As some of you may know, I spent the last 4 weeks caring for my husband's children. And as most of you are aware, I have the maternal instincts of an amphibian and as such have received many requests for updates (or more correctly, debriefings) on the experience from curious friends (read: schadenfreude) .
So here is the first part of my general observations on children and parenting. I'll start with the part I like least: Parents.
WARNING: Overly sensitive Mom-bots stop reading here. While it isn't my intended goal, I will gladly accept your offense as a bonus.
1) Most people have children for all the wrong reasons if they even bother having a reason at all.
Of course, this assumes that there could exist anything so compelling that one would give up freedom, vaginal elasticity and disposable income. When questioned, most people will confess to never having given the "why" a second thought. It was simply a foregone conclusion. Or they expected a child to give them purpose or save their marriage or be an extension of their lives. Which brings us to ...
2) Having children is a privilege, not a right.
Much like wearing Spandex, people assume that if they can, they should. And that sense of entitlement carries over to how they deal with their lives as parents. So, on behalf of everyone who knows a "Martyr Mom"...
3)Raising kids is supposed to be hard-STOP BITCHING
Once upon a time, children were the unfortunate price of sexual pleasure and were treated as such. Now that children are a choice, if not a luxury, people have this outrageously romanticized view of child rearing and children in general. Your experience, Saint Mommy of the Suburb, is not unique: diapers have always smelled, babies are supposed to cry and those gorgeous, engorged breasts in the La Leche League poster don't look like any mommy outside of LA. Get over it! You made this choice, and if it was uninformed that is squarely on you. Your hubris made you choose to take on the job of a god and create life and dump on it a crowded, fucked up planet. Seriously, how easy could you think it was going to be? You don't deserve any sympathy for dealing with the conditions of a commitment you freely took on. And your "sacrifice" does not oblige your kids so adjust your expectations of them too! By which I mean...
4) Get a life: your children are busy trying to live their own
Once the umbilical cord is cut that individual ceases to be a part of you and is...an individual! Ta Da! And anyone who says "my children are my whole life" is automatically suspect. If that's the case then, what were you before and what do you bring to the table for them? They're giving you a reason to exist but what do they get in return? A child's identity is not an extension, nor their life a sequel, of his or her parents'. Your kid is not your opportunity to right past wrongs or fix what's broken in you. If you couldn't play piano chances are little Mary won't either. What do famous performers Billy Joel, Mariah Carey and Alicia Keyes have in common? All had mothers who were opera singers. If you weren't one too, stop expecting your kids to live out your frustrated dreams of Carnegie Hall. And forget about them being your personal fan club. If you don't like yourself chances are they aren't going to like you much either. If you are incapable of creating and maintaining relationships in your life it is absolute lunacy to think that genetics and filial piety will somehow guarantee they'll stick around once they don't need you. And speaking of jumping ship...
5) Your children are no guarantee that your marriage will last-nor is that their job.
They didn't take vows or make commitments. Your marriage started as, hopefully is, and should always remain, a romantic relationship between two adults. Children are the product of this union-not its reason for existing. If you've forgotten how to bring sexy back, I assure you that no toddler will bring it for you. I've actually heard it said that children "cement" a marriage. Only if you mean cement in the same context as the mob. Children should carry a warning label: "Marital Solvent-add 1 kid and distance one spouse, continue adding kids to remove spouse completely". And this extends to your other relationships a well, to wit...
6) My not having children is not a reflection on your life choices and I am not a freak for choosing to live my life without kids.
Stop holding your lifestyle up to mine like you're trying to match a bag and a pair of shoes. If you had a child for the purposes of validating your existence you are the worst kind of piece of shit and your kids should pull a "Menendez Brothers" on you post- haste. If you and I had a friendship based on our mutual interests, similar tastes or just proximity to the same bar, why would you assume that I want the topic of every conversation to about your new addition? And where is the reciprocity? The highway runs both ways-I shouldn't always have to drive to see you. Or have smoke-, booze- and curse-free poker games that start at 2 and end at 9. No I don't have a fucking car seat and if you ruin my interiors strapping that hipness-repellent in my car I will "accidentally" run over Junior in the driveway. I buy your kid gifts year, after long suffering year, and you forget my birthday like clockwork-how the hell is that fair? And so finally, on behalf of everyone who knows you...
7) Seriously-shut the fuck up about your sainted motherhood, and your fucking kid already and furthermore stop expecting the world to make allowances for your choices.
Wanna be a doctor? Study for umpteen years!
Wanna be a lawyer? Study for umpteen years and sell your soul!
Want a title that imparts you an indentity if you couldn't develop one, instant respect if you couldn't earn it and veneration as paragon of virture regardless how big a loser/bimbo you were before AND requires no more effort to earn than access to functioning plumbing and bad luck? Be a mother! Come on now-Billy Mays couldn't dream up a better offer than that!
Getting knocked up earns you exactly zero in my eyes. Call me when your kid is 35, earning a Noble Prize (after you won yours) and still comes to your house on Easter/Passover. Then and only then, I'll be impressed. .
As for the process of getting from brat to Beethoven: spare us all the details. I promise you nobody cares about your kid's sleeping, crawling, walking, talking, shitting-on-command prowess (in that order). Or cheese-dick art work. Or painfully boring and commonplace psuedo-acheivements like 4th place in the Pee Wee Football League (thank you for sponsoring that slice of hell, fucking Kiwanis). Seriously, none of that matters to anyone but you-and it shouldn't. But you have to have a life of your own and grant others room in it if want any real adult relationship to exist. And if you have allowed your world to be reduced to the minutiae of someone else's life, that is your problem and your pity! Leave me out of it. Now re-read number 4; their achievements are NOT yours. So get a life.
Roald Dahl was right: the worst thing about kids is parents.
Stay tuned for Part 2 in the coninuing saga of Step-Monster Summer
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Funeral Blues
Governor Patterson has ordered that all state government buildings lower their flags to half staff today in honor of U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Alberto Francesconi of the Bronx, who was killed in Afghanistan on New Years Day.
While I applaud the Governor's actions and admit that this gesture has made him dearer to me, I first questioned; why this honor for this particular person? Other than having had the misfortune to die on the first day of a new year, his sacrifice isn't any different than that of those 4000 and counting who have perished in this war before him. On closer examination, I see the wisdom in the thought.
I look at this young man's boot camp graduation picture. He is extremely handsome and painfully young. He is (shockingly to my Peter Pan ego) young enough to be my son. In my living room and in my bedroom sit very similar pictures of another young man. It is my husband's boot camp photo. And I ask myself, what besides their resplendent youth in their beautiful dress blues, makes a kid from the Bronx and a farmer from Ohio so alike? Then the tragedy and the need for flag lowering come crashing home.
Look at either of these young men and you see such honor, decency, bravery, commitment. And that achingly beautiful cleanliness available only in the faces of very young and very idealistic men. You see in them every quality every father has ever hoped for in the men their daughters bring home. These young gods in their dress blues, so proud of having survived the crucible that is Parris Island which has distilled the very best within them; they stand so proud of having earned the brotherhood of the Corps.
Now look at the photo of the Corporal's widow. (Can a mere girl of 21 really be a widow? Is the universe really that perverse?) There but for the grace of god and 8 years of Clinton, go I. Call me the perpetrator of a gross oversimplification but the fact that she mourns and I do not is reason enough for me to be a Democrat. But I won't dirty this with politics-forgive that one lapse. The evil old men who wantonly send boys to die don't deserve a letter's worth of space that should be devoted to him and his memory.
But I must confess that I was never in any danger of being in her position because I have always lacked whatever gumption is necessary to have married or courted a man in imminent danger. Cowardice or self-preservation, either way, a person has to know their limits and sacrifice like hers is well beyond mine. So, I believe the flag is lowered for her too.
Now the real, visceral mourning begins because I get that what has been lost is exactly what I have been given. I met my husband after the service. I received all the benefits from what the Corps instilled in him with none of the sacrifice inherent in waiting at home. She will never know his children. She will never observe the subtle changes in his face that announce that the boy in the picture is no more (at least until he gets excited about some new toy or adventure and then the boy is resurrected). She will never have the pleasure of soothing him on cold mornings when his joints ache from the years of humping packs nor the laughter inherent in having to yell things over and over because he's half deaf from mortar fire. She will never have the joy, as do I, of living with a man for whom sacrifice is not just a word and who has offered himself up as the price of liberty. She will never know the great man this boy was likely to be, if my experience is any judge. I am grateful for my luck and ashamed at my relief that her suffering will never be mine. Because when the day comes that I am handed a flag from a grateful nation it will have been draped over the coffin of an old, old man whom I will have spent the better part of my life adoring. Unless I luckily and happily die first.
She has been robbed. We have been robbed. A whole generation has been robbed from us and we are all the lesser for it. Today this one young man is the standard bearer for all that have gone before him. 4000 deaths may be a statistic but the death of one mother's son is a goddamn tragedy we can all wrap our heads around. Or not.
So lower the flags. It is the very least we can do. And in honor of Lance Corporal Alberto Francesconi, so beautiful, so emblematic of all that is good and noble in young men and young Marines especially, I leave you with the words of Auden who says it better than I could ever:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
-- W.H. Auden
While I applaud the Governor's actions and admit that this gesture has made him dearer to me, I first questioned; why this honor for this particular person? Other than having had the misfortune to die on the first day of a new year, his sacrifice isn't any different than that of those 4000 and counting who have perished in this war before him. On closer examination, I see the wisdom in the thought.
I look at this young man's boot camp graduation picture. He is extremely handsome and painfully young. He is (shockingly to my Peter Pan ego) young enough to be my son. In my living room and in my bedroom sit very similar pictures of another young man. It is my husband's boot camp photo. And I ask myself, what besides their resplendent youth in their beautiful dress blues, makes a kid from the Bronx and a farmer from Ohio so alike? Then the tragedy and the need for flag lowering come crashing home.
Look at either of these young men and you see such honor, decency, bravery, commitment. And that achingly beautiful cleanliness available only in the faces of very young and very idealistic men. You see in them every quality every father has ever hoped for in the men their daughters bring home. These young gods in their dress blues, so proud of having survived the crucible that is Parris Island which has distilled the very best within them; they stand so proud of having earned the brotherhood of the Corps.
Now look at the photo of the Corporal's widow. (Can a mere girl of 21 really be a widow? Is the universe really that perverse?) There but for the grace of god and 8 years of Clinton, go I. Call me the perpetrator of a gross oversimplification but the fact that she mourns and I do not is reason enough for me to be a Democrat. But I won't dirty this with politics-forgive that one lapse. The evil old men who wantonly send boys to die don't deserve a letter's worth of space that should be devoted to him and his memory.
But I must confess that I was never in any danger of being in her position because I have always lacked whatever gumption is necessary to have married or courted a man in imminent danger. Cowardice or self-preservation, either way, a person has to know their limits and sacrifice like hers is well beyond mine. So, I believe the flag is lowered for her too.
Now the real, visceral mourning begins because I get that what has been lost is exactly what I have been given. I met my husband after the service. I received all the benefits from what the Corps instilled in him with none of the sacrifice inherent in waiting at home. She will never know his children. She will never observe the subtle changes in his face that announce that the boy in the picture is no more (at least until he gets excited about some new toy or adventure and then the boy is resurrected). She will never have the pleasure of soothing him on cold mornings when his joints ache from the years of humping packs nor the laughter inherent in having to yell things over and over because he's half deaf from mortar fire. She will never have the joy, as do I, of living with a man for whom sacrifice is not just a word and who has offered himself up as the price of liberty. She will never know the great man this boy was likely to be, if my experience is any judge. I am grateful for my luck and ashamed at my relief that her suffering will never be mine. Because when the day comes that I am handed a flag from a grateful nation it will have been draped over the coffin of an old, old man whom I will have spent the better part of my life adoring. Unless I luckily and happily die first.
She has been robbed. We have been robbed. A whole generation has been robbed from us and we are all the lesser for it. Today this one young man is the standard bearer for all that have gone before him. 4000 deaths may be a statistic but the death of one mother's son is a goddamn tragedy we can all wrap our heads around. Or not.
So lower the flags. It is the very least we can do. And in honor of Lance Corporal Alberto Francesconi, so beautiful, so emblematic of all that is good and noble in young men and young Marines especially, I leave you with the words of Auden who says it better than I could ever:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
-- W.H. Auden
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