On choosing

In response to my post yesterday, the lovely Catherine asks:

I’ve tried to understand the Choice viewpoint, and I earnestly desire to do so.  I would never, ever condone a man or a woman or the government or any power deciding when a woman should give her body over to a child.  But I get confused over how the anti-abortion arguments are asking for that.  Isn’t sex what leads to conception, after all?   I ask, with all friendliness and desire to learn another’s viewpoint – doesn’t a woman by nature make that choice when she becomes one of the willing pair?

First, I must point out that Catherine is in a tiny minority.  Most people are not looking to understand the other side’s view on this.  Most people are not respectful in their questioning.  I am honored to try to answer Catherine’s question and invite others who wish to also respectfully reply to do so in the comments section.  Rude, judgmental, or otherwise unpleasant comments will be returned to the sender wrapped in a package of dog doody.

Now, to Catherine’s question.  Well, the most obvious response is that sex does not always happen between a willing pair.  There are cases of outright rape that lead to conception.  There are also less horrifying instances in which people are not forced by a particular partner but are, rather, coerced by a life situation.

While I agree with Jen’s point that personal anecdotes have little to do with policy on this, I would, in the spirit of openness, like to share a story from my own past to illustrate my point.  Back before I met my wonderful husband, I had the self-esteem of a rather slimy slug (although, for all I know, slugs may have very high self-esteem).  I had lived through a very rough childhood and adolescence.  I was lucky to come out alive, let alone functional.

But, of course, I wasn’t completely functional.  And I took my clothing off more often than I should have, and not because I was a free spirit or anything like that.  I didn’t particularly enjoy sexual activity; but it was a good way to get some affection.  The only way I could see.  This past is not something I am proud of, but it’s not something I am ashamed of, either.  I wish I had thought more of myself at the time.

I was lucky.  Nothing horrible happened.  I got no diseases.  No condoms broke.  But I did end up having sex with someone I did not like.  And, although I said “no” early in the evening, I think it would be pretty fair to say that by the end, I gave the impression of being “willing.”  To myself and to him.

I was “willing” only because my past had made me think so little of myself that I thought sex was pretty much all I had to offer.  I had been a victim for fourteen of the previous nineteen years.  There hadn’t been much time for me to learn about myself and the world.  So, was I legally “willing?  Absolutely.  It was in no sense rape.  But, was I really choosing to be in this situation as a healthy, mature adult?  Hell, no.

Had the condom broken, I would not have gotten pregnant.  That’s because I had fertility issues, but there was no way of knowing that.  And should I have then been forced to carry a child I was in no way ready for because I was too much of a basket case to have the sense to keep my clothing on?

So, the word “willing,” even when it can be applied to a sexual situation, is at best inadequate.  And we all know there are many, many sexual situations much worse than the one I was in.  Should we allow abortion only in the case of rape?  Well, it’s better than no abortion, but frankly I think there are a lot of women who might not have been raped in the moment of conception but who had been long battered and bruised on their way to that moment.  And it would be awfully hard to craft a law that said “abortion in the case of rape or tragically low self-esteem.”

Not that we should, of course.  Because every situation is different.  Sexuality is complex and fraught with all levels of human emotion.  And legislation does not belong in the bedroom.  While in a perfect world all sex would be between two mature people able to accept the consequences of their mutual choice, also in a perfect world I would be six foot two and blonde.

There was a piece in Brain, Child awhile back that – frankly – appalled me.  It was by a woman – happily married with a couple of kids – who chose to abort a pregnancy.  She had the money to support the child and she planned on having another kid.  She just wasn’t ready right at that moment.  In fact, she went on to have a planned pregnancy a few months later.

The essay bothered me.  While I believe abortion ought to be available to anyone who feels the need, that kind of egotistical belief that she should only bear a child if it absolutely suited her at the moment repulsed me.  However, her point (and I believe a correct one) was that if we allow abortion, we must allow it to whomever sees the need.  It is not for anyone other than the person carrying the child to assess how urgent that need is.

Make no mistake – I think that woman is repugnant.  I really do.  But it’s not for me to tell her what to do with her body.  It’s not for anyone to say, “Well, you had sex.  I think it was probably lovely, consensual sex.  So, have the baby.”

Ideally, we would live in a world where every woman respected her soul, her mind, and her body – including the awesome power of the reproductive system – enough to only have sex when she was in a beautiful relationship.  Ideally, we would live in a world where every man respected women that same way.  But, that world would also include a legal system that respected women and their bodies – including that awesome reproductive system – enough to let women control their bodies.

(Someone else can get into things like medically necessary abortions if you like.  Or how every child should be wanted before being brought into the world.  I threw my back out a few days ago, and if I sit at the computer any longer I am going to need traction.)

Are we still arguing about this?

In a few hours, the Super Bowl will begin.  To be frank, I never have had any interest in the Super Bowl, although this year I do think New Orleans could use the win.

What I do care about, however, is a woman’s right to choose.  Having children has made me less able to empathize with the choice to abort a pregnancy.  I just can’t put myself in that position emotionally because my pregnancies ended in such a good place.

Having children has also made me more committed to supporting that choice, perhaps because I am pro-choice for reasons that are no longer personal.  I am not protecting my right to choose – I am standing up for a principle that I believe in regardless of my own gain.

Make no mistake – I believe in the right to choose as a fundamental principle. Our reproductive systems simply must not be subject to government regulation.  Do I think people should try to behave responsibly in how they use their bodies?  Abso-fucking-lutely.  People should try not to conceive children unless they are able to raise them.

People also probably should try to think about the impact their reproductive systems have on our planet.  I recently saw a magazine cover with those Duggar people holding yet another baby.  The headline read something along the lines of: “How many children are too many?”  Well, I am not qualified to reply, but I do think the answer falls somewhere between zero and 19.   I’m just sayin’.

That said, I don’t think the government has any business telling the Duggars what to do.  Octo-mom?  Well, since the taxpayers are footing her bills, folks have a right to be pissed off.  But if the government ain’t raisin’ the kids, it ought not be telling people whether or not to have them.

Neither, might I add, should professional athletes and their mothers.  They can preach all they want in their churches or whathaveyou, but they have no right to ask the government to stick its nose up my vajayjay.

I find it baffling that this ad is about a woman who chose not to abort and her son became a star athlete.  What the hell does that have to do with anything?  You don’t see the pro-choice movement airing ads in which Ted Bundy’s mama comes on saying, “If only I had aborted…”  (Now, of course, someone’s going to leave me a comment saying that Ted Bundy’s mama is dead or with some other fact that completely misses the point I am trying to make because for some reason people love to argue with me about crap that has nothing to do with the larger point I am making.)

I’m done having babies, and during my final c-section my obstetrician gave me a bit of surgical insurance against any more.  But, someday my children will be old enough to have babies, and I sure as hell hope they retain control over their own bodies.  Because I worked awfully hard to make those little bodies, and I just am not ready for Sarah Palin to start deciding what they do with them.

OK, so maybe my political stance still is personal, after all.  As is Tim Tebow’s.  The difference?  He feels his personal beliefs ought to dictate what other people can do with their bodies, while I feel my personal beliefs ought to dictate what I do with mine.

If a body catch a body

I find myself thinking about J.D. Salinger.  Aren’t we all thinking of him this week?  What makes a man of such extraordinary talent first seek the world’s recognition and then run to hide in a fierce hermitage?

People have picked apart Salinger’s work over the years, seeking an answer to the mystery of the man.  Yet, perhaps the answer can be seen someplace else, in someone else.  Another man who has recently died, leaving the world shaking its head at his mystifying life.

I understand Salinger through the lens of Michael Jackson.  The cult of celebrity tore Jackson apart.  His genius was too much for us and for him to bear, so we turned him into a spectacle that destroyed the man and the genius.  I wonder if Salinger ran away and hid because he feared that he and his talent could not withstand that kind of pressure.

In both cases, the person was a tragic, tragic innocent bystander to both his own talent and the celebrity that it caused.  We put so much value on production that we turn talent into a commodity.  Nothing beautiful can stand up under that weight.  And, sadly, the human being who was, by-the-by, the storehouse of that talent becomes a casualty of society’s mastication of all things lovely.

And so, today I stand up and holler, “Let’s be people first.”

Let’s be people before we are writers or bakers or cocktail waitresses or customers or cops or longshoremen or richmenpoormenbeggarmenthieves.  Let’s put our talents in service to our humanity, not the other way around.  Let’s honor the person behind the ability, rather than bowing before the gifts, and perhaps we will have fewer people like Tiger Woods breezily believing their talents protect them from being human.

While I think of Salinger and Jackson and Woods, I remember the most Djuna Barnes, a woman tormented by the war between her gifts and her humanity.  She holed herself up in an apartment to live out the end of her life long before J.D. Salinger even thought of Holden Caulfield.  She became a hermit because the world has no place where talent can exist comfortably as simply a part of a person, and so her gift became dark and sharp and tore her mind apart.

It’s a sad state of affairs when our most gifted artists become either freaks, guests on talk shows, or wisps of human beings, hidden behind the portieres in the living room.

You gotta fight… for the right… to PLIE

My preschooler wanted to dance.  At the children’s museum, he tugged a pink tutu over his sweatpants, donned too-large tap shoes, and tried to imitate the moves on the instructional video.  For his birthday, he requested a dance costume and ballet slippers.

Clearly, I have done something right, raising a child whose gender-identification knows no hard and fast boundaries.  He is a free spirit, a maverick, a dude who is comfortable enough in his dudeliness to want to dance his ass off.

We signed him up for dance class, an “enrichment” that an outside vendor provided at his preschool just before the Tuesday afternoon preschool class began.  He was the only boy, but Benjamin had never had a problem in any group activity.  He is an exuberant joiner in whatever the grown-ups have planned, always happy to play soccer or spin hoops or glue sparkly doodads onto picture frames.  There was no reason to assume dance would be any exception.

The first day, the teacher looked at me.  “You know he’s the only boy.”

“Doesn’t bother me,” I replied.  “I don’t think it will bother him, either.”  And it didn’t.  That first day, he enjoyed class well enough, and when I picked him up after his preschool day, he told me he had practiced arabesques.  Granted, his version of the elegant ballet move was a little different from what I found online, but, hell, he was enjoying himself.

We bought him some jazz shoes, since all the girls had pink ballet slippers.  We’d have gotten him ballet shoes, if we could have found any in size 10, extra wide.

He went into the second class cheerfully.  As I put on his shoes, the teacher came over.  “You know he won’t be doing the ballet in the recital.”

“Why not?”

“He can do all the dances in class, but in the recital he will do the boys’ program.”  Now, that might have made sense to her, but I couldn’t figure out how he was going to do the boys’ program since he was the only boy.  Nor was I quite sure why it was that ballet is only for girls.  Yet, the more I tried to wrangle an explanation, the more I became confused.

“Just tell me why it is he’s not allowed to do all the dances,” I asked about three minutes into the conversation.

“Because if dads hear their sons are doing ballet, they freak out,” she said, not for the first time.  “We’ve worked too long and too hard to build up a boys’ program.”  Well, obviously it was working out beautifully, given that they now had a grand total of one boy in the class.

“So, he’s going to dance by himself?”

“No, some of the girls will do the boys’ program with him.”  Oh, now that made perfect sense.  He couldn’t do ballet, but the girls could do the boys’ program.

I’d have continued the conversation, despite the vertigo it was giving me, but my kid started crying.  I am not sure if he was upset because she had been saying all this crap right in front of him or because her assistant had just called out, “OK, girls, follow me.”  We cut off the conversation and I knelt down, because now Benjamin needed convincing to stay in the class.

I caught up with her later.  “Look,” I said.  “This is not 1956.  Why can’t he do all the dances?”

She gave me the line about working hard to build up a boys’ program.

“Well,” I replied.  “I’ve worked too long and too hard to convince my boys that they can do anything a girl can do.  And, also, do you think you could remind your assistants not to refer to all the students as ‘girls’?”

That night, my husband and I decided that, as long as the child would be getting equal stage time, we wouldn’t make a fuss.  And, the next week, I marched on in, ready to stand by my man, all 37 pounds of him.

Except he didn’t want to stay in class.  “I don’t want to sit next to the girls,” he told me.  Now, you must understand that I read Ms. Magazine and Bitch. There was no earthly was I was going to stand by while my child quit dance class simply because there were no other boys in it.  I tried to convince him to stay.

“Sometimes I do things when I’m the only woman,” I told him.  “If you like to dance, you should stay.”

“I don’t want to dance,” he whimpered, looking out on the sea of pink tulle before him.

The assistants were trying to call the room to order.  “Quiet down, girls!” they commanded, oblivious to the p-nis in their midst.  Or perhaps trying to drive its owner away.

I pulled one outside.  “Do you think you could stop referring to the kids as ‘girls’?  He’s a boy, and he’s kind of sensitive about being the only one.”  She gave me the old whatsyourpoint stare and headed back in.  That probably should have been my cue to leave, but I didn’t want to give my kid the message that we’re down with quitting.

I convinced him to stay and just watch the class.  I figured the teacher would reach out to him after a few minutes and try to draw him in.

Yeah.  Not so much.  She had her girls to attend to.

When I peeked in a few minutes later, he was sitting by the side, watching while she led the girls through the routine.  “Now, turn around.  Step to the side.  Fix your hair.”

Whoa, Nellie.  Hold the phone.   Fix your hair? Fix your hair? That’s the dance move?

No fucking wonder he didn’t want to be in the damned class.  I didn’t want him there.  Nor, for the record, would I want his sister in a class like that.  Dance is about art and grace and exercise and hopefully becoming aware enough of your body to stop walking into walls.  It is not, unless I missed the memo, about fluffing one’s hair.

Well, folks, apparently I did miss the memo, because when I called the director of the program, he patiently explained to me that Benjamin should never have been allowed in the class because they segregate the boys and girls into separate classes.  Since there were no other boys, there was no boys’ class offered, so he should not have been allowed to join in at all.

In the process of ripping him a brand new anus, I asked why it is exactly that they segregate the boys and girls.  “Because boys don’t do girly moves,” he patiently explained to me, as if that just made everything OK.

It goes without saying that our refund check is in the mail.  And our daughter will never do this dance program.

But I am left wondering what has happened to us, the Free to Be You and Me generation?  Things were supposed to be all fixed by the time we raised our children.  Instead, it all seems even worse than when we were little.  When did it become OK that all the shoes in the toddler girls section are pink, so that in order to find my daughter brown shoes I needed to buy the ones marked “boys”?  When did we decide we were fine with the toy marketers informing us that two-year-old girls and two-year-old boys like to play with different things?  Hell, they aren’t even potty trained yet – they have no idea what their p-nises and v@ginas are for, let alone that that anatomical difference has marked them for a lifetime of gendering.

Why aren’t people mad as hell and not willing to take it anymore?  Because I sure am.   But I’m also very, very sad.

Because my boy now thinks that dance is only for girls.

Alive and well and living in New Jersey

Don’t worry about me.  I’m fine.  I’m just working on some stuff that — you know — actually pays me.  Plus, the kids are all in growth spurts, which means that I need to dig out the next size clothing, so if you all ever want me to have time to blog again, please send me all your hand-me-down size 5T clothing.  Because Zachary looks like he’s wearing pedal pushers these days.

Benjamin was eying my computer the other day, which — ever since the Flying Laptop Incident — makes us all a little nervous.  ”Don’t touch Mommy’s computer,” Zach told him.  ”Or you won’t be allowed in our house anymore.”

“For goodness sake!” I said.  ”Don’t tell him that!”

“But it’s true.  If he breaks your computer, you won’t be able to work anymore and we’ll be homeless.”

Now, in response, did I point out to him that what I make as a freelance writer doesn’t even pay for our yearly supply of dental floss?  No, I just reminded him for the hundred and ninety-seventh time that — in the event that we run out of money and are not be able to pay rent — we can always move in with his grandparents, so he has no reason to fear homelessness.  Because, if that child wants to believe his mama is picking up 50% of the tab around here, I say bless his little heart.  Who am I to set him straight?

Show me that smile again

As a part-time, work-at-home freelance writer, I often find myself in a childcare pickle.  Such as last week, when I unexpectedly landed a pitch with a very short deadline and had to stand on my head and juggle childcare with two hands and a foot in order to get into New York and conduct the necessary interview.  So that I could write and revise the two articles I sold in January, my husband took over all the post-kids’-bedtime chores, I stepped over screaming toddlers to get to my computer, and I once again did not get my lip waxed, although now the hair is so long I can simply tie it back in an elastic and throw it over my shoulder.  Things get complicated around here when I actually sell work.

But it is much harder when I don’t.

Because it hurts when I don’t, given that my self-esteem is held together with two toothpicks and a strip of masking tape.  And, unlike people who are in offices or quiet studios or whathaveyou, I do not have the luxury of hurt feelings.  Because I get the emails with the rejections while I am on the internet looking for a phone number of a karate studio and Lilah is scaling me as though I am a mountain and Benjamin is asking if he can use the large knife to chop onions and Zachary is doing his homework perfectly except that he is writing 31 and 41 for the numbers between 12 and 15 and I am not correcting him even though it takes all my strength to stop myself from doing so.

I can’t tell them that I am sad about a rejection because it is so foreign to their world that it would be meaningless.  I can sit for a moment, once I’ve removed the knife from Benjamin’s hand, and feel it, but I only have a moment because there is most likely an ass out there I need to wipe.

I have an old, old friend I only get to talk to every few months.  He is an academic, which is the profession I was pursuing back in the day when I was all career-minded and shit.  And, when we talk, I often express my envy that he is on this career path, towards all things bright and shiny.  And he tells me, “From where I sit, you have it all.”

He reads my blog.  Maybe I make my life seem more glamorous than it is.

My friend is of course right.  I have a husband who takes over all the evening chores after a long day at work when I have a deadline.  I have some childcare help to allow me to do part of my writing.  I have a more or less financially secure life (she knocks wood).  And I have three lovely children, who, despite driving me three types of batty, are absolutely delectable.

Nonetheless, I take the rejections hard.  Because, the truth is that I have to start selling to bigger name publications if I want to establish myself as a writer.  The competition is fierce, and I am not Faulkner.  I have a certain facility with language, a sharp sense of humor, and a willingness to bare my ass in public, but I am without two things:  I have a hard time coming up with ideas, and I lack the self-confidence to think anyone gives a shit about what I write.

When I ask you all to register your undying affection for my writing at polls like the one over at Babble, I am doing it because without those strokes, I ain’t gettin’ much lovin’.

The rejections and the acceptances roll in more or less equal numbers, but it is deceiving, because I lack the imagination to find new places to submit.  I am not much of a saleswoman because I don’t really believe in the product.

After that moment on the couch, I get up and finish chopping vegetables with Benjamin, who has insisted we will be having stir-fry for dinner.  I have convinced him to go with carrots and broccoli over apples and potatoes, but other than that he has planned the ingredients himself.  Then I take Lilah and him for a little walk.

He babbles on and I go on auto-pilot, inserting the correct answers when I need to.  “Mommy?” he says.

“Yes?”

“I love you.”  I stop walking and lean down.  I pull Benjamin into a hug.  As we walk on, he doesn’t know I am crying.  I am crying because I know that there are different kinds of success, and I just need to keep remembering that I am choosing this one.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t mourn the loss of a more traditional form of success or wonder if I am choosing this path because I doubt my ability to make it on the other.

Alpha

We are sitting together at a birthday party, one to which I am supremely grateful that my son has been invited, given that we’ve been in town for all of two months.  The only thing worse than attending a birthday party with Zachary would be the anguish he would feel if he weren’t invited.  Zachary has not yet spontaneously combusted, which he will undoubtedly do, due to the amorphous activity of the party and the social anxiety that attends trying to ingratiate himself into this group of children.  He is clearly trying to strategize how to insert himself into the little social groups forming within the play space, and I can see the tension rising.  While I wait for him to fall apart, I have a little time to talk with some of the mothers.

One of the women I have taken a liking to.  There’s something about her that runs on the right speed for me.  I’d like to call her to go out for coffee, but I have been spending every spare moment working and haven’t had time to sneeze let alone make plans with people. “There are Alpha families here,” she tells me.  “The parents are all friends, and the kids are all ‘popular.’”

I hear what she is saying.  In fact, I have heard what she is saying many times before, in many places before.  Hell, I’ve been the one saying it before.  Maryland.  Virginia.  North Carolina.  Massachusetts.  London.  Los Angeles.  It’s the same everywhere, even Philadelphia.  Cliques are nothing new to me.  I wince when I see them.  And then I remind myself to relax.  We are not in high school anymore, and I don’t have to worry about whether the popular kids like me.  Some will and some won’t.

We chat some more, and then Zachary has his meltdown, whereupon I do my thing and talk him off the ledge.  He calms down, has some cake, comes back with me to get his coat on.  “I hate birthday parties,” I whisper to her.

She is sympathetic.  One of her children has similar issues getting overstimulated.  She even knows terms like “sensory integration” and “highly sensitive.”  I am grateful to have another adult take a tiny portion of my worry and share it simply by acknowledging its presence.  “I can’t talk about it much, though,” she says.  “I’ve found people don’t want to hear about it.  They don’t want to be my friends if I talk about serious issues with my kids.  Like it’s contagious.”

“I don’t really care if people want to be my friend,” I tell her, clearly astonishing her.  But it’s true.  I try to be nice to people out of respect for their feelings and enjoy getting to know people.  But I am not staying up nights worrying about whether this or that mom at drop-off wants to hang out with me while I darn my socks.  I figure I’ll find people I like who like me.  Some of them may even surprise me and be in the popular clique.  Or they may be thirty years older than I am.  Who the hell knows?

I am as nice as I can be and I reach out to some people and I try to make the playdates my kids want me to make.  Yet I’ve lived too many places and seen too many things to think that social politics amounts to much more than so much rye bread.  It’s just what people do to entertain themselves on long winter evenings.

I didn’t always feel this way.  I once wrung my hands over fitting in and making friends.  It took me thirty-six years to come to realize that friendship needs to be organic, not strategized.  I hope it doesn’t take Zach that long.

Zachary has returned to a semblance of a child, and we prepare to leave.  I squeeze her on the arm and thank her for listening.  I like her.  I resolve to try to find some time for that cup of coffee.

Global positioning

Just a note to let my husband know that, in the future, if I should be driving into Manhattan (along routes I don’t know well because we just moved here to this very far suburb) with both boys to attend a birthday party in that begins at an apartment and ends at the circus, after which I will be leaving with two very tired children, and I ask if we can switch cars, it might – it just might – behoove you to mention to me that you have set your GPS to exclude all highways so that I don’t find myself exploring every tiny little back road of New Jersey.

That is all.

Daddies

Remember this post?  Well, this week, my friends brought home their baby.  Please — even if you’ve never considered leaving a comment before — leave a comment today, congratulating them on finally, after so, so many years, becoming daddies.

Suit

They are wrestling in the next room.  All too often, one child hits the other too hard, his brother retaliates in fury, and the whole shebang turns into something nasty.  Yet, I am loath to stop them, because when they do manage to keep it at the level of play, this is one of the best ways for my boys to interact with one another.  Plus, let’s be honest: kids horse around.  Some of this crap they have to figure out for themselves.

Every few minutes, one sustains a harder hit than he wanted.  He comes running in, crying.  Yet, if I suggest that perhaps the game is not fun anymore, they both protest that they want to continue.  Well, what the hell.  I give the child a kiss and he scampers out to wrestle with his brother again.

Then, inevitably, Benjamin gets hurt.  He outweighs Zachary, but he’s younger and gets his feeling hurt more easily.  He comes in, wearing the dress-up football helmet.  Somewhere along the line, he must have decided that a football helmet is just the thing to protect himself in battle.  But, he needs more.

“Mommy,” he sobs.  “I want a baseball suit.  I want a suit to keep me from getting hurt.”

I hug him and give him a kiss.  “Do you think maybe it’s time to stop wrestling?”

“No,” he replies, wiping his nose from under his helmet and heading back out into the living room.

I turn back to the broccoli I was chopping.  “Baby,” I say, only to myself.  “If there were a suit that could keep you guys from getting hurt, I would buy it.  Trust me, I would buy it.”