- Surveying the Landscape of Motherhood -- Lizbeth Finn-Arnold
- Letters to My Sons -- Regina Walker
- Warning: Motherhood May be Dangerous -- Elizabeth Thompson
- The Last Day -- Gerry Di Gesu
- Surveyville -- Elizabeth Ross
- Beauty in the Hours -- Joanne Detore-Nakamura
- The Democracy in Naming a Legacy - Jim Turner
- Make Chat, Not Babies -- Debra McCorkle
- Sharp Teeth for Old Saws -- Gloria MacKay
- Motherhood by The Books -- Kristin Stitz
- Crossing the Line? -- Sarah Bain
Showing posts with label August 2004. Show all posts
Showing posts with label August 2004. Show all posts
AUGUST 2004
The SURVEY SAYS Issue:
Surveying the Landscape of Motherhood
As The Philosophical Mother approaches its second birthday, I find myself once again surveying the landscape of motherhood. I've changed a lot in the last two years, almost as much as my children who seem to have grown up before me in a blink of an eye. They're not even babies anymore. There are no more diapers to change, no more infant carseats to lug around, and no more bottles to fill, clean, and fill again.In fact, this fall, my son Jared will be off to full-time Kindergarten and I will officially be a mother of school-aged children. I'm pretty sure my baby-making days are behind me (99.6% sure), and so I find myself at a crossroads. I have lots of ideas and lots of plans for the immediate future, so much in fact that I'm not sure where to begin. I feel ready to tackle new adventures and challenges, and I'm looking forward to committing more time and energy to my professional endeavors. Frankly, it's also nice to be free from the overwhelming responsibilities of caring for a newborn. And it's freaking fabulous to have kids who sleep in on weekends-- or at least allow their parents to sleep in on weekends.
And yet, I'm also a bit sad and feeling nostalgic for the very recent past. Things change very quickly here in motherville. And just when I think I'm getting used to all the strange customs and idiosyncrasies of my children, they go ahead and change on me again. Here in motherland, there's not a lot of time to dig your heels into the soil and become too comfortable for too long.
The one thing that hasn't changed in the last two years is my commitment to sharing the voices of motherhood here at The Philosophical Mother. But even that landscape has changed considerably since I began. Two years ago, I looked around and felt completely alone and isolated on my own mommy island. I felt odd, strange, unique, different. I didn't recognize myself in parenting magazines. And I didn't relate to other moms and dads -- at least not the one-dimensional simplistic models shown to me in popular culture.
Now I know that I wasn't alone. I have found a community -- a global online parenting community -- where real moms and dads are courageous enough to share their experiences and lend their voices to the dialogue on the pressing issues and personal challenges of parenting in today's world. Two years ago I started The Philosophical Mother because I wanted to actively solicit writing about motherhood. Two years later, the submissions continue to flow into my inbox -- and each email brings a unique and inspiring story into my life.
I love that total strangers send me their essays and trust me with their deepest and most personal thoughts. I love feedback from the readers and their kind thoughts and praise for the webzine. I love that I feel a connection to people I have never met face-to-face, but who seem to understand me better than many of my closest of friends or family. I love that moms and dads are now finding me in the same way that I once searched for others.
When I look around now, I don't feel at odds with the world around me. I see friendly faces everywhere and hear wise and witty words that I can hang onto. I see new mothers entering the world that I am leaving and more experienced moms moving up and away from the places where I am going. We are all at different maternal crossroads unique to our own lives and circumstances. But that doesn't mean that we can't greet each other, offer words of encouragement, or simply nod in silent recognition when we do occasionally meet at the same fork in the road.
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Copyright 2004 -- Lizbeth Finn-Arnold
Lizbeth Finn-Arnold is a freelance writer and independent filmmaker who works and lives in suburban New Jersey with her husband, Mike, daughter, Olivia (7), son, Jared (5) and Labrador Retriever, Elvis (2). She is also the editor and publisher of The Philosophical Mother and a columnist for Literary Mama. You can read her daily blog, MOM & Pop Culture.
Letters to My Sons
Dear Zachary and Sam,First of all, I love you both. I love you more than you can imagine and in a way that I never could thought was possible before you were born. I have your pictures on my desk at work and sometimes when I look at them I am in awe. The reality of the two of you astounds me.
I remember the minute I found out I was pregnant with you, Zach. I stood in the bathroom with my drugstore pregnancy test result and just stared at it, disbelievingly, but with a sense of excited joy that I can not describe even now. I remember walking around the apartment for what seemed like an eternity afterwards reveling in the “secret” that you were there. A microscopic dot deep within the core of me growing. I, me, had become “us”. My secret slowly then quickly was revealed but those first moments remain a point in time when my life changed profoundly and in ways I did not yet comprehend.
And I have watched you grow, Zachary and become You. You are eight now and have your secrets too -- your journal which I can not read -- your private thoughts that are yours alone and define who you are. You fascinate me. As you grow away from me I feel both the pride that you are mine and the sense of loss that, in fact, you really are not mine. You are your own.
Samuel, you are a magical mystery to me. I look into your deep dark eyes and feel a connection to a soul that is ages older than mine with a wisdom far greater than my own. You too are of me, but distinctly separate. At three you are a whirling dervish. You dance and smile and though your words often elude me, the intensity of your spirit reaches me like very few things can.
You both know I love you or at least I hope you do. I sometimes wonder why fate has allowed me to be your guide for a time. And the enormous responsibility of that can feel crushing. I realize I have this privilege for a finite period. There will be other guides in your life and you will guide others. My journey will end and yours will go forward.
I feel like there is so much I need to teach you. I want you to be careful, but not fearful. I want you to be safe, but remain open. I want to shelter you from pain, but also give you the skills to handle the inevitable pain and disappointment that comes with living in such a flawed world. I want you to have compassion and empathy and still be strong. And I want you to take care of each other no matter what. The world can be a dangerous but beautiful place. You need to have friends. You need each other.
Sometimes I become afraid and I falter. Can I teach you what I may not know or always practice myself? Learning these things is my own process and journey and I have not yet perfected much of it. But then I decide I must let it go. And eventually let you go. I make mistakes and so will you. Forgive yourselves. We go on and don’t give up. Don’t give up.
Love,
Mom
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Copyright 2004 Regina Walker
Since March 2003, Regina Walker has been a monthly contributing writer to The Philosophical Mother magazine. Her work has appeared in Hip Mama, widdershins, The Future Generation, Motherevolution, Motherload, Commie Mommie, Community Mother Magazine, and the online magazine www.stickyourneckout.com. Her work will be featured in an upcoming issues of Atheist Bear and Motherload. She is the author of the "Clinical Viewpoint" column in the Substance Abuse Letter published by Pace Publications. Regina received her B.A. from Bennington College and her MSW from Fordham University. She is a social worker and addiction treatment specialist in NYC. She can be reached at cswcasac@aol.com.
Warning: Motherhood May be Dangerous to Your Health
By Elizabeth Katkics ThompsonI quit smoking the day I found out I was pregnant with my first child because there was a warning issued by the Surgeon General printed right on my cigarette pack that, “Smoking…May Complicate Pregnancy…Smoking by Pregnant Women May Result in Fetal Injury, Premature Birth, and Low Birth Weight.”
I listened to the warnings because I wanted to be a good mother and do everything that I could to have a healthy baby. I grabbed every pamphlet, brochure, and mommy-to-be reading list available.
I mean, there were hundreds of prenatal care books for the taking and I quickly found myself feeling overwhelmed with advice and anxiety. Was I eating enough? Was I eating TOO much? When should I stop working? Would I continue working? What about stretch marks, gestational diabetes, or varicose veins? Would I get a seat on the train, or would the commuters continue to ignore my enormous belly thrust in their faces?
There are some answers that you just can’t or won’t find in a book. My husband and I went to natural childbirth and breastfeeding classes and felt confident that we were ready for the big day. It came finally, one unseasonably warm day in November, and every blessed birth practice we learned went right out the window. We weren’t as ready as we thought. We discovered – or more accurately – I realized the true meaning of labor. Ironically enough, none of the “birth specialists” took the opportunity to provide an opinion that childbirth would fall on the “yucky” side of the survey.
Our firstborn, Holly, tolerated formula loaded with iron. She very rarely spit up anything beyond what a cloth diaper draped over a shoulder couldn't handle. As an infant and toddler, she slept whenever and wherever possible. -- moving car, non-moving car, crib, floor, couch, grass, Daddy's shoulders, Papa's stomach -- and in every conceivable position(once while half sitting/half standing in front of the television during Barney). I went to every well and not-so-well visit with a list of questions and followed our pediatrician’s advice to the letter. During the many hours my baby slept, I was able to read monthly issues of Parents, American Baby and Child Magazines, cover to cover.
When we became pregnant a second time, I felt fully prepared. After all, I knew about the “yucky”, had all the baby stuff, and our firstborn was an easy baby. But my husband and I walked around in a shell-shocked state when our second daughter, Heather, was born. The child never slept. I am not exaggerating -- she screamed day and night and we had no idea what the heck was going on or what to do to make the child sleep. We switched formulas as the pediatrician recommended, twice, and were promptly introduced to projectile vomiting. I was stretched to every limit, both physically and mentally, and quickly became frustrated when nothing worked – nothing that I did with Holly, that is.
I felt like a failure as a mother; as if I were neglecting my 2 ½-year-old while focusing all of my reserves on her sister. Still, I could not make my six-week-old happy. Finally, on a particularly difficult night, I dressed and strapped my screaming infant daughter into her car seat and decided to take her for a ride. In spite of the ungodly hour, I didn’t want to wake my husband or my sleeping firstborn. There's absolutely nothing going on at 1:00 o'clock in the morning here in the suburbs of New Jersey. And so I felt as if I were the only mother in the world -- or at least the only sleep-deprived mother driving her colicky baby, and crying her eyes out in the middle of a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot.
It didn’t get better until Heather outgrew her colic, sometime soon before her first birthday. But, it did get better and I did get pregnant again, twice. Glen and Hope are third and fourth in birth order, respectively, and the feedings and non-sleeping only got worse. Glen beat his siblings in the projectile vomiting and emergency visits to the hospital department and I still can't begin to effectively describe the mess we went through with Hope’s intestinal troubles. Quite frankly, in between the doctor appointments, preschool canvassing, and constantly disinfecting my house, I didn’t have the time or energy to read the latest statistics or pay attention to reports on stress or the dangers of post natal depression.
Why, in the beginning didn’t I ask for help? Why the hell did I listen to parenting magazines, professionals and self-appointed experts in child rearing? They published tons of surveys, nationwide studies, and research statistics telling me that in order to be an effective mother, nothing less than a “Super Mom” would do. Well, if I truly had to be honest with myself (and what greater forum than in a philosophical mothering way) no one held a gun to my head. I chose to rely on popular opinion, rather than pay attention to my instincts.
My youngest is now three-years-old and fully potty-trained, I am relieved that my children and I have survived their baby years. However, I obviously did not learn my lesson, because I still find myself wondering if I could do it all again - or at least, maybe, just one more time.
What I have learned is that we live in an age where there is a lot of information on motherhood out there for the taking, the majority of which is probably very useful and some of which I certainly should have paid closer attention to. In hindsight, I imagine that it probably would not have mattered much though, because I truly believe that reading about motherhood is much different from living it.
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Copyright 2004 Elizabeth Katkics-Thompson
Elizabeth Katkics-Thompson is a mother to four children and has been married for 13 years to her husband, Pete. Liz also writes a weekly column entitled, Married With A Whole Lot of Children at Just For Mom and has had essays posted at The Imperfect Parent. You can read the ongoing adventures of her life at This Full House, the blog. Liz lives and writes in New Jersey.
The Last Day
On this last day of vacation, I wanted to spend time at one of my favorite spots — Mill Pond in Brewster on Cape Cod. My two teenage sons protested vehemently. One envisioned a final day of stalking females, the other, roused from sleep under great protest, proclaimed he wanted to soak up the sun and listen to music. City boys — not attuned to “bugs and all that nature stuff you like, Ma”. But, good mother than I am, I insisted we spend this day as a family. Only Nancy, 10, was happy. A spider spinning a web fascinates her, too.Once there the kids disappeared. My husband Rod and I walked past the mill, and the atmosphere immediately changed the tempo of our day. Shifting light and shadow, birds calling to each other, fish splashing to the surface in search of a fat bug — we entered another world.
Soon Rod was deep in conversation with a young teen from Minnesota vacationing with his family who fished daily from their ancient fishing boat. His knowledge of salt and fresh water fishing techniques was exceptional. I felt sorry for my husband as he listened to the boy relate his feelings of boredom over the large number of bluefish and striped bass he had landed in Wellfleet Harbor. After many years of trying, Rod is still trying to catch his first “keeper” striper. We had debated returning to the Cape next year for vacation but now I was sure we would be back. He knew where the fish were and how to catch them.
I sat down on a stone wall to inhale my surroundings. Pale sunshine filtered through cobwebs, spotlighting captive insects, twisted leaves and a few gull feathers caught in the spider’s trap. Lily pads bursting with delicate white flowers moved gently in the water. Tangled vines hung from branches around me and provided a refuge where I could be totally alone.
Schools of small herring circled the pond as if on a merry-go-round. Their parents seemed to be herding the youngsters faster and faster and reminded me of cowboys rounding up cattle. Groups of young fish were forced over the spillway and started downstream on their trip to the sea where they would live until returning to this pond in a few years.
A catfish and is sister — prehistoric looking fish with evil eyes, whiskers and a nasty look — surfaced to trap some herring in the weeds next to me and snatch them up for lunch. A water bug, his body set high on long legs skimmed the surface of the pond, imagining himself a hydrofoil. Beetles skittered around in circles like a child’s wind-up toy. Next to me a spotted bug splashed down onto the surface, a seaplane making an abrupt landing.
Bass, sunnies, pickerel and perch swam in harmony. Two eels oozed from beneath a patch of weeds, gliding toward the opposite bank. My skin prickled as I watched a water snake slither across the mirrored surface.
I heard a rustle behind me and discovered Chris, my heavy-metal fan, groping in the water for a large mussel to use for bait. “Hey look,” he yelled. “There’s a big frog right by the bridge.” Kevin raced over to join him and I chuckled as I watched my two nature-haters trying to catch the large bullfrog.
After much maneuvering, they were able to prod the frog gently, but he leaped beneath the bridge, out of reach. My meticulous husband, clad in yellow shirt and white shorts, plopped down full length onto the wooden logs. Moments later he jumped up — a huge grin on his face and the bullfrog in his hand.
“Quick, get the camera,” he ordered. “This is the only marine life I’ve landed in two weeks.” The kids laughed, surprised at their father’s quick reflexes. The frog rested a few moments, gave us a long, disgusted look and took a gigantic leap back into the water.
Chris captured a large turtle which was stunning himself on a rock. Apparently used to intruders, the turtle showed no fear and blinked at us complacently. The boys talked about taking him back to the pond behind our cottage but I suggested we leave him here with his family. Chris set him back in the water and in a few minutes his family appeared.
A huge turtle, probably dad, swam gently along the surface followed by three offspring. “Look at this little one,” squealed Nancy, pointing to the tiniest member of the family who slid off the bank and swam to catch up. The kids stared at me, apparently impressed with my knowledge of turtle family habits.
Too quickly it was time to leave. We had been here only a few short hours and had experienced just a tiny sample of the wonders of this pond community. I imagined the joy of being able to spend a year here. To experience the changing of the seasons, to hear the hums and cries, to smell, to feel the new rhythm of each day — to be.
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Copyright 2004 Gerry Di Gesu
Gerry Di Gesu is a retired school secretary who divides her time between homes in New Jersey and Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Her essays and poems have appeared in a variety of publications, journals and anthologies including the New York Times, Catholic Digest and Cape Women magazine. She has recently published her first book of essays, Keep Quiet, You’re Only A Girl. These essays celebrate the essence, power, and magic of ordinary people and events made extraordinary. The book also provides readers of all ages with a sense of acceptance and new perspective into their own lives. The book is available at local bookstores or by ordering through iUniverse, amazon, and barnesand noble.com .
Surveyville
It is the 25th anniversary of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ World Series victory this year, and that has made games at PNC Park an adventure. The prelude to the last game I attended was an autograph session with several of the players from the 1979 team. Unfortunately we arrived too late to manage getting any signatures, but we were just in time to wait in line for almost an hour.The queues were a little animated, since there were individuals asking if everyone had entered a contest for an H2 Hummer, and if we all were registered voters. It was marginally annoying that the salespeople with the contest entries were asking about every five minutes, but the more detestable individuals floating around the ballpark entry gates did not assault the lines.
I only heard them in passing as I made my way into the park, the pollsters asking about the ticket situation at the park. In 2006 the All-Star Game will be hosted by Pittsburgh, so now the Pirates’ organization is attempting to find out what restrictions they will be able to get away with imposing on Pittsburghers who wish to acquire tickets for that event. Our ballpark is relatively small for such an event, seating fewer than 40,000 fans, so this situation is inevitable. The pollsters were apparently asking how many tickets fans would be willing to purchase in the 2005 season to guarantee the ability to purchase tickets to the All Star Game. This survey’s existence in the first place is disheartening to me, since the implication is that there will have to be a certain degree of favoritism involved in the distribution of tickets in 2006, leaving season ticket holders from the 2005 season with the advantage. This will undoubtedly lead to some debate in our own household, since we would like to at least attend the Homerun Derby.
One survey was not enough for this day, and on the political end, beyond the voting registration drive, there was a survey with a petition going around about the recent garbage issue in Pittsburgh. On its face this undoubtedly would seem rather petty, especially to anyone outside of the viewing area of any of the Pittsburgh television stations. For the benefit of those who do not know, the city is in severe financial straits, bordering on bankruptcy. There have been cuts in the police force, talk of closing fire stations in the city, closures of public pools and recreation areas, and school closures. In the midst of all of this, there is now a garbage code enforcement team that is responsible for taking pictures of people’s garbage, searching for evidence of non-compliance with the recycling rules. I don’t claim to be green-unfriendly, but given the current situation, I think that there are more important issues than this. The loss of members of the police force has left the city with some minor jumps in violent crime; at least it appears that way since we are lucky if we make it through an entire week without at least two shootings or stabbings in the city. As annoying as the surveys can be, I can’t complain about one that addresses the quixotic priorities of the city’s officials.
Then there was a very small contingent of citizens asking the public about the current issue of most relevance to ballgame attendees: scalpers. Recently we have been hit with a run of rather nasty characters trying to buy and sell tickets to games, some of which have been accused of harassing fans, and others of selling counterfeit tickets. It is like running a gauntlet to reach the park, since these scalpers populate the Roberto Clemente Bridge, and accost just about every person crossing to reach the ballpark. There is a kind of sigh of relief as the fans reach the shadow of the ballpark, since these ticket-sellers cannot get too close to the park without getting arrested. This tiny survey was extremely limited, and held very close to the entry gates, in the safe zone beyond the scalpers’ territory. Those brave souls had to stay out of earshot of any of the people they were asking about, and hope that none of the fans went and told the ticket-sellers on the bridge what they were doing.
Finally, although it wasn’t a survey, there was also a small group of people at the stadium that seems to find a purpose at every venue in the city. These people were handing out cheaply printed black and white photos of the team members, proclaiming these the “labor-friendly” baseball cards. “No sweatshops were used to print these!” was their cry. If it had been the circus, they would have been handing out flyers about animal cruelty. I wonder what their cause will be in football and hockey season.
Freedom is a wonderful thing, and I encourage everyone around me to embrace it. The result of that can end up being annoying, especially when one is rushing through throngs of people to make it to the entry gates of a ballpark, and reach one’s seat before the singing of the National Anthem. But in the greater scheme of things, having to sprint up a couple flights of stairs because I’ve been detained a little by others trying to make their voices heard is fine with me.
Maybe I’ll try my hand sometime, and try to get the area outside the ballpark named “Surveyville”.
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Copyright 2004, Elizabeth Ross
Elizabeth Ross is a 32-year-old mother of four, freelance writer and editor from Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Imperfect Parent, MomsVoice, and is slated to appear in Momentum, the magazine of the National Catholic Educational Association. She is the publisher of River Walk Journal, a bi-monthly online literary journal which is an expansion of her online editing group.
Beauty of the Hours
When I was a little girl in central New York, I could smell fall in the air. The mornings were a bit crisper toward the end of August. The oak and maple trees' leaves were tinged with the first show of red and orange.
When I moved to Florida in 1995, I mourned the loss of fall. Here fall comes without much natural fanfare. The air continues to heat up with the first break of sunrise to a sweltering 80 degrees by 7:00 a.m. The mostly perennial trees hold their leaves and color throughout the year.
Back in 1995, there were few ways for me to measure the change of the seasons and I felt out of sorts without natural cues to signal the passing of time. That all changed at the end of March in 1998, the month and year of my daughter, Emily's birth, the first time I became a mother.
Emily was born in spring, a time of renewal and growth. Unlike in New York, there were no crocuses popping up between patches of snow. There were no robins to usher in spring, building nests and laying eggs. There were few trees with tiny buds bursting from barren limbs. Instead, Florida was not green that year, but brown. There had been a terrible drought and instead of soggy earth from melting snow, I encountered the stifling choke of smoke-filled air from the many brush fires throughout our county. The sun beat down mercilessly. When I took Emily home from the hospital, I couldn't take her outside for the morning carriage rides I had envisioned. The air quality was that bad. Inside, time wore on without nature's cues. But I knew that time passed. I knew because I had my own little time clock -- my baby girl.Before I had Emily, months seemed to melt into months, years into years as if I were on some continuous treadmill of time going no where. Suddenly when Emily was born, there wasn't enough time in the day. Sleep was elusive. Twenty four hours didn't seem enough time to get anything done. On my maternity leave, I had to finish my dissertation to be granted my Ph.D. I had spent five years before that time taking classes and working on my dissertation, but now I had no time left. It was now or never.
As I dusted off my notes and began to write, my girl grew and grew. Her tiny baby features began to take shape quicker than my dissertation did. When I had finally finished my 200 page work, my daughter was five months old and I had to go back to work. It was August 1998. I couldn't believe what five months looked like -- Emily was now a little person able to sit up and coo. All total, my Ph.D. had taken me almost eight years from the time I took my first course to the time I submitted my dissertation. In the same amount of time, I could have had an eight-year-old child. Instead, all I had to show for that time was 200 pages that would be dated and obsolete in a few years.Motherhood changed my perception of time and with it, restructured the priorities in my life. I decided to resign from my job as a department chair and as soon as I was allowed, I decreased my length of contract from almost eleven months to nine, taking a huge pay cut. I knew that I couldn't be the kind of mother that I wanted to be with a stressful job like that and with so many responsibilities. Going back to work was the most difficult challenge that I had ever faced. Had I not been the primary breadwinner of our family, I probably would have stayed home. I hadn't expected that going back to work or more pointedly leaving the most important person in my life would have been so gut-wrenching. My child was only five months old. She was so vulnerable, so tiny, and so dependent upon me. More than that, I was her very world and she was mine.
Even though I was lucky enough to have my parents watch my daughter while I was at work, I cried on my way to work every morning for months. Some semesters when my students were not particularly diligent and really didn't want to be there, I would wonder what in the world I was doing in the classroom. Clearly my students didn't give a rip if I were there imparting the ways of crafting better essays. They'd rather be surfing at the beach. But at home, my little girl wanted me, needed me. At the end of the day, I doubted my students spent a minute thinking about me or their English class. But at home, my daughter spent her time wondering where I was.
Those were tough days. I only got through those days and those years when occasionally, a former student would send me an e-mail, stop by, or write me a thank you note about how I helped him get his first job or how I helped her write the essay that garnered her spot in the graduate school of her choice. I lived for that sort of feedback, the only thing that helped me see that I was touching the lives of many people.
As my daughter grew older, I measured my life using her as my yard stick. She grew into a beautiful, intelligent, and kind little girl. Although my parents had spent eight hours of the day with her, my Emily still saw me as her primary caregiver, the light of her life. I was the one that she wanted to be with more than anyone else. This quelled my fear that working would prevent us from bonding.
Having the summer off was my way of becoming a stay-at-home mother for three months. My frenzied lifestyle of grading papers from 9 p.m. until 2 a.m. and often waking at 5 a.m. to grade more papers before I got ready for work and before I fed and dressed the baby, ended. I adjusted to Emily's natural rhythms, waking when she did and leisurely drifting through the morning. We went on day trips to the local zoo, to the beach, or to the playground. When Emily got older, we'd go to high tea at a local English tea house in our fancy dresses and hats. Or sometimes we'd sit at home and make tea and scones, pretending to be Mrs. Mouse and Mrs. Rat (a take-off of Beatrix Potter, a favorite author).
As Emily approached school age and I took my current position at a university where health care was cheaper, the pay was better, and college for dependents was free, the summers became more like working vacations. I didn't have to teach or grade papers, but there was an expectation that I use the summer to write papers and publish scholarly articles or creative work. I enrolled Emily in a few short, week long summer camps. I dropped her off in the morning around 9 a.m. and picked her up around 11 a.m. This gave me a couple of hours to write without disruption, and it gave her time to spend with children her own age.
This summer was different; it was my maternity leave. I struggled to do it all and realized that I couldn't. Recovering from a c-section after delivering my second child was very difficult. I was so very sleep deprived. Because I had an older child at home who was very much awake during the day, I couldn't sleep when the baby slept. This meant that I averaged a few hours of sleep a night. Then there was the pain from my operation. Not only did the site of my c-section hurt tremendously, but I had internal bruising on my left side. My son was breech and stuck under my rib cage so the doctor and nurses had to pry him out. I also had a reaction to the spinal block, which in its aftermath caused intermittent but excruciating pain in my back.
Luckily my husband took two weeks off from work to stay home and help me and later my mother helped too, but my recovery was slower than I thought. I had planned to finish a college course over the summer. I had planned to finish editing a book. I had planned to rewrite some of my scholarly articles to send out for publication. I had planned to exercise and lose the baby weight. I had planned to bond with my baby and help my daughter with her reading. I had too many plans.
In the end, time ripped through all my plans. Having two children did not quicken time by two but exponentially squared time until it strode off like the speed of light. For the first six weeks of my recovery, my parents were kind enough to take my daughter Emily to and from kindergarten. Emily had a tough time adjusting to her new baby brother and having the routine of school helped. In addition to stealing the spotlight from her, Luke didn't do much. Emily had expected (despite the many books we read and talks we had) the baby to be more like a two-year-old -- conversant and ready to play.
"He just sits there," she said. "He doesn't even know how to hold a rattle," she said disappointedly.
Certainly like all newborns, Luke couldn't smile yet. He simply did what newborns do best -- eat, sleep, and poop -- not a very exciting repertoire for a six year-old to watch. As the sands of time gushed through the hour glass, Emily graduated from kindergarten and Luke graduated into a new larger size diaper. He became more interactive, able to smile and react to his sister, who was now more enamored with him.
So while my guilt piled up over unwritten articles and stomach flab not disappearing fast enough, I found myself totally in love with my new baby and in need of absolution. I never realized how much I had missed these precious baby times. I found myself just in awe of my sleeping infant or simply reeling with delight over a recent new cooing sound. My worry that I wouldn't be able to love my second child as much as my first evaporated in the operating room as soon as I saw Luke for the first time. I loved my little boy just as much as my daughter. A mother's love is that big.As the weeks flew into months and my little boy grew bigger, I absolved myself from the guilt of unwritten papers. This was my time. I needed this time. My children needed this time. My family needed this time. I resigned from a committee that I knew would steal this precious time. I suspended my scholarly writing because sleep was more important to my recovery at this point. I wanted to make this time count.
My daughter grew weary of the baby routine and since I was feeling better, I enrolled her in a week-long art camp that she enjoyed fully. We broke up the routine by seeing movies every Friday, and going out for ice cream or for tea always with Luke in tow. On the weekends, my husband and I took the kids to a science center in the next city or miniature golfing at the local course. We helped Emily with her reading. I enrolled her in a five week reading program that met once a week for two hours. After some rough road with diaper rashes and allergies to formula, Luke was finally settling into a routine. With his 2 a.m.-5 a.m. colic gone, Luke became a happy baby. And three nights ago at exactly three months of age, Luke began sleeping through the night.This summer I didn't write the great American novel. I didn't even write the great American essay. My essays still await revision in my computer files waiting while my children's growth and development wait for no one -- including me. My daughter starts back to school during the first week of August as a first grader and then I will no longer share in her every waking moment.
Unlike the first time that I returned from maternity leave, I now know how difficult it will be to hand over my baby to my mother when I go back to work. I also realize how incredibly lucky I am to have my parents to watch my little boy. I know that they love him as much as I do and will give him all the love and attention that I would. However, my time spent at work is time that I cannot spend with my baby and time that can never be recovered. I will miss many of his new smiles, his new reactions. I will miss his hugs and his kisses. Although I love teaching and enjoy my students, they can never compare with the unconditional love that a child gives to his mother or that a mother gives to her child. Perhaps earlier than some mothers, I realize that I will never be able to be with my child for every moment. Therefore, I try to be truly present every moment that I am with my children.
Being in the moment when I am with her is what has created such a strong bond between my daughter and me. I hope to create the same type of bond with my son. Although my time with my children matters tremendously, I must plan for the future as well. As a working mother, I ensure a roof over my children's heads, food in their stomachs, clothes on their backs and all those "extras" like health insurance, college, and a retirement that won't burden my children.
As this summer wanes and the fall enters, I walk along the beach with my daughter and carry my son in my arms, happily looking for shells. I savor these times and am reminded of a quote I once read by an anonymous writer, "Today is a smooth white seashell, hold it close and listen to the beauty of the hours."
These hours, the ones that I spend with my children, are the most precious of all and rush by all too quickly. I will hold them close and in my heart forever.
***************
Copyright 2004 Joanne Detore-Nakamura
Joanne Detore-Nakamura, Ph.D. is enjoying her summer with her newborn son, Luke, her six-year-old daughter, Emily, and her husband, Eric. She heads back to work in the fall at Embry-Ridde Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, where she is an Assistant Professor of Humanities and Communication.
The Democracy in Naming a Legacy
One of the first tasks we have as parents that carries with it a monumental responsibility is the naming of our children. It will be the moniker that they will carry throughout their lives and the name that will mark their place in history for generations. This is an almost indelible decision that we cannot easily change. I know that some children grow up to be famous and they change their names for fame or they use a nom de plume when writing, but for the most part we all have the name our parents gave us.
Most of us begin thinking of the naming process at an early age, before we have yet considered being married or even having children. I had girlfriends in high school and college that were naming our children after the third or fourth date. This all scrawled on the front of their notebooks, surrounded by hearts and other doodles, their own name with my last name and then underneath, the names of our children. I admit I too have always thought what it would be like to have children and what they would be named. Of course, we men always give our boys masculine, football player/action hero names. Our daughters are given the names of a princess or our latest crush in the movies or on television.
My wife and I have three children. The first two of our children, a girl and a boy, were easy to name. We did not have to pick but one boy name and one girl name. The first of our children was a daughter. We were unable to determine the sex until her birth. This necessitated that we have a name of a girl and a boy on our list. We muddled through the process of elimination, reading every book of baby names and surfing every website with a baby naming section. We knew the spellings of names, the meaning of names, and the heritage of names we thought we might give our child. We wanted the name to be different than the most popular names, but not so peculiar that our baby would be teased or ridiculed at school, and would later want to change. My wife always wanted to have a daughter and name her Paige. This was a perfectly suitable name right up to the point when she married me, a man with the last name of Turner. Needless to say, this name did not make our list. We decided on a name that was different, yet was a strong indication of our heritage -- Annika. Yes, Daddy is an avid golfer, and very happy with this name.
It was different for our second child and we were lucky because we were able to determine the sex from the ultrasound. There was no doubt that this child would be a boy. We already had a list of boy names from 16 months earlier which made the second list easier to compile. I had always wanted a son, and always wanted to call my son -- Jacob. We decided that Jacob's middle name would be the last name of my grandfather who was killed in an automobile accident involving a drunk driver in the early 1970’s. I wanted to ensure that my grandfather's name was carried on through my own children.
The last of our children came somewhat unexpected, and we were not exactly at that point planning to name a third child. This made the process of naming our third child much more difficult. We wanted to give this child the same considerations we gave our first two. For the first four months, we had no idea whether we were having a boy or a girl, but I was certain that this next child would be a girl. I began a list of feminine names and compared that list to my wife’s list. We actually had a girl’s name fairly nailed down by the time my wife had her 16-week ultrasound. A dose of Murphy’s Law, as the ultrasound revealed, we definitely were not having a girl, unless this girl had an extra appendage. We would have to go back to the naming drawing board.
Still, I thought that a boy's list would be easy. I sat down to begin my list and I drew a complete blank. I could not think of a single name that stood out more than the others. I decided to delegate the full naming duty to my wife, but agreed to offer suggestions as they entered my mind. My wife began her list and kept it on the counter, and as we came up with a name we liked, we added it to the list. I should also add here that there were three other boys born into the family during the last three years and we could not possibly double up a name that had recently been used for the cousins.
A list was derived after a few weeks, and it was time to whittle it down to a manageable group to make our final choice. The list was comprised of only 12 names, but herein arose the problem -- we could not make a decision. Each name was as well liked as the other. We were deadlocked without a clue as to how we would narrow down the names to even a handful.
That's when I decided to turn to my blog. Through my daily postings, I have developed a number of readers that come to visit and read of my regular antics as a father. These readers are from all over the planet and they have grown to a significant number. I decided that since we were having such a difficult time paring down our list, and since we live in a democratic society, I would hold an election, or a primary, to help eliminate some of the names on the list. My readers truly represent a slice of society, or a good cross-section of the population, and I felt that in casting their votes they could ultimately help us with the naming of our child.
I presented all 12 names on the list and asked that each of my readers vote on the name they liked best. Over a hundred votes were tallied. I planned on taking the top three names and moving them to the next round of elimination. As fate would have it, we had clear first and second place names, but three names were tied for third. So, instead of three, we had five names to enter into the final voting. Again a vote took place and we had a large and supportive voter turnout. We must have had a number of voters from Florida though, as once again the tally had been completed, and we still did not have a clear winner. Three of the five names all tied with an equal number of votes. This was proving to be more difficult than imagined.
Finally, after some time had passed, and after voting on a middle name too, we determined a clear "winner", and came away with a name for our son. After nearly three months of intensive voting, tallying of all votes, and examining all the hanging chads, my son's name had been determined by popular (and blogging) vote. On the birthday of our nation, July 4, 2004, our son was born and we named him -- Aidan James Turner.
The people had spoken.
*************************************
Copyright 2004 Jim Turner
Jim Turner is the father to Annika (4) and Jake (3) and newborn, Aidan James. Jim keeps a daily blog called Genuine in which he shares his whimisical musings on fatherhood.
Make Chat, Not Babies
Can DSL Connections Reduce Teen Pregnancies?
By Debra McCorkle
American teenagers just aren’t making babies like they used to. The Center for Disease Control recently gave out 2002 birth statistics for U.S. and the birth rate is down 38% since 1991 for teenage girls aged 15-17. I have a theory regarding why this is so, and it has nothing to do with morality or birth control. In my opinion, low sex and pregnancy rates among teens has everything to do with instant messaging on home computers.
I am the ungorilla-ed Diana Fossey of teenage girls, studying my two teenaged daughters and a gaggle of their girlfriends as they wander in and out of our environment. My youngest at age 13 is the primary source of my research these days, although my 18 year old daughter’s behavior has also been included in my findings. Here’s a description of a daily occurrence:
The phone rings. She doesn’t budge from her seat, continuing to peck away at the keyboard undisturbed. Irritated, I run over and grab the receiver on the fourth ring.
‘It’s for you, it’s Joe.’
She doesn’t even look up. ‘Tell him to get on instant messenger. I’ll talk to him there.’
She holds court with a half dozen of her friends online, carrying on conversations ranging from school gossip to news of their favorite bands. Sometimes I ask her if she just wants me to drive her over to her best
friend’s house. ‘No’ she frequently responds. ‘(Friend A) will just be sitting at the computer, we won’t be doing anything else’.
Does this bother me? Sometimes. When I was thirteen I was walking to the mall, bicycling, talking on the phone. My friends were coming over, making out with their boyfriends on my couch (I was the token latchkey kid), smoking pot by the back door, trying to figure out how much they could water down their parent’s Stolichnaya before mom and dad noticed. On second thought, maybe all of this computer time isn’t so bad. It’s not like teens can reach through the screen and cop a feel or pass a joint.
According to AOL's research, 93 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds use the Internet instant messaging system. When given a choice between TV, phone, instant messaging and radio, and told they could only have access to one form of communication for a month, 41 percent of teens chose television, 33 percent chose instant messaging and just 17 percent chose the phone.
Against my daughter’s preferences, I sometimes do the annoying mom thing and look over her shoulder to monitor her correspondence. She types faster than I do, fingers flying across the keys. Her humor and quickness is remarkable as she trades quips and jokes with her buddies. She can effortlessly network
between numerous conversations without missing a beat. She dispenses advice, amuses and comforts simultaneously, adept as an air traffic controller with her multiple tasks. She has suitors, but usually prefers to type messages to them rather than seeing them more than once a week or so. When not chatting,
she’s shopping online, selecting music from our extensive files (stay away, RIAA! I don’t know how those hundreds of songs got on my computer!), and making entries into her journal.
Kids are still getting together, and their sexual candor is unnerving to parents like me. Teenagers make blow job jokes and bisexual remarks as casually as discussing homework or soccer. Still, when I sit down for those occasional heart-to-heart talks with either of my girls, they confide that few of their girlfriends are sexually active. Just as they converse on-line with multiple buddies simultaneously, they tend to run around in groups at the movies and at the mall. Whereas back when I was a teenager we coupled off in alarming rates, dropping most plans with girlfriends whenever the guy showed up, most of these kids bring along a posse, the same folks on their instant messaging buddy list, wherever they go. I haven’t had a
vacation in years in which we didn’t add one or two or five friends, depending on distance and car space. Boys are sometimes present but usually as part of the pack.
When my eighteen-year-old got busier with school and volunteer activities, I missed the constant presence (by phone/computer and in person) of all her girlfriends and the continuous pajama party that was held in her bedroom for years. My younger daughter has friends sleeping over now and again, but her slumber parties are frequently held instead on my Dell computer until 2:00 in the morning, when either the last friend falls asleep or someone’s mom yells at them to turn that thing off. Sometimes, that mom is me.
It’s a brave new world and no one will know whether this latest childrearing experiment is successful until these kids are all grown and on their own. I know that I survived too much television and three nights a week of church and lived to obtain therapists and credit cards like most Americans. It’s good to read the childbirth statistics and remain hopeful that most of my daughters’ friends will not be teenaged moms. I prefer to imagine my daughter typing out advice for her numerous online friends for the next few years until she has had plenty of time to grow up. Girls have their whole lives to make babies and to change mountains of diapers and to worry about bad influences on their own kids. If DSL connections are helping to reduce the teen pregnancy rate, the school nurse should be giving out modems.
*****************************************
Copyright 2004 Debra McCorkle
Debra McCorkle is the single mother of two teenaged daughters. She owns a store in the mountains of Western North Carolina. She writes in her spare time and publishes a regular column in The 11th Hour, a bi-weekly which appears in Macon and Statesboro, Georgia.
_________________________________________________________________
By Debra McCorkle
American teenagers just aren’t making babies like they used to. The Center for Disease Control recently gave out 2002 birth statistics for U.S. and the birth rate is down 38% since 1991 for teenage girls aged 15-17. I have a theory regarding why this is so, and it has nothing to do with morality or birth control. In my opinion, low sex and pregnancy rates among teens has everything to do with instant messaging on home computers.
I am the ungorilla-ed Diana Fossey of teenage girls, studying my two teenaged daughters and a gaggle of their girlfriends as they wander in and out of our environment. My youngest at age 13 is the primary source of my research these days, although my 18 year old daughter’s behavior has also been included in my findings. Here’s a description of a daily occurrence:
The phone rings. She doesn’t budge from her seat, continuing to peck away at the keyboard undisturbed. Irritated, I run over and grab the receiver on the fourth ring.
‘It’s for you, it’s Joe.’
She doesn’t even look up. ‘Tell him to get on instant messenger. I’ll talk to him there.’
She holds court with a half dozen of her friends online, carrying on conversations ranging from school gossip to news of their favorite bands. Sometimes I ask her if she just wants me to drive her over to her best
friend’s house. ‘No’ she frequently responds. ‘(Friend A) will just be sitting at the computer, we won’t be doing anything else’.
Does this bother me? Sometimes. When I was thirteen I was walking to the mall, bicycling, talking on the phone. My friends were coming over, making out with their boyfriends on my couch (I was the token latchkey kid), smoking pot by the back door, trying to figure out how much they could water down their parent’s Stolichnaya before mom and dad noticed. On second thought, maybe all of this computer time isn’t so bad. It’s not like teens can reach through the screen and cop a feel or pass a joint.
According to AOL's research, 93 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds use the Internet instant messaging system. When given a choice between TV, phone, instant messaging and radio, and told they could only have access to one form of communication for a month, 41 percent of teens chose television, 33 percent chose instant messaging and just 17 percent chose the phone.
Against my daughter’s preferences, I sometimes do the annoying mom thing and look over her shoulder to monitor her correspondence. She types faster than I do, fingers flying across the keys. Her humor and quickness is remarkable as she trades quips and jokes with her buddies. She can effortlessly network
between numerous conversations without missing a beat. She dispenses advice, amuses and comforts simultaneously, adept as an air traffic controller with her multiple tasks. She has suitors, but usually prefers to type messages to them rather than seeing them more than once a week or so. When not chatting,
she’s shopping online, selecting music from our extensive files (stay away, RIAA! I don’t know how those hundreds of songs got on my computer!), and making entries into her journal.
Kids are still getting together, and their sexual candor is unnerving to parents like me. Teenagers make blow job jokes and bisexual remarks as casually as discussing homework or soccer. Still, when I sit down for those occasional heart-to-heart talks with either of my girls, they confide that few of their girlfriends are sexually active. Just as they converse on-line with multiple buddies simultaneously, they tend to run around in groups at the movies and at the mall. Whereas back when I was a teenager we coupled off in alarming rates, dropping most plans with girlfriends whenever the guy showed up, most of these kids bring along a posse, the same folks on their instant messaging buddy list, wherever they go. I haven’t had a
vacation in years in which we didn’t add one or two or five friends, depending on distance and car space. Boys are sometimes present but usually as part of the pack.
When my eighteen-year-old got busier with school and volunteer activities, I missed the constant presence (by phone/computer and in person) of all her girlfriends and the continuous pajama party that was held in her bedroom for years. My younger daughter has friends sleeping over now and again, but her slumber parties are frequently held instead on my Dell computer until 2:00 in the morning, when either the last friend falls asleep or someone’s mom yells at them to turn that thing off. Sometimes, that mom is me.
It’s a brave new world and no one will know whether this latest childrearing experiment is successful until these kids are all grown and on their own. I know that I survived too much television and three nights a week of church and lived to obtain therapists and credit cards like most Americans. It’s good to read the childbirth statistics and remain hopeful that most of my daughters’ friends will not be teenaged moms. I prefer to imagine my daughter typing out advice for her numerous online friends for the next few years until she has had plenty of time to grow up. Girls have their whole lives to make babies and to change mountains of diapers and to worry about bad influences on their own kids. If DSL connections are helping to reduce the teen pregnancy rate, the school nurse should be giving out modems.
*****************************************
Copyright 2004 Debra McCorkle
Debra McCorkle is the single mother of two teenaged daughters. She owns a store in the mountains of Western North Carolina. She writes in her spare time and publishes a regular column in The 11th Hour, a bi-weekly which appears in Macon and Statesboro, Georgia.
_________________________________________________________________
Sharp Teeth for Old Saws
Passing on Words of Wisdom
By Gloria MacKay
Children take to clichés the way a dog grabs on to a bone. I first heard these tried-and-true expressions from my grandmother who kept them under her apron, as handy for to pull out as cookies out of the oven. I thought she made them up.
The early bird gets the worm, she cautioned, but birds of a feather flock together. Two heads are better than one, she nodded, but too many cooks spoil the broth she would shriek as my aunts converged on her kitchen. Don't count your chickens before they hatch but April showers bring May flowers.
Despite the obvious contradictions, part of me wants these borrowed words of wisdom to carry on, unchanged. They are the comfort food of language, warm and familiar, plain and simple. But it is time for a change.
Some sayings, of course, will stand on their own, for all times. Shakespeare, for instance, says:
Brevity is the soul of wit.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Condemn the fault and not the actor of it.
Shiny words like this will never rust.
But for the most part, instead of parroting the old sayings I would rather listen to a child, the child who said, If at first you don't succeed get new batteries.
This is an old saw with sharp new teeth.
Children have bullseye vision, straight and to the point. They are of the moment: as current as the six o¹clock news; as fresh as morning coffee; as practical as peanut butter; as piercing as an earring.
Who better to energize a few of our time-worn proverbs than five and six year olds. I wish I could have met the kid who warns, When the blind leadeth the blind get out of the way.
Or the little girl who told her teacher, A miss is as good as a mister. (Right on, sister).
Usually we don't realize how trite our sayings can become until we talk to a child, such as the little girl who admits, There's no fool like Aunt Edie.
The proverbs we hand down from generation to generation are not only boring, some are dead wrong. You can't teach an old dog new tricks? I believed this to be true until I became an old dog, myself, and now I know this is nonsense. It took a little boy to get it right when he sighed, You can't teach an old dog new math.
Who said children should be seen and not heard?
Kids can be as loose as cannons but they don't waste words
Strike, they say, while the bug is close.
Never underestimate the power of termites.
The pen is mightier than the pigs.
Who needs the old sayings we learned from our grandmothers?
A stitch in time saves nine.
Don't put the cart before the horse.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
We've heard these so often they are boring, especially when compared to the opinions of children.
A penny saved is not much.
Two's company, three's the musketeers.
Don't bite the hand that looks dirty.
Don't put off tomorrow what you put on to go to bed.
An idle mind is the best way to relax.
The best advice my grandmother, on the other hand, could come up with was, Don't cry over spilt milk.
But her platitudes weren't much help to me when I was a harried young mother. I can actually remember crying when the third glass of milk at a single meal ran loose all over the table.
If I had only known then what I know now. It's always darkest before daylight savings time.
A little kid said that.
It would be wise to listen to children and take notes, before they grow up and start to talk like grown ups.
It is better to be safe than punch a fifth grader.
Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you have to blow your nose.
As you shall make your bed so shall you mess it up.
It could have been Shakespeare who said, If you lie down with the dogs you'll stink in the morning.
It sounds like something out of Richard III, but this is just another bit of practical advice from a kid.
Perhaps this was the same child, still full of wonder, still willing to try, who mused, You can lead a horse to water but how?
*************************************
Copyright 2004 Gloria MacKay
Gloria MacKay is an essayist and humorist from the Pacific Northwest. Her work, Throwing Sticks and Skipping Stones and The Insomniac Tales by Chaucer's Women is available at dlsijpress.com. She appears in two anthologies, Forget Me Knots from the Front Porch published by Obadiah Press and The Don't Sweat Stories: Inspirational Anecdotes from Those Who've Learned How Not to Sweat It from Hyperion. On her weekly radio program (KSER FM) she is encouraged to read what she writes about whatever she thinks. (She thinks, among other things, about women and children and men and food and fog and death and taxes.
By Gloria MacKay
Children take to clichés the way a dog grabs on to a bone. I first heard these tried-and-true expressions from my grandmother who kept them under her apron, as handy for to pull out as cookies out of the oven. I thought she made them up.
The early bird gets the worm, she cautioned, but birds of a feather flock together. Two heads are better than one, she nodded, but too many cooks spoil the broth she would shriek as my aunts converged on her kitchen. Don't count your chickens before they hatch but April showers bring May flowers.
Despite the obvious contradictions, part of me wants these borrowed words of wisdom to carry on, unchanged. They are the comfort food of language, warm and familiar, plain and simple. But it is time for a change.
Some sayings, of course, will stand on their own, for all times. Shakespeare, for instance, says:
Brevity is the soul of wit.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Condemn the fault and not the actor of it.
Shiny words like this will never rust.
But for the most part, instead of parroting the old sayings I would rather listen to a child, the child who said, If at first you don't succeed get new batteries.
This is an old saw with sharp new teeth.
Children have bullseye vision, straight and to the point. They are of the moment: as current as the six o¹clock news; as fresh as morning coffee; as practical as peanut butter; as piercing as an earring.
Who better to energize a few of our time-worn proverbs than five and six year olds. I wish I could have met the kid who warns, When the blind leadeth the blind get out of the way.
Or the little girl who told her teacher, A miss is as good as a mister. (Right on, sister).
Usually we don't realize how trite our sayings can become until we talk to a child, such as the little girl who admits, There's no fool like Aunt Edie.
The proverbs we hand down from generation to generation are not only boring, some are dead wrong. You can't teach an old dog new tricks? I believed this to be true until I became an old dog, myself, and now I know this is nonsense. It took a little boy to get it right when he sighed, You can't teach an old dog new math.
Who said children should be seen and not heard?
Kids can be as loose as cannons but they don't waste words
Strike, they say, while the bug is close.
Never underestimate the power of termites.
The pen is mightier than the pigs.
Who needs the old sayings we learned from our grandmothers?
A stitch in time saves nine.
Don't put the cart before the horse.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
We've heard these so often they are boring, especially when compared to the opinions of children.
A penny saved is not much.
Two's company, three's the musketeers.
Don't bite the hand that looks dirty.
Don't put off tomorrow what you put on to go to bed.
An idle mind is the best way to relax.
The best advice my grandmother, on the other hand, could come up with was, Don't cry over spilt milk.
But her platitudes weren't much help to me when I was a harried young mother. I can actually remember crying when the third glass of milk at a single meal ran loose all over the table.
If I had only known then what I know now. It's always darkest before daylight savings time.
A little kid said that.
It would be wise to listen to children and take notes, before they grow up and start to talk like grown ups.
It is better to be safe than punch a fifth grader.
Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you have to blow your nose.
As you shall make your bed so shall you mess it up.
It could have been Shakespeare who said, If you lie down with the dogs you'll stink in the morning.
It sounds like something out of Richard III, but this is just another bit of practical advice from a kid.
Perhaps this was the same child, still full of wonder, still willing to try, who mused, You can lead a horse to water but how?
*************************************
Copyright 2004 Gloria MacKay
Gloria MacKay is an essayist and humorist from the Pacific Northwest. Her work, Throwing Sticks and Skipping Stones and The Insomniac Tales by Chaucer's Women is available at dlsijpress.com. She appears in two anthologies, Forget Me Knots from the Front Porch published by Obadiah Press and The Don't Sweat Stories: Inspirational Anecdotes from Those Who've Learned How Not to Sweat It from Hyperion. On her weekly radio program (KSER FM) she is encouraged to read what she writes about whatever she thinks. (She thinks, among other things, about women and children and men and food and fog and death and taxes.
Motherhood by The Books
Can Any Book Beat A Mother's Intuition?
By Kristin Stitz
When I got pregnant for the first time I was an over-educated professional, a veteran of corporate middle management, and president of my own small consulting company. I'd spent the past fifteen years of my life studying and working to get ahead, and I attacked this unknown in the only way I knew how - by gathering facts, synthesizing data, developing theories.
I combed the Internet for information and read all the books on pregnancy and childbirth. I prepared for birth as if I were getting ready for a major presentation to a client, dedicating myself to kegels and relaxation exercises. Then one day I looked in the mirror at my bulging belly, and it occurred to me that soon a living, breathing thing was going to burst forth and demand to have its every need met by me and only me. What did I know about taking care of a baby? In a panic, I turned my attention to books on childcare.
Fortunately, or unfortunately as it turned out, there is no shortage of such books. It seems that anyone who has had, known, or been a child can call themself a baby care expert these days. A search on Amazon.com using the keywords "child care" turned up 5717 results. Even discounting for multiple versions of the same title (hardback, paperback, audio, and video), that's still a lot of books. A trip to Barnes and Noble wasn't much better - there were over 500 titles on the shelf. There are books written by doctors and psychologists, and published by impressive institutions like the American Academy of Pediatrics and The Mayo Clinic. For those more commercially-inclined, there are offerings from Johnson & Johnson and Disney. There's Secrets of the Baby Whisperer for the new-age parent, and for the star-struck, there's even a book written by the star of a popular nighttime soap opera.
The Baby Book sounded promising. That's what I was planning to have, after all, but maybe it would be better to specialize. Was I planning to have a fussy baby or a challenging child? An explosive, difficult or defiant child? Since I was sure mine would be none of these things, I passed on those titles, but made the happy discovery that if only I read the right book, I could determine the type of child mine would be. Did I want a happy child? An emotionally intelligent child? Or a child who was simply good enough? All I had to do was fork over $25, and the choice was mine.
As I continued to gather information a couple of names cropped up over and over, and I deduced that Sears, Brazelton, Leach, and Eisenberg are today's equivalent of Dr. Spock (who doesn't even rate a place in the end-display at the bookstore these days). Armed with this short list, I headed back to the store. To my surprise I found that while there is consensus among the experts on a few topics, there are many others on which they don't agree. Unsure whether to give your baby a pacifier? One book warns that in the early weeks this will cause nipple confusion and impair his ability to nurse. Instead, the author suggests helping your baby to find his fist or thumb to suck. Another expert suggests giving baby a pacifier as often as possible in the early months precisely because it will keep him from sucking his thumb. While one expert suggest hanging lots of interesting things above your baby to give her something to look at and touch, another urges limiting the use of the mobile that you "inevitably" received at your baby shower. "How would you feel trying to sleep with a rotating disco ball suspended two feet above your face?" the authors scold.
"How am I supposed to know what to do?" I wailed to my childbirth instructor.
"You haven't even gotten to the best part," she said. "Just wait until you start talking about Ferberizing with your friends at the playground."
Richard Ferber is one of a whole crew of experts who focus exclusively on children's sleep habits. The verb Ferberize has even entered the parenting lexicon as the process of letting your child cry for progressively longer periods of time until she finally learns to fall asleep on her own. Whether or not to let baby "cry it out" seems to be the most controversial of all childcare topics. One expert claims this is an act of love - you are teaching your child a lifelong habit of good sleep patterns - while another claims that my baby will feel abandoned and suffer terribly if I ignore his cries. These books were enough to keep me up at night before my baby was born, praying that he would miraculously learn to sleep through the night on his own.
It seems to me that each of these experts relies on a heavy dose of personal interpretation as to what a baby needs and wants. One advises holding or carrying your infant as much as possible, so that she doesn't flail her arms about and waste a lot of energy on unnecessary motion. Another says to give your baby plenty of time on the floor so he can learn about this body in space. So which is it? Is my baby flailing his arms and wasting energy or learning about his body in space? When the time came I asked my baby, but he wasn't telling.
Now that I'm a mother and I've put the information in the books piled on my nightstand to the test, I've learned to pick and choose the advice that makes the most sense to me. The books I like best are the ones that support my own personal philosophy of childcare. This is probably the single most important thing I've learned through all my research. I have a personal philosophy of childcare!
Experts with their books are all well and good, but when it comes right down to it I rely on my mother's intuition for how to handle everything from diaper rash to pacifiers. The best thing about so many books is that I can find just the one to tell me I'm right.
************************************
Copyright 2004 Kristin Stitz
Kristin Stitz is a writer who lives with her husband and two-year-old son outside of Philadelphia. Her essays on pregnancy and motherhood have appeared in Pregnancy and ePregnancy Magazines, and her short fiction has appeared in several literary journals. She is looking forward to lots of new material with the birth of her second child, due in October.
By Kristin Stitz
When I got pregnant for the first time I was an over-educated professional, a veteran of corporate middle management, and president of my own small consulting company. I'd spent the past fifteen years of my life studying and working to get ahead, and I attacked this unknown in the only way I knew how - by gathering facts, synthesizing data, developing theories.
I combed the Internet for information and read all the books on pregnancy and childbirth. I prepared for birth as if I were getting ready for a major presentation to a client, dedicating myself to kegels and relaxation exercises. Then one day I looked in the mirror at my bulging belly, and it occurred to me that soon a living, breathing thing was going to burst forth and demand to have its every need met by me and only me. What did I know about taking care of a baby? In a panic, I turned my attention to books on childcare.
Fortunately, or unfortunately as it turned out, there is no shortage of such books. It seems that anyone who has had, known, or been a child can call themself a baby care expert these days. A search on Amazon.com using the keywords "child care" turned up 5717 results. Even discounting for multiple versions of the same title (hardback, paperback, audio, and video), that's still a lot of books. A trip to Barnes and Noble wasn't much better - there were over 500 titles on the shelf. There are books written by doctors and psychologists, and published by impressive institutions like the American Academy of Pediatrics and The Mayo Clinic. For those more commercially-inclined, there are offerings from Johnson & Johnson and Disney. There's Secrets of the Baby Whisperer for the new-age parent, and for the star-struck, there's even a book written by the star of a popular nighttime soap opera.
The Baby Book sounded promising. That's what I was planning to have, after all, but maybe it would be better to specialize. Was I planning to have a fussy baby or a challenging child? An explosive, difficult or defiant child? Since I was sure mine would be none of these things, I passed on those titles, but made the happy discovery that if only I read the right book, I could determine the type of child mine would be. Did I want a happy child? An emotionally intelligent child? Or a child who was simply good enough? All I had to do was fork over $25, and the choice was mine.
As I continued to gather information a couple of names cropped up over and over, and I deduced that Sears, Brazelton, Leach, and Eisenberg are today's equivalent of Dr. Spock (who doesn't even rate a place in the end-display at the bookstore these days). Armed with this short list, I headed back to the store. To my surprise I found that while there is consensus among the experts on a few topics, there are many others on which they don't agree. Unsure whether to give your baby a pacifier? One book warns that in the early weeks this will cause nipple confusion and impair his ability to nurse. Instead, the author suggests helping your baby to find his fist or thumb to suck. Another expert suggests giving baby a pacifier as often as possible in the early months precisely because it will keep him from sucking his thumb. While one expert suggest hanging lots of interesting things above your baby to give her something to look at and touch, another urges limiting the use of the mobile that you "inevitably" received at your baby shower. "How would you feel trying to sleep with a rotating disco ball suspended two feet above your face?" the authors scold.
"How am I supposed to know what to do?" I wailed to my childbirth instructor.
"You haven't even gotten to the best part," she said. "Just wait until you start talking about Ferberizing with your friends at the playground."
Richard Ferber is one of a whole crew of experts who focus exclusively on children's sleep habits. The verb Ferberize has even entered the parenting lexicon as the process of letting your child cry for progressively longer periods of time until she finally learns to fall asleep on her own. Whether or not to let baby "cry it out" seems to be the most controversial of all childcare topics. One expert claims this is an act of love - you are teaching your child a lifelong habit of good sleep patterns - while another claims that my baby will feel abandoned and suffer terribly if I ignore his cries. These books were enough to keep me up at night before my baby was born, praying that he would miraculously learn to sleep through the night on his own.
It seems to me that each of these experts relies on a heavy dose of personal interpretation as to what a baby needs and wants. One advises holding or carrying your infant as much as possible, so that she doesn't flail her arms about and waste a lot of energy on unnecessary motion. Another says to give your baby plenty of time on the floor so he can learn about this body in space. So which is it? Is my baby flailing his arms and wasting energy or learning about his body in space? When the time came I asked my baby, but he wasn't telling.
Now that I'm a mother and I've put the information in the books piled on my nightstand to the test, I've learned to pick and choose the advice that makes the most sense to me. The books I like best are the ones that support my own personal philosophy of childcare. This is probably the single most important thing I've learned through all my research. I have a personal philosophy of childcare!
Experts with their books are all well and good, but when it comes right down to it I rely on my mother's intuition for how to handle everything from diaper rash to pacifiers. The best thing about so many books is that I can find just the one to tell me I'm right.
************************************
Copyright 2004 Kristin Stitz
Kristin Stitz is a writer who lives with her husband and two-year-old son outside of Philadelphia. Her essays on pregnancy and motherhood have appeared in Pregnancy and ePregnancy Magazines, and her short fiction has appeared in several literary journals. She is looking forward to lots of new material with the birth of her second child, due in October.
Crossing the Line
Can Internet Relationships Hurt Your Marriage?
By Sarah Bain
I never thought I was the jealous type—until now. My husband has always preferred the company of women to the company of men; he’s just that sort of guy. Women love him because he’s honest, open, willing to take risks, willing to be the fall guy, and willing to lend an ear when someone needs to cry on his shoulder. Well, you can imagine that men certainly aren’t prone to crying on his shoulder.
But here’s the problem. Until about five years ago, I knew all of my husband’s friends; in fact, most of them were my friends too. And he never met women alone, for drinks, for meals, for anything at all. We all met together, shared our conversations together, exchanged our fears together. It’s not like my husband corresponded with other women through the mail. No one was writing handwritten letters back and forth.
So what’s happened in the last five years? The internet, that’s what’s happened.
Email, Google, Chat rooms, Forums, Blogs. Suddenly, I find that my husband is corresponding with women, several of them, and I’m no longer privy to the information they share. If I read his email, I’d be accused of snooping, of crossing a line, of doing the unthinkable; it’s almost as if I’d be reading his journals, his private stash, going through his wallet without his permission. That’s not to say I haven’t read his email. In fact, since we share a computer, often before I switch over to my account, I notice that his email is open, and well, occasionally I glance. It’s hard not to notice the long list of emails from women that I know he corresponds with. So if something is open, you bet I’m going to read it. If something is closed but right below the open email, I have been known to click and read that too.
Herein lies the problem: I’ve seen emails perhaps I shouldn’t have seen. I’ve seen emails that have caused me great distress. I’ve seen subject lines that have caused me sleepless nights and worry. I’ve read emails that taken out of the context of several emails back and forth are easy to blow out of proportion. I’ve seen emails that make me think women are flirting with him even if it has “gone over my husband’s head.” This is not to say that I spend a great deal of time looking at his email. But certainly, I can say that it’s created a lot of what I think about lately. Wasn’t it Ray Carver, after all, who had one of his characters going through the drawers and mail in the neighbors’ apartment while they were gone? Who wouldn’t?
Before I go any farther, I should probably defend my husband because I know he is devoted to me. It’s not as if he’s out surfing the internet looking for women to email, or chat with. My husband is a writer too. And as such, he’s been asked to be part of a group of writers in a chat room. He’s corresponded with other writers for years. They have all, both male and female, developed relationships. He’s gotten to know many other writers of similar interests, some of them female. So now instead of just chatting or posting in a forum, they correspond individually. And my husband is of course attracted to good writing, to thoughtful writing, to many women writers. They like him for all of the above reasons already stated.
So I feel a bit lost, a bit jealous, a great deal out of the loop. I have confronted my husband several times, and he generally reassures me -- tells me how much he loves me and that my worries are unfounded. But are they? Don’t most insecurities stem from some sort of truth. And how do I know that these women aren’t hoping for something more? If it’s easy for me to take something out of context, how easy is it for them to do the same?
I’m not sure how to “get over this issue” if that is in fact something I need to do. This brings up the eternal and well-researched and discussed question: Can men and women just be friends? Is it okay for a man to have an on-line relationship with another woman? Certainly business transactions occur every day between men and women. And writing, after all, is a kind of business. But where do we draw the line? Do I have the right to read correspondence between them? Is that what I really want to become—a voyeur, or even worse, accused of suspending freedom of speech -- of censorship?
Maybe all I want is for these women to know that I love my husband -- that I plan to be the one and only love of his life and I hope they can respect my fears and keep the relationships honest, respectful, within the realm of acceptable things that could be shared in front of me. I also want them to know that I’m tired of them flirting with him. I don’t like what I’ve become lately—a jealous wife. In fact, I hate it. I’m just not sure how to fix it. I think a close friend has summed it up the best for me, a close female friend, I might add, of the same sex: “I would feel the same way if it were me. Of course, I can be friends with other men, but my husband can't be friends with other women.”
Of course, all of this is really just intellectual conjecture. I know the real problem lies within myself. After all, if I’m confident in my marriage, and in my ability to keep my husband interested in me, then what really am I jealous about?
As always, before I send this essay out to be published, I’ll hand it to my husband first, ask him to review it. This will, of course, bring up all sorts of interesting things to discuss. But that, I suppose, is a whole other essay.
***********************************
Copyright 2004 Sarah Bain
Sarah Bain is a writer and a mother of three children, Carver, Sophia, and beloved daughter and much-anticipated baby girl Grace, who was stillborn on June 1, 2003.
Sarah's articles have appeared in New Beginnings: A La Leche League Breastfeeding Journal, as well as a poem and essay in The Loss Journal, May 2004.
Sarah can be reached at sarah@bainbooks.com.
By Sarah Bain
I never thought I was the jealous type—until now. My husband has always preferred the company of women to the company of men; he’s just that sort of guy. Women love him because he’s honest, open, willing to take risks, willing to be the fall guy, and willing to lend an ear when someone needs to cry on his shoulder. Well, you can imagine that men certainly aren’t prone to crying on his shoulder.
But here’s the problem. Until about five years ago, I knew all of my husband’s friends; in fact, most of them were my friends too. And he never met women alone, for drinks, for meals, for anything at all. We all met together, shared our conversations together, exchanged our fears together. It’s not like my husband corresponded with other women through the mail. No one was writing handwritten letters back and forth.
So what’s happened in the last five years? The internet, that’s what’s happened.
Email, Google, Chat rooms, Forums, Blogs. Suddenly, I find that my husband is corresponding with women, several of them, and I’m no longer privy to the information they share. If I read his email, I’d be accused of snooping, of crossing a line, of doing the unthinkable; it’s almost as if I’d be reading his journals, his private stash, going through his wallet without his permission. That’s not to say I haven’t read his email. In fact, since we share a computer, often before I switch over to my account, I notice that his email is open, and well, occasionally I glance. It’s hard not to notice the long list of emails from women that I know he corresponds with. So if something is open, you bet I’m going to read it. If something is closed but right below the open email, I have been known to click and read that too.
Herein lies the problem: I’ve seen emails perhaps I shouldn’t have seen. I’ve seen emails that have caused me great distress. I’ve seen subject lines that have caused me sleepless nights and worry. I’ve read emails that taken out of the context of several emails back and forth are easy to blow out of proportion. I’ve seen emails that make me think women are flirting with him even if it has “gone over my husband’s head.” This is not to say that I spend a great deal of time looking at his email. But certainly, I can say that it’s created a lot of what I think about lately. Wasn’t it Ray Carver, after all, who had one of his characters going through the drawers and mail in the neighbors’ apartment while they were gone? Who wouldn’t?
Before I go any farther, I should probably defend my husband because I know he is devoted to me. It’s not as if he’s out surfing the internet looking for women to email, or chat with. My husband is a writer too. And as such, he’s been asked to be part of a group of writers in a chat room. He’s corresponded with other writers for years. They have all, both male and female, developed relationships. He’s gotten to know many other writers of similar interests, some of them female. So now instead of just chatting or posting in a forum, they correspond individually. And my husband is of course attracted to good writing, to thoughtful writing, to many women writers. They like him for all of the above reasons already stated.
So I feel a bit lost, a bit jealous, a great deal out of the loop. I have confronted my husband several times, and he generally reassures me -- tells me how much he loves me and that my worries are unfounded. But are they? Don’t most insecurities stem from some sort of truth. And how do I know that these women aren’t hoping for something more? If it’s easy for me to take something out of context, how easy is it for them to do the same?
I’m not sure how to “get over this issue” if that is in fact something I need to do. This brings up the eternal and well-researched and discussed question: Can men and women just be friends? Is it okay for a man to have an on-line relationship with another woman? Certainly business transactions occur every day between men and women. And writing, after all, is a kind of business. But where do we draw the line? Do I have the right to read correspondence between them? Is that what I really want to become—a voyeur, or even worse, accused of suspending freedom of speech -- of censorship?
Maybe all I want is for these women to know that I love my husband -- that I plan to be the one and only love of his life and I hope they can respect my fears and keep the relationships honest, respectful, within the realm of acceptable things that could be shared in front of me. I also want them to know that I’m tired of them flirting with him. I don’t like what I’ve become lately—a jealous wife. In fact, I hate it. I’m just not sure how to fix it. I think a close friend has summed it up the best for me, a close female friend, I might add, of the same sex: “I would feel the same way if it were me. Of course, I can be friends with other men, but my husband can't be friends with other women.”
Of course, all of this is really just intellectual conjecture. I know the real problem lies within myself. After all, if I’m confident in my marriage, and in my ability to keep my husband interested in me, then what really am I jealous about?
As always, before I send this essay out to be published, I’ll hand it to my husband first, ask him to review it. This will, of course, bring up all sorts of interesting things to discuss. But that, I suppose, is a whole other essay.
***********************************
Copyright 2004 Sarah Bain
Sarah Bain is a writer and a mother of three children, Carver, Sophia, and beloved daughter and much-anticipated baby girl Grace, who was stillborn on June 1, 2003.
Sarah's articles have appeared in New Beginnings: A La Leche League Breastfeeding Journal, as well as a poem and essay in The Loss Journal, May 2004.
Sarah can be reached at sarah@bainbooks.com.
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