May 8th, 2011
Mothers are people
Before I had a baby, I thought the song “Parents are People” from Free to be You and Me was about the wide range of employment opportunities available to men and women everywhere in this brave new world– that some mommies drive taxis and sing on TV, and daddies play cello or sail on the sea. And then I had a little baby and for a while (in retrospect, a very little while, but at the time I didn’t know this) my entire self was erased, and it dawned on me that the song was about how parenthood doesn’t have to constitute the entirety of a parent’s identity (though I’ve got no qualms about those for whom it does. Parenthood is a noble and worthwhile calling).
Lately I’ve been extending my thoughts on the song and imagining it in terms of a mathematical equation though. (This is the kind of thing that occupies my mind as I push a stroller down the sidewalk looking kind of vacant.) If Mommies=People [with children], therefore People=? The logical answer is that People are People, but even Depeche Mode didn’t manage to get to the bottom of that matter. Indeed, why should it be that you and I should get along so awfully? But it does clear up the matter of why mothers can’t seem to get it together and support each other. Because mothers are people, and people just don’t do that.
Case in point, the story in the Toronto Star this week: “These moms refuse to wear sweats”, which makes the argument that motherhood doesn’t mean we have to stop wearing skinny jeans and motorcycle boots. My initial response is “ugh” for many reasons, chief among them being that I never looked that nice even before I had a child, and also because I don’t have the money, figure or talent to ever look like the skinny jeans moms do.
But I realize that these women are fighting the same mommy stereotypes that I grapple with. “Motherhood doesn’t have to mean 
sweat pants, baggy tops and bad perms” so the article goes, which is analogous to my own crusade, which is “Motherhood doesn’t have to mean being an idiot”. I’m not sure who exactly are these mythical frumpy idiotic mothers we’re all running from, unless we’re all running from the very worst fears we harbour of ourselves. And these selves are so various, and we’re all running so hard that it starts to look like we’re running from each other, but we’re not.
Or perhaps what I mean is that we’re not mothers divided as much as people with children who never had all that much in common in the first place.
I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to be out of the first year or so of motherhood. Those months when everything is so urgent, so terrifying, and so unsure that you just cling to something that may be true in order to make sense of a chaotic universe. On top of the practical matters of new motherhood was how threatened I was by other mothers and their choices. I was told that this would lessen as I became more assured, and it’s true. I think we all muddle through, and there’s no one way to do it, and that families are people as much as mommies are, and people are.
(I also think that that Tina Fey’s Fuck You to breastfeeding in her book Bossypants should be required reading for anyone who gets upset at the sight of formula fed babies. And I think that anyone who finds breastfeeding evangelicals offensive should consider the innumerable ways that breastfeeding mothers are only superficially supported in our society. And then should go read the Tina Fey chapter and feel better about everything.)
Lately I’ve noticed my failure to find my place in the mom dichotomy. Either I should be always putting my children’s need first (this rarely happens. Harriet is a fairly robust human being, and therefore under normal circumstances, her needs are pretty much on par with my own) or taking time for myself and having a manicure (which has never happened. Because it is very difficult to read and have a manicure, or so I imagine. See notes above about me being frumpy). The great thing about this lack of inclusion, however, is that I don’t have be involved in the mom dichotomy at all. Because, well, mommies are people with children, and people are…
And in such open endedness lies liberation and infinite possibility.
There is a book called The Happiest Mom that I’ve been eager to get my hands upon, most because, like all the best parenting books, it might validate all the choices I have already made. (Also, if you’re newish to this blog, read Dream Babies by Christine Hrdyment, which will teach you that all baby/parenting books are faddish fluff, and you are your own best parenting expert if only you have the confidence to believe it). I love the idea of a book suggesting that happy motherhood is possible (it is!) and that there’s a way to get there (and there are many!).
For me, the way to get there has involved a husband who’s as good a mother as I am, a life that gives me plenty of time to myself, and not having another child anytime soon because I think it would probably break me. An individual path, but it works for me, and so I feel so lucky to be celebrating my second Mothers’ Day (or my third, if we count the Mothers Day I spent having an external cephalic version).
First, because we had a lovely evening with own mom. And because my husband and daughter gave me a basil plant and license to run wild in the bookstore this afternoon (I got I’m a Registered Nurse Not a Whore by Anne Perdue, and The Bradshaw Variations by Rachel Cusk, whose novels I can’t get enough of). They also accompanied me on A Pro-Choice Jane’s Walk around downtown Toronto today in the glorious sunshine, which is fitting because my own reproductive freedom is part of why I get to be a happy mother.
I’m so grateful for the choices I’ve been able to make on the road to here.
March 27th, 2011
That annoying thing that women do
This is not so important, but it occurs to me that I’ve been doing that annoying thing that women in my situation tend to do. Making comments about professional tea-guzzling and reading with my feet up, and though these things are practically absolutely true, they’re not the whole picture. I have a tendency toward self-deprecation anyway (it’s just easier that way), and I also don’t find the demands of stay-at-home motherhood particularly arduous, mostly because I have only one child who sleeps a lot, and a small house that requires little maintenance (plus we keep our standards very low). Life for me is very good, though to play the role of the idle hausfrau would be disingenuous (though this does not change the fact that tedious maneuvering really is the story of my life. Let that fact stand).
I thought of an excerpt from a review I read recently of Shirley Jackson’s work (“Dye the Steak Blue” 
by Lidija Haas), and though I’m no Shirley Jackson, obviously, I can understand why Betty Friedan was annoyed by her, and I’m setting the matter straight here because I’m a little annoyed at myself. From the review: “Friedan called [Jackson] an Uncle Tom, one of those women who disingenuously portrayed themselves as ‘just housewives’, ‘revelling in a comic world of children’s pranks and eccentric washing machines’, affecting to find a challenge in the most routine chores and concealing the ‘vision, and the satisfying hard work’ which went into their proper vocation, as writers.”
So though my washing machine is terribly eccentric (in fact, it would be better termed a “kind-of washing machine” and it sometimes smells like it’s about to catch on fire), and though I do take pride in managing my household (which is no small task, as anyone who’s ever lived in a household realizes), I only do housework when my child is awake, and whenever she’s asleep, feet-up or otherwise, I am usually at work on something related to writing. I work very hard at this blog, on my freelance assignments, at reading thoughtfully and writing book reviews that communicate this, at writing fiction, at creating new projects and at being a part of a wider creative community. At managing to contribute to our household income through my creative work. And I absolutely love all of it. It is tremendously important to me.
So this is not to be the writer’s equivalent of those wretched Facebook statuses that made me hate mothers just as much as the rest of society does (“So you ask, do I work? Uh yes, I work 24 hours a day. Why? Because I am a Mom… I don’t get holidays, sick pay or days off. I work through the DAY & NIGHT. I am on call at ALL hours. re-post if you are a proud Mommy “). I just think I was selling myself short before, affecting a little too much, which isn’t surprising– there is unease that comes with being a stay-at-home mother. But I am also a feminist, and I’d never want to let Betty Friedan down.
Also, I much appreciate the friends who’ve been so supportive about last week’s news. Since the shock has worn off, we’re very positive about things, and even grateful that the right decision has made, in particular because it’s one we might not have been brave enough to make on our own.
March 24th, 2011
The original chronicler of motherhood
Lately I’ve been turning to Shirley Hughes’ Alfie books whenever I’m in need of parenting guidance. (I am also reading another book called Toddler Taming that recommends spanking and tying up children with rope, quite unabashedly, but then it was written in 1984 when that sort of thing was de rigueur. But actually, casual cruelty aside(!), it’s a great book. Just let me explain… Review to come.) I love Shirley Hughes, and I really love Alfie, and Harriet loves him too, so we’ve read his stories an awful lot.
And I don’t think the experience of parenthood has ever been better articulated in literature than with this one paragraph from Alfie Gets in First: “Mum put the brake on the push-chair and left Annie Rose at the bottom of the steps while she lifted the basket of shopping up to the top. Then she found the key and opened the front door. Alfie dashed in ahead of her. “I’ve won, I’ve won!” he shouted. Mum put the shopping down in the hall and went back down the steps to lift Annie Rose out of her push chair. But what do you think Alfie did then?”
This kind of tedious maneuvering is the story of my life, and if you’ve ever lived such a life, you understand that Mum has spent ages strategizing the perfect order in which to perform the tasks that will deliver her children and groceries into her house with maximum efficiency. I absolutely adore that recognition. Never mind Rachel Cusk as chronicler of motherhood, no, Shirley Hughes absolutely did it first.
I love her illustrations, and am fascinated by the interior of Alfie’s house. Harriet likes to comb the pictures for teapots, and I love to spot what else is cluttering the corners: discarded shoes, soccer balls, old ties, umbrellas, toy teacups, tennis rackets, folded strollers, and acorns.
Though Alfie’s mum, however rumpled, is a far better mum/mom than I am. Which I’m absolutely fine with, having chosen to take Alfie and Annie Rose’s dad as the parent upon which I model myself. He’s not around as much as Mum (and there I fall short. I never seem to go away), but when he is around, he’s usually behind a newspaper. I love that when in Alfie’s Feet, he takes Alfie to the park, he takes care to bring his book and his newspaper. A parent after my own heart, I think, and Alfie doesn’t seem any less content as he splashes through the puddles, his dad reading the paper on a park bench behind him.
More:
March 8th, 2011
Now I’m dying to know what stroller she chose…
“Life with small children means you can’t be too picky or precious about how you read. I need solitude and silence to write but can read anywhere. My main concern, when buying a stroller, was finding one I could manoeuvre with one hand, so that I was able to push the sleeping baby and hold a book at the same time.” –Maggie O’Farrell, on mixing reading with domestic drudgery (which is the story of my happy life, incidentally).
February 15th, 2011
More on the motherhood narrative
Lately, reading Susan Olding’s book Pathologies (and in particular, her essays about infertility and her daughter’s adoption) and Charlene Diehl’s Out of Grief, Singing (as recommended by Alison Pick), I was struck by how various is the motherhood narrative. And yet the universality of these stories– these women, with their extraordinary experiences of motherhood, managed to articulate so much that I’ve only been gesturing toward since I became pregnant two and a half years ago. Partly because the writing here is so remarkable. This might also be because I’m self-absorbed, and project myself onto everything. But still, how these stories resonated, and also taught me new things about the motherhood experience, added the possibility of additional dimensions to my journey.
I also can’t help thinking about how I would critique Diehl’s memoir if it were a novel– during most of her daughter’s brief life in the NICU, Diehl was suffering from a variety of post-birth complications and hardly saw her before she died. In a stupid workshop, I would insist on moments of connections, on the impossibility of these parallel storylines (mother and baby both in physical trauma), it doesn’t unfold like a story (but then, from what I’ve heard, death rarely does). We have to bend life a certain way to make it work in fiction, but real life doesn’t bend, does it. And how Diehl makes something so beautiful of it still, the unbendingness of real life. There is such generosity in her story, such grace, and though I’ve sobbed off and on today as I’ve read her book, so often I’ve been crying because of the joy.
February 13th, 2011
Doubleness and Happiness
Oh, the things I could tell you about my daughter. Like how she strums her guitar and sings the song she wrote, which is the word “Bunny” over and over; how she learned to say “CN Tower” last week; how when I say, “Slow snow falling”, she says “Deep”, and when I say, “Cars dogs babies”, she says, “Sleep”. How she says “sleep” like “seep” and does a fair amount of it herself. How she’s totally into colouring these days, and she has learned to say her name, except she says, “Ohra” instead of Harriet. Her favourite colour is purple (thanks to Mable Murple), she has to have a sticker on her hand at all times (and best if it’s purple), she loves The Wheels on the Bus (in particular “Swish swish swish”) and Skinnamarink. She loves any book by Marisabina Russo, and Alfie and his sister Annie Rose. How much fun she has with her best friend Margaret, especially when they’re being silly together (and seriously, is it ever fun to wear playdough on your ears.
We love love love her (except when she is having a tantrum at the ROM, and arching her back as I try to put her into her stroller so that the stroller rolls across the atrium at top-speed and everybody is staring at me as she’s screaming, and then we go through the same routine later that afternoon in front of a packed waiting room at the doctor’s). Just as I loved loved loved Sarah Hampson’s wonderful piece in The Globe last week about parenthood and happiness. Which I read with Carol Shields on my mind, and it underlined the line I’d already actually underlined from the novel: “doubleness clarifie[s] the world.” Yes, that’s precisely what it is.
Having a child is very much like everything about being a person who is alive: it’s wonderful and it’s terrible. It’s also very much like being alive in the sense that I’d rather do it than not do it, even though sometimes it isn’t very fun.
I loved this, from Hampson: “I realized that while it was hard not to compare my efforts to those of other mothers, I should see my approach to parenthood as an investment in penny stocks no could predict the outcome of.”
These days, as things have come together in a way that makes sense to me, I spend much less time thinking about “parenting” than I did a year ago. I was obsessed with books then, trying to discover some kind of methodology, but lately we’ve been doing just fine at “making it up as we go along”. Though I have put a book called Toddler Taming on reserve at the library. I have a feeling now is just the calm before the storm.
January 18th, 2011
This is Harriet, who
This is Harriet, who can say tutu. Today she said sun for the first time, as well as soap and snow. And while we were reading Madeline, she pooh-poohed to the tiger in the zoo on cue. When she reads Madeline, she goes and gets her Madeline doll, and then goes and puts the doll away when the story is finished. When she sings I’m a Little Teapot, she goes and gets her teapot. When we’re at toddler time at the library and sing Twinkle Twinkle, Harriet goes over and points to the star on the door. Similiar with the clock on the wall during Hickory Dickory. She says boom whenever anything falls on the floor, which is often, but she pronounces it bum. She demands that our radio be playing music at all times, and gets frustated when I won’t turn off CBC, so then I have to. She is totally into Skinnamarink, and alligators, and Dennis Lee’s poem Alligator Pie. Her interests include being flung through the air, and looking out the window. Last week, she learned to kiss properly (as opposed to slapping her mouth against my face and saying “mmmbah”) and I don’t know that I’ve ever loved anything as much as that tiny smack. She loves reading books as much as she loves throwing them on the floor, and she’ll sit reading stories for ages, so she’s the toddler of my dreams. She likes Olivia, and Shirley Hughes’ Alfie, and any book about babies, and Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggie, which she laughs at as she leafs through it by herself. She loves If You’re Happy and You Know It because she likes any excuse to clap her hands. She puts her arms in the air and says, “Uppy” and there is no choice but to comply. Every day she has more hair, and her big brown beautiful eyes are unfathomably lovely. We really love her. Every night around 11:30, we mention her for the first time in three hours, and it’s obvious that we miss her. Conversations about what Harriet likes, and how Harriet is, because it’s Harriet, you know. But not that we miss her so much of course that we’d want to hear a peep out of her before morning, oh no. There’s what Harriet likes and how Harriet is, but we’re very content to meet her again with the sun.
January 9th, 2011
“For never in our lives has anything so extraordinary happened…”
My friend Julia sent me a copy of Joyce Carol Oates’ essay “A Widow’s Story”, because the prose was “stunning”, and she admired Oates’ transition between past and present, and how “though the present is horrid (he’s dying), [Oates] knows, in retrospect, that it’s so much better than the future.”
I am so glad Julia sent it, because it’s a wonderful, devastating essay, but also, though it’s perverse to admit, because I have a thing for examinations of widowhood– also The Year of Magical Thinking, and Calvin Trillin’s About Alice (which was also a New Yorker essay before it was a book). Mostly because these are also fascinating examinations of long and enduring marriages, but, yes, because I can’t help it too– worst nightmares vicariously are the safest kind, a bit like staring at a car wreck, and also because I have this ridiculous notion that if just I read enough books, I could come to the moment prepared.
This final point bringing me to motherhood, which is where a similar plan has already failed me– I read enough books, but I read them all wrong. But, nevertheless, upon reading Oates’ essay, I had an ephiphany about the way that we talk about motherhood, or rather about how often we end up talking about motherhood. That these conversations about motherhood and widowhood are so often similar in approach and in tone. This I realized in particular when I read a line from just after her husband has died, ab0ut her amazement at the impossibility of such a thing occuring: “For never in our lives has anything so extraordinary happened between us…”.
For so many of us who are so fortunate, life doesn’t tend to happen to us. We live in a blissful, lucky, unaware state– what Oates’ describes as “the vanity of believing that somehow we [own] our lives.” Perhaps the most startling upset of new motherhood is the sudden awareness that we don’t, exactly. That another life owns ours and all at once, the world no longer bends to our wishes. That whole cliche about hearts outside our bodies as well, and though none of this has the same permanant rent as widowhood, there are parallels. The adjustment seems impossible.
Similarly, we are otherwise so insulated from the stuff of life, from birth and from death, which usually are enacted in the same place and restricted from public view, that these perfectly ordinary events do become extraordinary. Foreign, unimaginable, except for remnants we’ve gathered from movies and TV and the gulf between these scenes and reality makes the experience all the more difficult to actually process. The disconnect results in the fixation, the never-ending conversation– we’re putting the pieces together over and over again, hoping for something we’ll eventually recognize.
January 4th, 2011
The eye of the storm
A while ago, I answered some questions for The New Quarterly‘s blog “The Literary Type” about new motherhood and my essay “Love is a Let-Down”.
An excerpt:
“The point is that the storm is. Yes, it passes, and thank goodness it does, but that passing means nothing when you’re living it. But I think acknowledging the storm itself does mean something, that you’re not merely failing to feel the right things, that other mothers have been there before. It would help to acknowledge these experiences as part of a natural process of adjustment. And this does not merely free a new mother from her isolation, but it also provides tangible evidence that the storm does pass, that such a promise is not simply platitudes, because so many of us have been through it, and here we are on the other side.”
Read the whole thing here. And thanks to TNQ’s Rosalynn, who is expecting her own baby any day now! Best of luck and congratulations. xo
Miscommunicado
Recently, I was speaking to someone who felt it necessary to commend me for having interests beyond my child, which sort of galled me, because I wondered what business was it of his where any of my interests lie. It continues to be very important for me to engage with the world in various ways, but what if it wasn’t? It is easy to make being a parent an all-consuming business, but I can think of worse things to be consumed by.
And then I was recounting this to a friend of mine who gave me her definition of an all-consumed parent, which is that friend who has a baby and never calls you again. Another, I suppose, would be the parent who is unable to talk about anything except their children (which would be fair enough if they ever asked questions about your own life, but they never do). The problem with these people, I would think, is not that these parents are all-consumed, but that they’re crappy friends, and totally rude. (Or maybe, maybe, they’re totally overwhelmed by new parenthood and require your support? Though this excuse should definitely come with an end-date).
Anyway, from all this discussion, it occurred to me how rarely any of us are ever talking about the same thing. How careful we should be in giving opinions, in taking things personally, and how important it is to be articulate. That perhaps so much of what divides us (and I am thinking of women in particular, for there is no group more division-prone, except perhaps the Protestant church) is quite illusory, and how easily we might be able to clear things up with a bit of conversation.
