Teaching up at the NYU Stern School of Business Business and its Publics second semester writing course, we tried to get the students to deal with questions of their impending corporate life and the rest of the world’s ideals of decency, fair play, and family time. Of course, those young thoroughbreds just wanted to run, not be slowed by niggling concerns of how to balance work and family life. I gotta say, as much as I’d get frustrated at the young men’s assertion that they’d just go get themselves a wife who would deal with family life (and the rather limpid response on the part of the young women to whom this was indirectly directed), I acted just like them. Family life? Now? Don’t you know how busy I am?
One of the readings from that section of our collection was an article on the Confuscian ideal of roundness – of being well rounded not only in action, but in character, in honesty with oneself and others and having a work life that was honorable and important and a family life that was balanced and connected with the rest of your world. Occasionally, our first-generation Asian students would engage with this idea, either as a way of sorting their ideas through the essay or arguing that such notions were bosh in the 21st century. I do remember liking the visual implications of the metaphor, though. Roundness. Round like a donut, or a ripe fruit. Round like your favorite CD, the earth, a coin from a foreign country.
I too, have achieved roundness these days. I have an audacious belly that stands straight out from my achin’ back and mystified hips that rolls and sways with the movements of the little critter inside. This is my official due date, and aside from some emphatic wiggling, the only thing I’ve heard yet from my son, Connor, is that it’s going to be a while. The doc was shaking her head, warning us that if this baby gets too big, I won’t be able to deliver at all. I don’t know what I hate the most, the idea of missing out on all the vagaries and wonders of a normal trip down the Labor and Delivery ward, or having to wait even another day to get this baby in my hands.
Nonetheless, my work deck is cleared, my mother is arriving, the house is room by room not only being cleaned but rewired. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I’m preparing for my incoming infant in style: with a pair of electricians bonking away in the kitchen. They are sweet, fast and exceptionally tidy. Nonetheless, I think we’re all a little mystified and perhaps a little embarrassed to be sharing this week together.
“But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, Walks o'er the dew of yon high.” I’d best re-arrange the Netflix queue one more time and try to get some sleep before morning really breaks.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Friday, February 16, 2007
Not "In Love" but in Love
Virginia Woolf once said that “one cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” She had trouble sleeping though. I wonder if the doyenne of the Bloomsbury group might not have walked into a pond with rocks in her pockets if she’d been able to get some good sleep, as well as a good dinner now and then.
Let me present you with two scenarios. Let’s take the first wherein I’m nine months pregnant and it’s Valentine’s day. My dearest love, my husband and father of my child has been ambivalent about taking me out to a restaurant because I’ve slept fitfully for two months and for the last two days, barely at all. I’ve changed clothes for the evening but my bosom is falling out of my black bias cut top because I’ve had to pull it down so far to cover the ever-expanding belly that is now covered with a pair of black slacks that I must have stolen from Humpty Dumpty. I look like Mother Goose in funeral garb. My pudgy little feet are tightly zipped into boots that took 15 minutes and sounds usually reserved for tennis matches or porno films to get zipped. The hair that’s been braided and pulled back all day has been released and resembles a mop that was used to clean up an oil spill. And this, he gets coerced to take to dinner, with friends. But he’s a trooper. Clean shaven, buttoned into a black silk shirt with dragons on it and pony-tailed, he bounces into the kitchen yelling “Samauri Dan!” By the time the food comes, I’ve been alternately falling asleep on his shoulder and gnawing on it.
Then I didn’t sleep all night. I tried not to be angry, though I was frustrated. I spit cat hair out of my waterglass, threatened to wash everything in our bedroom and bathe a 19-year-old cat for whom it might well be a death sentence. But I got myself under control. I grumpily just chalked it up as par for the course of the last week of pregnancy and left for campus fueled by a combination of frustration, a big, fat to-do list, and a remembrance of how I used to do this in the old days. I was also carrying around a line from Fight Club “When you have insomnia, you’re never really awake or really asleep – nothing seems real” and decided to just deal with the weirdness of the day as it came.
And it was weird. I worked, I fell asleep over my coffee, I visited the mall to pick up new eyeglasses for Dan and stopped by the Goodwill to drop off one last load.
I returned home to find that the love of my life has vacuumed the house, changed the filters in the HVAC, run the fans all day, changed and washed the bed-linen and duvet cover, brushed the cat, wiped down the dusty surfaces upstairs and generally taken my distress so seriously that he has spent his lunch hour and all of his breaks clearing the bedroom of anything that might be interfering with my breathing and keeping me from sleeping. While this was at the time hidden in my frustration at needing to replace my too-short shirt with a longer one (I eventually borrowed one of his) to go see some friends down the block, I turned in at one am or so for a “nap” expecting to be up soon and pacing as usual.
But no, I slept. I slept til I awoke at 5:30. I went down with my book for a yogurt, fell asleep on the couch and woke up at 7:30. 7:30. I think I’m in love.
In Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, there is a character none-too-gently referred to as “Nateley’s Whore,” who is pursued recklessly by man after man, through party after party, who seems interested in neither men, food, parties, booze or any of the other sensual distractions of her social set or their dates. One night, she falls asleep and one of the guys gently tucks her into bed. She awakes in love with him, a phenomenon he didn’t understand until he realized how bone-tired she’d been and that all she’d really wanted during all these crazy parties, during the crazy war where crazy characters like Yossarian pursued crazy ladies who drank too much, was a good night’s sleep.
Not that all of y’all care, but I love this man. Not the “I showed up at his apartment at ten wearing black underwear and nothing else” kind of love from the early days, or the “I think we actually might be able to work out an equitable relationship where neither of us has to trade our self-hood for affection” kind of love. No, this is the same kind of love I felt sitting exhausted next to a stunning plate of (all cooked) Sushi on Wednesday night because although he was tired, it was what I wanted to do for Valentine’s day and we might not be able to do it without a sitter for another 15 years. It’s the kind of love you feel when you wake up after a full night’s sleep for the first time in a week to find that the bad boy you married has turned into one hell of a sweetheart of a husband. If I weren’t going to already, I’d have this man’s baby.
A lot of people discount that when they choose a boyfriend or girlfriend, that they may be choosing a future life’s partner. The end results can affect a person physically, emotionally, financially and intellectually for their entire life. Marry someone and have their baby and you are joined to them forever. If you don’t believe me, talk to someone going through a divorce with a custody battle over a child. Choosing wisely, Grasshopper, is key.
We might talk about gender roles, marriage and childrearing till we’re blue in the face, (and believe me I will) including why there’s something about a bad boy that makes a girl’s heart beat fast. Full grown and self-actualized women are supposed to be above this, though I’m still susceptible to the rascal in both of us. After a good dinner and a good night’s sleep (even if they are on separate nights) I’m going to spend the day thinking – and that might be the best Valentine’s day gift of all.
Let me present you with two scenarios. Let’s take the first wherein I’m nine months pregnant and it’s Valentine’s day. My dearest love, my husband and father of my child has been ambivalent about taking me out to a restaurant because I’ve slept fitfully for two months and for the last two days, barely at all. I’ve changed clothes for the evening but my bosom is falling out of my black bias cut top because I’ve had to pull it down so far to cover the ever-expanding belly that is now covered with a pair of black slacks that I must have stolen from Humpty Dumpty. I look like Mother Goose in funeral garb. My pudgy little feet are tightly zipped into boots that took 15 minutes and sounds usually reserved for tennis matches or porno films to get zipped. The hair that’s been braided and pulled back all day has been released and resembles a mop that was used to clean up an oil spill. And this, he gets coerced to take to dinner, with friends. But he’s a trooper. Clean shaven, buttoned into a black silk shirt with dragons on it and pony-tailed, he bounces into the kitchen yelling “Samauri Dan!” By the time the food comes, I’ve been alternately falling asleep on his shoulder and gnawing on it.
Then I didn’t sleep all night. I tried not to be angry, though I was frustrated. I spit cat hair out of my waterglass, threatened to wash everything in our bedroom and bathe a 19-year-old cat for whom it might well be a death sentence. But I got myself under control. I grumpily just chalked it up as par for the course of the last week of pregnancy and left for campus fueled by a combination of frustration, a big, fat to-do list, and a remembrance of how I used to do this in the old days. I was also carrying around a line from Fight Club “When you have insomnia, you’re never really awake or really asleep – nothing seems real” and decided to just deal with the weirdness of the day as it came.
And it was weird. I worked, I fell asleep over my coffee, I visited the mall to pick up new eyeglasses for Dan and stopped by the Goodwill to drop off one last load.
I returned home to find that the love of my life has vacuumed the house, changed the filters in the HVAC, run the fans all day, changed and washed the bed-linen and duvet cover, brushed the cat, wiped down the dusty surfaces upstairs and generally taken my distress so seriously that he has spent his lunch hour and all of his breaks clearing the bedroom of anything that might be interfering with my breathing and keeping me from sleeping. While this was at the time hidden in my frustration at needing to replace my too-short shirt with a longer one (I eventually borrowed one of his) to go see some friends down the block, I turned in at one am or so for a “nap” expecting to be up soon and pacing as usual.
But no, I slept. I slept til I awoke at 5:30. I went down with my book for a yogurt, fell asleep on the couch and woke up at 7:30. 7:30. I think I’m in love.
In Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, there is a character none-too-gently referred to as “Nateley’s Whore,” who is pursued recklessly by man after man, through party after party, who seems interested in neither men, food, parties, booze or any of the other sensual distractions of her social set or their dates. One night, she falls asleep and one of the guys gently tucks her into bed. She awakes in love with him, a phenomenon he didn’t understand until he realized how bone-tired she’d been and that all she’d really wanted during all these crazy parties, during the crazy war where crazy characters like Yossarian pursued crazy ladies who drank too much, was a good night’s sleep.
Not that all of y’all care, but I love this man. Not the “I showed up at his apartment at ten wearing black underwear and nothing else” kind of love from the early days, or the “I think we actually might be able to work out an equitable relationship where neither of us has to trade our self-hood for affection” kind of love. No, this is the same kind of love I felt sitting exhausted next to a stunning plate of (all cooked) Sushi on Wednesday night because although he was tired, it was what I wanted to do for Valentine’s day and we might not be able to do it without a sitter for another 15 years. It’s the kind of love you feel when you wake up after a full night’s sleep for the first time in a week to find that the bad boy you married has turned into one hell of a sweetheart of a husband. If I weren’t going to already, I’d have this man’s baby.
A lot of people discount that when they choose a boyfriend or girlfriend, that they may be choosing a future life’s partner. The end results can affect a person physically, emotionally, financially and intellectually for their entire life. Marry someone and have their baby and you are joined to them forever. If you don’t believe me, talk to someone going through a divorce with a custody battle over a child. Choosing wisely, Grasshopper, is key.
We might talk about gender roles, marriage and childrearing till we’re blue in the face, (and believe me I will) including why there’s something about a bad boy that makes a girl’s heart beat fast. Full grown and self-actualized women are supposed to be above this, though I’m still susceptible to the rascal in both of us. After a good dinner and a good night’s sleep (even if they are on separate nights) I’m going to spend the day thinking – and that might be the best Valentine’s day gift of all.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Sleep is for the Weak
One thing that really annoys the love of my life these days, according to his blog, is when well-meaning parents suggest that his life will change drastically with fatherhood.
(http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=59775710&blogID=219745336&MyToken=0c7866d0-acf9-44ed-8bd1-dfe3871d296a)
It's pronounced like a Varsity football player bragging about how much action you get once you win a homecoming game, with the combined smugness of those who've been there, taken their lumps and lived to tell about it to those who haven't yet made the team. And it annoys him. Because, well, if you knew us before, that's a big ole "Duh!"
My aggravation this week will be saved for those who suggest that I sleep as much as I can cause I'll never sleep again properly and probably won't average but about five hours of restless half-lidded, so-tired-you're-stupid, exhaustion-induced serial catnaps for the next ten years. The resulting anxiety has given me the "don't average but about five hours of restless half-lidded, so-tired-you're-stupid," exhaustion-induced serial catnaps. I have never had trouble sleeping and now can't manage to fall asleep unless its full daylight and I'm on my computer, working at something with a deadline. I sleep through movies, through e-mails, through electricians drilling holes in my upstairs bedroom. I cannot, however, sleep peaceably in my bed at night.
My good people, I have never slept much. Well, that's not true, there were those first ten years of life and then the three months during the second trimester, but those were long ago and I've forgotten the feel of a rested body. Seriously, at 18, I was working and going to school, at 19 joined the AF and survived Basic Training and Tech School cramming, at 20, I went on night shift and worked from 7pm to 7am , then went off to the college for another three hours of instruction. By the time I was taking my history final, I'd be in full exhaustion-driven hallucinations, getting the test answers from Thomas Jefferson who kindly showed up to coach me through the exam I was sleeping through.
Then there was grad school – a plethora of writing, teaching and school assignment tasks that took 26 hours a day to complete. I was good. I did it in 20. By the time I'd hit New York, and NYU, I had this perfected and could usually throw in a few hours of drinking afterwards. By Sunday, I was wearing out, though, and would need a full 8 hours to patch up the damage so I could do it again next week.
Then the college teaching years when scholarship had to be wrung out of the last dregs of a 4/4 teaching load full of College Composition classes that made even the bravest and most dedicated want to skip town, expatriate to the Bahamas, cornrow one's hair and tend bar for the rest of your life. I still managed to run two student groups, get a crew of students to London, attend conferences four and five at a time and become part of my small town downtown social scene. In fact, I was rather looking forward to this pregnancy of a time of hard-earned rest, recuperation and clean living to undo some of the damage I've done with too much coffee and bourbon and not enough shut-eye.
It started about a month ago, though, when the hour that I'd be up eating yogurt and reading War and Peace gave way to a patchy sleep that went from 11-1:30, 2-2:30, 3-4, 4:30-5:00 and then either 5:30-7 if the electricians were coming and 5:30- 9 if they weren't. On this six hours, I'm supposed to haul around my 8 pound unborn child, finish my classes and course work and be civil to those who smugly suggest that I should sleep now because I'll never sleep again.
Word of advice to those approaching the pregnant: we are tired, we are usually hungry, and we have few reserves for asinine advice like "sleep when you can." What about "What sleeping pill can we take that won't kill our child but will allow us to get through the 1:30-3pm spell?""
Now that would be good advice. But I'm not bitter, just sleepy, and what the hell, sleep is for the weak anyway.
(http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=59775710&blogID=219745336&MyToken=0c7866d0-acf9-44ed-8bd1-dfe3871d296a)
It's pronounced like a Varsity football player bragging about how much action you get once you win a homecoming game, with the combined smugness of those who've been there, taken their lumps and lived to tell about it to those who haven't yet made the team. And it annoys him. Because, well, if you knew us before, that's a big ole "Duh!"
My aggravation this week will be saved for those who suggest that I sleep as much as I can cause I'll never sleep again properly and probably won't average but about five hours of restless half-lidded, so-tired-you're-stupid, exhaustion-induced serial catnaps for the next ten years. The resulting anxiety has given me the "don't average but about five hours of restless half-lidded, so-tired-you're-stupid," exhaustion-induced serial catnaps. I have never had trouble sleeping and now can't manage to fall asleep unless its full daylight and I'm on my computer, working at something with a deadline. I sleep through movies, through e-mails, through electricians drilling holes in my upstairs bedroom. I cannot, however, sleep peaceably in my bed at night.
My good people, I have never slept much. Well, that's not true, there were those first ten years of life and then the three months during the second trimester, but those were long ago and I've forgotten the feel of a rested body. Seriously, at 18, I was working and going to school, at 19 joined the AF and survived Basic Training and Tech School cramming, at 20, I went on night shift and worked from 7pm to 7am , then went off to the college for another three hours of instruction. By the time I was taking my history final, I'd be in full exhaustion-driven hallucinations, getting the test answers from Thomas Jefferson who kindly showed up to coach me through the exam I was sleeping through.
Then there was grad school – a plethora of writing, teaching and school assignment tasks that took 26 hours a day to complete. I was good. I did it in 20. By the time I'd hit New York, and NYU, I had this perfected and could usually throw in a few hours of drinking afterwards. By Sunday, I was wearing out, though, and would need a full 8 hours to patch up the damage so I could do it again next week.
Then the college teaching years when scholarship had to be wrung out of the last dregs of a 4/4 teaching load full of College Composition classes that made even the bravest and most dedicated want to skip town, expatriate to the Bahamas, cornrow one's hair and tend bar for the rest of your life. I still managed to run two student groups, get a crew of students to London, attend conferences four and five at a time and become part of my small town downtown social scene. In fact, I was rather looking forward to this pregnancy of a time of hard-earned rest, recuperation and clean living to undo some of the damage I've done with too much coffee and bourbon and not enough shut-eye.
It started about a month ago, though, when the hour that I'd be up eating yogurt and reading War and Peace gave way to a patchy sleep that went from 11-1:30, 2-2:30, 3-4, 4:30-5:00 and then either 5:30-7 if the electricians were coming and 5:30- 9 if they weren't. On this six hours, I'm supposed to haul around my 8 pound unborn child, finish my classes and course work and be civil to those who smugly suggest that I should sleep now because I'll never sleep again.
Word of advice to those approaching the pregnant: we are tired, we are usually hungry, and we have few reserves for asinine advice like "sleep when you can." What about "What sleeping pill can we take that won't kill our child but will allow us to get through the 1:30-3pm spell?""
Now that would be good advice. But I'm not bitter, just sleepy, and what the hell, sleep is for the weak anyway.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
The Eggheaded and Eggbellied
A good friend of mine from childhood, whom I’ll call “Madame M” wrote this about my last blog entry:
“The good news is you'll be too tired, excited, and in love to worry about which bucket you fit in for quite awhile. :)”
Ah, yes, but Madame M, let me tell you, was raising two stepchildren while pregnant with her first baby, negotiating the loss of her eldest son to an avalanche earlier that year and working full time as an engineer in silicone valley. She loves her children dearly (her little girl was joined by a little boy about three years ago), but still works full time. And alas, well, this kind of examination of culture and its literary evocations is my work. Just to clarify. Hell, they even gave me a Ph.D. in it.
Not that Madame M is the first to grow cranky at this running conversation about styles of motherhood and evocations of “hipness” A very clever Lynn at http://www.thenewhomemaker.com/node/70264 writes:
“Another reason all this bugs me so much is that I was never cool to begin with. Ever. Not a day in my life. Would I like to be cool? When I was a teenager, god yes. I would probably have loved to have been cool right up until I had kids. After that, it SO did not matter any more.
If I *care* about my toddler's eating habits, as in the blurb from that book in the last blog post, there's something wrong with me. I should care more about Manolo Blahnik shoes or snorting coke or my band or my memoir or getting pierced or whatever. Talking about my kids? that's like SO not cool, unless I can somehow link it to something cool like, I dunno, my yoga routine.
And you know what? Screw that.
For instance. I've been a knitter for 35 years and it pissed me off when the Hip Young Urban Knitter thing took off, not because a lot of fun young girls were starting to knit and design--bless em, I'm glad to have them in the knitting sorority!--but because that's who everyone started marketing to, and Square Old Urban Knitters like me were not only marginalized, we were looked down upon.
And now I'm not hip enough for motherhood?! Who the hell ARE these people!”
I love both of these responses because they underline something I’ve been talking about regarding feminism and womanism and all those other isms that to be a girl gets you invited to: the assumption that there is one way to be a feminine person and that it’s fairly homogenous throughout North American mainstream culture. From what I can tell about what goes on in the real world outside of theory textbooks and laundry soap commercials, there are as many ways to be a woman as there are women who are one. There are also as many ways to be a mother as there are mothers who are becoming themselves every day.
Not that a young man becoming a Nietzschean, or a constitutional law scholar or a Republican is not going to closely investigate and discuss these choices. In fact, although there may be a correlation between the way he launders his clothes or puts out the garbage and his personal philosophy, he may rarely make that connection (unless it’s a question of green politics and/or eco-criticism). But motherhood many times claims a correlation between the smallest practices and the philosophies that drive them, as I’ve know little as contentious among the world’s controversies as how (male or female) one chooses to raise one’s children.
Hence my excitement about the conversations at hand.
Okay, so I promised last time to talk about what I thought I’d done well during pregnancy and what I screwed up so here it is:
1) I didn’t lose my mind and eat everything in sight like many of my friends said I should (mostly because you can get away with sporting an extra few pounds), but I did have a chocolate and salami binge over the holidays.
2) I swam weekly, but not twice a week as often as I’d wanted to – class requirements and holiday time constraints being what they are. Every time I swam I felt better. Every time I didn’t, my bones ached and my fingers swelled like those salamis I mentioned earlier.
3) I slept but not nearly enough and now that I’m getting close to the last two weeks of uninterrupted sleep I’ll have for nearly ten years, I’m regretting some of those late nights of staying up just to prove I was still cool.
4) I didn’t get through nearly as many Netflix as I thought I would but I have an extended period of nursing here that I suspect will take me through every egghead, Merchant-Ivory, A&E rerun of every French film I ever missed.
5) I didn’t go back and edit my last scholarly book, but then I didn’t really intend to.
6) I didn’t blog or journal as many of the strangely crazy moments of this process as I should have. It’s renewed my respect for the human body and natural processes. That you can get this big with another being living inside you and not die seems to me pretty heady and cool.
7) I did think about this a lot and mentioned it to a number of people whom I talked to a lot.
8) I hung out with my good friends a lot. I think I will see them less over the next few months and miss those hours of uninterrupted conversation.
9) I learned the value of comfortable shoes.
10) I also learned the value of pretty shoes that just get you into bed with your significant other . . . and the outcome of such adventures.
That’s enough for now. I’ve got some grading to do and some housekeeping. It seems I can’t quite get the place clean enough, of course, I’m working around a physique that looks like I swallowed a hoppity-hop.
“The good news is you'll be too tired, excited, and in love to worry about which bucket you fit in for quite awhile. :)”
Ah, yes, but Madame M, let me tell you, was raising two stepchildren while pregnant with her first baby, negotiating the loss of her eldest son to an avalanche earlier that year and working full time as an engineer in silicone valley. She loves her children dearly (her little girl was joined by a little boy about three years ago), but still works full time. And alas, well, this kind of examination of culture and its literary evocations is my work. Just to clarify. Hell, they even gave me a Ph.D. in it.
Not that Madame M is the first to grow cranky at this running conversation about styles of motherhood and evocations of “hipness” A very clever Lynn at http://www.thenewhomemaker.com/node/70264 writes:
“Another reason all this bugs me so much is that I was never cool to begin with. Ever. Not a day in my life. Would I like to be cool? When I was a teenager, god yes. I would probably have loved to have been cool right up until I had kids. After that, it SO did not matter any more.
If I *care* about my toddler's eating habits, as in the blurb from that book in the last blog post, there's something wrong with me. I should care more about Manolo Blahnik shoes or snorting coke or my band or my memoir or getting pierced or whatever. Talking about my kids? that's like SO not cool, unless I can somehow link it to something cool like, I dunno, my yoga routine.
And you know what? Screw that.
For instance. I've been a knitter for 35 years and it pissed me off when the Hip Young Urban Knitter thing took off, not because a lot of fun young girls were starting to knit and design--bless em, I'm glad to have them in the knitting sorority!--but because that's who everyone started marketing to, and Square Old Urban Knitters like me were not only marginalized, we were looked down upon.
And now I'm not hip enough for motherhood?! Who the hell ARE these people!”
I love both of these responses because they underline something I’ve been talking about regarding feminism and womanism and all those other isms that to be a girl gets you invited to: the assumption that there is one way to be a feminine person and that it’s fairly homogenous throughout North American mainstream culture. From what I can tell about what goes on in the real world outside of theory textbooks and laundry soap commercials, there are as many ways to be a woman as there are women who are one. There are also as many ways to be a mother as there are mothers who are becoming themselves every day.
Not that a young man becoming a Nietzschean, or a constitutional law scholar or a Republican is not going to closely investigate and discuss these choices. In fact, although there may be a correlation between the way he launders his clothes or puts out the garbage and his personal philosophy, he may rarely make that connection (unless it’s a question of green politics and/or eco-criticism). But motherhood many times claims a correlation between the smallest practices and the philosophies that drive them, as I’ve know little as contentious among the world’s controversies as how (male or female) one chooses to raise one’s children.
Hence my excitement about the conversations at hand.
Okay, so I promised last time to talk about what I thought I’d done well during pregnancy and what I screwed up so here it is:
1) I didn’t lose my mind and eat everything in sight like many of my friends said I should (mostly because you can get away with sporting an extra few pounds), but I did have a chocolate and salami binge over the holidays.
2) I swam weekly, but not twice a week as often as I’d wanted to – class requirements and holiday time constraints being what they are. Every time I swam I felt better. Every time I didn’t, my bones ached and my fingers swelled like those salamis I mentioned earlier.
3) I slept but not nearly enough and now that I’m getting close to the last two weeks of uninterrupted sleep I’ll have for nearly ten years, I’m regretting some of those late nights of staying up just to prove I was still cool.
4) I didn’t get through nearly as many Netflix as I thought I would but I have an extended period of nursing here that I suspect will take me through every egghead, Merchant-Ivory, A&E rerun of every French film I ever missed.
5) I didn’t go back and edit my last scholarly book, but then I didn’t really intend to.
6) I didn’t blog or journal as many of the strangely crazy moments of this process as I should have. It’s renewed my respect for the human body and natural processes. That you can get this big with another being living inside you and not die seems to me pretty heady and cool.
7) I did think about this a lot and mentioned it to a number of people whom I talked to a lot.
8) I hung out with my good friends a lot. I think I will see them less over the next few months and miss those hours of uninterrupted conversation.
9) I learned the value of comfortable shoes.
10) I also learned the value of pretty shoes that just get you into bed with your significant other . . . and the outcome of such adventures.
That’s enough for now. I’ve got some grading to do and some housekeeping. It seems I can’t quite get the place clean enough, of course, I’m working around a physique that looks like I swallowed a hoppity-hop.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Hot Mamas and Cool Characters
A colleague's colleague from gradate school, Lisa Hammond Rashley (http://web.infoave.net/~lrashley/), came to our small campus to give a talk on "Babies, Books and Blogs" last Spring. I was not yet pregnant nor did I have any reason to expect that I would be soon. Yet her brilliant talk unsettled me so deeply that I caught myself uttering several juicy expletives and oaths, as well as knocking over half a cup of coffee, at which point I decided to retire to my office to fuss in private. It wasn't so much that she filled us in on the draconian dietary fascism of the ever-popular What to Expect when You're Expecting (more than half a whole-wheat bagel at a time is cheating on the pregnancy diet), or went over some of the mainstream baseline assumptions about motherhood one can put together from soap advertising (we all stand around in sunlit laundry porches waiting for someone to get dirty), it was that mothers were writing back, all over the country, in their blogs and websites, about what real motherhood was really like. And it was controversial and women felt like they'd finally found their voice.
Excuse me, but hadn't we done that back in the 1970's with Roe v. Wade, NOW, Gloria Steinem and the Equal Rights Amendment? The answer that was coming back from the trenches was a resounding "No!"
Despite Women's Studies departments, novels by Alice Walker, Oprah Winfrey's book clubs and a whole level of academic study about what it really meant to be female and/or a woman in this country, huge chunks of the real deal were still left uncovered. Motherhood has some irksome truths about it. For one, not everyone bonds immediately with their squalling little infants while they teethe, cry, shit and peeve their way through the first year of life. Perfectly good mothers find themselves taking some time to bond with the little creatures well enough to not want to just give them back to where ever they came from. And our assumptions about the naturalness and ease of breast feeding are also pretty much shite: it's not uncommon for new mothers to find themselves crying in frustration over their cracked, bleeding, tortuously swollen breasts while both mom and baby figure out what they're doing. Nor is it common, despite our advertising otherwise, for women to really want to obliterate themselves forever despite their overwhelming love for their children.
So to be honest, part of the discussion I'm raising here isn't new, it's just that it's mine. For other points of view (or if you find this blog interesting) you should also check out:
http://www.hipmama.com/node/115
http://literarymama.com/
http://www.mamazine.com/
http://www.salon.com/mothers/mamafesto.html
I'm sure there's something like this out there for new Daddy-dudes who want to buck the system and father on their own terms, though there are some great books out there, including Pop Culture and Alternadad, which my husband (Dan -- you may as well get his real name as I'm sure he'll come up repeatedly) has read cover-to-cover with great excitement.
Okay, so neither Dan nor I are operating in a vaccum of discussion about all of this nor are we the first to put into words the concerns of transitioning from an intellectual, perhaps neurotically self-aware place to the change of parenthood (for Dan's blog, see http://papazook.blogspot.com/2007/01/terms-of-service.html).
For myself, I think I'm just surprised that my belly aches and my feet hurt and that they didn't before now. Seriously, I look like I swallowed a hoppity-hop and am pretty amazed that human skin and bones (let alone innards) are able to do this. If nothing else, the experience has really impressed me with the human body, most of which I usually think about as something to walk the human brain around with.
I'll regale you next time with what I've done right and what I've done wrong, but for now I need a nap. It's the last couple weeks of this adventure, I sleep about an hour at a time as it is and I ain't apologizing for keeling over sideways when I can. I'm told it could be the last time in several years that I have that luxury.
Excuse me, but hadn't we done that back in the 1970's with Roe v. Wade, NOW, Gloria Steinem and the Equal Rights Amendment? The answer that was coming back from the trenches was a resounding "No!"
Despite Women's Studies departments, novels by Alice Walker, Oprah Winfrey's book clubs and a whole level of academic study about what it really meant to be female and/or a woman in this country, huge chunks of the real deal were still left uncovered. Motherhood has some irksome truths about it. For one, not everyone bonds immediately with their squalling little infants while they teethe, cry, shit and peeve their way through the first year of life. Perfectly good mothers find themselves taking some time to bond with the little creatures well enough to not want to just give them back to where ever they came from. And our assumptions about the naturalness and ease of breast feeding are also pretty much shite: it's not uncommon for new mothers to find themselves crying in frustration over their cracked, bleeding, tortuously swollen breasts while both mom and baby figure out what they're doing. Nor is it common, despite our advertising otherwise, for women to really want to obliterate themselves forever despite their overwhelming love for their children.
So to be honest, part of the discussion I'm raising here isn't new, it's just that it's mine. For other points of view (or if you find this blog interesting) you should also check out:
http://www.hipmama.com/node/115
http://literarymama.com/
http://www.mamazine.com/
http://www.salon.com/mothers/mamafesto.html
I'm sure there's something like this out there for new Daddy-dudes who want to buck the system and father on their own terms, though there are some great books out there, including Pop Culture and Alternadad, which my husband (Dan -- you may as well get his real name as I'm sure he'll come up repeatedly) has read cover-to-cover with great excitement.
Okay, so neither Dan nor I are operating in a vaccum of discussion about all of this nor are we the first to put into words the concerns of transitioning from an intellectual, perhaps neurotically self-aware place to the change of parenthood (for Dan's blog, see http://papazook.blogspot.com/2007/01/terms-of-service.html).
For myself, I think I'm just surprised that my belly aches and my feet hurt and that they didn't before now. Seriously, I look like I swallowed a hoppity-hop and am pretty amazed that human skin and bones (let alone innards) are able to do this. If nothing else, the experience has really impressed me with the human body, most of which I usually think about as something to walk the human brain around with.
I'll regale you next time with what I've done right and what I've done wrong, but for now I need a nap. It's the last couple weeks of this adventure, I sleep about an hour at a time as it is and I ain't apologizing for keeling over sideways when I can. I'm told it could be the last time in several years that I have that luxury.
Friday, February 2, 2007
The Spekter in the Attic
Well, it's finally happened. My husband, a clever and thoughtful bloke, who did not spend 18 years in scholarship to become an English professor, who has not written several half-novels and who has not spent night after night in the local Jazz club at open mic poetry night burbling into the stagelights, has been writing more than I have.
This is galling.
I'm a writer who hasn't written in months, a scholar who hasn't researched much beyond IPod repair services lately, and am expecting my first child in 20 days, which I assume is only going to make the rest worse. In fact, I may not care at first that nothing else is getting done. I almost hope so. A relief from a lifetime of guilt over not researching enough while I'm teaching, or teaching well and compassionately enough while I'm researching would be welcome at this point.
The real sticking point is, of course, the usual identity crisis that rises when a scholar and a gentleman becomes a mother. I'm sure you notice the term "gentleman." I eschewed lady-hood a long time ago. As a Victorian scholar, trained in gender roles, identity politics and the socio-cultural affects of gender on individual subjects, I've done with all that "lady-ness." But I almost like the space of the "gentleman." It invokes visions of late-night card games, whiskeys drunk neat in panelled rooms full of books, and a healthy respect for the civic rights and virtues of others. I've even focused my studies on Victorian masculinities and their carry-over into our own 20th and 21st century constructions of masculinity. Since I left my first marriage and some of my youth behind, I decided to grant myself the right to live like a man: to make and invest my own money, get whatever education I decided was necessary for the proper support of my family, keep late hours, choose my own lovers, drink spirits, eat red meat and grease when and where I cared without worrying that I was no longer a size 2, and read whatever the hell I wanted.
And it's been a glorious life. I have a great position at a small liberal arts college in the South, a husband whom I dearly love, a great house in a neighborhood known as much for its social life as its intellectual life and a couple of cats who keep me entertained. I have also done some respectable work as a scholar, presented papers at NYU and Princeton, gotten a couple of articles into prestigious journals, submitted a book for publication, and am continuing my investigations in my field both in print and film materials. Life is good and its about to get better -- I'm about to have a baby.
It's been an easy pregnancy. I had a few weeks of light queasiness but if I ate early and continuously in small amounts, a bit of candied ginger was enough to stave off real nausea. I had some sleepiness and giddiness, but it was like being lightly stoned for three months. It fell during the summer break while my husband and I were traveling and visiting family, and didn't interfere with any research schedules (the book being at the publishers) or any teaching commitments. I've been swimming regularly for exercise, which keeps the swelling of hands and feet --and my temper -- down to a minimum, and the band still practices at my house and drinks on the porch afterward. We do have fewer nights where we come back to the house after being out, bearing a bevvy of new friends for after-parties, and quite frankly, I can't spend the time on my feet that I used to. But I did join the Thriller dance downtown for Halloween, was up til 3:30 New Year's Eve, and kept the poker players company (after working til 11) til about 1am last night. Only the strong or insane survive graduate school, and I'm hoping it's good preparation for parenthood.
Famous French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir said "one is not born a woman, one becomes one." What she meant is that we become one thing or another through repeated acts or performances of who or what we think we are. Women learn to become womanly, men to become manly. You're not just born that way, your culture teaches you how to pull it off properly. Occasionally we become aware that we're doing it and mess with the system just for the fun of it. I've had mothers scoff at my ideas of self-hood, I've read others who are desperately trying to redefine or identify social constructions of motherhood. But I've never tried this before and I'm curious about something:
What happens when the bad-ass bitch babe gets a baby?
We don't even have a lot of science fiction or female action films that try this one out. Sure, there's the Gina Davis character in The Long Kiss Goodnight, and Ripley in Aliens who loses one daughter while asleep in hyperspace only to replace her with Newt in the next film. But what would happen if Laura Croft had a little Tomb Raider? When Evelyn Carnahan (Racheal Wiesz) of The Mummy had her son, she learns swordcraft, but only because she's become the new hosting place of Nefertiti. Funny that, I didn't know Nefertiti was good with knives. Of course, this stacks up against the usual action-adventure role of heroines to end the story with marriage and children, or in the case of The Terminator's Sarah Connor, to be first consigned to a trailer in nowhere'sville and later to a lunatic assylum. You see where I'm coming from, right? The story ain't over and I ain't crazy, so I need another way to be than to just retire into the nursury with the little beastie.
So, as I write up my next Faculty Self-Evaluation, monitor a student's final project, write up something Lacanian for my Brit Lit II students and try to get my house ready for D-day, I'll be thinking about the differences between men and women, what will be important to decide about raising my son, and hoping that I'm able to write something of some sense when its all said and done.
This is galling.
I'm a writer who hasn't written in months, a scholar who hasn't researched much beyond IPod repair services lately, and am expecting my first child in 20 days, which I assume is only going to make the rest worse. In fact, I may not care at first that nothing else is getting done. I almost hope so. A relief from a lifetime of guilt over not researching enough while I'm teaching, or teaching well and compassionately enough while I'm researching would be welcome at this point.
The real sticking point is, of course, the usual identity crisis that rises when a scholar and a gentleman becomes a mother. I'm sure you notice the term "gentleman." I eschewed lady-hood a long time ago. As a Victorian scholar, trained in gender roles, identity politics and the socio-cultural affects of gender on individual subjects, I've done with all that "lady-ness." But I almost like the space of the "gentleman." It invokes visions of late-night card games, whiskeys drunk neat in panelled rooms full of books, and a healthy respect for the civic rights and virtues of others. I've even focused my studies on Victorian masculinities and their carry-over into our own 20th and 21st century constructions of masculinity. Since I left my first marriage and some of my youth behind, I decided to grant myself the right to live like a man: to make and invest my own money, get whatever education I decided was necessary for the proper support of my family, keep late hours, choose my own lovers, drink spirits, eat red meat and grease when and where I cared without worrying that I was no longer a size 2, and read whatever the hell I wanted.
And it's been a glorious life. I have a great position at a small liberal arts college in the South, a husband whom I dearly love, a great house in a neighborhood known as much for its social life as its intellectual life and a couple of cats who keep me entertained. I have also done some respectable work as a scholar, presented papers at NYU and Princeton, gotten a couple of articles into prestigious journals, submitted a book for publication, and am continuing my investigations in my field both in print and film materials. Life is good and its about to get better -- I'm about to have a baby.
It's been an easy pregnancy. I had a few weeks of light queasiness but if I ate early and continuously in small amounts, a bit of candied ginger was enough to stave off real nausea. I had some sleepiness and giddiness, but it was like being lightly stoned for three months. It fell during the summer break while my husband and I were traveling and visiting family, and didn't interfere with any research schedules (the book being at the publishers) or any teaching commitments. I've been swimming regularly for exercise, which keeps the swelling of hands and feet --and my temper -- down to a minimum, and the band still practices at my house and drinks on the porch afterward. We do have fewer nights where we come back to the house after being out, bearing a bevvy of new friends for after-parties, and quite frankly, I can't spend the time on my feet that I used to. But I did join the Thriller dance downtown for Halloween, was up til 3:30 New Year's Eve, and kept the poker players company (after working til 11) til about 1am last night. Only the strong or insane survive graduate school, and I'm hoping it's good preparation for parenthood.
Famous French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir said "one is not born a woman, one becomes one." What she meant is that we become one thing or another through repeated acts or performances of who or what we think we are. Women learn to become womanly, men to become manly. You're not just born that way, your culture teaches you how to pull it off properly. Occasionally we become aware that we're doing it and mess with the system just for the fun of it. I've had mothers scoff at my ideas of self-hood, I've read others who are desperately trying to redefine or identify social constructions of motherhood. But I've never tried this before and I'm curious about something:
What happens when the bad-ass bitch babe gets a baby?
We don't even have a lot of science fiction or female action films that try this one out. Sure, there's the Gina Davis character in The Long Kiss Goodnight, and Ripley in Aliens who loses one daughter while asleep in hyperspace only to replace her with Newt in the next film. But what would happen if Laura Croft had a little Tomb Raider? When Evelyn Carnahan (Racheal Wiesz) of The Mummy had her son, she learns swordcraft, but only because she's become the new hosting place of Nefertiti. Funny that, I didn't know Nefertiti was good with knives. Of course, this stacks up against the usual action-adventure role of heroines to end the story with marriage and children, or in the case of The Terminator's Sarah Connor, to be first consigned to a trailer in nowhere'sville and later to a lunatic assylum. You see where I'm coming from, right? The story ain't over and I ain't crazy, so I need another way to be than to just retire into the nursury with the little beastie.
So, as I write up my next Faculty Self-Evaluation, monitor a student's final project, write up something Lacanian for my Brit Lit II students and try to get my house ready for D-day, I'll be thinking about the differences between men and women, what will be important to decide about raising my son, and hoping that I'm able to write something of some sense when its all said and done.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)