Blowing the Lid Off This Thing!

I'm a mother, so naturally I believe in conspiracy theories. I mean, come on....there's no possible way there was a single shooter in that library annex. And, find me someone in the western world who didn't think that those first American moon landing photos looked like they were taken on a Hollywood back lot? I dare you to try to convince me that Kentucky Fried Chicken doesn't add some kind of ingredient that makes it irresistible? And really, the world is round? I wanna know who perpetuated that doozy? 

But easily, the most shocking, yet under reported and least discussed conspiracy of them all is, "The Motherhood Mood." Some one, some where (I don't want to point fingers or name names, but my investigations have led me to believe that this destructive dialog was started by someone with a penis) created a myth that really pisses me off: mothers are all deliriously happy to, first, be pregnant, then to give birth, and finally, to have our lives, our thoughts, our hopes, dreams, needs, and desires eternally altered. In short, we aren't allowed to say we're angry, disappointed, lonely, frustrated, sad, or just plain pissed. We've been robbed of our right to the honest expression of our feelings. We've been made into the Stepford Moms. 

So I'm going to shatter the conspiracy, at great personal risk (in fact, as I sit here typing, I expect the CIA or CSIS to break down the door, unplug my keyboard, and slap my hand.)

This myth is so deeply entrenched in our psyches that our greatest oppressors are ourselves, and each other. Woman against woman (and not in the porn mud wrestling pit way, either. This is worse). We find little ways to diminish each other--we judge each other by our children's progress. Come on, you've been there. When one of your sisters, or friends, or even your mother says, "Frankie's not potty trained?! Oh. Too bad! I'm so lucky! Jocelyn was completely trained  by the time she was 19 months. Oh yeah...even night-trained. She was so easy! Are you giving him stickers? Oh, well, I'm sure he'll do it someday." 

Or, we judge each other's decision to stay home or work. This can be cruel and particularly vicious. Some how, if I decide to work, I must be making the statement that my needs are more important than my kids, and that being at home isn't good enough for me, and that I think I'm more enlightened than a stay-at-home mom, thus it threatens women who decide to stay at home. Alternately, if you decide to stay at home, you must be making some comment on my commitment to my children, and how much of a better mother you are for sacrificing everything you need for your kids (and you never complain because that would undermine your position). It also must suggest that my working somehow threatens you and makes you less valuable to society. 

Or, what about, when we get together and we rake our eyes over each other to assess hairstyles, fashion, manicures, and tan lines--and that's just after we've checked out each others kids. My critical eye hasn't fallen on the mom yet! What kind of stroller do you push? What's your opinion on cloth or disposable? Do you have them in soccer, guitar, gymnastics, painting? And are you coaching or teaching any of these activities?

What's happened to us? Why do we do this to ourselves and each other? Who robbed us of our voices and why aren't we fighting to get them back? Every one else, every one else, on the planet whines, snivels, and cries about their jobs and their responsibilities--from my kindergartener to the President of the United States. But not us moms. Any expression that things aren't just 100% super-peachy-keen-super-awesome-fantastic and we're letting the world down. It's a conspiracy I tell you!

When I express my dissatisfaction with being a mother, a working mother, a working mother and wife, people are shocked and horrified. I once told my mother-in-law that while I loved my family deeply, they just weren't enough. They simply didn't complete me. She just sat there in horror looking at me as if I'd just grown a third boob. 

I want to say, without fear of reprisal (from other moms or some secret CIA agency): 

• Why don't men hear a sick child during the night? 
  
• Why does the responsibility for dentist appointments fall to me? 
  
• If I have to tell him that he needs to pick up diapers on the way home from work, I might as well just do it myself! 
  
• I'm angry that my husband can walk away from the house and our family, and not worry that things will get done and people will be taken care of. 
  
• I want to weep and pummel my husband (not necessarily in that order) when, at 3:00 AM I have to (again) tell him that no, he can't actually put the pillow cases and sheets full of  vomit straight in the washing machine, while I'm sitting with a 4 year old who's puking in a bucket (and all over me). 
• Why does gender define the household chores? It makes me crazy that vagina=cooking and cleaning toilets and penis=snow shoveling and washing the car. 
• I'm lonely and tired, and I hate that I have nothing of my own!! Nothing! 
• I can't bear being responsible for everything! The weight is too much. Sometimes I feel so heavy from everyone's expectations that I can barely move my limbs.
• I just wanna take a pee all by myself--no company, no interruptions, no fingers under the door, and no frantic knocking shouting about how bad they gotta go. Just me, my bladder, and a People magazine!

So every mom, every where, throw off the shackles of this conspiracy! It doesn't make you a BAD MOMMY to say, "Today, I was a bad mommy, and, yah know, it wasn't too bad!" Or, "Oh, just screw it! If I have to go to one more f#*&ing PTA meeting I'm going to hurt somebody." Or, "You work out, I work in, what the hell, we both work--let's get drunk!" Or better yet, "Honey, if you have kids and can manage to brush your teeth in the morning and get the little beggars to school less that 15 minutes late, you are the Martha Stewart of parenthood! Good on ya! Now go congratulate yourself with a scotch!"  

Wipe that frozen, icy Jesus-I-love-every-single-little-thing-about-my-life smile (that doesn't reach any where near your wild trapped-in-this-life eyes) off your face and let's overthrow this conspiracy. The Stepford Moms may have great hair, but girls, nice hair won't give you a tenth of the satisfaction you'll get when you tell your husband that you hate cleaning the goddamn toilets, so for the rest of your parenthood together, every Saturday he can clean those greasy receptacles and make sure the kids get lunch, 'cause you'll be at the car wash for two hours (because, that's just how long  it takes!). 

Girls to Women

Lately I've been doing a fair bit of reading on mothering. Not the kind of reading that is instructional, I can barely follow a bloody recipe, so I can't imagine the pressure of trying to follow rules on how to be a better mother. Plus I am reasonably lazy and I think, having had three children, all of whom have survived so far, I must be doing something right. They may need years of therapy, but hey, no one's perfect.

The reading I have been doing is mostly on how women view motherhood, relationships with their children, and how women are viewed from the general public, once they become mothers. I have been focusing in on mother/child relationships, probably because I no longer have a relationship with my own mother. I am, to say the least, worried, worried about how my relationship, or lack there of with my own mother, will affect my relationship with my children, my daughters in particular. I know, I know, there is always so much of a focus placed on mother/daughter relationships and mother/son relationships tend to seem as though they are overlooked.

This is definitely not the case. I have spend equal amounts of time dissecting my mothering and my relationship with both my son and daughters...it's just that I find it curious that most women who have daughters have the same fears I do. Will we have a good, decent relationship when they are grown? How will our later relationship play out? With my son, I don't seem to have these concerns, at least not yet. We are close, he seems strong, confident and sure of who he is and where he belongs in the world, although he is just a mere twelve years old.

My eldest daughter is the opposite unfortunately, and for this I am concerned. She seems to be much less self-assured, afraid to be who she wants to be. I am not sure whether this is simply a product of culture, home environment or in born personality. I have always thought we have given the two older kids anyway, a chance to be who they are, regardless of what anyone else thinks. I have as strong a relationship with her as well. I guess my biggest fear is that somehow along the way it is going to become frayed, tarnished somehow. I understand that of course I am a much different parent than my own mother was able to be, but the fear still draws me in.

As women raising daughters we are often made to feel like we have to force some kind of separation, push them to be strong, at the same time we push them away from us. Why is it that we want strong , confident young women to emerge, but the only way we seem to know how to do this is by severing the attachment to mother somehow? I shouldn't generalize I guess. It's just in asking a number of other moms who are raising girls if they have ever felt this way, the answer is often yes. This has caused much confusion for me, where I am not sure how or why I need my daughter to feel this kind of separation. I read this passage recently and it sums things up quite nicely.

Separation and autonomy are not equivalent: a person need not separate from mothers emotionally to be autonomous. Under the dominion of experts, mothers are urged to create a separation and disconnection from daughters that their daughters do not want. Early childhood and adolescence are the two stages of life where separation has been decreed as imperative to the independence and autonomy of children. To mother "right", women disconnect from their daughters and begin to see them as society will. Rather than strengthen girls this breach of trust leaves girls weakened and adrift.

-Elizabeth Debold, Marie Wilson, and Idelisse Malave

I guess what I want most for her, for all of them really, is to be able to know and understand who they are, and why they make the choices they do. I have been a good mother, a good female role model to all of them, I think. Probably what stumps me the most is that I have not been shown how to do it, how to let my children follow my lead, and feel confident about what I offer them. It is enough, will it prepare them for what they will need as they become adults? And in this will our relationships stay strong, or will I continue to try to separate in the name of independence? I hope I do not. Though I do hope more than anything, that they will want for themselves all that I want for them. To know that they are worthy of the kind of happiness that fills their lives up.

I want to be able to balance these lessons as their mother, to stay connected and not feel this pull do force them away from me. Sometimes I wish I could be guided, that there were clear rights and wrongs. That when mistakes are made they don't come back to haunt you years later, which of course they do.

All I hope for is that my girls, and my boy, will know I did the best I could, and that I was always interested in doing better. I wanted to learn more about how to make things different for them than they were for me. And that above all, I've loved them, every agonizing step of the way.

Get Your Bags and RUN!!

A couple of weeks ago I overheard a conversation (okay I was eavesdropping) between a couple of moms in the locker room. These moms must have been mid-fortyish, and seemed pretty with it from my limited standpoint. Then their conversation turned to the subject of going on vacation.

One of the women was telling the other that she was getting ready to go away somewhere warm, and her friend asked her if it was just she and her husband. To which she replied, as though she had cold water poured over her head, "of course not, we're taking the whole family. I just don't understand those people who want to be away from their kids. I personally love spending every waking, painful moment with mine" (okay I might be taking a few liberties here, but you get the tone).

I was so stunned I nearly made my eavesdropping known, but held back, due to the fact that I was hiding out in the washroom just to listen in. "Perfect Mom" then went on to say that since she and her husband "Poor Pitiful Guy" had children, they had never spent one night away from them....EVER. Are you kidding me? No dirty filthy hotel sex, EVER?? Geesh and I thought we were boring. Well, her reasoning was that if one wants to have children why would they need to be away from them? Her friend, just nodded her poor simple little head, and never challenged this notion. WOW!

Well let me tell you my friends I both NEED and WANT time away from my offspring. In fact when the chance arises I am giddy, tingly with excitement. I usually have an upset stomach and diarrhea due to the thrill, a few days prior to my launch.

I remember one year a friend and I had gone away, we decided to leave the night before our original planned departure, instead of leaving early the next morning. Well, we didn't arrive until very late, after midnight in fact. We grabbed out bags out of the car, checked into our room, and proceeded to crawl into our very own queen-sized beds, mowing down chips watching crap on t.v., giggling like we'd never been alone before. There is just something about the way that kind of freedom from your children, and your life makes you feel.

I cherish those times; when I can be a girl again, a fun, silly, sleeping late, staying up later kind of girl. We need those times away with friends and ourselves, to reconnect with who we once were. It feels good to know I can do this, that my loved ones support me doing it.

I love sitting cross legged on a bed reading trashy magazines, putting on make-up and acting as though I am a teenager again It feels bloody good to take care of just me for a few days here and there. To forget that someone needs something from me, and I can sit back and do nothing for a change.

Maybe there really are those "Perfect Moms" out there who never need or want time for themselves, away from their families, sadly, no, gladly I am not one of them. I look forward to the next parcel of time where I get to "pack my bags and run"!!

Oh. This is Fun.

I don't think I can adequately express, in a post you'd be remotely interested in reading, how awesome it is to have friends.

Real, close, lovely friends, who understand you, support you, laugh at you, and touch you (well, not touch me, but move me. Well, not really move me. I'm slightly too big, and they're slightly too little. I could hurt one of them.....oh, you know what I mean.)

I feel like one of those rare women you hear about who actually has a deeply meaningful relationship with other women. 

For that, I am blessed (well, not really blessed, I haven't been to church since.....oh, forget it.)

Suffice to say, I love my friends. I love that we agree. I love that we disagree. It's a damn good feeling.

Women

The following quote may not really have anything to do with being a mother, but as we all know being a mother has much to do with being a woman. We are constantly wrapped up in trying to find a way to be women, to be moms or to just be people.

"The complicated silence that has prevailed about woman's inhumanity to woman."While women may not be aggressive in the same way that men are, cross-cultural studies confirm that girls and women are equally aggressive in "indirect" ways,and mainly toward each other. Women envy and compete against other women instead of men and tend to deny this, even to themselves. Like men, many women also hold sexist beliefs and are often unaware of it. Women depend on each other for emotional intimacy and bonding, but their power to form cliques, gossip about and shun one another enforces conformity and discourages self-confidence and psychological clarity from girlhood on. Are women oppressed? Yes. Do oppressed people internalize the oppressor's attitudes? Without a doubt. Women, therefore, must acknowledge their own sexism and gender double-standards before they can practice sisterhood, resist sexism, treat other women ethically, and forge realistic and compassionate personal and political coalitions."

By Pamela Viddal

I know that many of you who've read this blog, our very personal feelings on being mothers, and people, have come away feeling somehow like we've managed only to see the down side of being a mom. This is so far off base. What we are doing is trying to listen to ourselves, and give ourselves the chance to say what we are honestly feeling, difficult or not. This is not earth-shattering, it doesn't expose us for the monsters we are, it just is what it is. Sometimes what is being said sounds cold and lonely, but in reality, that is how it feels some days. Other days, being a mother is wonderful, the most joyous, beautiful thing in the world. Should we be strung up for being the ones who have the gall to talk about it? I sure hope not.

We've said it before and will say it again, it never gets easy to open yourself up and share these things, but for us, it is very important. Some of you might say, talk to your friends, talk to your spouse, why put it out there for others to see? Why? Well for me, it is because I have finally found the courage and the voice that was hidden for so long, that is all, nothing more than that.

When I was younger, still a parent, I didn't have the voice to say the things I needed and desperately wanted then to say. Sure there were a couple of times when I was heartless enough to complain aloud. As quickly as the words left my mouth, I found other women condemning me for having the nerve not to enjoy every single moment of motherhood. Why do women do this to each other?

I can only speak for myself , but I do talk to my wonderful, loving, respectful and intelligent spouse about all of this, every hard -to -hear detail. The most incredible thing about it, is he really understands; he supports and he is proud that the person he has chosen to share his life with, feels, thinks and challenges beliefs.

I am so happy that I am loved enough to feel safe, unjudged, even when some of you might wonder how a woman who chose to be a mom could ask hard questions both of herself and other women.

Harder yet, is coming to the realization, that even today, in a climate of change, women still feel like they have to hold back, not upset the balance (news flash, there has never been balance). We would rather turn our backs , judge, ask why one has to stand up and say things that we know are real, and we've at one time or another, felt ourselves.

Quietly we are asked not to tip the scales, not to want for more, not to scream, if need be.

Sure some of you say, we've all felt it, just keep it to yourselves!!

Not on your life sister!!

What's Going On?

Something seems to be going on. Some small shift in my world, and it feels like some small shift in the larger world. Why are we talking about this now? About the dirty, hard, gritty reality of motherhood? Why do we feel compelled to say out loud what we've kept hidden for so long from our friends, our partners, or families?

What kind of mother writes these things? What kind of mother does that make me? 

I'm tired of hiding behind a false image, quite frankly, this false idol of "the Mother." It makes me angry that I have to. Who made these rules? We subjugate ourselves to this idea that we are these glorious, untouchable beings who, even at our absolute worst as parents, have to be placed firmly on a pedestal and worshipped. 

Screw that! 

I'm an incomplete, flawed, and scarred human being. Just like my husband. Just like my co-workers. Just like my mother. Just like you. 

When I was a teenager my mom told me that she loved me more than anything, and she'd throw herself in front of a bus to save me, but that if she had it to do all over again, she wouldn't have had kids. You're shocked! What kind of mother would say that to her child!!!!!

I was shocked too. Before I became a mother. But, my mother loves me, and she did me an incredible service that day. She modeled for me the complexity and conflict of being a mother. She gave me the strength to know that my life has value, as her's did, and does, with or without children. 

I'm angry. I'm pissed off that once I've had a child I am bound by these silent rules. I'm not allowed to express dissatisfaction. I'm not allowed to be unfulfilled. I'm not allowed to want more from my life than my family. 

I have big dreams. Wild, crazy, mad dreams for myself. Should I pretend I don't? Should I internalize everything I hope for myself so that my children don't suspect they don't "complete me?" No! 

What kind of mother do I want my children not only to have, but to see. The kind of woman who gives up everything for other people? Or the kind of woman who loves herself as much as she loves her kids?

It's pretty goddamn clear to me. And I'm unapologetic. 

I'm carving out a life for myself, come Hell or high water. Just as I hope my children will. And if the life they find themselves in, or if the life they choose for themselves is not every little bit of everything they hoped it would be, I hope they have the courage to find their voice and shout it out. And I'll be there cheering them on!

Cinderella's Stepsisters

When I was in university I had to analyse a piece of writing. I was looking for something that had meaning to me, and I connected with emotionally. Most of those years I was tired. I was a single mom of three small kids, living on a student loan, and alone in a city I'd never lived in before. My family lived too far away to help--as far away as Japan, and the kid's dad lived on the other side of the world.

I was lonely, scared, dog-tired, and poor. I would go to school all day, pick up the kids, play with them, make them supper, bath them, put them to bed, and then start my homework. It was hard.

But this one time, this one assignment, I had to analyse some one's writing. I found this. A speech by the Nobel Prize winning American author, Toni Morrison, to a graduating class at Barnard College (an all-female university). I cried as I read it. I want to share it with you:

Cinderella's Stepsisters

Let me begin by taking you back a little. Back before the days at college. To nursery school, probably, to a once-upon-a-time when you first heard, or read, or, I suspect, even saw "Cinderella." Because it is Cinderella that I want to talk about; because it is Cinderella who causes me a feeling of urgency. What is unsettling about that fairy tale is that it is essentially the story of a household--a world, if you please--of women gathered together and held together in order to abuse another woman. There is, of course, a rather vague absent father and a nick-of-time prince with a foot fetish. But neither has much personality. And there are the surrogate "mothers," of course (god- and step-), who contribute both to Cinderella's grief and to her release and happiness. But it is the stepsisters who interest me. How crippling it must have been for those young girls to grow up with a mother, to watch and imitate that mother, enslaving another girl.

I am curious about their fortunes after the story ends. For contrary to recent adaptations, the stepsisters were not ugly, clumsy, stupid girls with outsize feet. The Grimm collection describes them as "beautiful and fair in appearance." When we are introduced to them they are beautiful, elegant women of status, and clearly women of power. Having watched and participated in the violent dominion of another woman, will they be any less cruel when it comes their turn to enslave other children, or even when they are required to take care of their own mother?

It is not a wholly medieval problem. It is quite a contemporary one: feminine power when directed at other women has historically been wielded in what has been described as a "masculine" manner. Soon you will be in a position to do the very same thing. Whatever your background--rich or poor--whatever the history of education in your family--five generations or one--you have taken advantage of what has been available to you at Barnard and you will therefore have both the economic and social status of the stepsisters and you will have their power.

I want not to ask you but to tell you not to participate in the oppression of your sisters. Mothers who abuse their children are women, and another woman, not an agency, has to be willing to stay their hands. Mothers who set fire to school buses are women, and another woman, not an agency, has to tell them to stay their hands. Women who stop the promotion of other women in careers are women, and another woman must come to the victim's aid. Social and welfare workers who humiliate their clients may be women, and other women colleagues have to deflect their anger.

I am alarmed by the violence that women do to each other: professional violence, competitive violence, emotional violence. I am alarmed by the willingness of women to enslave other women. I am alarmed by a growing absence of decency on the killing floor of professional women's worlds. You are the women who will take your place in the world where you can decide who shall flourish and who shall wither; you will make distinctions between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor; where you can yourself determine which life is expendable and which is indispensable. Since you will have the power to do it, you may also be persuaded that you have the right to do it. As educated women the distinction between the two is first-order business.

I am suggesting that we pay as much attention to our nurturing sensibilities as to our ambition. You are moving in the direction of freedom and the function of freedom is to free somebody else. You are moving toward self-fulfillment, and the consequences of that fulfillment should be to discover that there is something just as important as you are and that just-as-important thing may be Cinderella--or your stepsister.

In your rainbow journey toward the realization of personal goals, don't make choices based only on your security and your safety. Nothing is safe. That is not to say that anything ever was, or that anything worth achieving ever should be. Things of value seldom are. It is not safe to have a child. It is not safe to challenge the status quo. It is not safe to choose work that has not been done before. Or to do old work in a new way. There will always be someone there to stop you. But in pursuing you highest ambitions, don't let your personal safety diminish the safety of your step-sister. In wielding the power that is deservedly yours, don't permit it to enslave your stepsisters. Let your might and your power emanate from that place in you that is nurturing and caring.

Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is not only about "us"; it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.

Do You Have to Work?

So there I am, at a family event (an in-law family event), sticking out like a Janis Joplin poster at a Conway Twitty concert, wondering how a city-girl, albeit moderately big city (but I cherish dreams of vanishing into obscurity in a behemoth of a city some day) married a small-town boy from a farm family.  I'm too opinionated,  too anti-authority, and too liberal to really fit in. I think some of them are a little scared of me. I might corrupt to many young minds with my high-falutin' ways, and, honestly, I'm a pretty consistent high-faluter.

I was hanging out in a corner, overseeing an intense and heated game of Spiderman Sorry!, when I was introduced to a friend of my husband's uncle. She was a bright interesting woman, with a ready smile, and I liked her. We chatted away about kids, board games, and the weather, until she sprang the question, in a sympathetic and warm-hearted way, "Do you get to stay at home with the kids, or do you have to work?"

Now, I'm no shrinking violet. I've done my time. All told, I've spent 12 years as a stay-at-home parent. 7 years with the first family, and 5 years with the next. I've wiped bums and noses, made more grilled cheese and peanut butter sandwiches than should be legal, organized, and avoided, play-dates, and seen enough episodes of Barney and Caillou to drive me to the verge of hari-kiri, but, after years of miserable self-sacrifice, and even more miserable moaning about it, I still felt the soul-compressing guilt of going back to work.  If it wasn't for my husband, who forcibly insisted I work, and friends who told me if I didn't go back to work they'd hurt me, I might have let my guilt, and the looks on people's faces that told me I'm only a good mother when I am with my kids 24 hours a day, keep me home. 

So here is my answer: It's not easy. But for me, now, today, it's not do I get to stay home? It's do I have to, do I really have to stay home?