#3

I promise I remember the days of hyperemesis, when my body cried out for nutrition but always heaved it back up in a matter of minutes, halfway digested. Salad was the worst: those green, crunchy leaves would wreak havoc on my esophagus. I remember the ligament pain, the waddling, the stretching, the lack of sleep.

But somehow, I’m still thinking about you.

I’m thinking about those short, pixellated moments directly after birth with you sobbing on my chest, and me heaving in exhaustion. Feeling in real time what I’ve been feeling for the months before within my belly.  

Yes, I still want another head to wash in the bath at night, baby curls encrusted with the day’s leavings. I want to rock with another sweaty head on my shoulder in the wee hours, to calm the fears of another sleepless one. Most often I think of my favorites: swaddling, nursing, and the burbles: you know- that gelatinous sound you’d make, trying to talk to me.

I am still thinking of you. Imagining who you’d be, what path you’d take. What disaster you’d be in my life, what sweetness, what exhaustion.

And I think: there are not enough reasons not. And so many for.  

And I think: I hope you come soon.

Conscientious objector

So you knew I had to post something about the brouhaha with Obama’s speech and the health care debate, right?

Well, HA. I’m not.

I’ve seen quite a few nice posts about it, though,  many of which reflect both  a growing discontent with the options and lack of concrete information. Which, of course, is a recipe for mob mentality, strenuously to be avoided. People who know what they’re objecting to, and do it badly, are just as clueless as the person who doesn’t know what they’re objecting to, but does anyway.

Look, I know I’ve said this before, but it seems to have become the paean that I keen more and more every day.

Just because I don’t agree with you, it doesn’t mean that I hate you.

I don’t even dislike y0u.

No, really. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s entirely and realistically possible to object to someone’s point of view, but still have nothing but warm fuzzies toward them personally. The uncoordinated leap into “you’re just a hater” is easier, sure, but quite frequently wrong, intolerant, and…dumb.

So look. I may be the mom who wanted her child home for Obama’s speech. I might be the woman who, with every fiber of her being, believes that a woman’s “right to choose” is a soft metaphor for systematized infanticide, and doesn’t want Obama to facilitate more. I might even be that crazy Christian who believes that an “open mind” is code for someone who can’t think logically through their platitudes.

But it’s very, very far from hurling stones, shouting epithets in the House, and screaming in people’s faces.

Call me a conscientious objector. It’s lightyears from being a hater.

Now you are five

You sleep like a broken stork.

Toothpaste, hurriedly mashed between the spaces in your teeth, dries in the corners of your huge smile. Sometimes your school pictures show it.

When I vacuum, you pretend that I’ll somehow be able to suck up your shoes, your big black teddy bear, your tricycle.

You take turns but I watch the frustration grow when they don’t play by the rules.

You insist on burping in my face, despite my insistance that it’s not ladylike.

Nothing compares to the anguish of your cries when you’re hurt. They squeeze at my heart and make me short of breath.

But now you are five, and I have to let you go a little more each day. I have to bite my lip instead of shouting “Watch out!”, and bite it again instead of saying, “I told you so…”

Now you are five, and I will let you do your own hair.

I’ll let you eat ice cream (with sprinkles) and not freak out about the clothes you’re wearing.

I won’t supervise. At least, not from two feet away.

Now you are five, but even so, when you grab onto me as I wake you in the morning, I will carry you to the breakfast table, your hands tangled in my hair, your breath smelling like dried toothpaste, and I will wait until you open your eyes and mumble, “Good morning, Mama”.

Neighborhood Watch

One of the blogs I follow recently had a “conversation” (and I use that term loosely) about the c-word.

Don’t worry, I won’t get into it. Already dealt with that one, anyway.

I was struck most by the overwhelming number of responses on the momversation that indicated that “it’s nobody’s business” and “who are they to question my parenting?”.  Sure, everyone has different parenting techniques, and different things work for different people, but there’s a basic understanding that to be a good parent, you need to try and avoid chopping off body parts.

And we say those things, but…do we really mean it? Do we really think that “whatever floats your boat” is a good way to navigate parenting? To navigate life?

Hmmm…

Say you see a mother beating her kid in the Kroger parking lot, apparently not a simple disciplinary spanking. It’s obviously hurting the child.  Do you say anything?

What about if it was a dog? In a story by Anne Lamott, she sees a man abusing a dog on the beach. And she’s powerless to even speak, to say anything that would get the man to stop.  What’s worse is that her son is watching, seeing the abuse, calling it by its name, and watching his mother do nothing.

What if the parent was locking the child in a closet, and you knew about it? Would you say something- to anyone that could change it?

What if the issue were FGM?

A good friend recently had his first baby, a little boy. I asked if they were planning on a circ, and he said, “Yeah. Why not?? I had one and I don’t remember it.” 

When we get to the point that it’s ok to hurt our children, as long as they don’t remember the abuse, haven’t we lost it? Isn’t that where the boat stops floating, and we’re left in the deep end?

I’d love to hear your thoughts, since I am by no means clear on this. Where does our responsibility to others intersect their personal freedom? At what point do we become the neighborhood watch?

Seconds?

Had this conversation lately? I seem to have had it at least once a day with various and sundry around me. Is it a symptom of my age/social status/cultural group that this is happening? Or is the Big Man upstairs trying to tell me something in his usual whispering/2×4-to-the-head way?

I am so not in the mood for another kid.

The Seconds conversation is the conversation you have with people when they ask any permutation of the lexical items following:

baby + another/other/more/additional + you + soon/ever/again

Examples include the oh-so-classy “So when are you guys having another one?” – this I’d call the Whopper approach. My cholesterol hasn’t returned to post-BK levels, but throw me another one on that tray. Have it YOUR way!Git it on! Seconds, please!

Then there’s the slightly more couth “Are you guys thinking of having any more?” – usually spoken in an undertone, off to one side, but can also be blurted by the usher at church as he hands you the Sunday program. Peace be with you. And don’t forget to procreate.

I’m not sure if it’s the circles I tread, but the urge/pressure to have kids is overwhelming. It’s like a given. You can’t have that much on your plate! Bring another life into the world! As if my memory is faulty, my pocketbook deep, my sanity endless.

Yeah…nope.

And I’m not surrounded by the Quiverfull wackos, either. It’s true that the Catholic church is big on procreation for its own sake, but my parish is less so, and families are rarely over three or four kids. I was raised with three siblings, and know the challenges we had to face, financially and otherwise, of a large family. R has two siblings, and has never wished for more. Our reality is not amenable to another child at this point, but when is it ever? Is it better to do something well or to do it a lot? From a biological standpoint, why do females ovulate for so long? And why are humans so frisky even into the elder years? Why am I still thinking about more kids???

Conflicted much?