums fall more than a year behind. My eye is always lusting for the picturesque frame, always editing. My husband thanks me for documenting our family's lives. Other relatives undoubtedly groan when "Shutterfly.com" cheerily announces that "Samantha has shared some pictures with you!" I am victim to the parental delusion that every single second (=frame) of your child's life is momentous and worthy of record. And what I can't catch on film, I write in their little books. Or blog about.
As I write this I am backing up 28 hours of video shot over 8 years, and I am racing against time. The electronics of my camera, once state-of-the-art for documentary filmmaking but now obsolete even for home videos, are nearly shot. In this footage, I am watching Jordy and me get married; our children are born and are growing up. Baby Duncan's hands wave in the air like a conductor's; Reeve jumps wildly in his bouncy chair; Tucker gets tossed in the air by his exuberant brothers. My pleasure in filming them is palpable in the images.
But I also notice that the shot often cuts out precisely when the fun and love turns to sadness. Tucker tires of the tossing and cries. Reeve and Duncan's game of chase ends up in a collision. In truth, my displaced attention through the eyepiece seems to precipitate -- or at least fails to ward off -- the meltdowns. When the hard things hit, the screen goes dark. It occurs to me that the dark gaps may contain the parts of the story we most need to understand.
The most important gap in my photographic record spans June to August, 2005. On June 25, 2005 my brother-in-law Gary Lehmann was killed by a drunk driver. I remember at the time feeling that it was inappropriate, even sacrilegious, to film anything, and it didn't seem necessary. Images and feelings from that summer are burned vividly in my memory. But now I wonder about my nephews Christopher and David and niece Katie, who were 8, 4 and 2. Will they wish I had kept the camera rolling?
Less than a year after their father died, Christopher and David came down with the chicken pocks. It was mud season in Binghamton, New York, which tries the spirit in the best of times. I did the only thing I could think of -- Home Video Therapy. I edited a special episode of "Sesame Street", re-titled Duncan Green Street, of goofy vignettes intended to make them laugh. My good-sport husband submitted to a time-lapse of sticker "chicken pocks" appearing and disappearing on his face. Baby Duncan in the bath turned into "The Creature in the Tub." The Lehmann kids make an appearance as a mariachi band from video shot earlier that winter in Arizona. The episode ends with a montage of all the cousins to a folk song -- "There's a dark and a troubled side of life... But there's a bright and a sunny side too!"
The other day my oldest, Duncan (now 5), wanted to clarify that the movies I make are "real" versus Scooby Doo and the Cyberchase, for example, which is "just a story." This led us to a discussion of "Duncan Green Street". Duncan was emphatic that they are real. I tried to reveal my hand in spinning the story a bit. He rejected the idea that this makes them in any way "just a story." Worthy ethical questions arise from my editing of my children's, nieces' and nephews' memories, not to mention questions about my own character and courage. But if I could make these kids laugh, ethics be damned.
By the time I looked at my mom's family movies, it was two years later. We had left California and lived in Brooklyn. I had begun a new feature screenplay about a couple with two kids fighting to save their marriage. I was aware of the intersections of art and life: Jordy and I now had two kids under age 3 and our marriage was strained. The photo record wouldn't reveal this fact; stunning photos from a family trip to Jones Beach on June 7, 2008 belie the fact that Jordy and I fought most of the car ride home, for example. As I sat at the Lonelyville Café one morning struggling to craft the courtship of my fictional couple in such a way as to plant the seeds of their relationship's demise, the bomb of awareness went off. Duncan was nearing 4, Reeve nearing 14 months. I was fast approaching the exact point in the life of my new family when my original family died. More than anything in my life, I was determined to give the story a different ending.
I decided to watch at last my mother's 8mm family movies as research for my script and for my life. It was impossible not to look only for clues in absolutely everything leading up to the end of 1970. Lots of Springer Spaniel puppies. My older sister as a newborn in my father's arms on a sunny July day. Stunning vistas of the Rockies. My mother and little Kristin feeding ducks. A few years later: Memar and Gar take my mom and Kristin to a zoo in Colorado. Then I appear in a crib. Kristin grabs a zipline and fearlessly flies across the back yard. My father smiles encouragingly at Kristin as he teaches her to ski in the driveway. I wish I could hear. I search my parents' faces. I search Kristin's. I find no clues, no foreshadowing. Baby me appears again in my crib; clothed, unclothed, rolling, on my tummy. I assume my mother is filming. I can feel her eyes on Little Me through the lens, craving these fleeting moments the way I crave my kids'. My father makes a goofy face at toddling me, then breaks into a big smile. The camera tells something very true but also feels as if it is trying very hard. Taking turns filming, my parents never appear in the frame together at the same time.
Suddenly it is Christmas, 1970. A Christmas tree hemmed with packages. In our pajamas, Kristin and I gorge on gifts. The camera follows us for several minutes. My father is gone from the frame. Our toy-drunk little selves are oblivious. But then suddenly he is there, helping us to blow up a punch-dummy toy. I am totally confused. How can this be? The story I remembered was that Mom, Kristin and I flew back to New York to be with my grandparents for Christmas while Dad stayed back in Colorado to work on his dissertation. Then my mother received the letter in the mail that it was over. But here we are together, sharing the most normal of American Christmases. Dad helps me get on a little ride-on toy. Kristin tries to make her new bicycle go.
Cut to: Easter. My hair is longer, my walk more steady. The wrapping paper is cleaned up. And he's gone. I am carrying a little Easter basket. Maybe I was looking for eggs? Now I am looking for those missing three months between the Birth, the Death, and the Resurrection.
My mother kept her wedding photos in the closet; I've never seen one at my dad's. My grandparents' houses were purged of images of my Other Parent by the time I was conscious. This always made me very sad in a child's inarticulate way. A lot of my own childhood must have been edited out in the process. But I got used to it. I assumed what had been erased was too painful to re-visit.
So I was wary of my mother's nostalgia in asking me to transfer these films; I felt she was never been able to accept fully that things happened as they needed to, whereas I had had to craft my own version of the tale that made the divorce inevitable. I was fearful of opening mine to question. But as I watched, I felt a growing strain. I was imposing the narrative of divorce over delicate images trying to reveal other things to me.
Through her lens, my mother lingers lovingly on my little waving hands -- exactly as I once lingered one morning in Los Angeles on Duncan's little hands. She captures a quizzical look on my face that could be my own son Reeve's. She zooms in on my little feet, a shot I could match cut with Tucker's just this winter. I get to see myself crawling across the grass, then attempting a first step. Her camera must have had an on-board spotlight, as it literally lights up its subject while the corners of the frame sink into shadow. As I am watching, I let down my guard. Whatever else was going on between my parents, she captured my father's loving eyes on Kristin as they watch a 4th of July parade together, and on little me as I deliver a present to him in his arm chair. I let myself begin to trust these tender moments as also true.
My grandfather's home movies can seem naive to suffering, but he was not. Gar's mother died suddenly when he was two years old. I imagine his first memories were of his grief-stricken father and his own grief, both for his mom and for any conscious memory of her. It is probably true that Gar's impulse to film his family in the cheeriest light was a sales pitch, even to himself. (After taking a good snapshot, he used to exclaim, "That one'll cost you a million bucks!") But it does not follow that what Gar filmed was a lie; rather, they reveal how he too enjoyed the parental delusion that his kids' (and grandkids') lives were momentous and worthy of record, come what may. So too for my mother. Perhaps she rolled camera in hopes that the film itself would hold the family together, but maybe she just responded to the poignant moments that are the gifts of parenthood without knowing how the story would unfold. It wasn't until I became a parent and looked through the other end of their lenses that I understood.
Now I am eternally thankful for my mother's few captured frames from a past that resists retrieval. I forgive the eternally hopeful eye for any fictional license taken in her efforts against what I imagine was a bleak emotional backdrop for my parents. My mother's determination not to leave our past on the editing room floor, whatever discomfort it may cause, gives evidence of the greatest force in the universe, more powerful than divorce or death: A parent's love.
Postscript
By some mysterious orchestration, my universe pulled back together two years ago when my father and step-mother moved back to the New Hampshire valley where both my mom and step-father and my in-laws live. From my boys' perspective, not only don't they travel between houses to see their parents, but they get six adoring grandparents in one place. This winter during a rowdy lunchtime visit of cousins and various grandparents I was captivated by a loving conversation my father was having with my 3-month-old Tucker. I framed them up and rolled camera. After our return to New York, I got an email inviting me to view my sister Kristin's "Kodak Gallery album." As I clicked through her photos, I came upon a mirror image of Dad and Tucker, with me in the background behind my video camera. We caught the same moment, or it caught us. The kids hold the camera now, and the dad stays in the picture -- illuminated by the bright reflection of sun on fresh February snow.
Monday, May 10, 2010
The Empty Nest
Yesterday was Mother's Day. I have always been suspicious of this holiday as another Hallmark invention (a la Valentine's Day) exploiting vaguely religious roots to monetize the guilt of unexpressed love. My suspicions were confirmed: After animated birds delivered Mother's Day cards in a dozen different languages in an e-card I received yesterday, a link offered "a brief history of the holiday." It was indeed a Roman festival to honor the mother goddess Cybele, which was later appropriated by early Christians to honor the Virgin Mary.
What does it mean that the first link in my google search for "Cybele roman goddess"leads me to www.teenwitch.com where, among other options, I can stop corporate blood libel and take action for witches rights? From this site I can catch up on my pagan shopping and, after a few private lessons in casting spells, etc., earn my certificate as a High Priestess of Cybele. My teen witch activist friends also teach me that the Vatican is built on top of the original temple to Cybele, also known as Gaia -- the deified Mother Earth.
This last part interests me. I'm not the first woman in the History of the West to notice how the Christian Church removed the feminine creative powers from the Holy Equation. Maybe if I were raised Catholic I'd have a relationship with the Virgin Mary, but even Mary is a "mother of God" as opposed to being God(dess) herself. The Holy Family consists of a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost. Many mothers I know report feeling like ghosts much of the time.
As a mother to 3 boys under age 5, I'm aware that their experience with women is pretty focused on me. I'm not a Freudian, but it makes sense that their attachment to me is both intense and ambivalent. Truth be told, I experience ambivalence on the other side. I have loved (obviously) having these babies; I delight in their bodies and minds; I am wired to respond to their sleeping, eating, and emotional rhythms. I take pride in anticipating their needs, whether for cheese sticks and oranges on the walk home from school or for an early bedtime, and I consider it a reward to watch them run happily in the woods lost in a fantasy of jungle exploration. But I get annoyed by the constant migration of matter in my house (how did the toothpaste end up in the kitchen sink? Why are their socks under every chair and table in the living room?). I get irritated when, for example:
...My body becomes a jungle gym or "fire pole".
...My freshly made bed ends up in a heap of covers and pillows ("But Mom! It's our fort!").
...I give in to requests to make "green eggs" that no one will eat thanks to, of course, their gross color.
...I ask a thousand and one times to get shoes on while feet remain stubbornly bare.
...Within seconds of the older boys falling asleep, baby Tucker wakes up.
...Duncan and Reeve must both possess the same toy boat at exactly the same time, and therefore chase each other screaming with claws bared.
...My efforts to be Casual Mom, i.e. allow them to paint in the basement without supervision, result in (gee!) Reeve's body in paint from head to toe.
...My refusal to rent Scooby Doo and the Cyberchase from the movie store for the umpteenth time gives grounds for a sit-in protest, i.e. two screaming boys sitting on the sidewalk refusing to move.
...Jordy's and my rare efforts to go on a date elicit tragic laments about our neglectful parenting from Duncan.
...I wonder whether my time-out from "work" will be penalized by the sputtering end of my barely begun filmmaking career (or any career for that matter).
And I get positively furious when Duncan or Reeve hurt the baby, intentionally or unintentionally. (Mama Tiger rage instincts, it seems, bypass my Homo Sapiens' "Positive Discipline" techniques.)
But in the middle of the other night, a chilling vision appeared. I was nursing Tucker and thinking forward to the long, loud hours after school/before dinner the next day when the Ghost of Mother Future visited me. One day these boys will no longer return to our house. No shoes to put away. No screaming matches to mediate. That inevitable quiet, foretold in this present 3am stillness, filled me with dread. The chaos of motherhood can feel unbearable until one contemplates the alternative. I can barely write this without my throat tightening.
I have never read my boys The Giving Tree. That book offends and grieves me. He comes back to her when he needs something from her. (Should we wonder that the tree is a "she"?) What does the tree get in return? She gets sat on! All that for the privilege of his ass on her back. Typical. This book not only conflicts with my coming-of-age politics, it offends my inchoate sense of environmental justice. Exploitation of Mothers = Exploitation of Mother Earth! High priestesses of Gaia/ Cybele, rise up! This is not the version of motherhood that I want to teach, so I guard the secret truth: I too would give my kids my apples, limbs and trunk even without a guarantee that they would come visit my stump.
So what is Mother's Day really about? To judge from the florist at the end of my street, it's about running out to buy Mom cut flowers on Sunday morning and a greeting card with a message written by an unpublished novelist in a cubicle at Hallmark. These are nice. (But involve maiming more plants.) Jordy and the boys gave me a very pretty necklace.
But my lingering question is, what do Moms really want on this day? Or at least, what do I want? I like holidays that act as reminders of actions we should often take -- remembering the dead, celebrating political freedom, giving thanks, the rebirth of hope, etc. Sadly, we can't even seem to remember for that single day, devolving as these holidays often do into ritual equations such as Independence = grilled burgers and beer, Hope = a new Wii. Rarely do they evoke the kinds of reflection that say, at its best, a good Passover seder demands. The engine of such reflection is imagination, putting oneself in someone else's shoes -- the fearful Israelite, the fighting Colonist, the starving Pilgrim, the Mother.
Yesterday by 11am, we wandered out to the sidewalk where the boys found all the neighborhood kids and their parents gathered with no particular plans for the day. The four mothers in the crowd had all surrendered our roles as Social Coordinators for the day. As a result, Mother's Day on Howard Place looked like a people adrift. (Truth be told, this masculine-inspired aimlessness resulted in delightful serendipitous play time for kids and parents alike.) The mothers struck up a discussion over whether Mother's Day meant we should "relish our roles as mother" by spending the entire day in the company of our children (the fathers thought this sounded good, which we promised to remind them of on Father's Day), or whether it meant we should be relieved of our motherly duties. And if so, what did that mean? Spa treatments? Lunch with our girlfriends?
What I want on Mother's Day is an indication that my family has taken the time to imagine my role and talk amongst themselves about what I give the family as the Mom and come up with some way to express their understanding. The problem with The Giving Tree is not only that the boy/man asks her to give again and again, it's that he takes her for granted. He never once pauses to imagine her as a being that exists for any reason other that serving his needs, or even how simply not to destroy her through his own taking. If Mother's Day hadn't been hijacked by Hallmark, maybe that boy would have learned to think about bringing the tree fertilizer. Or harvesting her apples in a sustainable way. Perhaps making a bench from one of her limbs instead of chopping the whole thing down. Moms, like trees, offer a lot more protective shade when they are left standing.
But like the tree, I felt mute to ask for what I wanted yesterday. By 3pm Jordy could tell I was tired and frustrated. Without a plan for the day, we all spent a lot of time waiting around the house trying to figure out what to do (never a good idea for us). Jordy's efforts to get the older boys out of the house to give me "peace and quiet" were well-intentioned, but most of the time they were out I was caring for the (awake) Baby Tucker -- not a chore, time I relish, but nonetheless, not a deviation from my regular days. Duncan had mentioned making dinner "for me," which reflects the assumption (rightly based in every day experience) that Mommy Makes Dinner, hence even feeding themselves was a gesture of kindness "to me," but Jordy, without whose help Duncan's ambitions wouldn't materialize, hadn't mentioned it, so I was unclear whether I should be getting dinner ready. When Jordy detected my exhaustion (up 5 times the night before)/restlessness/annoyance that no particular imaginative effort had been made about the day, he confronted me. "Tell me what you want," he asked.
The problem in answering his simple question was that the answer lay in what I wanted THEM to do, except the boys are 5 and 3 and hence depend on his leadership, so I really meant HIM. Jordy knew that and did not take it well. (Smacks of passive aggression. Felt yucky saying it too.) I am not his mother, but I wanted him to teach our boys how not to take me for granted, how to love me in ways beyond the function I serve to make their lives better/function. I wanted them to reflect on what I give that can go unnoticed in the flurry of daily life. I would have loved a gesture -- open to interpretation! -- that showed sympathy and understanding of how very much time I spend anticipating and attending to other people's needs. (I make a separate shopping trip to get the specific brands of cheese and cereal they all like!) In other words, I would have liked to have my needs anticipated, which of course, begins with imagining them.
I sound like a whiner. We don't like trees or women who complain about being under-appreciated. My mother gives my grandmother a hard time for insisting on Thank-You notes -- if that doesn't teach you not to demand appreciation, what will? And anyway, isn't the highest spiritual good to give without requiring acknowledgment? Or, more practically, can't I appreciate the daily tokens of acknowledgment my family gives me? My husband is adorable and extremely expressive of his love. He initiates the laundry when his underwear drawer is empty. He unloads the dishwasher without being asked. He reminds the boys to thank me for dinner. Duncan makes me a beaded necklace almost every Friday at school; Reeve runs into my arms at the end of the school day, "MOMMY!" Their desire for Mama-snuggles at bedtime and wake-up are actions speaking louder than words. (And in fairness and thanks to Jordy, he made a lovely spaghetti dinner, did all the dishes, walked the dog, and took out the trash.) Maybe the problem is the concentration of expectations into a single day. Why should we pressure ourselves to "fit it all in"? How contrived!
But again, I hear Rabbi so-and-so giving a midrash on such-and-such parsha about why we are bound to observe ritual days in the calendar: To remind us to direct our attention to things we need to do to keep ourselves morally or spiritually intact, usually involving either making good with people we love or with God. I am not ready to give up on Mother's Day as a meaningful day in the calendar. What will happen when the boys no longer need morning snuggles? Will they remember their old mama?
On my dog walk yesterday morning, I found a bird's nest that had fallen from a tree. I felt the mothers of my youth -- my mom, my step-mom, my aunt Sue-- exclaim, "Oo! Won't the children find that interesting!" as I picked it up and carried it home from Prospect Park. As my boys peered into it, I realized this was another woman's empty nest! Do those baby birds remember how carefully their mom sat on them in this nest? Do they appreciate how hard this bird mom and dad worked to construct this little home? I almost cried.
Duncan and Reeve snatched the nest from my hands and turned it into a crown, then a frisbee. Of course those baby birds don't remember. They are too busy making their own nests, finding worms, and juggling complicated brooding schedules. Maybe this is why Jordy forgot to send his mom a card. And maybe this is the greatest expression of love for one's mother: to undertake the making of your own nest, knowing the babies will fly away without calling (or even Skyping) as often as we'd like.
But next year, I won't wait. I won't even drop hints. Come Monday before Mother's Day, I'll ask flat out: So, guys, what's the plan for Mother's Day? And if they can't come up with anything, I'll help them imagine.
What does it mean that the first link in my google search for "Cybele roman goddess"leads me to www.teenwitch.com where, among other options, I can stop corporate blood libel and take action for witches rights? From this site I can catch up on my pagan shopping and, after a few private lessons in casting spells, etc., earn my certificate as a High Priestess of Cybele. My teen witch activist friends also teach me that the Vatican is built on top of the original temple to Cybele, also known as Gaia -- the deified Mother Earth.
This last part interests me. I'm not the first woman in the History of the West to notice how the Christian Church removed the feminine creative powers from the Holy Equation. Maybe if I were raised Catholic I'd have a relationship with the Virgin Mary, but even Mary is a "mother of God" as opposed to being God(dess) herself. The Holy Family consists of a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost. Many mothers I know report feeling like ghosts much of the time.
As a mother to 3 boys under age 5, I'm aware that their experience with women is pretty focused on me. I'm not a Freudian, but it makes sense that their attachment to me is both intense and ambivalent. Truth be told, I experience ambivalence on the other side. I have loved (obviously) having these babies; I delight in their bodies and minds; I am wired to respond to their sleeping, eating, and emotional rhythms. I take pride in anticipating their needs, whether for cheese sticks and oranges on the walk home from school or for an early bedtime, and I consider it a reward to watch them run happily in the woods lost in a fantasy of jungle exploration. But I get annoyed by the constant migration of matter in my house (how did the toothpaste end up in the kitchen sink? Why are their socks under every chair and table in the living room?). I get irritated when, for example:
...My body becomes a jungle gym or "fire pole".
...My freshly made bed ends up in a heap of covers and pillows ("But Mom! It's our fort!").
...I give in to requests to make "green eggs" that no one will eat thanks to, of course, their gross color.
...I ask a thousand and one times to get shoes on while feet remain stubbornly bare.
...Within seconds of the older boys falling asleep, baby Tucker wakes up.
...Duncan and Reeve must both possess the same toy boat at exactly the same time, and therefore chase each other screaming with claws bared.
...My efforts to be Casual Mom, i.e. allow them to paint in the basement without supervision, result in (gee!) Reeve's body in paint from head to toe.
...My refusal to rent Scooby Doo and the Cyberchase from the movie store for the umpteenth time gives grounds for a sit-in protest, i.e. two screaming boys sitting on the sidewalk refusing to move.
...Jordy's and my rare efforts to go on a date elicit tragic laments about our neglectful parenting from Duncan.
...I wonder whether my time-out from "work" will be penalized by the sputtering end of my barely begun filmmaking career (or any career for that matter).
And I get positively furious when Duncan or Reeve hurt the baby, intentionally or unintentionally. (Mama Tiger rage instincts, it seems, bypass my Homo Sapiens' "Positive Discipline" techniques.)
But in the middle of the other night, a chilling vision appeared. I was nursing Tucker and thinking forward to the long, loud hours after school/before dinner the next day when the Ghost of Mother Future visited me. One day these boys will no longer return to our house. No shoes to put away. No screaming matches to mediate. That inevitable quiet, foretold in this present 3am stillness, filled me with dread. The chaos of motherhood can feel unbearable until one contemplates the alternative. I can barely write this without my throat tightening.
I have never read my boys The Giving Tree. That book offends and grieves me. He comes back to her when he needs something from her. (Should we wonder that the tree is a "she"?) What does the tree get in return? She gets sat on! All that for the privilege of his ass on her back. Typical. This book not only conflicts with my coming-of-age politics, it offends my inchoate sense of environmental justice. Exploitation of Mothers = Exploitation of Mother Earth! High priestesses of Gaia/ Cybele, rise up! This is not the version of motherhood that I want to teach, so I guard the secret truth: I too would give my kids my apples, limbs and trunk even without a guarantee that they would come visit my stump.
So what is Mother's Day really about? To judge from the florist at the end of my street, it's about running out to buy Mom cut flowers on Sunday morning and a greeting card with a message written by an unpublished novelist in a cubicle at Hallmark. These are nice. (But involve maiming more plants.) Jordy and the boys gave me a very pretty necklace.
But my lingering question is, what do Moms really want on this day? Or at least, what do I want? I like holidays that act as reminders of actions we should often take -- remembering the dead, celebrating political freedom, giving thanks, the rebirth of hope, etc. Sadly, we can't even seem to remember for that single day, devolving as these holidays often do into ritual equations such as Independence = grilled burgers and beer, Hope = a new Wii. Rarely do they evoke the kinds of reflection that say, at its best, a good Passover seder demands. The engine of such reflection is imagination, putting oneself in someone else's shoes -- the fearful Israelite, the fighting Colonist, the starving Pilgrim, the Mother.
Yesterday by 11am, we wandered out to the sidewalk where the boys found all the neighborhood kids and their parents gathered with no particular plans for the day. The four mothers in the crowd had all surrendered our roles as Social Coordinators for the day. As a result, Mother's Day on Howard Place looked like a people adrift. (Truth be told, this masculine-inspired aimlessness resulted in delightful serendipitous play time for kids and parents alike.) The mothers struck up a discussion over whether Mother's Day meant we should "relish our roles as mother" by spending the entire day in the company of our children (the fathers thought this sounded good, which we promised to remind them of on Father's Day), or whether it meant we should be relieved of our motherly duties. And if so, what did that mean? Spa treatments? Lunch with our girlfriends?
What I want on Mother's Day is an indication that my family has taken the time to imagine my role and talk amongst themselves about what I give the family as the Mom and come up with some way to express their understanding. The problem with The Giving Tree is not only that the boy/man asks her to give again and again, it's that he takes her for granted. He never once pauses to imagine her as a being that exists for any reason other that serving his needs, or even how simply not to destroy her through his own taking. If Mother's Day hadn't been hijacked by Hallmark, maybe that boy would have learned to think about bringing the tree fertilizer. Or harvesting her apples in a sustainable way. Perhaps making a bench from one of her limbs instead of chopping the whole thing down. Moms, like trees, offer a lot more protective shade when they are left standing.
But like the tree, I felt mute to ask for what I wanted yesterday. By 3pm Jordy could tell I was tired and frustrated. Without a plan for the day, we all spent a lot of time waiting around the house trying to figure out what to do (never a good idea for us). Jordy's efforts to get the older boys out of the house to give me "peace and quiet" were well-intentioned, but most of the time they were out I was caring for the (awake) Baby Tucker -- not a chore, time I relish, but nonetheless, not a deviation from my regular days. Duncan had mentioned making dinner "for me," which reflects the assumption (rightly based in every day experience) that Mommy Makes Dinner, hence even feeding themselves was a gesture of kindness "to me," but Jordy, without whose help Duncan's ambitions wouldn't materialize, hadn't mentioned it, so I was unclear whether I should be getting dinner ready. When Jordy detected my exhaustion (up 5 times the night before)/restlessness/annoyance that no particular imaginative effort had been made about the day, he confronted me. "Tell me what you want," he asked.
The problem in answering his simple question was that the answer lay in what I wanted THEM to do, except the boys are 5 and 3 and hence depend on his leadership, so I really meant HIM. Jordy knew that and did not take it well. (Smacks of passive aggression. Felt yucky saying it too.) I am not his mother, but I wanted him to teach our boys how not to take me for granted, how to love me in ways beyond the function I serve to make their lives better/function. I wanted them to reflect on what I give that can go unnoticed in the flurry of daily life. I would have loved a gesture -- open to interpretation! -- that showed sympathy and understanding of how very much time I spend anticipating and attending to other people's needs. (I make a separate shopping trip to get the specific brands of cheese and cereal they all like!) In other words, I would have liked to have my needs anticipated, which of course, begins with imagining them.
I sound like a whiner. We don't like trees or women who complain about being under-appreciated. My mother gives my grandmother a hard time for insisting on Thank-You notes -- if that doesn't teach you not to demand appreciation, what will? And anyway, isn't the highest spiritual good to give without requiring acknowledgment? Or, more practically, can't I appreciate the daily tokens of acknowledgment my family gives me? My husband is adorable and extremely expressive of his love. He initiates the laundry when his underwear drawer is empty. He unloads the dishwasher without being asked. He reminds the boys to thank me for dinner. Duncan makes me a beaded necklace almost every Friday at school; Reeve runs into my arms at the end of the school day, "MOMMY!" Their desire for Mama-snuggles at bedtime and wake-up are actions speaking louder than words. (And in fairness and thanks to Jordy, he made a lovely spaghetti dinner, did all the dishes, walked the dog, and took out the trash.) Maybe the problem is the concentration of expectations into a single day. Why should we pressure ourselves to "fit it all in"? How contrived!
But again, I hear Rabbi so-and-so giving a midrash on such-and-such parsha about why we are bound to observe ritual days in the calendar: To remind us to direct our attention to things we need to do to keep ourselves morally or spiritually intact, usually involving either making good with people we love or with God. I am not ready to give up on Mother's Day as a meaningful day in the calendar. What will happen when the boys no longer need morning snuggles? Will they remember their old mama?
On my dog walk yesterday morning, I found a bird's nest that had fallen from a tree. I felt the mothers of my youth -- my mom, my step-mom, my aunt Sue-- exclaim, "Oo! Won't the children find that interesting!" as I picked it up and carried it home from Prospect Park. As my boys peered into it, I realized this was another woman's empty nest! Do those baby birds remember how carefully their mom sat on them in this nest? Do they appreciate how hard this bird mom and dad worked to construct this little home? I almost cried.
Duncan and Reeve snatched the nest from my hands and turned it into a crown, then a frisbee. Of course those baby birds don't remember. They are too busy making their own nests, finding worms, and juggling complicated brooding schedules. Maybe this is why Jordy forgot to send his mom a card. And maybe this is the greatest expression of love for one's mother: to undertake the making of your own nest, knowing the babies will fly away without calling (or even Skyping) as often as we'd like.
But next year, I won't wait. I won't even drop hints. Come Monday before Mother's Day, I'll ask flat out: So, guys, what's the plan for Mother's Day? And if they can't come up with anything, I'll help them imagine.
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Packing Up the Rickety Ladder
The puppies and I were running through the woods above the Top of the World yesterday when a thought unrelated to anything arose that it...
