I love the Fall. The cooler weather, fog and changing colors around here have recently brought in my favorite season. Spring is pretty, but the riot of Autumnal colors and rich, warm tones mixed with the cooling air really makes me feel like a cup of tea and a good book. Being as that this is what I do for a living, read good books and talk about them, it’s a good time of year for me, when that which I have to do and that which I really want to do meld and no library is safe.
I was born in the Fall. I wonder sometimes if this has something to do with it. All star charts aside, it wouldn’t surprise me if the season in which you first become aware of seasons, in that your own birth is celebrated, becomes special to you. For some people, the year starts in January, with the promise of new beginnings, for some its Spring with its rituals of rejuvenation. Sunbabies may worship the warmth and freedom associated with the summer months, family vacations and heat swimming up from the streets and sidewalks that loosens bones and poems and late night rambles.
Me, I’m a Fall girl, born in early September, just in time for school to start. As a kid I was an inauspicious student. A lack of discipline and a preference for thick novels scuttled all but my English classes often. I had bad habits, frankly. As a babe, I’d ather skitter round the yard chasing a red ball, or a soccer ball, or mooning about some adventure I wish I was on. As a teenager, I read trashy sci-fi novels in the leaves of my Warriner during class. Same with Algebra. I drew, I painted, I wrote notes to friends, short stories and an occasional essay. Biology homework was somehow a bit beyond me, though Fall made it fun for a while. There’s nothing like that change of season and the fruition of so many living things to get you excited about the natural world. But come winter that fades; Dickens novels do not.
Fall came late this year and its still not uncommon to head out in the fog of the morning with long sleeves and jacket to come home dragging jacket and rolling sleeves in 60 or 70 degree heat. This makes it harder to settle in, to drink tea and read books, to flee the chill for the library. But alas, the weather has changed, the fogs have come and the books beckon.
My son, a piscatory sign born in the late winter as the frosts were melting like our transported-new-parent eyes spent too much time in the warmth to use many of his long-sleeved shirts or thick winter sweaters. I think he had one. Had we still lived up North, he’d surly have had his own stadium suit – the ones that make infants look like tiny blue Michelin men. I do wonder, though, what his sense of the seasons will be, which he’ll most associate with, which he’ll love best. He spent a good part of his pre-baby hood swimming with me in the cool blue waters of the local pool. His nature seems to be as easy going and inexorable as a wave. While certain objects fuel a deep-seated and unrequited desire (the TV remote, the telephone, my cell phone,) he generally bops around the living room like a spider-monkey, butt in the air and a bit of fuzz clinging to one sticky cheek. He loves people and gatherings, and seems equally at home in my arms as in those of Jason the Argonaut – a good friend and his first babysitter. Until he gets tired and wants his Mom, that is.
After a Thanksgiving week where we spent a great deal of time together uninterrupted (and with a cold driving him into whining and fussing when often he’s smiley and giggley) I came back home from my first day of work missing him. He must have missed me too, cause he threw his little baby arms around my neck and squeezed. After changing clothes into my sweat pants, we clambered round the floor together for a bit, laying out on the rug and playing with his toys and books. I hope he’ll feel the same way about his books, come Autumn, that his father and I do. But looking forward to his first Christmas, I have to admit that he might have been endowed with other gifts.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
The Art of the Deal
It’s 9am on Tuesday and I get five minutes to do this blog. That’s the deal. I didn’t write last week cause it was a hell of a week and I trusted neither my wits nor my civility to do anyone or anything justice. So here I am, 5 days late with five minutes on the clock and that’s just one of the new deals I’ve made with myself today. I’ve been cutting deals all week and some have gone well, others have gone poorly and others have taught me that you really can’t bargain with an 8 month old or a dying cat and to try sidesteps the facts of a rich life, even when you’d rather.
Okay, yeah, so after the rest of the shit that happened last week that I’ll eventually get around to euphemizing, my 19-year-old cat, my friend and companion from my adolescence to my maturity, through four states, three degrees, countless boyfriend and two husbands finally got too sick this weekend. He had been pacing the house and howling for a couple of days so I took him to the vet and got a prognosis of growths in the jaw that were preventing him from eating. It wasn’t going to get any better and he wasn’t probably going to survive surgery at his age, weight and condition, so the only humane thing to do was to give the poor faithful animal to his peace. Even knowing it was the right and honorable thing to do, it sucked. I cried and the vet was very kind and respectful, but I felt like a ten-year-old again, snuffling and petting his head. He looked godawful, too: skinny, hairless, snaggle-toothed and unwashed. Even his fleas left him. Sad state of affairs for such a magnificent animal to come to that. Especially after the death of The Fish, I was just bereft. Now I keep thinking that I’m seeing cats underfoot, but it will be a sweater thrown on a chair, or a trick of the light or my own black socks.
This came hard after a weeklong negotiation for time. I think this must be the purview of new parents – you always have to negotiate for time. I traded dishes and laundry back for two hours a day. It might not sound like a good deal, but my brains are mush by the end of the week. I can do dishes and laundry; I can’t grade or hold much of a sustained thought (and grading essays – even the Freshman variety – requires sustained thought). So far, it feels like a good trade. We traded our family friend, the Nanny, a dollar an hour raise for Fridays. If I can get through this week and next, I might live. Hopefully, I’ll be saner than when I began. Sanity is worth an extra dollar an hour and laundry on weekends, believe me.
And this year we’re doing those terribly suburban Christmas cards with the photo of the family on them. It took a couple of hours yesterday to take a bunch of photos with our friend the photographer (but we all had a glass of wine and it was fun). Those hours, too, will save me a great deal of time when I go to do Christmas cards this year and don’t have to inscribe each with these long scrawling letters written in haste promising a better letter. We haven’t descended to the family letter yet, but might have to, just to fulfill my desire for written correspondence over the holidays. I can hear Papa Zook’s vehement objection already, nonetheless, as soon as I get the mail merge sorted out on the computer, days of Christmas cards will be reduced to hours. Because that’s another part of the deal – starting Christmas in November so that I can have a decent December. The shopping is more fun when it doesn’t resemble a Battan Death March with a Visa and a travel schedule that looks like Bob Hope on a bender.
So we’ll plunge into the holiday season with more time to experience it with Connor. The Grinch he loved, but it kept him up a little late, which was fine because he slept late. In fact, we’ve been folding real food into his baby cereal lately: little bits of roast chicken and potato, asparagus, broccoli, carrots. Yesterday, I mashed up some stir-fry and fed him nearly a half-cup of food before his eyes glazed over and he started in on the Banana Mango Surprise. He slept again last night, all night. I awakened to the sound of my alarm clock, which has been really only an extended snooze button for 8 months. So his dinners have gotten more substantial and so has my sleep. A nice tradeoff, I think.
It’s all just in the art of the deal.
Okay, yeah, so after the rest of the shit that happened last week that I’ll eventually get around to euphemizing, my 19-year-old cat, my friend and companion from my adolescence to my maturity, through four states, three degrees, countless boyfriend and two husbands finally got too sick this weekend. He had been pacing the house and howling for a couple of days so I took him to the vet and got a prognosis of growths in the jaw that were preventing him from eating. It wasn’t going to get any better and he wasn’t probably going to survive surgery at his age, weight and condition, so the only humane thing to do was to give the poor faithful animal to his peace. Even knowing it was the right and honorable thing to do, it sucked. I cried and the vet was very kind and respectful, but I felt like a ten-year-old again, snuffling and petting his head. He looked godawful, too: skinny, hairless, snaggle-toothed and unwashed. Even his fleas left him. Sad state of affairs for such a magnificent animal to come to that. Especially after the death of The Fish, I was just bereft. Now I keep thinking that I’m seeing cats underfoot, but it will be a sweater thrown on a chair, or a trick of the light or my own black socks.
This came hard after a weeklong negotiation for time. I think this must be the purview of new parents – you always have to negotiate for time. I traded dishes and laundry back for two hours a day. It might not sound like a good deal, but my brains are mush by the end of the week. I can do dishes and laundry; I can’t grade or hold much of a sustained thought (and grading essays – even the Freshman variety – requires sustained thought). So far, it feels like a good trade. We traded our family friend, the Nanny, a dollar an hour raise for Fridays. If I can get through this week and next, I might live. Hopefully, I’ll be saner than when I began. Sanity is worth an extra dollar an hour and laundry on weekends, believe me.
And this year we’re doing those terribly suburban Christmas cards with the photo of the family on them. It took a couple of hours yesterday to take a bunch of photos with our friend the photographer (but we all had a glass of wine and it was fun). Those hours, too, will save me a great deal of time when I go to do Christmas cards this year and don’t have to inscribe each with these long scrawling letters written in haste promising a better letter. We haven’t descended to the family letter yet, but might have to, just to fulfill my desire for written correspondence over the holidays. I can hear Papa Zook’s vehement objection already, nonetheless, as soon as I get the mail merge sorted out on the computer, days of Christmas cards will be reduced to hours. Because that’s another part of the deal – starting Christmas in November so that I can have a decent December. The shopping is more fun when it doesn’t resemble a Battan Death March with a Visa and a travel schedule that looks like Bob Hope on a bender.
So we’ll plunge into the holiday season with more time to experience it with Connor. The Grinch he loved, but it kept him up a little late, which was fine because he slept late. In fact, we’ve been folding real food into his baby cereal lately: little bits of roast chicken and potato, asparagus, broccoli, carrots. Yesterday, I mashed up some stir-fry and fed him nearly a half-cup of food before his eyes glazed over and he started in on the Banana Mango Surprise. He slept again last night, all night. I awakened to the sound of my alarm clock, which has been really only an extended snooze button for 8 months. So his dinners have gotten more substantial and so has my sleep. A nice tradeoff, I think.
It’s all just in the art of the deal.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Like No-one's Lookin'
Last Friday, I sent off the manuscript to my book. Well, returned it to the publisher after edits is more like it. That piece of work has taken years to produce and years to refine. Then another year to re-vision, take apart, put back together and send off with a wish. I’ve heard other writers refer to their books as their “children,” and indeed I’ve had this one longer than my living child, with whom it is now in competition for attention. When I began the revision process, Connor was just born, mewling and drinking in the sounds, visions and sustenance of his new life. Poor baby, he already had competition.
I found partway through the process that I was enjoying the work again. I thought I might never go back to that kind of academic pondering, testing and concluding. I thought that perhaps my time for such things and patience at building that work was past. I’m delighted to find that I’m wrong, that I still have a life of the mind that burns, not with a hard, gemlike flame, but the reassuring crackle of a hearth fire. This isn’t anymore where I have to prove myself a genius, but an intellect still on fire. Not the consuming sort, but the warming sort, that is sustaining and not scorching.
Not that it’s not still immense effort that the last push of effort required a great deal of fuel to consume. My grading slowed down to a two-week-turnaround, my drycleaning is still where I left it down the street, and I’ve been eating my lunches out of cans and off the salad bar at the school. For whole days I’ve fretted and twitched, while others I sat comatose with the effort. Nonetheless, the troublesome creature is off my desk.
But then I found my son underfoot, absent-mindedly picked him up and found that he’s turned into a very different creature. He’s about to walk, is fascinated with everything from the coasters off the living room table to the candy box I put on the end of my fingers a few days before Halloween. He claps his hands, giggles when you blow on his belly and bounces. A lot of babies love their bouncing chairs. This baby is a veritable bouncing machine. He bounces in his bouncy seat like there’s no tomorrow to bounce in. He bounces when he’s happy, when he wakes up from his nap, and to express pleasure. He bounces like no-one's looking, to quote a colleage. I am overwhelmed at the sheer force of life in his little legs and the little bright eyes bobbing over his pacifier as he bounces through the living room, standing first near a chair, then near the coffee table. His energy confounds me. Like his father, I’m feeling the effects of months of broken sleep and too many early wake-up calls. Like his father, I’m still entirely smitten with this little creature.
There are days, now that the manuscript is done and shipped off, where I put on sweats and just clamber about the living room with him while he bounces from one thing to another. The up and down, stretching of limbs and backbones, kneebones acclimating to his growing weight and the enthusiasm of his joy is good for these old bones.
And life goes on. Life without the manuscript is a hazy thing, unmarked by the passage of completed chapter revisions, the clear goals and easy markers of success. From here, life is marked in soups made and consumed, stacks of papers graded and replaced with others, dinners made, parties thrown and cleaned up after, conversations had and added to. And someday, maybe even someday soon, there will be a new project, with new markers of success and new challenges.
In the meantime, I think I’ll bounce a little. I think I'll bounce like no-one's looking.
I found partway through the process that I was enjoying the work again. I thought I might never go back to that kind of academic pondering, testing and concluding. I thought that perhaps my time for such things and patience at building that work was past. I’m delighted to find that I’m wrong, that I still have a life of the mind that burns, not with a hard, gemlike flame, but the reassuring crackle of a hearth fire. This isn’t anymore where I have to prove myself a genius, but an intellect still on fire. Not the consuming sort, but the warming sort, that is sustaining and not scorching.
Not that it’s not still immense effort that the last push of effort required a great deal of fuel to consume. My grading slowed down to a two-week-turnaround, my drycleaning is still where I left it down the street, and I’ve been eating my lunches out of cans and off the salad bar at the school. For whole days I’ve fretted and twitched, while others I sat comatose with the effort. Nonetheless, the troublesome creature is off my desk.
But then I found my son underfoot, absent-mindedly picked him up and found that he’s turned into a very different creature. He’s about to walk, is fascinated with everything from the coasters off the living room table to the candy box I put on the end of my fingers a few days before Halloween. He claps his hands, giggles when you blow on his belly and bounces. A lot of babies love their bouncing chairs. This baby is a veritable bouncing machine. He bounces in his bouncy seat like there’s no tomorrow to bounce in. He bounces when he’s happy, when he wakes up from his nap, and to express pleasure. He bounces like no-one's looking, to quote a colleage. I am overwhelmed at the sheer force of life in his little legs and the little bright eyes bobbing over his pacifier as he bounces through the living room, standing first near a chair, then near the coffee table. His energy confounds me. Like his father, I’m feeling the effects of months of broken sleep and too many early wake-up calls. Like his father, I’m still entirely smitten with this little creature.
There are days, now that the manuscript is done and shipped off, where I put on sweats and just clamber about the living room with him while he bounces from one thing to another. The up and down, stretching of limbs and backbones, kneebones acclimating to his growing weight and the enthusiasm of his joy is good for these old bones.
And life goes on. Life without the manuscript is a hazy thing, unmarked by the passage of completed chapter revisions, the clear goals and easy markers of success. From here, life is marked in soups made and consumed, stacks of papers graded and replaced with others, dinners made, parties thrown and cleaned up after, conversations had and added to. And someday, maybe even someday soon, there will be a new project, with new markers of success and new challenges.
In the meantime, I think I’ll bounce a little. I think I'll bounce like no-one's looking.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Falling
There’s a scene in Monty Python’s holy grail set amongst a plague. No great wonder, plagues swept through Europe like colds through a nursery school. Python’s twisted little riff on the plague years involves some old guy being drug out of his house and protesting “I’m not dead yet . . . I’m feeling much better . . . I think I’ll go for a walk . . .I feel Happy!!!”
Well, today, I feel happy.
Don’t know when it happened or why, but as uncool as it is to bitch that you’re having a hard time, it’s even uncooler to go about actually admitting to happiness. So I won’t beleaguer the point. Might have something to do with a) it’s not Monday, b)I got some sleep this weekend, not as much as I could have, but enough, c) I went to Thriller dance rehearsal yesterday. It’s like a scene out of “High School Musical,” corny as hell and great fun. Not to mention a great workout d) I’m running a 5K race tomorrow for breast cancer research and feel virtuous, and e) had a great week of getting things done and talking to friends, f) my students actually studied for their midterm and many of them aced it, and g) Dan and I had a couple of great talks and no-one wants to kill the other this week. It’s like things hit an equilibrium, or like I did. The weather finally cooled off a little, the mood in the house cooled off a little, the mood at the school cooled of a little and I chilled out a little. It’s hard to tell, but I think it’s that last one that’s most important.
When I was a kid, I couldn’t be bothered to care about or do anything that didn’t grab my attention. I’d just disappear behind a book and be gone. Somewhere in the last ten years, I found my inner twitch, though, and the bugger bloody makes me crazy. Everyone else too. I can guarantee that half the reason I’ve been grumpier than a treed cat in the rain is that I think there’s shit I ought to be doing and that I’m not doing it. Maybe its cause I got a lot of it done, but I’m chillin like a Martini this week. I don’t know how long it’ll last but I’m gonna roll with it for a while.
My mom often quotes some philosopher who says “let death be your advisor,” the idea being that you don’t stress or fuss about that which doesn’t matter. I’ve never really dealt much with death nor had any fears of it. Mocked it every Halloween I went costumed as a death thing. Matter of fact, a couple of years ago, I went as death for Halloween. I love Halloween. That year was tops, though. I was death, Dan was a Borg (complete with foam rubber costuming, tubes, wires and a shaved head) and we made a punchbowl of Bloody Mary’s and threw a great party. Then I got trumped when our 7-foot friend, Harley, showed up as dead and I had to cede that perhaps my version of death was like the “dia de los muertos” death – kinda little and impish. Because I was also studying 17th century poetry, we joked about my being the “little death” – a 17th century euphemism for orgasm.
That Halloween has yet to be topped til last year when, 5 months preggers, I did the Zombie dance and ended up at the local watering hole afterwards to drink soda water with lime and totter about in my zombie makeup amongst the elaborately costumed folk who’d either danced with me or come out to see it. Doing it again this year kinda reminds me of why I like Halloween. Grown adults get to put on costumes and go about doing things they wouldn’t otherwise. You get to play dead: not the real dead with the soul-wrenching, bone-grinding grief that we all know that death brings, but the mockery that we make of it to thumb our noses at it. It’s the same spirit that produced “Scary Movie,” Python’s “Holy Grail,” and every bad-B horror flick that camps up the dead. It’s like a Tarot deck where the Death card isn’t disaster, it’s just change, the end of something and the beginning of another. This week has been the end of something and the beginning of another, and I’ll gladly paint my face and get my ghoul on for the holidays.
It seems to be in the very air, too. The winds have changed and smell like rain and cool winds, old leaves and damp asphalt. I go visit houses that smell like good cheese and pumpkin, hot tea and cinnamon, with some baked goods just to remind you that the great winter feast holidays are just around the corner. The halls of the college are filled with activity and smell like coffee and the order of an academic semester underway, but without the frantic, desperate activity of the beginning and end, just the slow roll of time marching towards the holidays.
And that makes me happy.
Well, today, I feel happy.
Don’t know when it happened or why, but as uncool as it is to bitch that you’re having a hard time, it’s even uncooler to go about actually admitting to happiness. So I won’t beleaguer the point. Might have something to do with a) it’s not Monday, b)I got some sleep this weekend, not as much as I could have, but enough, c) I went to Thriller dance rehearsal yesterday. It’s like a scene out of “High School Musical,” corny as hell and great fun. Not to mention a great workout d) I’m running a 5K race tomorrow for breast cancer research and feel virtuous, and e) had a great week of getting things done and talking to friends, f) my students actually studied for their midterm and many of them aced it, and g) Dan and I had a couple of great talks and no-one wants to kill the other this week. It’s like things hit an equilibrium, or like I did. The weather finally cooled off a little, the mood in the house cooled off a little, the mood at the school cooled of a little and I chilled out a little. It’s hard to tell, but I think it’s that last one that’s most important.
When I was a kid, I couldn’t be bothered to care about or do anything that didn’t grab my attention. I’d just disappear behind a book and be gone. Somewhere in the last ten years, I found my inner twitch, though, and the bugger bloody makes me crazy. Everyone else too. I can guarantee that half the reason I’ve been grumpier than a treed cat in the rain is that I think there’s shit I ought to be doing and that I’m not doing it. Maybe its cause I got a lot of it done, but I’m chillin like a Martini this week. I don’t know how long it’ll last but I’m gonna roll with it for a while.
My mom often quotes some philosopher who says “let death be your advisor,” the idea being that you don’t stress or fuss about that which doesn’t matter. I’ve never really dealt much with death nor had any fears of it. Mocked it every Halloween I went costumed as a death thing. Matter of fact, a couple of years ago, I went as death for Halloween. I love Halloween. That year was tops, though. I was death, Dan was a Borg (complete with foam rubber costuming, tubes, wires and a shaved head) and we made a punchbowl of Bloody Mary’s and threw a great party. Then I got trumped when our 7-foot friend, Harley, showed up as dead and I had to cede that perhaps my version of death was like the “dia de los muertos” death – kinda little and impish. Because I was also studying 17th century poetry, we joked about my being the “little death” – a 17th century euphemism for orgasm.
That Halloween has yet to be topped til last year when, 5 months preggers, I did the Zombie dance and ended up at the local watering hole afterwards to drink soda water with lime and totter about in my zombie makeup amongst the elaborately costumed folk who’d either danced with me or come out to see it. Doing it again this year kinda reminds me of why I like Halloween. Grown adults get to put on costumes and go about doing things they wouldn’t otherwise. You get to play dead: not the real dead with the soul-wrenching, bone-grinding grief that we all know that death brings, but the mockery that we make of it to thumb our noses at it. It’s the same spirit that produced “Scary Movie,” Python’s “Holy Grail,” and every bad-B horror flick that camps up the dead. It’s like a Tarot deck where the Death card isn’t disaster, it’s just change, the end of something and the beginning of another. This week has been the end of something and the beginning of another, and I’ll gladly paint my face and get my ghoul on for the holidays.
It seems to be in the very air, too. The winds have changed and smell like rain and cool winds, old leaves and damp asphalt. I go visit houses that smell like good cheese and pumpkin, hot tea and cinnamon, with some baked goods just to remind you that the great winter feast holidays are just around the corner. The halls of the college are filled with activity and smell like coffee and the order of an academic semester underway, but without the frantic, desperate activity of the beginning and end, just the slow roll of time marching towards the holidays.
And that makes me happy.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
The Thriller Dance
One of my favorite 80’s film noir Sci-Fi flicks is Bladerunner. Starring a painfully young Harrison Ford stars as the specially created police force agent Decker, and Sean Young as an achingly beautiful human-like robot. The tale is about the other robots who, designed for off-world labor, are not allowed on Earth. When they break the law and return home – usually violently -- Decker “retires” them. They don’t go willingly. One tries to strangle him to death with a pair of gorgeous thighs, another with a karate chop to the neck. And those are just the ladies. The men try to shoot him, throw him off buildings, break his fingers, and beat him to an inch of his life. Even Young’s character Rachael, gets a good shot in with a cannon of a handgun in perfect lipstick, a smashing 1940’s-era suit, and a coat with a huge fuzzy collar.
It seems that these creatures, while “more human than human,” nonetheless have a four-year life span. The most resplendent off these illegal, childlike denizens of mother earth, and their leader, is Roy, who grabs his creator by the head and intones “I want more life f_____” right before he squeezes him to death. The censors substitute the word “father.” Those of us who saw the director’s cut know that the substitution doesn’t necessarily mar the intent of the moment, but does subtly shift it into the Frankensteinian motif the film evokes. This being October and closing in on Halloween, it’s a good time to view such crazy cool stuff again.
So, being Halloween season, it’s time for rehearsals of Michael Jackson’s Thriller that this fair city’s young and interesting will perform in the streets of downtown again this year. I went and began learning it all over again. The rehearsals have all the excitement of the high school musical (I think they just put a film out of that, too), all breathless, a little sweaty and a mind to “getting the feet right.” Dan, bless his heart, took the baby with whom I was five months pregnant last year when I did this. It was a great kickoff to a great weekend that started Thursday night with a celebratory soda with friends, the dance rehearsals, a Friday Day at the Spa Dan gave me as a birthday present, a Friday night academic talk, a late, late Friday night on the porch talking about Deconstruction, the Saturday morning Farmer’s market, a great day at the legendary huge barbecue of a local millionaire, and Dan’s band’s gig at the old watering hole with 50 of my favorite people in attendance. Sunday, we had chicken dinner with friends (who had raised the chicken themselves and to whom I took a conciliatory plate of pesto pasta with fresh basil from the garden), then Sunday night with my favorite boys.
Props to Dan, Heidi, and our good friends Thad and Rebecca who made it all possible. After working for two weeks straight grading papers and trying to move mountains through the growing pains of our school’s IT problems, it was a welcome return to all the other good things in life. It was exhausting and I think I averaged 4 or 5 hours of sleep for a week, but I came out of the other end so refreshed and energized, it felt like I’d slept for a week.
It seems I want more life, f_______.
It also seems that I got it. No, not seems, did. Now by Saturday, I was really pathetically jonesing for some time with my baby boy. I missed him so badly Saturday night that I had to flip open my phone to see his picture a couple of times while out at the gig. It made Sunday all that much sweeter when from sunup to sundown, I got all day playtime and snuggling with Connor and Dan. It was a good day. They all were. A great weekend. A stellar weekend. The kind of weekend that puts soul and body back together and makes them ready to face the work coming down the pike again.
And I’m happy. Oh, I know that the papers are coming, that the students are starting to wear out and get cranky and blame me, that the school’s IT issues and my half-luddite attempts to get around them aren’t going away anytime soon, that I’m going to have more on my academic plate than I feel like I can handle, and that the editing of my manuscript will be torturous and needs to get done this week.
But for now, I’m just thrilled.
It seems that these creatures, while “more human than human,” nonetheless have a four-year life span. The most resplendent off these illegal, childlike denizens of mother earth, and their leader, is Roy, who grabs his creator by the head and intones “I want more life f_____” right before he squeezes him to death. The censors substitute the word “father.” Those of us who saw the director’s cut know that the substitution doesn’t necessarily mar the intent of the moment, but does subtly shift it into the Frankensteinian motif the film evokes. This being October and closing in on Halloween, it’s a good time to view such crazy cool stuff again.
So, being Halloween season, it’s time for rehearsals of Michael Jackson’s Thriller that this fair city’s young and interesting will perform in the streets of downtown again this year. I went and began learning it all over again. The rehearsals have all the excitement of the high school musical (I think they just put a film out of that, too), all breathless, a little sweaty and a mind to “getting the feet right.” Dan, bless his heart, took the baby with whom I was five months pregnant last year when I did this. It was a great kickoff to a great weekend that started Thursday night with a celebratory soda with friends, the dance rehearsals, a Friday Day at the Spa Dan gave me as a birthday present, a Friday night academic talk, a late, late Friday night on the porch talking about Deconstruction, the Saturday morning Farmer’s market, a great day at the legendary huge barbecue of a local millionaire, and Dan’s band’s gig at the old watering hole with 50 of my favorite people in attendance. Sunday, we had chicken dinner with friends (who had raised the chicken themselves and to whom I took a conciliatory plate of pesto pasta with fresh basil from the garden), then Sunday night with my favorite boys.
Props to Dan, Heidi, and our good friends Thad and Rebecca who made it all possible. After working for two weeks straight grading papers and trying to move mountains through the growing pains of our school’s IT problems, it was a welcome return to all the other good things in life. It was exhausting and I think I averaged 4 or 5 hours of sleep for a week, but I came out of the other end so refreshed and energized, it felt like I’d slept for a week.
It seems I want more life, f_______.
It also seems that I got it. No, not seems, did. Now by Saturday, I was really pathetically jonesing for some time with my baby boy. I missed him so badly Saturday night that I had to flip open my phone to see his picture a couple of times while out at the gig. It made Sunday all that much sweeter when from sunup to sundown, I got all day playtime and snuggling with Connor and Dan. It was a good day. They all were. A great weekend. A stellar weekend. The kind of weekend that puts soul and body back together and makes them ready to face the work coming down the pike again.
And I’m happy. Oh, I know that the papers are coming, that the students are starting to wear out and get cranky and blame me, that the school’s IT issues and my half-luddite attempts to get around them aren’t going away anytime soon, that I’m going to have more on my academic plate than I feel like I can handle, and that the editing of my manuscript will be torturous and needs to get done this week.
But for now, I’m just thrilled.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Time Bandit
Tom Hank's character in Castaway says flippantly that "we live and die by time." This is of course, right before he gets thrown onto a desert island for years to contemplate the error of his ways and slow his act down. It's October already and I find myself awash in ungraded essays, unmarked homework assignments, unanswered letters and emails, unfinished projects and understanding people who nonetheless can't understand why I'm so freaked out by all the "un's" in that sentence.
When I began this blog it was to explore and translate an almost ineffable experience Рmotherhood Рinto an intellectual and critical space Рnot an academic one, but one that might be palatable and tolerable to those with no patience with sentimentality and no truck with too much literary or social theory. Great idea. I just haven't got bleeding time to do it, really. I'm stealing time right now from a combination of essay grading and class prep to bank out at least something to post, even if it's not of the multiply revised quality of my earlier work. More than that, I have denigrated to conversations about housekeeping, fights with spouses, shoe shopping and fussing about having no time as a working mother. Nothing could be more boring, pass̩, clich̩d, or so yesterday. Yes, there were those essays on Virginia Woolf, on Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley and her monsters, on properly appreciating men who do housework, but I'll be damned if I can say that they have been primary in my posts, or that I've done anything but piss off the husband who was lovingly doing my laundry and dishes.
I guess I could say that I'm frustrated a bit in my project and my other uses of time because I'm always going to be robbing Peter to pay Paul and having to explain why. It's not the robbing – I'm used to theft – it's all the bloody explanations. Thieves steal because they want stuff. It’s that simple, really. I steal time because I want stuff. I spent yesterday evening with my husband because I hadn't seen him in four days. But explain that to the students whose papers didn't get back to them and it seems a bit hollow. As far as caring how tough, cool, rock and roll, or hip me or my life is, well there will be time to care once I can find an evening baby sitter who isn't in our social crowd and doesn't want to go to all the same gigs we do. In that my engineer friend, Madame M, was right. Time pressures squeeze the silly and pretentious right out of you. More importantly, when you do have a moment to pause and enjoy how happy your baby son is at the moment, or how much you might love your husband or how cool you think his new idea about eating healthier, setting a dinnertime and eating at the table is, all you can feel is the slowly rising panic of having yet another thing to have to squeeze into a day and you invevitably say the wrong thing. Or at least I do.
But then the baby smiles and it’s like opening a door in your house to find out that there’s a whole other wing full of jewels, art and antiques.
He’s fun and he’s charming, like that Capuchin monkey you’ve always wanted, you know the one who throws poo in the house. But then you and the monkey get trained about the poo throwing and it starts being easier. Connor’s never thrown poo at me, but I did have a rather sizeable turd roll out of the diaper midday once and land half on my foot and half on the floor. With the shit-butted baby spinning around in my favorite chair and the turd on my toes, I had to call Dan in for backup baby holding and turd retrieval. Yeah, that was a good day. I felt competent that day.
And this is the easy stuff. I know where he’s sleeping at night, he’s too little to steal the phone, dial Nepal or order pizza, have a pot connection, drink, smoke, snort anything other than his bathwater or get addicted to anything more potent than Enfamil Lipil AR. I can still hold the cherished dream that he’ll make it to college and get through to choose a professional school; he has yet to tell me he’s dropping out of high school to tour Europe. A Mr. L, an older friend with two college age sons, took umbrage to my article on the gender gap in colleges and universities. “When its in your home,” he said, “ it ceases to be an abstract issue and becomes very personal.” I think about this while I review my perfect parent dreams of our baby going to law school. Of course, first there’s grade school and before that, getting the rest of his teeth.
Yes, yes, yes, I’d do it again in a heartbeat, but it teaches you humility and what sleepless really looks like after three months of cumulative effect. It teaches you that you might have been cool, but it’s hard to feel competent with spit-up on your shoulder or shit on your feet. It’s hard to feel cool, calm and collected when your to-do list is kind of like those bathroom towel rollers. As soon as I take something off, there’s something new on and some stuff just stays there til I pay a babysitter to sit with my cheeky little monkey so mom can finish her book manuscript. Today that seems like a good investment of time. Ask Peter, though, he’s the one I robbed to do it.
When I began this blog it was to explore and translate an almost ineffable experience Рmotherhood Рinto an intellectual and critical space Рnot an academic one, but one that might be palatable and tolerable to those with no patience with sentimentality and no truck with too much literary or social theory. Great idea. I just haven't got bleeding time to do it, really. I'm stealing time right now from a combination of essay grading and class prep to bank out at least something to post, even if it's not of the multiply revised quality of my earlier work. More than that, I have denigrated to conversations about housekeeping, fights with spouses, shoe shopping and fussing about having no time as a working mother. Nothing could be more boring, pass̩, clich̩d, or so yesterday. Yes, there were those essays on Virginia Woolf, on Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley and her monsters, on properly appreciating men who do housework, but I'll be damned if I can say that they have been primary in my posts, or that I've done anything but piss off the husband who was lovingly doing my laundry and dishes.
I guess I could say that I'm frustrated a bit in my project and my other uses of time because I'm always going to be robbing Peter to pay Paul and having to explain why. It's not the robbing – I'm used to theft – it's all the bloody explanations. Thieves steal because they want stuff. It’s that simple, really. I steal time because I want stuff. I spent yesterday evening with my husband because I hadn't seen him in four days. But explain that to the students whose papers didn't get back to them and it seems a bit hollow. As far as caring how tough, cool, rock and roll, or hip me or my life is, well there will be time to care once I can find an evening baby sitter who isn't in our social crowd and doesn't want to go to all the same gigs we do. In that my engineer friend, Madame M, was right. Time pressures squeeze the silly and pretentious right out of you. More importantly, when you do have a moment to pause and enjoy how happy your baby son is at the moment, or how much you might love your husband or how cool you think his new idea about eating healthier, setting a dinnertime and eating at the table is, all you can feel is the slowly rising panic of having yet another thing to have to squeeze into a day and you invevitably say the wrong thing. Or at least I do.
But then the baby smiles and it’s like opening a door in your house to find out that there’s a whole other wing full of jewels, art and antiques.
He’s fun and he’s charming, like that Capuchin monkey you’ve always wanted, you know the one who throws poo in the house. But then you and the monkey get trained about the poo throwing and it starts being easier. Connor’s never thrown poo at me, but I did have a rather sizeable turd roll out of the diaper midday once and land half on my foot and half on the floor. With the shit-butted baby spinning around in my favorite chair and the turd on my toes, I had to call Dan in for backup baby holding and turd retrieval. Yeah, that was a good day. I felt competent that day.
And this is the easy stuff. I know where he’s sleeping at night, he’s too little to steal the phone, dial Nepal or order pizza, have a pot connection, drink, smoke, snort anything other than his bathwater or get addicted to anything more potent than Enfamil Lipil AR. I can still hold the cherished dream that he’ll make it to college and get through to choose a professional school; he has yet to tell me he’s dropping out of high school to tour Europe. A Mr. L, an older friend with two college age sons, took umbrage to my article on the gender gap in colleges and universities. “When its in your home,” he said, “ it ceases to be an abstract issue and becomes very personal.” I think about this while I review my perfect parent dreams of our baby going to law school. Of course, first there’s grade school and before that, getting the rest of his teeth.
Yes, yes, yes, I’d do it again in a heartbeat, but it teaches you humility and what sleepless really looks like after three months of cumulative effect. It teaches you that you might have been cool, but it’s hard to feel competent with spit-up on your shoulder or shit on your feet. It’s hard to feel cool, calm and collected when your to-do list is kind of like those bathroom towel rollers. As soon as I take something off, there’s something new on and some stuff just stays there til I pay a babysitter to sit with my cheeky little monkey so mom can finish her book manuscript. Today that seems like a good investment of time. Ask Peter, though, he’s the one I robbed to do it.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Trash Talkin
Ayup. So yesterday I felt kinda flat, blah, no juice, no spark of enlivening, fortifying, galvanizing zing to make my soul sing and my fingers move at anything other than a reticent pace. And I didn’t really feel like I had anything to say, and I had Connor and he was starting to cry anyway, so I emailed my lame effort to myself to post this morning and, well, then . . . the cat peed on the Roomba.
Now this is perhaps the oddest 21st century sentence I’ve had to utter since the turn of the century. Yes, we have a Roomba. It’s a small circular vacuum cleaner with sensors in the front like those mechanical pets. When it hits a wall, it turns around. It’ll keep turning through your rooms til the place is vacuumed. It helps if you’ve given the place a good once-over before you begin, but the thing is pretty cool for keeping those wads of cat hair, bits of string, dust bunnies and general schmutz off the baby, who is now all over the floor.
We have a Roomba because a couple of neighbors got married, were renovating their house and loaned us this exquisite example of modern convenience while they were still picking wood nails off their floor. After a few rounds, we looked at all the hair wound in the thing and realized that there was no way we could return it in anyway near it’s original state and purchased them a new one. The device is plugged in next to my desk, which is incidentally near the cat box. Since I didn’t really hang out at my desk last night, I didn’t notice that the cat box hadn’t been cleaned yet that day – which is stupid since I’m in charge of the downstairs cat box. I just never see the damn thing. And when I do, I’m busting ass so hard to use the little time I have wisely that the last thing I’m going to do is go play with the kitty poo using a spoon.
I would like to think that if we keep that box pristine, my ancient 19-year-old spiny, spiky, wobbly beast of a hairball yakking cat is going to stop peeing on things,. In fact, though, I think this is vengeance. I think the cat has intuited (as they will) my affection for the vacuum cleaner that just runs itself and is jealous. I also think he’s got Alzheimer’s or whatever version of it cats get. He’ll sit and stare at the wall, hunched like an old man. I think he’s trying to dream up things to pee on.
So my lovely husband and I find this as I’m trying to get out of the house this morning. I have a new routine – pile a bag or two of recycling into the trunk of the car on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Between porch sitting, band practice, cooking, cat food, plastic juice bottles and pickle jars, our recycling is the stuff of epic. The city used to pick it up and sell it to a recycling plant, but decided that kickbacks to its road builders would be a more useful investment of city funds. So now we have no bullet train and no recylcling service but great roads by which to haul the crap to the center yourself. Being as I have some extra times in these morning, I take a few bags down to the center on my way to school. It adds about 15 minutes to my morning commute, but the dwindling pile bottles and cans is worth it.
But there’s nothing like a peed-on Roomba to bring out the worst in two people loading recyclables into a trunk. Nothing seems to be quite a deconstructive moment than deciding which bins, bags, and baby wipes to use to rid the world of too many beer bottles.
So the recycling is three bags less and my day is just starting, but at least yesterday’s sleepy blahs are gone and I’m ready to do good in the world again. Even if its one bloody bag of trash and one thorough Roomba cleaning with alcohol and Q-tips at a time.
Now this is perhaps the oddest 21st century sentence I’ve had to utter since the turn of the century. Yes, we have a Roomba. It’s a small circular vacuum cleaner with sensors in the front like those mechanical pets. When it hits a wall, it turns around. It’ll keep turning through your rooms til the place is vacuumed. It helps if you’ve given the place a good once-over before you begin, but the thing is pretty cool for keeping those wads of cat hair, bits of string, dust bunnies and general schmutz off the baby, who is now all over the floor.
We have a Roomba because a couple of neighbors got married, were renovating their house and loaned us this exquisite example of modern convenience while they were still picking wood nails off their floor. After a few rounds, we looked at all the hair wound in the thing and realized that there was no way we could return it in anyway near it’s original state and purchased them a new one. The device is plugged in next to my desk, which is incidentally near the cat box. Since I didn’t really hang out at my desk last night, I didn’t notice that the cat box hadn’t been cleaned yet that day – which is stupid since I’m in charge of the downstairs cat box. I just never see the damn thing. And when I do, I’m busting ass so hard to use the little time I have wisely that the last thing I’m going to do is go play with the kitty poo using a spoon.
I would like to think that if we keep that box pristine, my ancient 19-year-old spiny, spiky, wobbly beast of a hairball yakking cat is going to stop peeing on things,. In fact, though, I think this is vengeance. I think the cat has intuited (as they will) my affection for the vacuum cleaner that just runs itself and is jealous. I also think he’s got Alzheimer’s or whatever version of it cats get. He’ll sit and stare at the wall, hunched like an old man. I think he’s trying to dream up things to pee on.
So my lovely husband and I find this as I’m trying to get out of the house this morning. I have a new routine – pile a bag or two of recycling into the trunk of the car on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Between porch sitting, band practice, cooking, cat food, plastic juice bottles and pickle jars, our recycling is the stuff of epic. The city used to pick it up and sell it to a recycling plant, but decided that kickbacks to its road builders would be a more useful investment of city funds. So now we have no bullet train and no recylcling service but great roads by which to haul the crap to the center yourself. Being as I have some extra times in these morning, I take a few bags down to the center on my way to school. It adds about 15 minutes to my morning commute, but the dwindling pile bottles and cans is worth it.
But there’s nothing like a peed-on Roomba to bring out the worst in two people loading recyclables into a trunk. Nothing seems to be quite a deconstructive moment than deciding which bins, bags, and baby wipes to use to rid the world of too many beer bottles.
So the recycling is three bags less and my day is just starting, but at least yesterday’s sleepy blahs are gone and I’m ready to do good in the world again. Even if its one bloody bag of trash and one thorough Roomba cleaning with alcohol and Q-tips at a time.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Laps
It’s calm under the waves, in the blue of my oblivion. – Fiona Apple
Yesterday, I went swimming, as I usually do twice a week, for a bout a half an hour. I did 20 laps – 33 is a mile – again, like I usually do. If I get there with enough time, I’ll do the whole mile. But mostly the point is to get into the water, move the blood around, look at no-one, talk to no-one, see no-one. If you ever see me in there, don’t worry: I’m not wearing my glasses and my goggles are foggy from the bathroom soap I use to rinse the chlorine off of them. I’d worry about anyone seeing me, but I’m usually underwater, well at least the bits of me of which I have less reason to be proud. But, in the condom cap and goggles, it wouldn’t really matter what the bits below the bra looked like – it would all appear slightly insectoid.
I love my time in the water. I didn’t know that I would. We had a pool when I was little – we were living with my grandparents – and in the myriad apartment complexes we inhabited before and after that. I remember swimming lessons at 5 years of age. I was a skinny kid, though, they were all at 7 in the morning, and under-appreciated by the skinny kid who couldn’t stay warm in the pool. I came flapping out, blue-lipped and shivering once to go snug with my mom. She sent me back in saying, “just swim faster, you’ll warm up.” Later on in the summer, with my now water-proofed self able to cruise around the family pool with confidence, we could always sun like lizards on the pool deck, warming and swimming and eating, like primordial creatures.
I suppose that’s why I decide to swim when I was pregnant with Connor. I knew that my lack of will power with all manner of fried food and my recent separation from all form of distilled beverages and cigarettes would make me want to munch. I knew I would need to do something to keep from swelling that dude in Dune who had to have an air pump in his suit to keep his fat ass buoyant enough to walk. I also needed something I could do at seven months pregnant and after doing the Thriller zombie dance downtown at five months, was pretty sure that it wouldn’t be aerobics. Everyone and their cocktail guests wanted that I should do yoga. Everyone. If I hadn’t had a course conflict with my downtown class, I’d have had to listen to it till I acquiesced, or was drug -- kicking, screaming and munching on microwave popcorn –to the mats.
The swimming has an added benefit in all that cool blue, though. It’s calming and head clearing. This is a good thing for a pregnant woman or one with a new baby. It’s the one 45 minutes a day where no-one can find me. The cell phone is off and not only am I in the bowels of a beautiful old stone building, I’m underwater in an ancient and algae-stained body of water. It’s about as away as you can get and the pool stays warm up through November or December. When I lose my desire to clamber into cold water in the middle of winter, there’s always biking again. If I wear my swimming goggles and my Ipod, I’m sure no-one will recognize me, let alone bug me.
I’ve used other spaces for this in other lives. There was the racquetball court in the NYU gym. It was a big, white room, empty and cavernous, just right for beating the mess out of a little blue ball, some handstands, some stretching, some flurried attempts at running after the ball, some zen-calm volleys. I went there for the exercise, yes, for the moving of the blood and the strengthening of limbs. I also went for that getting-away-from-everyone head-clearing property of a large space that you get to have all to yourself because you’re moving quickly in it. I think at the time I was writing my dissertation in an apartment full of my husband’s employees. I did many times love having the business in the dining room, living room, etc. But it was hard to get some time to yourself to think. And with space in New York City being at such a premium, a large soothing-to-the-soul white room would have been cheap at twice what folks paid their shrinks. Free for all students, I'm surprised I only had to stand in line once or twice to use it.
So a little exercise is good for a lady and the cleared headspace means I’m less likely to scream at or maim someone. These days of late nights, early mornings, fussy teething babies, busy husbands and stressed-out-friends, it helps if I can keep my cool. Yes, exercise for young women will improve their health, their interactions with others, keep their endorphins up, increase their self-esteem, reduce the number who allow themselves to be beaten or abused, and clear their minds now and then. In a near-40 academic, it seems to be the difference between crippling neurosis, too many bad habits, sleep problems and divorce -- the “if I don’t settle my shit out, my husband is going to divorce me” kind of solution.
And you know what, it’s kinda calm down there, in the blue, between the devil and the deep blue . . .
Yesterday, I went swimming, as I usually do twice a week, for a bout a half an hour. I did 20 laps – 33 is a mile – again, like I usually do. If I get there with enough time, I’ll do the whole mile. But mostly the point is to get into the water, move the blood around, look at no-one, talk to no-one, see no-one. If you ever see me in there, don’t worry: I’m not wearing my glasses and my goggles are foggy from the bathroom soap I use to rinse the chlorine off of them. I’d worry about anyone seeing me, but I’m usually underwater, well at least the bits of me of which I have less reason to be proud. But, in the condom cap and goggles, it wouldn’t really matter what the bits below the bra looked like – it would all appear slightly insectoid.
I love my time in the water. I didn’t know that I would. We had a pool when I was little – we were living with my grandparents – and in the myriad apartment complexes we inhabited before and after that. I remember swimming lessons at 5 years of age. I was a skinny kid, though, they were all at 7 in the morning, and under-appreciated by the skinny kid who couldn’t stay warm in the pool. I came flapping out, blue-lipped and shivering once to go snug with my mom. She sent me back in saying, “just swim faster, you’ll warm up.” Later on in the summer, with my now water-proofed self able to cruise around the family pool with confidence, we could always sun like lizards on the pool deck, warming and swimming and eating, like primordial creatures.
I suppose that’s why I decide to swim when I was pregnant with Connor. I knew that my lack of will power with all manner of fried food and my recent separation from all form of distilled beverages and cigarettes would make me want to munch. I knew I would need to do something to keep from swelling that dude in Dune who had to have an air pump in his suit to keep his fat ass buoyant enough to walk. I also needed something I could do at seven months pregnant and after doing the Thriller zombie dance downtown at five months, was pretty sure that it wouldn’t be aerobics. Everyone and their cocktail guests wanted that I should do yoga. Everyone. If I hadn’t had a course conflict with my downtown class, I’d have had to listen to it till I acquiesced, or was drug -- kicking, screaming and munching on microwave popcorn –to the mats.
The swimming has an added benefit in all that cool blue, though. It’s calming and head clearing. This is a good thing for a pregnant woman or one with a new baby. It’s the one 45 minutes a day where no-one can find me. The cell phone is off and not only am I in the bowels of a beautiful old stone building, I’m underwater in an ancient and algae-stained body of water. It’s about as away as you can get and the pool stays warm up through November or December. When I lose my desire to clamber into cold water in the middle of winter, there’s always biking again. If I wear my swimming goggles and my Ipod, I’m sure no-one will recognize me, let alone bug me.
I’ve used other spaces for this in other lives. There was the racquetball court in the NYU gym. It was a big, white room, empty and cavernous, just right for beating the mess out of a little blue ball, some handstands, some stretching, some flurried attempts at running after the ball, some zen-calm volleys. I went there for the exercise, yes, for the moving of the blood and the strengthening of limbs. I also went for that getting-away-from-everyone head-clearing property of a large space that you get to have all to yourself because you’re moving quickly in it. I think at the time I was writing my dissertation in an apartment full of my husband’s employees. I did many times love having the business in the dining room, living room, etc. But it was hard to get some time to yourself to think. And with space in New York City being at such a premium, a large soothing-to-the-soul white room would have been cheap at twice what folks paid their shrinks. Free for all students, I'm surprised I only had to stand in line once or twice to use it.
So a little exercise is good for a lady and the cleared headspace means I’m less likely to scream at or maim someone. These days of late nights, early mornings, fussy teething babies, busy husbands and stressed-out-friends, it helps if I can keep my cool. Yes, exercise for young women will improve their health, their interactions with others, keep their endorphins up, increase their self-esteem, reduce the number who allow themselves to be beaten or abused, and clear their minds now and then. In a near-40 academic, it seems to be the difference between crippling neurosis, too many bad habits, sleep problems and divorce -- the “if I don’t settle my shit out, my husband is going to divorce me” kind of solution.
And you know what, it’s kinda calm down there, in the blue, between the devil and the deep blue . . .
Monday, September 10, 2007
Dan the Man
After last week’s blog, Dan told me that he’d kind of liked what I wrote, but that he felt like he’d been left completely out of the equation I had described. I explained to him that last week’s blog was a trimmed-down political rant that almost veered in socialism and that I’d been focusing more on the experience of everywoman and not myself, specifically.
As a fairly affluent working mom with a very supportive husband and wonderful friends who keep offering to baby-sit, my experience is not entirely representative.
I want to drop a word of thanks to my dear husband, whom I love madly, who sometimes stays out too late and is rather limp and somewhat limited the next day, but who always comes back and does the dishes, the laundry, the yard, and takes care of Connor for my Sunday morning sleep-in or Saturday nap. If I really need it, he’s got my back. He doesn’t quite do the dishes or the laundry the way I would, but do the forks, knives and spoons really need to be sorted in different parts of the silverware holder in the dishwasher? Does the laundry really need to be sorted like a librarian on Dexedrine with (Dan’s shorts, Dan’s shirts, Dan’s socks, Dan’s skivvies, my shirts, my skirts, my tights, my skivvies, baby clothes, baby socks, baby blankets, baby towels, our towels, upstairs washcloths, downstairs washcloths, baby bag wash cloths – well, you get the picture). Dan’s housekeeping isn’t as Japanese, center-the-vase, laundry-origami, Rage for Order kind as mine is, but it is not to be discounted either. When I get home, the deeds are done; and done is beautiful. And when did I get to be such a freak anyway?
A recent U.S. News and World Report article cited more supportive spouses as one of the major new tools available for working moms. Alongside flexible work schedules, non-peak hour travel, working at home and starting their own businesses, the article cited spouses who were either willing, or had been convinced they were able, to take on more of the housework. I’m mentally stacking this up against word-of-mouth reports from husbands who say that they’d like to be more involved in the childrearing or housekeeping, but feel like every time they pick up the baby, a sauce pot or a load of clothes, their efforts are so heavily criticized as to be discouraged.
What?!?!?
Why are my over-worked, over-tired, over-zealous ladies in arms doing such a very, very stupid thing (and I don’t believe in the word “stupid” in general, but this is stupid!)? Now, first- time parents can be driven by inexperience and anxiety to a great deal of fussing over the right way to sleep-train, feed, dress clean and properly stimulate our little darlings. We easily cut deals like “Okay, you be boss cause I’m tired of fighting about it.” By the second or third child usually the knowledge base and the understanding that babies are harder to kill, ruin or just maim from ignorance saves the marital energy for other fights. But if the darling man (or woman!) wants to help, let him or her. And don’t fuss. If your laundry is folded like a Shar Pei puppy, so what, at least it’s clean. If the dishwasher, when opened for unloading, looks like a Macy’s houseware’s department exploded, so what! At least it’s done and you have a clean cup for your coffee. If your bathroom is wiped down but not bleached into EPA-report toxicity, so be it! You can at least put the baby in the tub without getting cat hair between his fingers.
Not that our household bliss wasn’t hard won. Some remember the blog a couple of weeks ago fussing and fuming that was quickly taken down and replaced with another. A week of negotiating for a life that works is cheap at twice the price, even if it’s half the laundry detergent. And letting go may be the first step to getting everything you want.
This weekend I stayed up too late, got up too early, did too little on Saturday, tried to make it up on Sunday while Connor peed, pooped, urped and lurped on me. No manuscripts were cleaned up, only little clothes and certain muslin blankets and spots on the floor. Dan did the yards, washed the clothes, put in a much-needed doorknob and latch on a door (babyproofing!) and brought me a lamp. I did some dishes and made some dim-sum – not well, but it’s a work in progress. Sunday night, I had to wash Connor from the series of nasty things he’d done to himself and that’s one load of laundry that should probably be handled with Haz-Mat gear. Nonetheless, the house was happy, got clean, and no-one yelled.
It’s the good life.
As a fairly affluent working mom with a very supportive husband and wonderful friends who keep offering to baby-sit, my experience is not entirely representative.
I want to drop a word of thanks to my dear husband, whom I love madly, who sometimes stays out too late and is rather limp and somewhat limited the next day, but who always comes back and does the dishes, the laundry, the yard, and takes care of Connor for my Sunday morning sleep-in or Saturday nap. If I really need it, he’s got my back. He doesn’t quite do the dishes or the laundry the way I would, but do the forks, knives and spoons really need to be sorted in different parts of the silverware holder in the dishwasher? Does the laundry really need to be sorted like a librarian on Dexedrine with (Dan’s shorts, Dan’s shirts, Dan’s socks, Dan’s skivvies, my shirts, my skirts, my tights, my skivvies, baby clothes, baby socks, baby blankets, baby towels, our towels, upstairs washcloths, downstairs washcloths, baby bag wash cloths – well, you get the picture). Dan’s housekeeping isn’t as Japanese, center-the-vase, laundry-origami, Rage for Order kind as mine is, but it is not to be discounted either. When I get home, the deeds are done; and done is beautiful. And when did I get to be such a freak anyway?
A recent U.S. News and World Report article cited more supportive spouses as one of the major new tools available for working moms. Alongside flexible work schedules, non-peak hour travel, working at home and starting their own businesses, the article cited spouses who were either willing, or had been convinced they were able, to take on more of the housework. I’m mentally stacking this up against word-of-mouth reports from husbands who say that they’d like to be more involved in the childrearing or housekeeping, but feel like every time they pick up the baby, a sauce pot or a load of clothes, their efforts are so heavily criticized as to be discouraged.
What?!?!?
Why are my over-worked, over-tired, over-zealous ladies in arms doing such a very, very stupid thing (and I don’t believe in the word “stupid” in general, but this is stupid!)? Now, first- time parents can be driven by inexperience and anxiety to a great deal of fussing over the right way to sleep-train, feed, dress clean and properly stimulate our little darlings. We easily cut deals like “Okay, you be boss cause I’m tired of fighting about it.” By the second or third child usually the knowledge base and the understanding that babies are harder to kill, ruin or just maim from ignorance saves the marital energy for other fights. But if the darling man (or woman!) wants to help, let him or her. And don’t fuss. If your laundry is folded like a Shar Pei puppy, so what, at least it’s clean. If the dishwasher, when opened for unloading, looks like a Macy’s houseware’s department exploded, so what! At least it’s done and you have a clean cup for your coffee. If your bathroom is wiped down but not bleached into EPA-report toxicity, so be it! You can at least put the baby in the tub without getting cat hair between his fingers.
Not that our household bliss wasn’t hard won. Some remember the blog a couple of weeks ago fussing and fuming that was quickly taken down and replaced with another. A week of negotiating for a life that works is cheap at twice the price, even if it’s half the laundry detergent. And letting go may be the first step to getting everything you want.
This weekend I stayed up too late, got up too early, did too little on Saturday, tried to make it up on Sunday while Connor peed, pooped, urped and lurped on me. No manuscripts were cleaned up, only little clothes and certain muslin blankets and spots on the floor. Dan did the yards, washed the clothes, put in a much-needed doorknob and latch on a door (babyproofing!) and brought me a lamp. I did some dishes and made some dim-sum – not well, but it’s a work in progress. Sunday night, I had to wash Connor from the series of nasty things he’d done to himself and that’s one load of laundry that should probably be handled with Haz-Mat gear. Nonetheless, the house was happy, got clean, and no-one yelled.
It’s the good life.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Triage
A Fench term used in battlefield medicine and emergency rooms, “Triage,” means “to sort.” The practice is simple. Take the most serious cases first – those likely to die without immediate care, the less serious cases after, and then those that can wait until after all the other bleeding is done. There are those, however, that you just have to admit aren’t going to make it and need to be quietly put aside to meet their maker while three others are saved with the surgeon’s time. Busy people all know this: they sort and resort, triage through their day. And Moms are busy people.
Even those who write about how busy moms are getting tired of being so busy at it all the time. I recently read an article in a magazine (can’t remember which one) where a critic was writing about being sick of blogs, articles, books and newspaper articles on motherhood, babyhood, parenting, working moms, part-time working moms and all the vagaries, challenges, bitches and ecstatic joys of all those spaces. I suspect she’s got her bases covered and her balls momentarily all in the air and would really like to just spend some time with her kids without thinking too much about it.
I can totally relate, as my students would say. I’m sure that Madame X is tired of the media onslaught and I have to admit to throwing Parent and Child against the wall because they want to insist that I think about “10 Things To Do With a Toddler” or “Bringing Back Dinner Time.”
Who eats dinner?
I’m catching cold bologna sandwiches while spoon-feeding (and wearing) that gack that passes for baby food into Connor, at the same time doing the mental calculations of how many student papers I’ve read and how many I have left to go before I’m free to collapse in bed with a book. If I have an hour and a half to cook, serve, sit at while wrassling the baby like a greased pig, and clean up after dinner, I’m damn sure going to work on my manuscript or play on the floor with my baby boy. It’s easier, more fun and actually gets something valuable accomplished. Life these days is about getting organized, using time wisely and taking no prisoners when it comes to things, people and projects that aren’t good time investments. Some would say that I’m getting lazy about the housekeeping, some would say I’m getting smart if I want to use that time to write, talk or play with the baby instead. We all have to cut our deals and dance with our devils.
I easily devolve into spitting fury these days, however, at those stupid enough to suggest that the problems of working mothers can be solved with a day planner and a bowl for your keys.
Before school started, I cleared the decks of my closets, bathroom, desks and in-box so that things would roll smoothly. No extraneous and useless pieces of clothing, extra jars, hairpins, etc. would clutter my smooth and facile way to getting ready in the morning, getting out the door and getting to the desk in the afternoon. Things must and would work with only the necessary pieces of equipment – no reaching through the slogs of useless things to get to the essential. No cluttering of the house, no up-and-downstairs with cleaning equipment; each level had what it would need to stay clean.
It is to laugh.
Well, after several weeks, I can tell you that it’s probably working better than if I hadn’t done all that, but I’ve let go many of my Rage for Order projects that seemed to be more about Rage and less about Order. I’m beginning to treat every day, closet and workspace as if I’m going on vacation tomorrow, don’t have time or inclination to deal with extra minutia, and would really play with my baby than have to dig through extraneous bits to find the right bra-underpants-tights-shoes combo to go with a dress or turn 5 dollars worth of ingredients into a vat of food that no-one will want to eat anyway. To hell with it, it’s all black and the summer wardrobe be damned. Ironing has gone the way of the large cooking projects on Sunday. In fact, one of the blouses I bought second-hand while I was in between sizes needed ironing and I managed to shrink out if it before I got an iron to it to wear it. So be it. Moving right along.
Yes, restructuring both our national health and child care systems would take an egregious weight off working moms – probably work out to an extra 5 hours a week one way or the other that they could feed back into their days, and hundreds if not thousands that families could feed back into their budgets for groceries, babysitters, and ironing. All working women know that money buys time – food that is cooked for you, housekeeping, babysitting, car washing. The broke do all their own cooking and cleaning. A few extra dollars and there’s money for take-out now and then and some dry-cleaning.
Because of these kitchen-level economic realities, I’ll be watching our presidential candidates very closely and voting for family-friendly policy making. Til that happens though, I’m going to keep throwing things away that don’t work: plans, clothes, projects, arguments, recipes and housekeeping expectations. I learned this morning, in about a half hour, that there’s little you can’t do with a Swiffer pad and a damp sponge and the rest isn’t that important anyway.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
The Real World Redux
When Dan and I do wash, we put it in the machine, close the lid, and then close the door to the laundry room, which is behind the door to our private home.
This is the appropriate way to wash dirty laundry. You won’t see me out on the front porch with the skivvies anymore than you’ll see that piece I posted yesterday again. It’s going to be, like a pair of skivvies, quietly folded and put away in a drawer. You see, I’ve had the flu since Thursday and have learned a great deal about working through illness. It’s not that this version of the virus makes you want to die; it just saps your will to live. And I notoriously deal poorly with frustration anyway.
As a mode of correction, let me reiterate that my husband is a sweet man who is trying to negotiate an equitable and happy solution to the problems of the two-career household. The transition is usually difficult when I return from the lazy, hazy days of summer to the schedules, workload and diminished housekeeping interest of the school year. This year, we are also trying to ensure that Connor’s needs are met. That’s rather like reiterating the obvious, but I’m afraid it’s as close to our personal washing as you’re going to see right now.
I have a very privileged position: Nanny, supportive husband, somewhat flexible hours (I only really need to be on campus 6-7 hours a day). All that aside, I would say that three or four different women have said that they appreciated my candor – not about the “he said, she said,” business – that’s about as interesting as watching five-year-olds fight about the last stick of gum. But about the “buck up” factor of motherhood: that sick, aching, exhausted, gotta keep-on, keeping on factor of what it’s really like to have two full-time jobs at once. Now, anyone who knows a mom knows this.
So why are all the rest of us so surprised when we either hear one of these women distressed, or we become one of them?
A student approached me in the hall the other day to say she wouldn’t be in class because her baby was sick and she had to go get her from the sitter’s. There was a time I might have internally rolled my eyes and thought: this is why it’s so much easier to get an education before you start a family. Now, knowing the reality of trying to get anything done with sick babies, I’m amazed that people (women?) do it at all. I am also perhaps galvanizing my support for those who find they must manage jobs, childcare, and the demands of a sometimes insensitive and stuck-up educational system as well. I’m going to have to tackle that one next week, I’m sure, because there are reasons for what educators choose in these circumstances, reasons why students must be in attendance and have finished their work. Yet a baby with a fever is a non-negotiable factor, not to mention a very small beloved person who feels badly. If you’re going to make a mother choose between that baby’s welfare and your assignment, the book-learning will lose every time.
I’ve never known any learning curve that was easy and each time Dan and I approach something completely new with this baby, we have to figure it out all over again. He’s teething, he’s sick for the first time, he’s needing to learn to sleep in his own bed, he’s needing to learn to be comfortable with the Nanny, he’s weaning off the Baby Einstein (yes, I read that article that says it causes ADD – mostly the Nanny didn’t like that he’d rather watch toys being played with than play with his own. I had to agree). These baby milestones, precious to us, are also challenging in ways that building businesses and writing classes, lectures, books and articles are not. We find ourselves taxed for patience when we have the least bit of it. We beg for respite from spouses who are equally exhausted, sick, and sleep deprived. Such is life.
So you pop another two Motrin, you have another cup of coffee and you pray that today will be better than yesterday.
This is the appropriate way to wash dirty laundry. You won’t see me out on the front porch with the skivvies anymore than you’ll see that piece I posted yesterday again. It’s going to be, like a pair of skivvies, quietly folded and put away in a drawer. You see, I’ve had the flu since Thursday and have learned a great deal about working through illness. It’s not that this version of the virus makes you want to die; it just saps your will to live. And I notoriously deal poorly with frustration anyway.
As a mode of correction, let me reiterate that my husband is a sweet man who is trying to negotiate an equitable and happy solution to the problems of the two-career household. The transition is usually difficult when I return from the lazy, hazy days of summer to the schedules, workload and diminished housekeeping interest of the school year. This year, we are also trying to ensure that Connor’s needs are met. That’s rather like reiterating the obvious, but I’m afraid it’s as close to our personal washing as you’re going to see right now.
I have a very privileged position: Nanny, supportive husband, somewhat flexible hours (I only really need to be on campus 6-7 hours a day). All that aside, I would say that three or four different women have said that they appreciated my candor – not about the “he said, she said,” business – that’s about as interesting as watching five-year-olds fight about the last stick of gum. But about the “buck up” factor of motherhood: that sick, aching, exhausted, gotta keep-on, keeping on factor of what it’s really like to have two full-time jobs at once. Now, anyone who knows a mom knows this.
So why are all the rest of us so surprised when we either hear one of these women distressed, or we become one of them?
A student approached me in the hall the other day to say she wouldn’t be in class because her baby was sick and she had to go get her from the sitter’s. There was a time I might have internally rolled my eyes and thought: this is why it’s so much easier to get an education before you start a family. Now, knowing the reality of trying to get anything done with sick babies, I’m amazed that people (women?) do it at all. I am also perhaps galvanizing my support for those who find they must manage jobs, childcare, and the demands of a sometimes insensitive and stuck-up educational system as well. I’m going to have to tackle that one next week, I’m sure, because there are reasons for what educators choose in these circumstances, reasons why students must be in attendance and have finished their work. Yet a baby with a fever is a non-negotiable factor, not to mention a very small beloved person who feels badly. If you’re going to make a mother choose between that baby’s welfare and your assignment, the book-learning will lose every time.
I’ve never known any learning curve that was easy and each time Dan and I approach something completely new with this baby, we have to figure it out all over again. He’s teething, he’s sick for the first time, he’s needing to learn to sleep in his own bed, he’s needing to learn to be comfortable with the Nanny, he’s weaning off the Baby Einstein (yes, I read that article that says it causes ADD – mostly the Nanny didn’t like that he’d rather watch toys being played with than play with his own. I had to agree). These baby milestones, precious to us, are also challenging in ways that building businesses and writing classes, lectures, books and articles are not. We find ourselves taxed for patience when we have the least bit of it. We beg for respite from spouses who are equally exhausted, sick, and sleep deprived. Such is life.
So you pop another two Motrin, you have another cup of coffee and you pray that today will be better than yesterday.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Apologies
At 9:30 this morning, I posted my usual blog. At 10:10, I took it down. I apologize to Dan for the post. It was neither dignified nor befitting our 14 years together and was beneath the virtues of discretion and mirth with which I usually post.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
What's Cookin, Good Lookin?
Madonna once said that we live in a material world. It seems mostly, however, to be a visual world. And my world has changed considerably this week.
School officially started this week, complete with roll sheets, first-day lectures, student e-mails, course advising and the rest of my real life as a working mother. Gone are the halcyon days of editing manuscripts at the coffee table while my infant son lolls on the rug. Now it’s the nanny, a tight schedule that puts me back at the house by three, late nights and early mornings. My son has learned to crawl and I find him in improbable places about the living room. No longer content to get himself stuck under the couch, I now find him wandering off the blankets and rug to skitter on the hard wood floor and approach the threshold that divides the front room from my study.
Can you say “baby gate?”
Ours is set up at the wide doorway between the foyer and the front room and looks something like the barrier that sets off viewing spaces at the zoo. My nanny is a painter by calling and I came home to find her painting away, my young son curled in her arms, watching. Another day, he was listening to a Johnny Mercer cd and intently watching from his blankets while she etched some fine lines onto the canvas in black ink. He’s getting “watched” all right, but I suspect he’s doing a lot of watching back.
It reminds me of our first Sunday inHarrow , a northeastern suburb of London Georgia Harrow is home to Harrow school, a prestigious prep school where George Gordon, Lord Byron attended, wrote some of his earliest poems and buried his daughter Ada Harrow countryside to look at. The ladies for their part, gazed right back, stunned and fascinated by these serious little boys in their robes. Both unfamiliar creatures sized each other up from across the cobbled street, ogling and being ogled right back.
French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan developed an idea about seeing and being seen that he called the desire for the Gaze. In Lacanian lexicon, this is always capitalized and means that deep desire to be seen and recognized, to be claimed through vision: the desire to be desired through viewing. Laura Mulvey in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” flips this around to discuss the desire inherent in the act of looking. She does it on purpose, but the desire to see and be seen seems elemental. Even my young son wants you to look at him, to notice him and pay him attention. Even if your vision is otherwise engaged, he wants to be seen.
He also wants to see. He has a yen for lovely women and is an unconscionable flirt when his gaze is returned. He tucks his head, he bats his eyes, he smiles, he giggles. He is a mere 6 months old yet understands the pleasures of looking at and being seen. I suppose this is not so odd. it is with vision that we make our earlier associations with others of our kind, that we know our world (though to many babies, an item is just as likely to be tasted as it is to be seen). I'm definitely curious what I will see in my young son as he continues to grow from infant to baby to child. My pleasure in seeing him is never daunted, yet it will be a very different creature that I see here soon, as my return to school and work changes forever who we are together.
School officially started this week, complete with roll sheets, first-day lectures, student e-mails, course advising and the rest of my real life as a working mother. Gone are the halcyon days of editing manuscripts at the coffee table while my infant son lolls on the rug. Now it’s the nanny, a tight schedule that puts me back at the house by three, late nights and early mornings. My son has learned to crawl and I find him in improbable places about the living room. No longer content to get himself stuck under the couch, I now find him wandering off the blankets and rug to skitter on the hard wood floor and approach the threshold that divides the front room from my study.
Can you say “baby gate?”
Ours is set up at the wide doorway between the foyer and the front room and looks something like the barrier that sets off viewing spaces at the zoo. My nanny is a painter by calling and I came home to find her painting away, my young son curled in her arms, watching. Another day, he was listening to a Johnny Mercer cd and intently watching from his blankets while she etched some fine lines onto the canvas in black ink. He’s getting “watched” all right, but I suspect he’s doing a lot of watching back.
It reminds me of our first Sunday in
French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan developed an idea about seeing and being seen that he called the desire for the Gaze. In Lacanian lexicon, this is always capitalized and means that deep desire to be seen and recognized, to be claimed through vision: the desire to be desired through viewing. Laura Mulvey in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” flips this around to discuss the desire inherent in the act of looking. She does it on purpose, but the desire to see and be seen seems elemental. Even my young son wants you to look at him, to notice him and pay him attention. Even if your vision is otherwise engaged, he wants to be seen.
He also wants to see. He has a yen for lovely women and is an unconscionable flirt when his gaze is returned. He tucks his head, he bats his eyes, he smiles, he giggles. He is a mere 6 months old yet understands the pleasures of looking at and being seen. I suppose this is not so odd. it is with vision that we make our earlier associations with others of our kind, that we know our world (though to many babies, an item is just as likely to be tasted as it is to be seen). I'm definitely curious what I will see in my young son as he continues to grow from infant to baby to child. My pleasure in seeing him is never daunted, yet it will be a very different creature that I see here soon, as my return to school and work changes forever who we are together.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Bridging the Gap
It's late August and school has started around the state. Next week, the college students return to my own Macon State College -- who are mostly women, it seems. The front page of Sunday’s paper contained an article entitled “Bridging the Gender Gap,” detailing admissions offices response to the rise in women attending local area colleges. Mercer University
My question is “why?” If as many women as men are heads of households and our children are reliant upon their earnings for food, clothing, housing, health insurance and education, isn’t is a good thing that more women are getting sufficient education to provide those things to their children?
Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women extols reason as a necessary precedent to virtue, and education of women’s minds necessary to their ability to properly reason. Notice that she didn’t say “football” or “masculine hair” or “lesbianism” or any of those critiques of feminisms we get from the easily agitated. Wollstonecraft was a delight of a human being, revolutionary, free-thinker and mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the novelist who at 17 wrote Frankenstein. The younger Mary was educated in her parent’s library and in her father’s late night philosophical discussions, became steeped in the ideas and ideals of her time, and both explores and challenges those in her novella. Shelley’s monster speaks quite a bit about these ideals, their failure, and his role in the society that has spurned him. The horror of the novel is doubled in the murderous revenge the creature takes as well as the nasty underbelly of a society that tortures him because he is ugly.
The cultural capital of this novel is clear in those green Halloween masks that we see every Fall, though we may owe as much to to Boris Karloff’s makeup for the 1931 film. These are big ideas writ large on a green man, made clear for the masses, but invoking multiple important sources and ideals. Mary Shelley is Wollstonecraft’s own vindication – proof in the pudding of the pudding-maker’s recipe: smart education makes for smart women.
For years, men outpaced women in college attendance and performance although young women traditionally did better in high schools. Now that the ladies have come to college, this is a basis for concern? Perhaps the schools are concerned that there won’t be enough men for the ladies to date and that their enrollment will drop? Perhaps the schools are worried that they’ll be perceived as a less prestigious institution if the ranks become feminized. Nationwide, women make up 57% of the total college population. At Harvard, women’s enrollment is 44% of the total, up from 11% in 1970, atPrinceton they make up 39% of this years’ class, and the Engineering and Applied Science program boasts 32%. MIT boasts 44% enrollment in it’s undergraduate class and 32% in the graduate programs. The ladies are getting educated.
Perhaps some of the difference in male and female enrollment can be traced to the perceptions that fuel ads like a Gymboree ad I saw recently. The cover depicts girls in suit jackets and the boys in sporting clothes. The interior features the same suit-jacketed little girl and a young boy wearing a shirt that says “football” and clutching the same. This is one ad in the whole back-to-school pantheon, but it might say something about the sensibilities with which we are using to prepare our young men versus our young women. Even when hula-hooping these little girls -- I repeat, little girls -- are in suit jackets and look like they’re there to study. The little boys are in sports clothes and look like they’re there to play. For years it has been a question of the girls being serious about school, but the boys going off to college to have big ideas and get good jobs. It seems the worm is turning.
But we mustn’t slide back into ignorance and complacency. I haven’t read Rousseau in years, written a treatise against the death penalty or for immigration since I left college and even now struggle to keep the TV off, the pulp novels on the bedstand, the good book list rolling and the computer screen open to that daunting blank page. Let’s just keep it up, Ladies. The stakes are high and the prizes worth it, especially when we think of what books we’d like our daughters to write.
My question is “why?” If as many women as men are heads of households and our children are reliant upon their earnings for food, clothing, housing, health insurance and education, isn’t is a good thing that more women are getting sufficient education to provide those things to their children?
Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women extols reason as a necessary precedent to virtue, and education of women’s minds necessary to their ability to properly reason. Notice that she didn’t say “football” or “masculine hair” or “lesbianism” or any of those critiques of feminisms we get from the easily agitated. Wollstonecraft was a delight of a human being, revolutionary, free-thinker and mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the novelist who at 17 wrote Frankenstein. The younger Mary was educated in her parent’s library and in her father’s late night philosophical discussions, became steeped in the ideas and ideals of her time, and both explores and challenges those in her novella. Shelley’s monster speaks quite a bit about these ideals, their failure, and his role in the society that has spurned him. The horror of the novel is doubled in the murderous revenge the creature takes as well as the nasty underbelly of a society that tortures him because he is ugly.
The cultural capital of this novel is clear in those green Halloween masks that we see every Fall, though we may owe as much to to Boris Karloff’s makeup for the 1931 film. These are big ideas writ large on a green man, made clear for the masses, but invoking multiple important sources and ideals. Mary Shelley is Wollstonecraft’s own vindication – proof in the pudding of the pudding-maker’s recipe: smart education makes for smart women.
For years, men outpaced women in college attendance and performance although young women traditionally did better in high schools. Now that the ladies have come to college, this is a basis for concern? Perhaps the schools are concerned that there won’t be enough men for the ladies to date and that their enrollment will drop? Perhaps the schools are worried that they’ll be perceived as a less prestigious institution if the ranks become feminized. Nationwide, women make up 57% of the total college population. At Harvard, women’s enrollment is 44% of the total, up from 11% in 1970, at
Perhaps some of the difference in male and female enrollment can be traced to the perceptions that fuel ads like a Gymboree ad I saw recently. The cover depicts girls in suit jackets and the boys in sporting clothes. The interior features the same suit-jacketed little girl and a young boy wearing a shirt that says “football” and clutching the same. This is one ad in the whole back-to-school pantheon, but it might say something about the sensibilities with which we are using to prepare our young men versus our young women. Even when hula-hooping these little girls -- I repeat, little girls -- are in suit jackets and look like they’re there to study. The little boys are in sports clothes and look like they’re there to play. For years it has been a question of the girls being serious about school, but the boys going off to college to have big ideas and get good jobs. It seems the worm is turning.
But we mustn’t slide back into ignorance and complacency. I haven’t read Rousseau in years, written a treatise against the death penalty or for immigration since I left college and even now struggle to keep the TV off, the pulp novels on the bedstand, the good book list rolling and the computer screen open to that daunting blank page. Let’s just keep it up, Ladies. The stakes are high and the prizes worth it, especially when we think of what books we’d like our daughters to write.
Monday, August 6, 2007
On Fear
The Fear's got me again. About the time I thought I had it licked, Wham!! It hit me again like Freddie Krueger back for sequel number 13. This time, it was an article in the Telegraph about children being left in cars and slowly baking to death. It caught me off guard, like most truly horrible things do. As I unwrapped the paper, it was the front inset and I knew that it was part article and part warning by the way it was set up, letter-box style, in the middle of the other stories about Iraq
I couldn’t bear to read more than the first couple of paragraphs about the little red-headed baby whose skin blistered and sweat plastered her hair to her head as she slowly expired and cried and no-one came to help. It must be the worst fear in the world, not only that something horrible and painful will happen to your baby, your heart and the dearest love of your life, but that you will somehow -- through stupidity, forgetfulness or just brain burn -- be responsible.
I think it’s worse because the parents of young children are typically exhausted and more likely to make stupid mistakes while handling a life that is so very fragile. It may also have something to do with having recently lost our little cat to a stupid mistake, a horrible death, when she climbed in the dryer for the umpteenth time and we didn’t see her in there among the dark clothes, turned it on and lost her to a very bad death. It only takes a moment of looking away, to not see the impending tragedy, for the smallest slip of fate, to take a creature you love so dearly.
Connor, my son, is currently teething, which had me up last night every half hour between three and7:30 , when I turned to my husband and begged for relief. He took him for a walk to give me an hour of desperately needed sleep and came back with roses and a smile. How lucky am I to have this kind of support and not have had to be at work at 8 in the morning, try to function and try to pick up the baby at the sitter after a full day on fractured sleep and try not to forget anything. Yet. How lucky am I that with the bowl of oatmeal I have for brains today that I don’t have to do anything more risky than send some photos over the e-mail, begin compiling syllabi and reread a chapter I’m writing. If I screw those things up, I just have to do more work tomorrow. No-one dies. I don’t have to get on the road with this bundle of fat little legs and toothless smiles and wonder what stupid thing I’m going to do to him today. Okay, I forgot to change his diaper and he had to cry for a few minutes before I remembered that it was his naptime, but I count myself ahead of the game even so.
According to the article in the paper, it’s many times high achieving people who leave their children behind in the rush to get everything done. Perhaps its part of the new culture of parenthood that doesn’t want to recognize how messy real life is. With just a new organizational routine, the magazine articles promise, your family, too, can run smoothly. I can see it running so smoothly, with all the ducks in a row, from the6:30 wakeup to the 8am arrival, that you don’t see the baby for the deeds. For those of us who are organizationally obsessed, with a rage for order and a series of checklists and tight schedules, I can see the disasters we try to stave off by our checks and balances, ripping us open from the other end completely.
I could see this being me – is the horrible thing. I so rarely go anywhere without Connor that if he’s not in my hands or line of sight, I feel like I’m missing something. It stops me at doorways and restaurants – what have I forgotten? What happens, though, when I go back to teaching, get into the habit of not having him with me and spend my tightly organized days trying to do in five hours what I used to in eight? I’m tempted to do as Leonard in Memento did, and tattoo Connor’s name on my hand, so that I will remember always to check, to listen, to look for him, to never let him fall in the way of harm that might be waiting for him. I will lose his toothless smiles to the teeth that bite his gums, his babyhood to the world I must give him up to, his innocence to war and money and the brutality of real life. But I pray I will never lose him to my own stupidity of thinking I can fight the messiness or real life with ordered exhaustion that leads to complacency of thinking I’m every going to have it all together again.
I couldn’t bear to read more than the first couple of paragraphs about the little red-headed baby whose skin blistered and sweat plastered her hair to her head as she slowly expired and cried and no-one came to help. It must be the worst fear in the world, not only that something horrible and painful will happen to your baby, your heart and the dearest love of your life, but that you will somehow -- through stupidity, forgetfulness or just brain burn -- be responsible.
I think it’s worse because the parents of young children are typically exhausted and more likely to make stupid mistakes while handling a life that is so very fragile. It may also have something to do with having recently lost our little cat to a stupid mistake, a horrible death, when she climbed in the dryer for the umpteenth time and we didn’t see her in there among the dark clothes, turned it on and lost her to a very bad death. It only takes a moment of looking away, to not see the impending tragedy, for the smallest slip of fate, to take a creature you love so dearly.
Connor, my son, is currently teething, which had me up last night every half hour between three and
According to the article in the paper, it’s many times high achieving people who leave their children behind in the rush to get everything done. Perhaps its part of the new culture of parenthood that doesn’t want to recognize how messy real life is. With just a new organizational routine, the magazine articles promise, your family, too, can run smoothly. I can see it running so smoothly, with all the ducks in a row, from the
I could see this being me – is the horrible thing. I so rarely go anywhere without Connor that if he’s not in my hands or line of sight, I feel like I’m missing something. It stops me at doorways and restaurants – what have I forgotten? What happens, though, when I go back to teaching, get into the habit of not having him with me and spend my tightly organized days trying to do in five hours what I used to in eight? I’m tempted to do as Leonard in Memento did, and tattoo Connor’s name on my hand, so that I will remember always to check, to listen, to look for him, to never let him fall in the way of harm that might be waiting for him. I will lose his toothless smiles to the teeth that bite his gums, his babyhood to the world I must give him up to, his innocence to war and money and the brutality of real life. But I pray I will never lose him to my own stupidity of thinking I can fight the messiness or real life with ordered exhaustion that leads to complacency of thinking I’m every going to have it all together again.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Magnificent Bastard
Saturday night was the debut of my husband’s band, Magnificent Bastard at the local watering hole, The Hummingbird, my first night out with adult beverages and a babysitter in months and a late-night party back at our place that went until dawn. Although I was up late, I had little to drink and thus enjoyed more of the evening, night, dawn, early morning and the next day than I had expected. So I have a couple of realizations:
1) Some might say that my husband was always a magnificent bastard, but now he’s proclaimed it to the world and is making quite a splash being one. I have to admit it’s kind of sexy. Don’t know why and my feminist friends will probably bother me about it.
2) The band I’ve been listening to through a door, wall and floor sound better live on a decent stage with a sound system. They really are good. I suspected it, but can’t really tell when I’m listening to them behind the TV through all the soundproofing.
3) I can still drink, but my long abstinence has taught me that it’s not necessary to drink to excess. Just because some is good does not mean that more is better. I am nevertheless way too fucking old to stay up partying tilsix am whether or not my last two beverages were cups of orange juice.
4) I really do like the guys in the band. On top of being great musicians, they’re each and every one of them absolutely cool, smart and fun guys. This would not be important unless you realize that I spend two evenings a week with them one way or the other and because they’re cool, I don’t even mind the noise.
5) Connor loves music. I wonder if its because he hears so much of it behind doors, floors and walls. To hear it live and clear must be like having an RCA crank phonograph get traded in for a Kenwood stereo with Bose speakers.
6) I still love music, love going out and hanging out, but don’t love tight crowds, fussy old biddies who sit at a bar packed three deep with people trying to get drinks and then give you a dirty look when you brush their sleeves, or freeloaders who tip up and guzzle from the one bottle of bourbon you haven’t finished by 1am, when folks are still coming in to the party. I should have slapped that boy.
7) I owe the overworked and very busy folks at The Rookery an apology. I forgot that my friend paid our second tab and that I had given her cash. No-one needed to go looking for that second credit card receipt as busy as they were.
8) Personal thanks to my trainer, BJ, by whose hard work I was able to wear a pair of jeans on Saturday without giving myself a hernia.
Okay, back to school now and serious things of the mind. Just thought I’d say thanks to Magnificent Bastard for a great show.
1) Some might say that my husband was always a magnificent bastard, but now he’s proclaimed it to the world and is making quite a splash being one. I have to admit it’s kind of sexy. Don’t know why and my feminist friends will probably bother me about it.
2) The band I’ve been listening to through a door, wall and floor sound better live on a decent stage with a sound system. They really are good. I suspected it, but can’t really tell when I’m listening to them behind the TV through all the soundproofing.
3) I can still drink, but my long abstinence has taught me that it’s not necessary to drink to excess. Just because some is good does not mean that more is better. I am nevertheless way too fucking old to stay up partying til
4) I really do like the guys in the band. On top of being great musicians, they’re each and every one of them absolutely cool, smart and fun guys. This would not be important unless you realize that I spend two evenings a week with them one way or the other and because they’re cool, I don’t even mind the noise.
5) Connor loves music. I wonder if its because he hears so much of it behind doors, floors and walls. To hear it live and clear must be like having an RCA crank phonograph get traded in for a Kenwood stereo with Bose speakers.
6) I still love music, love going out and hanging out, but don’t love tight crowds, fussy old biddies who sit at a bar packed three deep with people trying to get drinks and then give you a dirty look when you brush their sleeves, or freeloaders who tip up and guzzle from the one bottle of bourbon you haven’t finished by 1am, when folks are still coming in to the party. I should have slapped that boy.
7) I owe the overworked and very busy folks at The Rookery an apology. I forgot that my friend paid our second tab and that I had given her cash. No-one needed to go looking for that second credit card receipt as busy as they were.
8) Personal thanks to my trainer, BJ, by whose hard work I was able to wear a pair of jeans on Saturday without giving myself a hernia.
Okay, back to school now and serious things of the mind. Just thought I’d say thanks to Magnificent Bastard for a great show.
Back to School
Clarity and closets rarely mix. It was both wrong and sad when I found that I liked my maternity wardrobe better than my real clothes. Of course, these days that doesn’t mean pastel blue checked frocked blouses with bunnies on them, but rather sleek, fitted little nothings in black, red, turquoise and paisleyed or swirled polka-dots. Friends from everywhere sent me choice bits from their own round-bellyed days and voila – cuts and colors I would have never attempted on my own. It was about time for that wake-up call. Something had to be done with the graying collection of black t-shirts, the fraying cuffs and seams of seven-year old white collared shirts, and the sweaters that had never quite fit right. Now that I’ve given up the maternity collection, I miss those colors and patterns like you miss curried lamb after eating bologna sandwiches.
Henry David Thoreau once said, “I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes and not rather a new wearer of clothes.” School kids everywhere often sympathize, though for my three sisters and I this was an exciting season of housekeeping on our wardrobes. After the flurry of trying on everything last stitch in our closets, there was the haggling on shopping day for the jeans, shoes and coolest shirt you would live in for the next year. As the eldest, I suffered from usually handing down more than I could get out of tight budgets, but with some flexibility, a deft needle and a yen for vintage (old) clothes, I managed a middling sartorial presence – nothing brilliant, but passable. Thank God for Cindi Lauper and Madonna. Back in 1985, you could literally wear anything and get away with it.
Several jobs later, I found I had nonetheless never properly learned to shop. The Air Force gave me several suits it wanted me to be proud in, my sister gave me her collection of khakis that she outgrew in high school, Mom bought me my first work clothes and by the time I hit grad school, everything just had to be clean and not look like I’d slept in it. But then, up inNew York
Then last week, I returned from myCalifornia Europe : set out what you think you need and put half of it back. It works every time and you find you don’t overpack. I found I could have cut even that in half. What half of a carryon case teaches you about your clothes is that you have far too many of them sitting around that you don’t use. I came home and raked my closets for all the detritus and tore four garbage bags off the shelves and racks. I find, too, that I haven’t really lost anything, just the crap that was too old, the wrong size or that I’d never really liked.
I’d like to do the same for the rest of my house: broken-handled cups, the gadgets that don’t work, the pasta that’s been in the cupboard for a year, camping gear that we didn’t use last time and probably won’t ever use, knickknacks in drawers, old magazines. I used to do this every time I moved. As a student that was about every 2-four years. Having settled, I find that a clattering layer of plaque has collected in the cupboards and drawers of my home, obscuring those things I do use and making my head feel dusty and cluttered. So the ritual is the same even if the collection has telescoped from shoes, clothes and hair ribbons to blenders and candleholders.
There something still in my internal clock that clears the junk, cleans house, irons shirts, sharpens pencils, lays in canned veggies and a new box of tea and gets ready for the new school year. Summer’s been wonderful, but its scattered loose logics give way to an orderly readiness, the crisp white shirt effect, of the Fall. Of Excel spreadsheets of new budgets, of new files for the piles on the desk (baby sitters, receipts) and of new tasks and resolutions: Finish the bloody manuscript of the book, don’t stay up too late, start looking at pre-schools, test-drive a larger car. Each year’s ritual is a preparation for growth, a clearing of the deck for the next challenge. It makes me wonder whether the divestiture of things isn’t immediately connected to growth.
So my job this fall is to throw out a lot of junk and buy one sleek, sassy dress that I love. Maybe two. What the heck, I’ve got a lot of space in my closet now.
Henry David Thoreau once said, “I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes and not rather a new wearer of clothes.” School kids everywhere often sympathize, though for my three sisters and I this was an exciting season of housekeeping on our wardrobes. After the flurry of trying on everything last stitch in our closets, there was the haggling on shopping day for the jeans, shoes and coolest shirt you would live in for the next year. As the eldest, I suffered from usually handing down more than I could get out of tight budgets, but with some flexibility, a deft needle and a yen for vintage (old) clothes, I managed a middling sartorial presence – nothing brilliant, but passable. Thank God for Cindi Lauper and Madonna. Back in 1985, you could literally wear anything and get away with it.
Several jobs later, I found I had nonetheless never properly learned to shop. The Air Force gave me several suits it wanted me to be proud in, my sister gave me her collection of khakis that she outgrew in high school, Mom bought me my first work clothes and by the time I hit grad school, everything just had to be clean and not look like I’d slept in it. But then, up in
Then last week, I returned from my
I’d like to do the same for the rest of my house: broken-handled cups, the gadgets that don’t work, the pasta that’s been in the cupboard for a year, camping gear that we didn’t use last time and probably won’t ever use, knickknacks in drawers, old magazines. I used to do this every time I moved. As a student that was about every 2-four years. Having settled, I find that a clattering layer of plaque has collected in the cupboards and drawers of my home, obscuring those things I do use and making my head feel dusty and cluttered. So the ritual is the same even if the collection has telescoped from shoes, clothes and hair ribbons to blenders and candleholders.
There something still in my internal clock that clears the junk, cleans house, irons shirts, sharpens pencils, lays in canned veggies and a new box of tea and gets ready for the new school year. Summer’s been wonderful, but its scattered loose logics give way to an orderly readiness, the crisp white shirt effect, of the Fall. Of Excel spreadsheets of new budgets, of new files for the piles on the desk (baby sitters, receipts) and of new tasks and resolutions: Finish the bloody manuscript of the book, don’t stay up too late, start looking at pre-schools, test-drive a larger car. Each year’s ritual is a preparation for growth, a clearing of the deck for the next challenge. It makes me wonder whether the divestiture of things isn’t immediately connected to growth.
So my job this fall is to throw out a lot of junk and buy one sleek, sassy dress that I love. Maybe two. What the heck, I’ve got a lot of space in my closet now.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Road Songs
There we were. It was 5:24pm on Thursday when we ended up in LA rush hour traffic with Connor screaming with all of his five-month-old might and the planes-trains-automobiles weary Dan and I trying to bargain with the gods. “Please just let him fall asleep,” I prayed, “I’ll never touch a drop of red wine again.” Of course that still leaves white wine, and so the gods were unwilling. Connor screamed on. So I did something I swore on several different counts for several different reasons that I’d never do: I unbuckled my seatbelt (please Officer W, don’t lecture, I know I shouldn’t have), climbed into the back seat and sat there the rest of the way, soothing my son. Dan and I said we’d never sit me in the back on a trip. It was over-indulgent to the baby and demeaning to women everywhere -- like walking twelve paces behind the husband and male children. Yet, travel weary people are willing to cut deals, and Dan and I ate crow on this one along with our In-and-Out burgers. It wasn’t the first time and won’t be the last.
I am learning how many crazy things parents do that make no sense to the uninitiated that eventually become casual faire to those new at the game. To be fair, this was one of only two or three 20-minute rough patches in an otherwise idyllic vacation. Connor flew well and dropped off to sleep regularly at his9:30 bedtime, despite the time change. But to be sure, I rode in the back seat on the drive from Los Angeles Palo Alto
And my good friend fromPalo Alto 7:59 when I’m scrambling out of the house to go teach on a Monday morning. Nonetheless, we were all on vacation together, driving and eating and singing. From LA to Sacramento, we visited relatives, stopped in on friends, saw my Grandmother hold Connor in Whittier, drank too much wine and stayed up too late in Palo Alto, watched the sun set and the city lights come up in San Francisco while we ate Fresh Salmon in Daly City, ate Sushi and got lost in ‘Frisco -- driving blind and grousing at each other at the interchange of the 1 and the 280 that we miss again and again, ate Black Forest ham with my aunt and uncle at their ranch in Herald, and partied down with 20 of our old friends and their children in a Sacramento Babypalooza, eating chicken and drinking Aviators and Sierra Nevada while watching the little ones scrabble around with sidewalk chalk and legos.
It was a lot of driving but it was fun – our first family roadtrip. Dan was surprised to find I’d made up a song for the baby:
“There once was a wee little laddy named Connor,
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey . . .”
It’s a song I made up in the shower to keep him happy enough in his Fisher Price Aquarium bouncy chair so that I could at least rinse the shampoo out of my hair and get most of a leg shaved before he started to scream. Singing soothed him, and so I brought out what I could remember of the old Broadway tunes, some of my favorite Police songs, melodies and ditties from favorite moments throughout life. But this one was all Connor’s. He loves to hear the repetition of his name and know that I’m singing to and about him. The versus are fun, too, with a piratical sea chanty turn about them, with our fictitious hero traveling the world to taste the food, wine, women and song of the seven seas, or at least old towns Dan and I have visited or lived in:
“One day he sailed off to the Isle of Manhattan,
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He said, ‘give me a coat now that’s cut in the fashion’"
The kid loves it.
And I’m starting to think, not of those things I swore as a young (and not so young) married chick with time to paint her nails, read the PMLA cover to cover, and sit on the porch without interruption, that I’d never do. But about those I didn’t think I’d get to do. Making up songs with the baby is fun. I was worried that the pressures of writing critical articles, having something intelligent to say despite the mashed sweet potato on my shoulder, and keeping clean a house that gathers dust, houseguests, and dead bugs faster than I can blink, would suck a lot of the joy out of my life. Indeed, it probably will, but there’s always the naughty little song, the picture book or the gooey little kiss and wiggly monkey-baby hug to ease the trouble of the road.
Like all road trips, my summer off with Connor is about to come to an end. It’s time to get back to real life: go back to school, start with the syllabi and paper assignments, bring on the Nanny and iron the white shirts with stiff collars. But it’s been a nice summer, a new trip, another road. We got lost a couple of times, sure, but we had fun, ate some strange things on the road, sang some songs and slept in late. Someday Connor will take his road trips without his Momma, but til then, it’s been a nice ride.
Connor's Song:
"The Roving Sailor"
There Once was a wee little laddy named Connor
Ahoy, ahoy, oh matey
He swam and he sailed he was not a land lubber
Ahoy, ahoy, oh matey
He swam with the fishes, he sailed a small boat and he danced with the wind
Ahoy, ahoy, oh matey
On day when the sun was out shining brightly
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He took his small boat and he went to the islands,
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He fried some plaintain and he ate some bananas and drank all the rum
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
One day he sailed of to the small town of ‘Frisco,
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He said “give me some chowder that’s not made with Crisco
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He stayed at theFairmont
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
One day he went up to his Mum’s townSacramento
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He said “give me a breakfast that’s got some tomato”
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He stayed at the Hyatt and ate all the chicken and drank all the beer
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
One day he sailed off to the Isle of Manhattan,
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He said, “give me a coat now that’s cut in the fashion”
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He drank a martini, and ate a strip steak and danced at the Ritz
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
(Dan’s verse)
He got on the F train and went down to Brooklyn
They asked “Are you buying,” he said “no, I’m just lookin.”
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He crossed the Gawanus, downFifth Avenue
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
One day he sailed up to the small town of Macon
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
Said “give me some barbecue, chicken and bacon”
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He stayed at the Plaza and drank all the bourbon and stayed up til dawn
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
I am learning how many crazy things parents do that make no sense to the uninitiated that eventually become casual faire to those new at the game. To be fair, this was one of only two or three 20-minute rough patches in an otherwise idyllic vacation. Connor flew well and dropped off to sleep regularly at his
And my good friend from
It was a lot of driving but it was fun – our first family roadtrip. Dan was surprised to find I’d made up a song for the baby:
“There once was a wee little laddy named Connor,
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey . . .”
It’s a song I made up in the shower to keep him happy enough in his Fisher Price Aquarium bouncy chair so that I could at least rinse the shampoo out of my hair and get most of a leg shaved before he started to scream. Singing soothed him, and so I brought out what I could remember of the old Broadway tunes, some of my favorite Police songs, melodies and ditties from favorite moments throughout life. But this one was all Connor’s. He loves to hear the repetition of his name and know that I’m singing to and about him. The versus are fun, too, with a piratical sea chanty turn about them, with our fictitious hero traveling the world to taste the food, wine, women and song of the seven seas, or at least old towns Dan and I have visited or lived in:
“One day he sailed off to the Isle of Manhattan,
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He said, ‘give me a coat now that’s cut in the fashion’"
The kid loves it.
And I’m starting to think, not of those things I swore as a young (and not so young) married chick with time to paint her nails, read the PMLA cover to cover, and sit on the porch without interruption, that I’d never do. But about those I didn’t think I’d get to do. Making up songs with the baby is fun. I was worried that the pressures of writing critical articles, having something intelligent to say despite the mashed sweet potato on my shoulder, and keeping clean a house that gathers dust, houseguests, and dead bugs faster than I can blink, would suck a lot of the joy out of my life. Indeed, it probably will, but there’s always the naughty little song, the picture book or the gooey little kiss and wiggly monkey-baby hug to ease the trouble of the road.
Like all road trips, my summer off with Connor is about to come to an end. It’s time to get back to real life: go back to school, start with the syllabi and paper assignments, bring on the Nanny and iron the white shirts with stiff collars. But it’s been a nice summer, a new trip, another road. We got lost a couple of times, sure, but we had fun, ate some strange things on the road, sang some songs and slept in late. Someday Connor will take his road trips without his Momma, but til then, it’s been a nice ride.
Connor's Song:
"The Roving Sailor"
There Once was a wee little laddy named Connor
Ahoy, ahoy, oh matey
He swam and he sailed he was not a land lubber
Ahoy, ahoy, oh matey
He swam with the fishes, he sailed a small boat and he danced with the wind
Ahoy, ahoy, oh matey
On day when the sun was out shining brightly
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He took his small boat and he went to the islands,
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He fried some plaintain and he ate some bananas and drank all the rum
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
One day he sailed of to the small town of ‘Frisco,
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He said “give me some chowder that’s not made with Crisco
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He stayed at the
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
One day he went up to his Mum’s town
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He said “give me a breakfast that’s got some tomato”
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He stayed at the Hyatt and ate all the chicken and drank all the beer
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
One day he sailed off to the Isle of Manhattan,
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He said, “give me a coat now that’s cut in the fashion”
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He drank a martini, and ate a strip steak and danced at the Ritz
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
(Dan’s verse)
He got on the F train and went down to Brooklyn
They asked “Are you buying,” he said “no, I’m just lookin.”
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He crossed the Gawanus, down
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
One day he sailed up to the small town of Macon
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
Said “give me some barbecue, chicken and bacon”
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
He stayed at the Plaza and drank all the bourbon and stayed up til dawn
Ahoy, Ahoy, oh Matey
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Packing Heat
Ack! Argh! Okay, before the philosophers get too pissed and folks think it’s okay to cater to this anti-intellectualism that’s so de rigueur in this country: philosophers do not talk nonsense. They just don’t always have room for babies in their philosophies. For fathers, yes; for women, sometimes. For babies, almost never. Why is this? Is it the poo that puts them off?
I think on this as I’m making a list of what to take on our annual pilgrimage to California, which used to be my home but is now just where all of my family and a lot of old friends live. My home wasCalifornia California Central Valley or freeze my ass off in the San Francisco San Francisco
Packing for a couple of weeks for myself was no big deal – a carry-on and a computer bag. For an infant, it’s ridiculous. I’m shipping a box of diapers and rice cereal to LA where we’ll begin our trip, but we’ll be checking Connor's car seat and his travel bed (doubles as a play pen, nap zone, nighttime retreat and safety zone for non-drool-proofed houses). His little clothes will take hardly any space at all. His gear will take more than all of our clothes put together. Most philosophers have never traveled with an infant as their primary responsibility so the qualities of one pac-n-play over another have no importance to them. To me it's everything. They do not have to choose between a backpack and diaper bag for daytime use, wondering what they would carry keys, bottles, diapers, and a wallet in should they go to dinner with said infant. The mind boggles. The smallest inclusion or deletion could make or break the trip.
So not to harp on material circumstances, but it seems to have some bearing on my existence these days. It does not mean that I do not ponder the nature of truth or that I didn’t read the latest PMLA article on Polyphony (multiple voices and/or influences in a text) with great relish and enjoy the last article on daughters of famous French authors influenced by their fetish for Orientalism. But I do have to find the instructions for breaking down that pac-n-play. I’ll also be carrying chapter 4 of my book to continue revision. I fear that I’m not nearly as far along as I should be and although I probably won’t be able to use the usual time on the plane to go over it, there will probably be some driving time while Connor’s napping that I’ll have had enough of the I-5 landscape and want to look at what the hell I wrote last Fall about Armadale. Of course if I get really bored, I can write up a syllabus or two.
Or I could give myself, husband and son the kind ofCalifornia
I know Kerouac wrote about the joys of the open road and I’ve always sought them either solo or with Dan, but this will be our first road trip as a family. We’ll see if it’s the kind of heat we know or a different one entirely. Neitzche might have some will-to-powering things to say about it, Sarte, about how it can define one's existence, Barthes about the joy of play, Lacan about Jouissance. But are they gonna be able to make up a word for what it will be like for my son to visit his mother's homeland?
I think on this as I’m making a list of what to take on our annual pilgrimage to California, which used to be my home but is now just where all of my family and a lot of old friends live. My home was
Packing for a couple of weeks for myself was no big deal – a carry-on and a computer bag. For an infant, it’s ridiculous. I’m shipping a box of diapers and rice cereal to LA where we’ll begin our trip, but we’ll be checking Connor's car seat and his travel bed (doubles as a play pen, nap zone, nighttime retreat and safety zone for non-drool-proofed houses). His little clothes will take hardly any space at all. His gear will take more than all of our clothes put together. Most philosophers have never traveled with an infant as their primary responsibility so the qualities of one pac-n-play over another have no importance to them. To me it's everything. They do not have to choose between a backpack and diaper bag for daytime use, wondering what they would carry keys, bottles, diapers, and a wallet in should they go to dinner with said infant. The mind boggles. The smallest inclusion or deletion could make or break the trip.
So not to harp on material circumstances, but it seems to have some bearing on my existence these days. It does not mean that I do not ponder the nature of truth or that I didn’t read the latest PMLA article on Polyphony (multiple voices and/or influences in a text) with great relish and enjoy the last article on daughters of famous French authors influenced by their fetish for Orientalism. But I do have to find the instructions for breaking down that pac-n-play. I’ll also be carrying chapter 4 of my book to continue revision. I fear that I’m not nearly as far along as I should be and although I probably won’t be able to use the usual time on the plane to go over it, there will probably be some driving time while Connor’s napping that I’ll have had enough of the I-5 landscape and want to look at what the hell I wrote last Fall about Armadale. Of course if I get really bored, I can write up a syllabus or two.
Or I could give myself, husband and son the kind of
I know Kerouac wrote about the joys of the open road and I’ve always sought them either solo or with Dan, but this will be our first road trip as a family. We’ll see if it’s the kind of heat we know or a different one entirely. Neitzche might have some will-to-powering things to say about it, Sarte, about how it can define one's existence, Barthes about the joy of play, Lacan about Jouissance. But are they gonna be able to make up a word for what it will be like for my son to visit his mother's homeland?
Woolfing it Down
From July 2, 2007 . . .
Something tells me that I have to stop composing my blogs on Mondays. Mondays are for the business of life: making phone calls, doing laundry, getting errands planned, finishing Friday’s work. They make for very satisfyingly busy days but are terrible for the musings of a week’s thoughts. Their work-filled day makes it tough to think or write about anything but work and getting something done to justify the weekend’s revels. And I have some revels to justify. Friday night turned into one of those old fashioned evenings one the porch that didn’t end until the crew came home from last call and4am ticked by on the brass wall clock. Indeed I am too old for such madness, and the collateral damage was severe. Today I am getting done what I didn’t on Saturday. It’s one of those days of housecleaning and getting down to business.
They are bad days for musings.
And musing is what is needed for decent writing. That’s why Virginia Woolf said that a woman must have 500 pounds a year and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. Now I love Virginia Woolf. Woolf was a writer’s writer, part of the famousBloomsbury group of intellectuals, part of the Hogarth Press that translated and published Sigmund Freud’s work in London
Of course, I came out of that post-70’s mood where everyone was thinking that that a writer is just a slacker with a typewriter. But then, so many good books were written by slackers with typewriters: Tom Wolfe, Henry Miller, Ken Kesey. The boom in women’s literature in the 80’s driven by text that were uncovered, lives that were dug out of the past and considered important, and voices amplified by lovely and lively text into enough importance to center a book around. I think here of Amy Tan, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Jane Smiley. Also women had more money to buy such literature and read what the sisters were writing. It was important.
Perhaps I say this because like most women writers, I write amongst a life of laundry, children, work, getting groceries and all the mundane bits that usually interfere with “good” writing, the kind that comes out of thoughts had at2am after long conversations with others at 2am . These are not people that have to get the dishes done and dinner on the table after work. These have the luxury of escaping the mundane for greatness. I think it’s important to remember that Virginia Woolf, although I respect her deeply, was wealthy and never had children. Some critics actually dismiss her from the Canon of women’s writing, or at least feminist writing, for that fact. For what could a childless woman of means know about most women’s experience? Well, she knew enough about it to know that most worked under material conditions that interfered with the production of art. So those who produce art do so under dire pressure of imagination to cut through the demands of work and life to get to the good stuff.
My friends Mr. C and Ms. C were over and Ms. C and I were talking of important things: where to get hair cut, how to make yogurt and where to buy shoes. These things bored Mr. C, not being part of his life or needs and he left us to go talk to some men about man things. I used to talk his way, before I had less time to get shoes and get hair cut. Now this information is important because I need to make these decisions long before I leave the house and strategize the care of my baby while I’m doing them or make sure that I accommodate his needs in my rounds of errands. I must assume that my shift of energies and interests has been determined by my change in circumstances (though I’ve always needed to know where to buy shoes – I didn’t get that shopping gene, have no practice and love shoes).
I have always argued that the things that need interest men and women need not be different, but I find sometimes that our material circumstances do claim different time investments. I’m not sure what this means, as an avid feminist currently nursing a baby. But I can tell you that it’s not a zero-sum gain or loss. I do twice as much now in half the time, but find ways to multitask that I wouldn’t have even considered before: reading e-mails while nursing, cleaning the kitchen while the baby does his floor exercises, writing while he sleeps. The life of men doesn’t always require this doubling of action. I say "always" because there are plenty of fathers out there who are primary caretakers of their children (Hi, Mr. T!).
I don’t want to, but I have to admit that the way I have chosen to parent requires a difference from the life my husband has. Had I not decided to nurse or take a few months off to raise my infant son, they would have been the same. Alas, Dan can’t make milk and I’m the only camel here. Nor could he bear this child. We could have adopted, but then we’d never know what our own child would be. It was a question to which we wanted to find the answer, hence Connor’s arrival the fairly old-fashioned way.
So am I angry? Maybe a little around the edges – I didn’t expect to be sucked in so quickly by a drooling half-smile from this fussy little baby. I didn’t expect to gratefully trade nights out for nights in. And I have been rewarded each time this little critter puts his arm around my neck. You can’t take it to the bank, you can’t wear it and the philosophical intellegencia don’t think it’s interesting.
But they always did talk a lot of nonsense anyway.
Something tells me that I have to stop composing my blogs on Mondays. Mondays are for the business of life: making phone calls, doing laundry, getting errands planned, finishing Friday’s work. They make for very satisfyingly busy days but are terrible for the musings of a week’s thoughts. Their work-filled day makes it tough to think or write about anything but work and getting something done to justify the weekend’s revels. And I have some revels to justify. Friday night turned into one of those old fashioned evenings one the porch that didn’t end until the crew came home from last call and
They are bad days for musings.
And musing is what is needed for decent writing. That’s why Virginia Woolf said that a woman must have 500 pounds a year and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. Now I love Virginia Woolf. Woolf was a writer’s writer, part of the famous
Of course, I came out of that post-70’s mood where everyone was thinking that that a writer is just a slacker with a typewriter. But then, so many good books were written by slackers with typewriters: Tom Wolfe, Henry Miller, Ken Kesey. The boom in women’s literature in the 80’s driven by text that were uncovered, lives that were dug out of the past and considered important, and voices amplified by lovely and lively text into enough importance to center a book around. I think here of Amy Tan, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Jane Smiley. Also women had more money to buy such literature and read what the sisters were writing. It was important.
Perhaps I say this because like most women writers, I write amongst a life of laundry, children, work, getting groceries and all the mundane bits that usually interfere with “good” writing, the kind that comes out of thoughts had at
My friends Mr. C and Ms. C were over and Ms. C and I were talking of important things: where to get hair cut, how to make yogurt and where to buy shoes. These things bored Mr. C, not being part of his life or needs and he left us to go talk to some men about man things. I used to talk his way, before I had less time to get shoes and get hair cut. Now this information is important because I need to make these decisions long before I leave the house and strategize the care of my baby while I’m doing them or make sure that I accommodate his needs in my rounds of errands. I must assume that my shift of energies and interests has been determined by my change in circumstances (though I’ve always needed to know where to buy shoes – I didn’t get that shopping gene, have no practice and love shoes).
I have always argued that the things that need interest men and women need not be different, but I find sometimes that our material circumstances do claim different time investments. I’m not sure what this means, as an avid feminist currently nursing a baby. But I can tell you that it’s not a zero-sum gain or loss. I do twice as much now in half the time, but find ways to multitask that I wouldn’t have even considered before: reading e-mails while nursing, cleaning the kitchen while the baby does his floor exercises, writing while he sleeps. The life of men doesn’t always require this doubling of action. I say "always" because there are plenty of fathers out there who are primary caretakers of their children (Hi, Mr. T!).
I don’t want to, but I have to admit that the way I have chosen to parent requires a difference from the life my husband has. Had I not decided to nurse or take a few months off to raise my infant son, they would have been the same. Alas, Dan can’t make milk and I’m the only camel here. Nor could he bear this child. We could have adopted, but then we’d never know what our own child would be. It was a question to which we wanted to find the answer, hence Connor’s arrival the fairly old-fashioned way.
So am I angry? Maybe a little around the edges – I didn’t expect to be sucked in so quickly by a drooling half-smile from this fussy little baby. I didn’t expect to gratefully trade nights out for nights in. And I have been rewarded each time this little critter puts his arm around my neck. You can’t take it to the bank, you can’t wear it and the philosophical intellegencia don’t think it’s interesting.
But they always did talk a lot of nonsense anyway.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)