The last post about the balancing act that is marriage post-baby makes me feel a little bad. I don't want you to have the wrong idea, but in leaving you this record of your early years, I don't want to give you the impression that motherhood is all smiles. While I worry that you might someday read this and feel as if I didn't love you or think I was terrible, I'd rather that than have you find yourself alone someday reading a glossy, smiling account of everything and thinking, "What's wrong with me?! Why can't I manage this? Mom never had these problems." Um, yes she did, and then some.
Now in case you're reading this before you're really able to understand, I want to explain something. You'll probably know by now how it goes with some things in life. A great number of life experiences have fabulous outcomes after lots and lots of work. When you're young, sometimes it can be hard to separate the two - to understand that the work and the outcome depend on each other, but are sort of separate experiences. Like when you have to clean your room or study for a test or save your allowance for weeks to buy a new toy - the cleaning, studying and saving aren't the fun parts (although if you can learn to make them at least moderately enjoyable, things go more easily), but the neat room, the good grade or the new toy are terrific. You are the end result, not the process, and I can be frustrated, taxed and tried by the process but still madly in love with you. Two completely, totally, entirely different things!
As I've mentioned, physically pregnancy wasn't rough, but emotionally, I had more than a few rocky spots. But we got you here, and, when I have good days, I can recognize that I walk a little taller inside knowing that I was able to get you here under my own willpower, without having to have the extra assistance of medication or surgery. And I can also recognize that I've pushed through the difficulty of nursing to an almost inhuman degree.
Nursing might be where things first began to slip a bit.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Friday, January 7, 2011
Seesaw
You hear a great deal about how children change marriages. This, I believe, is inaccurate. Children do not change marriages, but rather bring a new level of awareness. They change your awareness of your marriage or your role in it.
Your dad and I have a pretty stable relationship. If you think of relationships as a seesaw, some people are at opposite ends, as far as they can get from each other. These work, of course, but because if their distance from the fulcrum, it can take a little more work to keep things balanced. Your dad and I are both pretty near the center, so historically, it's taken a lot for us to get unbalanced. We're so close to each other in terms of work, interests, outlook, etc., that we're like two people scooted right up to the center of the seesaw. If you ever try this, you'll see just how hard it is to shake things up!
And that was always important to me. I grew up in a culture that really values men and male contributions. I would like to think that you're reading this some distant day in the future and thinking, "Huh? What was that like?" but I'm not that optimistic.... It's getting better - when your grandma had me, she was told by her employer, "I don't hire pregnant women. If I can give your job away while you're on maternity leave, I will." So she only took eleven days off. That sort of thing would be a lawsuit today, but even so, when I was growing up, there was a real imbalance. The men in our family made the big decisions, even about things they didn't necessarily know as much about as the women. They sat down at the dinner table and waited to be served. When dinner was over, they went to the living room to lie down and talk while the women cleaned up. Women could be talking and one of the men would decide they had something to say, interrupt and just change the direction of the conversation. Your grandma and great-grandma took us shopping, weeded out our clothes, picked up birthday gifts for our friends, and just generally made our lives run smoothly.
Still, early on, I realized that there was an equation and that I was on the wrong side of it.
Your dad and I have a pretty stable relationship. If you think of relationships as a seesaw, some people are at opposite ends, as far as they can get from each other. These work, of course, but because if their distance from the fulcrum, it can take a little more work to keep things balanced. Your dad and I are both pretty near the center, so historically, it's taken a lot for us to get unbalanced. We're so close to each other in terms of work, interests, outlook, etc., that we're like two people scooted right up to the center of the seesaw. If you ever try this, you'll see just how hard it is to shake things up!
And that was always important to me. I grew up in a culture that really values men and male contributions. I would like to think that you're reading this some distant day in the future and thinking, "Huh? What was that like?" but I'm not that optimistic.... It's getting better - when your grandma had me, she was told by her employer, "I don't hire pregnant women. If I can give your job away while you're on maternity leave, I will." So she only took eleven days off. That sort of thing would be a lawsuit today, but even so, when I was growing up, there was a real imbalance. The men in our family made the big decisions, even about things they didn't necessarily know as much about as the women. They sat down at the dinner table and waited to be served. When dinner was over, they went to the living room to lie down and talk while the women cleaned up. Women could be talking and one of the men would decide they had something to say, interrupt and just change the direction of the conversation. Your grandma and great-grandma took us shopping, weeded out our clothes, picked up birthday gifts for our friends, and just generally made our lives run smoothly.
Still, early on, I realized that there was an equation and that I was on the wrong side of it.
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