@ Home in the World

Because it Ain't All Sweetness and Light

I was going to post something entirely different today, but I started reading before I posted this morning and my head got filled with ideas.

Mostly what I've been reading is people's reactions to not one, but two MSM mentions of "hipster parenting" this week.

Now, I'm not a hipster parent. I'm probably too old, for one thing, and I have this thing about how kids should be dressed, but it's my thing and I no longer care how other people dress their kids unless it's overly suggestive.

But I do understand the urge to resist conformity. Who says you have to move to some Camazotz -like suburb or rush out and buy the minivan just because you have kids (that's what I was going to write about, but I'll save it)? Who says your life ends because a new one has begun?

Reading David Brooks' column on Sunday, I couldn't escape the image of the old man rocking on the porch, shaking his fist and saying "These kids today, I tell ya...."

Both the article and the column are full of complaint about parent-bloggers not growing up, sharing too much, and foisting their own tastes on their children.

Excuse me, but don't we all do this to some degree? If I chose to dress my kids from Talbots wouldn't that be foisting my tastes on them? If I give my sons Red Sox shirts before they are old enough to understand baseball, or my husband teaches our kids to skate because he once loved playing hockey, isn't that the same thing?

And sharing too much? Well, hey, if I never hear another conversation about the contents of diapers it will be too soon. Thankfully my boys and their peers are well beyond that stage, as are most of their friends' parents. But there was a period there where that's all the women around me talked about and it did drive me nuts. Yet, I can handle reading about it, because I can skip over it if I want to and nobody will know, and there is evidence in their blogs that mothers do think and write about much more than poop. 

Wait, you mean I'm not a grown up because I'd rather bond with my kids over the Beatles or B. B. King rather than Barney? I don't see how driving myself insane with music a step above The Chipmunks makes me a better parent. And you know what? I'm not entirely convinced that toys and entertainment and things that are tested and focus-grouped and marketed for children are all that good for them. Too many of the characters of children's TV are grammatically lazy or don't speak in full sentences. In my house that's a bad thing.

Or maybe I'm not a grown up because I miss my old life, or because I think parenting is hard, harder than it used to be, and I'm not hesitant to say so. and I will also not be ending every sentence with "but it's all worth it."

When I talk to mothers in the real world, no matter how positive their words, 90 percent of the time, I would describe their tone as wistful. Wistful about the loss of their old selves, whether it be their career, their friends, or their body type; wistful about the fact that their husbands frequently reside in different worlds than they do because of their jobs; wistful that their kids are growing up so fast, or the fact that they are not where so many of their peers are developmentally. Wistful perhaps, that no matter what anyone told them before they had their first child, motherhood was not what they expected.

Women kept journals and diaries for centuries. In addition to recording the major events of their lives, they recorded mundane things like the weather, their monthly cycles, their children's accomplishments and the latest round of social obligations. Most of their journals were never intended for publication, but what they wrote tells us how they lived.

I think that blogging affords parents an outlet that we don't have in real life. I'm amazed at how much more communal it can be than the neighborhood playground. It allows us, for reasons I don't yet understand, to be more accepting and supportive of parents who seem different from us than we would be in the real world.

But maybe it's the fact that these conversations are taking place in what is essentially a public space that disturbs some. I'm still new to this whole Mama Media thing, and I'm just starting to take notice of blogging's collisions with mainstream media, yet I can't help but think that traditionalists have some kind of interest in silencing mother's voices. Oh, but it's not just mainstream media, My Space, the leader in inappropriate online behavior, is banning photos of breastfeeding as sexually suggestive.

I don't know about you, but I'm starting to get weirded out here. Motherhood can be isolating, but are people saying that it should be so? I didn't become a mother to give up my life, but to expand it. Are people who complain about parenting bloggers, children in public spaces, and mothers who don't fit the norm saying not just "suck it up," but "go away?" I may work at home, but I don't want to feel sequestered there. Most of us who choose to be parents do not want to be put upon a pedestal and sainted for our so-called sacrifices, but many of us do want family life not to be excluded from real life.

Halfway Across the World

More from our adoption story. Originally published on Harbor Log February, 2006.

I’ve always been one of those people who believed that most things in life happen for a reason. Like the three fates weaving their tapestry, one thread of life seems to lead to another. Even the not-so-great parts of life can lead to better things. A guy I was dating, whom I was not that into, suggested I work at a bookstore where I later met my husband. Another job that I hated years ago nonetheless gave me skills that I was able to use at a better company with smarter co-workers.

When I was in high school Ronald Reagan gave a speech in Britain calling the Soviet Union an evil empire (I’ve looked it up, and he never actually used the phrase, but the speech has been so dubbed ever since). I was never a big fan of Reagan, and it’s hard to imagine paying much attention to politics at 14, but reaction to the speech piqued my interest and led to a lifelong fascination with Russia and the Russian people. Call it a teenage rebellion for the hopelessly bookish. I grew up at the end of the Cold War, Russia was the ultimate other. I had to get there somehow.

Years later, when it came time to consider starting a family, Russia captured my imagination again. There’s a certain amount of fatalism associated with the adoption process anyway. You come to believe that there is a certain child out there for you, like finding a true love. Although we briefly considered other avenues, I pretty much knew our first child was in Russia. It turned out that our second one was as well, but that’s another story. We made that journey of a lifetime four times. And as I suspected, although their approach to life is inevitably colored by decades of totalitarianism and, more than likely, the climate, the Russian people are just people. For the most part they value the same things that we do.

The designs in our life tapestries are woven from the choices we make and the random connections that occur throughout our lives. Although I believe that these children were meant for us, intellectually I know that they just as easily could have been adopted by a family in France, or Canada, or remained in the orphanage system as many children do. A decision made in a court session they weren’t even present for changed the design of their tapestries overnight - within a matter of hours really.

I wish that people in the world, and Americans in particular, were more attentive to these connections, to the cause and effect of human interaction; whether it involves the major decisions of a leadership team or an individual’s choice between two or more paths. I wish that we saw the world more as a human race, rather than a collection of nations and ethnicities, people to be labeled “evil” and “other” and “them.” If children born halfway across the world could become ours, shouldn’t that illuminate the connections we have with all children?

Now to some, this may seem like a naive, or even suspiciously liberal sentiment, but it is pragmatic as well. Although we all have our hands full trying to make our own homes into civilized places, we should not neglect the larger world. Someday our children will step into that world and make connections of their own. How much will they try to understand the people they meet, and the impact of the decisions they make?

Occasionally I have the privilege to speak with students the local high school. I’m often impressed with how poised and articulate they can be, much more than I was at that age. We live in a very small town, and it would be very easy to avoid looking beyond the island. I’m encouraged that these teens are eager to engage with the world in positive ways.

Not to wish the intervening years away by any means, but I hope my sons will develop that enthusiasm for the world beyond our borders. And I hope they send me postcards.

Since writing this I've since learned that there was a separate speech, to a group of Evangelicals where Reagan did use the phrase. You can find the text of that here.

Frozen

Valentine's Day found us battling the elements. This was perhaps the first serious winter storm of the winter and we got precipitation of all kinds. It snowed, it slushed, it sleeted, and then it rained. T's school did not cancel which was fine with me, because I had a major deadline later in the week and I was hoping not to have to try to break up fights while I was working. P's school did cancel, so I didn't get all that much done in any case, but P can entertain himself for long stretches at a time, so at least it was quiet. After snowing off and on all day, it started pouring in earnest just in time for the kids to come home from school wanting to play outside.

And then it froze.

The next day, a thick layer of ice coated everything and the wind was brutal (even now, it sounds like a hostile planet out there). We had a one hour delay that morning. The ice is mostly still there, although it is thinning a bit. It's just enough to send me flying should I even attempt to run after the ever escaping Pumpkin. I used to like winter.

There are no words strong enough to describe how much I hate February. Bleak is only the beginning. In addition to Valentine's Day, of which I'm not a fan, February was the month that my father died, and on the same calendar page are his birthday and my parents' anniversary. Losing him doesn't define me the way it used to, but I still hate February.

As the words for this post were first forming in my head, I was watching my neighbors across the street gleefully pack up their van for the fight to Orlando. Sigh, this is the first year that I can remember feeling envious of them. It's not so much that I care about going to Disney World, or Sea World, or that the kids are even old enough for that kind of trip, it's that I'm facing an entire week at home trying to keep the kids occupied, when I so want to get out of here that I'd even go to Texas just for a change of scenery and a bit more warmth.

Personally, I think February vacation ought to be abolished and that we ought to get out a week earlier in the summer. If you don't ski and can't afford a tropical vacation with your family, what good is it? I know that there will be other opportunities in other years, but man, I just want to get out of here! And I don't really like feeling like this. The place where we live is really rather beautiful, and I know that I chose to live here. But I'm anticipating a bad case of cabin fever before the week is over. I don't like being stuck, frozen, in a rut.

No matter what the calendar says, February is the longest month of the year. And with the odd shift of seasons that we have experienced out here in recent years, this kind of weather could last until April. Unseasonably warm in December has all too frequently translated into unseasonably cold in June. The groundhog says we actually get a real spring this year. I'm so hoping...

Speaking of hope. If you look hard enough, there are already signs of Spring...   

Posted as a Public Service

Dear CBS,

John Vito was right. America IS sick of Rob and Ambah.

Thank you.

Not Exactly Puppy Love

Originally posted on Harbor Log, February 14, 2006Congratulations to James, this year's winner! Love those spaniels.

We don't do much for Valentine’s day in this house. I have never really liked it. So it has been weird spending the last few days making hand-made valentines for the members of T’s pre-school class. We’ve been doing this to encourage T. to practice his letters, and of course, because the rest of the class is doing it.

For us, the highlight of Valentine’s day is the Westminster Kennel Club Show. It’s such a pleasure to see all the different breeds, learn about the different types of dogs and root for the breeds that we are most familiar with. Quite a few of us were thrilled to see the Newfoundland known as Josh take best in show a while back. I’m just pleased when best in show is not
a poodle. I like standard poodles, really, but those topiary hair-dos always make me feel sorry for them.

And from the small world department: every year the Kennel Club has an official poster that they use to raise money for a dog-related charity. In 2004 and 2005, that poster was done by Misha Lenn. Lenn lives in the Boston area and in the mid-90s, he did a couple of covers for the publishing company where I was working. He’s Russian, studied in St. Petersburg and last year had a show in the hotel we were staying at when we went to get our second child. His style is pretty distinctive and it was really something to recognize his work, both on TV and on a placard in a hotel room thousands of miles from home. I guess that must be success. Good for him.

Siesta

That's it. We simply must find a way to move to Italy.

For my health!

When the Journey is Just the Beginning

The subtitle of this blog is "International Adoption and Other Travels." I've been working on this blog for three months now and have yet to approach either topic. I'm amazed to find that it is still difficult to write about our adoption experiences even though I have already done so on my last blog.

So I'll start here with entries from Harbor Log, and work my way back into the stories. The following post was written a year ago and I am pleased to say that things have greatly improved since then. While the sibling rivalry between the boys will never entirely go away, there are more and more cooperative and tender moments that they, and we as parents share.

Originally posted on Harbor Log February 16, 2006.

Before, during, and even after our first adoption, I read every adoption story I could get my hands on. There were international adoptions, foster care adoptions, stories of being chosen by a birth mother and being present during the delivery. With each story I cherished that culminating moment when the child was united with the new parents, making the anxiety-fraught journey all worthwhile.

My doctor is an adoptive parent himself and put it this way; unlike getting pregnant and heading straight for parenthood, with adoption, you must reaffirm your commitment at every step along the way. You can stop the process at any time and the process can be stopped by external factors beyond your control. Dealing with the starts and stops along the way is not for the faint of heart. Getting to the moment you become a parent is quite a journey, but the journey is only the beginning.

Very few of the stories I read followed the new family through the post-adoption transition. Any new parents go through a radical change when the baby comes home. There’s no way to understand the amount of change and the amount of work involved until you go through it. Whether you are dealing with the sleepless nights and constant feedings of a newborn, or the inexplicable tantrums and bonding challenges of bringing home a toddler, the task is much bigger than anyone can possibly explain.

We’ve been at this for three years, and I am just now starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel in terms of everyone’s adjustment. We made so much progress with T. in his first two years, only to have to start nearly from square one when we brought P. home. And this time we had two of them.

I don’t want to scare people, because the adoption of waiting children is something I strongly believe in. I’m hoping that writing about these experiences will encourage and help prepare others for what may come down the road. Like any other parent, on almost a daily basis, I stand in awe of what my kids have learned or how they observe things in their world. Their small successes lighten my heart.

At Home in the Bookstore

We met in a bookstore 16 years ago. I think this says a lot about our relationship, although my husband would likely disagree. But I left the bookstore to start a career in publishing, when he left, he went into biotech and never looked back. To him, the bookstore was just a job, and a not-very-well-paying one at that. For me, the bookstore was my support system and the antidote to the rest of my early 20s, utterly confused life. Yes, it is where we met, but I guess he'd say that we went on to make better memories after we left. I can't really argue with that.

The bookstore was part of a small chain in the first outdoor mall in the country. Both are now gone. The mall itself was something special, if that word could be used about a mall. In the spring, the center courtyard was planted with tulips, and at Christmastime there were enormous toy soldiers guarding the Gazebo where Santa received his guests for pictures. Eight live reindeer stood in wait for their appointed duties. It could be a magical place.

For me, there was magic in the bookstore as well. Surrounded by books, shelving, reading, recommending, I was in my element. If a book was not on the shelf, I had an uncanny ability to remember if it was somewhere within the many overstock books in the back room. My co-workers thought I was nuts, but my favorite time of year was the oh-so-crazy Christmas season, with the customers lined up all the way to the back of the store.

The bookstore attracted its share of real-life characters, both as customers and as employees. Many of the regulars had not-so-flattering names: Movie Tie-in man, The Breather, the Warlock (a guy who used to buy copies of the Necromonicon to resell in his occult shop downstairs), and so on. We'd have the SciFi guys who would come in and tell me we needed to stock more H.P. Lovecraft, we have the romance readers who would buy Harlequins or bodice-rippers by the stack. And we'd have the guys who would come in and read the Anonymous books in the far corner of the store.

Pillars of the Earth was a bestseller back then. It was a good read. A Brief History of TIme was a non-fiction bestseller for weeks. Tons of people bought it, very few read it. There was the annual Danielle Steele and a number of Stephen Kings.

I was at the bookstore for nearly three years. By the time I left I had a fiancee, a maid of honor, two roommates, and a bunch of really great friends and memories.

When I worked in offices in Boston, bookstores would be my refuge. I often ate lunch at my desk and then went out for a walk, frequenlty finding myself in a bookstore. The atmosphere of staid calm and shelves full of possible escapes restored my stressed out head and helped me return to work to handle whatever drama I had left behind in my office.

When I was a new Mom, I used to take T to the bookstore for story hour or to play with the wooden train set at the back of the children's section. Of course the bookstore with kids is never as relaxing as being there on your own, but in this case it was a refuge from boredom.

Bookstores are a great place to people watch, even in the larger chains. I can remember when both children were in school, heading out to the nearest Barnes and Noble just to work in a different atmosphere. I must have been up late the night before, because I had a hard time keeping my eyes open. Somewhere nearby, a cell phone rang, "Hello," said the old man answering the phone (pause). "I'm in Barnes & Nobles, taking a nap!"  Guess I wasn't the only one.

We have two fine independent bookstores near us. They are good for finding great writing that doesn't necessarily make the best seller list. Though they often host signings and readings for local writers, I once met Madeline L'Engle at a reading here. If you are fortunate enough to have a non-chain bookstore near you, go there as often as you can, they need your support.

Every so often, I long for a simpler job, dealing with customers with whom I will interact only about 5 minutes at a time. I miss having all those titles and authors and sometimes even ISBNs in my head and little else that was worth worrying about.  Sometimes I miss sitting on the floor arranging hardcovers artfully around a column. I miss knowing way ahead of time when the next book in a series is coming out. But when I really miss it, all I have to do is visit a bookstore. And if I hang around long enough, someone is bound to ask the salesperson the same question I got asked at least once a week.

"I'm looking for a book, I don't have the title or the author, but it's blue and I heard about it on a talk show the other day...."

All I Really Needed to Know I Learned From

My first attempt at blogging came about a year ago.  I answered an ad on Craigslist and began to tell the story of our adventures in adoption and adjustment. I was very new to blogging and had maybe read a page or two of the Daily Kos or Huffington Post, but no more. I didn't quite get the whole blogging model. My original blog network got merged into a single blog and was quickly taken over by people writing merely to fish for ad hits, family story content was sparse and there was no longer any compelling reason to go there. At the same time the merge was happening, we were on the verge of moving back into our home after a 7 month construction project, I had planned to start a completely new website after we had settled in, but with the kids starting new schools and my return to work it didn't happen right away. It was so much easier to read rather than write in my spare time.

And read I did. I started plunking around on Blogspot, flipping through the "next blog" button and managed to find some really interesting stuff. I enjoyed this couple's perspective and the quests of this woman. The adventures of this family were interesting to me, and it was one of the few other adoption blogs I found. I found Robert Reich's blog after a while and was amused to be reading the blog of someone I had actually met (he ran for governor here a number of years ago, but the Democrats weren't smart enough to give him the nomination). And then there are the Daily Photo Blogs for the armchair traveler I am for the time-being. Here I'll share the one I visit the most, but there's a whole network to check out.

I still visit those blogs from time to time, but several months ago I found Motherhood Uncensored. I have no idea how I got there, but Kristen was funny enough to read quite a bit of. And it was through her that I found Mom-101 and from there Amalah and Girl's Gone Child (best blog name I've seen so far, that and Strollerderby) and so on, and so on, and so on. LIke that old Breck commercial, but not. Reading Kristen's blog and looking at all that she does online, I started to realize what blogs and blog networks could be. I started to realize that she gets it. She gets it in a Fast Company, social networking, buzz marketing, pod-casting, Mama-media sort of way. And she's funny as hell.

(Geez, does it look like I'm name dropping or what? Yikes!)

Now, I'm not blogging as a business, although if money happened to come my way, that would be a bonus. I'm in it for the stories, and the debates, and the fact that blogging has given mothers a voice in the public square where, previously, there had been mostly silence. 

The world is full of opinions about what mothers should do, but in the mainstream media, there is so little heard from mothers about the reality of parenting. When one mother writes about an experience or a feeling, and a dozen other mothers comment that they have had similar experiences, a window has opened. And it's not sequestered in our homes or the local Gymboree, it's out there. There are entire sites set up to search what people are blogging about; mother's voices will be heard.

It is in that spirit that I am pleased and honored to join The Soccer Mom Vote. It's a collection of mothers of all political stripes who have strong opinions and ideas to share on the state of our country and the world. I don't have a post up there yet, but I expect to soon. In the meantime there are plenty of other thought-provoking posts to read. Keep your eye on the ball.

Speaking of mothers' voices, Liz Henry has a story to share on another forum that's quite chilling. No matter what you think about illegal immigration, did you ever think it would come to mothers dragged away screaming in front of their childrens' school?

Not Cool to be Cruel

I'm puttering today. I should be getting things done, but I was heads down through the Super Bowl (hey, it''s not like I was really watching it anyway although Prince was pretty good) and all day yesterday trying to meet a milestone for a project. After some rest, my eyes feel better, but my head is still so full of fog I spent about an hour trying to decide whether to do a load of laundry or take a shower. I am so NOT getting things done, and before I know it, it will be time to pick up the kids from school.

And this is one of the drawbacks of working mostly from home. When I worked in an office, I knew that I had a standing meeting let's say every Tuesday at 1 and another every Friday morning and then there would be other groups that I was involved with that met periodically, and that I could organize my work around the meetings, and the lunches, ohhh, the lunches.

I suspect that I may be a little ADD, because I like to work a little on something and then come back to it after having worked on something else. I do know that while I am not working on a given project, it is percolating in the back of my brain, and so that is like working on it, a little. I am interested in everything too, so there's always that distraction around the corner, or on the bookshelf or on the next website.

I need structure, and at the same time, I balk at it. The fact that I am responsible for imposing structure on my kids is a little disconcerting. Tigger needs structure. He needs to know what he's supposed to be doing and then needs to be validated or rewarded for doing it. He gets a little anxious when he's supposed to find his own way and that's when he gets into trouble. His need for structure was a large part of the reason I sent him to full-day Kindergarten instead of holding him back a year "for social reasons."

And now that I've gone there, I will, instead of telling you how the Pumpkin is exactly the opposite, go down the path of social expectations and why we have them.

I started Kindergarten at age four. I have a mid-September birthday, so these days I would not have made "the cutoff," and would have attended school a year later, always the oldest in my peer group. Instead, I was the youngest. I went off to college when I was still 17. My mother says she regrets this, and feels that it was the major reason why I was not socially adept. I see it differently.

In my early school days, I had plenty of friends. In Kindergarten, other children played with my hair, I could make the shy, sad, little girl smile by making the appliqued turtles on the hem of my dress appear to walk. I had a couple of girls who used to fight over who was going to be my best friend (groups of three tend to be bad news, I find).

Around the third grade, that all changed, there might be a couple of reasons for it. First, my gentle, supportive, all girls' school merged with two other private schools in the area and went both co-ed and super-competitive. Second, I was hospitalized for two months at the end of the year, my parents said I almost died, and even as a child, that had to change my worldview profoundly. I came back in the fourth grade feeling weaker than my peers, but older than they were. I wasn't athletic, I didn't care about the same things they cared about, and they pounded me for it. I was astute notice that as a group my classmates were horrible children, but on their own many were actually quite human, giving me tips on how to fit in. However, by the sixth grade, my parents and I, and even the school, had had enough. I transferred to a smaller, Catholic school, which was only slightly better.

When I look at my school pictures from that time, I feel so sorry for that little girl, even though I don't feel like her anymore.  My husband says that I don't look sad in those pictures, I look scared. 

I don't think a year would have made that much difference. In high school, we moved to CT and I went to the local, public HS. I loved it. Some of the people I met there are my best friends to this day, and I work in support of public schools because of my experience there.

And so when the pre-school teacher suggested I keep T out an extra year for social reasons, it got my back up. On the one hand, I want him make friends and be happy (notice I did not say "fit in"), but on the other hand, he is so clearly academically ready (he's almost reading) to be there, that it felt wrong to withhold that from him. Plus, his birthday is in March, so that meant he would have turned seven in Kindergarten. Seven! But so many mothers of boys are keeping their kids out an extra year, it seems to be the new thing to do.

I once heard from a teacher that the majority of elementary school parents she deals with don't care as much about how their child is doing academically, they want to know if their child is making friends.

And I've also noticed that "social reasons" can be the bad behavior of other children. That certainly was the case with me. Some of my classmates were monsterous, and their parents were too often the "not MY child" type, you know, their kids walked on water. In T's case, his first cohort had a group of boys who lived in the same neighborhood, and who had known each other since birth, and were not about to let a stranger in their midst, let alone one who was still working on self-control. The mothers were about as cliquey as the kids. And because the teachers won't really talk about other children, it took me most of the year to figure out what was going on.  When the weather got warm and many of the kids stayed to use the playground after school, I saw the real deal.

One child, I'll call him the Ringleader, took on the role of organizing things for the other boys to do, even if it was climbing a rock. The other boys would follow and Ringleader would yell at my son, "No Tigger, only 4 boys can fit on this rock." Or "Only 3 boys can play this game." Or whatever it took to exclude him. Is it any wonder that T struck out in frustration?

Now I had gotten in the habit of staying on top of T to remove him from a situation when he was losing control. Ringleader's mother? On the other side of the playground, chatting.

So when he was 4, I had T go to school with a new cohort of 3 years olds. He still had some issues, but he made friends and was a lot happier and more confident. And yet, I still didn't feel right about keeping him out of K, even though absolutely everyone was trying to convince me otherwise. It just went against everything I believed in about being ready to learn. He was starting to recognize sight words, he was on the verge of reading. T's a smart kid, what if he got to 2nd or 3rd grade and was bored? Wouldn't he get in more trouble then? Why are social issues more important than learning to read? Isn't this pecking order sort of thing how we get to the point where languages are cut before sports? And I survived my childhood through reading. So after much debate and agonizing, off he went.

Now, imagine my horror at seeing Ringleader's mother two years later in my son's classroom on that first Kindergarten orientation night before school started. Sure enough, the next day Ringleader saw T and yelled, "Oh, there's Tigger, stay away from him. He hits." Ringleader's mother? Across the parking lot, chatting.

So we're halfway through the school year, and we've definitely had our issues, but his teacher is wonderful, T is reading a lot of words and glows with pride when he's completed a project or had an especially good day behavior-wise, and yes, he's making friends.

And now, I have to go pick him up.