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Cold War / Warm Heart
But first, a word of explanation. The introductory essay to this blog was written in the middle of January, 2005, well before the (fashionably) late arrival of my son. When the blog launched, the feeling of being on the brink was still relevant- if a bit misleading. My kid showed up in February and is going to be eight weeks old very soon.
***
Having one's child in winter has some advantages. During the extended window of opportunity one has to go into labor, friends, family and strangers will delight in placing bets based on weather forecasts that every blizzard or snow shower will be sending you straight to the hospital. I wish I could have made some money off of this, but even a foot of snow didn't send me into labor.
I also treasure the fact that late winter and early spring is inevitably a complete wasteland for movie releases. As an ardent movie watcher, I was concerned about the baby cramping my style somewhat, but really, nothing is going on. Even the local revival houses are obliging me by doing things like programming series of super-popular Westerns that I've seen several times.
To compensate, I've been relying on a fabulous service for shut-ins, and have rediscovered the pleasures of British television crime series. While motherhood has not mellowed me much, and I still love falling into dark, grim mystery tales, I was surprised to find a rather blunt commentary on parenthood buried in the heart of the 1982 Alec Guinness production of Smiley's People.
If you haven't seen it, understand that you must watch another series, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy first. Smiley's People is the second part of a late cold war espionage story based on novels by John Le Carre.
NOTE: Please don't read on if you feel the need for anything like a surprise, though in my opinion, the remarkable success of the series is in the writing and performances - not so much the way the story ends as in the way it plays itself out.
At the end of the story, George Smiley (Alec Guinness) triumphs and gets revenge on his arch-rival Karla (Patrick Stewart – yes, the very one) not by outwitting him, but by playing on the Russian spymaster's only Achilles heel. Karla has a daughter, a sad insane woman he carefully smuggled out of Russia. To return her to her homeland would destroy her. When Smiley finds her, he merely writes a polite, gentle letter to Karla, suggesting he will send her home. Karla immediately surrenders.
Clearly, this ending is about how powerful being a parent is, and how even this Russian spy can't sacrifice his child, but there is something else going on. In his letter to Karla, Smiley acknowledges that they are similar men on different sides of a chessboard. Their lives and goals are nearly mirror images of each other. What makes Karla vulnerable is the fact that he has a child. Smiley realizes that this thing that allows him to triumph also makes him somewhat less human. This is good for his job but possibly tragic for what remains of his soul.
I don't agree with the notion that one must have children to realize one's full potential or that having a child is necessarily "humanizing." But I have been plagued with feelings of vulnerability since Felix was born. I know that there is a soft spot on the outside of me that I can't completely control or help, no matter how much I exert myself. A part of me will always be out in the world, and I will worry more about him than I do about my own limbs. It is a curious feeling that I feel alternately good and bad about, but it is interesting that it took the iciest of cold war dramas to find a way to understand the vicissitudes of my heart and mind.
(By the way, if you're interested, other fabulous mystery series that I've watched and obsessed over during these early weeks are: Foyle's War and Cracker.)
posted by Elise at 11:42 AM
3 Comments
Who Do You Love?
It's Easter Sunday and the Fashion and Style section of the New York Times is asking you to pick who you love most, and feel guilty about the soul you didn't put at the top of your list. Worrying is a delicate art. I grew up among world-class worriers and married into a family that also wrestles with concerns both fussy and dark. But in spite of my healthy acquaintance with the neurotic, I do know what it means to look for trouble and I know better than to exert myself too much. Trouble will find me, whether or not I'm searching.
Ayelet Waldman has an article in the often annoying New York Times article series "Modern Love" today that makes me wonder if she (and others) aren't working a little too hard to feel guilt and shame. The essay "Truly, Madly, Guiltily" discusses whether Waldman is somehow criminal for being so deeply in love with her husband, for loving him more than she does her children. She compares herself to the women she knows from "Mommy and Me" classes and seems to feel at once superior (her sex life is great and theirs isn't) and inadequate (they have given themselves over entirely to their children and she hasn't).
I have a seven week-old son, and words fail me when I try to describe the ways I feel about him. I don't, however, feel conflicted about the feelings for him and for my husband, and I wonder what worm in Waldman's mind twists to make her worried that she is failing by loving her husband more than her kids. Why does she even feel she must place these most important relationships on some kind of hierarchy?
This seems like madness. I don't sit around trying to contemplate which of my vital organs I prefer, since I depend rather fundamentally on all of them. My son and my husband are just two more vital components of my life. They are not comparable, not interchangeable.
And yet Waldman's worries make me queasy even as I feel inclined to mock her brittle, self-congratulatory hand wringing, because she pokes at herself so hard in a way that I fear is symptomatic of American mothers. There is so much public judgment leveled at every choice, every thought and private impulse. How could mothers not feel self-conscious about their feelings when all around them are (apparently) smug martyrs implying that they have reached some higher plane of existence in becoming self-sacrificing mothers, too superior for sex, too dedicated to their children to maintain other deep connections.
If asked who I love best, whom I would choose above all others, I wouldn't answer. The question would be stupid if it weren't so savage and mean. Perhaps I'm just greedy (the chocolate menagerie – big pig, monkey, and chicken - on the dining room table would support that notion), but I don't believe in love hierarchies and I wish the culture didn't want us to make them.
(You can read the article in question here. The New York Times requires registration:
posted by Elise at 12:24 PM
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Mommy Diarist
In the twenty-first century, there are very few choices one can make that
one can't undo if filled with regret. It may be expensive and painful to
extract oneself a hideous career, a bad marriage, an unwise bit of plastic
surgery, but it is possible. Lately (mostly in those nether pre-dawn hours
when reason is on hiatus) I've been considering these spoiled times, when
regret is a novelty and decisions can be revoked. I've been contemplating
choices that can't be undone because I made one. I am pregnant. My identity
will change very soon. I don't know when, but in a matter of days I will
become someone different: a mother.
Don't misunderstand. This kid is welcome, wanted, highly anticipated. But in
spite of this being something savagely intentional, I still feel
uncomfortable -- a spy in the maternal world. I wander through stores, read
articles and have conversations alternately desperate for any information
that could save me and disinterested, unable to comprehend how I will ever
casually use this strange equipment or respond to a child in any way that
could possibly be helpful. I fret that my inadequacy will expose me to so
much scorn that it will make me alternately embarrassed and furious to show
my face on the streets of New York with my child. I am daunted.
If my bones were found 856 years from now in an archaeological dig, my body
would be that of a mother. Since I am in the process of becoming something
else, now seems an appropriate moment to begin to think about the experience
and open up to it productively. This blog will be a sounding board, a rant
receptacle. I am full of questions, somewhat ready for adventure, and
longing to hear from you out there in the ether. All kinds of issues and
plagues have me bursting at the seams: How long will it take me to love my
child? What if the kid becomes a serial killer? Does anyone else dislike
Caitlin Flanagan with the savagery I do? Why does becoming a mother allow
everyone to mind a woman's business for her?
How is that for an invitation? Soon, soon (I hope) I'll be a mother both in
theory and practice. You'll hear about it and I hope you'll stick with me as
I wrestle with this new job, new identity, new life.
posted by Elise at 2:53 PM
1 Comments
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