Come hear me read Spilt Milk at Next Stage Arts in downtown Putney, VT, along with New York Times columnist Bob Morris. Hope to see you there Saturday, June 11, 7:30 pm!
Tags: Bob Morris · Next Stage Arts · Putney VT · ReadingNo Comments.
Of Mice and Moms
May 3rd, 2011 by
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It’s Friday afternoon before April vacation, and I’m loading up the car with bulging folders of artwork, spare mittens, muddy socks, naptime bedding, and a glass cage of mice. On a whim, I’ve volunteered to take home Buster and Harriet, the preschool pets.
I’d like to be the kind of mom (laid-back, yet nurturing) who takes care of the classroom animals– as compensation for my other maternal failings. Of course my daughters are elated, especially C, who wants the rodents to live on her bookcase for nine days.
Bringing home the mice feels a little reckless. It’s as close as I get to spontaneous these days, a ragged mama who pays bills in the evenings and goes to bed by 10. There’s also real risk involved, as we have two fierce black cats who were born in a cow barn in East Hardwick, VT, and now spend the warmer months hunting squirrels, chipmunks, rats, snakes— anything that moves—no matter how many bell collars we snap round their necks.
It would be tragic if Rascal and Nomar managed to paw off the top of the mouse cage and sink their claws into Buster and Harriet, who are fat, sleek, and happy, burrowing in a cardboard tube, racing madly on their plastic yellow wheel.
So the girls and I pile the heaviest books we can find on the cage as cat-blockers: The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh, The Twentieth Century Book of Children’s Literature.
Back in the preschool classroom, these mice were not as fascinating to my daughter as the water table, the nail-pounding station, or the play-doh spaghetti maker. But once instituted in her very own bedroom, they acquire the magic of newness, and she pulls up a chair to the side of their cage to watch them scrabbling. Every day she gives them a careful scoop of Mouse Max grain mix, proud to rise to the challenge of responsibility.
Meanwhile, down in the kitchen, her father and mother are cursing like sailors at the mice who are living under the kitchen sink, destroying the dishwasher.
“I can’t believe I’ve willingly brought two new mice into this house,” I lament, calling the appliance repair guy for the fifth time.
Mice have come in through the foundation, nibbled through the floorboards, and eaten the wiring and drain-hoses to our Kitchen Aid. They’ve also raided the vitamin drawer and absconded with 24 honey-lemon Ricolas, snacked on various tubes of Arnica and first aid creams, enjoyed helpings of fish-oil caplets, and generally made a disgusting mess everywhere. [Read more →]
Tags: hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy · mice · motherhood · rodents3 Comments
Three-peat?
April 13th, 2011 by
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I wake from a nightmare at dawn, tangled in damp sheets. I was pregnant, just starting to show. Tired, swollen, and 
depressed, I wanted to go hiking to boost my mood, but I was ravenous and needed to eat something first. All I could find was a fluorescent buffet bar in a hotel lobby, loaded with doughy white pastries. My husband and daughters were gone, and these strange people insisted on chaperoning my hike to make sure I didn’t over-exert myself.
A cloud of lethargy and worry press down on me in the dream. When I wake, I’m nailed to the bed by the weight of that dark mood.
We’ve been talking about Number Three lately. After one friend confessed her desire for a third baby, the floodgates of longing opened inside me, and the subject was officially out on the table. I assumed my husband would shoot down my fantasy with an immediate, “Are you crazy?” but I was dangerously wrong.
“I love babies!” he said, smooching me. “We could make another little nipster…”
Talking about a baby infuses a relationship with hope. It fills a stale world of to-do lists, work, and chores with fresh, blossoming potential. Babies are miraculous creatures and they smell like heaven. I started teaching Mama-Baby Yoga to get babies out of my system, but then my plan backfired—I was entranced with the chubby, cooing infants, their sudden toothless smiles, their warm weight in my arms, how easily they were comforted by their glowing mothers.
At night my husband and I stand together watching our sleeping girls (now comparatively enormous), and imagine we could do it again. This time, it would be different. The prenatal depression, the emergency c-section, the colic— none of it would happen, or if it did, we could handle it because we’re be older and wiser. Right.
My readers offer useful advice. “What the h-ll are you thinking?” writes one mother of two, who like me, will come out of the Baby Cave this summer.
“I don’t know whether to recommend one puppy or two,” sympathizes a college friend.
One man from Goshen, VT urges me to be environmentally conscious and follow his philosophy of procreation, whereby two parents limit themselves to only two offspring, creating a net-zero population balance and lowering their carbon footprint. Someone else suggests adopting another child, which is certainly a good option. [Read more →]
Tags: babies · family · how many kids? · motherhood · siblings1 Comment
The Writing Life in The Baby Cave
March 31st, 2011 by
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Fuzzy Jacket
All of you know that I haven’t exactly taken to the blogosphere like a duck to water. I don’t have a SmartPhone or do Twitter (yet). There are over two million Mommy bloggers on the web and some of them are even making a living at it, and a very few of them (ie, Heather Armstrong of Dooce.com) are topping six figures.
Meanwhile, I still can’t organize myself to post regularly and reply to comments and create daily, thought-provoking LOLs for an online community of loyal readers. It’s mostly my friends and relatives who read my blog (and I love you guys for doing so!)…
I entered (and lost) a Blog contest for Yoga Journal, despite being sure that because I was a yoga teacher AND a writer, I should win and skyrocket to fame as a big-shot YogaBlogger. I’ve also been rejected from Mothering magazine, Parents magazine, Family Fun, Glamour, and countless more print and online publications.
But … I was recently a Guest Blogger for “The Writer’s Life blog on Her Circle Ezine. Here’s a link to my post.
Tags: Her Circle Ezine · motherhood · Parenting · WritingNo Comments.
The Marshmallow Test
March 29th, 2011 by
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Scene: a grim, slushy, rainy day in Mud Season. I’ve got PMS and the late winter blues. Now I’m staring down a long afternoon alone in the house with two cranky sisters who can’t stop fighting. How to avoid our usual cycles of sibling squabbles and snappish mom interventions?
Answer: conduct a “science experiment!”
I’m inspired by a review I read in the New York Times of David Brooks’ new book, The Social Animal. These days, at the mouth of the Baby Cave, my man and I can actually sit with the Sunday paper and drink tea while our children run off and play. Sometimes I can make it through an entire article before the shrieking starts. These are the moments I should not take for granted, peaceful adult times which would not have been possible two years ago, which would vanish immediately should we have a third baby.
Browsing the paper, I learn about a famous social experiment conducted in 1970. Scientists showed the ability of four-year-olds to delay gratification by leaving a marshmallow uneaten for a time (in order to receive a second marshmallow) was a very good predictor of their success in life. David Brooks sums up the results:
“The kids who could wait a full fifteen minutes [for their marshmallow] had, thirteen years later, SAT scores that were 210 points higher than the kids who could only wait 30 seconds. Twenty years later, they had much higher college-completion rates, and thirty years later, they had much higher incomes. The kids who could not wait at all had much higher incarceration rates. They were much more likely to suffer from drug and alcohol addiction problems.”
How would my girls fare on the Marshmallow Test? [Read more →]
Tags: children · David Brooks · Marshmallow experiment · The Social Animal · will-power5 Comments
The Secret
March 17th, 2011 by
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“Is that you, Mommy?” asks A.
She’s caught me perusing the Victoria’s Secret catalogue, where a 19-year-old Brazilian goddess pouts for the camera in a turquoise plunge push-up bra. Other than both having brownish hair and breasts, this nymphet and I look nothing alike. I feel the warm glow of pleasure that comes from a nice compliment. My five-year-old thinks I look like a supermodel!
Usually, browsing through “The Secret” (as one friend calls the catalogue) induces a crippling sense of inadequacy. Flipping through pages of silky camisoles and stretch-lace mini-dresses, I mourn my lost youth and the fantasy that I might someday resemble these uber-sexy women.
I’m doing well for 37, but I honestly couldn’t wear these clothes without serious Spanx, or looking like I’m trying too hard. For a moment I even contemplate a modest boob job to augment what six years of nursing and pregnancy have done to my bosum. Then I slap some sense into myself. The best place for The Secret is in the recycling bin, where it can’t do more damage to my self-esteem or my daughters.
Just Chuck It
A’s naivete is a powerful force. Do her eyes not yet distinguish the myriad ways in which her mother differs from the young model? Does she not actually see the gray roots, new wrinkles, and saggy décolletage that make me grimace in the mirror?
If only I could summon her innocent confidence on a bleak winter day when I’m beaten down by life. If only I could bottle it and dole it out to her as a tonic when she turns thirteen. Body Image Medicine: Two tablespoons to be taken each morning to relieve anxiety, shame, and self-criticism. [Read more →]
Tags: body image · Girls · self-esteem · Victoria's SecretNo Comments.
Sick Day
March 3rd, 2011 by
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Just when I’m getting pumped to step clean out of The Baby Cave– one high-heel stiletto boot at a time– and paradoxically going dewy-eyed over other’s people’s plump babies, the hormonal zeal for yet more procreation fueling my third-child fantasies– we get hit with a Tummy Bug.
First my three-year-old falls asleep on Sunday afternoon, always a warning sign in our nap-less household. Instead of savoring the precious nap, I fret about the sickness to come. Sure enough, that evening in the bath, Carmen grows pensive, concentrating hard.
“Carmen, do you have to poo?” asks her father.
She starts crying. “But Daddy–I already DID!”
Lo and behold, the evidence appears and the bath must be evacuated. My husband and I go into all-out coping mode, splitting clean-up duty and bracing ourselves for the full onslaught of the virus.
Worst case scenario: everyone gets sick at once. I pray to the gods who watch over the keepers of small children. Please, please spare me this illness.
The next wave comes in the form of a feverish 5-year-old crawling into my bed. The snuggling is nice, but at 4 am she wakes me with bad news. “Mommy. I threw up.”
The result is all over my pillow and sheets, as well as tangled in her long hair. We stagger through a complete bed change and child clean-up and manage to fall asleep briefly before it’s up and at ‘em again.
Lucky me, I’ve come so close to the mouth of The Baby Cave, I’ve forgotten that particular painful ache in your eye sockets that comes from being up half the night. The kind of exhaustion that makes you queasy.
“We’re not out of the Cave yet,” grimaces my husband, washing chunks of chewed pasta off our comforter and down the drain.
“10-year-olds throw up too,” I remind him.
“Not in their parents’ bed, they don’t,” he counters. [Read more →]
Tags: motherhood · mothering guilt · Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy · sick · The Baby CaveNo Comments.
Mothers, Sharpen Your Claws
February 15th, 2011 by
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Unless you’ve been hiding in a snow cave for the past month, you’ve probably heard about the Tiger Mother. Forget “Bad Mother” or “Slacker Dad”, the new “momoir” by Yale law professor Amy Chua declares that a hyper-strict, Asian-American parenting style (no playdates or sleepovers, relentless piano practice, and mandatory straight-As) is the best recipe for successful children. Thanks to a brilliant marketing scheme, Chua’s book is a bestseller. Her Wall Street Journal excerpt–“Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” – went viral, generating over 7000 comments in a matter of days.
Of course, now I’m analyzing my own “soft” Vermont-y parenting in wake of the controversy. What happens when Spilt Milk meets the Tiger Mother? Don’t I want my kids to be successful too?
Well, it depends on your definition of success. Chua’s oldest daughter performed at Carnegie Hall at age 14, and both her teenagers are following in their parents’ high-achieving, Ivy-League footsteps. But Chua admits in her book that she’s “not good at enjoying life.” I can’t say this high-strung perfectionism is what I dream for my own children. Good colleges, yes. Years of tortured self-criticism on the therapist’s couch, no. There must be long-term psychological consequences of pressure-cooker parenting.
Many critics have come down hard on Chua (who now, backpedalling, claims she meant to be ironic). The New York Times’ David Brooks called her a “wimp” for protecting her daughters from the arduous cognitive demands of all-girl sleepovers. Practicing violin for four hours or doing 2000 math problems a night is nothing, says Brooks, compared to navigating an intense social situation.
Then feminist writer and self-proclaimed “sexpert” Susie Bright lacerated the Tiger Mother on her hilarious blog. Bright likens the overbearing Chua to the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. If you take this parenting advice, warns Bright, “you will not only end up with a grade-grubbing piano soloist who’s afraid of her own shadow, you will also produce a first-class SEXUAL BASKET CASE.” Bright then refers readers to the book, Addiction to Perfection.
But before you dismiss Chua’s overbearing parenting style and semi-abusive techniques (ie. calling her kids “garbage”), consider her finer points. “What Chinese parents understand,” Chua writes, “is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it.” Practicing piano or hockey or ballet takes time and hard work, and sometimes kids aren’t naturally inclined to work. As parents, we can help (push?) our children to do the work in order to reap its benefits. [Read more →]
Tags: Amy Chua · attachment parenting · Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother · Dr. Sears · Tiger Mother3 Comments
Kindergarten Photography
February 10th, 2011 by
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What art arises when you cross a princess-loving 5-year-old with modern technology? Many blurry shots of the kitchen floor, yes. But here’s the best of A’s private photo shoot with my point-and-click Nikon:
Close-up Portrait
Pocahontas
Ariel
Tags: kindergartenNo Comments.
It’s a Girl Thing
February 3rd, 2011 by
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“Nobody likes me, ” says A.
She’s sitting in a snow-pile outside her school, digging furiously in the snow with wet mittens, cheeks flushed as red as her snowsuit.
“Oh honey, that’s silly!” I say. “OF COURSE people like you. I like you. Actually, I LOVE you.”
But once you’re five, having Mommy as your friend doesn’t hold the same weight it once did. Not like when you were a toddler or a preschooler, when playmates were fun but unessential to your existence. Back then, the primacy of Motherlove trumped everything. Now we are in a new world of girl friendships, where the natural laws are complex and shifting.
A scowls at me, her face twisted with sadness. “NO! Nobody likes me. They said so.” She scrapes away more snow, digging down to bare dirt.
“Who? Who doesn’t like you?” My maternal hackles rise. I start to feel panicky. What has happened at school today, at our happy, progressive, play-centered, nature-loving school where children sing “Peace Is the World Smiling”?
“Sally said she wasn’t my friend. Then Mackenzie and Ali said I couldn’t slide through the hoop without my arms touching so I didn’t win and they didn’t want to play with me!”
After this outburst, A looks at me in visible pain. I load her and her sister into the car and wonder what to say. I realize this is the first time in her five years that she’s faced rejection. As the oldest child and the first grandchild on both sides, Ava’s basked in the glow of the world’s approval since she cooed her first coo at two weeks old. Initially shy, she’s made friends in preschool and now Kindergarten.
But why did these little girls– these sweet four- and five-year-old girls whom I’ve baked cookies with and read books to and watched frolicking on the playground like magic sprites– exclude my daughter today? I don’t know exactly what transpired at Choice Time, but I know my child’s distress is palpable. She immediately takes it out on her sister, reaching across the back seat to give C a fierce pinch on the arm.
I’m over my head. I remember the day I first learned I was pregnant unexpectedly. My husband couldn’t stop grinning, but I started sobbing, saying “I just hope it’s a boy, because I don’t know how to raise a girl. I can’t handle watching her go through that awful girl stuff like I did…” [Read more →]
Tags: friendships · girl social dynamics · Girls · kindergarten · Queen Bees and Wannabees2 Comments