Judgy Mother

I'm a judgy mother.  I wish I were free-thinking, live-and-let-live, love everyone like my inner hippie idealist espouses, but my inner critic always shuts that peaceful bitch up.  Maybe I'm just in a bad mood because it's been raining for a week and I've got a migraine.

My worst judgment is passed on parents who complain about the drugery of taking care of their children.  It drives me insane.  I'm certain the reason it annoys me so much is because I'm envious these superfertile breeders have the balls and ovaries to take for granted something as sacred as parenting.  Something so serious, so special to subfertile me, who counts her blessings every day the thirteen months of stressful visits to the fertility specialist and medication and timing finally worked and produced our proudest creation: Katie.  How could I whine and sigh and post complainy Facebook comments about how frustrating it is to be her mother after all the trouble I went through to become a parent?

I rolled out of bed at 10AM and popped some more Ibuprofen.  My tablet was laying where I left it last night when I gave up after trying for centuries to get through level 13 of Angry Birds.  I woke it up and saw I had some Facebook notifications.  When I opened my Facebook app, instead of checking my notifications I got side-tracked and noticed a link to this post from a fellow mom friend.  I read through it in a hurry--Katie was calling from her bedroom where she had been patiently playing with her Legos until Mommy dragged ass out of bed, asking what's for breakfast.

Hrmmpf!  Well if the blogger's so "tapped out" and frustrated with parenting, why did she have five kids?

Katie called again, asking for eggs, so I brought her a banana and gave her a kiss on the cheek.  "Here, eat this until Mommy gets the kitchen clean enough that I can cook you some eggs.  Right now the stove is covered in dirty pots and pans."

When I walked out of her bedroom I went into the kitchen and decided to brew a pot of coffee.  I needed some caffeine to get energized enough to do the dishes.  I played around on my tablet some more until the coffee was done.  I poured a cup of coffee and went downstairs for a minute to use the laptop.  I needed to share a link on Facebook real fast and my tablet was not cooperating with the concept of copying and pasting URLs.

After I shared the super-important meme, I looked up Jen Hatmaker, the author of that mommy blog that ticked me off a few minutes before.  I wanted to see her full story before I started going off on her on my own blog.

The nerve.  Bragging about her slacker mom ways to the whole world.  How dare she not take her job as mother seriously?

Then I read that she's this wonderful, saintly, spread-love-and-peace kind of mother and I felt bad.  She adopted two of her children from Ethiopia.  That's why she has five kids.  That's why she's pulling four more fistfuls of hair out of her head each day than I am.

I was immediately reminded of the time I ate lunch with Katie at her school.  I'd been writing and working at the library a lot lately and she was feeling neglected, so she asked if I'd come to her school to have lunch with her.  I sat at the table with her little friends and we had a great time.  But I couldn't help myself, judging the lunch of the kid who sat immediately in front of me.  Inside his Angry Birds lunch box he had three Special K cereal bars and a Capri Sun.

What kind of parent packs that kind of lunch for her kid?  I bet the poor thing packed it himself.  What kind of parent makes a first grader pack his own lunch?!

Later I found out Special K Kid's mom had just had a baby, and that he, at seven-years-old, was the oldest of three.  I pictured what my life would be like if I had a newborn, a preschooler, and a first grader to take care of and I cut her some slack about the crappy sack lunch.

It's so easy to judge parents we don't know.  But once we know someone, and we know they're doing their best and some days their best is shitty, as is the case with all of us good parents out there, it's easier to forgive others.  And ourselves.  I should write a blog post about this topic.

Hold on a sec.  Katie's calling.  Again.  It's after noon and I gotta get the dishes done so I can cook my super, special, miraculous kid some eggs.

A Difficult Pleasure

I'm on break now from playing stick ball with my six-year-old daughter.  I don't have much time to pay attention to what's going on in the world when the person in my back yard on summer break is so interesting.  So when I do get a break from summer parenting, I like to watch John Green videos on YouTube.  They're short and they're smart.  Here's the best I found today:


It makes my day better when I pay attention to Green and ignore most mainstream media clamor.  Here is yet another reason why John Green is so awesome:

"...it's not easy to read Moby Dick, but it is really fun.  Like visiting the aquarium you get to go to sea without puking.  As you know, Hank, I hate the idea that when it comes to books and learning hard  is often seen as the opposite of fun.  It's strange to me that we should be so quick to give up on a book or a math problem when we are so willing to grapple, for centuries if necessary, with a single level of Angry Birds.

When I was a student why was I so willing to work hard, much much too hard, to make people like me, and so unwilling to work hard to read great novels or comprehend the edglessness of the universe?  I don't have an answer, maybe I'll find one in comments or here at the aquarium, or maybe I'll find an answer looking at Melville's great whilte wall of a whale, but in the meantime the search is a pleasure, and a difficult one, as most great pleasures are."

Doll in a Sneaker Car, Seat Belt Included

Cleaning Katie's room is a challenge because we let it get so messy that what should be a routine, easy task becomes daunting.  One fun thing I get out of it, though, is finding toys left in funny positions, as if they were abandoned mid-play.  Here's an example of a doll I found today.  Katie doesn't like these sneakers because she can put on her Velcro ones by herself.  She hasn't yet mastered tying her own shoelaces.  I like that she re-purposed them as her doll's car, seat belt included:

Breakfast at 1:07PM

I announced first thing this morning that I was going to help Katie clean her room today.  We've been putting it off for four days now.  After a couple cups of coffee I got side-tracked writing, while Katie played all morning.  We finally sat down to breakfast at 1:07PM.  Needless to say, Katie and I have been a couple of slackers so far this summer vacation.  That doesn't mean Katie's brain is turning to mush.  She's still thinking.

Katie: "Mom, when I put the bite of egg under my tongue I'm like, 'Huh, what is that?  Is that an egg?  I can't taste it.'  But if I put the bite of egg on top of my tongue I'm like, "Mmm, this is a tasty bite of egg!"

Me: "Yep, that's right.  Why do you think that is?"

Katie: "Because I have like thousands of taste buds on top of my tongue and like maybe one taste bud under my tongue?"

Me: "That sounds right to me.  Did you read about that somewhere or just figure it out yourself?"

Katie: "I just figured it out myself."

Me: "Wow, like a real scientist., experimenting with ideas and figuring stuff out."

Katie, beaming, "Yep!"  Suddenly serious, "You know, Mom, most scientists like messes."

Me: "But what if their work space is so messy they can't conduct an experiment?"

Katie: "But that's what scientists do.  They create messes when they work."

Me: "Well sure.  Same as artists.  I'd rather write than clean my house."

We both sat silently together.  After a minute, I said, "Well, I'm going to go blog about this.  I'll help you clean your room when I'm done."  I left her to conduct experiments on things that need figuring out.  Cleaning can wait for science and art.

Night and Day

Last Night:

Katie: "Mom, I'm going to clean my room."
Me: "What?"
Katie: "I'm going to clean my room."
Me: "Huh?  What's going on?"
Katie: "I'm going to clean my room.  All by myself."
Me: "You're going to clean your room all by yourself?  You don't want any help?"
Katie: "Nope.  I'm going to do it all by myself."
Me, skeptically: "Wow."
Katie: "Mom?"
Me: "What?"
Katie: "If I do chores around the house will you give me an allowance?"
Me, the rebellious daughter of two retired accountants who thought she had been keeping her child in ignorant financial bliss: "An allowance?  Who told you about doing chores for an allowance?"
Katie: "Brady and Kale do chores for an allowance."
Me: "Oh.  Your classmates do this so you think you should do it too?"
Katie: "Yes.  I think it's a great idea!"
Me: "Well, like what kind of an allowance are we talking about here?"
Katie: "Like, if I clean my bedroom you give me two dollars?"
Me, holding out my hand to shake-on-it before my sweet, ignorant child realizes two bucks to clean her room is a freaking steal!  I had planned on helping her with it this weekend but if she wants to do my part for two bucks, have at it kid: "It's a deal!"
Katie: "Really?"
Me: "Sure.  I wasn't going to talk to you about doing chores for an allowance for a few years.  Honestly I didn't think you were mature enough for that kind of responsibility yet, but since you brought it up, sure, why not.  Let's try it.  But I still want you to help pick up after yourself in the living room and take your dishes to the kitchen and set the table and stuff like that for free, just because you're a part of the family and we all have to pitch in on picking up after ourselves, Ok?  But for special, big cleaning projects, sure, you can have some money for doing those kinds of things."
Katie: "I am mature enough to do it, Mama!"
Me, my throat catching a bit: "Yes you are, Sweetie.  So what are you going to do with all the money you earn?  Buy ice cream from the Ice Cream Truck?"
Katie: "No!  I'm going to save it for college."
Me: "What?  Are you serious?"
Katie: "Yes!  Brady and Kale are saving their allowance for college too.  We're going to be scientists!"
Me: "Wow, Sweetie.  That's great!  Would you like to open a savings account at the bank?"
Katie: "What's a savings account at the bank?"
Me: "It's where you give them your money that you want to save for college, and they give you a little bit of money each year that you have money in your savings account, so like if you put fifty dollars in the account they might give you two bucks after the year, so then you'd have fifty-two dollars in your account even though you only put in fifty.  And then if you put in fifty more, you'll have one-hundred and two dollars!  And after a year you'll have one-hundred and four dollars because the bank will give you two more dollars.  So by the time you're eighteen you'll have a lot of money saved."
Katie: "Yes!  I want to do that!"
Me: "Ok.  Clean up your room and we'll open you a savings account."
Katie: "Ok!"

This Morning:

Me, wiping sleep out of my eye with one hand while the other hand holds a cup of coffee: "Katie Bug, are you going to clean your room?"
Katie: "What?"
Me: "Uh.  Remember?  You said you were going to clean your room so you could get an allowance and save your money for college so you can study to be a scientist?"
Katie: "Oh.  Ha-ha-ha.  No."
Me, a little disappointed I felt so disappointed that my six-year-old kid lost her enthusiasm for cleaning her room and not blowing her money on ice cream: "Oh.  You don't want to go to college and become a scientist when you grow up?"
Katie: "No.  I do.  But for now I just want to watch 'The Lion King.'"

Whew!  I was worried my kid was starting to lose her ability to live in the moment.  These hooligan first graders, teaching my kid about financial responsibility.  Good thing she's got all summer to laze around, watching videos and not cleaning her room, to forget about their radical ideas.

Envy

A friend of mine shared a photo on Facebook that hit home with me:

image source: Facebook

More than my hot temper, my moodiness, my competitiveness, my struggle with envy is something that causes the most unhappiness in my life.  I wish I could remind myself of this quote each time I feel the green illness creeping inside me.

I don't envy people's possessions.  I don't care that many people in my community drive fancier cars than I do.  Car culture bores me.  I don't care that many people my age and in my socioeconomic class have a bigger, cleaner house with matching furniture that hasn't been donated to them by pitying friends and relatives.  I'm into frugal living and getting by with less "stuff", so I'm pleased with my rickety shit.  I no longer envy other women's bodies.  When you get to be my age, forty-two, and your body has guided your soul through as much muck as mine has, you learn to love the vessel and all its imperfections as much as you love a well-worn robe or a favorite pair of arms wrapping themselves around you in a warm embrace.

The two areas where I struggle the most with envy are 1) writing and 2) breeding.  My creative output.  

I'm an extremely critical reader.  If a book I'm reading is not well-written, I simply can't finish it.  So basically every book I've ever finished is a favorite of mine.  The fact that I got through it is proof it's good.  A poorly written work gets tossed aside in a fit of envy.  A good piece of writing takes me outside of myself where I'm no longer paying attention to my own ego.  I feel inspired by good writing, not envious of it.  It's bad writing that taps my inner envy.  If this crap found a publisher, what does that say about my unpublished manuscript sitting at the back of my desk drawer?  

My most sickening envy comes from other women's fertility, or, more specifically, from other women's lack of appreciation of their fertility.  I want more kids.  When I was younger I had fantasies of having ten children when I grew up.  Will once told me he wanted six kids.  We married when I was almost thirty-four.  After trying for over a year to get pregnant, I saw a fertility specialist who confirmed my suspicions that I'm subfertile.  My mom had taken DES when she was pregnant with me, and that on top of my Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) means I don't produce the right concoction of hormones to sustain a pregnancy naturally.  After six months of taking the medications Clomid and Estrace and timing my ovulation via sonogram in the office, Will and I were able to conceive and my body functioned well enough to bring her into the world.  After Katie, though, we've had no success.  

I used to cry about it.  I felt bad for Will especially.  He's the poor schmuck who fell in love with a subfertile old lady.  He's the one who wanted six kids and I can give him only one.  He and Katie would be better off without me.  He should marry someone younger and more fertile who could give him the big family he wants and the siblings Katie begs for.    

Most days I don't think such things.  Most days I feel blessed with our small family.  The three of us get along wonderfully.  We eat together and laugh together and play together and give each other just enough space that we can focus on our introverted pleasures.  We have a beautiful family that's just right for us.  I'm proud of us.

Yet that green monster stirs inside me some days.  Why can't I have more children?  Why is it so easy for other women who don't even plan it to get knocked up and yet my body won't budge no matter how hard we try?  It's especially loud and obnoxious inside my head when other women, superfertile women, publicly complain about their children and their pregnancies.  Come on!  Seriously, sister?  I'd trade places with you in a heart beat, me puking out my guts inside the toilet or waking up three times a night to tend to my child while you come over here and try to explain to your lonely six-year-old why she doesn't have a baby brother or sister.

Envy.  It sickens me.  It's not helpful.  Here I am, complaining about other people complaining.  There are women reading this now who are sick of me complaining I only got one kid.  Their kids suffocated as their Oklahoma elementary school crushed them during a tornado.  Their kids died during a drone attack by my government.  Their kids got hit by a stray bullet during an inner-city gang fight or out in the sleepy suburbs during a day when some kid forgot to take his meds and felt like people-hunting.  Or there are women reading this now, sick of me complaining that my fertility specialist could only help me have one baby when theirs couldn't help them have one.  Or there are women reading this now, sick of me complaining that my life did not go as I planned it when theirs hasn't gone as they planned it either.  Oh wait.  Those might be the same mothers of unplanned pregnancies and children who won't sleep through the night whose complaints about what they got stuck with in life triggered this envy within me.  

Envy is a ridiculous feeling.  Envy is full of assumptions that other people's lives are better than yours, when in reality we're all struggling and laughing and living and loving in our own way.  Pay attention to your own life, Becky.  It doesn't have to be anything other than what it is.  Love your life for what it is, not what you think it should be.

Corporate Welfare

I'm a total tightwad.  It drives me insane to think I've spent more money on something than I needed to.  I'm also radically progressive.  It drives me insane to think a worker isn't being paid a fair wage.  Years ago I shopped at Walmart because of their ultra-low prices, but I refuse to spend a dime there now.  Partially in moral protest to the death of security guard Jdimytai Damour who got trampled during Walmart's Black Friday event back in 2008, but also because the company doesn't need any more of my family's money.  They benefit from plenty of our tax dollars already.

A few years ago a friend of ours got hired at Walmart, and in the course of filling out paperwork, his boss handed him the forms he'd need to submit to the state of Missouri so he could collect food stamps for his family.  My friend asked why the company couldn't pay him enough money to feed his own family instead of relying on the state to do it.  His boss didn't have an answer.

I do: corporate welfare.  

Here's a great article that supports my point, "The Conservative Case for Raising the Minimum Wage" by Ron Unz for Salon.  This part especially:

Our federal and local governments currently spend vast sums of money subsidizing the social benefits and living standards of our working-poor, including mailing them checks via the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). These expenditures constitute an enormous corporate welfare program in which businesses obtain the full value of their low-paid workforce while shifting much of the cost onto the general taxpayer, a classic example of economic special interests privatizing their profits and socializing their costs. Private sector employers should cover the expenses of their own workers rather than force middle-class taxpayers to pay the tab.

I refuse to shop at Walmart until they raise their employees' wages enough that my family no longer has to pay for their employees to eat.

Katie, First Grade Defender of Multiculturalism

When Katie pulled this "Favorite Book Tulip" out of her backpack today, I asked her how on earth she knew how to spell the author's name.

Katie's teacher instructed the class to write the title and author of their favorite book on their tulips.  Katie couldn't remember the author's name of The Legend of Zelda so Ms. B looked it up online for her.  Ms. B found an image of the book and showed Katie the screen, asking, "Is this your favorite book?"

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Part 1 by Akira Himekawa

"Yes, that's it!  The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, part 1!" Katie said.

"Well," said Ms. B, "The author has a weird name."

"No she doesn't," Katie argued.  "She's Japanese."

"Oh," smiled Ms. B.  "She's Japanese, not weird."

"That's right," said Katie, first grade defender of multiculturalism.

Dishes

On the same day my 80 year old Marlboro Man of a stepdad survived a risky heart surgery at a well-funded, highly-regarded hospital in Nebraska, seven children drowned in the basement of their elementary school in Oklahoma.  After I read an email from my mom that said medical staff were working for an hour to get his blood to clot, worried my stepdad wouldn't pull through, I called my mom in a panic and told her I'd say a prayer for him.

I'm not a daily pray-er.  I save my prayers for desperate times, when I literally can think of nothing else to do. When I feel hopeless and scared and unsure.  When life is chaotic and unkind.

When I pray, I usually try to find a dark, enclosed space--under the covers in bed or huddled on the closet floor.  I'm usually sobbing before I get there, and I let the dark wash over me.  My prayers usually go something like this:

Please God, help me.

or

Please God, help [insert pitiful person's name].

A cry for help.  And that's it.  I don't know what else to say.  I figure God knows.

I used to be a daily pray-er.  When I was young, my mom taught me this prayer, and I said it every night before I went to sleep, with mom sitting at the side of my bed:

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Thinking of a six year old Becky talking about "if I should die before I wake" creeps me out.  No wonder I had to sleep in bed with someone until I was twelve.  I mean, yeah, it's great and all to ask God to care for our souls in the afterlife, but must we really focus our thoughts on dead children at bedtime?  Couldn't we end the day on an up-note?  Something like this:

Thank you, God, for everything.

In the end, does it really matter what we say to God when we pray?  "Let go and let God," the bumper stickers say.  Isn't that what prayer is?  Telling God, uh, um, I don't know what to say, or where to turn, or what to do, so I'm going to be quiet and try to tune into something bigger than me.

This morning after I talked on the phone with my mom, and my stepdad, and we marveled at science and how tough he is, I turned on the radio to listen to the news while I washed dishes.  I felt a little guilty when I realized I had forgotten to say a prayer for my stepdad the night before like I told my mom I would.  Then I heard the man on the radio report that seven children had drowned while hiding from the tornado that hit their school in Oklahoma.  From the safety of my suburban home in Kansas, my own hands submerged in dishwater, I pictured these sweet, precious gifts from God, seven dead children floating in a pool of water under the rubble of their school.  Tears flowed from my eyes and plopped like rain drops into the dishwater.  I immediately wanted to say a prayer for these seven nameless children, too.  But what good would it do?  They're already gone.  So I wanted to say a prayer for their surviving loved ones.  I thought of my own child, my sweet, precious gift from God, sitting in school right now and I wondered how solidly constructed her building is.  I worried about what she would do if we had a tornado.  I wanted to say a prayer for her, too, to ask God to protect her.  I immediately felt selfish for thinking God might answer my prayers while other parents' prayers went unanswered as they sat in a church in Oklahoma and waited for authorities to tell them their children are dead.

I pulled my hands from the water and dried them on my pants and turned off the radio and turned off the light and stood in the corner of my kitchen.  I looked at the unwashed dishes.  Particles of my husband's and my daughter's and my own DNA covered those dishes and it was my job this morning to wash them and dry them and put them away until we'd come together for another meal.  I cried and held my face in my hands.  I felt so sorry for those seven dead children and their surviving loved ones.  I felt so happy for my mom and my stepdad, that they'll have more time together on this earth.  I thought of my husband at work and my child at school and I pictured them getting home and sitting down to dinner with me later this evening in the safety of our home.  I wiped my eyes and shoved my hands back into the dishwater.  I looked out the window, up at the sky, and I said this through quiet tears:

Thank you, God, for everything.

I don't even know what that means, but I figure God knows.

As I washed my family's dishes, I felt lucky.  If I ever catch myself complaining about the drudgery of housework again, I'll think of those seven dead children and how their parents would feel lucky to get one more chance to wash their children's dishes.

Naked Questioning

It was the first hot day of spring.  The three of us were outside in our front yard.  Will had his shirt off and his "dad shorts" on, futzing around the yard, picking up sticks and snapping them til they fit neatly inside a giant brown sack full of our compostables.  Katie and I were sitting together on the front porch swing, both wearing t-shirts and shorts, when she said, "Mom, can I take off my shirt?"

I was seven when my mom broke it to me that I was too old to go outside without a shirt on.  It was so unfair.  My friends who were boys got to run around the neighborhood shirtless on hot days.  I was so teed off, I stormed into my bedroom and sulked until I realized having the freedom to go topless in the isolation of my own room was not nearly as fun as throwing on a t-shirt and going outside to play with my friends.  My first feminist defeat, crushed by my desire to play kickball.

I didn't know how to answer Katie's question.  She's only six.  But then again, she's six already!  My gut felt like telling her, "Sure!"  She's a child.  It's hot.  We teach her that boys and girls should be treated equally.  But my brain cried out, "No!  What will the neighbors think?!"

I told her no, and I felt lame.  But then I felt better after we spent the next ten minutes discussing why our culture has different rules for women and men.  We talked about how sometimes we have to follow rules we don't agree with, and that if we really think the rules should change we have to work hard to convince other people why the rules should change.  We talked about respecting other people's feelings, other people's religious beliefs about modesty.  We talked about how in our culture many people think of breasts not just as body parts that deliver milk to babies but as "sexy" private parts.  Then I got to try to define what "sexy" means to a six year old.  We went on to talk about how some other cultures in the world don't have the same rules as we do about women and girls going topless in public.  We talked about how we have to learn to respect other people's beliefs while also working to make sure our beliefs are heard and respected.  

Whew!  I must have wiped my brow at least twenty times during our conversation.  Too bad I couldn't take my shirt off to cool down.

It looks like our conversation would have been different if our family lived in New York.  Here's a recent news article about how NYPD officers have been instructed to stop arresting women for exposing their breasts in public.  

What do you think?  Should girls be allowed to play outside without a shirt on?  If the answer is yes when they're young but no when they're older, at what age do you think girls should be restricted from going topless in public?  Have your daughters asked to take off their shirts outside, and if you tell them no, do they seem to resent it or to live with this gender rule unquestioningly?