Abandoning Motherhood

Early March is a challenging time. Each year around this time my soul gets restless. I have a particularly sharp memory from my freshman year of college, looking out a geology lab window onto the pale sunshine and bare trees. I was struck by a forceful need to leave. Go somewhere, anywhere, but not stay stuck there in the stale and dried out remains of my winter term. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to go south to the warmth. I just suddenly needed to feel like I was moving forward in my life- out on the road. I got as far as calling a car rental company and when I found out that I’d have maxed out my rinky-dink credit card limit within two hours, I gave up and sunk back into the torpor of late winter.

This year the restlessness snuck up on me. I almost always attribute it to cabin fever but since we’ve been outside every day and the trees are budding, that is not an acceptable excuse. Instead, I’ve been humming with a nervous energy that’s expressed itself in rearranging the mantelpiece decorations (again) and figuring out how to make curtains for the kitchen without a sewing machine (fabric glue and a good pair of scissors). But with each completed project, instead of a sense of accomplishment would come a desperate feeling of “What’s next?”

So when I caught an article online yesterday about the book Hiroshima in the Morning and the author who apparently “walked away from motherhood”, I was left breathless. I was only able to read a short section of the article (interrupted 11 times by demands to play trains) and then later read the brief excerpt from the intro to her book (interrupted another 6 times to get food and drink for my apparently starving child) but it haunted me all day. I imagine that the mommy websites and chat rooms were lit up last night. I can hear the self-righteous howls of mothers excoriating Reiko Rizzuto for leaving her husband and kids to go to Japan for six months. I can envision female talk show hosts (many of whom probably spend minimal time with their own kids) castigating this woman for her selfish choices. Even the title of the piece was telling- “Abandoning Motherhood”.

After reading the piece, I was left with only a question, would I have made a different choice in her shoes?

I hope it is clear to everyone who knows me how much I love my kids. I adore the puffy, warm, early morning snuggles and sweet puppy breath of our three year old. I revel in the dramatic hugs and movie star kisses I get from my six year old in brash defiance of the kindergarten belief that moms are gross. I adore eavesdropping on them playing together, reading them stories, watching them get excited about pretty much everything including broccoli. I am tremendously proud of who they are becoming and I would commit an act of homicide rather than allow some other woman the honor of mothering them. Equally, I love my husband for a thousand reasons. Foremost among them is his modesty, which prevents me from enumerating here the myriad reasons why I want to grow old with him and no one else.

So what would ever, EVER drive me to make a decision to leave them? Nothing. I hope.

Having only read the briefest of excerpts, I don’t know all of the reasons Reiko Rizzuto “abandoned motherhood”. I’d like to believe that her marriage was broken already, or that she’s somehow entirely self-absorbed or otherwise profoundly dysfunctional. I want to believe that she’s so unlike me that I won’t be able to relate to her or her decisions at all. But I have a feeling that she’s just human. And like all humans, she’s had to make some tough choices.

In trying to understand my intense responses to the article, I realized I had to put mothering in a context in which it made sense that people make different choices about it. Rather than forcing motherhood up onto a precarious pedestal, I needed it to be real. In so many ways, motherhood- indeed parenthood- is a career. There are moments of genuine joy but many aspects are mind-numbingly boring. Like any career, it’s hard to completely leave it behind at the end of the day, and like much the medical profession, people’s lives and mental health depend on your competency.

What is so uniquely hard is that there is so little true time off. Moreover, one can change a regular career without being crucified. Try that with parenthood. The fact is that parenting demands a level of selflessness that I’m not always sure I’m capable of. I need to have time to myself to think and right now, there is precious little. Once the boys are old enough, I will be going back to work full time and so there will be even less. Although I am endlessly awed by my kids, I do not wish to be forced to gaze adoringly at them all day, nor do I wish to have to cater to them like a slave, forever having my needs consumed by theirs. I will say it now: I do not find Playdoh and finger painting intellectually stimulating.

And yet. Abandon it? No.

Perhaps what may have prevented her, and others, from giving up entirely would have been a simple vacation. Just as most jobs allow for time away, parents need to speak up for some time off as well. And embrace it. And not feel guilty about it. Parenting doesn’t have to be all consuming. It’s not an all or nothing deal. I suspect a little honesty and self-awareness goes a long way towards preventing the tragedy of wrecking people’s lives either by having children when you don’t want to or worse, leaving them after they arrive.
So maybe that’s what I need. I need to refocus that restlessness I feel- not to run off to Japan on a fellowship but to be honest that I need a few days break so that I can come home and be better at my job than I was before. Because for me, this is the most important job of my life. And I want to do it well.

A Misspent life no more.

After reading and rejecting the well-worn list of resolutions: yell less, eat more fruit, exercise, communicate better, I happened upon a resolution that I am determined to carry through in 2011. I am going to have a more cluttered home.

Some of you that have known me since childhood are already laughing. I can hear it. You know that I’m the one who comes over and reorganizes YOUR junk drawer; I’m the one that stops in the middle of a conversation to straighten a book on the coffee table. This resolution is going to be impossible to keep.

Others of you who were colleagues of mine when I taught high school are having the opposite reaction. Well, no shit, you’re saying. I saw your desk in your classroom. The one you periodically completely disappeared behind when you sat down. I remember the  piles, you’re saying, the tall Shel Silverstein-esque stacks of paper and post-its and napkins and drawings and essays and half-used calendar pages. How could you NOT keep this resolution?!

Well, yes, I say. All of this might be true. But here’s the thing. This past fall I expended extraordinary amounts of nervous energy obsessively cleaning up and then periodically giving up. I justified it by a variety of sad and transparent excuses: “if I’m not working outside the home at least I can do a good job inside”, “I deserve a serene space at the end of the day”, “this is a grown-up house, it’s time to be grown-ups” and, my all time favorite, “don’t be so damn lazy, just clean up”. Somehow, in the back of my mind, I felt that if I just finally got everything cleaned up all at once, then it would stay cleaned up and then I could get on with important things like life. However, expending all of this energy on cleaning up meant I was NOT spending it on creative or social endeavors. And that was starting to wear on me. Oddly, I kept blaming the messy house rather than blaming the faulty logic. This was not only ridiculous but suspiciously close to insanity. I’m not going down the road to insanity. I refuse.

So to counterbalance this, I would periodically completely give up and the house would rapidly turn into a hovel. I hated this too. It was exhausting. I had to find a balance but I couldn’t. Finally I realized that some of the people I love and admire the most have homes that are cluttered. Not dirty, not “Hoarders” worthy, but you can tell some good living is going on in those spaces. And I feel relaxed, engaged, and alive in their homes. I want that for my home too. I want people to come in and feel as though they can kick back and relax without worrying that they are messing up the throw pillows or that I’m going to be vacuuming under their feet.

My mom recently quoted this line to me: “A clean house is the sign of a misspent life.” How determined I am to embrace this notion. So for this year, bring on the legos, the heaps of shoes, and the crayon bits. Bring on the paint cups, the misplaced socks, the scraps of drawing paper, the matchbox cars, the piles of books, the balls of knitting, the magazines. Bring on life.

Potty Training Yourself, 101

Let me say, here and now, that I am NO potty-training expert. But I had the good fortune of watching friends go through it before me and I was able to witness the hazards of this particular transition to childhood. Potty training means having lots and LOTS of Lysol wipes on hand. It means having to know the EXACT location of EVERY single public toilet within a 30 mile radius so that at any moment you can rush a shrieking toddler who is clutching his/her crotch immediately to a bathroom. It means doing laundry first thing many, many mornings and often at other people’s houses too. It also means having to occasionally hire a professional upholstery cleaning service. Be prepared that if you jump into this too early or force it too hard, you can have a kid who deliberately has accidents at other kids houses so that he/she can borrow “cool” underwear. You might have a stubborn kid who is not ready for pooing on a potty and ends up completely impacted and being taken to the hospital for industrial strength laxatives. Or you could just enter into the most amazing psychological warfare you will ever experience, mostly on the losing side.

Laying the Groundwork: Having seen all of this, I decided to take a back-seat approach to potty training with both our boys. I was in NO hurry to introduce this level of chaos into my life. With no particular timeframe or agenda in mind, I decided I’d slowly introduce the concept of the toilet without much fanfare. It sat in our kitchen for a few weeks. Every time they’d refuse to get a diaper change, I’d go charging after them, yelling as calmly as I could, “If you want to use the potty, then we don’t have to do these diaper changes anymore!” We would occasionally reference the new piece of furniture in the corner of the room. We’d talk about how they were welcome to check it out. I’d ostentatiously say things like, “Ex-cuse me, my body says it’s time to pee.” And then “Boy, that was so quick and easy!”

Getting down and dirty: After a few weeks of the potty-training boy completely ignoring all my laid-back efforts, I’d decide to step things up. They would be told that every night they would sit on the potty before bathtime, with or mostly without anything happening. But every once in a while, we would accidentally hit a moment when they had to pee and they’d discover what it felt like. Things took off from there. Ian and I decided that we felt bribery was perfectly acceptable and so we’d frequently remind the potty training boy that there were M&Ms waiting if he used the potty. Always, all of this was done with no pressure or expectation. If they said no, the discussion was dropped immediately with just a calm “OK” from the parent involved.

Winning the war: All of this gentle breeze finally wore down the mountain. I really do believe that they will potty train when they are ready. You need to encourage them to check in and see they are ready, but it’s a LOT easier than if you force them to be ready when they are not. As for the bribery piece, it will work itself out. We were willing to fork over candy and stickers and prizes for as long as it took. Finally, the bribery fazed itself out because it seems ridiculous to the child to be rewarded for something as “natural” as using the bathroom. We had to tough out a few months of nighttime wettings and occasional accidents but those were just the mistakes one makes when one is learning a new skill.
Prepare yourselves, read up as much as you can, ask everyone you know for advice and then follow your instincts. Remember that diapers are convenient in a lot of ways so don’t be in too much of a hurry to get your child out of them. It’ll happen. The potty train will come for your kid too and when they get on, watch the hell out for the ride.

The Soul Arrives…

It’s cold in here. Even the boys can feel it. I remember this feeling from years of leaving home after the holidays and going back to Minnesota. Somehow, the house felt cold. Even with the heat up and a fire going, the edges of my heart were chilled. It is the same this time. We are back home in Durham and the weather feels like April outside but inside, I can’t get warm. Familiar objects seem lusterless, it’s hard to get comfortable on the couch and normal ambient noises seem deadened.

During Ian’s first research season in Tanzania, an older researcher told him, “The soul arrives at the speed of a camel.” At the time, I thought the phrase was poetic and quaint- but only apropos to that cosmic disconnect one feels when one is far from home. Now that phrase resonates with painful clarity. While we were packing the car, hustling to the airport and shepherding kids and gear through Logan, then Dulles, then Raleigh, our souls were having a last cup of tea in Foxboro. They were meandering across town to peek in on old friends, ambling slowly down the coast to give final long hugs to family spread here and there, having an extra holiday cookie, perhaps taking a nap.

Meanwhile we wait here. Slowly, our hearts will warm to being home. One morning I will wake up and welcome the sight of the trees outside our window, turn over and feel settled. Our souls will have arrived. But not quite yet. Not yet.

Telling the Story

The other night I started one of my favorite Christmas traditions. I love this time of year in general- the baking, the preparing, the excitement of looking forward to seeing family and, I’ll admit it, getting gifts. I love giving them too but when it comes to getting presents, I’m as bad as a five year old. As many and as big as possible, please. However, this particular tradition has nothing to do with buying/decorating/stressing/getting and everything to do with spending quiet time with the boys. The other night I began telling the Christmas Story.

I’m not quite sure how this tradition began. I know that my paternal grandfather told the story to my father and his four sisters. I like to think that he got it from his father and that it was a way to connect to his family after a long day at work. But my mom once suggested that it may have had a more utilitarian function: to calm five overexcited children at the craziest time of year. Either way, the tradition continued with my father and now with me. Our family’s Christmas Story had always had the same basic elements: the Scrivani (now Gilby) children are visited by Timothy the elf on Christmas Eve who takes them to the North Pole via moonbeams to visit Santa and his workshops. The elves are all named after spices (except for the year my cousin famously named the elf dressed in red, “Bloodbath”). The children visit with Santa and then have various adventures in the different workshops. Each night ends with “And tomorrow night we’ll find out what happened next…” and the entire story is supposed to finish on Christmas Eve.

I have only a few clear memories of listening to the Christmas Story but I know we listened with rapt attention each night, snuggled against my father on the family couch. I can still feel his voice resonating through his chest and into my head which lay against it. The room is quiet and warm, the lights are dimmed. I know there must be years when I was too old for it but my siblings were not, however I can’t remember ever a time choosing NOT to listen. The workshops varied from year to year and some years my father was so exhausted from working all day that the adventures took an interesting turn as he struggled to stay awake while telling it. Inexplicably one year (one of the years when my father was a New York City garbage man) we took the freight elevator to the third floor to visit Santa. Another year the story kept involving phrases like “And just as the childfrsn wrmn going to shmfhflrflmns…(snore)” But each year my father cheerfully sat down and began the story anew.

I don’t know quite what it is that so captivates me about this story and this tradition. It’s not like the boys are learning something important about the religious meaning of Christmas. It’s not that they are being reminded of charity and selfless giving. Perhaps it’s just the power of storytelling. That a loquacious 6 year old and a rambunctious 2 year old will sit still and (mostly) silent for half an hour as their mother talks is exciting to me. Or maybe it’s just one more enduring connection to my past. Either way, I hope that of all our family holiday traditions, this story most of all is carried along in my sons’ lives to their children and beyond.

In my great-grandmother’s day…

A comment I received on my Home Cookin’ post has been banging around in the back of my head for a week now. The comment insightfully asked if the generations of women behind me ever felt as stressed about cooking as I seemed to. I can’t speak for my mom or one remaining grandmother because I’d rather they speak for themselves. But I do often wonder just what my great-grandmother was thinking as she was moving through her day.

It’s tempting to repaint the history of women’s domesticity in rosy hues- how fulfilling to cook a huge meal for one’s happy, hungry family! How lovely to stand in the back yard with your neighbors, chatting as you hung up the laundry! How simple and grand life was back then. And it’s equally tempting, and just as misguided, to look at my life as a woman in the 21st century and say how much easier it is now. How wonderful for me to throw said laundry in the dryer! How great to go to the store and buy pre-made everything for my happy, hungry family! What a relief that I can go to bed without dry, cracked hands from hours of manual labor in the home.

Somehow, though, I suspect things weren’t that much different for my great-grandmothers than they are for me. I am willing to bet there were days when baking bread, making ravioli, or cooking a Sunday roast were labors of pure love. I want to believe that Great-grandma Romano enjoyed the complements she got on her cooking, that Great-grandma Scrivani looked forward to the joy with which her husband and sons devoured her pasta. Perhaps there were days when the cleaning could wait just a few more minutes while they chatted on the front stoop with the other women in their apartment building, connecting and building friendships. Surely, the hopeless, obsessive need for perfection that our culture is drowning in these days was not as crushing for them as it seems to be for us now. If something went wrong, there was a shrug, a headshake, an “eh, what did you expect?” and then she moved on.

And I’m sure that there were times when the recipe didn’t turn out right, the pasta inexplicably burned or the gravy was too salty. There must have been days when the cleaning seemed stifling, sisyphean and they were drowning in their own boredom with their home responsibilities. I envision of one of them stopping for a moment, hair in a loose bun and cheeks flushed from being in the kitchen too long. She is at the sink, looking out the window over bare sycamore trees and a slate-grey New Jersey winter sky. She pauses, the flurry of activity stops and she turns inward for a moment to some mysterious interior life full of expectation, joy, regret, beauty and wonder.

After rereading that comment for the hundredth time, I try now to think of them, not as vehicles for my own nostalgia, but as real women.

Today I am 37.

Today I am 37. Thirty-seven was supposed to be solidly adulthood. I was going to live in a Mission-style home filled with an eclectic mix of antiques and meaningful artsy objects. I was going to have developed the perfect fashion sense: vintage sweet with a bit of an edge. I was going to have fixed all my faults, remember to brush my teeth 3 times a day, exercise consistently and always walk the dogs. I was going to be department chair of an exciting, energized and well-rounded English department while publishing novels on the side. It was going to be great.
It is not any of those things but undeniably, it is good. Maybe even better. I have two wonderful boys and an amazing husband who manages to be both incredibly supportive of who I am and push me to be my best. I have friends and family all over the world who keep me grounded. I have a comfortable home and enough to eat. I don’t brush my teeth all the time and I goof off a little too much but that’s ok. I’m still working on my numerous flaws but that’s ok too.
Today I am 37. I’m not who I thought I was going to be. But I think that’s just fine.