Recently, we had to run into the hideously named "BuyBuyBaby" (honestly, not even a thinly veiled blatant commercialism?) to purchase a thing or two for you. We were making a lap through the store, which sort of reminded me of that Bugs Bunny cartoon where Yosemite Sam is tiptoeing through the lion den as a Roman gladiator, trying not to make eye contact, but just get through intact. And we made it about as far as the cribs in the back when I started to tear up.
Rationally, this makes no sense. I know this. I know you have no need for any of these things. I know you can't possibly have a desire for them. I know that most of them are cheap imported junk made from molded plastic and stapled laminated wood and fabrics awash with flame retardants. And yet I found myself feeling awful that you didn't have the "perfect" room with a set of matching furniture (furniture your father summarily dismissed as "garbage") with matching ribbon-embroidered rosettes and your name on every available flat surface.
Your father gently reminded me that my ability or my willingness to purchase things for you did not define my parenting abilities or the quality of your childhood and then he said, "You know, you shouldn't feel guilty. What you should feel is mad. You should be angry that corporate executives are all too happy to mine a mother's desire to do the best for her child in order to create this kind of guilt just to make a buck." And the more I thought about it, the more I realized he was right. I should feel angry about that, that someone has figured out how to manipulate my best biological instincts, to subvert my intentions and my hopes, just to make money, that I should feel hurt or "bad" or upset that despite being home with you and nursing you and turning my body over for the repeated pummeling that is pregnancy and childbirth and breastfeeding, I'm still made to feel as if I've not done enough for you because you don't have a rug emblazoned with your initials or large "N" bookends shellacked with white enamel paint. Selling emotionally raw people that kind of idea is a lousy thing to do.
And, while we're on the subject, I'm also annoyed that society tends to make mothers feel like their instincts aren't good enough. If you're doing this someday without me and I can't tell you anything else, I'll tell you this: trust your instincts. I hope you'll mother in a different world, but the one we're in currently makes a lot of money off of telling mothers all sorts of things that just muddy the waters. Child health and safety have improved dramatically, but women have been raising children literally since the dawn of man. Literally. Think about that for a moment. And there were no baby safe feeders or baby monitors with lcd displays or talking heads spouting off endless nonsense about what sort of emotional problems sleeping issues will cause. It has to be an instinctual process and it is, if you can just get everything else out of the way and not doubt what your gut tells you to do. We have somehow decided to let people tell us how to do something that we've known how to do for centuries.
I'm off to assuage my guilt by reading to you lots and lots and lots. I will read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? until I'm hoarse, but I'll probably still be thinking of those $&*# embroidered crib blankets....
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
Orbit
In the beginning, we were a very different kind of us. Not a you-and-me, give-and-take, back-and-forth us, but an us that neither one of us will really ever be with anyone else. An US us, welded together.
And then we took our first step apart and became just an us like every other pair with your birth. We formed a close, tight orbit, a dizzying and suffocating spin around and around each other. Initially, it seemed as though you were the center, but I'm come to realize it may be me. For months, I thought I shifted around you, that you were the only fixed point in the world and I was bound by you, unable to wander far from the course you permitted. But now, I think it may be different, that it's my job to sit, steadily anchoring the center of your universe.
Strangely, I'm a little flummoxed by this, not sure whether it is better or preferable or enviable to be the orbiter or the orbitee, but in the end, what I think about it doesn't matter. Maybe your rotations seem to be on a daily basis now, still snugged up close to me, but as time goes on, you'll become your own increasingly independent little universe, only coming close periodically. Perhaps there'll even come a day when you're very distant, stretching the bounds of my ability to hold you in balance, far enough from me that you're barely able to see the light of my love, let alone feel its warmth. But it will not be your job to be fixed and I will never set my compass by you as you will by me.
I'm a bit frightened by the idea of being a center for anyone and sometimes it seems so cosmically sad, the idea of being a sun, but perhaps it is a metaphor for motherhood. You burn with a fierce light, your nurturing makes life on the "planet" of your child possible, and too tight an orbit burns them up, while charting too wide a track freezes them out. And then you glow and glow with a self-immolating intensity....
And then we took our first step apart and became just an us like every other pair with your birth. We formed a close, tight orbit, a dizzying and suffocating spin around and around each other. Initially, it seemed as though you were the center, but I'm come to realize it may be me. For months, I thought I shifted around you, that you were the only fixed point in the world and I was bound by you, unable to wander far from the course you permitted. But now, I think it may be different, that it's my job to sit, steadily anchoring the center of your universe.
Strangely, I'm a little flummoxed by this, not sure whether it is better or preferable or enviable to be the orbiter or the orbitee, but in the end, what I think about it doesn't matter. Maybe your rotations seem to be on a daily basis now, still snugged up close to me, but as time goes on, you'll become your own increasingly independent little universe, only coming close periodically. Perhaps there'll even come a day when you're very distant, stretching the bounds of my ability to hold you in balance, far enough from me that you're barely able to see the light of my love, let alone feel its warmth. But it will not be your job to be fixed and I will never set my compass by you as you will by me.
I'm a bit frightened by the idea of being a center for anyone and sometimes it seems so cosmically sad, the idea of being a sun, but perhaps it is a metaphor for motherhood. You burn with a fierce light, your nurturing makes life on the "planet" of your child possible, and too tight an orbit burns them up, while charting too wide a track freezes them out. And then you glow and glow with a self-immolating intensity....
Monday, April 11, 2011
Never Go Anywhere Empty-Handed
We're past that initial exhilaration and desperation, and somehow, those first months are already fading in my memory. When I think back, I can only seem to muster a handful of extremes. Short on sleep, pain of nursing, drowning in adoration, all spent in either whole days on the couch or what seem like whole years on the road, nursing and changing you in rest area parking lots, behind gas stations, corners of park-and-ride lots, staring at the front of outlet malls. You're sleeping on your own, soundly, only nursing about four times a day, and seeming more and more contented to drift a little further away.
So it seems like a good time to begin offering little bits of advice and life philosophies and all those things that you'll be hearing from me constantly and not really be interested in until I'm dead and you find yourself saying them to your own children. And there's no better place to start than your namesake's favorite - "Never go anywhere empty-handed."
Your great-grandmother said this all the time. This could be because when I knew her, she lived in a beautiful split-level house that was positively state of the art when your grandfather built it in the late 1950s or early 1960s. (I know it was state of the art because there's a newspaper article somewhere of your grandfather standing with his cows in the field that refers to the house and it's "state of the art" or "latest style" or "up to the minute" or something else equally valued in the 1950s....) Anyway, this meant that you walked in to a wide tiled entryway (which was always the coolest place in my world in the summer - they had central air and we never did) with a "rec room" off to the left ("rec rooms" being a must in 1950s homes). Straight ahead, and this seemed completely normally then, but completely strange now, was a half bathroom where your grandfather could scrub up before really coming into the house. The strange part is that there was also a file cabinet in there with a roll-top desk where all the household accounts and documents from his businesses were stored. Anyway, from there, you could go down seven steps to the basement (which always smelled so good because your great-grandmother used gallons of fabric softener - your grandmother never did - and she line-dried all the sheets) or, from the hallway, go up seven steps to the living room, dining room and kitchen. The three bedrooms and only full bath were up another flight of seven stairs.
Anyway, living in a house where you had to go up seven steps to go to the bathroom or down fourteen steps to do laundry probably made her very efficient. As a result, if she had to up to use the bathroom, she'd take the shampoo she bought at the store. When she came down, she'd bring the dirty laundry. If she had to go the basement with the dirty laundry, she'd come back up with the cans of tomatoes she'd need for dinner. Once we got big enough to do her bidding, she'd send us to the basement for potatoes or frozen vegetables from the chest freezer, but before we could dart off, she'd press something into our hands with instructions on what to do with it on the way.
Like most good instructions, it seems simple on the surface of things, but only deepens with examination. To never go anywhere empty-handed requires forethought, planning, awareness, and remembering. It fostered in my small self a sense of intention and later, it served well as social advice too, reminding me to always bring a hostess gift, a willingness to help. "Life's complicated," it says, "so think about what you're going to do, make a plan, and go out into the world prepared." The world is full of people who show up, metaphysically and literally, with their hands empty, and I don't want you to be like that. Show up with something to offer, show up with your hands full.
So it seems like a good time to begin offering little bits of advice and life philosophies and all those things that you'll be hearing from me constantly and not really be interested in until I'm dead and you find yourself saying them to your own children. And there's no better place to start than your namesake's favorite - "Never go anywhere empty-handed."
Your great-grandmother said this all the time. This could be because when I knew her, she lived in a beautiful split-level house that was positively state of the art when your grandfather built it in the late 1950s or early 1960s. (I know it was state of the art because there's a newspaper article somewhere of your grandfather standing with his cows in the field that refers to the house and it's "state of the art" or "latest style" or "up to the minute" or something else equally valued in the 1950s....) Anyway, this meant that you walked in to a wide tiled entryway (which was always the coolest place in my world in the summer - they had central air and we never did) with a "rec room" off to the left ("rec rooms" being a must in 1950s homes). Straight ahead, and this seemed completely normally then, but completely strange now, was a half bathroom where your grandfather could scrub up before really coming into the house. The strange part is that there was also a file cabinet in there with a roll-top desk where all the household accounts and documents from his businesses were stored. Anyway, from there, you could go down seven steps to the basement (which always smelled so good because your great-grandmother used gallons of fabric softener - your grandmother never did - and she line-dried all the sheets) or, from the hallway, go up seven steps to the living room, dining room and kitchen. The three bedrooms and only full bath were up another flight of seven stairs.
Anyway, living in a house where you had to go up seven steps to go to the bathroom or down fourteen steps to do laundry probably made her very efficient. As a result, if she had to up to use the bathroom, she'd take the shampoo she bought at the store. When she came down, she'd bring the dirty laundry. If she had to go the basement with the dirty laundry, she'd come back up with the cans of tomatoes she'd need for dinner. Once we got big enough to do her bidding, she'd send us to the basement for potatoes or frozen vegetables from the chest freezer, but before we could dart off, she'd press something into our hands with instructions on what to do with it on the way.
Like most good instructions, it seems simple on the surface of things, but only deepens with examination. To never go anywhere empty-handed requires forethought, planning, awareness, and remembering. It fostered in my small self a sense of intention and later, it served well as social advice too, reminding me to always bring a hostess gift, a willingness to help. "Life's complicated," it says, "so think about what you're going to do, make a plan, and go out into the world prepared." The world is full of people who show up, metaphysically and literally, with their hands empty, and I don't want you to be like that. Show up with something to offer, show up with your hands full.
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