Women: Will Someone PLEASE Start Asking the RIGHT Questions? (HINT: “Are You Mom Enough?” Isn’t One of Them.)

It was not my intention, when I started this blog, to get into political issues. I mean for this blog to be something of a place of respite – to maybe even provide some comedic relief. (Yes, I know that requires being funny, Snarky, I mean for ME, and I think I’m funny, dammit.)

But, sometimes stuff happens about which I just cannot stay quiet. (This probably explains why I have a blog.)

Believe me, I tried. First, the whole Hilary Rosen / Ann Romney thing blew up. As I read or listened to the media coverage, I got more and more angry, because – listen – I’ve been on both sides of that fence. The more it went on, the more I wanted to say something. I was horribly afraid, though, it would come out wrong. Then, the TIME magazine cover happened. (And, I am purposely not linking to it, because I’m mad at TIME, and I feel like being all petty about it. Plus, you know what it is anyway.) But, the icing on the cake was this crap from TODAY about how depressed stay-at-home-moms are compared to other moms.

ENOUGH!

I’ve been a work-out-of-the-home mom, I’ve been a stay-at-home-mom, and I’ve been a work-at-home-mom. What do all these experiences have in common? No matter what, I’m always a mom. Whether I dress up in Armani suits and Manolo Blaniks or yoga pants and a t-shirt decorated with strained peas and ketchup smears, I am a mom. Whether I am in dancing in the kids’ playroom to Laurie Berkner or presenting oral argument to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, I am a mom. Whether I carpool to a play date or to the office, I am a mom. Whether I pull an all-nighter nursing a sick child or finishing a client’s project, I am a mom.

Guess what else? Just like I sometimes really do not like my professional gig, sometimes the mom gig is the suck, too. Dropping my kids at daycare was often horribly gut-wrenching but sometimes blissfully freeing. Finger painting, going to the park and whipping up recipes in the kitchen is often maddeningly fun but sometimes … just maddening. Going to the office, pouring a cup of coffee, closing the door and listening to anything not related to Nickelodeon, Disney, Sprout or Cartoon Network was sometimes nothing short of orgasmic. Taking a “mental health” day to drive to the beach with the kids, singing “Found a Peanut” at the top of our lungs is marvelous, but so is sending them to school or day care anyway so that I can read a book, watch an uninterrupted TV show or – Heaven forbid – have marital relations with my husband. (Or, you know, just a hot meal of grown-up food we can eat in relative peace.) Also, can we just be real for minute? Does anyone really like cleaning up poop, cutting gum out of hair, scrubbing crayon off the walls or driving around in a car that smells like a locker room and sour milk?

But, here’s the most important thing I want — no, I NEED — you to know. I absolutely, indisputably, beyond any shadow of doubt and without an iota of reservation LOVE my children. Every second of every minute of every day of every week of every month of every year of every decade of every century and until the end of time. And, you can’t tell me I don’t, whether you are cheering about or horrified by what I just wrote above.

You know what else? I don’t doubt you love your child/ren either. Even if you don’t agree with a word that comes out of my potty mouth.

Because, hell yes I am mom “enough.” And so are YOU. Seriously, what the fuck does “Are you mom enough?” even mean? That’s like asking a woman if she’s a “little bit” pregnant. As a teacher and a parent, I often say there are no stupid questions, but congratulations TIME — you finally found one. Way to dig up that nugget, Woodward and Bernstein. (And, for future reference, NEVER ask a woman if she’s pregnant unless she’s spread eagle on a delivery table screaming for an epidural. You WILL thank me for this someday.)

Listen, this chain of recent “war on women” bullshit events wasn’t an accident. Oh, no. When journalists, politicians, religious leaders and ESPECIALLY other women ask accusatory, I’ll-meet-you-at-the-bike-racks-after-school questions via screaming mass media headline, the asker is purposefully playing on a mother’s most exposed and raw emotion: fear of failure. Every mother is susceptible to this kind of emotional terrorism, because kids don’t come with instructions – no weird IKEA-like drawings, no diagrams, no user’s manuals, no troubleshooting guides. So, we rely on – among other things – advice from people or sources we trust. You know, like political leaders, priests, pastors, rabbis, or – say – reputable (ahem) journalistic publications.

Aaaaaaannnd, there you have it.

Well, chew on these facts for a minute:

• As of 2010, 50.8 percent of the United States’ population is female. Yes, you read that right. Better still, the overwhelming majority of that female population is 18 or older (e.g., eligible to vote).
• The demand for workers with a postsecondary education (and especially high literacy and math proficiency) outpaces the supply of such workers.
• Between 1998 and 2009, women were awarded more post-secondary degrees of EVERY type – from Associate’s degrees to doctoral degrees. And this is true even when looking at the data for different racial/ethnic groups!

Now, think about what this means:

• By sheer power of numbers alone, WOMEN can determine the outcome of almost any election.
• We cannot afford to exclude anyone from the workforce who is educated and willing to work, or the United States will not be a competitive player on the global economic, technological, scientific or medical stage.
• There will be more women than men qualified to enter this future workforce.
• Unless men start lining up to swap their penises for uteruses and vaginas, women are also the most qualified for bearing and birthing babies.

What’s my point? We (as in the greater “we” not just the random few lovely people who read my rants) MUST find a way to make motherhood and professional careers co-exist. AND WE CAN! Fathom the power women could harness in the political and economic arenas if we would stop diluting our own strength. Imagine the force for social, economic, structural and pedagogical change we would be if we stopped the myopic focus on changing each other or placing blame at each other’s feet.

Because, guess what ladies. Your government officials have thought about this (see, e.g., current raging debates above). Your religious leaders have thought about this. (Ahem – Gospel of Mary – Ahem.) And the vision of women as a united force was enough of a nightmare that a solution was quickly devised: provoke gender in-fighting!

Has any group been more susceptible to the cannibalism of its political/social/religious/economic clout than women? I took a semester-long class in college about Black-on-Black racism, and the room was tremendously less hostile than the “Survey of Women’s Issues” class I took, where someone had the “audicity” to speak up in favor of staying at home. And I was in San Francisco, one of the more “liberal” cities you might find.

Mothers are the perfect catalysts for division of our gender because of our peculiar vulnerability to the pressures of our peers. Having a baby? You better not make my job more difficult or cost my business any money! Not having a baby? But, that’s what you’re SUPPOSED to do! Having an abortion? You are going to Hell! Having a baby you can’t afford? Leech! Going back to work after having a baby? How heartless of you to leave your children to be raised by someone else! Staying at home to raise your children? How dare you set back the progress of the “women’s” movement! Breast feeding? Not in my store/restaurant/airport/park you don’t! Not breast feeding? Selfish and ignorant! Vaccinating? You are dooming your baby to a life of disease and defect! Not vaccinating? Irresponsible! Cloth diapers? Bottles? Binkies? Blankets? Toilet training? Co-sleeping? Television? Is there anything we women can’t find to disagree upon – especially when it comes to raising children?

Look, I’m not saying that women should just bounce giddily along, singing Kum-Ba-Ya on the way to the ballot box. (But, hey, I’m in if you don’t mind the fact that I couldn’t carry a tune if it had a handle on it.) Beyond our commonality of gender, there is an amazing range of things we don’t have in common, and no one should advocate to change that. Instead, let’s just start talking to one another and supporting one another, or NO ONE is going to advance political, legislative, religious, economic or social change agendas that affect what matters most to us as the MAJORITY of citizens in this country. If we want equal rights, we damn well better start by treating each other as equals.

So, please, no more blowing up Facebook timelines, Twitter feeds, Google circle-thingys, MySpace pages (is that even a thing anymore?), email accounts, newspapers, talk shows, daytime television, political debates, sermons, or What to Expect When You’re Expecting books with stupid questions about whether we’re women enough, professional enough, mom enough, sexual enough, married enough, single enough, liberal enough, conservative enough or any of the other myriad ways we can tear each other down. Instead, let’s just stop taking no for an answer. Let’s stop taking the bait. Let’s find ways to unite around our differences and use them to our advantage instead of letting the minority control what we get paid, whether or when we work, what we do with our bodies, and what we do with our minds. Let’s think about our children — our daughters AND sons — and whether we want to leave them a legacy of anger and “war” or of progress and equality.

Let’s start asking the right questions before someone needs a time out.

One Day in 1998, A Miracle Happened

The first thing I realize is that my lips hurt.  They are so achingly chapped and swollen.  It feels as thought I’ve been repeatedly punched in the mouth.  There’s a hand in front of my face now, and it’s holding something clear and glassy.  I can’t really focus, because my eyes are groggy, and there’s so much light.  Too much light.  Where am I that’s so bright?

The hand rests against my lips and I feel the shocking relief of something cold and wet.  Ice.  I turn in the direction of the hand, and I recognize a familiar shape.  A person.

“How are you, honey?”

I know this voice.

I murmur, “Okay,” around the ice cube, afraid of breaking contact with this welcome salve.  Somewhere in my mental fog, I finally recognize the voice belongs to my mother.  I also know something is not right.  Something is … missing?  Then, as if someone flicked on a projector in the darkness of my brain, images flash inside my head.  I turn as quickly as my drug-induced stupor will allow and ask my mother, “Where is Nate?!”

“He’s fine, honey.  I wanted to be here when you woke.”

I move my arm and feel something tugging.  I see a wire or a tube protruding from the back of my hand.  It is swollen into an almost-unrecognizable shape, as if someone replaced my hand with a lump of flesh-colored Playdoh.  A woman appears.  She is dressed in a matching shirt and pants that look as though someone barfed a rainbow upon her.  She asks how I am.  I don’t think I answer her, if only because I lacked the words.  My brain is coming alive with tingles and stabs of worry; my body is too numb to feel it anywhere else, but I’m certain my stomach is churning.  I don’t care about my chapped lips anymore, I don’t care about the pain that is starting to creep around my hips and rib cage like a boa constrictor preparing to consume its meal.  I just want Nate.

Eventually, a young man appears.  He wheels the bed on which I’m perched away from the torturous lights, down several hallways and into a quieter room.  There is a window here, but the room is dark.  The clock on the wall directly in front of my bed says it’s 5:15.  I’m not sure if it’s morning or night.  I ask the nurse, who is fussing with wires and the tubes seeming to come from my body in every direction like an octopus’s tentacles, “When can I see Nate?”

“The doctor says you should get some sleep first.  Maybe around 6:30,” she says.  I start to cry, but I don’t argue with her.  Instead, I stare at the clock.  It has a second hand the sweeps gently over the diameter of the circle of numbers.  You do not realize how long sixty seconds are until you watch them elapse and collect into the next sixty seconds and the next, waiting for minutes to reach a temporal destination.  The worry starts to become more concrete yet less logical, What if I don’t recognize him?  What if he doesn’t recognize me?  What if he’s not okay?

Finally, the interminable wait mercifully ends.  A nurse wheels Nate into my room, parking him next to my bed.  He is wrapped in a blanket as a tortilla around rice and beans, and I can see only his face.  I notice first his lips, and in that moment of staring at the plump, pink arch of his upper lip and the thinner, straight line of his bottom one, all my doubts are gone.  It is like looking in a mirror; that mouth is unmistakably mine.

I want to reach for him, but the core of my body – where every muscle I need t0 stretch over and lift him – is electrified as I try to move.  The nurse hears my gasp.  Without a word, she moves Nate from his bed and places him in my arms, resting him gently across my chest.  He is sleeping.  I stare at his face for an eternity.  I am memorizing him — his tuft of downy hair, his strawberry-stained porcelain skin, his mile-long eyelashes, his impossibly perfect nose.  But, the purpose of this is practical; not emotional.  I am perpetually afraid that the nurse will bring me the wrong baby, and I will not know.  The “bond” I spent so many months reading about is not materializing.  Instead, I feel only tired.  So, so tired.  I call for the nurse, and she wheels Nate away.  She brings the artifice of peace that comes with pain medication, and I fall into a comatose but restless sleep.

When I wake, there is movement in my room.  My sister.  Nate’s father.  My mother.  They are fussing and cooing. “Did you wash your hands,” I ask.  Their assurances come with laughter and mock disdain.  I am not amused.  Neither is Nate, because he starts to fuss and cry.  It’s an odd cry.  It’s not the least bit annoying, yet I have a powerful, desperate urge to make it stop.  My mother hands Nate to me and says, “I think he is hungry.”  I have no idea what to do, but my hands and arms are moving Nate toward my breast as though I am possessed of something or someone.  He tries to latch on, but his little mouth just won’t cooperate with him.  I am terrified of smothering him.  His wailing increases, and mine begins in earnest as well.

A nurse appears to offer assistance.  She grabs Nate like a running back heading for the end zone.  This makes me cry harder.  The nurse presses Nate’s poor, red, wet face into my bosom.  He remain angry and unsated.  We change positions, holds, angles – nothing works.  I feel the deepest sense of failure, but I am told not to despair, because he isn’t really hungry; he’s just looking to fulfill a sucking instinct.  I don’t believe her, because I know she is speaking memorized words.  She doesn’t feel them.

Nate and I go on this way until about 4:30 a.m.  I beg the nurse to bring him a bottle of formula.  She takes pity on me, on Nate or on us both and brings a four-ounce bottle.  She tells me he won’t drink more than a few cc’s of the fluid.  “That’s fine,” I tell her, not a little dismissively.  I wave her out of the room.  Then, I nestle Nate into my lap and bring the bottle to his lips.  He latches his mouth onto it with a vice-like grip and begins sucking down the fluid with a singular focus.  About two ounces in, he turns his head to me and our eyes meet.  The only light in the room is coming from the television, and it casts a halo-like aura around Nate’s little body.  The tears instantly stream down my face.  I am not crying.  There is no squinting or sobbing.  But water is pouring from my tear ducts in a silent shower of gratitude.  My heart feels though it may swell right through my rib cage.  The words in the books – the paragraphs and pages and chapters I read about maternal bonding – all worthless and woefully inept.  There are not words that describe that feeling.  There are not words that prepare you.  It is love and sorrow; it is courage and fear; it is the beginning and ending.  It is the sum of all contradictions.  It is beautiful, singular and endless.

When Nate finishes the entire four ounces of formula, I gently burp him.  Then I lay him on the bed in the space between my legs.  I slowly unwrap him from his burrito blankets, and I examine every inch of him.  I find the blush-colored birthmark, shaped like Africa, on the back of his leg.  I find his little bent toe curled under his other toes.  I fuss at the remnants of his umbilical cord.  I marvel at the tininess of his fingers.  I kiss every warm, sweet-smelling inch of him.  I breathe him in and burn that smell into the memories of my olfactory sense bank.

Some mothers gleefully recite their baby’s statistics, record all firsts, save outfits and locks of hair and first lost baby teeth.  But, Nate was born via emergency Cesarean section.  I was given general anesthesia, and I didn’t see Nate until he was a little more than six hours old.  So, what was more important to me than his 9 pounds and 5 ounces or his 22 inches or his Winnie the Pooh going-home outfit was to remember every tiny detail of our first moments together.  To revel in the knowledge that the love that grew inside of me would survive on the outside; that the strength of my arms would equal the protective envelope of my womb; that he wouldn’t stop being a part of me.

The One Where I Find Out I Can’t Juggle

I’m not crazy, M’Lynn.  I’ve just been in a very bad mood for the last 40 years.  — Ouiser Boudreaux, ‘Steel Magnolias’

Here’s the thing about juggling.  If you think too much about the mechanics of keeping the balls in the air, you are bound to drop them.  Maybe you’ll get lucky and drop only one.  But, more often than not, everything’s gonna wind up on the floor and getting away from you.

For the past two months, I’ve spent an awful lot of time thinking about the mechanics of juggling, and shit is hitting the floor.

I am certain that until the moment I actually went to work as a lawyer — sat down behind the desk, staring at my name on letterhead — I believed I could simultaneously be a spectacular mom and a kick-ass professional.  Oh, sure, I had talked to or read about other moms who were “struggling” with finding a balance between work and home.  But, that was them, and I am me.  My whole life, I’ve always managed to land on my feet.  Things work out because they just have to work out.  Over the course of fourteen years, I’ve managed to balance law practice, a teaching career, parenting, volunteer work, running a house and the occasional side project.

Lately, though, I’ve been asking myself:  why?  I can’t be doing all this for my kids.  If given a choice between me being home and available to them or constantly at work or traveling, I think they’d choose to have me home.  I can’t be doing this for my husband, who has to pick up the slack when I’m away (which is a lot) and who has had to essentially put his own career on hold to accommodate mine.  I can’t even be doing this for me, because I’m too damn busy getting through this stuff to actually enjoy any of it.

Sure, I’ve had some successes.  I’ve scored some big wins for clients.  I’ve had my work complimented by judges in open court.  I’ve seen many of my former students go on to become lawyers and do well for themselves.  I save all the emails from students that come years later, thanking me for what they learned in my classes.  I have the best husband a girl could ever hope to have (and not just because he hasn’t killed me yet).  I have two beautiful, amazing kids.

This should be enough, right?  To ask for any more than this is selfish and greedy.  Well, I don’t want more; I want less.  I want to forget this stuff:

• The first day you drop your baby off at daycare will be the singularly worst day of your life.  You will bill 1.1 hours that day.
• The day you are to take your first deposition, your son’s school will call to say he has a fever.  There will be no one else who can pick him up.  There’s no one else you really want to pick him up.  But, you’re a second-year associate, and telling your male supervising partner (whose wife stays at home with their kids) that you need to leave makes you want to put a hot stick through your eye.
• There will be countless Saturdays that you can’t go to the park, or bowling, or to a movie, because you’re trying to catch up on billable hours.  You hate yourself as you start yet another Thomas the Tank Engine video.
• You will be in a car accident and have your hand broken, make a Herculean effort to get your kids to school and yourself to work, and have a supervising partner look at your cast as you walk in the door and ask, “Where’s my brief?”
• You and your spouse will have a scheduling conflict and no one to watch your daughter, so you will hide her under your desk at work as she naps while you get in as many billable hours as possible.
• The phrase “quality of life” describes the difference between working Saturdays and Sundays or just one of them.
• You will be shocked to find sympathy for this struggle more from male lawyers than from female lawyers — especially the female lawyers who do not have children.  There are women who will absolutely despise you for taking maternity leave.  You, in turn, will want to strangle the women in your firm who take maternity leave and then string the firm along on a return-to-work date only to decide not to return at all.
• It’s really fucking hard to leave your kids everyday to go to work if you don’t absolutely love what you do, no matter how good you might be at it or how much money it might provide your family.  You do not love being a lawyer.
• It will be cause for celebration in your house when you are actually home for dinner.  If you make dinner, your family will be confused by the plates and silverware as they search for bags, boxes and sporks.
• Your daughter will be diagnosed with autism, but you will stay in your job for years because of the guilt you feel about “wasting” $100,000 on a legal education and for breaking promises you made to the firm that supported you.
• You will develop insomnia and random but real pain throughout your body.  Your doctor will suggest you see a mental health professional, and you will not only ignore him, you will actively look for another doctor, because yours is clearly an idiot.  (Except, you know, that he’s not.)
• You will say mean things to your husband and your children that you don’t really want to say but that fly out of your mouth because you are exhausted and bitter.  The words I’m sorry are said way too often.
• You will end up in a puddle on the floor of a therapist’s office, begging her to save you from yourself.

So, here’s what I’ve realized in the past couple of months.  Yes, there are women who do it – who manage career success and still make soccer games and dance recitals and band concerts.  I am not one of those women, and its not just because I have a daughter with special needs (although that’s really forced me to confront this).  So, on Friday, I put the balls down and took a leave of absence from my law firm.  What I finally realized is that if I don’t take care of myself, I am no good to anyone else.  I might be able to make up billable hours, but I can’t make up for lost time.  There is no one at the finish line of life handing out medals for juggling, and I don’t want a medal anyway.  I want kisses and hugs.  I want to read books, play in the park, make flashcards, chaperone field trips and make dinner every night.  I want to exercise more than my brain.  I want to be present in my life instead of just going through the motions of living it, building a resume that looks good on paper but leaves nothing meaningful in my wake.  I want to figure out how to heal.  I want to know whether I can handle more than one job and do both of them really, really well.

I can’t juggle.  But, the beautiful thing is, the only person who really expects that of me is me, and I can stop whenever I want.

Funny Stuff Our Kids Say #1

Our kids both have a good sense of humor. It’s probably what keeps them alive. (Kidding … Sort of.)

Anyway, here is the first installment of Funny Things Our Kids Say. Feel free to add you own in the comments below.

Kid: Mommy, why did you do that?
Me: Do what?
Kid: That thing you did a medium time ago.

***

Kid: Hi, [Robert]*
Dad: Linny, my name is Papa.
Kid: I know. Hi, [Robert].

***

Kid and Cousin are in backseat of car. Kid speaks only English. Cousin speaks some English but mostly Swiss German. They are arguing. Cousin keeps saying, “Nein!” Kid, frustrated, asks Dad, “What number is ‘yes’?”

***

Kid and me driving in car …
Me: Wow, it’s raining really hard.
Kid: Yeah. [Pause.] You know, sometimes when it’s raining, it’s like I can feel it on the back of my neck. It’s weird.
Me: Dude, roll up your window.

***

Kid, Mom, Dad playing Boggle. Kid reading his word list during scoring …

Kid: cat, car, clap, klee-aught, …
Dad: I’m pretty sure that spells “cleat.”

***

Kid (4 years old at the time), takes his stuffed Sully doll into bathroom with him to pee. We hear peeing, then silence.
Kid: Mooooooooom! Sully’s wet!

***

Moments after Sully’s unfortunate lesson about what happens to apple juice after ingested by a 4-year-old boy, Sully is extracted from toilet and rushed to the washing machine. Anxious child follows, saying “Mom, we don’t wash toys!”

***

I come downstairs one morning carrying three tampons. Kid (now about 5 years old) looks at my hand and says, “Oh! I want candy!”

***

Mom and Dad are standing on staircase, kissing. Kid (now about 7) sneaks up from below …
Kid: I know what you’re doing.
Me: Really? What’s that?
Kid: It starts with “S.”
Me: Uh, ok. What’s the word that starts with “S”?
Kid: “Smooching.”

***

Kid, Mom, Dad driving home. (Kid about 5). We are playing the “Rhyming Game.”
Me: Kiss
Dad: Miss
Kid: Piss!

***

For the longest time, we had kid convinced that the ice cream truck that came around our neighborhood park was a school bus. Until:
Kid: There’s the school bus.
Dad: Yep.
Kid: What’s in there?
Dad: What do you think is in there?
Kid: Candy.

***

Kid is 4 years old and finally learning to sleep in own bed. (Don’t judge!) We tuck him in, say good night and head to our room. Just as we settle in, a little voice calls out, “But, I want to sleep in a bed with people in it!”

***

*Not Papa’s real name, no matter what the folks at Peet’s think.