A Woman’s Place

I was recently informed that since I am a stay at home mother who, gasp, needs help from her hardworking husband from time to time with things like the lawn and laundry, I am lazy. According to the feminist narrative, since I do not work outside the home for money, my husband should really put his foot down with me. The assumption is that beyond feeding and dressing babies and cooking, I do nothing besides sit back and watch my cash cow of a husband provide for my every whim. And while my husband is very generous with his help and has been known to do late night cheeseburger runs, I know this is untrue. I know that I am making people, molding souls and ensuring that my girls have a happy place to call home. I know. Then why does it feel like such a slap in the face?

I suppose it’s because my interior monologue is riddled with self doubt about how well I’m doing as a Woman (TM). I don’t bring in any money, which we need. I can’t drive, though I am working on that. My house is not a showplace, but since I only have one small baby at home all day while big sister is at school, according to some it ought to be. The fact that it isn’t, and that I do feel badly that I hardly ever make myself write, despite the fact that I want to write, shakes me up when I’m confronted with worn out feminist claptrap.

Here’s the thing. I can talk  the talk about how wonderful at home motherhood is. And it is wonderful. When I really think about it, there is absolutely nothing I would rather do. It’s hard work, particularly emotionally, but most things worth doing are hard work. My angst (and it’s definitely angst, not to mention agita) comes from the omnipresent prevailing narrative that choosing to stay home with your kids is less than good. It’s a waste, a second best choice, a symptom of patriarchy, the only option for loser women who can’t cut it in the real world, or who are just plain lazy and selfish. I admit, I am often lazy and frequently selfish. But not with my children. I could get the house spotless, day in, day out, if I restricted their movements and ignored their pleas for attention. I could have the worlds most immaculately kept yard if I could only keep them in their room for at least three hours a day. In the long run, though, while I love having a clean house and pretty garden, I think I’d be more upset at having children who wondered why Mama was so mad at them so often, or who didn’t pick them up when they cried. I don’t like to sound like something off of Sanctimommy, but I do like to think that their emotional well being trumps some disgruntled feminist’s ideas about what is appropriate behavior for women.

What do you do when someone in your life gives you a hard time about what you do? Chime in!

Five Favorites

Thanks to Hallie for what is basically a writing prompt for me.It’s an unfocused kind of morning, as I’m nursing the baby and typing, which leads to an unfocused non-theme. Here is some stuff I really like. Enjoy.

~1~

Tea. The fact that this is really the only thing I can think of to start off and it’s nine-thirty in the morning gives you an iea of how important this is to me. My favorite, specifically, is PG Tips, purchased at World Market for less than my local store charges. I am addicted to caffeine, but I find that tan-your-hide strength black tea works better and .doesn’t make me feel as edgy as coffee does. Nectar of the gods.

~2~

The Chronicles of Narnia. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was the first big kid book I ever read. I was five. Philomena turned five in March, so we got her a copy. We finished it two nights ago and it was wonderful. Her reaction was a heavy, contented sigh and “Mommy, I miss Narnia.” Next up, Prince Caspian. Yes, I am one of those people who strongly believe the books should be read in the order of publication. If you want to argue, you may take it up with me in the combox. I will win.

~3~

My new shampoo and conditioner. Nature’s Gate makes a beautiful henna shampoo. It lathers up beautifully without anything harsh and really does improve the shine in my hair. It’s also pretty cheap, even at my local organic hippy store. You know, the one where I buy my organic hippies.

~4~

Rowan Pure Wool DK. Expensive and hard to find in the US. I took up crochet last year, got distracted, and took it up again this year. Right now I am making a pile of three inch multicolored stars that I’m going to string together into a bunting for the girl’s room. I have four blankets to make in the next year or so, and I have  to use up the yarn I have before I buy more. This is the wool I want.

~5~

Ralph Vaughn William’s unearthly setting of Psalm 90.

 

Seven Quick Takes-Weddings and Plagues

Be sure to check out more Quick Takes at Conversion Diary!

~1~

My sister got married! She is a beautiful, wonderful woman and she married a pretty great guy. They are adorable together and that makes me very happy. Her wedding was beautiful.  We danced a lot. People held my baby so I could party. Philomena was an unstoppable force, getting down with particular zest during Gangam Style.  I love weddings.

~2~

I’ve lived in the deep South for a while now, and it has thinned my blood. The aforementioned wedding was during the weekend following the March for Life. Cold. Cold. Cold.  It snowed a lot.  I don’t own nearly enough sweaters. Also, standing outside in nineteen degree weather in a strapless dress is not fun.

~3~

Don’t get the norovirus, or, as it is known by the fraternity of those who have had it, the East Coast Martian Stomach Plague. Especially when you are traveling with small children. It makes you violently ill, forcing you to stay the night at a North Carolinian motel and makes an eleven hour road trip last thirty six hours.

~4~

If you foolishly succumb to the East Coast Martian Stomach Plague, you will lose the equivalent of a pug dog in weight. There are better ways to do this. You will also not be able to eat anything harder to digest than chicken broth for days, have a bizarre craving for cornbread and no matter how much Gatorade or water you drink, you will always be thirsty.

~5~

Also, if you succumb, make sure your spouse does not get the East Coast Martian Stomach Plague at the same time. This will result in untold misery your whole family can enjoy.

~6~

The high fevers induced by the plague will make you have bizarre dreams and your least favorite song stuck on a loop in your brain. I had something by Kings of Leon on repeat for twenty four hours. Think about that. Twenty four hours. Kings of Leon. Also, I had been reading my dear friend Colleen Swaim’s new book, Radiate: More Stories of Daring Teen Saints shortly before I became ill and was certain that St. Gabriel Possenti was in the motel room with me. Maybe he was. I definitely needed the prayers.

~7~

Colleen got the plague, too.  She was a great comfort to us when she called to let us know that she had lived, and we, in all probability, would to likewise. Many thanks to her and her family for their hospitality in Maryland.

La Vita Nuova

After writing about the Pope after a long break from blogging, I realized I had not yet said anything about our baby! This little bundle of joy is Bernadette Rose. She was born at 1:50 in the morning on November 14 after a fairly easy labor. Of course, by fairly easy I mean it was still labor and therefore painful and hard. Compared to Philomena’s birth, however, it was a piece of cake. She was and is completely adorable, mellow and happy unless it’s the two hours before dinner and you want to put her down. She doesn’t like that at all.

We waited a long time for Bernadette, who is a miracle baby. She came when I had resigned myself to secondary infertility. After she was born Will and I discovered she really is a miracle.

This is a picture of Bernadette’s umbilical cord. That is a true knot. It occurs in 1% of pregnancies and significantly increases the chance of what the nice scientists call “fetal demise”.  The attending midwife and the nurse had never seen one before and let me know how lucky we were. A week or so later we received a phone call from one of the nurses, who told us that h er heel prick blood test had come back abnormal and we’d need to take her in to get retested. Scary, no? My husband asked “abnormal how?” and she told him “cystic fibrosis”.

What?

In that instant I was deeply frightened.  Deeply.  I got a a glimpse into what an adverse diagnosis feels like. My family is absurdly healthy.  Being an imaginative sort, I’ve always wondered what getting that kind of news would feel like, particularly if it happened to a child of mine.  It turns out the feelings are hard to sum up. Fear, grief, a weird sort of battle-mentality, anger all surged around my mind at the same time. There is probably a word for it in German.  Life seemed very, very different, very suddenly.

We took her in and got the actual lab results. The test had been invalid, which of course makes me want to know why they said abnormal when they could have said invalid. The new nurse did the new test quickly and well and then showed us the actual lab report. No cystic fibrosis. Mom and Dad are not carriers, you see. Apparently these false positives happen all the time. All the time.

Needless to say, we wanted Bernadette baptized as soon as possible. With the close call from the true knot in utero and the cute little false positive, Will and I were in a bit of a hurry to get the original sin cleaned up.  Fortunately, Will had set up the baptism time when I was four months along.  She was baptized in the basement chapel of the Cathedral, and, though we are not traddies, we asked for the old rite. It’s beautiful, and very, very thorough. The only time she cried was during the main exorcism. They always cry during the main exorcism.

Pagan baby

Almost there!

As soon as the water stopped pouring Will and I both exhaled. What a profound relief it was, knowing we’d done what we needed to do. We had a little saint.

Christian baby

 

Afterwards, instead of having a party, which would have required planning and consciousness, we repaired down the road to Clary’s, where we feasted on fine diner fare. It was good day. and the answer to many prayers.

The Pope and I

I think it’s best to resume blogging without any apologetic fanfare for my lengthy absence. It has been a wild several months. The muse fled early on and pregnancy, weddings, illnesses and school life has been rather too busy to spend time tip tapping away at my laptop.

So, the Pope is abdicating.

I heard this news very early in the morning the day it broke. Will was dutifully checking Facebook while I made Philomena’s breakfast. It went something like this:

Will: WHAT?!?!

Me: Uh oh, what happened?

Will: (choking up) The Pope resigned!

Me: “What? No he didn’t. It’s bad reporting.”

Turns out, it wasn’t  bad reporting.

Oh, I cried. I deeply love this Pope. I’m a card carrying member of the JPII generation, and I loved him, too. He was the Pope when Iwas baptized and when I came back into the Church. He introduced me to the wonderful world of phenomenology, and to the truth of what the Church actually is.  Thinking about it, he was the Pope of my baby Catholic period-full of enthusiasm but not a lot of sense. i could cheerfully get behind his thought explained to me by others and it was grand and beautiful and made me want to  be Catholic. Benedict XVI is different. He’s the Pope of my agonizingly slow maturation in faith and I feel closer to him.

His writing is so clear! It’s not written in philosopher jargon or theologianese. Spes Salvi completely altered my way of believing because he emphasized the present tense of living in hope. Salvation wasn’t something “out there”. Faith wasn’t another thing you tick off your to do list. It was, instead, a mode of being.  Growing up with a muddled view of these things because of the odd churches we attended, I had a very non-Catholic notion of faith and hope and charity. Papa Benedict fixed all of that.

I  got to see him at my alma mater, The Catholic University of America. It was a beautiful day, six weeks after Philomena’s birth. We were right up by the fencing next to the east entrance of the Shrine. A perfect spot. We saw him go in and we waited around for him to come out again. The excitement you could have cut with a knife. When he came out an got into the big car that wasn’t the Pope mobile, he saw Philomena as I stuck her up in the air, and he smiled and blessed her from the car. Two days later, thanks to the awesomeness of the two gents who designed the altar furnishings, I got to go to his mass at the baseball stadium. I was about six rows back, four rows in back of Placido Domingo.  Again, the joy was simply unbelievable. And the funny thing was, I expected to be a bit star struck during mass and I wasn’t at all. I figured I’d forget all about Jesus in the Eucharist and when the time came for the consecration I was kneeling on the ground and I actually forgot who was celebrating mass.

That is how Pope Benedict does things. He turns your focus back to the Lord.

I’m sad to see him go, but I’m so glad he’s been our Pope. The humility is a different kind of humility from Blessed John Paul, but it’s still humility.  John Paul stayed on, an actor with a beautiful voice, living with that great gift slipping away every day, his movements slowly turning to stone. That takes courage, and humility. And if you know an actor, you know how had that must have been. Benedict, amidst all sorts of misunderstanding about motives and accusations from the faithful about how awful it is to quit the papacy, and from the world about how there must be something wicked going on, steps own from an immensely powerful position because he, one of the most brilliant intellects in the world and certainly one of the holiest souls, thinks the Church will be better served by someone stronger. And if you know a brilliant intellectual, you know how much courage and humility it takes to admit weakness.

We love you, Papa! Viva!

 

Seven Quick Takes-Quite Silly Edition

These are pretty unrelated and tend toward the silly. I blame society and the fact that I am in a silly mood. The fact that I am in a silly mood and not a sour, irritable mood can be ascribed to my lovely new supplements which are making my brain much nicer. Be sure to take a look at Conversion Diary for more Quick Takes.

~1~

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been feeling tired. Very, very tired. The brain has been foggy, the get up and go  non-existent. I chalked it up to making people. Turns out, my iron levels are super low. Baby Cubbedge has been sucking my life force right out of me. Le sigh. Fortunately, my iron supplements aren’t upsetting anything, and I thought I saw color in my lips this morning. Hurrah!

~2~

My daughter loves Jamiroquai. She says that Jaykay is her buddy. I’m not worried about her love for Jamiroquai, but am unsure if Jaykay is the best buddy figure for a four year old, though I can see the appeal. Particularly the hats.

~3~

Speaking of Philomena, a couple of days ago, in what I imagine to be an attempt to get in touch with her roots,  painted herself blue and took off most of her clothes.

~4~

It took a while to clean up.

~5~

My bury my head campaign on Facebook and blogs is working. I pay attention to the news and talk about it with Will, but I have studiously avoided all bloggy things that are poorly thought out and basically exercises in know-it-all-ism. My stress levels are down and when I do stumble across something really stupid or mean I utter a mild(ish) oath or two and move on.

~6~

Who steals French tip nail pens out of manicure kits? My lovely husband, sacrificing a substantial amount of man-cred, purchased a kit for me last night and brought it home. I got all my nail stuff out when I noticed the pen wasn’t there! Quel domage. While I recognize this is clearly a problem white people have, I was still pretty upset. Where will the madness end?

~7~

I do think it’s pretty awesome that Gloria Steinem herself is annoyed that the powers that be are making it as hard as possible for Democratic delegates to keep their children on the Democratic National Convention floor. Apparently, the babies must be issued credentials. The problem is that when the mothers try to get credentials for their nursing infants and tots they get the runaround. Granted, Ms. Steinem is fairly cynical in her take on it, but it was a refreshing bit of sense from an otherwise played out ideologue.

 

 

 

 

 

July is the Messiest Month

This month has been…hard. It’s July in Savannah, so my backyard looks like this:

We all got sick, and my house during my never ending illness looked like this:

Okay, so maybe not this bad.

And that  brings me to what I am thinking about today. Order! Yes, I am a very, very disorderly person. Unfortunately, I am not one of those people who thrives on mess. I like routines because they make me feel calm. I like a reasonably clean house because it keeps me calm and able to do things besides worry about whether the health department is going to come and shut me down. What is a girl to do?

A girl is to bite the bullet and realize she is a grownup with other people relying on her to provide a semblance of order and beauty in their lives.

At the beginning of July  I realized I had no, and I mean NO, order in my daily grind. The dishes were piled up in the sink (no dishwasher-thanks, retro kitchen!) the laundry  strewn throughout the house and dinner while usually there, was a source of strain. Frustration, hormones exhaustion and chaos all contributed to my feelings of inadequacy.  When I managed to pray it seemed like the Holy Spirit was tugging me toward establishing order in the home and embracing this life I’ve chosen. So what happens? He gives me tons of energy and a a hearty dose of perseverance? Nope. We all got the flu.

I sat on the couch and watched cartoons with my daughter for five days. I struggled to stagger over to the sink to wash a few dishes, but upright just wasn’t in the cards. I was completely helpless. Will was out of town on business and he was still getting over the virus from the pit of hell. The filth  piled up. And do you know what I realized? I realized that, if I’m an at-home wife, it’s mostly my job to ensure a very few things get done every day, barring emergencies. The husband must help, to be sure, but providing the basic framework of order is a job that falls to disorganized, slightly slothful me.

I know, what a revelation, right? So, while lying in my bed of contagion, out came a  notebook to list the stuff that had to get done on a daily basis so my kitchen wouldn’t end up on Hoarders, and so I’d have things like clean pants. To my surprise,  the stuff that had to get done every day were really basic. Dishes/kitchen tidy up, bed making, at least one load of laundry (including putting it away) and making sure meals were on the table. I had read this many times at Auntie Leila’s, who is my guru, but it didn’t really sink in until I realized how unhappy I was because of my environment. I’m a very visual person. Too much going on around me actually makes me feel physically overwhelmed, to the point of needing to retreat to dark silence and do deep breathing. Anyway, I figured that if I can do these few things every day, the rest of what needed to happen (daily exercise,  walks with Philomena,  fun, learning, prayer, all that good stuff) would fall into place. Because you know what? The disorder had unleashed itself on every aspect of life. I didn’t do anything that I actually wanted to do. I  spent my time trying to stay afloat. Life should be more than drudgery and trying to keep on top of chaos. The time for picking up my cross of dishes and daily tidy up had come.

I’m a little over a week into this wild new life of cleaning up immediately after every meal and getting the laundry done daily. Will helped me dig out from under. It took a solid week. Please bear in mind that all through this he was doing dishes, taking the trash out, keeping the child occupied and doing a great deal of grocery shopping while studying for and taking the bar exam. Stars in his crown. The difference in the quality of day to day life here is HUGE. I mean, HUGE. It’s starting to feel like home.

With this new- found  order comes the freedom to create beauty. Order comes in lots of different packages-overflowing bookshelves are glorious to me and a menace to the sanity of other people.  My house will probably never grace the cover of Dwell. For one thing, people live here. For another, we’re not pretentious hipsters. I’ll never be a neat freak.  I’ll stay up too late more often than I should. But my house doesn’t smell. I have pants again. Philomena has daily cuddle and play time and isn’t saying things like “Mommy, why is this bathroom not clean like my friend’s bathroom?” I now have the freedom to do little things to beautify the house. You know, great big fancy things like hanging the pictures on the actual walls and putting a jar of marigolds on the table.  And when Baby Girl arrives, she will rejoice, secure in the knowledge that Mommy keeps the floors relatively crumb-and-therefore-palmetto-bug-free.