Constrained Choices - Issue No. 17
I AM MOTHER AND I AM WORTH YOUR TIME
To potential employers, I know 2.5 years is a long time, and when you put my application next to one without holes in the employment history, perhaps there isn’t really even a choice to be made. However, in my time “off”, along with writing a collection of essays of which I am quite proud, I’ve been working hard to keep two children, whose prefrontal cortexes have yet to fully develop, alive and well. They are irrational, risk-taking little humans who have caused me to never surpass a sleep score beyond 70, or “fair”, on my Fitbit, and who make it nearly impossible for me to finish my own sentences, remember the days of bodily autonomy, or ever have clothes that are unstained and unpulled. I would argue that they’re thriving, and while they now wipe their own butts more often than not, I assure you that in these 2.5 years “off,” I have had nearly no breaks. Though I could tout innumerable qualifications I have gained from motherhood that would make me an excellent employee, I will leave it at this, there isn’t a moment I’m not multitasking, under pressure, being creative, thinking outside the box, showing resilience and patience, answering hard questions, being strategic, connecting, stretching outside of my comfort zone, and leading with compassion and altruism. I have done this job with zero performance reviews, bonuses, upward mobility, or days off, and with full understanding that it would widen my wage gap and make you view me as a lesser candidate than I was just a few years ago.
For my first two and half years as a mother, I continued teaching, and my mom left her prestigious executive director role at a counseling organization to help take care of my daughter. The sacrifices women make in their careers for their children and their children’s children continue. I was making thirty-thousand dollars per year teaching sixty-percent time at a prestigious private school in Atlanta. I was driving across the city and spending approximately two hours in my car each day to take care of kids that were not my own. Returning to teaching after maternity leave made me feel like a lesser mom and being a mom with a baby at home often made me feel like a mediocre teacher. In the Fall of 2021, like so many, coming off of insurmountable challenges with childcare, fear of COVID, and the long-term impacts of spending so much time in isolation, I became a part of the “Great Resignation.” I was one of the 47 million people who quit their jobs in 2021. An additional 50 million quit their jobs in 2022. This also meant I did my part in exacerbating a long-standing national shortage of teachers.
I never intended to stay at home with my kids. I had grown up with a mother who often surmised that remaining in the workforce and maintaining her own ambitions were integral parts of her success as a parent, so I had every intention of doing the same. I had big goals and dreams of what I wanted to do and how I wanted to make my impact in the world. But, despite the unmarketable pretext of rearing children, I do not regret the time I’ve been at home. It also gave my husband the opportunity to continue to climb the corporate ladder, thanks in large part to his hard work, smarts, and dedication, but also in part because having children didn’t derail his career like it did mine. Now, I am looking for a job, because it turns out having kids, on top of being incredibly time consuming, is also very expensive. In many ways, I find the idea of returning to work appealing: feeding my ego, earning my own income, being recognized for my worth, occasionally changing out of my joggers, and partaking in “adult talk” outside of school drop off and pick up times. But looking for a job has made me feel like I’m totally floundering. My priorities have shifted and I’m left trying to peel my own ambition apart from the consuming reality of parenting my children, all while justifying why the sacrifices I’ve made shouldn’t disqualify me as an applicant.
This brings me back to the purpose of this letter, an attempt to offer a modified lens with which to view me. We live in a country that is restricting our bodily autonomy and yet offering so little support and understanding for the mothers that are desperately trying to do it all. I get that my time away might cause me to be overlooked, but I assure you it does not make me a lesser candidate. I challenge you to break the cycle of devaluing women with children and overlooking the paradox of being a working mother. I am worth your time.
TRADWIVES AND PENIS SPOONS
Recently, while attempting to shower while solo-parenting, I heard my son screaming and proceeded to run out dripping wet and naked to find my daughter physically restraining her brother on the landing of our staircase. Water droplets still trickling off of my nipples, my feet making small puddles on our wooden floors, I imagined myself as them looking at my mom in a state of such exposure and likely wondering if she had become completely unhinged. After towling myself off and feeling utter regret for my retrospectively masochistic demonstration of freedom by staying up till midnight the night before, I couldn’t get either child dressed for the day. Then, at breakfast, my daughter looked me in the eye and said, “get me milk, old lady.” She called her brother “bad baby” about a dozen times, which at this juncture is her most severe insult. He responded with a desperate plea of “just call me by my name.” My son would not let me tame his Flock-of-Seagulls hairstyle with a brush. My daughter stuck her finger through the hole in her shoes and reminded me once again that I had forgotten to buy her a new pair. Her disappointed look somehow doubled when I told her that I had no way to fix her thumbnail that I had cut too short. I made our dog yelp when I pushed his humping pelvis off of my arm. I rushed everyone more than I wanted to and didn’t find a moment to pause and enjoy our time together. I dropped them off at school feeling utterly relieved to have a break and so guilty for being a subpar mom during the short time that they were in my care that morning.
After settling in at my desk, I found an article by Kathryn Jezer-Morton called Is Tradwife Content Dangerous, or Just Stupid? Not knowing anything about Tradwives at all, this sent me down a disturbing rabbit hole. Like a lot of nonsense, this movement has been propelled by social media and seems to be an attempt to garner nostalgia for traditional gender roles and women finding their joy through returning back to homesteading, homeschooling, and baking. These accounts are getting millions of views on TikTok. While not overtly proselytizing, Ballerina Farm is an Instagram account I’ve followed for quite some time that arguably falls under this regressive umbrella. Hannah of Ballerina Farms has 8.4 million followers and is currently representing the United States in the Mrs. World pageant. Just to clarify, the difference between Mrs. America and Ms. America is simply if you’re married or not. Because, I suppose it is empowering to divide married women from unmarried women to sexualize and objectify them equally albeit separately.
I’ve followed Ballerina Farm on Instagram for quite some time, and not exactly with judgment. More so, because there is something that feels very captivating and foreign about their country-french aesthetic and homesteading lifestyle. Their house isn’t a minefield of sharp toys, Hannah’s hair is always perfectly highlighted and effortlessly styled, she is constantly kneading bread, whipping cream with milk from her cows, and putting sausage stews in pumpkins. In one recent Instagram story, Hannah claimed that because of inclement weather, she was letting her 7 children skate around her kitchen on a thin sprinkling of flour. She said this with no sense of humor, blemishes on her skin, or notable concern for the cleanup or concussions that would most certainly ensue if I gave my children the same opportunity. This content is a ruse. Despite their seemingly unostentatious lifestyle, Hannah’s father-in-law is also the former CEO of JetBlue Airlines, so their homesteading storyline comes from lucrative beginnings. None of this should matter to me. However, similar to the new viral Tradwife ideology, which is perpetuating sexism and glorifying incredibly repressive times in American history, I, like millions of others, am still watching this propaganda and using these platforms to feel connected to the outside world while I am cloistered in my insulary mostly-at-home mom life.
The night after reading about Tradwives, I made tacos for dinner, a meal that we eat too often in our household. There was rice all over the table and black bean juice making five o’clock shadows on both of my kids’ faces. My son, who was inexplicably pantless, put his penis on a spoon at the table and served it to me while my daughter experimented with how many chickpeas she could grasp between her chin and chest. She then proceeded to stand on her chair, giggling, as she mooned us for the first time. By the end of the meal, they had both deemed it a “naked-baby dinner” and had removed all of their clothes entirely. This has nothing and everything to do with Ballerina Farm and Tradwife content. If I were to really capture our lives on social media, this revealing dinner, or disaster of a morning that came before it, would be what I’d have to show, the hard and the hilarious. When I knead bread, my kids ruthlessly poke it with their fingers. I desperately seek the moments of being an ambitious individual just as I embrace the messiness of motherhood. There’s room for my escapism through Instagram but the inevitability of it coloring my reality through comparison is such a waste of a life I wouldn’t want to change.
SUCCUMBING TO A CULT
When we moved into our home, we didn’t know anything about the private school that was essentially our neighbor. After a tour, we applied to their early childhood program for our daughter and, when asked what drew us to their methodology of education, we did our best to not answer, “the proximity to our front door.” I wanted her to feel nurtured, safe, and encouraged to stretch and grow in all of the creative and unique ways for which I knew she was ready. The little school tucked into the woods behind our home had everything we wanted.
My daughter has loved the school from her first moments there. She is immersed in nature. All of the toys are wooden, which is so different from the plastic dinosaur at home that relentlessly demands we feed him the apples that we have lost somewhere in the crevices of our playroom. Kids carry their lunches and water bottles to school in a basket instead of a backpack, which is a bit puzzling and inefficient but very fun to watch. On Tuesdays, the students bring vegetables that they then prepare themselves (picture three year olds with knives and peelers), for their vegetable soup snack, a dish which would quickly be deemed “yucky” at home and is gobbled up perfectly with a spoon at school, thanks to what I can only assume is some hippy hypnosis. The kids do “handwork” weekly and come home with acorn-felt-bead garlands and “water bottle satchels.” The classrooms are filled with tree branches suspended from the ceiling, colorful silks, candles, and glass jars of grains and oats, and, mysteriously, nothing seems to ever break or catch fire. The kids design their own lanterns in November for a ceremony in which they proceed through the woods with their families to a bonfire at dusk, singing songs about the lights that shine brightly within them. The teachers have all been there forever. They wear aprons over their bucolic aesthetic and put on puppet shows with needle-felted dolls. They command the classroom with ethereal charisma. “It’s like being in a watercolor world,” claimed a Times reporter. They focus on the whole child, “the head, the heart, and the hands” with a curriculum that emphasizes “arts, nature, and imagination.” The school fills so many of my own shortcomings as a parent. And if I’m being honest, witnessing the rituals and the incantations feels a bit like we’re on the verge of sorcery or perhaps like we’ve accidentally registered our children for an adolescent cult, which I suppose might be how all cults feel at the beginning. But, that being said, I can’t think of a more nurturing or magical place for them. In the ancient words of 90’s nostalgia, I drank the Kool-Aid.
My daughter will be eligible for Kindergarten in the fall, and I am feeling utterly heartbroken at the thought of pulling her out of what seems like the perfect place for who she is today to attend her local public school. She will be leaving her wonderful teacher, who she’d otherwise be with for another year; her dear friends; and an ethos that encourages her in the creative, mindful, holistic ways that I truly believe she needs. However, during the pandemic we outgrew our house and found our dream home, which is at the very tip top of our budget and is located in one of the best school districts in the city. We agreed to have a tight few years financially with the anticipation of promotions and public school. My kids were six months and two and half years old when we moved, and in the haze of nursing my son and potty training my daughter, kindergarten still felt far away. Their future education was something of which I had only a faint outline. We were half-dressed, exhausted, and regularly playing a game called what is this stain on my shirt? Though I’m honestly unsure how anyone ever knows in advance how to best support their children. Even though a part of me knows my daughter will likely adjust, find her groove and be okay, even though a part of me knows that if she’s not thriving, there will always be another way, still, today I’m giving myself the space to just be sad. As I clumsily answer my daughter’s questions about switching schools and listen to her articulate anxiety at the prospect, I feel disappointed by constrained choices. For the past five years, the focal point of my life has been predicting the needs of my children and ensuring they thrive; it is only getting harder as they unfold into these whole beautiful individuals in a world that just keeps on spinning.
SOMETHING THAT
DID WORK
While I maintain a healthy skepticism towards alternative medicine, I also believe that there is a lot about the human body that we don’t understand, and that at times it is important to think outside of our Westernized box. While I certainly don’t think health problems can all be solved with homeopathics and acupuncture, I do think that we are doing ourselves a disservice by overlooking these treatments entirely. There is value in considering the longevity of some of these forms of medicine. My 98 year old grandmother swore by apple cider vinegar in boosting her immune system and keeping her healthy. Does it work? Who’s to say? But, choking down a shot of it is the first thing I do when I begin to feel a scratchy throat.
Last spring, my then two-year-old son went through a very random bout of hitting his peers in class. He was never upset when he did it. Rather, it was as if he had energy in his hands and didn’t yet have a way of handling it. His teacher and I had a meeting to discuss this problematic new behavior, and during our meeting she suggested that I try “body mapping.” She explained that when her husband had become paralyzed after a stroke, she did this body-brain mapping, and truly believed it improved his quality of life for the time he had left. We had already tried all of the talk strategies we could come up with, so we decided to give it a shot. The handout she gave me, which I can’t find anywhere on the Internet, has a picture of a person, and instructions to basically move your hands from their navel to their feet, hands, and head while giving squeezes or pushes to those body parts. After three weeks, my son’s hitting disappeared entirely.
Then, a few months later, my daughter began having massive tantrums quite regularly. There was biting and throwing things, spitting, pinching and pulling hair. She seemed so dysregulated, and no matter what “gentle parenting” strategy I tried, it took time, resilience and patience for her to calm herself down, and it felt like the next tantrum wasn’t far behind. Eventually, I was referred to several forms of massage and passive rhythmic movement. I began rocking her back and forth, squeezing her arms and legs, rubbing her head, and pushing on her feet every night. I’ve watched the skepticism wash over people’s faces when I’ve told them this, which only grows when I tell them that the intensity of the tantrums faded substantially a couple of weeks later.
Here is what I know: Were there other factors at play? Absolutely. Time, illness, sleepiness, hangry-ness, and innate challenges of being growing little humans and learning to self-regulate could all be contributing factors. I am weary of endorsing something I don’t fully understand, but there is a lot to still be learned about the “magic of touch”, and, for us, magic is exactly what it felt like.
SOMETHING THAT
DIDN’T WORK
Over the last three months, my daughter, son and mom have all been diagnosed with pneumonia. It took us a shockingly long time to realize that this was likely bacterial pneumonia and that they had probably all passed it to one another. My mom was pretty much laid out for six weeks, and is still dealing with wheezing and a lessened lung capacity. Between my kids, there have been 8 visits to the doctor, one chest x-ray, daily Pulse Ox readings, an ear infection, a sinus infection, three rounds of antibiotics, heartbreaking nightly coughs, painfully little sleep, worrisomely low appetites, and irritability that makes it feel like every time they are in a room together, they think they’ve entered a “Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robot” match.
Not coincidentally, I recently noticed increasingly deep wrinkles in my forehead. Studies show that aging comes with wrinkles but that doesn’t cushion the blow much. I have tried to cut and position my bangs to cover said wrinkles but it turns out, cutting your bangs on little sleep is not a good idea, and it seems that my brow might just be permanently positioned in a slight furrow or, as I like to think of it, a badge of honor for surviving the last couple of years.
At my kids’ first signs of illness, I feel a tightening in my chest at the thought of entering another sickness spiral: all that will not get done, the worry, the loneliness and boredom of being trapped inside for days, the capacity it takes to be a tireless caregiver without reprieve. At the risk of revealing what it feels like to exist in my head, here are the questions I confront approximately every two weeks as my kids succumb to yet another illness: Am I putting enough balanced foods in their meals? How many days of pasta in a row is too many days of pasta? Why isn’t my son eating? Do they need to be outside more, or is being outside perpetuating their symptoms? Should I be giving them vitamins? Should I be giving them elderberry syrup? A probiotic? A DHA supplement? Is any of this caused by allergies? Food intolerance? What am I missing? Should I be looking more at homeopathic treatment? Are they too cold while they’re sleeping? Are they getting enough sleep? Can I force them to sleep? Is our ventilation system insufficient? Did I waste $150 on air purifiers? Are their shoes too thin? Am I not washing their sheets and dusting enough? Is that why they’re snotty all of the time? How long should we keep them on their inhalers? What if it stunts their growth or is causing behavioral challenges? Is milk the problem? Is that why my son’s cough is so bad? Do we have black mold? Does their school have black mold? Am I not hugging them enough? Am I totally screwing this up?
In my more rational moments, I recognize that they are kids building their immune systems, but I had no idea how hard and worrisome that process would be. Though seldom, when they’re both well, I am shocked at how much easier it all can feel and then, one of them inevitably sneezes.
SUSTENANCE SUGGESTIONS
A few years ago, my husband mentioned, rather nonchalantly, that he had made chocolate mousse for a woman the had gone on a date with years before. I immediately felt pangs of jealousy, not so much at the woman, but at the fact that she had gotten homemade mousse from a man who is definitely not known for having an affinity for baking. He judiciously made homemade chocolate mousse for me soon after. Since then, it has become his specialty and a celebration-meal staple in our family. My kids have become dedicated mousse sous-chefs and taste testers and I have become a delighted regular recipient. This is an airy, silky, rich and deeply satisfying dessert. Top it with a few raspberries and enjoy.
