Were we even there?

Today a high school acquaintance “friended” me on Facebook and I accepted (though, as usual with these requests, I had never spent any personal time with her in my life), then checked out her profile. The thing that struck me is hardly unique among people my age: her profile picture was of her kids, not her. On closer examination, I saw that she was there, but in the background, with only her face and a sweet, self-effacing smile showing around the bodies of the small children she crouched beside.

This morning at 5:40 AM my daughter, in the next room, began crying, as she always does but not usually this early; and I lurched out of bed to see what was going on. She requested milk in her sippy cup, and when I told her that it was still time to sleep, not eat, she insisted, “I hungry!” So I got the milk, gave it to her, and flung myself back into my bed, in anger that I could not express toward my child. I can barely remember a single day in the past 3 years when I have been able to wake up on my own, when I wanted to, instead of being interrupted out of sleep.

The dining room in my apartment is a room that is never used. It holds a little piece of my grandparents’ house, where I spent so much happy time as a child, in the form of their 50’s wooden table, chairs, sideboard, and jelly cabinet. Large, red-toned portraits of them, taken in the early 1980s, rest high up on the walls looking down at me so often—I feel—in disappointment that I have no innate abilities (or maybe willingness) to create a warm and nurturing home; to keep a relationship, a marriage, a contract, a pleasant demeanor…erect a Christmas tree, host dinners, enjoy being a member of the larger social structure. How did I get this way? Is this how I am supposed to be? Is there some model for “bohemian, neurotic, introvert parent” that is missing in our culture? Do these labels absolve anything—just because I know I have these qualities, what do I do?

And so, the picture of my high school acquaintance kneeling in a streambed with her four children and muscular husband awakened old debates in me and a yearning for that word “family,” which is so fraught that it is impossible to feel positively about it and impossible to live without what it represents.

The division I feel inside continues in my life, in which I am dating someone who, though he has a daughter, too (older than mine), does not want to be involved with my child, at least at present, or to see me as a mom. He prefers that we get together outside of our domestic situations, current and former. So while our exes babysit, he picks me up in his sporty car like I am a teenager, and we progress from restaurant, to bar, to bed, to a brief iced-coffee session in the morning, then back to our separate obligations. This world we inhabit is about romance, leisure—illusion. Because how can these things be real when they ignore huge parts of our experience and identities? And yet, what single mom would not want such a break from the rigors and disappointments of life? A chance to enjoy globes of red wine, animated discussion about art and relationships, spontaneous time together; and avoid mundane conversations about dry cleaning or potty training?

On one of our first dates, he and I went to a wilderness preserve in another part of the state. It was just before spring had begun, and the irises he was hoping to show me hadn’t bloomed yet. Instead, there were all these waving, brassy stalks where, in a month or less, the flowers would surely appear. They were dry like husks. They resembled wheat, nourishment, but also gave an impression of decay. It was a windy day, and there was something displacingly eternal—I know of no better adjectives for this—about the sound the wind made blowing these parched golden things around. It was a dry, old moan-hiss that said, the world has been here forever, and this life is just an accretion of perceptions arranged in time, not necessarily wedded to anything stable…look deeply into anything and it will blow away.

It was a second or third date. We held hands, or his arm was around me, as bundled in our coats we walked and sat and listened in the quiet, far from highways. I don’t know what he was thinking, but on top of the thrill of feeling his body in contact with mine, that newness, I felt a detached weariness, like we were each just collections of particles experiencing other collections of particles, forming them into stories and feelings. Were we really even there at all? I imagined how months before we met, that sound had been there, with only the small life—insect, fish, mold—subsisting in that mute place to witness it; and it would be there in the utter blackness that night after we left, when people in the cities and towns nearby were fashioning certainties of their plans and happiness.

 

Irises at Jean Lafitte National Historic Park and Preserve

Mama Juice

For about the past year I have been part of a local mom's group (you pay dues, there is a yearly banquet with a "theme"...the whole thing). I am not much of a joiner but I had an idea that I needed to meet other moms who would understand what I was going through as a mom-person. Also, at the time I joined I had just read the wonderful book Mommies Who Drink by Brett Paesel and had a vision of women coming together in a bar once a week, talking raunchily about everything in life over a shot or Zinfandel or several. I thought knowing other moms would help me to feel less alone as a woman transforming from a regular person into a mom (it doesn't just happen when you pee on the stick or change your first diaper...); or that at least it would help make me feel like less of a fuck-up and less of a shut-in, excluded from everything I used to do in my pre-child life. Intead, almost every time I have attended an event, with or without my daughter Sara, I have felt horribly out of place like I am visiting a suburban neighborhood in the 50's or 60's as the Scarlet Letter woman or something (you know, with a big "A" or a sign reading "I don't breastfeed" branded on my forehead).

The problem with moms coming together is that you check yourself against the other people to see if you're normal and are doing things right. So if you happen to be in a group where the other people all do it a certain way that is different from you, you're going to feel defensive and like you have to put down their way of life. This is how I have felt, and I'm not necessarily proud of it. However, it is not a crime that they all have husbands and regular babysitter/nanny/au pairs and are stay-at-home (must be nice to have the option) and breastfeed for at least a year and co-sleep. These are just choices that are made as one goes along as a parent, and are based on many complex factors. What IS a crime is...the group members wanting to change the once-monthly Moms' Night Out to a Moms' Morning In. As is so often true in my life, it is here, regarding the convivial consumption of alcohol in an actual restaurant or bar outside one's house, that I draw the line and place myself firmly on the alcohol side and NOT on the brunch / board games / potluck side.

Yes, our little group had a quaint and, by me, beloved tradition of having 1 night per month when moms are invited to meet up at a local restaurant, bar or otherwise slightly hip, atmospheric place and grab a drink or dessert together. It was bad enough that these "nights out" started at 8 and were history by 10pm. Bad enough that some moms drank seltzer, not alcohol, and others couldn't stop talking about the cute habits of their child the entiiiire time. But at least there was a gesture toward the idea of mothers still having an adult life, doing things they had done before becoming parents, and walking a little on the dark side. Staying out until 9 pm! Having a glass of wine or...2! Letting someone else put your kid to bed! Maybe the conversation might stray toward sex or crazy things we did in college! (It never did.) Alas this dark side proved too much for the group and the Moms' Night Out, after several months of pathetic / nonexistent attendance, is now going to be held only every other month, to be alternated with a Moms' Night In of board games at someone's home. One person suggested that the Night Out be jettisoned altogether and replaced with a Moms' Morning In brunch, also at someone's house (not actually out at a restaurant; that courts the dark side of feckless, money-spending self-involvement, not to mention that you are then fraternizing among the enemy--i.e., people who don't yet have kids and thus, still appear in public and seem to be enjoying themselves, not tensely managing their screaming toddler).

I know I am not just a parent-hating freak who happens to be a parent because I know other moms, through different social channels, who feel the same way I do and are also wonderful, devoted parents. The most nurturing mom I know, who happens to be my child's daycare provider, refers to wine as "Mama juice." She gets it--how we need time to ourselves and pockets of our lives that are not owned by our child and our fierce protection of our child, fear for our child's future, and dismay at our post-child body and identity as a Mommy. I go to a bi-weekly dinner at a single girl friend's house, at which there is usually at least one other mom in attendance, and they all get it too and we have amazing, truly joyful nights of great food, free-flowing wine, fires down by Cayuga Lake, reading poems out loud, dancing, laughing hard, joint-smoking (occasionally). Sometimes someone brings her child and that is welcome, too but the child is never really the center of attention, they are just part of what the adults are doing in this harmonious, organic way. This happens to be my idea of good parenting--that you don't give up all your pre-baby interests and become severely domesticated, that you are a role-model to your child that a woman can have a life and interests of her own, that even if you spend 90% of your free time being with your child and on domestic duties, something is left over for just you and that something is NOT apologetic for wanting a night out or loving "Mama juice" and the fact that you still have your own desires, thoughts, and feelings that would not be appropriate to share with your child (until the age when she can have a glass of wine too...) or in a playdate situation.