jubyred

Mommy Blog

I wrote the following in response to a blog I read on Feminism and Motherhood asking how the choice to stay at home fit into Feminism .  I just came across it and  found it so interesting for me to read  now that I've returned to work. This was from February 2006:

I'm a Stay At Home Mother to two children, ages two and four.  I also write part time. It's a good rhythm for me but it may not work for other mothers. The good news is that I don't expect other mothers to do what I do. If they want to watch soaps all day or join a scrapbooking club, then that's their choice. But it's not mine. And that is OKAY.

It pisses me off that this is not a conversation that men are having. My husband is a designer who works with a bunch of other geeky designer dads and they don't sit around and judge one another on the amount of time Dad #1 spends reading to Junior or that Dad #2 is spending practicing multiplication tables with little Susie.

As someone who would consider herself a wicked feminist (is that a bad word now?), I choose to stay at home with my kids. I will likely return to work when they are both in school.  I have a college degree and I don't consider myself a failure because this is what I choose to do. I'd like to go back to school one day to study Music.  And guess what?  I may NEVER use that training or that degree towards related employment. Why can't education be for its own sake anymore anyway? Why must degree=work?

I thought that having "rights" was all about having CHOICES. I have the freedom to do what I see best with my life and for my family. For some women, that's working and putting food on the table. For others, it's working outside the home because it makes them better mothers. For me, it's being at home. We're all big girls here. Can't we decide that for ourselves?

My mother worked on and off while I was a kid. Yes, there were times I wanted her there that she wasn't. There were also times she was there that I wish she would vanish. I could say the same thing for my husband AND my kids. My kids will say the same thing for me.

I have a 23 month old daughter and my biggest hope for her (and my 4 year old son) is that they do what they see fit to make them happy without neccesary regard for what society deems appropriate. Unhappy parents are bad parents. No one wants a martyr mother. If my daughter chooses to work, it will not have devalued what I have done here. On the contrary, I will hope that being here for her allowed her to make a decision that had nothing to do with what I think she should do.

That, after all, is what successful parenting is all about-launching them, helping them find their own voice, and stepping back when it's time.

I have seen the trend towards the child-centered parenting and franky, I think the issues this philosophy raises are enormous.  I am not responsible for my children's happiness.  That seems a shocking statement, I'm sure.  But I stand by it.  I love them and vow to protect them and guide them and nurture them but how else will they learn how to create their own future if I am constantly doing it for them?  And if my life happiness is ruled by theirs, what does that teach them?  In order for them to learn how to be happy, they must first see that it is possible and that it is a choice.  That's what I hope to teach them.

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

I’m not sure why men have a much easier time accepting that women suffer from mental illnesses rather than themselves.  In fact, I’d argue that they’d rather have a physical ailment than an emotional one. 

Okay, I know.  “Mental illness” sounds, well, crazy.  It reminds us all of schizophrenia and madness.  I don’t even mean it in those extreme terms.  I mean really common ailments like depression or anxiety.  I guess they think it’s easily attributed to female hormones in women so it makes sense that we’re all nuts.  But them?  Nah.  No way.

A colleague of mine was having some “issues” a few weeks ago.  He arrived at work and felt as though he couldn’t breathe, his heart was pounding, he was trembling. Of course he assumed he was having a heart attack.  It makes sense.  He’s 34 years old and works out every morning.  It’s probably a heart attack.  So he saw a doctor who ran a series of tests, all of which were totally normal.

Yesterday morning, he comes into work and it begins again.  He’s pacing and pale and downing water.  He says he feels like he’s dying.  So, I grab my keys and drive him to the ER.  He was having, in my professional opinion, a classic panic attack.  As soon as we got in the car, he was calming down. I kept telling him he was okay, reminded him to just breathe.  He was going to be fine. 

By the time we got there, he seemed a lot better.  I told him to ask the doctor about anxiety, about panic attacks.  He said, pretty sure, that’s not what it is.

After 4 hours in the ER, a normal EKG and unremarkable chest x-ray later, he emerges, pissed that no one can tell him what’s wrong with him.  I drove back to pick him up and he had a prescription for some blood pressure medication even though they said his blood pressure was normal. 

Did you ask about anxiety?

Yeah, but that’s not it.  They told me to go see a cardiologist.

Do they think it’s your heart?

Well, the tests they ran were all normal, but I could have some more done.

Okay. 

It’s none of my business, but it’s remarkable to me that he would really rather have some heart defect than to think for one second, it could be mental.  It never happens at home, only at work.  Admittedly, our work environment is very stressful.  Yesterday was the last day of the month and we were counting on one of his deals to make our quarterly goal.  He was very worried it wasn’t going to happen.

I see this time and time again.  Men think of depression or anxiety in very specific ways.  Crying on the bathroom floor comes to mind or obsessively straightening the fringe on the rug.  I have yet to see a straight man crying on the bathroom floor.  Depression manifests itself very differently in men than it does in women.  I wish there was more dialogue about this so it all didn’t seem so weird and taboo.

I have written a lot about my own moments of hearing the jungle drums beat.  I am confident that the few people who read my blog sort of get it.  I am probably no crazier than anyone else out there.  Sometimes my life feels like it’s spiraling out of control and I can’t get a handle on it.  Who doesn’t feel like that occasionally? 

Our society seems to readily accept that women can easily tap into that sort of introspection.  Especially mothers.  We cut Moms a lot of slack.  Hardest job on Earth and all that. 

But I know I felt it before I had kids. I have journals dating back to age 11 feeling like an outsider, wondering if I was normal and pretty enough and trying to figure out my place in the world.  I know my husband often feels overwhelmed between work and the kids.  Shit, he has to deal with me on a daily basis.  Being married to me could make anyone feel nutty. 

So, my pal comes back into work this morning and starts telling me about the doctor’s appointments he has scheduled for later this week.  I certainly agree he should rule out any physical problems.  No sense in wondering.  But 5 out of 5 women here yesterday all had the same diagnosis—Anxiety.  “All he needs is a Xanax and a shrink,” one said.  And everyone knows, 5 women outweigh one male cardiologist any day of the week.

It Must Be Me

One of the things I love most about my husband is his unshakable belief that we were meant to have beautiful, perfect family moments.  He believes they will revolve around traditional events like Thanksgiving dinner, Easter Egg hunts, Saturday afternoon picnics, and this week, decorating the Christmas tree.

As for me, I have long known that those are the least likely moments when we will achieve any sort of family synchronicity.  I document these events with photos and video and try like hell to make it appear as though that's the way it occurred (perhaps fooling our memories down the road into believing it), but it never ever happens.

Case in Point: Last Easter, it was about 30 degrees so we were all freezing because I neglected to bring parkas to the egg hunt.  I also didn't bring baskets, so the kids ran around with Target bags fighting with one another over the candy and crying.  Easter at church, Drew left halfway through the service with both kids and never returned, leaving me sitting there alone while he had two screaming kids in the car.   Good times.

Last weekend's tree decorating extravaganza was no exception. 

I asked Drew to take BoyChild to get the tree.  Already, he's disappointed that we aren't all going to the farm to pick out the one to cut down.  I don't know how he could have a good memory of that.  My memory is chasing kids around the trees, freezing, then a long drive back with cranky kids.

But he agreed to expedite it a bit since I gave him full authority to choose a good one.  Which he did.  Hours later, we finally managed to get the mammoth tree up.  And straight.  Without knocking any holes in the walls. 

The anticipation, however, of getting in those boxes of sparlky, breakable shiny things, was too much for our children to bear. GirlChild showed up to the event in a princess dress (of course) and immediately started pulling things out.  Dropping them.  Pulling wings off angels.  Legs off Santas.

For the next hour, all I heard was the sound of me bitching...

• Please put that down.
• We'll get to that in a minute.  Let us get the lights on first.
• Okay, did you hear me when I said to put it down?
• If you drop that, it's going to break.
• That can hurt you.  Give it to Mommy.
• Does that belong to you?  No?  Then stop touching it.
• Do you want to decorate the tree or not?  Okay then please do what I ask you to do.
• Why don't ya'll go to the playroom and I'll come and get you when we're ready.

After a while, I had to excuse myself before a vein in my head exploded and I started screaming uncontrollably.

It seems like if it wasn't for me, maybe it would look like a storybook.  Drew just sails through it.  Not a word. No anxiety. Everything is fine.  I mean except for the periodic loud sigh and look he gives me for being Debbie Downer.

I guess I just realize that it's a lot of pressure for things to be perfect just because the calendar says it's a certain day.  The most perfect moments come when we least expect them. Tuck-ins at night.  A long drive that goes well.  A good day at the playground.  Bowling with the kids.  Seeing a deer on our hiking trail.  Hearing the kids tell a joke.  And I never have the camera for those moments. 

 

Wha?

Just another example of why grammar is so important...

Someone in Drew's office sent out a mass email yesterday announcing the birth of a coworker's baby on May 27th.  One of the Customer Service Reps hit "Reply All" and sent this--

Watch out that the day i was born. that a special baby.
Congrats! enjoy your new baby

Which Drew promptly forwarded to me.  After reading it about twelve times in an effort to grasp the syntax, I think my favorite line is the last one, "enjoy your new baby."