Lately, I’ve been a little obsessed with The National’s High Violet album. Matt Berninger’s emotional baritone delivers some lyrics that burrow under your skin like a tick and are just as hard to remove. My favorite line comes from the song Conversation 16. “I was afraid I’d eat your brains. ‘Cause I’m evil,” but unfortunately, I just couldn’t work that one into a blog post. (Except there! I did it!) But the line that really haunts me comes from the central track, Bloodbuzz Ohio. Not only does it give me a clear differentiation between the term “housekeeper” and “homemaker” (not the song’s purpose by any stretch) but I think it spells out the meaning of life (probably not actually their intent either).
“I never thought about love when I thought about home.”
And there it is. The answer to one of life’s Big Questions. The Performance Measure. When your kids grow up and think about home, will they think of love?
If they do, then, as the coach in the movie Teen Wolf says, “The rest is just cream cheese.”
So there it is, the answer to one of life's Big Questions, embedded in a plethora of pop culture references.
Stop there. Save the extra language for later. Try to link to the track.
That really is the point of it all. The Performance Measure. It’s actually pretty unlikely that the things we pay the most attention to – laundry, homework, sleep schedules, commutes, being late or on time – will be what our children remember of the homes we make for them. Or if they remember them, it will be more like the still images at the end of a movie as the credits roll where the soundtrack tells you how you’re supposed to feel about them. Is it a happy nostalgic Disney end credits? Or is it a melancholy pointless lost kind of 60s movie end credits?
How would it be if we could actually keep Bloodbuzz Ohio playing in our heads as we went through those routine actions? What yoga could generate the kind of mindfulness to remember, in all of our actions, that the memories we are laying down should be memories of love?
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Today's Moms Are Either Ones Or Zeroes
The digital age has undoubtedly brought about tremendous benefits to the world. But just like the industrial age that preceded it, it has resulted in a world paradigm that doesn’t always benefit children and other living creatures. During the industrial age, all thinking was modeled on the machine, ignoring holistic relationships where the sum was sometimes greater than the combined parts. Today, when I look around, we seem to be dominated by ones and zeroes. Everything is on or off, yes or no, black or white. The tendency to oversimplify is eternally human, but seems to have reached tyrannical proportions in the binary age of soundbites.
Nowhere is this more painful to me than in the false dichotomy of motherhood that women face. Working mom or stay-at-home. Self absorbed and neglectful or antifeminist and subjugated. More than thirty years after the birth of the feminist movement, and we are still facing the same bullshit choice. Career or children. Of course, some things have changed, but essentially, we still live in a world that is structured around a midcentury nuclear family, with one breadwinner and one homemaker. This despite the fact that 93 percent of households no longer fit the mold.
Stay-at-home moms face insecurities about their ability to support themselves, stereotypes of privilege and trophydom from society at large and are quite frequently bored out of their minds by the repetitive drudgery of the work they do twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Most of them would love to go to work – just not all the time.
Working mothers face insecurities about their ability to meet their children’s emotional needs, stereotypes of having skewed priorities and emotional deficiencies, and are quite frequently driven to distraction by how much they miss their babies. Most of them would love to stay home with their kids – just not all the time.
I read a sociology book once that said the first generation of any formerly excluded group that breaks into a coveted position (the first wave of immigrants in a new nation, the first blacks to join the country club, the first women in the boardroom) usually protect their tenuous position by working to reassure those in power that they are not a threat. "Despite appearances," the newcomers seem to say, "I am more like you than like myself." The first female president is more likely to be a neocon than a progressive. By this theory, first wave feminists broke into business by giving up their families and being tougher and more good-old-boy than the good old boys themselves.
The next generation of feminists tried to have it all. Family and work. They played by the old boys’ rules all day and tried to follow the feminine rules by night. They were the mothers of the latchkey kids, before there was a childcare infrastructure. They missed first baby steps and field trips and midweek afternoons exploring the zoo. They made less money than men in the same positions. They were taken less seriously because they often had to miss work to take care of their kids. It didn’t really work.
But here we are, Generation X, the third generation, laboring under the same old failed infrastructure. And why? We’ve had three generations to practice. Today there are so many highly educated women having children. We want to spend time with those children, be involved in their lives and not miss all those wonderful developmental moments. We want to keep our professional minds and skills sharp. We want to contribute financially and not just hygienically to our household.
So where are all the professional- level part-time jobs? Either or is a stupid choice. We can do better. This is a favorite topic of mine. It will come up again.
Post Script on 3/1/11:
Here is a more recent reference for the changing face of America's families:
http://houstonfamilyattorneysblog.com/2010/11/more-non-traditional-families-emerging-in-us.html
Nowhere is this more painful to me than in the false dichotomy of motherhood that women face. Working mom or stay-at-home. Self absorbed and neglectful or antifeminist and subjugated. More than thirty years after the birth of the feminist movement, and we are still facing the same bullshit choice. Career or children. Of course, some things have changed, but essentially, we still live in a world that is structured around a midcentury nuclear family, with one breadwinner and one homemaker. This despite the fact that 93 percent of households no longer fit the mold.
Stay-at-home moms face insecurities about their ability to support themselves, stereotypes of privilege and trophydom from society at large and are quite frequently bored out of their minds by the repetitive drudgery of the work they do twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Most of them would love to go to work – just not all the time.
Working mothers face insecurities about their ability to meet their children’s emotional needs, stereotypes of having skewed priorities and emotional deficiencies, and are quite frequently driven to distraction by how much they miss their babies. Most of them would love to stay home with their kids – just not all the time.
I read a sociology book once that said the first generation of any formerly excluded group that breaks into a coveted position (the first wave of immigrants in a new nation, the first blacks to join the country club, the first women in the boardroom) usually protect their tenuous position by working to reassure those in power that they are not a threat. "Despite appearances," the newcomers seem to say, "I am more like you than like myself." The first female president is more likely to be a neocon than a progressive. By this theory, first wave feminists broke into business by giving up their families and being tougher and more good-old-boy than the good old boys themselves.
The next generation of feminists tried to have it all. Family and work. They played by the old boys’ rules all day and tried to follow the feminine rules by night. They were the mothers of the latchkey kids, before there was a childcare infrastructure. They missed first baby steps and field trips and midweek afternoons exploring the zoo. They made less money than men in the same positions. They were taken less seriously because they often had to miss work to take care of their kids. It didn’t really work.
But here we are, Generation X, the third generation, laboring under the same old failed infrastructure. And why? We’ve had three generations to practice. Today there are so many highly educated women having children. We want to spend time with those children, be involved in their lives and not miss all those wonderful developmental moments. We want to keep our professional minds and skills sharp. We want to contribute financially and not just hygienically to our household.
So where are all the professional- level part-time jobs? Either or is a stupid choice. We can do better. This is a favorite topic of mine. It will come up again.
Post Script on 3/1/11:
Here is a more recent reference for the changing face of America's families:
http://houstonfamilyattorneysblog.com/2010/11/more-non-traditional-families-emerging-in-us.html
Friday, February 18, 2011
The Thermostat of Happiness
I’ve recently read the book Bluebird by Ariel Gore. I’ve been a fan of Gore since her Hip Mama days because we are so much alike. Like me, Gore is a punk rock lesbian in her mid-30s who raised her daughter to adulthood as a single mom supporting herself with her own underpaid writing without ever compromising her commitment to herself as an artist before starting all over again with a second pregnancy in middle age. Ok. So Gore is nothing like me on the outside. But her written voice resonates with the same timbre as my own inner monologue, and I have always felt that in person we would be wax philosophical in coffee shops. So I was very excited when I saw that she had a new nonfiction book about happiness. The book is well researched and the analysis is strong, but so heavily self-referential that it doesn’t read at all like an academic work. Rather, it feels more like one of the aforementioned coffee shop conversations. And as I expected, it gave me a lot to think about.
Gore makes much of the historical pressure for women to set the emotional tone in their families. Naturally, that tone should be cheerful, even it requires suppression of one’s true feelings. She and I were both struck by a comment by Harriet Beecher Stowe to the effect that a happy wife is the sunshine center of her family circle, and her positive love is more important than an orderly clean house. An orderly house, of course, being pretty darn important. Beecher Stowe asserts that mothers are the emotional thermostats for their families. Or she would have, if she had any concept of central heating.
All that smarmy sunshiney center business is pretty retchworthy. But the trick is, it’s also pretty much true. You can argue that emotional tone is a collaborative effort, that any member of a family can change the emotional tone of the whole. But in a sense, that’s nitpicking. Thought experiment: Imagine a family (of any structure) in which the primary caregiver is full of genuine joy and satisfaction in the care they give. Now, try to imagine that family dysfunctional. Now imagine the opposite- miserable primary, happy family. It doesn’t really work.
It seems the bumper sticker sages are wise. If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. Yet study after study (read the book, I won’t repeat citations here) show that women consistently prioritize their own happiness below that of the rest of their family. Which raises two Big Questions: How do we get mama to happy? Why do we keep working downstream of the issue and trying to meet everyone else’s needs first?
Good questions.
Gore makes much of the historical pressure for women to set the emotional tone in their families. Naturally, that tone should be cheerful, even it requires suppression of one’s true feelings. She and I were both struck by a comment by Harriet Beecher Stowe to the effect that a happy wife is the sunshine center of her family circle, and her positive love is more important than an orderly clean house. An orderly house, of course, being pretty darn important. Beecher Stowe asserts that mothers are the emotional thermostats for their families. Or she would have, if she had any concept of central heating.
All that smarmy sunshiney center business is pretty retchworthy. But the trick is, it’s also pretty much true. You can argue that emotional tone is a collaborative effort, that any member of a family can change the emotional tone of the whole. But in a sense, that’s nitpicking. Thought experiment: Imagine a family (of any structure) in which the primary caregiver is full of genuine joy and satisfaction in the care they give. Now, try to imagine that family dysfunctional. Now imagine the opposite- miserable primary, happy family. It doesn’t really work.
It seems the bumper sticker sages are wise. If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. Yet study after study (read the book, I won’t repeat citations here) show that women consistently prioritize their own happiness below that of the rest of their family. Which raises two Big Questions: How do we get mama to happy? Why do we keep working downstream of the issue and trying to meet everyone else’s needs first?
Good questions.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Speaking Of the New Year
After three years of attending the Families With Children From China lunar new year event, and reading the book Inside Transracial Adoption, and realizing that once again FCC had scheduled on a day when we have 30 other commitments, this year we decided not to go. Instead, we would go to the festival in the International District, where the real Chinese people go, on a Saturday when it doesn't conflict with ski school.
I have a friend whose stories always begin, "So, blah de blah blah. Great. The trick is..." The trick is, Rose Red has aikido on Saturday mornings. But it's done in time to get to the ID and watch the lion dance. Great. The trick is, I forgot her clothes at home and she has to go in her gi. Then she falls down and hits her head at the end of class, and cries for 15 minutes so we're running late. We finally get to the ID and find parking in a sideways lot on a very steep slope. Afraid that the stroller will get away from me, I give Red the parking pay stub and ask her to put it on the dash for me. She opens the door against gravity, but it slams back on her finger. By the time we are calm and make it two blocks down the hill to discover that the "stage" is a blocked off bit of pavement visible only to the first row or two of the crowd, we have missed the lion dance anyway.
So we push through the crowds to get dim sum. And that part was actually nice. But next time I think we'll do it on a normal Saturday. We did swing by the "culture tent" on the way back to the car. We stood in line for 10 minutes to get balloons twisted into swords. But over all, the crowded downtown event was more crowd than event. We are still looking for the right new year celebration.
I have a friend whose stories always begin, "So, blah de blah blah. Great. The trick is..." The trick is, Rose Red has aikido on Saturday mornings. But it's done in time to get to the ID and watch the lion dance. Great. The trick is, I forgot her clothes at home and she has to go in her gi. Then she falls down and hits her head at the end of class, and cries for 15 minutes so we're running late. We finally get to the ID and find parking in a sideways lot on a very steep slope. Afraid that the stroller will get away from me, I give Red the parking pay stub and ask her to put it on the dash for me. She opens the door against gravity, but it slams back on her finger. By the time we are calm and make it two blocks down the hill to discover that the "stage" is a blocked off bit of pavement visible only to the first row or two of the crowd, we have missed the lion dance anyway.
So we push through the crowds to get dim sum. And that part was actually nice. But next time I think we'll do it on a normal Saturday. We did swing by the "culture tent" on the way back to the car. We stood in line for 10 minutes to get balloons twisted into swords. But over all, the crowded downtown event was more crowd than event. We are still looking for the right new year celebration.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
The Nutritional Content of Contentment
Okay, I realize that I’ve been living under a rock the last couple years and this 10in10diet blog is probably so famous that everybody else already knows about. But I just found it and I’m impressed. Two ideas keep presenting themselves to me lately, and eventually I’ll have to act on them.
1. Vegetarians should eat beans.
2. Fake meat is only better than eating dead animals on one out of the three main reasons that people avoid meat. (That is, it’s not a dead animal. It is still devastating to the environment, and highly processed, therefore of questionable nutritional value at best.)
When I first read it, I thought, “Damn, why didn’t I see this when I was still at home and could have tried some of these ideas?” Then I realized I was falling into the greener grass trap again. When I was home, I never even had the time to stumble onto cool blogs that supported my values, let alone try to incorporate their lessons into my actual life.
This post about contentment struck me as very wise, and also gave me some insight into why I was never able to be the kind of radical homemaker I envisioned myself before actually trying a stint as a homemaker (and even now, when it’s too late, imagine that I might be if I had another chance).
From 10in10:
“ If we observe our minds when cravings and compulsions to shop arise,... We can regard it the way we see a cranky toddler. It will pass and there can be real satisfaction in realizing that the 'need' wasn't real….”
So there it is. I never could, and still can’t, see my cranky toddler as something that will pass. I can’t, in the moment, see that her tantrum is not a real crisis, any more than she can. I even have a hard time remembering that tantrums in general pass. Her sister has outgrown them and soon she will too, regardless of how I react right now. Without that sense of the fleeting, temporary nature of my problems, I cannot generate enough emotional distance to respond appropriately. And so I get sucked in and have to keep responding. How can I learn how to make cabbage soup when my toddler ‘needs’ to put her shoes on RIGHT NOW?
So, as tempting as it is to think, “If only I had learned how to cook beans, we wouldn’t have been so broke and I wouldn’t have had to go back to work and I could be at the Children’s Museum with my daughter RIGHT NOW…” I have to step back and observe my mind running in its old hamster wheel. It is so much more productive to accept the life I have and see how I can incorporate these good ideas without wanting them in a different context.
Maybe the next time I’m home alone with Snow White on a ski school day, I’ll try to make beans or soup or yogurt. If it works, hooray! I’ve done learned how to do something healthy and homey and hippie and can be proud. And if, as is more likely, I make a big mess in the kitchen and we end up at the pub for our usual après ski dinner, well, I’ve learned something then too.
1. Vegetarians should eat beans.
2. Fake meat is only better than eating dead animals on one out of the three main reasons that people avoid meat. (That is, it’s not a dead animal. It is still devastating to the environment, and highly processed, therefore of questionable nutritional value at best.)
When I first read it, I thought, “Damn, why didn’t I see this when I was still at home and could have tried some of these ideas?” Then I realized I was falling into the greener grass trap again. When I was home, I never even had the time to stumble onto cool blogs that supported my values, let alone try to incorporate their lessons into my actual life.
This post about contentment struck me as very wise, and also gave me some insight into why I was never able to be the kind of radical homemaker I envisioned myself before actually trying a stint as a homemaker (and even now, when it’s too late, imagine that I might be if I had another chance).
From 10in10:
“ If we observe our minds when cravings and compulsions to shop arise,... We can regard it the way we see a cranky toddler. It will pass and there can be real satisfaction in realizing that the 'need' wasn't real….”
So there it is. I never could, and still can’t, see my cranky toddler as something that will pass. I can’t, in the moment, see that her tantrum is not a real crisis, any more than she can. I even have a hard time remembering that tantrums in general pass. Her sister has outgrown them and soon she will too, regardless of how I react right now. Without that sense of the fleeting, temporary nature of my problems, I cannot generate enough emotional distance to respond appropriately. And so I get sucked in and have to keep responding. How can I learn how to make cabbage soup when my toddler ‘needs’ to put her shoes on RIGHT NOW?
So, as tempting as it is to think, “If only I had learned how to cook beans, we wouldn’t have been so broke and I wouldn’t have had to go back to work and I could be at the Children’s Museum with my daughter RIGHT NOW…” I have to step back and observe my mind running in its old hamster wheel. It is so much more productive to accept the life I have and see how I can incorporate these good ideas without wanting them in a different context.
Maybe the next time I’m home alone with Snow White on a ski school day, I’ll try to make beans or soup or yogurt. If it works, hooray! I’ve done learned how to do something healthy and homey and hippie and can be proud. And if, as is more likely, I make a big mess in the kitchen and we end up at the pub for our usual après ski dinner, well, I’ve learned something then too.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Mama Tse Tung's Five Year Plan
Today I read an article on Grist that speculated on the ways our democratic society may actually be at a disadvantage in dealing with climate change when compared with the efficiency of China’s autocratic system. It got me thinking about the efficiency you gain when you can just do something yourself instead of having to get the Republicans or your 2 year old on board first. And I started thinking about the Five Year Plan. Although some people make fun of China’s fondness for the Five Year Plan, and there is something silly about it on the surface, it seems to me that maybe there’s something to it. Maybe that’s due to the fact that I just went back to work, and a major project relates to a strategic planning document that is required to be updated – you guessed it – every five years. In any case, I decide to see how it might work for my own life.
To get a sense for how much change I should plan for, I decided to look back at my life five years ago. I was working full time as a planner, had season tickets to the opera and the ballet, had recently tested for my orange belt in kung fu, and was a couple months shy of submitting my dossier to adopt a healthy infant from China (a process I expected to complete that year). I had no consumer debt and had built up a healthy little savings account earmarked for the adoption.
Since then, I adopted a 3 year old with special needs from China, after a process that lasted years longer than expected, went down to part time work, had a baby, stayed home for two years, went deeply into debt despite giving up all forms of entertainment outside the home before finally returning to work full time as a technical writer, with one child in first grade and a full time nanny taking care of my toddler.
No wonder China never plans in increments longer than five years. It really does make that old saw "kids-grow-up-fast-so-enjoy-them-now" sound a little less trite. In the last five years, I’ve lived at least three lifetimes, each of which I thought would never end. Can I possibly conceive of my life five years from now? Maybe a five year plan is too much. Is it too late make a new year’s resolution?
To get a sense for how much change I should plan for, I decided to look back at my life five years ago. I was working full time as a planner, had season tickets to the opera and the ballet, had recently tested for my orange belt in kung fu, and was a couple months shy of submitting my dossier to adopt a healthy infant from China (a process I expected to complete that year). I had no consumer debt and had built up a healthy little savings account earmarked for the adoption.
Since then, I adopted a 3 year old with special needs from China, after a process that lasted years longer than expected, went down to part time work, had a baby, stayed home for two years, went deeply into debt despite giving up all forms of entertainment outside the home before finally returning to work full time as a technical writer, with one child in first grade and a full time nanny taking care of my toddler.
No wonder China never plans in increments longer than five years. It really does make that old saw "kids-grow-up-fast-so-enjoy-them-now" sound a little less trite. In the last five years, I’ve lived at least three lifetimes, each of which I thought would never end. Can I possibly conceive of my life five years from now? Maybe a five year plan is too much. Is it too late make a new year’s resolution?
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Jennifer Senior is All Joy and No Fun
http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/67024/
Here’s another article that speaks for me better than I could myself. It supports the need for solutions like like coparenting, and ties in a little at the end with the grass being greener elsewhere. I particularly appreciate the reference to life as a parent being experienced as a sine wave.
Here’s another article that speaks for me better than I could myself. It supports the need for solutions like like coparenting, and ties in a little at the end with the grass being greener elsewhere. I particularly appreciate the reference to life as a parent being experienced as a sine wave.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
The Grass is Always Greener
On Sunday night of a three day weekend, I commented to my husband that every week should be a three day weekend. It was so nice to know that after catching up on errands on Saturday, and doing fun things with the girls on Sunday, that we still had one more day to rest and get ready to face the week. A four day work week seemed to offer the perfect home/work balance.
On Monday night of the same three day weekend, I locked myself in the bedroom and folded laundry with earplugs in. I could still hear my youngest daughter shrieking in the living room. It was no tantrum, not teething pain, just the chaos of two year old brain resulting in the temporary (I hope) loss of the ability to modulate her volume. But after hours of the audio onslaught, I was a shattered wreck who perfectly understood why Noriega surrendered even though all they did was play loud music. I was so glad that I got to work in the morning instead of stay home with my bundle of joy.
They say that human memory is short as a coping mechanism. We can’t move on after traumatic and difficult events if the memories are as real as the world in front of you. I guess that is why stay at home moms remember how nice it was to have measurable results at the end of the work day, and forget the sick feeling they got in their stomachs on Sunday night when they thought of going to a dreaded job in the morning. Perhaps it equally explains why paid moms remember snuggling sleeping babies and bringing cookies to preschool for Wednesday morning birthday parties, instead of staying home day after day because they didn’t have money to pay entrance fees at the exciting and educational activities they stayed home to share with their kids.
Sometimes, the memory is amazing short (mom brain?). On Tuesday night after a three day weekend, I rushed out of the office and raced to the bus stop. I couldn’t wait to get home and see my little girls. I just missed them so much while I was gone all day at work.
On Monday night of the same three day weekend, I locked myself in the bedroom and folded laundry with earplugs in. I could still hear my youngest daughter shrieking in the living room. It was no tantrum, not teething pain, just the chaos of two year old brain resulting in the temporary (I hope) loss of the ability to modulate her volume. But after hours of the audio onslaught, I was a shattered wreck who perfectly understood why Noriega surrendered even though all they did was play loud music. I was so glad that I got to work in the morning instead of stay home with my bundle of joy.
They say that human memory is short as a coping mechanism. We can’t move on after traumatic and difficult events if the memories are as real as the world in front of you. I guess that is why stay at home moms remember how nice it was to have measurable results at the end of the work day, and forget the sick feeling they got in their stomachs on Sunday night when they thought of going to a dreaded job in the morning. Perhaps it equally explains why paid moms remember snuggling sleeping babies and bringing cookies to preschool for Wednesday morning birthday parties, instead of staying home day after day because they didn’t have money to pay entrance fees at the exciting and educational activities they stayed home to share with their kids.
Sometimes, the memory is amazing short (mom brain?). On Tuesday night after a three day weekend, I rushed out of the office and raced to the bus stop. I couldn’t wait to get home and see my little girls. I just missed them so much while I was gone all day at work.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)