Blog Book Tours, Reviews
« Previous EntriesA dangerous life
Friday, May 18th, 2007
When my husband was two years old he fell off the top of a removal van while his parents were busy packing boxes and supervising the move rather than their son. He was, by sheer luck, perfectly fine after his fall but you’d have thought that this might have alerted his parents to his daredevil ways. Unfortunately when he was six he fell over the top of the banisters at the top of the stairs and was in a coma for a few days. Then as a teenager he fell out of a tree and broke his leg right up to the hip.
When my father was a boy he, among other dangerous things, broke his right arm twice, the legacy of which is that he can only bowl with his left arm. As a boy, learning the skills of cricket clearly took precendence over learning the skill of writing as his right-handedness seems otherwise unaffected.
My brother, among other dangerous things, fell down a manhole in the road. He escaped any broken bones because - as he now says in a rather supercilious tone of voice, as if this is what saved him - he had been enacting war scenes only a few hours before and had been practicing how to roll after hitting the ground when parachuting in behind enemy lines.
Before Matthew and I had children we used to joke how I was certain to have four boys (boys run throughout my father’s side of the family - so much so that I was the first girl for years) and how I would therefore be in and out of Accident and Emergency. Oh, how we laughed and laughed!
I now have three small boys. I’m thinking we’ll have another baby at some point so I will have, before long, those four boys. So far we have not had any major escapades resulting in trips to the emergency room, although I am careful to watch all of them when removal vans are around, mindful that they have their father’s genes. Okay, I admit it, I have been a little over-protective. When I tell you we have five safety gates up in our house you might realise just how over-protective. (Although sometimes the gate is to protect me from them.)
However, in my defence, I have actively encouraged a bit of danger as they have got older. We own two copies of The Dangerous Book for Boys and we thumb through the pages regularly. Not only does it provide everything they need to know to enjoy a typical boyhood - although I’m not certain every boy really needs to know how to skin a rabbit - but it also contains information that will hopefully encourage them to read for themselves. A bit like the Oh Yuck!: The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty that I bought my sons recently.
Harry is now five and William almost four and although I don’t let them play out on the street - even though other local children do - I am happy for them to go out and get covered in mud, I am happy for them to play in the field behind our house, to make things, to be naughty and energetic. The decline in learning standards in this country has been directly linked to the time when active play was taken off the curriculum for five and six year olds. Children need to play. And in our over-protective world, children also need to play a little bit dangerously. I keep them away from traffic, I keep my eye on them (perhaps a little bit more after the abduction of Madeleine McCann), I don’t let them jump on trampolines without safety nets and I will not let them harm any living thing. But those are about my boundaries.
As they get older I will let them take more risks. It will be frightening as a mother to do so, but I know how necessary it is to let them experience more than our backyard. I have already started teaching them about stranger danger and who they should, or more importantly shouldn’t, approach if they are lost or on their own. I am doing my best to prepare them to have a little bit of danger in their lives that many children don’t have now because of fear of something terrible happening to them.
But I have put up a big board at the top of the stairs to stop them throwing themselves over the banisters. Because, despite their protestations to the opposite, that’s not the kind of danger I want them looking for.
*****
And if our next child is a girl? Well, she’ll probably be out there with her brothers, skinning rabbits and climbing taller trees than all her older brothers. The Dangerous Book for Boys is not exclusively for boys. The authors wrote it for boys because that’s what they know. I write about mothering because that’s what I know - it doesn’t mean fathers aren’t welcome here. Having said that I’m sure The Dangerous Book for Girls will be out before long if the publishers have any sense although I’m equally sure that much of the same information could be in it.
****
This post was written as part of the MotherTalk Blog Bonanza for Dangerous Book for Boys.
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Even June Cleaver Would Forget the Juice Box
Monday, April 23rd, 2007Three years ago I was in the depths of terrible post-partum depression. During the worst of these times I was a blink away from doing something, anything that would have taken away the dreadful days. At the time I couldn’t admit how I was feeling to anyone and it took an acquaintance to point out that what I was feeling wasn’t normal. Part of the depression was due to a need to be a great mother. Not just a good mother to my children but a great mother - to my children and, perhaps just as importantly, to the outside world. Anything less was to admit to being a failure and that didn’t sit well with me. So when I felt I wasn’t being a great mother I felt sick with failure, adding massively to my depression. Silly, really, when I look back at it. I so loved being a mother first time round so when my second son was born and I wasn’t coping I didn’t know why or, more importantly, where to turn.
Since then I have taken the pressure off myself. Some might say too much when they see me in the hammock with a G&T while my children create havoc in the garden. But I am unbelievably happier and I’m pretty sure my children are too. So when I read Even June Cleaver Would Forget the Juice Box, the new book by parenting author Ann Dunnewold (who wrote The Postpartum Survival Guide) I simply wished I had had a copy of this three years ago. It’s a wonderful book about how to avoid extreme parenting and create a new mindset to become a ‘perfectly good’ - rather than a ‘perfect’ - mother. As mothers, we are increasingly aware of the images that the media perpetuate: the patient, happy, calm mother baking cakes while the children sit quietly doing their homework before going obediently to bed. Even if we know that these images are not realistic it is not always easy to know how to challenge them on a day-to-day level. What separates this book from others like it is that the author discusses strategies to counter extreme parenting and offers, as Dunnewold puts it, ‘a new paradigm for motherhood: the perfectly good mother’.
Part One, ‘The Problem’, discusses the causes and consequences of extreme parenting and how cultural expectations about the role of mothers have led to a loss of perspective about parenting and created more anxiety and less freedom, enjoyment and satisfaction from the job of mothering. ‘Mommy thinking traps’ like overperfecting, overprotecting and overproducing and irrational thinking are described in detail and suggestions for defeating the thinking patterns are included. One of my thinking traps (and one I am still consistently guilty of) is that I believe my children should always come first. The ‘Perfectly Good Mantra’ that is suggested is the same one my therapist gave to me and that is “Taking care of me means more to give to my kids.” It is good advice.
While Part One lays out the groundwork, it is Part Two and Three that are really of interest. In part two of the book, ‘The Solution’, Dunnewold discusses revising expectations, changing the words we use about our own actions and developing new ways of thinking. What I really liked about this book is that the author doesn’t suggest a one-solution-fits-all. Dunnewold talks about each mother defining what a perfectly good mother would be for her. She lists stepping stones to achieve your own vision of what makes a perfectly good mom - rules like taking care of your own needs and being yourself and not the mother others think you should be. Like all the suggestions in the book, the advice is sensible and useful. I underlined lots of points to re-visit in this section because, yes, I’m a geek.
The advice goes further than simply explaining how we ourselves can change. In the final section, ‘Sharing the Solution’, Dunnewold discusses the need for no more ‘mommy wars’ by connecting with other women, supporting each other and being upfront about the true nature of parenting. This is a subject close to my heart: mothers can be so judgemental - I’m on the receiving end of some of that at the moment - and that needs to change. As the book says ‘there are funny, smart, kind, and supportive women out there. Find them and connect with them, building your own web of perfectly good mothers.’ I am doing just that and I am coping a great deal better with motherhood for it.
So how to spread the perfectly good paradigm to bring about social change? There are plenty of suggestions in the book about how to do this, for example by mentoring other mothers, becoming a spokesperson, forming a group of like-minded moms or getting involved in political action. This section works for all parents: even if you have not been guilty of extreme parenting you can still pick up the ideas here and use them as a basis for change to help all mothers. Central to the theme of the book is the idea of slowing-down and in this section the author discusses different groups that have formed in an attempt to bring about social change. Back in January, after I was going through all the guilt after my dog died, you may recall I had a change of attitude about my own lifestyle and parenting choices and about how I felt I needed to look after my family more before anything else I was doing. So, many of the suggestions are ones I have already undertaken and I can say from experience that they have worked for me. Websites like Putting Family First and Take Back Your Time are discussed in the book and are ones I have visited in the course of my change of heart over my parenting style. I fear I’m beginning to sound a bit evangelical here so I will round this up and say that this book is a must for anyone who feels they are struggling with motherhood, with the thought that they don’t ‘measure up’ as a mom, anyone who feels they have fallen into extreme parenting habits and lost sight of what’s important for them and their children. Because, in the end, what we all need is less of the ‘perfect’ mothers and more of the ‘perfectly good’ mothers.
You can buy the book here (US readers) and here (
(I received a free copy of this book in order to review it. I was free to say whether I loved or hated it.)
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Please talk amongst yourselves in the comments about your own extreme parenting moments. While you’re doing that, I’ll be having several extreme parenting moments at 35,000 feet with three small children. Be grateful you’re not there to witness them.
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Baby-proofing your Marriage
Monday, March 19th, 2007When you have a baby it can feel like your entire life has been turned upside down. Even if you attended ante-natal classes and read whole shelves of books while you were pregnant, nothing really prepares you for the bombshell that is the arrival of your first baby. Somehow we muddle through those early weeks, wondering how we will survive having this infant in our house but also wondering how we ever survived without her. Those early days are often a blur of tiredness, shock, learning, repetition and trying to find time to have a shower every few days. When the dust settles we begin to feel like we are getting the hang of this whole gig a bit. We get out and about a bit. We meet other new mothers and start to feel a bit less isolated and a bit more like a person. Not the same person we were before, but a person nonetheless.
There can be an unforeseen casualty in this early period though: your relationship with your partner is changed forever as you are thrown into being responsible for another person. That’s if you even remember that you have a partner once the baby arrives, what with all that cooing and bonding and sleep deprivation. Some parents manage this hand grenade without batting an eyelid. The rest of us struggle with sleep deprivation, the sheer bloody hard work that looking after a baby entails, the feeling that we are working All the Time, the loss of libido, the pressure from our husbands to have sex when we would rather be sleeping, the feeling that we somehow might have become the lesser partner in our marriage if we stay at home or if we end up working and still being responsible for the bulk of the domestic stuff, the loss of our identity, the feeling that we might have become less valuable in terms of our contribution to the economy or all of the above. For men they can feel like they have in one fell swoop become the least important member of their family, feel great pressure to be the provider, wonder what the hell happened to their wife/sex life/money/freetime or all of the above. The end result? Resentment, resentment, resentment. All round.
Once upon a time there was a father who never read books. He rarely read the paper. The only thing he read was Thomas the Tank Engine at about seven o’clock on weekend evenings. But one evening he spied a book on the table.
‘Another book to review about babies!’ he scoffed. ‘Baby-proofing your Marriage,’ he mused as he flicked through the first few pages.
An hour later he was still engrossed. ‘You should read this,’ he said.
‘I have to,’ I said archly, bridling at the implication that I, rather than he, could learn from it, ‘I’m reviewing it.’
‘The Five-minute Fix,’ he said predictably. ‘You see, that’s what it takes to keep a marriage OK.’
We could have come to serious blows over that. But it was a book my husband wanted to read so it must have been good.
Baby-proofing your Marriage is the warts-and-all truth about how having children can affect your relationship - and what to do about it. The authors have seven children between them and have canvassed the opinions of hundreds of parents to come up with a book that looks at how having a baby changes your relationship with your partner, understanding those changes and how to deal with them.
It’s a great book. When you read it you sit there, nodding in agreement with the authors, thinking thank God I’m not the only one who felt like that. New parents should read it. Expectant parents should read it - even though it might scare the hell out of them (still, forewarned is forearmed). If you’ve had a baby and everything is ticking over nicely in your marriage then you have no need for this book, but parents who have been in the trenches a while, particularly those who feel there may be niggling issues in their partnership with their spouse, will benefit from reading it. It covers the arrival of the baby(Baby … Boom), the who’s working harder? who’s giving up the most? questions (What’s the Score), the sex life of new parents (Coitus Non-Existus), the in-laws and outlaws issues, the More Kids, More Chaos/should we have another baby? question, and a final chapter on balancing priorities as parents. Each chapter starts with the problems parents can face, using the authors own experience and research and extensive quotes from parents who have been-there-done-that, and goes on to suggest practical, workable solutions like the Training Weekend (leaving Daddy in charge to see what looking after children is really like) and Good Enough Is Good Enough and Shortcuts Are OK [Sometimes] (where mothers lower their standards when Daddy is in charge). All are written with typical humour; of the Training Weekend one of the authors’ husbands says
honestly, I did think, ‘How hard can it be?’ I thought she was making a big deal over nothing. Turns out I didn’t need a Training Weekend; all I needed was one morning. I was dying. I just wanted it to be over.
My husband may be on his Training Weekend very soon.
Much of the book focuses on the resentment that can be felt when either or both of you feel that parenthood has knocked you sideways and your relationship is suffering. Whilst many of the sentiments about new motherhood are expressed in the blogging world, the emphasis in the book is more on the issues that wives feel about their husbands in their role as parent and vice-versa. There are not many bloggers who are candid about their relationships after a baby arrives because, well for many of us it would just seem downright mean. And perhaps lead us to the divorce courts. So we find support about pregnancy, childbirth, the arrival of a new baby, post-natal depression, work/life balance, but not so much about the problems within our relationships. This book fills that gap.
The authors are women but they have gone to great lengths to include the male point of view. This adds immeasurably to the book. It avoids the book sounding like one long moan about men and makes the solutions that they suggest equitable and workable. To resolve the problems of ‘Scorekeeping’ the authors suggest having expectations and planning - having a set division of labour with penalties for violations. It sounds very dry but I was intrigued. Many of the scorekeeping issues they raised resonated with me. I’m always working. And if I’m working I don’t expect to see anyone else sitting with their feet up. When I do, I start Scorekeeping. Needless to say I may be trying the solutions that the authors suggest.
Did I say how much I like this book? But - it has a few flaws. I dislike the title: its use of the word ‘marriage’ excludes those who are not married and its use of the word ‘baby-proofing’ implies that your marriage is something you need to keep your child out of rather than encompassing the changes that the baby’s arrival will bring. Certainly the word ‘baby-proofing’ is not indicative of the content of the book as the authors focus on making the most of family life rather than protecting yourself from it and using that term is doing the book a disservice. However it is a snappy title as far as the publishers are concerned and I couldn’t come up with a good alternative (How to Keep Your Partnership on an Even Keel After You Have a Baby didn’t quite cut it).
Because the book is written by three mothers there is a ‘cosy’ feel to it. They use examples from their own marriages and laugh at themselves and each other. It takes away the preachy feel that so many other parenting books have. The quotes from parents also add a personal element to the book although one or two grated with me: ‘I read about all those mums who are depressed. I don’t have time to get depressed - I’m too busy surviving. I don’t even have time to think about getting depressed.’ - Erin, married 11 years, 3 kids. As if you only get depressed if you have too much time on your hands.
But the biggest mistake in the book is including the Five-Minute Fix, in which the authors suggest that a five minute weekly blowjob can transform your marriage. Not only does this suggest an element of whoredom and a lack of equality (why not suggest the husband performs oral sex on his wife instead?) not to mention returning to an era of 1950s housewifely duties (the perfect wife should be a madonna to her children, a maid in the house, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom, right?) but in their cost/benefit analysis the authors flippantly table one benefit as ‘He will think he is one lucky bastard and look down with superiority at all the poor sods around him.‘ against the cost ‘mild feelings of compromising yourself. These will pass.‘ Granted, it is only two pages in the whole book but it detracts from the sensible, striving-for-equality tone that the book manages elsewhere. The next section ‘Get Out of Mummy Mode: Reclaim Your Sexuality’ is a good deal more helpful and could have mentioned in one line ‘if you are too tired for sex or can’t face it, a blowjob/handjob/asking your husband to perform oral sex now and again, if you feel up to it, will make your husband very happy.’ The idea was clearly based on the wife not wanting to be ‘invaded’ and for the husband to achieve satisfaction - for want of a better word - but the implication in the book is that if you don’t make at least some effort in the bedroom, even if you don’t feel like it, why should he around the house? They write ‘a friend of ours told us about it, and believe us…. we were totally disheartened.’ Me too.
But don’t let these minor points detract from the success of the book. It is focussed, funny, written in well-broken sections and offers helpful suggestions for tackling a whole range of problems that the arrival of a baby might inflict on your marriage.
My favourite quote from the book? This:
The sheer volume of work is especially painful for couples who, having waited until their thirties to have their first child, have the second one very quickly afterwards….If a first baby is a hand grenade thrown at a marriage, then a newborn and a toddler are a full-frontal assault, complete with machine guns, heat-seeking missiles, and stealth bombers.
‘One night, I came home and my wife was still in her pyjamas, with a baby in one arm and a toddler in the other, crying hysterically, “Why did we ever get married and why did we ever have kids?” ‘ - Dan, married 9 years, 2 kids.
And I don’t know many mothers who haven’t been there.
You can buy your copy here (UK readers) or here (US readers).
And now, your turn, tell me what surprised you most about your relationship when you had children? (You can write anonymously if you don’t want to give your url!)
(I received a free copy of this book in order to review it. I was free to say whether I loved or hated it. You can see my policy on transparent blogging here.)
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Blog book tour: Ayun Halliday - Mama Lama Ding Dong
Monday, August 21st, 2006
I am honoured to be hosting today’s stop on Ayun Halliday’s blog book tour of her book Mama Lama Ding Dong: A Mother’s Tale from the Trenches (known in the US as The Big Rumpus).
Mama Lama Ding Dong is a memoir of motherhood, Ayun’s account of life with her two small children, spirited toddler Inky and chubby baby Milo. It covers the universal themes associated with bringing up two small children, reflecting on the daily grind, maintaining a sense of self, dealing with lice, the politics of breastfeeding, fears about death, her adoration of her baby. Interspersed are stories about her own childhood, celebrating religious holidays in non-religious ways and views on circumcision all told with irreverent, self-deprecating humour and set against a background of New York City life.
Ayun is the creator of The East Village Inky, a zine born out of the isolation and despair that followed the birth of her daughter. Mama Lama Ding Dong, in turn, has grown out of the zine. Ayun’s observations about bringing up children are spot-on. She writes ‘What’s it like being the unpaid caregiver of little children? Fucking grueling, mate….I think the thing that gets to me the most about the stay-at-home mother gig is the constant side work. …. I find myself wishing Mary Poppins would blow over to teach me that nifty finger-snapping trick.’ And on the subject of payback she writes: ‘It strikes me as quite possible that by the time my children hit the teen years …. I’ll be the one driving them crazy with my idiosyncratic behaviour, my infuriating desires and my interminable stories about the cute things that they did when they were little. At long last I will get my turn and use it to drive them right up the fucking wall.’ I love it!
There are many moving chapters too. ‘NeoNatalSweetPotato’ describes Inky’s birth story and time in the NICU: ‘the luckiest mothers get to rock their babies in their arms, their faces ecstatic, drunk from contact.’ And in ‘Mashnote to Milo’ she captures all those feelings we have about our babies, that time when they are pudgy-chubby and milky-sour: ‘I love every inch of your body. Your breath is pure banana. I am completely infatuated.’
Ayun manages to convey not only her joie de vivre for raising children in the city but also how she adjusted to life with a baby, maintaining a sense of balance between her old life and her new role as a mother - in her case by creating something new out of the loss of identity she felt.
There is a great deal of pressure to ‘measure up’ to the notion of motherhood portrayed by the media and the endless rows of - often dictatorial - parenting manuals. Ayun’s account of wonderfully imperfect motherhood is refreshingly honest. Her book shows that there is much that is common to all Western mothers: isolation, sleep deprivation, difficult toddlers, a loss of identity, all inextricably bound up with the love and private moments that make it all worthwhile. It would have been easy for me - and possibly you too - to read the book feeling acutely aware of the differences in our lives but Ayun writes with enough candour and humour about the joy and difficulties of being a stay-at-home mom that the similarities of our lives were much more apparent than the differences. It’s comforting to know that despite all our differences, mothers across the world are experiencing similar circumstances.
I asked Ayun:
I’m finding it difficult to remember anything at the moment. If I have a rare good idea I find myself unable to remember it twenty seconds later when whatever child-centred moment of crisis that’s taking place is over. How do you combine writing with small children? What did you do if inspiration for Mamalamadingdong struck while you were in the middle of changing your baby’s nappy (diaper) or something?
Unlike the books that followed it, which reflected on my travels, my crappy day jobs, and my culinary history from the vantage point of some remove, Mama Lama Ding Dong was unfolding in real time. Changing diapers was field research. (Never has a manuscript been so well researched.) Inky was in nursery school, and unless something happened to throw him off, Milo could be counted on to conk out for an hour or more every morning. Fortunately, I didn’t have to waste valuable naptime referring to my field notes. Inspiration was all around me, on the baby food flecked walls, in the glamorous tangle of Inky’s dress up clothes, exhaled on the sleeping baby’s sweet banana breath.
It came with the territory that Milo almost always woke up before I was ready to call it quits, but that turned out to be okay, good even. I once read that Ernest Hemingway used to knock off before he’d finished saying what he had to say, so he’d have a thread to pick up when work commenced the next day. Same here, though I envied him his barstool at the Closerie des Lilas. I too would have liked to celebrate the end of the daily literary labors with some oysters and champagne, to be done working when I was done working, you know?
You talk in the book about how you envisaged life with a baby (curled up on the floor at your feet like a kitten) and the reality (mopping up pee on the floor) but the overall impression I got of the book was that life with small children is great fun and that you can still be a fully-accepted member of society, not ‘simply a mom’ (by this I mean that mothers as a group are frequently marginalised and can also be socially isolated, especially in the suburbs where often they are the only people around during the day, whereas urban dwellers have more on their doorsteps). How much do you think this was due to the fact that you lived in a city, not in suburbia or the country and that you were able to get out and about on foot with the children without having to have a fixed schedule of playdates or trips out?
[I’m a countryside dweller and I definitely miss having a sense of purpose when we go out walking. I also think that if I had places to go I would be out walking with the children much more than I do now, mixing with all sorts of people (not just other mums), all colours, all creeds, getting exercise, shedding pregnancy pounds. Whilst our lives are very different and I chose to live in the country, I definitely felt a sense of loss when you describe life in the city. My husband is cross that I’ve read your book: he thinks I want to move back to the city now! (He may be right!)]
I think location had a great deal to do with it. I didn’t have to set up or go hunting for interesting social interactions. All we had to do was tromp down three flights to East 9th Street. Most of the families who hung out in the Tompkins Square playground lived in apartments as ridiculously small as ours, which upped the likelihood of running into someone we knew and liked if we could just get it together to put on our shoes, rain slickers, or snowsuits. There are ways in which New York is a very easy place to be with a little child. You can get anywhere on the subway, and be fairly assured that you’ll always be near a source of bananas, bagels and juice, if you forget yours at home. It’s not for everybody: the germ phobic, the crowd-phobic, those whose physical concerns require cars and strollers as opposed to public transit and slings, and for anyone who has a horror of pissed-on sidewalks and non-pristine grass, but for me, it was and is perfect. Your kids get to commune with nature (in a bonafide natural setting!). My kids get to commune with all sorts of oddballs, some of them human, one of whom is their mother.
You also talk about breastfeeding toddlers and breastfeeding in public places, activities which are often frowned upon by the public at large. I’ve adopted a new approach to the tutting and sighing that often accompanies public breastfeeding and that is, when I have finished feeding, I smile at the person who has been making those few minutes so uncomfortable, then I smile a bit more and then I get up and go over to them and say ‘hello, it’s so nice to see you again, how are you?’ with exaggerated friendliness. Usually they are so embarrassed and confused by my action and I feel such sweet pleasure in embarrassing them that it makes up for their stupid staring and sighing. Almost. I’m a pretty shy person but I feel really strongly about not being made to feel like a pariah when I’m feeding my baby that I am prepared to become a completely crazy woman on this subject! (Okay, now you can tell me I should be locked up). Should breastfeeding mothers be an acceptable public sight, in the same way that a mother bottle-feeding her baby is? And if so can we as mothers do anything to make public breastfeeding more acceptable?
No way should you be locked up for that brilliant activist solution! I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but of course it shouldn’t be an issue for a nursing mother to feed her child in public. One thing I really like about your hilarious tactic is that it comes disguised as a gesture of good will, rather than confronting rudeness in a manner that would be perceived as equally rude. Be above reproach when you breastfeed your child in public. Smile sweetly at those who would treat you nastily. Say “please” and “thank you”, just as you hope your child will in most social situations. Speak kindly to your older children, the ones who are hanging around whining (or not) while their younger sibling refreshes him or herself on the teat. Be the poster-child for The Society to Normalize Breastfeeding in Public Places. And as a card-carrying member, if you see someone giving the fish eye to a breastfeeding sister, it is your duty to override that ill-intentioned nastiness with support. Offer her your chair. Amuse her older children. Plop yourself down on the bench next to her and engage in pleasant chatter about the weather . Tell her you love what her kid is wearing. Otherwise the terrorists win.
I think most mothers would agree that being a mum is not accorded a lot of respect by society as a whole. I struggle with this, given how important our role is, that we are raising the next generation. What are your feelings about the way motherhood is perceived?
Here in the Western World, a lot of it seems to be media-driven and some of it is generational.
I try not to get too offended when childless young hipsters in their early 20’s assassinate the maternal character, bitch about “badly behaved” babies on planes, that kind of thing. I assume that most of them will get theirs, and hopefully, when they do, I won’t behave like one of those disapproving elders who can’t deal with the idea of children being raised differently than they raised theirs. I often find that what the disapproving elders really want is to reminisce about when their kids were small, and if their audience listens patiently and politely, they become less disapproving. Or not. You can’t scrub the spots off of every leopard and why give yourself carpal tunnel syndrome and a nervous breakdown trying to force it?
As far as the media goes, seek out and possibly even generate alternate media. Boost its visibility and circulation by making certain books and subscriptions to certain magazines your go-to baby shower presents. Expectant parents need to get hip to what’s out there more than they need some adorable onesie and an impractically huge stuffed duck! Present them with a list of blogs you like, the ones that keep your wig on straight after a long, frustrating day of REAL motherhood. If you see a character in an independent movie that embodies your experience, tell your friends to put it in their rental queue! Patronize independently-owned businesses that accommodate parents with small children along with other less-burdensome customers. Organize an outdoor festival where folks with children won’t be herded off to a sad little corner where a hungover clown is twisting up lame-ass balloon animals. Demonstrate by example that the bulk of the mainstream media has its head jammed high up its heiner with respect to the noble, grueling office of motherhood!
How have you changed since you had children? Do you still hang out with friends who haven’t had children and if so how do you find things in common when staying at home with small children all day can sometimes be rather repetitive and draining?
Hopefully I would have grown and evolved even if I hadn’t spent the last nine years raising the feral young. I have endured the greatest physical pain of my life. I have been scared half to death. I am better equipped to understand other parents’ experiences. I have common ground with a much wider range of people. My patience has been tested, snapped and regained. I’ve accepted that I’m not the sole mistress of my destiny. I have had to put myself second, third, sometimes even, fourth. The sands of time have speeded up seconds after it seemed like they were standing still.
Yeah, I do still hang out with friends who have not gone on to have children. My children have lots of childless adult friends, and the ones who can tolerate their company for longer than a couple of hours tend to be rewarded with the honorific, “Uncle”. We talk about whatever’s going on in our lives, just the way we did before I became a mother. We spend a lot of time talking about our upcoming projects, and I recount in depth the plots and dialogue of whatever book I’m reading or a movie I recently enjoyed, a habit I picked up from my father. It’s true that there are old friends I would like to see more, but it’s a natural progression that while I was home, changing diapers and such, they were joining theater companies, starting businesses, hanging out in bars, traveling, and that with those activities come new friends, a circle of people who are more available to do those sorts of things than I am.
Here’s a pisser that I didn’t anticipate: many of my childless friends have gone on to have children! Now that my kids are older, able to behave themselves in restaurants, walk long distances, amuse themselves with books, refrain in large part from whining, my childless friends are childless no more, but subject to the rules and regulations of parents with toddlers and babies! Argggh! It makes the whole concept of Elderhostel very appealing.
And my circle has expanded exponentially in the last nine years. I’ve met so many great people because their children are my children’s ages. Some of them have become really close friends. We have fun as well as each other’s backs. And we have plenty to talk about besides the dang kids.
What’s next for you, what future projects do you have lined up and what do you plan to do with the precious time you have when the children are in school?
As soon as this blog tour’s finished, I want to get kicking on an illustrated novel for young adults, hopefully one of those young adult novels that non-young adults will read too!
And if all goes according to plan, we’re going to take the kids out of school for a month next spring, fly to Budapest to visit the recently relocated cousins, and wander through Turkey, Greece and wherever else the wind might blow us. That’s the kind of home schooling I can handle!
****************
In Mama Lama Ding Dong, mothers everywhere will recognise their own lives. Funny, honest, rarely sparing the details that mothers want and need to hear about the daily grind of life with small children to remind them that they are not the only ones, the book reflects the joys and horrors of life with small children. But most of all it shows life doesn’t have to stop when you have a baby but that, really, it’s just getting started.
Many thanks to Ayun for inviting me to participate in her blog book tour. You can buy the book here (in the UK) or here (in the US). And in case you needed further persuasion to buy it, I’ll leave you with one of the most evocative passages in the book:‘The nurses pad between the bins on their gum-soled white nurse feet, bending to the babies like seraphim, spotlit. The banks of monitors click and whir. The babies lie still, their eyes closed, even the crack babies, breathing together, in and out, their tiny hearts pattering like the hearts of mice. Sleeping. Or maybe they’re born knowing everything and this is the time when they’re busy erasing the tapes.’
Erasing the tapes: what a perfect thought.
(I received a free copy of this book in order to review it. I was free to say whether I loved or hated it. You can see my policy on transparent blogging here.)
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Lost in Translation: A letter to Sofia Coppola
Friday, April 22nd, 2005Dear Miss Coppola
I finally saw your film ‘Lost in Translation’ last night. It took me over a year to get around to it, but I have to say it was entirely worth the wait.
I feared that it would not live up to the hype, but as I knew nothing of its premise I could not form an idea in my own mind, before seeing it, of how good or otherwise your film might be. I tend to do that, although I wish I didn’t.
Anyway, your film was wonderful. Humorous and touching, your film is not in any way a love story, it is something both more and less than that. It contains that element of yearning that any good love story needs, but instead the yearning is for connectedness in a world where we are so connectable but which can leave us feeling so disconnected.
Dislocated people: they’re an unknown quantity, aren’t they? Especially when they can’t sleep. I can especially relate to that part, even though I am not dislocated and disorientated in quite the same way as your main characters, Bob and Charlotte. I have two main characters called Harry and William who have dislocated and disorientated me from my own life but in an entirely different way. However that’s another story and I can tell you now that it wouldn’t make for nearly such an interesting film.
Anyway, you can be sure that if I had to spend a week in an hotel, I wouldn’t waste it by staying awake. Not for a minute.
However I could still appreciate the isolation and sense of dislocation felt by your two protagonists. To have a partnership with someone who doesn’t really listen to you, who doesn’t listen to who you are or to what you need is miserable at best, devastating at worst. To be caught in limbo in a place where all the cultural markers are different as well simply adds to the sense of displacement.
I’ve been trying to think why I feel so affected by your film. ‘Lost in Translation’ is beautiful, poignant and humorous but, more than that, I think it might be simply that there are so few films that I feel I really want to sit through anymore. Time feels so precious to me these days and I have learnt to fill it only with things that enrich my life. Your film has done that even though I can’t say quite how.
Yours
Ella M
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