judging you, judging me

This morning started with a fight.  Well, not really a fight -  more like a pissing contest.  On email.  Between a handful of moms I've never met.  Exposed to the 500+ other mothers who are part of a yahoo group about parenting in our town.

Some poor mom had posted a query about an accident that had happened which jeopardized the well-being of her infant but caused a minor injury to her brand-new uninsured care-giver.  She was looking for advice.  She got wrath, judgement - and apparently a threat or two - instead.

It carried on back and forth in my in-box and I found myself increasingly sucked in.  I know better than to engage the crazies - but they were polluting my otherwise very helpful little group and ganging up unfairly on this mom.  If online communities largely self-police, I felt I was being drafted.  In the end, I couldn't resist a short and carefully worded note on the importance of reserving judgement and creating a safe environment for us all to figure out how to raise our children the best way we can.  One of the pot-stirrers shot back a final snark.  I ignored it, the thread died, but the turkey got me down.

Then, I saw this, an opinion piece in the New York Times - yes, the New York Times, about moms who buy fancy cake pops for bake sales just to show off.  Really?  WHO CARES?  Who cares if she bakes, buys, or blows it off?  Who has time to analyze motives?   WHO CARES?

I suppose we all have a little sanctimommy in us.  One was definitely born in me with my first child - I probably spent half of my first maternity leave on urbanbaby telling everyone what was what.  And then I spent the next six years learning that parenthood is a humbling endeavour and a whole bunch of things I swore I'd never do/think/feel happened and taught me that judging too soon is a new mom's folly.

Or so I thought.  Perhaps I judged too soon.

The Pile

Gel nail disaster (featuring my son's thumb)

I had a steady babysitting job at the age of 11.  That's right: ELEVEN.  I sat for two adorable little ones, and I charged $1 per hour.  We played 'guess what flavor the m&m is' and watched cartoons and ransacked the basement.  And when they went to bed, I would tackle The Pile.  Next to the phone in the kitchen was a disorganized heap of papers and miscellaneous stuff.  Every Saturday night for months I would sort and stack them into neat piles.  At least I did until I got feedback from the three year old: "Mommy doesn't want you to straighten her papers any more."

I have my own pile now.  Actually, I have a lot of piles.  And lists.  And on the weekend, I tackle them.  Sometimes I tackle a list.  Sometimes I tackle a pile.  More often than not, the pile is part of the list, and the list is part of the pile.

I've found that the amount of piles and lists I have directly correlates to the state of my grooming.  I don't mind being busy, or feeling busy, but I sure do hate looking busy.  Because while a pile can wait, eyebrows, or, say, grey roots, are less understanding.  Once upon a time, Scarlett O'Hara's hands gave her away.   I guess mine do too.  After a seven week period which encompassed full-time work, a two week visit from my sister-in-law, a Gala for CASA's 25th Anniversary, two extended power outages, a spouse away for weeks on business, Halloween,Thanksgiving and then Christmas decorating - the house was awash in piles.  And I walked around with this trashy half on-half off gel manicure for at least two weeks (the first three weeks they looked great!).  

This weekend I reclaimed both my house and my hands and am left only with my list. But I crossed off The Piles, The Nails, and now I can cross off The Blog Post.  

What piles up for you during busy periods?  And more importantly, how do you hide it?  

Blethering Heights

So, I've renamed the blog.

It turns out Blethering Heights wasn't such a good name after all.  They say if you want to test out a name for your kid you should introduce yourself to someone in a bar with that name, and then go yell it on a playground.  If either makes you hesitate, go back to the drawing board.

I suppose I should have practiced that myself, having now mentioned my blog both in bars and on playgrounds and cringed each time. 

I'm not sure this is much better.   But at least it's on topic.  And available.

What do you think?  Better?

The Perfect Storm

Working parenthood is a study in organization, back-up plans and dealing with whatever the day throws at you - it's a constantly shuffling house of cards, where the deck often seems stacked against you. This particular mix of challenges is perhaps best summed up in one of my favorite blog posts of all time, Domestic Enemies of the Working Mom - to which I will humbly add Major Holidays and Weather Events - the convergence of which this past weekend, created the perfect storm of working parenting challenges.

Being present for holidays and making them special is important to all parents and certainly so for working parents.  For kids of a certain age, Halloween is about as good as it gets and I was going to be damned if I missed it.  (Not all employers get this - my husband had a 5 PM meeting scheduled yesterday).  So as usual I put planning into (and pressure onto) Halloween again this year - I even negotiated working from home on October 31st into my latest assignment because trick or treating starts so early and I didn't want to miss it, or be rushed.

Then, as if costume shopping, pumpkin carving, candy buying and trick-or-treating were not enough for memory-making, our elementary school actually sent home a note saying that not only were parents invited to come see the parade at school at 12:30, but they were also encouraged to pick the kids up at 11:15, bring them home for lunch, put them in their costumes. I don't know what kind of denial this district is in about working parenthood, but despite thinking that it was an absolutely ridiculous suggestion, I completely fell for it and rearranged everything to bring my kids home for lunch, at which point I noticed a classroom was full of kids eating.  What a promising development to discover that the other parents are not only smarter but also more confident than I am when it comes to these things.

Really, though, it would have been manageable.  If it hadn't snowed.  A lot.  All weekend.  On all our beautiful, ancient, three-story-high sycamore trees in full leaf.

Because while holidays can be complicated for working parents, they can't hold a candle to weather events when it comes to making you scramble and improvise. So for me and all the moms I know in town, this is what this weekend looked like:

1. Snow, falling tree limbs and power lines coming down all day Saturday.
2. Kids desperate to play in the snow but unable to (see #1). 
3. Kids bored and destroying the interior of the house while mother nature does the same to the street.
4.  A crack, boom and then power failure followed by the room temperature dropping to 50 degrees.  Fresh regret for not buying a house with a fireplace.
5.  Eating dinner in the dark and piling the whole family in one bed.
6.  Waking up on Sunday to realize the whole east coast is buried in branches so you might not get power back for a while.
7. Attempting to run the week's worth of errands you were going to run on Saturday only to discover everything is shut. (See #6)
8. Discover that only one of your posse of friends still has power.
9.  Jump at the first offer of shelter, bring over all your halloween shit, the entire contents of your freezer, and air mattress and wine. 
10. Spend Monday navigating, in no particular order: no power for your laptop, no train service to Manhattan, a busses Standing Room Only, a car fire backing up the Lincoln tunnel, delayed opening or cancelled school (we had both), lunch at home with kids who are miserable in the cold house and would have rather stayed in school with their classmates, thank you very much, crossed signals with the nanny, the roads closed on both sides of the house due to live wires in the street, enduring a 2 hour indoor Halloween parade with 200 other parents although you are the only one who looks like you haven't showered since Friday and are wearing the wool sweater you slept in Saturday night, the sinking realization that this will be the state of things for the foreseeable future and then the two consecutive PA announcements that there will be another delayed opening on Tuesday and oh, Halloween has been postponed.

As you can see by points 1 - 10, yesterday I broke one of the cardinal rules of working parenthood: "Though shalt go with the Flow", also known as "God grant me the patience to accept the things I cannot change" or even, if you can swing it: "Who Cares?"  Yesterday, I felt sorry for myself.

But today is another day.  A cold, still powerless day, yes, but one where I have the presence to recognize those other things that come with perfect storms: rainbows, silver linings and moments of calm.  For me these would be: amazing friends who are enthusiastically hosting us without even a whisper of how long our stay might be, the world's most flexible babysitter who rocked up to cover this morning's delayed opening AND drive carpool for me, a husband who is sleeping alone in a freezing cold house just to keep an eye on things, and who drove me my work clothes this morning at 7:15, kids who are going with the flow and (more or less) behaving themselves while sleeping on an air mattress in an attic guestroom with me, and colleagues who couldn't care less that I didn't make it in yesterday.  Oh, and a seat on the train.

Drinking my own Kool Aid

Ah, the teachable moment. Why do I always seem to learn from them too?

Recently, in the chaos of a weekday morning, despite a caution, my son spilled grape juice on his khaki pants. Time to learn about stain removal! We went to the laundry. The stain was identifed. I pulled out the stain stick, ready to preach to ...the apparently converted.

"OXY CLEAN!!!!!" My son starts wiggling and waggling and his eyebrows are all up in his forehead with delight.

I think my boy, seven weeks into kindergarten, has just read the label. My eyebrows shoot all up in my forehead with excitement. Yes! Yes! Oxy Clean!

"That's on TV!!!!!!!"

Oh.

"We have that?!!? I didn't know we had that!!" He is grinning from ear to ear. "I gotta tell my sister. Veev! Veev! We have something from TV!"

Now my son is teaching me, a mother who has spent 17 years making television commercials, five of them for Kool-Aid, the effects of advertising on children (They would they have loved those ads - Oh, Yeah!).

I suddenly understand the Oxy Clean media buy, which seems to own a time slot during Tom & Jerry, which, for my sins, we record. This past weekend my son got marker on my mother's carpet. She got her Spray n' Wash stick. They both watched as the marker stayed in the carpet. My son shook his head. "Grandma, you should have used Oxy Clean."

This compounded teachable moment has led to another about healthy skepticism, and not accepting things at face value. This is a bit much for a boy of 5 to absorb. But so is the concept of car insurance, which apparently he was urged to buy this morning.

The final teachable moment? Perhaps it's time to press pause on Tom & Jerry afterall? Nah, we just mastered fast-forwarding instead.

Daughters of the Revolution

I am the Gen X daughter of a Boomer, and the mother of a girl who, I learned today, is on the trailing end of the newly named Generation Z, or the iGen. Lately I have been thinking a lot about what one generation of mothers gives to the next, and how some of our challenges are timeless, while others are shaped by the times. What will my daughter take from my choices and experiences? And how will those choices and experiences shape the advice I give her?

Our Boomer moms were the first generation of liberated women, and they raised us Gen Xers to forge new paths, follow our dreams, maintain some degree of financial independence and yes, pursue successful careers. Because of them, we are the lucky beneficiaries of the Freedom to Choose, finances aside, whether to work or not. But lots of moms (grandmothers) have strong opinions about the choices their daughters make when they become moms themselves - especially when there is already a working spouse in their house. The question I've been mulling is: Do Boomer Women's attitudes around working women and working mothers shift when they become grandmothers? Or have they simply shifted with the trends of our times? Or are we all collectively grappling with the newer complexities that freedom and choice give us?

Yesterday I read Kate Bolick's provocative and well-researched article All the Single Ladies in the Atlantic about the rise of single working women and the dearth of conventionally-defined "eligible men" as an unintended consequence of the rising success of women. I was struck by the parallel path I had been taking with this post, and how the issues our generation faces are as thorny for those who marry and mate as they are for those who do not. Bolick writes how her "future was to be one of limitless possibilities" and how "this unfettered future was the promise of my time and place." Amen - I hear that! But when she added, "What my mother could envision was a future in which I made my own choices. I don't think either of us could have predicted what happens when you multiply that sense of agency by an entire generation" I sensed it wasn't just the single ladies who wondered if maybe there needed to be an asterisk to the promise of limitless possibilities* (like, *they all come with trade-offs). And at what point do I start incorporating that asterisk into how I inspire my children about their futures?

The Boomer voices in my world - not just my mother's - repeat the chorus 'It goes by so fast.' It resonates. I can move myself to tears just imagining an empty nest years from now. But it seems to me when this truth is spoken in the context of career choices - the implication is if you work too hard, you'll miss it. It's worth noting that I don't know a lot of Boomer women who sustained successful, demanding careers through motherhood - and I certainly haven't had Boomer moms as mentors or sponsors in my professional life. So I'm supplementing with the views of two prominent feminist Boomer grandmothers who have had their cases made in the media this summer - Elisabeth Badinter and Erica Jong.

Soon to be released is Badinter's latest book, Conflict: the Woman and the Mother which was profiled at length in the New Yorker (in an article by Jane Kramer that I recommend paying to download if you have to) and more briefly in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in which she takes aim at "motherhood fundamentalism," laying out a number of themes that have driven women back into the home and away from work. In response there were several pieces by Erica Jong published in the Wall Street Journal ("Mother Madness") and the New York Times this year about today's mothers - including the assertion that we are so focused on family that we are shunning sex. (To this there was a lovely response from a young mother named Hallie Palladino, in the New York Times' parenting blog, Motherlode).

Essentially they both argue that motherhood - with the rise of attachment parenting, co-sleeping, year-long breast-feeding, cloth diapers and home-made baby food have trapped mothers into an impossible set of expectations, all of which are keeping us increasingly tied to the home and feeling guilty when we provide any less than a 100% of ourselves to our children. Jong asks, "Is it even possible to satisfy the needs of both parents and children? In agrarian societies, perhaps wearing your baby was the norm, but today's corporate culture scarcely makes room for breast-feeding on the job, let alone baby-wearing. So it seems we have devised a new torture for mothers—a set of expectations that makes them feel inadequate no matter how passionately they attend to their children."

Still, when I surveyed my peers about what their mothers think about managing both career and family, there was a wide range of perspectives, some surprising, some inconsistent, but almost always coming from a supportive, well-meaning place. I wondered, when they discourage us, however subtly, from trying to juggle it all, is it because they falling victim to the same trends we are? Or, I wonder, it is a highly personal response - one that thinks of what is best for the grandchild first, then the daughter? Or is it simply a perspective that can only come from having a generation's worth of experience in parenting - that childhood is fleeting, and you don't need to have it all, all at once? Or that they see how hard the juggle is and wish it wasn't so? I've come to believe it is mainly the latter, but perhaps elements of all those things are true.

A college friend hit it on the head for me: "Overall, I think our mothers have the perspective of knowing there is no perfect/ideal choice and there are compromises to ourselves or our family, whatever path we may go. What my mother has stressed to me is how the level of contentment a mother feels directly correlates to the harmony of the family. For me, I believe this is an absolute truth - and my choices are, and will continue to be, a function of my families' unique needs, at any given time. I hope I can maintain that mantra...and maintain myself at the same time. I think my mom is most troubled by the amount our generation of mothers is attempting to juggle. Put to a simple example, our mothers (working or not) used playpens and didn't for a moment feel guilty about it -- that type of dynamic has completely changed and the impact to the family is very real. My mother-in-law seems saddened by all the pressures we have to be mothers and career women as well. There are serious growing pains with the choices we have - and our mothers are witnessing it. (italics mine)"

Do you think your children's well-being depends almost exclusively on you? Does your mom? How does she advise you about juggling it all? What's the most encouraging tip she's ever given you?

Before you respond, and I really want you to -- here's are my own mother's thoughts on this particular conundrum:

"The predominant factors that influence the advice a mother gives to her daughters are drawn from personal experience. So in my limited way, I gleaned “wisdom” from my own personal experience and passed along my feelings, observations, opinions and aspirations to my daughters. I felt happy, lucky, and very fortunate indeed to be able to stay at home and care for my daughters during their formative years. I surrounded myself with caring, upbeat, educated, professional women who had made the same choice that I did. We loved caring for our children and relished in bonding lifelong friendships. That was a magical time of discovering what really mattered in life. We volunteered in the community, engaged in creative activities, took classes, learned to cook, worked part time, and visited every child-friendly resource available. We stopped and smelled the roses. It was an option that today’s women and most men never have the good fortune to experience.

But all was not like the life of June Cleaver. There were days when being a full time mom felt trying and stressful, frustrating and limiting. While I was busy building my family, other women were busy building their careers. Being an achievement-oriented person, I sometimes felt that my life could have taken a different path, one that led to making lots more money, or one that led to more prestige, responsibility, accomplishment of things more highly valued and rewarded by society. I was outside looking in, and saw the glamorous, rewarding side of being a professional woman. I knew that excelling in a profession demanded concentration, hard work, time and energy, but because I had not chosen that route, I never gave much thought to how that concentration, hard work, time and energy could affect one’s life as a mother.

Throughout my formative years, I remember hearing over and over again that teaching was such a wonderful job (not career, profession, but job) for a woman. That, in fact, proved to be true. I could have it all. Or did I? I did feel that that career choice (did I have a choice?) in itself, was limiting. I don’t remember having a choice of what I wanted to do. It was always assumed that I would be a teacher.

When I returned to teaching full time at age 40, I was able to juggle my time, vacations, and experience success and fulfillment in my teaching career. What I did not have to do was work late, commute long distances, find daycare during school holidays, travel, worry about building my resume, posturing myself for raises or promotions, or keeping an eye out for future career opportunities for climbing the corporate ladder.

The advice that I gave my daughters over and over again, was that they could make whatever choices they wanted when choosing a career path. The world was theirs. However, this advice was heavily slanted towards keeping their options open for advancement, increased earning capacity and accomplishment in that path, something that was not available to me in my career. If you love teaching and stay in the classroom throughout your career, you are doing the same thing at the end of your career that you did on the first day of your career. And whether you are a rock star at teaching or a slacker, you are receiving the same pay as everyone else. I wanted my daughters to have choices that I felt I did not have. The advice that I gave never focused on careers that would be good for a woman, or for that fact, for a family.

Late in my career in education I moved to a position as an administrator in the central office of a large school system (15,000 employees). This position was similar to one in a large corporation - with it came stress, long hours, pressure, extreme visibility, politics, management and budgetary issues. I found myself so busy and consumed with work that my husband had to step up to the plate and manage the plans and arrangements for our daughter’s wedding!!! Was there such a thing as work/life balance? I was caught up in what my daughter is now experiencing, only I was doing this as an empty nester and she as a mother of young children. I’m not happy about the choice I inadvertently made to “opt out” of the wedding plans. Can I go back and redo it? That moment in time is lost forever.

We only get one chance to raise our children. There are no do-overs. But there are continuing opportunities to get back into the job market and a time to devote yourself to your career with a vengeance! When reentering the workforce, one might find, as I did, that I had the total support of my husband who was secure in his own career and shared family responsibilities and believed in me, maturity to make good decisions and the time to carry through and execute ideas flowing from those decisions. It’s true, I envisioned great opportunities for my daughters, but I could not have possibly imagined what it would be like to walk in their shoes. Times, economic conditions, attention to unique situations that arise in the family, nanny issues, and other outside influences all contribute to the stressors that make up life for a working professional and a mother. That said, seventeen years later, the house is very quiet. A person could feel drained and empty if all their eggs had been invested solely in the mommy basket for all those years."

She ended with, although we are not overly religious, Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 - 'To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven'. So this isn't new afterall. I guess doing it all, all at once, has been fraught with difficulty for thousands of years.

Ode to Working Mothers - with apologies to Rudyard Kipling

If you can be queasy morn after morn
And not complain, or tell others why
If you can keep up 'til the baby is born
But never allow an occasional sigh;
If you can fly to Dubai, jet-lag be damned
to negotiate, standing in for your boss
And still make the egg hunt as planned
But miss the first word, and not give a toss;

If you can climb the ladder, rung by rung
And get the results you yourself demanded
And not dwell on the lullabies a nanny sung
And focus instead on the deals you landed;
If you can make the most of every meeting
And catch the early train and bolt home
If you treasure each moment no matter how fleeting
and always make your priorities known;

If you can endure sudden illness at night
Or nerves, or bullies, or allergies, lice
Despite having to - must - go catch a flight
If you can be ruthless while still being nice--
If you have a partner who's willing to share
And can trust and depend on your sitter
If you can work late without much of a care
And miss bakesales, etc., without being bitter-

If you can arrange playdates while busy commuting
And stay ahead of the game, the trends and all this
If can juggle it all without losing your footing
And see all that you have, and not what you miss;
If you can beat those at the top (men)
If you can do this - and avoid all the drama
Then yours is the Industry - you'll be the Captain!
And what's more, your kids will be proud of you, Mama!