Real Moms

I must say, I had no idea how fun it would be to open up this blog and see comments, -- even if most of them are from myself. It's like walking along a shore and finding messages in a bottle, except the messages are in response to whatever thoughts you sent out to the horizon the day before.

As it happens, I have been "tagged" by Zany Mama at http://zanymothering.blogspot.com/ to finish the sentence "Real moms..."

A cascade of images has been running through my mind for the last few days. They come from everywhere, an NPR broadcast about civilian casualties in Iraq, the ragged, needy kids I see at work, The tired, patient women I see at bus stops and cleaning offices, a documentary about Pinochet, the young Mormon women of this part of the country. I can't think of how to fit it all into my bottle, but the time has come to cast upon the waters.

Real moms pick up the dog poop every Saturday, even though they promised.

Real moms make dinner every night, even if it's pancakes, even with morning sickness.

Real moms get dressed and go to Walmart at 10:00 pm, because someone just remembered at 9:30 pm that they needed reindeer shoes (what could those be?) for their performance in the school Christmas Musical tomorrow.

Real moms put 4 shirts on their first graders when it gets cold, just in case they take off their jackets when they get to school.

Real moms send their kids to live with relatives in a foreign country so they can learn English and have a better life, even though they know it will be years before they see them again.

Real moms sit on an aluminum bleacher for 2 hours 4 times a week instead of watching Trading Spaces.

Real moms go to work in a foreign country holding and comforting other people's children so they can provide for their own.

Real moms climb up on the gurney to calm the baby down, even though she herself is injured and bleeding.

Real moms always cry when the State comes to take away the kids. They never forget and they never forgive themselves, -- at least none of the ones I've met.

Real moms run their hands over the bones of a young male recovered from a mass grave, just so they can touch the baby one last time.

Rehab is for Quitters

I'm sick today, so not much to say.

Just want to say that I've noticed a bit of a backlash against Rehab in the popular culture. Things like this song:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8914101
(scroll down and click on the Amy Winehouse link).
Now, I'm in the medical profession, and I see way too much of what a diet of toxins can do to bodies and families, but I think this is funny, and it cheers me up.
That's wrong, isn't it?

5 Reasons

1. So many of the blogs I like to read (and comment on) have stated, with varying degrees of encouragement and hostility, that I "should get my own blog," that I thought I would at least give it a try.

2. I thought that putting my desires and aspirations into words might help to actualize them, in the sense of being the first step to making the inchoate concrete. After all, I am the Queen of Lists.

3. It's kind of fun to explore topics that no one around here has any interest or patience with. Like the bombing of Pearl Harbour, like Middle Eastern music.

4 . It's a good way to waste time when I need to do something tedious, like housework. Blogging "seems" productive.

5. I love the comments! Hate chat, love comments. Hate small talk, love comments. There is something about this forum that brings out the best in people's thoughts. Concise, pithy, to the point. I may or may not be a blogger, but I am definitely a commenter.

Love and Marriage

Once there was, and once there wasn't a teenaged girl living in a foreign land. Her parents were or weren't from India, although she herself had grown up in Orange County. At any rate, she finds herself, now in her 14th year, living in a small frontier town on the edge of the Mojave desert, her father in prison, her mother, no less imprisoned, running a small motel day and night. Even more astonishing than this unlikely turn of events, is the fact that she has somehow become reincarnated as a Mexican. It's a lot to deal with during Freshman year.

She called a couple of evenings ago, "I need to ask your Mom about Mt. St. Helen for my science paper."

"Mt. St. Helen? What do you need to know?"

"...science project...blah blah blah...I can't talk to my Mom about anything. She never talks to me. I've already broken every rule of Hinduism. I want to try out for cheerleading. My Mom will never let me. I had a boyfriend, but he betrayed me. Boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend. I can't have a boyfriend until I finish college and medical school! My mom doesn't drive and doesn't speak English. That's why we have satellite, so we can get Indian channels."

"Uh...I was in Hawaii when Mt. St. Helen erupted."

Man. I have no idea how to help this poor kid. Clearly, she needs to have more to do besides sit around cooped up in a motel watching over-heated romantic Indian romances, and dreaming of being a cheerleader, but what can I do? I have my own daughter chasing tennis balls every night. It is all she can do to eat, finish her homework and fall into bed exhausted before she can think much about boys. Heh heh.

Anyway, that's not what this post is about.

This post is about arranged marriages. I said earlier that I wondered if they were one of those societal conventions which distinguishes the more highly civilized from the barbarians. This is a concept that came to me in an Indian restaurant once. It was my husband's first experience with Indian food, so we were discussing the entrees and the menu and so forth. He really liked the daal soup, and asked what was in it. It came to me that the list of ingredients were not what made the soup so good, rather the combination of flavors, subtly synthesized so that none really stood out, but they created a sort of dance across the palate. I made a comment about it which ended with the statement "...this is just one of those things left over from a more advanced civilization." Arranged marriages might be another of those things. After all, "falling in love" is all well and good, but can you really base a lifetime on hormones and adventure?

Evidently, you can about %46 of the time. I'm not sure what the odds are for arranged marriages lasting, but I do know that when it comes to my own kids, I really don't feel good about leaving such a major decision completely up to them. Surely a consensus among the adults in the situation would be a much better way to go into the future?

I don't know.

When I was an undergraduate ( I took a BFA in French, BTW), my boyfriend, Bah'man/Hossein/Jack, told me that his late father had had three wives. His mother was the youngest, and the only one with children. The wives lived separately from each other. The second wife was the widow of some relative, and his father married her rather than leave her homeless. Or so the story went. Evidently, the father was a big womanizer in general, and none of the wives were happily married. I have an image of them all stuffed into the back seat of a car, tight-lipped and cordial. B/H/J loved all of them and called the co-wives his Aunts. The thing is this: what is the difference between having three wives, and having a wife and two ex-wives? -- You can't put them all in the back seat, for one thing.

Since then, I've met many couples who's parents were matches made in living rooms and over tea tables. They seem to be as happy or happier than anyone else's parents. My daughters asked me once how it all worked, if you just showed up for your wedding, or what?

"It's not like that," I said. "You get to a certain age, and maybe some boy notices you, so he asks his mom. Everyone more or less knows each other anyway, so the mom and maybe the sisters just happen to pay a visit to your mom. They talk about different things, then someone starts asking about "the kids." Then, maybe some pictures come out, and the idea occurs to someone that it might be nice if you two got to know each other. So something is arranged, a dinner party, or another visit, or something. They everybody gets feedback. If you like each other, it goes for a little while, then you are expected to declare what's going on, engaged, or just friends, or whatever. If you don't like the person, then your mom starts visiting other moms. You do get a choice, and some input, depending on the type of family you have, but it's just not all up to you."

A the end of the day, my conclusion is that there isn't really such a difference between Moslem, or Hindu, or Chinese or Christian marriages. There is no divorce, really, here or there or anywhere. You can spend money, and feel like you've solved a problem, but at the end of the day you still have to deal with these people, especially if you have kids. There they are at the weddings, the funerals, in sickness and at Graduation. Not to mention finances. All you can really do is put space between you and add more people in. At least in the East there is a protocol, and a hierarchy, and everyone is expected to get along.

--Not that I'd want to live that way, mind you. Oh no, I've been raised to demand my God-given right to equality...but I can see the appeal. Frankly, there are days when I wouldn't mind a younger wife or two to help out around here, and it might be nice to have a baby in the house without having to go through that whole pregnancy ordeal.

So this is what I tell my kids, when they worry about if we are going to get a divorce. Don't worry, I say. There is no such thing.

If Not Now, When?

Here's a thing. I just overheard a conversation wherein a youngish, obviously affluent man was earnestly explaining to another how his "girl"friend wanted children, but he felt he wasn't ready. The use of the word girl in the previous sentence is quite loose, I'm sure, as the speaker had to be in his mid-thirties at least, and he mentioned that she was a year or so older than he.

This is not the first time I've heard this line of thought. The perception seems to be that in exchange for sexual favors, an innocent and decent person will be saddled with an unbearable load of debt and obligation.

OK, that's not entirely wrong.

BUT, it does seem to be such a tiny, reductionist, niggardly way to look at family life. My mental response is always "yeah, I get it. YOU're the baby."

I, myself, waited pretty long before having children because there were THINGS I wanted to get done. Education, some travel, living on my own. Eventually, though I felt ready to move over and give up center stage. Living for and by myself all the time just kind of got...stale. I wanted to come home to a group of people happy to see me, I wanted to share. It seems to me these guys (and there are a lot of them), are all about "what can you do for me" in their relationships. They can't commit. They aren't sure.

-- Bullshit. If you can commit to 5 years of car payments, or a 15 year mortgate, than you can stand up before God and your family and commit to stand by your mate. It's about "I take this woman and we are a family," not "I'm afraid of being inconvenienced if I don't keep my options open."

I hope the unlucky "girl"friend my earnest, young Mr. Sensitive was discussing dumps him on his narcissistic ass and finds a Grown Up some day. If there are any.

Grrr.

Collectibles

In 1971 I decided to forgo attachment to the material world. I don't remember what exactly triggered the decision, but I do remember rising from a pink frilly bedspread, crossing a pink rug to a small maple bookcase (against a pink wall), taking three ceramic figurines from a shelf and divesting myself of them at school the next day. Ommmm.

I'm pretty sure the idea came to me from certain books I had read which introduced me to ideas of Zen, and Buddhist thought. -- I'm talking about books like "Tales of a Japanese Grandmother," and "The Tao of Pooh." -- Kid's books. I was big into folk and fairy tales. I'm afraid the libraries on American Military bases are pretty limited as far as their selection of children's reading materials.

The constant changing of residence in my youth ( every 6 months or so during most of my college years) has helped me develop my taste for lightness and freedom from stuff, but has also left me with very little of a tangible nature from the past. I don't scrapbook, or have "good" china, or any of that kind of thing.

I do however, have a few collections, just like the civilian girls!

One of the things I collect is stories of what people were doing when Pearl Harbour was bombed. -- These are getting harder and harder to get, by the way. So far I have 5 that I can recall right now.

The first one came to me during the summer of my sophmore year in High School. I had a summer job tagging merchandise in a huge, dusty, rat-infested warehouse. An old Japanese lady, who I think might have been trying to keep me awake, told me that when she was a girl she lived in Honouliuli (a little plantation town up the road).

She and her sister were getting ready for church when they saw the planes coming over the pass. They didn't think much of this at first, because there were, and still are so many military bases all over O'ahu. The planes were flying in formation, and heading towards the open sea. "Oh, they're doing War Games," said the sister, "Let's watch!" So they decided to watch what they assumed to be USAF training manoeuvres. As the planes swept down the mountains they flew almost directly over their house, closer than they had ever flown before. So exciting! They could really see the planes right up close. The girls were surprised to see that there were suns, or the Japanese crests, painted under the wings. "Wow," said my friend, "They make these games so realistic, with mon and everything!" Then they saw what looked like rain coming from under the planes. Again they exclaimed excitedly to each other on how real it all looked.
It was only when smoke started billowing up from the harbour that they began to feel uneasy. When the sirens started, my friend ran and hid under the bed. She stayed there crying for a long time until they came and told her it was a War.

I'll tell you some more later.