Burning Man…Avec Toddler

I love that this parent took his kid to the Burning Man festival - nice to know there are models of parenthood that involve adventure and art and wildness, not just “Mom jeans” and playgroups.

I do want to complain that, much as part of me would love to go to this festival, I don’t get why it has to be a burning “man” - and since I failed in my attempts to become a hippie, I have a feeling I really wouldn’t fit in.

I also really like clean toilets.

Women’s Work Revisited

A friend of mine wrote:

“It’s so incredible what women do.  I find it metaphorically resonant that a pregnant woman looks like she’s just sitting on the couch, but she’s actually exhausting herself constructing a human being.  The laborious process of growing a human is analogous to how women’s work is seen”  (Ani Difranco from May/June Mothering mag).

Add to this idea:  A woman who looks like she is just taking the kids for a walk, just nursing the baby, just giving her child a snack - is exhausting herself creating and nurturing human beings.  How important!

And also, I don’t think of myself as a poor-me feminist, but I do agree that women’s work (in all spheres/settings: factories, fields, offices, homes) is a giant engine that is quietly turning the world, just like a pregnant mama is quietly churning a babe. Isn’t this interesting?  Why are women so humble about their achievements?

So often I find myself talking down my mother-work, speaking about my being with my children - feeding, instructing, playing with, etc. - either by

a) Not even mentioning these things in conversation, because it would seem akin to brushing my teeth - as in, “What did you do today?” “Oh, I brushed my teeth.”

b) Prefacing with “I was only” as if these things aren’t enough - though nursing a baby, for instance, is exhausting and time-consuming and requires attention - I may multitask - but that’s me being crazy - if I didn’t walk the dog/clean/type/read/read aloud while nursing, I wouldn’t be lazy…

Take a Break

What if I took a break this year?

Took a break - broke myself of the habit of - broke out - for a whole year - of needing to achieve something?

What if I took a break from guilt?

What if I broke myself of the need to accomplish anything this year?

What if I just enjoyed myself, took pleasure in my life, relaxed in the moment, relished my children and relationships, didn’t face each day with the burden of needing to do something Big, feeling bitter and guilty by the end of the day that I had done nothing worthy?

See, especially as I approached my birthday this year, I’ve been struggling hard with the sense that my life is going by so fast and I’m doing nothing with it, and I’d better finish those manuscripts and get published and do some art and focus so I can finish projects to have Something to Show for Myself, some evidence of adequacy, some great career or good work begun that will use all my skills and maximize my talents and give back and balance out my negative footprints and contribute something to the greater good and fulfill all my promise…

Everyday I am mentally straining against the thick heaving tide of life to Do Something. It’s extremely tiring.

What if I just gave up?

What sweet relief - how decadent and indulgent and selfish but oh, what a delicious prospect. What if I just gave myself one year to live happily, without needing Make the Most of It?

Somehow, I feel that following my bliss, indulging in what pleases me, will somehow make me more productive in the long run. And there’s something very Taoist about not trying to do things (wu wei) that adds some principled morality to the idea.

But would it be a cop out? Would I be lazy, lacking ambition and follow through? Would it mean a wasted year? Is this an excuse to not believe enough in myself to work hard to achieve things?

Could I do it? Give myself permission to just raise my kids and do my work and love my husband and weed the garden and read books and watch movies and swim in the sunshine and be myself?

What Defines “Work”?

One of the problems I have anytime people are trying to quantify a mother’s work is that I think it’s basically impossible. (Last Sunday’s NY TImes article on “equal parenting” is sure causing quite a stir among couples I know…)

I am, you might say, officially “off duty” at 10:43 at night - both kids asleep - and yet, if I were a sitter, I’d still be getting paid, and my ear is cocked, my boobs at the ready should they be needed, etc.

That is, I very rarely “get off work.”

Is it possible to walk off the job? To take a break? Without putting the kids in danger? I’m not so sure. There are times when I want to say to my partner, “You know what? The diapers are full, everyone’s hungry and bored, no one wants to sleep, but I really want to go read a book up a tree while drinking colt 45 - see ya!”

But I don’t.

The other problem with the whole “parenting as work thing” is that it’s not always totally pure work - kind of like when you’re in the office and surfing the web. It’s enjoyable loafing that kind of counts as work, because heck, you’re putting in your time at the desk and no doubt, you need to know what’s going on in the world, too, don’t you?

So yeah, I have “playdates” and “coffee” and “pool time,” during which I have a lot of fun with other people and / or my kids, and that is very hard to call work at all, because I’m just living, it’s not “work.”

Which makes me sad, really, because when did “work” become something so forced, formal, external, disconnected? Somewhere as humans moved from being hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists whose work and play blended together, religion and food-gathering part of the same activity, we got more and more removed from how we obtained our food, we ended up typing in cubes…

Being a parent can be work, it can also be pleasure, and trying to account for it, while I get the intention, is trying to take something amazing and amorphous and screw it into a cube that comes from a whole separate kind of ideology. Instead, why don’t we try to make “work” fit into the parenting/domestic/female-type idea of Being? Why don’t we try to integrate what we do with who we are and how we live, as opposed to trying to fit the latter into what we do?

Am I making sense? I feel like it’s “feminist” to quantify “mother” “work” - but I think that’s a very superficial assumption. It’s far more feminist to envision a reversal, an upheaval of the whole stratified, rigidified system of “workers” in our capitalist society.

Revolution, you know, begins at home.

A Perfect Work Day

I had the Perfect Work Day.

A babysitter came and watched the kids upstairs while I worked in my office downstairs. I took breaks to nurse and snack. It was only four hours. I got a lot done. I was doing stuff I like to do. The kids were happy. I was happy. We had a lovely rest of the day together.

Is this a vision of how it could be, at least sometimes?

Maybe.

When Did Work Start to Suck? (or has it always?)

Toddler and I at Hoos Brews today, the place empty, and she starts asking me for a real-time play-by-play of everything the kind woman behind the counter is doing - “Emptying the soup bowls,” I say, diligently. “Scooping ice cream, I think.”

“What she doing?”

“Making a smoothie, maybe.”

The woman notices, and erupts: “Enjoy your childhood, because this is work, and it sucks!”

“Yeah,” I say, sympathetically. “To kids it seems like so much fun.”

“You just wait,” she says.

And so I start thinking about my daughter’s play activities - imitating cleaning, imitating cooking, making things, pretend shopping… her playtime is all about going through the motions of what I do, what adults do, most of it perceived and experienced as drudgery… rote, boring tasks…

But what makes domestic chores burdens - and what makes a job feel like compulsory torture?

Part of it, I think, or most of it, is the compulsory piece - the fact that you have to shop, you have to clean, you have to Bring Home the Bacon, to survive - you don’t really have much of a choice. Most jobs require that you follow someone else’s rules and procedures, subverting your own ideas and questions, your own style your own imagination your own rhythms to a hierarchy that often doesn’t seem to deserve its power.

Would working in an ice cream/coffee shop be fun if it was play time? If you could do it fearlessly, lovingly?

Would your job be fun if you didn’t have to do it everyday? If you could do it your own way?

Or is it that people tend to be doing jobs they don’t like in the first place, at all, ever?

Because I don’t think the answer is that things are “hard.” Hard work that you love, that you find challenging and rewarding, can be a heck of a lot of fun. I loved studying for the SATs, for instance. I liked mastering the analogy portion of the test. I also enjoyed sweating while swinging a hammer to help build latrines at a women’s music festival. I also loved writing papers in school, having to think out hard issues and find the right words to explain and clarify my points.

On the other hand, I hate doing financial paperwork. I hate data entry. I like the challenge of typing fast. But I don’t like having to be on time to a 9-5 job. I like when I get to question how things are done and develop new, better ways to do them. I don’t like when I have to go through the motions someone else invented that feel slow and redundant.

Meaningful, engaging, fun work that makes one feel like a whole, worthy, respected, happy person - what does that require?

Why does my two year old love sweeping and mopping and I hate it??? And what do I do to reclaim my joy for the mundane and to help my child retain it as she ages?

Answer me, people!!

Another for the “Why do I live in America?” file:

As reported on the Strollerderby blog:
•    In Norway, parental leave allowance is 54 weeks at 80% pay or 44 weeks at 100% to be shared any way the parents wish, although the mother must take three weeks before birth and six weeks immediately after and the father must take five weeks off if they intend to use any leave (yes, must, not “if they have a sympathetic boss and can afford to, maybe”). Adoptive parents are eligible for 51 weeks off at 80% pay or 41 weeks at 100%.

•    In Greece, either parent can use up to 17 months of leave time, and receive an additional hour off per day until the child is 30 months old, or two hours per day for 12 months and one hour per day for the next six months.

•    In Belgium, free early childhood education is available to all children starting at the age of 2 1/2.

I WEEP.

Working Moms - A Great Gmail Tool! Yay!

I’ve been looking for this: pining for it: whining for it: an application that gives you a task list INSIDE your Gmail account.

If you’re like me, you have your Gmail open all the time, and it’s from there that you launch your calendar and documents - the Google homepage is nice, but I just don’t use it - it’s not the base of operations, whereas email IS. So this is great -

it’s called Remember the Milk - read about it on my new favorite blog, the Unclutterer… which offers some awesome ideas on staying organized…

Hey, Non-Mother: Read this!

So you are an employer of/ coworker with / married to a mother?

And do you ever have those cringing moments where you think that the mother you hire/work with/know is not fully functioning in the brain area?

She’s not keeping up with the latest current events, she’s not focused on The Issues, she seems ‘brain dead’ or mushily thinking to you?

Well, I’m here to tell you that, while yes, she may not be concerning her mental powers with what you consider to be worthy subjects - politics, fashion, work - she IS using her brain in rigorous and useful ways that not only will make her an excellent employee, but an insightful human being necessary to our culture and species at large.

Don’t believe me? Read this article about it - all the way through - and let me know what you think.

And all you mothers out there should read it, too, and give yourself a break if you’ve had a baby and lost interest in ‘the normal things’ - you’re doing important work when you’re thinking about your child - stop apologizing for having “Mommy Brain.” That’s a smart head you’re talking about!

Thanks to my friend who forwarded this along to me, confirming my suspicion that all this delicious time I’m spending with my infant and toddler is not a vacuum or waste, but really amazing fodder for learning what it means to be human…

Yoga and Meditation… for all

I have never been able to take a post-partum baby & mommy yoga class because they are all scheduled during normal work hours.

That, or I now have two kids to drag along to a class, not just one.

So I do my personalized version of yoga-stretching-tai chi in my living room, pausing every once in a while to tend to the demands of my always-hungry infant. Or to fend off the assault of my always-running toddler.

I find the stop-start nature of this annoying, but I’m trying to go with The Flow, to keep in the spirit of things.

Forget proper meditation, though. In the morning, that is. I’ve tried setting my alarm to beat the kids to waking up - HA! What a joke! The earlier I set my alarm, the earlier they wake.

If I can get the toddler to sleep, I can usually get the baby to sleep soon thereafter, and then I can take some afternoon silent space to meditate and stretch, and boy howdy, that makes a difference. Mental and spiritual refreshment is key to helping me stay mindful, in the moment, present with my self and my children.

My friend who has a 10 month old - she teaches high school in upstate NY - took a stress-reduction class that turned out to focus on the meditation techniques of that Zabat-Zinn guy. She was told to do a 40-minute body scan every morning. What? With a baby??? She was more stressed out by trying to fit that into her life…

Still, I’m becoming a firm believer that everyone should meditate - in Britain, the NHS even subsidizes meditation programs! because of the health benefits - full-time workers, white and blue collar, poor and rich alike - but to make space for that, we’d need to have a nationwide midday siesta (you could nap, too - we all need more sleep!) - maybe in rotation to handle waking kids?

I would love to have more tai chi/yoga Gatherings - not classes you have to pay for and attend, but get togethers where people stretch and meditate together.

If I had extra time/energy, I think I would become an activist for getting more yoga, tai chi, meditation classes made available at very low costs to make them more accessible to poor / stressed/ working parents (of both genders). How about some free stuff in the parks? How about getting whole families breathing and meditating together?

So much of the conflicts and strains in our lives directly stem from stress taking control of people.

God these hormones are like drugs. I’m turning into a hippie.