Changes - Issue No. 4
GIVING MY SON TO A STRANGER
AND THE TRUTH ABOUT MOM GUILT
A few months ago, I was leaving the house to pick my daughter up from school with my son strapped to me when our beloved dog, Bennett, slipped through my legs and took off, full speed ahead with no intention to turn around or adhere to any commands. Thankfully, my mom, who was at our house, was able to pick my daughter up from school while I took off running down the street with my twenty-pound son attached to my chest. I knew if our dog got all of the way down our street and onto the next one, the chances of him getting hit by a car would increase exponentially. With tears in my eyes, I begged construction workers who were building a house close by to help me, but to no avail. A runner offered his assistance as Bennett crossed onto the busy street and dodged the first of three cars that nearly hit him. It was at this moment, when I did a thing that afterward I decided I wouldn’t tell a soul about. And now I’m publicly proclaiming it in this newsletter. An older woman approached me on the sidewalk and asked if she could help me by holding my son. After staring this ethical dilemma in the face for a good thirty seconds as I watched my dog cheat death zig-zagging across the busy street, I introduced this women to my son, handed him to her, threw the baby carrier to the ground, and took off running away from them, faster and farther than I’d like to admit. Long story short, I caught my dog thanks to a squabble with a surly cat he had found. And then, I dragged Bennett back up the street to my son who was thankfully not kidnapped but instead patiently waiting for me in a stranger’s arms.
While this story is extreme, it is at the root of mom-guilt. Feeling divided and knowing no matter which option you choose, there will be an undercurrent of failing, this feeling has been constant since my kids were born. When my maternity leave ended and I went back to work after having my daughter, I felt so guilty for leaving her, for not making her the priority, for giving my students more energy than I was giving her, for feeling distracted and not giving my job my all either. When I quit my job this past August to spend a few years with my kids and to really try writing, I felt guilty for no longer bringing in money (even though my salary as a teacher compared to my husband’s was miniscule, which is a piece for another time). I also felt guilty for not modeling to my kids what a working woman looks like. I felt guilty for feeling like I couldn’t do it all and for not wanting to. I felt guilty for the privilege of being able to make the choice to step back. I felt guilty if I ever relaxed and guilty for the resentment I’d feel for feeling like a housewife. When I am playing with my kids, I feel guilty for giving my son more attention when we’re outside because he is a walking hazard. I also feel guilty that my son doesn’t get the same focus as my daughter when we’re inside playing make-believe or reading 172 books in one sitting. I feel guilty that I have to divide my time at all. I feel guilty that at the end of the day, I sometimes want to sit on my phone, untouched and disconnected when it’s my only time to reconnect with my husband. I feel guilty for being tired, guilty for never being able to catch up with the laundry, guilty that our house is a mess, guilty for sitting my kids in front of Paw Patrol to finish dinner or just take a breath, guilty for making pasta again, guilty for writing, guilty for not writing, guilty for not being able to lose the last bit of baby weight for the second time, guilty for working out, guilty for not working out, guilty for not always modeling the confidence that I want my kids to have, guilty for being ready for my kids to go to bed at the end of the day, guilty for not thanking my parents and husband more for all of their hard work, guilty for expecting so much, guilty for telling my husband how to parent, guilty for how I’m parenting. I feel guilty for not having done more to help advocate against the newest regressive abortion legistlation or the “don’t say gay” legislation. I feel guilty for not having supported the people of Ukraine more or the people who have been crossing our borders for years because risking everything is better than trying to survive in their current situations. And then I feel guilty that I feel like I have any problems at all. But the truth of the matter is, there are days when you have no other choice than to hand your son off to a stranger so that your dog doesn’t get hit by a car despite the pervading, inescapable and unequivocally unfair mom guilt.
They are watching us constantly, like little creepy ghosts in a haunted house, there is no room for privacy, they are somehow always with us. A few months ago, after officially weaning my son, I stepped out of the shower and my daughter unexpectedly came out of my closet with my bra on her head like a headband. She looked at my naked body and said, “mommy, your boobs are smaller than mine this morning.” Then she pointed to my c-section scar and said “there’s the pocket that we came from.” My body is reviewed like a roadmap charting the landmarks of other people’s needs. While, I desperately attempt to ensure that my kids see their own bodies as miraculous and beautiful and with a far less critical lens than I use to view my own. Sometimes, I watch my daughter on the monitor after she’s gone to bed, which I realize is invasive in its own right, and she’s nursing and rocking her dolls just as I’ve done to her and her brother: same songs, same motions, our little shadows. In the morning, my son will run around the house with Mardi Gras bead necklaces draped around his neck, a dog-less leash clasped in his hand, he’ll put on my shoes and attempt to slip a hat over his head (a skill he has yet to master), ready to conquer the day. He is doing his very best to put together the puzzle pieces of how to function in this world, they both are, with us as their roadmap, everyday, no matter our mood, no matter what we’re feeling or going through, no matter if we need to poop, no matter if we are clothed or naked, no matter the pressure.
“RIDE WIT ME” AT THE GYNECOLOGIST
The other day, I was at my gynecologist’s office for my annual exam (if this hasn’t stopped you from reading, I want to assure you that this section is not about pap smears). I was sitting on the exam table in a gown with an open back, braless with my butt exposed despite my best efforts, the stirrups ready for the ultimate exposure. I was answering an array of questions about my medical history and sexual proclivities when I noticed that the song “Ride Wit Me” by Nelly was playing on the room’s speakers (if this is not a song that you are familiar with, it was released in 2000 and the sound effects in the song include him taking a hit after the line “Smok[ing] a L in the back of the Benz-E.”) I heard it and then thought to myself, what a different life I’m living now than when this song came out 22-years-ago and I was at a middle school dance surrounded by “booty-dancing” while I navigated my ever-changing body and the array of confidence-issues that accompanied it. So many things have changed: I am so much more aware and endlessly grateful and stunned by the miraculous things my body has been able to do with growing and nourishing my children. I also feel so much more grounded, comfortable and settled in my skin. But, some things remain the same. The sexualization of my body as a woman is still a very complicated and confusing thing. And, when I look in the mirror, I’m still plagued by judgment.
In the past four years, I have gained and lost nearly 50 pounds twice, I nursed my kids for a total of 34 months, I had six layers of my abdominal wall and my uterus cut open for each cesarean. My body is not the one I had before my daughter was conceived. It is curvier with additional scars and cellulite, my breasts are languid and my hair weirder. In some ways, I feel sexier because I’ve proven how powerful my body can be. But, on the other hand, I feel like the opportunity for sexiness is lost in motherhood. When you hear the word “maternal” it feels like the antonym for “seductress.” There’s a lot to unpack here. Women are sexualized from the moment they hit puberty, while men maybe never really have to consider their own sexiness, or certainly not to the same extent. In our society, beauty and worth are inextricably connected for a woman even after they’ve brought life into the world. But as mothers, this part of our identities also seems to disappear in the public-eye once we have children. I remember walking past a group of men, when I was far along in my first pregnancy and thinking, I’m not sexy to them anymore and then more powerfully, I wonder if I’ll ever have public-sexuality again. This is not about sex but instead how appealing we feel to others. Part of me now wants to say, why should I care? I’m happily married to a man who finds me beautiful and I’m looking for nothing else. And, that is true. But, as a member of a society that places a ceaseless emphasis on beauty, my appearance is something that matters to me. On my way home from the gynecologist, I passed an Amazon van cruising down the street with the sliding door wide open, just ready for all of the boxes to tumble out. From one side, it looked fine, but it was actually one turn away from being a hot mess. I feel like that all of the time, I thought, never having quite enough uninterrupted opportunity and focus to pull myself together. I’ve found a certain resolve in how my life, and with it, my body has changed with my kids, but figuring out how to view my physical-self in this world is still so confusing. I’m so busy, so consumed with caring for the little people in my life, so focused on holding everything together, but also I’m a woman who wants to be seen as something separate from them, something singularly beautiful. The inevitable selflessness that comes with motherhood has not caused me to let go of the selfish interest in being desired. For the sake of a tidy, cyclical ending, I’ve been trying to think of how my life now connects back to Nelly’s Ride Wit Me or who I was at 13-years-old, when the song first played. Back then, I was pretty confident that I’d have everything figured out by the time I was 35. And now I see how absurd that idea was. Understanding ourselves, our bodies, the changes we go through, and how we fit into this complicated world, it’s an ongoing ride.
WORKING OUT WITH BARBIE AND THE IMPORTANCE OF SHOWING UP
When I first moved to Atlanta, before having kids, I went to the YMCA to work out. Every day, I noticed this group of women lingering outside of a workout room waiting. They ranged in age and body type, but seemed united in their enthusiasm to break a sweat. The timing, I thought, was odd. They were just arriving as I was wrapping up and I wasn’t planning on getting to my job till 10am. But, they all seemed to be on similar schedules and had this shared activity. It got me thinking about the idea of adult lunch tables. When you’re a kid, at least in the movies, there are cafeteria tables based on your interests. There are the slackers, the popular kids, the nerds (I realize that this is grounded in an ‘80s teen-movie-mindset) but you get the idea. I started thinking about how you pick your cafeteria table in adulthood. It could be through your local cornhole league, your affinity for meetups at local breweries, or working out with a contagiously energetic and strong woman named “Barbie” in a group workout class. I was desperate to make new friends and had decided that I would write a series of essays on “adult lunch tables” and so, I decided for the sake of research and curiosity to give Barbie’s class a try. When I arrived, I wasn’t aware of a few of the unwritten rules (as is true with most cafeteria tables). Firstly, you have to show up 15 minutes early to secure a spot. Secondly, upon arriving you have to claim three sets of weights, so as to not prematurely show your limitations in terms of physical agility and strength, and third, faking it until you make it is harder if you have not followed rule one and two and are placed in the very front of the class, next to the instructor, with dumbbells that are far too heavy. Long story short, after a rocky start, I became hooked on Barbie’s classes and with them this camaraderie with women who, it turned out, were mostly Mamas who weren’t in the office for a traditional 9-to-5 and just liked a good workout.
One of the friends I made in this class was a woman who was due with twins around the same time that I was due with my daughter. We used to team up during certain exercises, especially once our bellies grazed the floor during pushups and burpees became a preposterous proposition. We found camaraderie in our big-bellied squats, and then, when we had our babies and were on maternity leave, we began walking together. One day during our walk we were talking about all that changes when you have kids, and she said something that I think about almost everyday and reference all of the time. She explained, “I was one of the last of my friends to have kids and once I did, I felt like I had so many people to call and apologize to. I just had no idea. I had no idea how I should have shown up.” The idea of “showing up,” how it fits into friendships and changes over time has been such an important point of reflection as I think about who makes up my “lunch table” of sorts today. My husband and I were among the first of our friends to have kids, and with that a fissure grew in understanding and perhaps empathy with the people that until that point had kind of always gotten us. It seems like a rite of passage for adulthood, not just the kids, but the big life events that others just don’t and won’t understand. I have friends who have lost parents and dear friends, who have grappled with infertility, who have chronic illnesses, who have made the decision to not have children, and I feel pretty confident that there are so many ways that I could have shown up better for these people and didn’t. Because, I suppose, in part the essence of empathy is understanding what another person is feeling, to connect because of a shared experience. We can feel close because of memories, but to connect, in some ways, now comes with a different kind of understanding. That’s not to say that you can’t be close to someone whose experience is different, in fact, I think those friendships are very important. Rather, I suppose, what I’m saying is that there are a lot of types of friendship and they definitely don’t belong at the same lunch table or at the same time frames in our lives. Forgiving each other for our shortcomings and continuing to do our very best at just showing-up however and whenever we can, that’s what matters.
SOMETHING THAT
DID WORK
The other day, this woman, who does not have kids and who I had seen a couple of times around my neighborhood stopped in front of my house as I was chasing two kids around my yard and said, “It looks like you have a whole team there.” A doubles tennis team, I thought, as I politely answered “Just two, but they’re busy.” “Oh really? I could have sworn over the last few days that I had seen at least four” she said. “Yeah, I totally feel the same way,” I replied and then she walked away and I was left unsure of if I should be offended or laugh it off. One kid was picking all of the flowers from our garden prematurely, and the other was trying his luck once again with not falling face-first down the stairs and getting another set of symmetrical giraffe-bumps on the crest of his forehead. This is my life now. And I try as often as I can to keep my sense of humor about me. My 17-month-old son has begun to discover his sense of humor as well. While his comedic timing and repertoire could use little polishing, it is definitely working for him. Right now, he has three jokes. The first involves him putting various things on his head, then looking at us and saying “hat?” with arms outstretched and uncanny resemblance to a blonder and arguably much cuter Danny DeVito. The second joke involves him fake sneezing “ah-choo” and then us replying, “bless you.” That’s it. The joke isn’t great but his anticipatory expression makes up for what the joke lacks. His third joke is to hide things (pacifier in a school bus, bottle under the couch, apple in a drawer) and then slyly smile as he exclaims “uh-oh” and runs, his feet leading his gigantic head, all over our house, fake-searching for the lost object. There are many moments worthy of tears, but then our daughter tells a fart joke, and somehow it lands just right for every one of us, and laughing feels more important than ever.
SOMETHING THAT
DIDN’T WORK
Recently I heard a podcast about the founder of Girls Who Code Reshma Saujani’s new book Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (and Why It's Different Than You Think). She highlights the catastrophic impact of the Pandemic on working moms and how far women in the labor market have been set back because of it. Saujani explains how the pay gap isn’t as much between women and men as it is between mothers and fathers, with the biggest gap actually being between mothers and women without children. Many of us are personally familiar with the millions of women — particularly mothers with school-age children — who pared back their hours, took paid or unpaid leave, and left or lost their jobs during the pandemic. (AJC) According to Saujani, 11 million women in the United States left the workforce for some period of time during the pandemic, and 1.1 million women are still missing. This doesn’t account for those who have downshifted or changed their careers during this time. According to the 2020 Women in the Workplace study, co-authored by McKinsey and LeanIn.org, 1 in 4 women considered leaving the workplace or downshifting their careers. According to the survey, 40% of mothers (compared to 27% of fathers) also added 3 or more additional hours of caregiving a day to their schedule over the past 2 years. The pandemic was the largest exodus of women leaving the labor market in the history of our nation. According to Saujani, it erased 30 years of progress nearly overnight. And women of color were leaving the workforce at two times the rate of white women. The impacts of a “mom penalty,” an issue that far predates the pandemic, can be severe. Stepping down the career ladder puts promotions, future earning power, and leadership opportunities at risk (NPR). Saujani has created The Marshall Plan for Moms to address a lot of these issues. She highlights many areas of the workforce that need significant changes to better support women, such as: more autonomy with schedules, more paid maternity leave and incentivizing men to take paid leave, provided back-up care, subsidized child-care, more on-ramps back to work after maternity leave, and more training in workplaces to ensure that the motherhood penalty vs. fatherhood premium isn’t unintentionally imposed. There’s a lot to reflect on, and this little piece just scratches the surface, but clearly how we support mothers returning to work and being successful at work deserves serious consideration and change.
SUSTENANCE SUGGESTIONS
It’s strawberry picking season, and, if you’re like us, this is an outing that seems to satisfy all parties. Then we return home with buckets of strawberries and an overzealous belief that we have extra time and hands and can somehow pull off making this pie. But, if you want to succumb to your false belief that you can do it all, I would recommend starting with this delicious dessert.
