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Was He Thinking?
It's still Christmastime in Manhattan and the streets are packed with people looking for bargains and photo opportunities. Unremarkable. Everyone does this.
And yet, surprises lurk around the most obvious corners.
West 4t h Street between 6th and 7th avenues is a high traffic area packed with bars, an ice cream parlor and quite a number of sex shops, including the quite famous Pink Pussycat Boutique.
These places have been around for so long that one isn't particularly inclined to blink, let alone raise one's eyebrows, UNLESS one sees some guy (grown-up) taking a picture of a group of four girls (all clearly under 10) posing in front of one of the less cuddly of these spots blowing kisses to the camera.
This was a little awful. The window was full of mannequins wearing and demonstrating bondage gear on each other and the featured products were a "Love Swing" trapeze, along assorted dildos, and feather boa g-strings. (Citysearch has an amusing review of the store, pronouncing it: "Not for the faint of heart.")
Certainly this was unfortunate. I wonder if this father figure really just didn't understand what he was doing. Is it that New York become so "safe" that even the sex shops look like fun and appealing playgrounds for little girls? Maybe he was so exhausted from carting his charges around the West Village all day that he had no idea what he was doing- but that's not reassuring. I should say here that not only were the children eager to pose for him, they lingered behind him studying the window and pointing out the outfits that they liked (in addition to leather there were sexy kilt and a holiday thong and bustier-thing set in red with white trim).
Don't misunderstand me. This is not to say that the stores shouldn't be there. I'm all in favor of them. I don't care if children see or ask about these things. What's problematic is that the kids were suddenly- literally- part of the picture.
posted by Elise at 9:40 AM
2 Comments
Oh, Spare Me
The New York Observer this week is running its second set of angry letters about an article called "Breast is Best?: This Bad Mom Trusts the Bottle" that ran on December 5th. While it would be nice to think all of this ire poured in because people were finding outlets for their anger and impatience during the transit strike, I know that isn't the case.
I'd link to the original article for you, but I can't because one must pay $2.95 for it at this point. The gist of the piece is that mothers are damned from day one. There is always something they should be doing or trying to do and if they decide not to do it, they're "bad" or "selfish" or "shouldn't have had a kid anyway." The writer, who was still knocked up when she wrote this piece, used herself (naturally) as an example of this. She has decided not to breastfeed and rattles on and on about how bad or "bad" she is in the eyes of the world.
And I am plugging my ears.
If the writer was trying to make a statement about the strange world of competition, contests for suffering and one-upmanship that is parenthood, then she failed completely. Her audience clearly couldn't hear a word of her larger argument because she was jumping up and down saying: "Look! Look at me! I'm going to make you breastfeeders MAD! I'm not going to nurse my baby and I know it's terrible. I know how very, very BAD I am." And of course her audience rose to the occasion and pounced all over her saying she was just an asshole who shouldn't have kids if all she wanted was her body back and the ability to drink tons of wine or what have you.
So what if she doesn't breastfeed? I don't care. I don't care if anyone does. It isn't my business and it isn't interesting. I don't think anyone is better or more virtuous for breastfeeding just as I wouldn't think anyone was cruel or selfish for opting out. It is just one choice among many. The writer knows what she is doing (happily she managed to work in the fact that she went to Yale, I suppose as a way of letting us know how very, very smart she is) and appears comfortable with her decision- except that she had to write a defensive article about it and cast herself as the Cruella de Ville of the post-partum set.
This is too bad, not only because it's boring. The real shame is that everyone is so competitive and nosy and trying to measure maternal success in abstract, pointless ways. Breastfeeding, co-sleeping, organic food, non-medicated childbirth, television, vaccines, non-electronic toys, gender neutral clothes, circumcision, attachment/no-attachment, gender neutral toys, childcare, whether the mother went to Yale or not- all of these things that are mere elements, fragments in lives have become enormous standards, points by which people compare themselves to others in the hopes of feeling superior.
This is all just so much dancing in the face of existentialism. There is no objective "best," thank God.
If you don't want to breastfeed, you're entitled not to, but you should shut up about it- and not just because I'm not interested. You should keep it to yourself because the only thing blabbing will do is give people the opportunity to reveal what jerks they really are.
Really, if the writer wanted people to hear what she had to say, she shouldn't have talked so much about herself.
posted by Elise at 7:45 PM
4 Comments
Resolved
I used to have a not uncommon annual tradition during this season. This week, actually. I would to sit down and fuss over a private year-end Top 10 list of movies. I had all kinds of rules (Had to be something seen on a big screen, couldn't have been a revival, though special screenings or festival viewings were fair game... that sort of arbitrary rigidity) Not this year.
The habit has been fractured by my unwillingness to admit how steeply my movie watching has dropped off (I don't get out nearly as much). I haven't even seen the movie I worked on that the country is hooting about right now.
But I'm also finding that I don't trust myself entirely. My reactions to movies seem a little weird to me. I thought Syriana was great but had an impossible time with a death that occurs in the middle of the picture. This did not used to be a problem I ever had as a moviegoer. I don't recognize myself. Who is this woman in whose body I'm sitting and why is she squeezing her eyes shut? What happened to the toughie who happily sat through any amount of carnage and human death, who only minded certain kinds of animal threat? Of course this has everything to do with having had a child. There are other things that are also different about me, though I'm hoping a little more dedication in the gym and a bit more restraint about the enormous box of delicious chocolate-covered caramels that is calling to me will remedy that.
(Here I will say, in my defense that this is somewhat different from my King Kong problem. I have always had a Kong problem, ever since I saw the 1933 version. It promises to be worse with my new viewing quirks and the fact that this Kong, as my brother says: "seems so much sadder.")
Happily, I can enjoy thinking about the wrestling match I used to have with myself, because every critic around is writing about the agony and the ecstasy of creating a Top 10 (the Village Voice does this well, too). On top of those articles, there's also the Slate Movie Club, in its final year. I adore Movie Club and have read it avidly for years. David Edelstein should know how deeply it will be missed and I hope he reincarnates it somehow in his new gig.
I don't know how long I will be so easily manipulated or when my critical faculties will normalize, but in the spirit of trying to be myself, here are some pictures- new and old, and a couple of television series- that would be on a Top 10, if I were making one, which I am not.
Here is what I remember really enjoying this year. It isn't a Top 10. I haven't seen enough to do justice to the list.
A History of Violence
2046
Good Night and Good Luck
Syriana
Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Three Times (a Taiwanese movie by Hou Hsaio-hsien, a favorite director who didn't disappoint)
Wedding Crashers (thought I would hate it, didn't, a complete surprise)
Sin City (would never be a top 10 pick, but was novel)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
No no, this isn't everything I've seen. There are others, I know there are others, but I forgot to write everything down. And if I start weeding too hard, despair will set in until I actually find myself trying to cough up shabby Top 10 list. And then I will have to pry open my exquisite bottle of post-partum tequila I got as a baby shower present. This is only a little gesture, and a promise that I will one day return to my old ways.
On the bright side, all this talk of lists and interesting pictures has allowed me to plump up my Netflix queue. Any picks on your end? Do tell.
Next year, perhaps. Next year I will have done more, seen more and even though I will surely be under the sway of this maternal haze, have more to say. Consider that a resolution.
posted by Elise at 9:44 AM
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Holiday Postscript
This was a year full of photographs. Happily I was on the back end of the camera, for the most part, but this season renewed a world of horrible pictures of me that I thought had somehow ceased to exist. Is there any way to keep from looking drunk (when one isn't) and jowly? If there is a secret, I beg you to share it.
posted by Elise at 8:38 PM
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Sleep Tight
Felix finally passed out after howling and raging at me, at the injustice, at the misery of a long-postponed bedtime and I'm a bit surprised my voice wasn't mixing with his because getting through the week has been like an obstacle course.
I started behind, because that is how the week that ends with Christmas always begins (work, shopping, thinking, breathing, nothing escapes). And then the transit strike hit which made everything difficult.
Then the dog got extraordinarily ill at 4:30 on Thursday morning, while I was still sleeping, but after my husband had hopped a plane for a day trip to the Midwest. We did eventually get to the vet. Diagnosis: "Street Virus"- so word to the wise: there is something nasty going around on these mean streets. If you notice something evil happening, don't wait it out. (I should also here caution everyone against using Resolve carpet cleaner because while it did work on the terrible smell, it may have also extracted some portion of the rug itself.)
Anyway, the whole week has been a wash and a scramble all at once and by Friday night I was somewhere between sour and catatonic. So I had a lot of red wine and pushed myself towards the latter.
And then things got turned around, and it is thanks to Felix. Somehow, the kid is just happy to party. He apparently doesn't care if the place is overheated or if there's shouting. He'll eat any quantity of turkey and sweet potato (with or without marshmallow), and will happily skip a nap if it means getting to throw bits of wrapping paper around.
Unimaginable as it is, to me, at least, I was not anxious or depressed at any of our family affairs and of all the possible things I would have predicted having a baby would affect, that it perhaps the last one.
Christmas traditions were always low-key in my family, largely built on circumstance and convenience. (Our tree ornaments, for instance, were always just old toys and things that couldn't quite get thrown away. I recall we used to hang a couple of forks that had been half-eaten by a disposal unit from higher limbs, and an old marionette head of a "gypsy" was the star- when we could find it.) My husband's family is much larger and better organized and quite daunting to me.
All through this week I occasionally worried about letting my little family down- about being a flake or an underachiever. Felix had no tradition this year, and who knows how old he'll be when he gets it. I was wondering this morning how I'll handle the whole Santa Claus business and hoping I don't blow it because I'm chronically preoccupied. I do want Felix to have some traditions, even if they are idiosyncratic and dopey. I want him to have them so he can remember clearly the pleasures of these days that will bring his whole family into focus.
At the end of this week, which was weird and disappointing in many ways, my kid and I basked in two families, and it is amazing to me that he has made himself so much at home. One of my brothers-in-law, who just spent his second Christmas with my husband's family, thanked Felix for coming around so that he's not "the new guy" anymore.
Felix just raised his finger (he likes to point) and gave one of his extended Shouts of Many Meanings, which I hope my brother-in-law took in the inclusive spirit in which it was meant.
posted by Elise at 7:54 PM
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Strike, Baby
It is day 2 of the first total transit strike in New York City in 25 years (and it is fascinating how everything old really is new again, with every angry gesture and bit of media posturing-- right down to tearing up things like strike-halting injunctions in front of television cameras-- having been performed before in 1966, when they actually locked up Michael Quill, the founding president of the Transit Workers Union of America).
What is annoying is that in the absence of movement, the news is full of non-news and padded with human interest stories. There are:
Tales of sitting in traffic; long walks in the freezing cold; taking a chance on a ride with a stranger; how great it is to finally use a Vespa for something other than looking fashionable; New Yorkers being helpful to tourists, etc.
But just wait a few months. The Sunday New York Times will be full of Strike Weddings, and a raft of Strike Babies will appear, possibly as a result of Strike Sex. Craigslist also has Strike Sex personals.
If this is trend spotting, or trend predicting. I'm on record.
posted by Elise at 12:35 PM
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Grade A
In light of my utter lack of productivity because of the transit strike in New York City, I'm now able to stew a bit about my general performance and guilt in a larger sense.
Slate ran an article a few days ago about the publication of Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise High Achievers and How You Can Too, by Dr. Soo Kim Abboud and her sister Jane Kim. The piece reports that the book contains a 17 "secrets" that committed families use to create high achieving, academically stellar children.
The Slate article points out the struggle it expects the book to have. On the one hand, everyone wants a smart successful child, and the competition to get into good schools and achieve great things is high. I didn't realize quite how crazed the whole business of New York schools was until a few friends with older children started the application process. It is unbelievable how the entire business is designed to make one feel like some sort of parental failure before one's kid can even tie his or her shoes. (Or is that perhaps yet another test of one's child's relative proficiency?) I say this knowing that one of the things that children are "tested" for at the Excessively Intense New York City nursery school / kindergarten stage is what kind of parents they have, and I don't just mean financially- the schools look for parents who themselves aren't unbearable. The flip side of this is that many parents, particularly those who don't feel they have to actively demonstrate their worth to the community, feel deeply ambivalent about the academic pressure that books like Top of the Class suggest that parents should place on their children... if they truly want them to do well.
I should say here that this dialectic can easily be couched in racial stereotypes and Slate is aware of this. Not only does Top of the Class make no bones about stereotyping "Asian" parents as being particularly driven to produce "high achievers," which is apparently intimidating to the (again stereotypical) Caucasian parents who worry about damaging their kids with excessive competition and the exclusion of extracurricular interests. This whole racial debate was interestingly raised in another book that has been reviewed all over the place lately: The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton by Jerome Karabel. (Malcom Gladwell wrote an excellent piece about it in the New Yorker back in October, and the New York Times published an extensive review a month later.) In The Chosen, the dialectic was not between Asian high achievers and a worried Caucasian majority, but between academically aggressive Jewish students and the Protestant majority.
I find these discussions reasonably interesting but as always it seems to me that the trick will be maintaining a middle ground. It is easy to recognize a theory of parenting and find it appealing, but people respond to different stimuli. Does my skepticism of the "17 secrets" make me a slacker? I never went for the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, either. This is not to say that one shouldn't work hard and encourage one's children to do the same, but that it strange to run a kid's life by a self-help book, especially one that appears to be targeted at rewarding the parent for the kid's achievements.
posted by Elise at 1:28 PM
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I Know What You're Saying
It had been about fifteen months since the last time I dared go near my haircutter. She's extremely nice and interesting, but it has been one thing after another. When I was most extremely pregnant, nothing was going to make me look better. Then I had no time. Then I had no hair, well, substantially less than usual.
So I finally got up the nerve to face the scissors and hear how long it would be before this odd tufty look that comes upon me in humid weather would subside.
I'll probably have to wait until the summer for my head to be back to normal, but during my time in the chair I got to look at the January issues of Glamour and Elle magazines, where the push is on to promote a book called: You're Wearing That: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation. I was susceptible to these articles. While I can go for years between haircuts (not that I would recommend it), but one of my most memorable "You're Wearing That" moments with my mother came when I bounded into LaGuardia airport after being in Berkeley for a few months and becoming a little too lively with a bottle of Sun In. As she ran up to hug me, my mother couldn't help herself: "What have you done to your hair?" And the next day we went to the first place we could find that would make my head less... I think the word was "brassy."
Te memory of my blonde chagrin was sort of interesting in light of these articles because as the title of the book suggests, this conversational gambit really is universal with mothers and daughters. It is hard to immunize oneself against the leading question:
You're wearing that?
Do you really like your hair that way?
Are you sure you haven't been eating too much candy corn?
And then there are the more insidious conversation starters that are harder to understand or parry, about the success or stability or marriage or babies of friends. It is hard to know what to do when your mother talks about these things. Are you supposed to be purely happy for the person's success or marriage or baby or are you supposed to feel guilty about the ways in which you don't measure up?
Are these things as identifiable in the dialogue between mothers and sons? I refuse to let my tongue turn so passive aggressive.
The Elle piece really is about mother/daughter relationships and it highlights a creepy and fascinating legacy. The writer Paula Fox had a hideous couple of parents and ended up putting her own child up for adoption. She wrote about her family in 2001's Borrowed Finery. That child, a daughter named Linda Carroll went on to become a writer herself (she just published her memoir called Her Mother's Daughter), in which she discusses her extraordinarily problematic relationship with her daughter Courtney Love. Of course they're not speaking. Love has claimed in the past that Marlon Brando is her father. This is almost certainly erroneous, but if she is looking for a personal mythology, she doesn't have to look any further than her own very real backyard.
posted by Elise at 8:38 PM
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Presenting
So if you were going to perform Hamlet with finger puppets and only four characters, which ones would you choose? I ask because a friend gave Felix a Christmas present of a set of (magnetic!?!) Hamlet finger puppets of: Hamlet, Ophelia, Gertrude and Claudius and I don't know how much one can do with those particular four. Hamlet is pretty interesting, now that I think about it, for being really invested in its secondary characters: the Ghost who gets the ball rolling, Polonius who makes things worse all the way around... Still, perhaps this set is really best for a holiday-time contemplation of Hamlet. Forget the state, it's all about family (mother, stepfather/uncle, girlfriend and of course our hero).
This year I started looking for presents comparatively early, which is to say, this week as opposed to the week of the 25th. It is amazing how procuring presents is like those scenes from Looney Tunes cartoons where a character cleans up by sweeping everything under the rug, and creates a giant lump that moves around and won't be squashed no matter how many whacks it gets with a broom. I found and ordered something for my husband. Triumph! It arrived. Then it arrived again. While I try to sort that out, which is more complicated than it sounds, I order something for one of the nieces. As soon as I make contact with husband's present's customer service, an email arrives telling me the niece's item (which was fab, by the way, and I hope I can remember it exists for a birthday or next year or something) has been back ordered. Eventually I had to get back to work and today my email box seems more like a minefield than ever before.
But here's one recommendation, if you're short a present for bookish types. It is rather spendy, but don't dismiss it too quickly. A couple of years ago- pre kid- I was given a subscription to the Times Literary Supplement, a British publication, and I've become addicted. But only now that I have Felix do I really relish it. The supplement contains mostly book reviews and a scattering of pieces about art, theatre, movies and strange things. It always has poems scattered around, an often amusingly blustery letters section, the occasional acrostic or quotation quiz (with cash prizes!), and an amusing classified section.
Since the thing shows up every week, and I'm short on time they tend to pile up, but I always keep one in my bag to ward off boredom and they also help, I think, to prevent my becoming boring. This week I've read about curry and pineapples, the prejudices against meteorology, and Edvard Munch. No matter how insular I feel in the dark mornings while I feed Felix or noodle with him, I can always glance through any stray issue and glimpse a peculiar assortment of passions. Just a taste of these texts provides enough succulent tidbits to toss around at cocktail parties (if any were being thrown), and it's just as well that one isn't desperate to read the books because many are unavailable in the United States and the shipping rates from Amazon UK are extraordinary.
posted by Elise at 8:03 PM
3 Comments
There Must Be Cake
I threw the one party I've been pitching for the last five years. The terrier is almost finished snuffling up all the stray flakes of sparkly sugar, edible glitter and gingerbread bits. Here you can see the end result of this event.
While the festivities were burbling along, a little theme developed that has not subsided and that is: what will we do for Felix's birthday?
What indeed?
I have always felt that I would be happiest doing a whole lot of nothing, but then we attended a first birthday bash and my husband fell, hook line and sinker, for the kid-makes-a-mess-of-cake-and-frosting ritual and photo op.
And now I don't know what to do. As a friend had no trouble pointing out to me recently, I haven't been overly concerned with creating a large social circle for Felix, and my own energy shortage (while helped by an iron supplement, coffee and chocolate) is unlikely to be remedied in a couple of months.
What does one do? I desperately don't want to have a kid-fest, not yet. But it seems almost too sourpuss-ish, even for me, to do nothing at all. And believe me, I haven't dismissed the idea of a cocktail party, which I find myself rather in need of these days.
Surely there's a middleground and I'll take suggestions. What I want: messy cake pictures, a minimum of screaming, limited mess, a drink or two, a dog that doesn't get ill at some inopportune hour.
posted by Elise at 10:14 AM
6 Comments
While I'm At It...
Among one of the most exquisite family movies on my list was just on television, and I feel obliged to mention it. Blasphemous and hilarious, with one of the best wise-ass teenage girl characters one could ever ask for, and William Demarest, I adore The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. Everyone should see it at least once, and if you're limiting yourself to holiday themed pictures this season, this one has a Christmas scene, of sorts, so there's nothing to hold you back. If you watch it, you'll see why I once recommended it to some friends who were hoping to induce labor.
Preston Sturges, who wrote and directed the movie, has been regularly saving me from misery and despair ever since I was a lonely college girl. What a fantastic creature he must have been to come up with such wonderful dialogue, AND have the time to invent "Red-Red Rouge," the first "kissproof lipstick," something I wish could be perfected today.
posted by Elise at 9:21 AM
1 Comments
Family Viewing
Movies are my religion in many ways. I believe in them. I love to visit them in their houses of worship. A marvelous feeling comes over me when I met someone who just happens to love the same movies I do, even the oddest ones.
So I was intrigued when the Guardian published an essay about family films, accompanied by a 50-best picks list. Family Film is a term that makes people skittish, for good reason. The fear is that the pictures will be shabby and saccharine, riddled with cheap sentiment, dull stories, clunky "messages," crappy humor and no irony at all. (I have an additional problem that I've mentioned here before, which is a problem with cinematic dog- or other animal, really- threat or death. I recently saw the preview for the gorgeous looking King Kong and practically wept. The 1933 version was ridiculously devastating to me.
To think about family films is to think about one's own history with movies and families. I don't recall the first movie I went to (which, my parents once told me was Yellow Submarine, though I'm not sure their memories are perfect on this point), but I do have powerful nostalgia for family outings and remember vividly my father taking me to see La Belle et la bete when I was about eight, and the tantalizing whole-family trips to see Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Arc. There was a nature documentary called Animals are Beautiful People (memorable for being funny and for my mother sitting on a huge piece of sucked-on grape candy), and a somewhat misguided excursion to see a revival of Nosfaratu at a theatre that had extra atmosphere because it was infested with rats. One of the two best New Year's Eves I've ever spent was with my family, which was unified in sickness- we all had strep throat- watching a Marx Brothers marathon.
Felix is too little for movies, and I haven't gotten it together to go to any of those stroller cinemas people seem to like, though I wonder about my ability to actually watch anything I cart him to.
Peter Bradshaw's essay brings up all sorts of unpleasant and exquisite aspects of family films, things one perhaps doesn't want to think about when one has a ten-month-old, such as the possibility that children can outgrow their parents, but I have been savoring the list, conjuring one of my own, and perhaps if I can offer my kid enough interest and entertainment, he won't have to outgrow me, not entirely.
Feel free to offer up some choice tidbits from your lists. I'm always collecting.
posted by Elise at 6:52 PM
2 Comments
Bookish
For Thanksgiving, my father gave me a copy of The Bad Mother's Handbook. I admit to lifting an eyebrow because he so rarely gives me new fiction that doesn't fall into one of two categories: mystery or science fiction*. The Bad Mother's Handbook belongs to a chick lit spin-off category: tales of the hapless maternal. Set in Northern England, there is not a high heeled shoe or girly cocktail in sight; it is all embarrassing encounters baddish food, unfortunate but not disastrous decisions and mostly feckless men.
The Bad Mother's Handbook was originally published in the UK, no surprise given its setting, where it was a big hit and made quite a star out of its author, Kate Long, who was a schoolteacher and mother in Shropshire who wrote in her spare time. The book, which is available here, didn't blast off in the United States, which makes me wonder where my father found it.
He is not a man who is above finding books amusing strictly on the basis of their titles or covers, so I'm not surprised that he got it for me, but what I can't figure at all is how he knew about it in the first place. The copy I have here (and yes, I did read it) is one he clearly purchased from an online used book dealer, since it is a Canadian hardcover edition. This means he must have known about it to order it, and while I have searched mightily in all the places he usually finds books that aren't really his thing, I am still in the dark. Why does it matter? Why don't I just ask him? It matters because this is the way my father and I express ourselves with each other and to discover what he's thinking, I tend to play detective.
This was one of the strange side effects of Felix. Naturally, there was a good chance having a child would bring me closer to my family, but one never really knows what will happen. On the one hand, I have gotten rather used to playing backup for my kid. My mother frequently asks: "How's my boy?" before anything and tends to burst into loud chatter with him even though he can't manage to hold the telephone to his ear. On the other, my father now calls from time to time to chat, which is something he almost never did pre-kid.
So I can't ignore the gesture that is the book, even though the text has nothing to do with me in any literal sense and it doesn't tend to be the kind of thing I read. It is significant. It is as significant as the fact that I had to shout at my father, who was loitering in the hall refusing to remove his parka, from my wobbly position astride the hospital bed, IV pole in hand to get him to come into the room the morning after Felix was born. When I asked my brother what he thought was up, he said: "The dad was probably trying to avoid anything that might encourage an expression of something like emotion." I not only agreed with him but felt that his reticence was all for the best. My father likes to keep things academic.
I choose to see this present as a gesture of interest from my father who I think does understand, though probably in an impractical way, that having a baby has its vicissitudes. I have read the book and like to think he is giving me a vote of confidence, because the alternative interpretation, given the story, is that he is thanking me for not getting knocked-up in high school and dropping out. Having said that, I do recall one evening in the middle of high school when I called home to let my parents know I would be late and the only reply was: "Just don't come home pregnant." But I really think in this case I should accentuate the positive.
Has anyone read The Bad Mother's Handbook? If so, what say?
*We have a thing going, my father and I, where we each try to find genre books the other hasn't heard of. I am rather proud about being way ahead of him. I was the first to read the Jack Reacher novels, the fabulous Altered Carbon and everything else by Richard K. Morgan and Jasper Fforde.
posted by Elise at 5:33 PM
3 Comments
Like the Proverbial Hole in the Head
Generating all kinds of ire and defensiveness is today's article in Salon about some odd new niche magazine for stay at home mothers called Total 180!. I can't blame Rebecca Traister for wanting to write about it and talk to its creators because its message is so fascinatingly conflicted and seems, to me, to speak of an unpleasant side-effect of becoming a parent: the "I'm Suffering But I Love It and You Should Suffer, Too" phenomenon.
The magazine is chock full of "humorous" articles about how these stay at home mothers never have sex, are kept at home by their husbands and "let out" occasionally, how their children are bloody nightmares, but that parenting (all together now!) is the hardest and most important job anyone can choose to do (Traister happily takes issue with this statement).
And, really, isn't this a lot of crap? Before I became a parent, I hated, hated, hated all the smug clubby language one sees in magazines like this one that people with kids would invent for the ways in which they feel victimized by their circumstances, and never understood why in the next breath they are urging everyone else to take on this burden of suffering.
My kid is young, and I didn't choose to drop out of my pre-baby lifestyle, so maybe I'm talking out of my hat, but there is something wrong with this "joking" language of suffering and sacrifice and sexlessness and "my husband is such an idiot-ness." It's stupid.
Of course being a parent isn't easy, but nothing is, and contact with other people involves a certain amount of conflict, which is why I tend to get migraine and heart palpitations around this time of year. (At least I hope that's the reason.)
It won't happen anytime soon, and maybe it can't happen because the big stupid statement is always going to be eye-catching and generate all sorts of anger and debate (I notice that by 11:20 this morning, Traister's Salon piece already generated 43 letters to the Editor.) But I wish someone would applaud the subtleties of being a parent, how the pleasures are so potent and the problems that are most savage are not so easy to quantify. The Total 180! women surely believe in what they write, but they're doing a total disservice to everyone.
I didn't have a kid to join a private club or make myself feel included in anyone's agenda but my own, so while these articles claim to be "amusing," I can only see them as toxic and frankly elitist, and if I'm picking up a magazine for pleasure, I'm much more inclined to look at Vogue, where I don't have any trouble understanding that I am not like the people on those pages.
posted by Elise at 8:32 AM
2 Comments
But First
Dawn arrived too early yesterday, as it has done for the last ten months and I had occasion to peer blearily out the window as I went to lift the hollering Felix. And lo, there was a bit of snow on the ground, most of it untouched. Some sort of mania hit me and I stuffed the kid into his coat and stroller, threw the harness on the terrier and grabbed the camera to take pictures of First Snow Felix.
And then I realized that, of course, this isn't his first snow, it's just the first snow of his first full winter, and that's hardly a milestone. That's just weather.
I've never been one for marking moments well. I don't remember turning sixteen, didn't go to a single prom, didn't spend much time at either my college or graduate school graduations, so how did I end up falling into the Firsts Insanity? When Felix first rolled over, I was thrilled and actually relieved that I managed to see and videotape the incident (a complete accident). Why the concern? Was I thinking no one would believe me that he had figured this out? Was I thinking he would never flip over again and I would be like the hapless guy from the infamous "One Froggy Evening" Looney Tunes cartoon where the frog will only sing "The Michigan Rag" when there's no audience?
This is not some "tree falls in a forest" situation. People routinely learn how to walk and talk and roll over without a documentary crew handy. But in my case, I suspect an ulterior motive. I can't remember anything anymore except by association. Felix's landmarks are just a constellation of memory triggers for me and it has happened since he was still in utero.
- When was it exactly that my aunt visited and I had to show my uncle the ways in which "Hey Fatso" is an unwise way to greet a pregnant woman? Oh yes, the weekend of December 16t h when Felix first began exerting rare pressure and pain on my ribs.
- When did my friends elope and how long do I have to give them their wedding present? Around the time Felix's first teeth popped out (present finally delivered, by the way- whew).
There is another sad possibility. I would rather not think that compulsive "firsts" charting is the result of the hideous obsessive baby comparing that one hears about so often. Happily I avoid this by being completely useless and unable to play the game because I can't clearly articulate what Felix does, since so much of it seems rather vague. ("Well, he doesn't say Mama, but when he wants something he spouts `Mamamamamamamamama.' Is that close?")
So beyond fostering the competitive spirit and giving people like me a decent mnemonic device, is there any point in documenting "firsts"? I suspect I know the answer to this already, given the fact that the pediatrician and all close relatives have yet to question me on any of these finer points that I try to remember to write down.
posted by Elise at 10:18 AM
2 Comments
Creepy Jewelry
I took a glance at Daddy Types this morning and my eyes are still burning. There's an entry about Christmas presents for new mothers (and, I suppose their corollary, "push presents) that almost put me off my coffee. Not quite, but almost.
It is hard for me to muster complicated feelings about "push presents" generally. If someone wants to give the woman who delivered his or her baby a present, that's a nice and sweet idea, especially at a time when one feels really weird and one's body is doing interesting and painful things. I won't quarrel with it on principle.
What is unfortunate, if inevitable, is that once a market for these presents has been identified, companies will come up with all sorts of prefab items that people can grab without having to put much thought into it. I realize time is short after a kid has arrived, indeed I lived it, but the presents Daddy Types point out, no matter how expensive, seem to have come out of a can, AND are sort of infantilizing, an unwelcome quality in any present for a mother. What is the appeal of a four thousand dollar diamond necklace branded by Baby Gund, the company that makes "Sprinkes (formerly Speckles) the Giraffe"? (Yes, Sprinkles, or Speckles or whatever he goes by is very cute, but not so much around one's throat, unless I'm missing some subtlety.) And the other deluxe bits of jewelry Daddy Types mentions are strange charm bracelets and necklaces that while surely very chi-chi, are extremely childlike, not grown up or sophisticated or the sort of thing one would wear in hopes of distracting oneself from postpartum exhaustion and spit-up covered shoulders.
But the insane push present is not the exclusive domain of the rich and strange (or rich and unimaginative). Daddy Types gets credit for pointing out the most insane representational jewelry I think I have ever seen. I realize these items are being sold through Midwifery Today magazine, which is read primarily by midwives, but that are listed as "Products for Parents."
They are:
"Baby's Joy earrings". Even if you can discreetly nurse in public, your ears can show the world what's really going on.
"Womb With a View earrings" That kid isn't breech.
"Baby Earrings" The size of an 8-week-old fetus. Creepy, perhaps?
And
"Crowning Earrings" Words escape me except to say that this particular spectacle is always, always, always best kept private.
The comfort here, and there is one, is that everyone can go too far, regardless of financial limitations.
posted by Elise at 10:14 AM
5 Comments
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