Today was a great day
[Re: work screw-up; is fixed. It was administrative. I did an interview with someone last week about "why did Tiger Woods cheat" (sad media note: saying that cannot possibly out me since everyone and their dog did that interview last week) and he said that high powered sensation-seeking men basically have to do something risky to get their adrenaline high and once they're famous that becomes doing something as stupid as that. While I am not sure I buy this argument, I did start to wonder if I occasionally royally procrastinate while that one item gets worse and worse in order to feel the adrenaline rush myself. Sadly I do not have the talent to go with it.]
And now onto today.
6:15 Noah wakes me up to ask if we can please decorate the (pre-bought disgusting kit, but we will never eat it!) gingerbread house. So, starting a bit later at 7 after breakfast has been consumed, we do.
Then we played Playmobil general store. Then we played Little People (ah… the Little People. Just when I was about to pack them away.) Then we went to his school holiday party and Noah played in his first piano recital. He played middle C, in quarter notes, alternating hands at regular intervals. It was very exciting.
Then Santa came and Noah was entranced. But not shy. He went up to Santa and said “Hi Santa! I’m Noah from XXX Trail” where XXX Trail is our address. Noah asked for a Playmobil castle and a “stormtrooper bigger than Daddy.” Fortunately Santa pointed out that said stormtrooper would not fit in his sleigh.
Then we came home and chilled out in front of YouTube and watched the Star Wars Christmas special, fast-forwarding through a number of bizarre things. (Jefferson Airplane!) Then we played Star Wars together ad nauseum and had pizza and read books.
It was a very ordinary but extremely fun day. Well, ok, the party was not ordinary but it was low-key and very enjoyable.
Noah did go to the doctor last week as he was still suffering diarrhea, but also because he was pale and tired out beyond what you would expect. Carl took him, but our doctor is concerned that he might be anemic. To be truthful about it, we have been a little worried for some time that he is excessively pale. So far the recommendation is to come back in a month and also to increase the iron in his diet. (He does take vitamins, but without iron, as it creates other issues, but we may change this.)
I sat down and looked at his diet though and short of frying liver (I’m actually going to get pate) I’m not sure what else we can do: on the plant front he eats black beans, chick peas, and lentils; kale, spinach, dried figs, raisins, dried apricots, and so on. On the meat front we do eat beef and salmon. We only eat whole grains, and the odd times we don’t, they’re fortified for the most part. I’m not sure about trying oysters, especially as they come with other things.
I will pay more attention to combining vitamin-c rich foods with meat + plant iron all in the same meal, but really? I don’t think we can address this via diet. However I’ll keep a journal and see what’s what. Noah is at what will probably be the most neophobic stage, but it’s never translated into a white diet. Right now his most requested meal is either soup (minestrone or pea) or baked breaded eggplant with buckwheat noodles. You see what I mean? Well, ok. He also eats Zoodles from time to time (1 per month). And tonight we had pizza, with steak and spinach on it.
Screwing up at work
I screwed something up at work and I feel like shit at 3:50 am. Sometimes I’m really not sure what my problem is. Anyone else ever feel that way?
The power of fathers (Carl)
So this is my post about Carl and Noah, which sort of touches on Thursday.
The thing is…I can walk out of my house 4 hours after a vomiting episode. And I will still feel bad and guilty because I just want work to STOP and stay home with my kid (and yes, I can if it is “an emergency” but one thing I’ve learned about the job-kid-life dance is that it’s not the clear-cut emergencies that are hard; it’s working out when to give up trying to decide if it is/find alternate care/etc.)
But I will know that Noah will be having the best care. Maybe even just slightly better than me, when it comes to illness, only because I tend to get a little more nervous and communicate that nervousness to Noah. Whereas Carl still will respond and take him to the doctor, but he doesn’t get as tense about it.
And that’s the thing about Carl as a dad…he’s not the second parent, he’s the other-first-parent. There was a time, around when Noah was one, that I didn’t think this would happen. And in some ways I think going back to work hastened the process because as far as the morning routine goes, after Noah and I eat breakfast together and I leave, I have no idea what happens. He shows up eventually at school clean and dressed and with the proper snack/paperwork/whatever. He and Carl have their thing. It helped, to carve out that space without me.
But of course the root of the goodness is that Carl’s an excellent dad. He’s much more in the moment than I am, and it’s a good match - I plan things, sign up for swim lessons on time, and get the laundry done while playing Magnet Man/Baby Cat with Noah along the way (two different games, in case you were wondering); then we head out together to the library and cosy up with some books for quality time. But Carl sits down with Noah and focuses on painting or Legos for 30 intense minutes and then has a mad tickle-fest. He’s really good at just being there in the moment and not obsessing on the mess. It’s quite lovely.
He’s also gentle and kind. He’s always treated everyone in the system with pretty much infinite patience (I’m sure I don’t know who screamed down the stairs that this wasn’t her life and she was going to go fuck random strangers to prove it *cough*) within firm boundaries (I did not go do the fucking) and it turns out that’s the kind of dad he is. He has loads of patience with Noah, but he doesn’t just give him carte blanche to behave however he wants either (when necessary).
When Noah is having big emotions, Carl helps him identify them. Sometimes they paint them out. Sometimes after I leave in the morning they paint a dream Noah had or a nightmare. So I come home a lot of days to a whole little history in art. (We have an easel set up in the kitchen.) They laugh together a lot (actually we all do). There is an ease between them that is so genuine, and so primal. When Noah was in pain today he cried for me and in the next breath he cried for Carl. He truly feels safe with us both.
It’s really lovely. I really hope there is nothing that ever really interferes with that; obviously, if mythology is to be believed, there will come a day that Noah has to take Carl on in some way. But I have faith it will work out. Noah has a real man and a real father. It’s super neat.
This is what fear is
Note: Thanks everyone who emailed me about the site. I did forget to renew the account (which was going to an old email address) and then after that I screwed up the nameservers, but apparently all is good at last. I am emailing people back but slowly.
This week I have come up against the fear wall again. Last weekend Noah and I were merrily making sugar cookies and I moved a can of tomato paste to get the vanilla and it popped open and paste came spewing out. Noah and I watched in fascination! And then I wiped it up and threw it out and we washed our hands and went on our merry way.
Tuesday I had a really nice interview with some of the people at Bereaved Families of Ontario, for a work piece.
Then Wednesday night Noah woke up at about midnight vomiting. He threw up about four times total and then went back to sleep, but of course, I did not. I cleaned up, not just the bathroom but then disinfected/bleached the kitchen and the doorknobs and everything else, because if someone is vomiting it must be, you know, my fault. I fully recognized that this was an OCD moment out of the legacy of living with my mother, who always treated anyone sick like they had bubonic plague, and would then serve rice & plain noodles for a week because her fear of meat and vegetable born illness would be triggered. But anyways, so I cleaned up and then I thought hmmmmmmmmmm that can exploded.
So, I Googled. And I learned that botulism is like NUCLEAR WASTE. If a can explodes you should basically don a gas mask. And you have to bleach everything. And throw the rags out. I’m not kidding! Eeek!
Then I read that 30 per cent of people who get botulism, you know… die.
If this were a movie you’d have some amazing tunnel-like cut effect here, because all of a sudden there I am at 3 in the morning in The Bad Place. (In my head.) The place where Noah dies. Honestly, I am wondering when this ends, if ever. It is just safer to feel the horrendous, crushing fear along with the images of how that would be (body, funeral, empty house) now that he is generally heathly and 4 years old? Is it because this is the season of Emily? Is this getting worse? Is it just a bump on the grief train? PTSD? I don’t know but too many nights like that and I will end up having a heart attack. I think the problem is that it’s not just the fear; it’s the fear that comes and then with it all the images and feelings of when the fear was accurate; that day we walked in on the tech crying at Emily’s scan.
And the thing is, I knew I was freaking out. I just couldn’t actually stop it. On the outside it was very calm ’cause I couldn’t move. Anyways, I got back to sleep somewhere around 5, in time to get up for six. Carl stayed home with Noah (more on this in a later post) Thursday and I worked but it was not connected work; it was pretty dissociative. Friday I worked half a day as I’m interviewing people (interns) and then headed home.
Only perhaps Saturday did I actually start to stop planning for the end of the world as a sort of background to the rest of my daily life. Then of course, this morning (Sunday) Noah had horrendous abdominal cramps for about 15 minutes so I rushed him into the clinic. By the time we were seen (about an hour and half after the pain stopped) Noah was dancing around in excitement. (Sigh.) The diagnosis is either continued virus or virus-induced constipation. The doctor was not overly impressed with the possibility of botulism contamination given that the can was a commercial can and no one ate anything, but did humour me by having Noah wriggle his eyebrows.
Anyways, the thing is… parenting in the age of anxiety is well, anxious enough, but I think we strike a good balance. But when we slip off that balance, my god. It is really tough.
Test update
The test went fine and no one ran around screaming about the state of my uterus. From reading the tea leaves of the technician’s face, I’m guessing she found something but it was not urgent and I’ll have the results in about a week, which is how non-urgent things go here. :)
The elephant on the blog
Tomorrow I’m having an ultrasound of my abdomen - “everything” - on the orders of two doctors: My own, and the ER doctor. About a month ago I had the worst pain I’ve ever had in my life* (I include labour in that) and went into (mild, but visible) shock and ended up in the ER, but by the time they really got to me beyond treating for shock and sticking a blood pressure monitor on me (6 hrs; this is unusual even here in socialized medicine-land but my small ER had been overwhelmed by a three-vehicle accident) the pain had gone away.
Completely.
Said ER doctor said to follow up with mine, but mine was in Egypt until last week. Unfortunately just as I was about to call her to make an appointment I had another round of pain. I think it’s in my girly bits, and not on the gall bladder/appendix side, but pain can be referred and so on. So I was in last week and got the requisition for the ultrasound, and being me I scheduled it around work so tomorrow it is.
However, it’s a bit scary ’cause remember last year I had a big thyroid cancer scare and my lymph nodes were all swollen up? Well, they’ve never entirely gone down. So of course, I’m a little worried that we just didn’t look low down enough and there’s like, massive cancer in there.
This also just highlights the love-hate relationship I have with my girly bits. They have delivered two children, but sadly strangled one of them. Also, miscarriages. Also, I’m almost 39 and haven’t gotten pregnant for the last year, not that we seem to manage to have sex at the right time. (See above re: work times: two adults plus: preternaturally aware preschooler who manages to sleep soundly any night his parents are not on another floor rolling in the hay. Ahem. Do you have enough information yet?)
Even though my bits have been subjected to imaging many many times while pregnant, I still sort of wait for the day that someone looks at them and goes OH MY GOD. THESE ARE AWFUL.
I just have this deep survivor shame and certainty that written in them somewhere in scar tissue are the runes for INCEST or perhaps BORN FOR WEIRDNESS. This is, in fact, sort of one of the reasons I’ve never really pursued fertility treatment in any serious way: I just don’t want that much scrutiny.** And having Noah at this point, I sort of honestly feel like my GOD the LARGESS is so huge that really another child — a third! a second breathing, but still — would be beyond the bounty of the universe to provide.
So I guess what I’m saying is that I’m a bit worried (ovarian cancer! uterine cancer! cervical cancer! My god, you could even have bladder cancer did you know? Google says so!), a bit nervous, and pretty much halfway convinced that there will be some kind of emergency hysterectomy as a result of my scarlet letter.***
* Were Carl here he would immediately jump in to explain how bad it was, because he has every other time I’ve mentioned it to anyone. It freaked him out. And he was there for the labours!
** After losing Emily the ob offered me, at the 6-wk post-partum grief-fest and checkup, Clomid, like it was so much candy, because “the only risk is twins, ha ha.” While I realize this was already demonstrably not the best ob clinic in town, since this ob had my entire history on being able to GET pregnant and not being able to STAY pregnant, this really put me off further intervention at the one time in my life I have desperately felt that if I could not have a baby within a reasonable timeframe I would actually just lie down and die. Which is not really that relevant to the why not? question but I had to rant anyway.
*** Actually we’re guessing garden variety cysts. But I was expressing my FEELINGS. :)
Parenting: Time machine to your past
So, I toured the Montessori. Carl didn’t, ’cause Noah had a cough and was tired and so we decided they would stay home and I would check it out.
This particular school seemed to be half-Montessori, half-lycée. Which is a totally odd mix. Concrete up to about grade 3 and then desks in rows after that. There were things I liked a lot about it: The kids seemed happy and engaged, the teachers reasonably ditto; the language instruction blew. my. mind. in both French and English. They also do double math (in the morning in french, with textbooks from France, and in the afternoon in english with Saxon math, so that they learn to think mathematically in both languages. They don’t even worry about whether this is confusing. To quote the directress, “if learning two different maths is confusing, the child has not understood a concept, so as teachers we must re-teach that area in any case. If students read two different books by two different authors in the same day, no one worries.” What? You want them to understand math? Crazy talk, man.)
And I am not easily impressed that way, but the directress let me rifle through random children’s work all the way up to grade 7 and I saw, for example, essays with supporting quotes in grade 5 workbooks, correctly spelled, with varying sentences lengths with different types of clauses.
I guess this is what you can do when your classes, after grade 2, are about 9-12 students large.
But the facilities were very, very ehn. I would suspect the students come out with fantastic basics, including history and geography, but not necessarily a whole lot else. Small rooms in a church hall. There were no computers or labs, and although I kind of think they’re not necessary — and elementary teachers who print material off the Internet with no care as to source drive me up the wall blah blah — I did have to wonder at what it all means when a school is still using the same exact methods as they did in 1978, not uncoincidentally the year I had a teacher from France.
And that was kind of it - the handwriting, the textbooks, the progress chart on the wall, the sheets of dictées floating about, the choice of almost wildly inappropriate reading material (Zola in grade 6? Really?) - all hugely familiar.
I had a lot of feelings come up about that, since grade two was a year of infamy in my mind; I had a teacher who was brilliant and talented and able to move students at their own pace, and so by October of that year I’d finished grade two, and ended up somewhere in the middle of grade 5 by the end of it, and then spent the next several years more or less bored and in trouble and socially ostracized. (The charts on the wall, where my stickers had their own little piece of paper sticking off the right-hand side, did not endear me to my classmates, particularly since there was prize each week for most units completed.)
(Remember SRA reading?)
Which brings me to my navel-gazing point that man, why does parenting have to be such a trip to all the corners of one’s childhood? Why?
Anyways, so that just hit the educational buttons for me without really blowing me away in either direction. I feel sure one’s child would come out well educated; not so sure about happy. Imagine if you did not get along with the 9 kids in your tiny classroom.
Then yesterday I had a meeting with Noah’s current school’s owner/headmistress to get leads on other schools and also Discuss His Future. They of course want to keep him for his final year (which would be senior kindergarten) so she’d both prepared a sheet for me on the french he’s learned and how they could teach him way more. They newly have a teacher whose first language really is french and so that was a pretty generous offer. She also gave me some phone numbers of parents whose kids have gone from her SK to French Immersion directly, which I didn’t know could happen… and which frankly makes me weep a bit for the FI programme. Not that Noah’s teachers are not lovely, but he is in no way fluent.
But she also talked about the whole private school thing and a list of schools to look at and why she chose, with her four kids, to send them to (local) public elementary and save up her pennies for the real, vastly expensive, top-notch private high schools ($27k/yr for anyone wondering) and not bother with the mid-range (mid-range being $15k/year) schools for elementary.
And she talked about how Noah is such a social extroverted wriggly boy and that having a slightly larger class and good school teams and neighbourhood friends would be nice for him to have, and that his skills in learning-to-learn will already basically get him through elementary. Which is slightly overstating the case, I think, but I see what she means which is why actually I started looking at private.
So that was a nice counterpoint, and sort of our original plan. So lots to think about.
It’s not, by the way, that I think Noah is a super special snowflake (although of course, he IS, he’s my son! But only as much as anyone else’s son is. :)) in terms of profoundly gifted or anything like that; it’s more that school is so many hours of the day that I would like them to be good hours.
Bullet points o’doom
Educational angst, and angst
I have spent far too much time on Sandra Tsing Loh today, mentally and emotionally. I actually think this is progress, but ouch. One thing Anna, my therapist, said to me that has echoed in my mind oh, monthly, was that my mother was “a whole therapy” on her own. We never did get to that. But I am learning about me and us that while it is very tempting to blame everything wrong ever on incest, there were other forces shaping our life. Which, in turn, I imagine I will blame for a while and then move on with life itself.
So this is my year for generational outrage at the bad behaviour of my parents and their social set in the era of about 1976 - 1982. I do love my parents. In some ways as I get into the task of parenting a child (and not a baby) I get softer towards them. It is hard. I do screw up regularly. On the other hand, there are things I simply cannot fathom and the fact that my parents did, demonstrably, fathom them absolutely blows my mind every now and then. And I think what really set me off in the Atlantic piece was the thing about reading. Because I have been a strong reader all my life (started reading just shy of my third birthday, spontaneously, like something out of Harry Potter) and it has been a blessing, but it has also often been my drug of choice. My great aunt also did this, to the point that one time I was running around the Brussels airport seeking english language books or else my great aunt, whose knee was broken and in a cast, was going to refuse to get on a flight to the U.S.
So.
In total Jungian non-coincidence, Noah is starting to read. And I don’t mean the odd word like he was before, but really sit down with books in order to read them. Except, he sort of can’t yet. Actually he’s almost a case study in how phonics is helpful but not really the magic key. He decodes, and he has a sight vocabulary, but that hasn’t all come together yet to form an understanding of reading-reading.
I joke, but only half-way joke, that phonics are messing him up.
He’ll pick up a new book at the library, or *gasp* one of mine, grasp the meaning of a sentence (possibly from the illustrations in most cases, but in a few cases it wasn’t possible), talk about it, and then go and sound words out labouriously and get confused. Or he’ll bring home phonic readers, sound them all out sloooowly with reversals all over the place (d for b etc.) and then get so bored or distracted that he then has to compose his own song based on his riff on the pictures.
I have total faith that when he’s ready, the leap will come. My two years in the learning centre/reading lab give me a basis for this belief. But meanwhile it’s an odd twilight world, and I never went through that phase that I can remember.
Other than the phonics messing up the sight vocabulary, though, I’ve turned into a Montessori fan. I kind of have startled myself, actually, with how happy I am with Noah’s school right now. Noah’s happy. He’s engaged. He comes home with a lot of information, which is fine, and a lot of joy in that information. I’m starting to care about what he’s learning as he gets older, where before I just wanted him to be happy.
And I’m quite happy with what he’s learning. He can add and subtract and group and count by twos and tell you if numbers are odd or even and it seems to be fairly deep knowledge. He understands place value and seems to be grasping fractions a little. He can write letters and numbers and make attempts at spelling words that mostly go horribly awry but still are recognizable if you are paying attention. (Example: He leaves notes: momilfu. Translation: Mom, I love you.) He draws faces and the latest skill is that he is starting to read music.
He has no grasp of telling time on a clock with hands, tying his shoe, or pasting things straight, though. And he is a glue waster! (< — for Ramona fans)
For someone who turned four in August, this seems like a lot. And yet, some days he comes home from school and says he didn’t really want to work and he played in the sand and rolled in the pillows all day. Sometimes he brings home the same kind of work he did a year or so ago, and it all seems okay with the school, and I appreciate that. It doesn’t always have to be forward momentum.
So next year really is the make or break year where kindergarten and french are concerned. To recap: Noah is missing junior public kindergarten right now, which is generally english. French Immersion starts in senior kindergarten, so if we want that, it MUST be in September. He can enter english public school whenever, but most kids have entered already and the gentle transition of kindergarten gives way to seriousness in grade one, so that could be hard. He can stay in his current school to the end of senior kindergarten if we want, and this is also the ‘payoff’ year in the three-year cycle if he does.
Our local elementary school (walking distance) does not have a FI programme. The one to which he could be bussed is not in a good school; good authority has it they wanted the money to help with the gang problem. So our public school options, barring talking our way into the french board which didn’t happen last year and gets increasingly unlikely, pretty much come down to english public where he gets to WALK THERE (this I actually do care about) or move. In a fabulous new wrinkle, there is a movement to close under-populated schools in my area. In this local school none of the classes are full.
Then there are private options. Next Monday I have an appointment at a french Montessori that goes up to grade 12. It’s also four, count ‘em, four blocks from my work (representing a 45 minute commute for Noah where his current drive is 5 min; on the plus side he would only have to be at school for basically 8 hr. 20 min. and all I would add to my day would be the drop off/pick up minutes. We could even do something funky like park at my work and walk over, and I could walk over and get him and walk back to my work, thus giving me lots of exercise and Noah some. Given that we would be together and it would not be me rushing somewhere, it’s conceivable that we could even do it on public transit, although then it would take over an hour. And if we did it by car, we could listen to all the great works of children’s literature on audio books!)
I’m kind of leaning towards the Montessori but some things stop me. One, it is risky financially. I think it costs about $15k/yr and that doesn’t include the summer (we pay about $16k/yr now, but that includes summer). If Carl or I were laid off, we would have to switch schools fast. And if my work moved we’d be screwed. Our long-term financial planning generally has been with a view towards lowering our childcare costs, not increasing them.
Two, as someone who went to private school downtown in high school, I know that it changes your life fairly dramatically. It’s one thing in high school to have all your friends scattered about the city. It’s another thing in elementary school. This would mean no local school chums to go biking with and no self-sufficient walking to school alone in grade 4. It means him being trapped in a car with me 1.5 hrs a day, which doesn’t really seem natural or right or even healthy (I know I don’t find it healthy for me.)
The thing is, I don’t know whether those things will really truly happen if Noah’s in some kind of aftercare anyway. It sort of depends on whether Carl continues to work at home 3-4 days a week and whether that would be reliable enough for Noah to come home and hang out with him (working) after grade 1 or so, or what. In kindergarten, which is still half-day, obviously there has to be half-day daycare. If we can arrange the driving (see: Carl working from home some days; me working one; my parents pinch-hitting) Noah could even do half the day at public and half at his current school, for some crazy exorbitant fees.
We can’t move into my work neighbourhood, realistically. Houses similar to our current one cost about $700k and ours is worth about $375k, so it’s just out of reach. (Carl will never move into a condo and even the townhomes are $$$). We could move closer, I guess, if the school turns out to be wonderful and perfect.
[Real estate note: We could move and improve our education odds in a wide variety of ways: We could move into a FI neighbourhood. We could move closer to my work and this Montessori. However, we have a really good deal here in that our mortgage is very doable, our neighbourhood is lovely lovely and the lake - my god, the lake - and also, our neighbourhood is getting discovered. It's possible that in 5 years, we could make out like bandits. And the local school, if it stays open, is just fine - just not bilingual. Also, moving is so hard.]
Three, I really like Montessori right now. I’m not, however, convinced that it is the way to go for all of elementary. It depends on the teachers and the school.
Four, if Noah were reading fluently, I would be much more keen on French… and by September, he may be. I am keen on bilingual early education, and all of Noah’s other skills are solidly enough in place to take the rock to his world. But it would/will be a rough transition, and I would prefer if he were reading first.
So… I don’t know. This is what I’m thinking right now, but we have to tour the french school. If I adore the french school, perhaps we could try it for one year. One year of immersion at 5 years old wouldn’t make anyone bilingual, but it would lay a foundation for later study. If it worked brilliantly, we could talk about moving so as not to have a commuter lifestyle forever and ever and ever. If it fell in between, as most things do, we could either go on a year by year basis, or we could transition to public for grade one. If it were a disaster it would only be one year.
I don’t like the school hopping but that is what I’m thinking. Word from experienced parents at Noah’s school is that educationally kindergarten has mostly been a wasteland for their kids, after the work there.
We’ll know more Monday. I find this very hard. There are other private school options but I don’t really know if I want to pay for english private unless there is a problem with english public once we get into it.
Then of course there’s the quit my job, walk Noah to public kindergarten, supplement myself like crazy. Only problem is, I love my job.
Finally, I would like to get pregnant. If I ever manage that all bets are suddenly off because we can’t afford any of this for two kids… but wouldn’t that suck for Noah?
So. confused.
More Gen-X grump: Sandra Tsing Loh
First, you have to read this.
You will probably have to pause, breathless, a few times. The leaps are large in this piece, especially when she tries to explain the epiphanies she had about mothering when her SIL became vegetative and the time she spent creative narrative for her SIL’s kids. And a lot of details and the willingness to lay bare go pretty deep, on one level.
But on another level I’m experiencing generational rage all over again. It’s the looking to 70s feminism that does it. Hey, I’m all for feminism. I reap the fruits of its labour despite writing about beauty and fashion and I like being educated and I watch Mad Men in wonder at the whole secretarial pool.
And yet - I remember those days, from the fog of childhood, and I remember how everyone’s (except my parents’, maybe) marriages were falling apart and how someone’s mother was always “on strike” and there would be ashtrays lying near a shattered something - mirror, vase - with the shards still there in the carpet because picking up the pieces would be supporting the patriarchy. (And no, I don’t understand why the men didn’t pick them up.) I remember how several of us kids on the block got into fairly serious trouble setting alcohol - alcohol! - on fire in the basement while (I’m not even kidding) my friend’s mother and her friends looked at their vaginas in mirrors.
Yes, the women who changed their destinies did a great thing and it was hard and scary. But when it came to their kids, it sucked. It was not fun making pancakes with Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer. Remember the scene where the kid is playing with his airplane and he spills the drink all over Dustin Hoffman’s work and there’s tons of crying and stress? It was like that, a lot. It. sucked.
Ass.
And when I read about Tsing Loh’s kids sitting in her car because she isn’t working her ass off to put a deposit on, yes, a crummy apartment where they can, say, store some toys and a toothbrush… it drives me nuts.
Look, I have incredible sympathy for the woman. I really do. It sounds like she burned out for good reasons (5 kids? hospital visits?) and I have a secret soft spot for people who long for more passion or whatever, I really do.
But - grow up. To her husband too. Find the cash between you both to get some kind of housing arrangement that actually works. Stop kidding yourself that the kids are fine. And for fuck’s sake stop reading Germaine Greer or whatever.
Look, I’m not saying we all have to be helicopter parents, but can we please, please, please stop pretending that following our bliss is inherently good for our kids? It’s not that I don’t think we should do some of that — hell, I work, and although it’s for money too it’s also for joy. But there are little, trapped people to consider. Carefully. Not drive around in a Volvo deciding it’s okay because they like to read.
I liked to read too. I looked very content. The sad thing was that a lot of the reading was compulsive because my life sucked. A love of books is not the same as security and family love.
So yes - I have to agree there is something to the Bad Mother title here.