|
recent posts
----------
Back in the Saddle
Holiday Reeling
Playing Wild Things
Signs of the Times
Expectations...
Ready to Work
Ignoring the Elephant
A friend of mine with older children once commente...
Nights of Tiny Chairs
Hungry for Change
archive
----------
March 2005
April 2005
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006
October 2006
November 2006
December 2006
January 2007
February 2007
March 2007
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
August 2007
September 2007
October 2007
November 2007
December 2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008
August 2008
September 2008
October 2008
November 2008
|
 |
You've got questions, she's got answers. Be among the first to read Elise Mac Adam's new etiquette guide.
Pre-order from:
- Simon & Schuster
- Amazon
- Barnes & Noble
Back in the Saddle
Thanksgiving weekend isn't cold in its grave and the New York Times is hot and bothered to get everyone angry and angsty about contemporary parents, kids, parenting and lifestyles. It is amusing really, now that the holiday season has well and truly dug in its heels, that the Times feels the need to generate more bile and snark when it comes to the Domestic Sublime.
Before I had children, but when I was training the terrier, I would occasionally find myself wandering my block at an ungodly hour (5:30 or 6:00). The only people from my building I ever encountered at that time were: the fun couple just getting home from a night out (one heard quite a lot about their fun, too), the guy who always had an early flight and the Dad Whose Son Played Hockey. I told my husband then, and I mean it now: if hockey is on the menu I am not handling the transportation.
But now it seems my husband and I could start preparing our arguments regarding sport drop off because the Times published an article today which suggests people might be able to predict (a bit) what sports their children will be good at based on a DNA test. No mention is made of what to do about children who decide to pursue sports in spite of not being particularly talented, of course, but maybe this sort of test only applies to team sports and highly competitive situations not to people like me who are willing to try things (trapeze school, running) knowing that there is no future in it for her. The DNA pursuit seems utterly silly to me except as an academic exercise, but people do love tests and even more than tests, they love prophesies, so this is not the last we've heard of the Agility Predictor.
The real bit of savagery, though, comes in the New York Times Sunday Magazine's cover story, by Alex Kuczynski, which is called "My Body, Her Baby." In it Kuczynksi details her decision to enlist the services of a gestational surrogate to carry her baby. She doesn't really say much that is new or revelatory in the piece. In fact, a few too many words seem to be wasted paying token service to the enormous number of issues and complications raised by gestational surrogacy. Perhaps there is no way for a person to discuss these choices that will not put some people out, but the Times really made sure to emphasize the topic's nasty questions of economy and class, with the remarkably crass photographs that accompany the story. Does Kuczynski's surrogate, a woman named Cathy Hilling really have to be shot barefoot and pregnant on her porch while Kuczynski is so proper in her unstained skirt and sweater standing on her perfect lawn with a baby nurse at her side? Even if Hilling really prefers to be barefoot (nothing wrong with that, says the woman whose mother used to have to pull glass shards out of her feet every summer from running around shoe-free), wouldn't someone say that this creates a terrible impression?
The comments, which of course I looked at because I knew it would be a blood feast, are predictibly hostile. People hate Kucznyski, hate her priviliege, hate her choices, hate "breeders" (an appalling word), hate people who don't adopt, hate haters, hate hate hate.
So there it is. I have known enough people who have wrestled with infertility and come to hugely varying solutions that I wouldn't have much to say about Kuczynski's choices, except for the fact that she's written this crude article that seems to exist only to generate ire.
But maybe this is the point and the piece is doing a public service, giving us something other than money and politics to fight about over leftovers.
posted by Elise at 4:33 PM
3 Comments
Holiday Reeling
It is impossible, I think, to face the holidays as an adult with anything like pure pleasure, or even pure pleasure that is only mildly adulterated by Cooking Angst or Traffic Teeth Gnashing. I find that holidays are very much like regular days but the volume on my usual struggles is much much higher.
And the children present an interesting alternative to my standard Holiday Reckoning, which has been with me at least since college because they are primarily interested in chaos. They would happily eat Doritos for dinner or spend their evening swinging from a chin-up bar, oblivious to tradition or to the entire season's required emphasis on nostalgia.
So I have managed to get them to do the bulk of the work of the holidays for me. The boys can manage more cheer (until the inevitable line between Fun and Too Much Fun gets crossed and then there are tears and, often, from the baby, some biting) than I can. They are untroubled by questions of inadequacy or guilt or disappointment (except when it comes to having to eat some sort of dinner before dessert). They are like filthy diplomats, bumbling around while I can manage my own state of mind quite handily. My own problems with falling short are easily managed, since I often feel that if we can get out of anyone's house without breaking something a net win for my team.
At some point I think I'll have a reconciliation with the holidays. That's in the cards, isn't it? And until then, I think I'll just say I'm grateful that the children have found way of making my cheer more sincere.
posted by Elise at 4:28 AM
0 Comments
Playing Wild Things
So I recently got a chance to hear a lecture about how not to drive your kids crazy. Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of talk about how important it is for children to play and for play to be a sort of source of future success and interests. It was a highly optimistic, interesting lecture and not nearly as simplistic as I'm making this sound.
And of course I gobbled this up (if you're interested, the speaker was Dr. Edward Hallowell and I suspect strongly you can find his actual words, rather than my simple condensation of a fragment of what he had to say, in one of his 14 books: The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness: Five Steps to Help Kids Create and Sustain Lifelong Joy. I have not read it. Yet?) I don't really go for parenting programs generally, in part because I can't really follow any set of rules all the time and I have a very hard time remembering what I'm supposed to do according to these protocols at crucial moments, AND I resist domestic tweaks that feel artificial or silly or smack of self-help techniques. Anything that even reminds me slightly of that embarrassing confidence-building exercise where one stands in front of a mirror saying things like "I love you and you are great!" to oneself is nothing I'm going to embrace, ever, not even when drunk or tired or desperate or "e" all of the above.
This lecture made sense to me and didn't suggest that we should all start doing a bunch of weird and stilted exercises to ensure our children will all grow up happy and all of that. But indeed, someone felt the same kind of anxiety about these suggestions that I feel when faced with the absurd Mirror Exercise. A parent said she really has trouble relaxing into make-believe play with her child and didn't want to feel that she's a bad person. She said she is happy with other sorts of play but can't get comfortable and not feel dopey when she gets sucked into pretend games.
She was reassured that she is not a bad person. Various audience members had other suggestions to make these playtime sessions more palatable. All of them involved alcohol (some said wine, but there was a strong vote for tequila shots).
I was subsequently reminded of the lecture and the whole question of finding pretend play difficult when I read a strange (for format and for lack of editing reasons) interview with Spike Jonze who is trying very hard to finish his new movie which is an intense live action version of Where the Wild Things Are. If you track movies in production at all (not that you should, or that it is even particularly interesting since you often have to wait years and years to see the things you've been hearing about), you know that this picture has been kicking around in various ways for a while and at some point there was plenty of chatter about how this was going to be something utterly unreleasable. I suspect strongly that it is going to be quite intriguing. Jonze makes it quite clear that this is no movie for small children, that its themes and emotions are strong and threatening and that this comes from wanting the movie to have something of the reality or un-reality of children's pretend play.
Here's what he says: "I wanted it to feel "real," or not-real because it's not "real," I wanted it to feel like... like when I was a kid, and I would play with my Star Wars action figures, or read Maurice's books and imagine me being Mickey in IN THE NIGHT KITCHEN, or whatever it was... it felt like it was everything, you know? It's like your imagination is so convincing to yourself that... you're there, you're in it. And I wanted this movie to take it as seriously as kids take their imagination and not, like, fantasy it up."
All of this musing is to say that it is interesting how this sort of play, utterly natural for children is not only uncomfortable for adults, but it is also something adults can not re-interpret back for children in a way that isn't terrifying. My children have and love the Maurice Sendak book, but I suspect strongly that it will be years before they could handle the movie. As for other sorts of pretend, I am lucky because most play acting games around here get stalled as we try to figure out exactly how old all 36 of the stuffed animals are, which is a prelude to any sort of play acting.
posted by Elise at 11:18 AM
0 Comments
Signs of the Times
Don't ask me where I've been or what's been going on. I can hardly tell you. I can hardly tell you what I had for dinner last night, when it comes to that.
Something about the sweep of Autumn-- the plunge back into school and everyone's schedules (mine included) while trying to keep some sort of work momentum going while fending off things like the shower that is broken such that using it would damage the apartment below ours (no, it isn't really a moral quandary for the household because one can always shower surrounded by the bath toy menagerie, which has seen better days now that I'm looking at them regularly, but for some people it could be...)-- means that I am breathless and distracted.
So distracted Felix's delight at the coming of the Evergreen Dinosaur Semi-Topiary to the American Museum of Natural History put a chill into my heart. Can it be that the holidays are landing so soon? How can I stop it? I need about 10 days to catch up.
On the recommendations front, I squeaked out and got to see a remarkable movie: Slumdog Millionaire. Don't say I never put my two cents in. If you've got a Heart of Oatmeal, as I still sort of do when it comes to Sad Kid Situations, you may have to steel yourself but it is very worth it.
posted by Elise at 12:41 PM
0 Comments
Expectations...
Judith Warner has an interesting opinion piece in the New York Times about Obama's victory and the great difference between what it means to children-- for whom racial issues have much different inflections than for people who had a more immediate experience of the civil rights movement in the United States-- and parents. My own children are too young for this question, of course, but I do wonder if this sort of generational philosophical shift will happen more and more and what sitautions will arise in the future where I am joyful or sad (or both) and my boys can only find me curious (or preposterous).
And then, while I'm talking about this sort of thing, I have to mention this piece that ran in Slate on Friday about how we expect too much of our children, and how we can temper our reactions to kids not doing what we want them to do, the way we want them to do it. I am struggling these days with a Clean-Up Rebellion where Felix, whose faculties are quite intact is suddenly stricken by some sort of wandering malaise when asked to exert himself a bit.
This week I am supposed to attend a lecture on a similar topic and it will be interesting to compare the thoughts... and advice.
In the meantime, I was introduced recently to the pleasures of Roseola. If you've never seen it, it's pretty remarkable. Sebastian was ill for a few days, and I figured it was one of his usual fevers... and then after it broke I took off his shirt to discover a massive rash all over his little torso. The doctor, after telling me that his was the seventh case she'd seen that week, enlightened me a bit. This is Sixth's Disease (the one that comes after Fifth's, which is the affliction that makes your kid look like his or her cheeks have been slapped red), is related to chicken pox, and on the plus side, it isn't dangerous to pregnant women (the way Fifth's is). For those of you curious about the numbered names, these were the product of the late eighteenth century, as a way of classifying childhood rashy diseases (others on the hit parade are measles, scarlet fever and rubella).
Anyway, now that I know so much about it, I'm done with it because once caught, Roseola can't be caught again.
posted by Elise at 9:30 AM
0 Comments
Ready to Work
There was no question about whether the children would come to vote with us yesterday. There was actually not question about whether the terrier would accompany us as well (though he was asked to leave our polling venue after I cast my vote). These are moments they aren't going to remember, but they will know that they were there to witness and participate in what we all hope is a big and remarkable, marvelous even, change in the way things are in this country.
But I think Dahlia Lithwick says everything I was going to write here already.
Still, today I am so proud and so happy I could mark this moment with my little family.
And, as experiences go, voting was short and terribly sweet. There was no line to speak of because Daylight Savings Time conveniently encouraged the children to wake up well before 5:00 AM so we were among the first.
***
Later, much later. When I wrote the above it was early and I was hoping for something not to happen, but I was disappointed. I am so sad to see that the infamous Proposition 8 passed in California, demonstrating how much more work we have to do to stop limiting people, to stop trying to regulate what we would call family. I would resent terribly if anyone tried to render the experience I described of going to the polls, with my husband and sons (and dog) in any way illegitimate and I'm so very sorry this this is happening in California.
posted by Elise at 5:50 AM
0 Comments
Ignoring the Elephant
Of course tomorrow is election day but I can't discuss it because if I do I'll get the vapors all over the place, and my husband won't be interested in dealing with that.
So, instead I'll talk about the blackmail photographs I have from this Halloween season. Due to what I hope is not a chronic low energy situation on my part, I asked Felix if he wanted to decide on his and Sebastian's Halloween costumes. He set his mind to it and after about five minutes told me that he would be a butterfly and Sebastian would go out as a flower. A concept costume! I couldn't believe it. (I also thought that this might be tricky for Sebastian to pull off, since he tends to look like he's just wandered out of a bar fight. He's not much one for delicacy.)
I also couldn't believe my good fortune since I didn't have to exert myself at all to outfit the children accordingly. Felix's "butterfly" outfit was a red leotard, a set of semi-glittery wings, an "antennae" headband that kept falling off and a tattoo of a butterfly in case nothing else was convincing. Sebastian wore a "flower" outfit found on the Target web site that looked so little like a flower that I wound up sewing one of the terrier's formerly squeaky bumblebee toys to it in hopes that people could get the hint.
So, my creativity exhausted, I set the boys free to do their Halloween thing and I learned a few things. 1.) Other parents are much handier than I am when it comes to making butterfly costumes (one little monarch butterfly really put me to shame) 2.) The bumblebee attachment helped. 3.) A red leotard turns Felix into an interpretive dancer.
And yes, I have much photographic evidence that I will be able to produce at a moment's notice when they will be least welcome.
Anyway, here's to hope.
posted by Elise at 4:39 PM
0 Comments
........................................................
|
