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Extremists
I'm on edge these days so my eye tends to be drawn to particularly grim, outlandish news stories that don't inspire faith in humanity. These, needless to say, aren't hard to come by, but at least Judith Warner is writing intelligently about terrible things in her opinion pieces for the New York Times.
Her most recent article is inspired by some events in Missouri in which a teenager killed herself after being dropped horribly by a boy she had fallen for on MySpace. Her parents subsequently learned that there was no boy at all, that the person who had used their daughter so poorly was a grown woman who was abusing the girl to get some revenge on behalf of her own daughter. I am not describing these miserable events well and part of the reason why it is hard to put them briefly is that from a behavioral standpoint, it is impossible not to confuse the actions of the adults and the children.
Warner argues rather persuasively that this is an awful and extreme example of parents refusing to allow their children grow up. This is an issue that is discussed at length in various chapters of The Blessing of the Skinned Knee (which I did read on various peoples' recommendations, but whose title I keep misremembering as The Blessing of Wounded Knee-- which if it existed, would be about something else).
At any rate, I have little to add except that I think it is odd that it has come to this. It is strange to me that parents are so reluctant to teach their children how to get on for themselves in the world and instead work very hard to keep their children eternally young.
I promise to perk up soon, but really the Warner piece is worth a gander.
posted by Elise at 7:23 PM
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Appalled for the Holidays
I was going to say something else today. I had in fact been well on my way to saying something else, but I got derailed by Ayelet Waldman.
Credit must be given where it is due. I got this tidbit from my husband, (who got it from a friend of ours). He sent it to me, I suppose, in hopes that if he could get my dander up about trivial matters, I might forget some of the more pressing issues that have been looming with this holiday season.
La Waldman apparently concocted a piece of antic festivity for the latest issue of Harpers Bazaar. In it she explains that as a Jew, she coveted the Christmasses of other families growing up but now, having found true love and true community in the arms of her novelist, husband Michael Chabon, she shuns the holiday and indoctrinates her children in the ways of loving condescension. Here is a quote pulled by Gawker that more or less says it all:
" I told [my daughter] Sophie, as I have since told her younger siblings, that there is no such thing as Santa Claus, that he is a character in a story just like Willy Wonka or Amelia Bedelia. I further instruct them that their Christian friends are sweet but gullible, and out of respect for their limitations, we should all work hard to sustain their delusions for as long as possible."
It's heartwarming, isn't it?
What on earth is this woman's problem? Does she seriously mean for us to take her pronouncements (however parodic they seem) at face value? Is she just not a good writer and her words don't convey her meaning well? Is she perhaps trying to be funny? I suppose she manages to keep getting published everywhere because so few people are willing to expose themselves as being that ridiculous.
Anyway, this is a good way to get the season started.
posted by Elise at 1:20 PM
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Today Is Not a Holiday
Happy Thanksgiving, by the way.
But today is Friday, "Black Friday" if you're a retailer, and for the rest of us it is a day of reckoning. Suddenly counting the number of shopping days before Christmas isn't silly. Suddenly, end-of-the-year deadlines have real and intimidating meaning. Suddenly my lectures to my oldest son about how he can't wear shorts outside really have meaning (yesterday it was 60-some degrees and today we're in the 30's).
At any rate, I hope very much your holiday and the ensuing weekend is full of things more pastoral (yes, even the urban pastoral) than the automotive.
posted by Elise at 7:47 AM
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What Ho, Nostalgia?
I watched a lot of Sesame Street when I was a kid, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I had a record featuring Kermit the Frog singing "It's Not Easy Being Green" and Ernie's hit "Rubber Duckie"... I seem to recall a song about having two eyes ("and they're both the same size") as well.
I remember Sesame Street quite fondly, really, though I won't touch the stuff now. Elmo's voice makes me want to do terrible, terrible things and I got disgusted when Cookie Monster became a spokesperson for the virtues of vegetable eating (no one can convince me that Cookie Monster isn't a better sinner than he is a saint). But in spite of these changes, I was a little surprised to see a piece in the New York Times Sunday Magazine about how the DVDs of vintage Sesame Street carry a warning: "These early 'Sesame Street' episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today's preschool child."
It's a really interesting article, and I can't say I don't still prefer old Sesame to new.
This is not to say that I don't understand how looking back can be painful. I happily got a copy of The Story of Babar for Felix and nearly choked when I started reading it to him (I loved it but it had been quite a large number of years since I last looked at it) that Babar's mother is shot to death by hunters on the second or third page. Felix is in a bit of a clingy phase right now and I suppose that gives me a heart of marshmallow because I have been fudging the story. I told myself I wouldn't do that but I just can't do the death thing with him. Cookie Monster is certainly welcome, however. Light vice I can handle. I commit it constantly anyway.
posted by Elise at 11:44 AM
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Not On Top of It
I feel these festive days have fallen upon me, like the proverbial anvil on Wile E. Coyote's head. Halloween was managed pretty well but I guess I hit the snooze button a few too many times in November because here it is Thanksgiving week and every day someone has to remind me of something I forgot.
I forgot, for instance, that I volunteered to put together some elements for Felix's class Thanksgiving party. (The whole holiday is much too early this year. There isn't usually this much November left over after Thanksgiving, is there? Or am I just wallowing in denial?) A mad scramble ensued but I should be in good shape not to let anyone down tomorrow.
In a way, this is the sort of thing that I find more challenging than the usual "work vs. kid" questions. I can usually find time to deal with work around my children but I get really tied up with the whole question of school responsibilities and social things. I don't want either of my kids to suffer because I'm sort of lousy at planning things. Felix's birthday isn't for months, and already I'm behind. Other parents in his class have already figured out their children's parties and are probably sleeping the sleep of the Just and Efficient. I can't decide what we should do or when we should do it. I was going to write "if" we should do it but even my mother, who is the most low-pressure person I know about this sort of thing, says this is the year. Now is the time.
Astonishing how easy it is to get all in a welter about how a handful of small children will entertain themselves for a couple of hours on a winter weekend.
posted by Elise at 4:55 AM
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R.I.P. Dr. Saperstein
Ira Levin, the man who brought me numerous nightmares courtesy of his novel Rosemary's Baby, and Roman Polanski's movie based on it has apparently died.
Not content with squicking out pregnant women, he went on to write The Stepford Wives, which creepily and amusingly did a nice job of mocking suburban angst while legitimizing it. With robot ladies.
At any rate, Rosemary's Baby, the movie, which I have seen many times over the years, (and yes, I did read the novel as well) handily captured so many of my pregnancy worries. Fear of carrying Satan's child wasn't really on my list of preoccupations, but all of the betrayals and fear of the kid within were absolutely percolating inside me, along with the baby who would become Felix.
Happily, now that the children are around, I spend more time panicking about keeping them from swinging from the rafters and getting my work done than I do thinking about which neighbors could possibly be Satanists.
I am sorry to hear about Mr. Levin's death. The world needs pulpy writers who can so easily nab and articulate angsty zeitgeists but his heyday was some decades ago. Does he have a successor?
posted by Elise at 5:23 AM
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But Did They Breastfeed?
Because if they did, it doesn't really show.
Some flickers of interest for a Friday...
Here's a piece about lunatic celebrity mothers (celeb mothers who are lunatics and mothers of lunatics, both!) that should make anyone feel better about any job he or she is doing in any profession or parenting role.
But before you get too comfortable, here's the latest from Slate's Emily Bazelon about possible potential advantages of breastfeeding.
posted by Elise at 3:39 PM
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Where Is It?
I despise cumulative statistics.
"Americans eat a zillion pounds of sugar/wheat/dust mites/lint every year."
"In a single year average suburban mother is recorded approximately 16 hours by shopping mall surveillance cameras-- more minutes than the complete running time of Berlin Alexanderplatz!"
"In the average decade, commuters lose out on 5,000 precious hours better spent with pets, books and family."
The numbers are all vague and saddening, designed to make you feel unhappy about things you can't change much and thought were just part of life (the commute), paranoid (those surveillance cameras), or guilty (the foods you love are horrifying).
So I ignore those sorts of assessments for the most part but, lately I've been wondering about the enormous amount of time I spend looking for things, weeding under couches, peering into shelves. In the old days, the pre-toddler times, if one were to leave a non-food item someplace, it would pretty much stay there (note the hungry terrier exception). Now, anything could be anywhere at any time because of the wandering randomizer that is my older child.
It doesn't matter if I try to get organized or set policies about things such as: where Black and White Doggie will stay when we go out or why the buttons I have to sew back on a sweater can't go in his pockets, because I have to turn my back at some point and then the center stops holding.
The only way to keep track of things is to become like an FBI serial killer profiler, putting oneself into the mind of the mysterious creature that relocated everything.
Once upon a time, I was the most eccentric person living under this roof. Now I'm apparently investing many minutes every day becoming the straight man.
posted by Elise at 6:40 AM
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Public Face
New York City offers so many opportunities in which to be rude or receive rudeness that it is impossible really to enumerate them. Last week, Felix and I went to the zoo in Central Park with some of his classmates and of course everyone got hungry.
Things started to get a little tetchy on line and then I realized that the cashier was a cashier in training, which accounted for the slowness, and my child had developed a case of octopus arms and was reaching wildly for the extremely vulnerable tray of donuts, the packages of jelly beans, the ice machine, while trying to knock over the tray of food. While this was going on, the woman behind me began trying an assortment standard conversational gambits: "Oh, just look at him." (Believe me, I'm looking and I'm not liking what I see.) "What nice eyes!" (That glint in them leads me to believe he is going to knock that whole tray of jelly donuts over and jump on them.) "He's an angel." (Let's not go too far...) "What's your name, little boy? Oh have you been told not to talk to strangers? Why not? Do I seem crazy?"
And now I'm wondering what to do. I'm stuck on line and the kid is on the brink of insanity (he would soon go right over the edge) and I want that woman to shut up. But maybe she's trying to do me a favor and distract my kid. If so, she is failing and why does she feel she needs to do this good deed anyway?
The line never did speed up and I was finally forced to grab Felix and hold him in place in a way that made me wonder which one of us would develop nursemaid's elbow first. The woman talked talked talked at me and just when I thought I would have to yell at her, I realized she was drunk.
I don't know what person decides that the Central Park Zoo cafeteria is the place to get loaded, but it was indeed the nicest revelation. I should have studied her purchases more carefully (one cup of ice, a couple of the little bottles of white wine that they sell, I suppose to accompany the hot dogs, chicken fingers and fries) before I got steamed.
As we finally managed to pay and started to run the gauntlet of the condiments area (do read Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker article on ketchup-- it's quite interesting, especially with respect to ketchup and kids). The woman continued to talk to any ear around. She was upset that the bottles of Zoo Wine were $6.50 each.
But the joke was on me, I guess because by the time lunch was over, I could have used something a bit stronger than Zoo Wine. I had to settle for Advil.
posted by Elise at 7:59 AM
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