Wednesday, September 27, 2017

I'm lightening up today, offering up a poem (I think) that I wrote for an assignment when I participated in the University of Iowa MOOC writer's class. Let me know if you can relate!

Baggage—or Not

I forgot the bags, again.
There’s a note on the dashboard,
“DON’T FORGET THE BAGS!”
But I was distracted,
And now I’m in air conditioning
Pushing a cart, reading my list, and wondering
Should I go back to the car?

On the floor in the back seat are bags—
From Publix, from Fresh Market,
From Whole Foods and Target.
There’s one from a posh store in Virginia,
From a visit to friends who lived there,
A turquoise bag from a vacation in Maine,
And one with whales from Alaska.
There’s a nice one from Trader Joe’s
With compartments for bottles of wine.
There are two with bright green and white stripes
That keep frozen foods from melting.
Some have long straps that fit over the shoulder,
But most can be carried by hand.
Several are made of strange crinkly fabric,
Some made of cotton and canvas.
Many of them are Polypropylene
Which is basically recycled plastic.

But they’re all in the car

And I’m in the store.

Friday, September 8, 2017

I'm still thinking about parenting and parenthood. When we moved into our first "family" neighborhood, our son was six and starting school. There were neighbors with kids, and a couple with boys about his age. Nobody brought a casserole, but one mother introduced herself and said they had three boys and that their kids "are my life." I walked away from that conversation thinking, "that's never going to be me." I wanted a child or maybe even children with that man; I knew that, and the one I had was beautiful and smart and complex. I loved him completely, but he wasn't my life. He enriched my life, but he didn't define me. I had dreams and desires and goals that didn't include him, maybe in the knowledge that he would grow up and move on and have his own life, or maybe I didn't even think that far ahead. I was just selfish enough to want my own life separate from being a parent. Two years later, when he had just turned nine, we had a daughter, and she, too enriched my life/our lives, but I hung onto my life as a student and finished college, much of it while simultaneously being her mother. When she was seven, I took a full-time job and had a career that I loved that lasted until after she finished college. I'll never know how much my attitude toward parenting influenced either or both of their attitudes toward parenting; he never wanted kids and she always wanted them. And, as I have written, she has two now and parents very differently than she was parented. I would love some feedback on this post; have you looked at your attitude toward being a mother (or father)? Did you have a "style" of parenting? Did you mirror your mother's or do the opposite? Can you look back and see what your parents did/didn't do and get a handle on how that did or did not influence your decisions and attitudes about your own children? If you are a grandparent, do you watch your grown children and see that their parenting techniques are different from yours? If so, how?

Monday, September 4, 2017

Grandma, again

My daughter had another baby - her last. She's forty, so that's a good thing. We had a girl, Amelia Catherine. Her 104-year-old great-grandmother's name is Catherine, and Amelia is the ninth great-grandchild, and the first namesake. That's a wonderful thing. I've been a grandmother for two years now, so I probably have a handle on it, you might think. But with each new stage of development of my grandson, I have to learn new skills, so no, I don't. Besides, I'm a terrible pushover. I never was any good at boundaries and sticking to the rules. It's a wonder my kids survived me, and I'm probably worse with my grandson, and will be even worse with my granddaughter, no doubt. But this isn't about that (although maybe I should give all that some thought and write about it). It's about this:
Here’s what I perceive to be the difference between philosophy about child rearing today and yesterday: Formerly, doctors encouraged mothers to take care of themselves first over their newborns, believing that a rested, well-fed mother was the best mother. It mirrored the oxygen mask over your face first, THEN take care of others. It wasn’t that babies were ignored, it was just that their needs came second in the knowledge that babies will often get what they need, if not always what they want, because they are pretty demanding. And cute.
Today, so much science has gone into child development and so much is known about infants and their needs in order to provide the baby with the optimum experience in order to give it all the advantages it can have, keep it safe from any health hazards, and nurture it into an extraordinary being with superior brain power. In the meantime, Mom has been put on the back burner. She is supposed to do everything to give her baby every advantage. If she doesn’t she’s a bad mother.

There has to be a happy medium. We don’t know yet if these extremely well-cared for, 24/7 monitored, climate controlled, organically diapered, sufficiently stimulated infants and toddlers with just the right amount of play dates and educational toys are going to be happier, more well-adjusted people or if they are going to wonder what the hell happened when all the focus is no longer on them. Would a little benign neglect help them to get a glimpse of the real world and allow them to become a little more resourceful? But more to the point, would Mom taking some time for herself, maybe briefly ignoring the optimum experience for the baby/toddler, and settling for “good enough” help her to be a less-stressed person? How is all this anxiety caused by trying to do everything perfectly so as to not fail your baby helping either one of you? There's so much focus on the child now, I'm wondering about Mom. How is she doing? Maybe we need to ask.