Unfit Mother

Superpowers

Five-Minute Friends and Other Rules

I have been recovering, secluded, unable to write. Too much stress in November and December. I feel more rested now. The following is a sneak peak at the Spring Issue of my Motherwords magazine column, Unfit Mother.

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We are sitting next to them on the boat. An Orthodox family consisting of a man, his wife and their two daughters, look completely different from us, but my oldest does not seem to notice the girls’ exceptionally long hair, their skirts even longer. Ivy is eager to accept the invitation to play and share plastic bags of snacks. When we reach the Channel Islands National Park, we walk with them on the guided hike picking lemonade berries along the way. Quenched, the three girls run ahead and the husband stays behind, leg trouble.

Hours after the day’s excursion, the shared lunch and accepted advice about raising girls, we are back in the parking lot when Ivy asks, “Can I have a play date with Rachel and Zayit sometime?”  I am already thinking about the mother’s suggestions for non-Disney places to visit in LA; this family’s influence has been rich.

“Well, Ivy, they live really far away from us.”

We did not exchange contact information, although that idea crossed my mind briefly.

“Sometimes, we meet people when we are traveling and we become friends with them. Sometimes it’s just for one day. Or even for a couple of hours, or minutes. We have a good time with them and we remember them, but really we probably won’t ever see them again.”

“Oh.”

She is crestfallen, still flushed with a full day of sunshine and laughter. Her small sisters nap contently in their car seats. Ivy looks out the window pensively and waves goodbye as we drive away, continuing on the California vacation in our 14-year-old VW Vanagon with a pop-top. We have come to know this event as “The Five-Minute Friends” rule. We open our hearts across culture and destination and we soak in the warmth of shared experience, but we remember it is fleeting.

As we return to the open road, I recall a time stranded in the Azores when I was 10. Military dependents and enlisted men spread across the hanger floor with box lunches of paper wrapped sandwiches and tins of Duncan Hines pudding. The month before, my brother and I had fought for the chocolate one as we flew backwards across the Atlantic on board a windowless C-141 Starlifter.  My brother was not with us on the little Portuguese island. It was just my mom and me and more people than I could count waiting for a flight to Frankfurt. Trapped on the air base, I found a friend. Her name was Tammy and she was flying to Crete where her dad was stationed. We played for hours, slept on the linoleum floor and vowed to become pen pals.  One or two letters were exchanged before we dropped the connection when the pull of our current lives overshadowed the interest. It is easier to hold these five-minute-friends in our hearts and move along to the next layover, leaving them posed and waving in our minds.

I still like to travel. Growing up an Army Brat, I became accustomed to never staying put, but taking advantage of my location wherever the dart landed on the standard issue map. It is something I want to give my children, this experience of different people, different ways of life and different weather. Provide a broader worldview.  Although my family may like to travel, the word, “vacation”, seems to imply lounging languidly on a poolside lawn chair with a cocktail sweating by your side. What we do is closer to adventuring.

My husband and I must have set a precedent when we chose to ride our bikes across Western Honshu, the largest of the Japanese islands, for our honeymoon. In the seven years since we have become parents, we have spirited our children away to Japan, Singapore, and Thailand. We have driven them back and forth across the North American continent. When I did attempt a relaxing poolside spa retreat to Mexico without my progenious companions, they were never far away from my thoughts. I imagined my children on the beachfront playground and haggled trinkets for them in the winding market alleys. I do not do well sitting still; I like to have an itinerary packed as full as my luggage, my daughters along side. It is more likely that I need a vacation from my children upon return, exhausted and jet-lagged. After all, this is what motherhood feels like: jet-lag. I figure if I must toil in the day-to-day drudgery of diaper changing and nose wiping, I might as well set the task against an exotic backdrop. If I could be doing this anywhere it might as well not be here.

I have also noticed that traveling with my children opens invitations from native people in ways that my solo backpacking presence does not. Slowly spread smiles are offered for my struggles and old ladies dig in handbags for cellophane wrapped sweets lying forgotten among broken pens. Once during an ill planned rush hour Tokyo train ride, fellow passengers barricaded themselves behind my husband and I protecting the fragile infant twins strapped to our backs from the pressing swarm of commuters.

It is my plan, when these girls of mine become saturated with pubescent hormones and begin commenting from the side of their mouths, to cart them off to volunteer in Southeast Asian orphanages rife with squalor. “No-you-may-not-have-a-brand-new-car!” I will grit through my teeth. “Now go pump more water from the well in the compound, watch out for the snakes and bring a couple of those locusts in for dinner.” I’ll rely on perspective to teach them a lesson, the consequence of broken family rules.

I'm Bringing Bloggin Back

Well, my own anyway. Sorry for the unannounced hiatus. I have been burnt out. Still recovering from a crazy November that did not get December off to a good start. Fighting brain death and more soon.

Sorry y'all.

Attitude Adjustment

New study on how a new mother's pediatrician's attitude about breastfeeding can affect her breastfeeding success.

Chh chhh Changes...

Tomorrow is my birthday. As a present to myself I have allowed a certain “slack” for the last couple of weeks. I’m still adjusting to the routine change that happened over the fall break with Thanksgiving. I don’t mean this to sound like a Dear John, but Dear John:
My thoughts are scattered and translucent. I haven’t been very good with making things work lately. The month of November all but killed me. I am still recovering and picking up pieces finding new footing. The dark has settled in and I try to remember that the shortest day of the year is a mere 9 days away and then we start to turn again and face the sun.
I went on and one to my newly arrived to the Northwest friends about what it takes to make it through the winters here. But I didn’t happen to notice the boards of my soapbox were cracking beneath me, as I stood there so smug. I feel like as an adult now, nothing can phase me, but yet I find myself blindsided by predicament still often enough.
I’m still scrambling to the top of my heap of a life and trying to get a handle on things. Get my vices organized.
Ah change. I like to be in control of it and I honestly do not feel like I’m in that seat right now. My brain waves have changed, is there some astrological event? I need an explanation; if I can’t control it, dammit, I will understand it.

There is just one more week of school before winter break and our routine will still be in flux. I am really hoping that January and the New Year bring about some fixes. My mood is fine, its just everything around me is shifting. I feel like such a bystander.

My tattoo is colored in now though. I'm going back AGAIN to clean up the old Tennessee biker mess underneath next month.

Dear Sam,

Coming upon this week's holiday, my daughter created the ubiquitous "I am thankful for..." school assignment. I'm all for having someone else instill a high moral code and sense of patriotism in my child. I'm the first to admit I am an armchair parent. (Although it usually looks more like shouting orders from behind my laptop at the kitchen table while my feral progeny chase danger around the circular layout that is my house.)

Anyway, as I just admitted to being a lazy parent, I have also been a lazy blogger lately as well. (But I am one very active and productive facebooker.) After being chastised by some other bloggers for whom I hold the utmost respect, I decided to throw a little something together.

I had my oldest daughter's, Ivy, parent teacher conference today which lasted all of 15 minutes because she is just doing really well and there wasn't much to say other than she is great. But this week in school, Ivy came home with that annual "I am thankful for..." assignment I mentioned. Her tiny scrawl provoked my throat to constrict and yanked tiny tears from my eyes.

Before I get to that, let me preface. We have very good family friends with whom we have celebrated Thanksgiving for the last five, maybe even 6 years. Their son, Sam, was Ivy's first best friend. He was the first friend she chose for herself and the feeling was mutual. Peas and carrots, those two for the primary years before they began Kindergarten at different schools. They don't see each other very often during the year, but we reserve Thanksgiving for them always.

Here is what Ivy wrote:

Dear Sam,

"I am thankful for..."

playing with me. You ar are

a good friemnd. I love play
ing with you. I am so thank

ful because all the stuff

I have wreitten is true. 

As a friend I Love you. Since
I am a good friend I am so
thankfull. I can't wait
until thanksgiving. I hope
that sameday we will play
again. I just hope so much
we will be together some
day. 
Love,
Ivy

Unfit Mother is

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Why I Love Trader Joe's

WELCOME Babble visitors. Be sure to peruse the "Previously On Unfit Mother" section to your right.

Don’t Fix it, I Like It broken

I spent about an hour and a half on the phone with my sister this morning. Thank the fates for my older sister cause it worked out in my favor; being the younger in the relationship gives me the benefit of her experiences. She called me specifically so I could bitch and moan at her. And with that opportunity, I forfeited 2/3 of my morning while the wee ones galloped off to glue multi-hued paper together, sign along to the Itsy Bitsy Spider and bash graying rainbow dough into someone else’s tabletop. But I feel better for it.

In fact, I have been whining for the last two weeks to the detriment of several of my closest friendships, I am sure. I am slowly recovering from my funk and working out the details. Shaping my ship so out with it I can be.

One needs to protest one’s life to one’s friends. It's the hallmark of every female relationship I have / have had. As I have poured my heart over the phone and to any hapless soul willing to make eye contact above my scowl the past week, I have worked out the trouble I feel in and figure my way out. So now I’m done feeling sorry for myself and am back to just getting through the day. Usually when I start feeling that weary depression seeping at the edges of my life, I think of the mothers in the Sudan. What those women go through every day to get to the end and how in comparison, I have very little to complain about. But I let down my guard a couple of weeks ago and let all that pity affect my attitude. I think I started to feel indignant when I mentioned what had me down to some folks and didn’t hear the response I wanted. I like my girlfriends to bob their heads along with my tirade and “amen, Sister” to my litany of complaints. But there were a few… someone who took the other side or offered the perspective I already know… who did not care to indulge me.

The catalyst for strife in relationship arguments usually transpires when one party gripes and the other commits the offense of actually trying to solve the problem. Men often make this mistake with the women in their lives. We do not want answers, we do not want your suggestions; we want the satisfaction of being in the most pitiful one-upmanship position. Dammit, when I have something to bitch about, I want you to listen and agree with me entirely. (Unless I am paying you $80 an hour, in which case suggestions are helpful and certainly welcomed.)

It does not appease me to hear how hard it must be for my poor husband to be gone 18 of the 30 days this month. I want you to stroke my poor soul and mummer soothing coos at me. I don’t want to hear how much of a sacrifice it is for HIM, you are to “tsk” and shake you head in my defense. I don’t care that I am lucky that he even has a job… oh wait. Yes I am. After reading about how Citibank laid off 10 percent of their employees over this morning’s coffee, I am glad my husband has a job. In fact, it was his job as he stayed out of town over the weekend, to fire many people in his employ - just before the holidays. So now that I have sung my blues, I can dry my eyes and look for that sharp silver edge in the clouds. I can think again about the mothers in Darfur and be thankful that my life is as easy as it is.

Without Bootstraps

I’m in a funk. I don’t know if it's the full moon, knowing the wet that seeps from the skies has only begun and will last until June, or the fact that the father of my children has been gone since before we decided a new president. Maybe I’m just tired. Maybe I don’t have anything on the horizon to plan and keep me preoccupied. Maybe.

I haven’t had a funk like this in a long time and I’m having a hard time pulling myself out of whatever this is. I finally mustered the energy to clean. It helps me organize my thoughts and an uncluttered surrounding gives me that much less anxiety to sort the clutter in my brain. The clutter: it is backed up – congealed like the gelatinous goo still spewing like the viral mucous glue we all suffered through last week.

I’ve worked through the transition and we are settled into our new routine, but I am still unsettled. The worst was a few days ago but issuing a parade of lament to several friends seems to have eased some of the troubled thoughts. I still don’t feel the energy I usually have. The motivation is lost. Still this funk.