We have a nail brush in the shape of a cow, a baby gift from four years ago. For some reason Akiva calls it the sad cow.
Due to some serious playing in the dirt today, I suggested at dinner that he might benefit from an appointment with the sad cow.
He agreed, and then I asked him why he thought the cow was sad.
“Because he saves everybody.”
I asked what he meant by that.
“He cleans everyone, but he gets dirty.”
There are so many threads I’ve been wanting to pull at, any one of which would, in the hands of a more diligent and talented writer, make a lovely essay. It never seems to happen. I feel the passage of time so acutely. Several whole seeds of thought have gone by, and it’s hard even to remember them.
A few weeks ago, I had ambition to write a long post about rehabilitating the word homemaker.
Before that, I wanted to describe another skirmish in my ongoing (and futile) battle to give my kids a saner notion of gender-neutrality. This would be the bike story. You’ll probably never read it, because I’ll probably never write it.
I’ve also wanted to update about our attempts at gardening, and what they teach me.
There’s also the kernel of an essay about the work and the real work — and how being a mother is about two things simultaneously.
I’ve got pictures of the kids from the past several months. In some of them, they’re wearing sweaters. Now it’s the middle of June, and Gideon will celebrate his first birthday tomorrow, G-d willing.
I finally recycled the big pile of Wall Street Journal crossword puzzles. I’ve already got a new pile.
I cancelled my subscription to the Boston Globe, partly because it’s a crappy newspaper, and partly because I was never reading it anyway. Skimming was a victory.
Who am I, under all this busy work?
Does it ever slow down? If it does, will I know what to do?
For some reason I have been unable to post to this blog through my usual browsers, so the lovely and intelligent Karen suggested I try Firefox. Here goes nuttin’…
Can anybody figure out why my posts look so crappy, with weird spacing & justification? I’m using the visual editor setting, with the left justification button, but it doesnt’ seem to be working out that way. If I write on Opera (the browser, not the art form) it comes out wacky-looking. If I write on Safari (the browser, not the African sojourn) it just crashes my computer. I’m not smart enough to use computers. It’s all fine when it’s working but I’m clueless at troubleshooting!
And other subtle gender issues.
I think the sissy incident has sensitized me to gender stuff this week. To wit:
Akiva and I were playing together the other day when he suddenly said, “Boys are better than girls.” As calmly as I could, I asked him who told him that. He didn’t answer. It turned into a fight (partly my doing) because I stopped playing with him and said, “I don’t want to play with someone who thinks I am not as good as he is.” I know I was being petty. But it really pains me that at four, he is already internalizing such a simplistic, sexist message.
Then yesterday morning, he woke up whimpering and saying he wouldn’t “use that bubble blower anymore.” I asked which one he meant, and he said the purple one. He said he no longer likes purple. He said he likes every color except pink and purple. It came out that one of his friends at school is very vocal about hating pink and purple. Akiva is already making differentiations like his favorite color at school vs. his favorite color at home. And I keep saying the platitudes about every color being available to whoever likes it, and everyone being different, and real friends being the ones who like you just as you are.
There are a couple of boys at his nursery school who seem to have his ear on all things boy. They tell him what colors it’s ok to like and so on. In one sense, I can see how trivial this is, but in another sense, it really does matter to me.
It matters to me because I resent any attempt to tell my son he is not ok just as he is. It matters to me because I see his so-called friends shaving off his sweetness — and it hurts me. It matters to me because there’s a whole unspoken code about it being “bad” to like “girl” things. This relates back to the sissy incident — what is a sissy anyway? A boy who is like a girl. Which is automatically bad.
The superiority thing really irks me. Even though it’s a bunch of four- and five-year-olds talking about their favorite color of bubble blower.
Further, I have talked to so many moms lately whose boys like(d) pink and purple, or wore barrettes, or pretended to be mermaids. If all these boys like these purportedly girly things, and all the moms know it’s stupid, why does everyone keep buying into the color-coding? Why, if we know our sons like pink, do we buy them blue sweatshirts. We all know it’s asinine and arbitrary, but we still give it so much power.
Akiva asked me yesterday who the first people were, “when G-d was making stuff.” I talked to him a little bit about Adam & Eve (with a brief mention of Lilith). Then he mused, “When the dinosaurs were finished, the first humans were Neanderthals…”
There is no way I could home-school this child. He’s already way smarter than I am. I think he should home-school me.
1. What do you think of the “mommy wars” ?
I’m not even sure I know what that term means. I think it’s the alleged war between mothers who have outside work and mothers who don’t. Sometimes I think it’s a media invention, just the latest in a long line of Zeitgeist fads that conspire to make women feel threatened and insecure, and to make us feel competitive with each other. Still I must admit that I sometimes feel judgmental toward mothers who have outside work *and* have very young children, perhaps because I think they’re judging me but also because I think babies really need to be near their mothers.
This past weekend I had the following exchange with my dearest friend, who just married a few days ago, and who is a highly respected scholar, and who is hoping very much to have a baby. I said, “I hope that awkwardness won’t arise in our relationship due to different choices that each of us is inclined to make. Sometimes it’s hard for me to let others make their choices and be non-judgmentally supportive.”
She said, “Why is that?”
I said, “Well, I guess I feel like the choices I’m making are the best ones I could be making for my children.”
She said, “Yes, exactly. For *your* children.”
You can see why she’s my best friend. She cut straight through the bullshit.
Seriously, more often than not, the bottom line for me is that I have a hard time genuinely believing that there’s more than one way to do something. I know it’s wrong, but it’s the truth about me.
2. When did you last do something just for you?
I did a crossword puzzle last night. Loved it. Also, answering these questions (and most of my online activity) is pretty much just for me.
3. Boston or NYC and why?
New York in a flash. Because I love the energy and the theatre and the amazing random coincidences that happen there. Because despite it all (and there’s a lot to overlook lately) I love the Yankees. Because you don’t need a car to be in New York. Because I would love to worship at B’nai Jeshrun every week.
4. What did you want to be when you grew up?
From the time I reached double digits, I wanted to be a famous actor and singer. Before that I wanted to be Nadia Comaneci. Before that I wanted to be the President of the U.S.
5. What’s your favorite musical?
That’s like asking a mother which of her children is her favorite! I adore Sweeney Todd, both because I love the piece and because the production I did back in 2003 was hands-down my favorite job ever. Others I love (and would love to do) are Follies, Carousel, West Side Story. And for sentiment at least, I love The Sound of Music. It was the first musical I ever did (I don’t count Annie since I only did excerpts) and although people tend to dismiss it, I think it has great dramatic potential — think of it as being about a family escaping the Nazis, rather than as being about a bunch of cute kids dressed in draperies.
6. How would you describe motherhood to a newly pregnant friend?
Depends on the friend! If a quip were in order, I’d say it’s a combination of cloud 10 and “what was I thinking?”. If a serious answer were appropriate, I’d say it’s a full-being experience — spiritual, physical, emotional, and intellectual. The hardest, best, most fulfilling, most harrowing thing that anybody can do. It’s an opportunity to live the truth of every cliché and to know the meaning of the word impossible. It’s life-altering, mind-altering, and (especially) the thing that most alters one’s relationship with the passage of time.
7. Who would you most like to meet who is famous and alive today ?
Elton John or Stephen Sondheim.
We spent the weekend in (gorgeous) Interlochen, Michigan for my dearest friend’s (gorgeous) wedding. Almost all was gorgeous, but an incident that took place at the B&B we stayed in still has me a bit stunned.
When I arrived with Gideon on Thursday night, I got a feeling of unease from the host gentleman. He was friendly and yet certain externals put me off. There were a lot of flags flying round the place, including what I am pretty sure was a Confederate flag. When I asked for a 7:30 breakfast, he said that was too early and asked me to make it 8. OK, whatever. Odd duck, I figured. Trying to make the best of it. I didn’t feel fear, but I did feel a certain discord, perhaps a bit passive-aggressive inhospitality.
The next morning, though, at the 8 a.m. breakfast, we managed to find some common conversational ground, and I thought all was well. Bill and Akiva arrived that afternoon, which also helped. The host woman, whom I finally met on Friday evening, was unreservedly lovely.
Then something yucky happened on Saturday. Akiva had gotten a mosquito bite — his first ever. The mosquitoes in northern lower Michigan are big as hummingbirds, and their bites are serious. At least, they are if you are four years old and slightly sleep-deprived and overstimulated. As we sat in the breakfast room, Akiva was making big drama about the mosquito bite, bigger drama than strictly speaking necessary, and while I wasn’t thrilled with his carrying on, I figured the best course was simply to murmur, “Yes dear,” and wait it out. However, when Bert (the host man) came in and asked what was wrong, I told him that Akiva had just had his first mosquito bite.
And this is what he said:
Hey buddy, I think you’re making too big of a deal out of it. Sometimes you just have to suck it up. Life is no place for being a sissy.
I am still trying to parse just what kind of sad, sick man calls a four-year-old child a sissy.
P.S. Of course, I was a sissy and didn’t say anything because I could think of nothing even remotely reasonable to say in that moment. I hope my son forgives me. I kinda think he does.
Every year, our congregation organizes something called Mitzvah Day. (Mitzvah is often taken colloquially to mean good deed but it actually means commandment.) Temple members sign up to staff various volunteer projects in the community, such as cooking at a soup kitchen, visiting nursing home residents, planting a garden at a homeless shelter, etc.
I’ve always had mixed feelings about Mitzvah Day. I think it’s a nice way to get congregants involved in community service. It’s often easier to get started at something like this if you go with a group of people you already know, and if someone else has done the legwork. On the other hand, I think a single day is scandalously inadequate to the task of making a meaningful difference. It’s all fine and good to plant the garden but if you don’t water it, so what? I personally prefer volunteer projects that are ongoing, peppered with the one-offs as needed. I feel like that’s what works best for our family for transmitting the values that matter to me.
Still, we signed up for Mitzvah Day because it’s better to do something than nothing. With a group of fellow congregants, their children, and their dogs, we went to a local nursing home and visited with any resident who was interested in having a chat, or just in petting the dogs. By and large, the residents were eager for the interaction, and they lapped up the attention. Everyone thought my children were gorgeous, and who’s to argue?
Although I must admit this one was cheerier than most, I’m generally spooked out by nursing homes. The residents always seem to me generic, hollow-eyed, defeated. It’s easy to think that all they ever were is represented in the ragged face and worn out body, the wheelchair with a seatbelt and the laundry basket labeled “incontinent.” There’s so much physicality in a nursing home — and almost all of it decrepit — that it’s hard to hold in mind that the each of the residents has a story.
One of the people we met today taught me this lesson most vividly. His room was highly decorated, with paintings, plaques, an “intensive training” sign (stolen from Harvard, he revealed), books, toys, maps. He mentioned modestly that he’d been a composer, and although we failed to draw him out further, I was intrigued enough to look him up online after returning home.
Here’s what I found:
In 1952, at the age of 26, Charlie Kletzsch moved into Dunster House as librarian and composer in residence. He stayed fifty years.
Tagged by Dawn, I am herewith listing three things I do right as a mother, without apology or equivocation. If you are a mother, I tag you to do the same.
1. I fill my childrens’ lives with music, humor, Judaism, books, and love of the outdoors.
2. I am awesome at bedtime snuggles and tuck-in. I read stories, I sing lullabies, I tell funny anecdotes, I say heartfelt words of love.
3. I try earnestly (despite my own upbringing and internalized habits) to listen carefully to my boys’ feelings, even when they are unspoken, and to give them the space to be how they are.
