Sometimes you wake up and not five minutes into the day all you plans and hopes and goals shatter like so much ice sliding off the roof top (or exploding out of the pipes as the case may be). The day becomes just a frenzy of doing what needs to be done. Some times it don’t end at that day, but carries on to the next and the next. You barely have time to breathe or think, just to act.
Then you collapse into bed at night and you realize that despite everything you have a clean house, healthy happy children, a well rested husband and you’ve just spent the day with a good friend. And you realized crisis or not, you enjoyed the hell out it.
Yesterday: I got my license despite a harrowing test that was everything I’d fear it would be, except the yelling and failing part. Despite being agitated for a while I realized that the tester was completely impossible to please and I still passed. Besides I primarily want the license to drive to exercise class, the store on my own time table, and down town so I can go back to school. The furthest things is down town, which is only about 3 miles away and I don’t have to take the express way or even parallel park.
Then I came home and went ahead and applied for college. Like I said on Twitter I got my license and applied for college, I feel so grown up and responsible, and yet ten years younger.
Then I made my first drive alone, and my first drive at night, to Jazzercise where two things happened. 1. Both the Jazzercise instructor and my women’s health (aka “good”) doctor were both horrified at what the internalist had told me. They both say 1500 calories a day is insane, among other things. They not only advised me to avoid said doctor’s “advise” like the plague the other doctor gave me information on who to complain to and strongly encouraged me to do so. I knew the internalist was giving bad advise, and ignoring the whole point of all this, which is to help me find a lifestyle that I can physically and mentally live with. I need to be healthy, but I need to know, mentally that I don’t need to be a certain weight or BMI to be healthy. Having support helps, and feeling ignored and attacked doesn’t. It just harms and encourages people to do unhealthy, destructive things.
Thing number is just totally awesome. See the clinic I go to is old, old, old, like built in the 40s or so. But in that complex is an old Marine hospital from the Civil War. It was built in 1845 and was once the best rehabilitation clinic for military personnel in the area. They’ve been rehabilitating it. It’s haunted as hell. I set part of Plague Lives in it so I took pictures of the area to use should PL get picked up. Jason and I found faces in almost every picture of the Marine hospital. This building is just a gorgeous piece of antebellum awesome, not to mention haunted as hell. And yesterday Jazzercise class was IN it. It was so awesome. I got permission (or at least, a we won’t tell on you) to take some pictures next class which will be Wednesday if yoga is held there as well, and next Monday if it’s not.
Today: My little girl had her first school performance and I had to be there. Thanksgiving is always a rough time when it comes to this because, spirit of thankfulness aside, the performances of “pilgrim” and “indian”s always disturb me. What happened AFTER Thanksgiving, the religious overtones and the borderline to outright “accidental” racism against Native Americans is not really brought up to the kids, but I can’t forget it so the celebration of the holiday always kind of bothers me. Not that it stops us, because ultimately holidays are about family to me and I’m always ready to celebrate my family.
Speaking of which we actually have Thanksgiving plans this year, which involves actually spending time, voluntarily and joyfully with actual family. It’s been many years since it’s been something other than just us. I’m rather excited about this.
Other than that it’s been house cleaning, form filling and reading as far as getting anything actually accomplished today. I did drive to the grocery store with my daughter today, and we had fun looking around the store at our own pace and looking at parts we commonly skip with the boys. But we had no money to really even treat ourselves, so we just made mental Yule lists instead. (And yes, you can get holiday gifts at the grocery store. We’re real big on fancy bath stuff we don’t usually get for holidays, plus the girl asked for character a cartoon character toothbrush and toothpaste. Can you say awesome stocking stuffers? Awesome.)
It just figures though that I can now legally just grab the keys and kids and go, and I have no money to go anywhere.
Despite the hubub my last two posts on abuse have caused here I am again, talking about it again.Here’s your chance to skip it if you don’t want to hear it. (It’s a long post.)
This will probably be an inflammatory post, so if you’re not in the mood for it, keep trucking.
Gender an racial rights/privilege is one of many ongoing conversations between my husband and I. For him it began when I handed him Guy Garcia’s The Decline of Men, and for me it primarily became and issue when multiple female in my life, over a period of a few months, informed me that I’m not an empowered modern woman because I stay home with the kids. The sticking point to that is their complete ignorance of the fact that I CHOOSE to stay home with the kids because I enjoy it and because it has so far offered me the opportunity to write and to try to build the career I want, rather than the career I have to take to pay bills. Choice is the key point there, and in my opinion being an empowered modern woman is about having the opportunity and the ability to chose what I want to do, rather than being forced into a role deemed appropriate for me, which includes so called feminists and empowered women who feel I should be the one out working and make the man stay home with the kids.
I don’t consider myself a feminist because everyone I’ve met who has proudly declared themselves so have, in my opinion, mutated the idea of equal right for women to mean reversal of rights, where men are forced into the situations women have been for years and women become the powerful, the oppressors. How is this equal rights??
Now I do not mean to imply that all feminists are like this. Clearly, based on the number of wacked out defenders of Roman Polanski, and the number of people who think Chris Brown must have only hit Rhiana because she deserved it, the states where domestic abuse is considered a pre-existing condition, etc we are still in the battle for equal rights. We need women and men fighting for fairness. But fairness does not come at the suppression and discounting of the “privileged” persons.
I admit this is rant is partly inspired by a certain other rant about the “feminizing of science fiction” (which I’m not going to link to.) I don’t understand why catering to a female audience would be, in any way, minimizing the strength of a genre any more that I understand why a female doctor in a practice would weaken the skill of the male doctors in the practice. I also know that the screed in question was not written by a logical, intelligent person so I’m not sure there’s even a point to reacting to it.
But more and more, I am seeing a wave of activists who don’t understand, or seem to want the equal in equal rights. Why is the idea of men’s rigts laughable? Why is it offensive?
My own experiences with GLBTQ activism is a perfect point. I joined a group in college and while some of the members where happy to have me, some blatantly told me I wasn’t really one of them because bisexuality didn’t exist. And when I started dating my husband, he tried to get involved (because he was involved with getting Fairness passed here in Louisville) and was outright rebuked, because he was straight. This, combined with a select few who tried to convince me that dating a man was a horrible thing because they were destined to abuse me and repress me and take away who I was, led to my falling out with the local GLBTQ community. Put simply, Jason and I were not allowed to be equal to them because we weren’t gay.
How is that Fairness? How is that equal?
In many of the ensuing reactions to the SF screed people have called “Men’s rights” a joke. I don’t get that. I know we’re engaged in a fight for equality for minorities and that by the nature the “privileged” white male (remember I don’t believe privilege is universal) must give up some of that power to balance the scales. But some does not mean all.
Another primary case we use in our discussions are the Dove commercials about female body image. I adore Dove’s drive. I completely agree that women need to think they are beautiful at every size, not at the size the media says we should be. I try to compliment my daughter every day, on her physicality and on her actions. I think there are many, many girls, teens and women out there that desperately need to know they are beautiful people.
But where’s the help for boys growing up with the same problems? Where’s the Tyra of male self esteem, to tell them they don’t have to be muscle bound emotionless hard asses to be male?
And I believe these things are linked, because if men weren’t chained to a gender image of their own then gay males and transgender males also wouldn’t be suffering as much for not fitting the stodgy “male” stereotype. Self image and self esteem ARE gender issues, but they are not female, or trans or gay issues.
We all know about anorexia and bulimia, but it is considered a female problem and we focus on building up the health of the women to battle these issues. Meanwhile over a million men also suffer from these eating disorders (numbers taken directly from the National Eating Disorder website). Why is it that we ignore these men?
Well that’s because unlike the women, who are seen as suffering victims in need of help (and yes, absolutely they are) the men are seen as pussies that just need to “man up” and get over it and stop being sissies. Yet this social ideal is common, and ingrained to the point of not even being thought of. How is that equal?
I have a son and a daughter and in raising them I face a lot of the same issues. How do I built their self confidence? How do I help them not be crushed by the world around them and the hardships they must endure?
Recently, much to my rage, a woman in my life has blatantly taken a pro women side when it comes to my children. My daughter is important, and addressed, and invited places and treated as if she is valuable, and my son is completely ignored, excluded from invitations, etc. This is not someone new to my life, this is someone who changed my son’s diapers and played with him as a toddler. The blatant sexism, regardless of which sex it is against infuriates me. I would never tolerate someone excluding my daughter in this way, so why should I tolerate it toward my son?
It is this base question that I see ignored in the gender battles these days. Man hating language, derision and debasing is somehow okay because “men have all the privilege”. What kind of excuse is that? Why is it okay to belittle, ignore and yes, in cases, oppress the majority simply because they are the majority?
I don’t know about you but I’m not trying to switch gender, or racial, or classist roles. I’m trying to eliminate them. I’m not trying to “show the white male what it’s like”. I’m trying to form a world where I have the choice and the opportunity and the respect.
This line between “They’re important/privileged” and “we’re important/privileged” only exists in our heads. It is not us or them. That kind of mentality can never result in equality and respect. We aren’t fighting a battle to put the majority in their places, we’re fighting to eliminate gender, race, religion, sexual identity and preference, etc as a means to define the worthy and the not.
I want to live in a world where jobs, whether it be in a traditional workplace or the job of raising the children and maintaining the house, go to the most qualified and most able person, not to the one who is a certain gender.
In my own life I chose to be the stay at home mom. I had more schooling and a higher paying job when Jason and I began our domestic voyage. I was forced to quit my job for medical reasons during pregnancy, but afterward it would have been almost as easy for me to rejoin the job force as for him to have. But not only did I want to be at home with my kids, if (again) afforded me the time to pursue things that I find empowering, and likewise being in the workforce allowed Jason to pursue things that he finds empowering.
This is not a case of “the man” forcing “the woman” to stay home, it’s a case of partners weighing the options and deciding what is best for them and the family unit (which just so happens to have a traditional shape, but the choices weren’t right for our gender, they were right for us as people). And that’s how is should be, a world where the choice is available and the individual rules over concepts like race and gender and their ilk.
As Ursula Le Guin points out in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” as long as one person remains oppressed and marginalized there can be no freedom, and no utopia.
“Parent” is a loaded word, even when divided into “mother” and “father”. Everyone thinks they can do it, and better than the people they see. Better than their own parents.
Yeah, not all parents are good parents. Some are down right abusive. Some, in trying to do what they think it right negate the child’s ability to be a whole person of their own. There’s black, and a narrow band of white and a hell of a lot of gray.
Mother’s Day reminds us to honor our mothers. But it can be a cruel reminder to those of us who have lost their mothers (mine died when I was 9) or those out there with mothers who abandoned, neglected or abused them. It is very hard, possibly impossible to face the idea of what a mother is supposed to be and reconcile it with what an abusive female parent has been.
The same is true for fathers and Father’s Day.
Just over a week ago my father had a stroke and spent some time in the hospital. I hadn’t talked to him in about five years, not due to an argument, like many in my family think, but because I’d finally broken under the pressure of misery.
See, you start to realize things when you become a parent yourself. When you have to make the choices between what you want or need and what your child or children needs. More than any other conversation, memory or event in my life, traveling the path of parenthood hammered in just how much was different between how I was raised and how I raise my children. There is massive gap between the two. It’s impossible for me to look at all I have done for my kids, and do, without thinking, without even really considering putting myself first, and not realize that I was neglected, at best as a child.
There are some things children shouldn’t think about their parents. There are some places children shouldn’t go. There are feelings children shouldn’t feel about parents. Knowing now, seeing now, every single day, how my actions so easily effect my children and how I hold myself responsible for them receiving the mental, physical and emotional care they need to be whole, healthy people later in life, I can’t help but blame my parents, and secondarily the other adults who could have intervened and didn’t, for many of the negative things that happened in my childhood.
I have been told I am a bad person for this. I have been told that my parents didn’t have to take care of me, and I should just be thankful that they kept food on my plate and a roof over my head.
But parenthood doesn’t end at paying the bills. Parenting is in the small moments that fill our lives, many of which we don’t remember, save for their contributions to making us grow up feeling loved, or otherwise. Parenthood is about turning off the television to listening to what your child has to say when they need you. Parenthood is making sure they have clothes that fit, the self esteem to face their challenges and tools they need to keep themselves clean and well functioning (even if you have to be that tool, making sure they bathe, have clean clothes and brush their hair and teeth daily). Parenting is as much about defending your child as it is about disciplining your child when they have done something wrong.
Some parents only offer one of these sides. Some, offer none and instead seek to pay their children off to be quiet, well mannered accents to their lives instead of stresses.
Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day means something different to the people out there, which is a lot of us, who have the other kinds of mothers, the kind you see on Law and Order instead of sitcoms.
While some people are sending their mothers tokens of their appreciation and affection, and others are morning their mothers, or their lack of good mothers, I’m using this Mother’s Day to renew my vow to my children. I will be better than my parents. I will give you the tools you need to shape yourselves instead of forcing you into the shape I want you. I will hold you responsible for your actions, and expect the best of you.
But I will also defend you against those who seek to hurt you. Those who make you feel worthless, or inferior. I will build you up against the hazards of the would, rather than be the one who gets to leave the first scars.
I owe you my best, which isn’t perfect, isn’t easy, and isn’t always what you’d like.
Rose Lee is a precocious five year old who likes playing Monster Rancher almost as much as she likes her Mom. She thinks ghosts and vampires and zombies are scary, “but only a little bit”. Vampires & Zombies is her first sale. (Editor’s Note: Yes, in the spirit of publishing I paid her for it.)
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A zombie came into the room, but he was a good zombie. Then a scary bad zombie came in.
“Jackass!” he said.
The scary zombie went over to AnneMarie and started poking her in the head with a pencil.
AnneMarie got poked in the head by a pencil and a bad zombie. She screamed.
The vampire was in his blood bath and heard her scream. He jumped out of the bath and went and rescued her.
He had a real sharp pencil and poked the bad zombie into the ear, and it came out the other ear and it hurt real bad. The bad scary zombie fell to the ground and was dead. And they covered him to the death.
AnneMarie was so glad that she said, “Thank you!”
He said, ” You’re welcome.”
AnneMarie gave the vampire a hug.
Then AnneMarie went over to the vampire’s house and they took a blood bath together. They blew lots of blood bubbles. A really big one popped over them and it was like raining blood.
It was very good. I say was because one of the loafs is already gone.
Rose Lee is a precocious five year old who likes playing Monster Rancher almost as much as she likes her Mom. She thinks ghosts and vampires and zombies are scary, “but only a little bit”. Vampires & Zombies is her first sale. (Editor’s Note: Yes, in the spirit of publishing I paid her for it.)
