I try to stay out of the "Mommy Wars". Even that description of what this debate consists of is a third rail I would rather not touch, nor do I buy into its assumptions of "us" vs. "them", a dichotomy that I have not personally found exists in such stark terms, at least not in my own life and circles. That's not to say I don't have my opinions; I have very strong, sometimes politically incorrect, opinions about women, about working, about parenting, and about why, for me and my family, having two working parents is the right model for us and for our kids. But I recognize the limitations of my perspective; my opinions come from my life, my upbringing, my wiring, and the values my husband and I share. They do not necessarily reflect, or speak for, any other woman or family or set of values. And while (if I'm being totally honest) I don't necessarily buy into the "no one should judge one another, every mom is awesome and should do whatever she wants without being vulnerable to criticism" line of thinking (in an ideal world maybe, but the bottom line is that everyone judges and not all moms (or dads) are awesome in each other's estimation; denying that doesn't really move the discussion forward in my opinion), I do think there are some rules of engagement when one enters this conversation.
I read Matt Walsh's recent blog post ("You're a stay at home mom? What do you do all day?") after it appeared in my Facebook news feed and had a visceral reaction. I have been trying to pull that reaction apart, to determine exactly from where my offense derives. So, Mr. Walsh, here it goes:
I certainly don't take issue with each sentence you write in a vacuum. I agree that the anecdotal conversations you quote sound unfortunate and short-sighted, and that being at home with children full time (which I have done at various points for various lengths of time) is extraordinarily tiring and challenging and also fulfilling in incredible ways. I also, however, happily work outside the home and have always had a career (albeit in various iterations); not because I'm "forced into it", but because it is important to me that I do for many reasons. My job is not some Marxist nightmare, but actually something I care deeply about, and that fulfills me in a way that other spheres of my life do not. I would not be the person, and parent, I am without that need filled.
But the cringe I felt when I read your post really didn't come from a strong feeling about working vs. staying at home; again, I've done both, I have friends who do both (or one or the other), and I think it's less of a line in the sand for most women than you make it out to be, your anecdotes notwithstanding. For the most part I find we are all individual grains of sand, mixed together, doing our best before the tide washes in and our kids are grown. My main concern is your totally unjustifiable conflation of what it means to honor mothers (and their children) with the side you have chosen to take in the "Mommy Wars", a "War" in which I'm not sure you should be fighting at all (and here I used the term deliberately because you are clearly choosing an us vs. them, and I am part of the "them" in your framework). You don't honor women and motherhood by verbally denying membership into their hallowed halls to women who do not agree with your take on what the "ideal" balance is -- for women -- between working and staying at home. Not to state the obvious, but you are not a woman. Although I tend to believe everyone has a right to their opinion, here I have to say you are speaking out of turn. This is not like Wally Lamb's invisible embodiment of a female voice in "She's Come Undone". Your post, Mr. Walsh, is the opposite of that. And to take up such an important cause on our behalf, with such a divisive message, makes me want to say "lay down your sword, Sir Walsh; your white knight services are not needed here."
I can't speak to whether your wife was flattered or bolstered by your words, or whether she felt that you were inappropriately speaking on her behalf; that's between you and her and really irrelevant to my point. You may be able to speak for your wife; you may know her well enough, and you may have a relationship where coming to her specific defense against the specific critics you cite in your post is a positive thing for your relationship. But you do not speak for all women, and you certainly do not speak for me. I remain a woman, and I remain a mother, even with my career (I truly cannot believe I am prompted to write that sentence in 2013...but the fact that I am gets to the core of what is so offensive in your words). Going to an office and contributing in that sphere of my life does not diminish my mommy-ness. I suppose in that regard I agree (indirectly) with your description of one of the distinctions between having a job and being a mom: I may have chosen to work "part-time" at various points in my career, but in doing so I do not (through some sort of inverse proportion) become a "part-time" mother. I am always a mother, 100% and completely. In the same way my husband is always a father, even though he goes to work in an office every day. To suggest that women who choose (and are able) to stay home with the kids have some type of monopoly on motherhood (or at least a claim to the "ideal" or "revered" motherhood) is heresy. It is the greatest insult to motherhood one could possibly make. Not to mention, to fatherhood. Because I personally don't want the exceptionalism you bestow on mothers, of which I count myself one. Take me off your pedestal, Mr. Walsh, or I'll jump, a la Kate Chopin's The Awakening.
At this point (at the risk of adopting an approach I have just criticized) I will come to my own spouse's defense. Because he is as important and as central to our children's lives as I am. He is shaping, and molding and raising them, just as I am, even though we both work (and sometimes because we both work, as I am certainly proud of the example I try to set for my three amazing boys who I hope will grow up to be three amazing men who value being intellectually curious, passionate about what they do, dedicated to both work and family, and who are not afraid of strong women). Because that's what parents do. And parenthood is not a zero sum game. Isn't that why it's so beautiful? All the fears about not having enough love to sustain multiple children are never realized. There is always enough love. Always enough energy. Always enough devotion and dedication. At least, that's my experience. Like an elementary particle, my "motherhood" cannot be split or diluted. Whether you work, whether you stay at home, whether you are a mom, dad, or other primary caregiver raising a child -- it is who you are, all the time; whether on the soccer field, helping with homework, or sitting in an office behind a desk. That is what should be glorified -- not one model of achieving the ultimate goal of raising happy kids into successful adults.
Don't tell me what is best for me or my kids, Mr. Walsh. Don't tell me what is ideal for humanity, and what my role as "mother" should be in getting us there, all in some supposed defense of mothers and children. You are one voice. You are not my voice. And you are on thin ice claiming to represent a group to which you don't belong, in a "War" that most of us aren't fighting.
Monday, October 14, 2013
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
A Bad Breakup
As I lay on the X-ray table at the orthopedist's recently, the pain in my hip throbbed from the cold, hard table pushing through the flimsy hospital gown, not to mention the various physical manipulations required by the physician's exam (bending and flexing; hopping on one leg and then the next; probing the spots on my side and back that, when touched, feel like a hot iron poker is being applied). As I stared up at the machinery above me, I felt uncomfortably exposed. As though my insides, and all the emotions they contain, were as transparent as the X-ray films being generated in the adjacent room, a glowing skeleton of sadness against the dark backdrop.
My hip has been getting progressively worse since I injured it while training for the Boston Marathon this year, and over the summer it got to the point where I could no longer run or really do any form of physical exercise. With an upcoming MRI scheduled, the doctor was clear: no running until they figure out what is going on. I understand that in the larger scheme of things, this is not a big deal. People get injured running and pursuing other physical past-times. People go to orthopedist's every day. Hiatuses from exercise for various lengths of time are common (although for me, tortuous). Physical therapy is a cottage industry. There are others, many others, whose physical recovery since April 15 has been of a magnitude I cannot even begin to imagine, but I follow the coverage of their progress in the news with intense interest, relating in my very small way to the long road this has been on so many levels for anyone there that day. My hip injury is not special or exceptional, nor is my situation particularly tragic or deserving of sympathy. However, when the orthopedic fellow asked me to explain how I ended up at their office, I could not manage to provide a standard medical history without the emotions of the marathon rising uncontrollably and rapidly. What should have been a cut and dry explanation of the progression of my injuries became words backed up in my throat, escaping haphazardly: "I ran in the Marathon"..."Boston"..."My first"..."the hip...it's all connected"...Was all I managed before the tears came. The kind fellow immediately passed me the Kleenex. After a few moments hiding in my tissue, I lamely joked "You probably don't get many people breaking down at the ortho's office?"
"Oh you'd be surprised," she said; "pain is a very powerful thing."
The past few weeks I had been waiting anxiously for my appointment. Counting on the fact that the doctor would know what to do. That all I needed was a shot of Cortisone, or a chiropractic adjustment; that there would be an easy prescription to follow and everything would be better. That at least physically I'd be in control of my decision whether to run again next year. And that my physical rehabilitation would somehow complete the emotional. But now I lay on the X-ray table, officially on the DL, with no sense of the time or effort it would take to be whole again (and the realization that I no longer know what being "whole" looks like, and that it probably will never look quite the same again). My hip pain, an external manifestation and constant reminder that, in fact, I remain broken on many levels; putting the pieces together for sure, but the cracks where the glue has dried still evident and ever so fragile. "Handle with care" I want to label myself. "Contents may have shifted."
Until very recently I had intentionally accumulated only a vague sense of what happened to my family on April 15 as they stood on Boylston Street waiting to watch me finish the race, in a spot that turned out to be directly across the street from the second blast. All I knew were really just the snippets that were told to me on that day as we walked in a fog across the city to find our car, most of which I was too stunned to really digest, and a few details my children have since shared. I have not been able to look at photos of my family from earlier in the day, enjoying the race and waiting for me to arrive. It evokes the feeling I have at the start of the movie Titanic, watching the steamer trunks loaded on the ship as the heroine Rose, stunning in her wide brimmed straw hat, looks up at the unsinkable masterpiece. You feel the excitement and the beauty in real time, while another part of your brain is screaming "Don't get on that ship!! Don't do it!! I know how this ends!!" I cannot bear to see my kids' smiling faces in these pictures, knowing that moments later their world would be upside down, with me unable to help them; trapped 3/4 of a mile away. The other night I finally wanted to know. I wanted my husband to go through it moment by moment. I wanted to know what it sounded like, smelled like, felt like; what their faces looked like, who was crying, what were they saying. I wanted to know how many minutes it actually was before they knew I was safe (and I knew they were alive). How long were they in total chaos. Where did they wait and how exactly did they find each other and then me. I needed to know whether it was better, worse, or a little of both, than how I have pictured it over and over in my head, almost unconsciously. And as I continue to connect these dots, as the blurry watercolor settles into a still life, I am finding relief.
A man walked by me the other day wearing a Boston Marathon jacket and I found myself asking him if he had run this year. "Yes, you?" "Yes." I answered, smiling slightly. "It was a bad day," he said. I nodded, although in truth when I answered his question what I felt was not sadness and anger, but more a wistfulness akin to learning that an old boyfriend or girlfriend is getting married; a softness for what you shared together, framed by the time and space that separates that experience and a recognition that you no longer have (or want) a claim to it. "Are you registered for next year?" he asked. I paused; "Well, I'm registered", I said tentatively, "but I'm not sure I'll be able to run. My hip is still really messed up..." and then in a moment of over-sharing, I added "and so is my emotional state." He slowed down to actually look at me. "Well, I think you should worry more about your emotional state than your hip," he said.
When I got home later that day, the mail, wet from earlier rain and our defective mailbox, sat in a damp pile on my counter. I went through tossing things out one by one: catalogues, credit card solicitations, the local newspaper that was disintegrating from the rain water. I reached for a plastic wrapped magazine that looked like another running catalogue and was moving towards the trash when I saw the label warning me not to throw out the address card because it contained a "Runner Certificate" on the back. And then it came together. The "magazine" was in fact the "Racers' Record Book" from the 117th Boston Marathon and the certificate was my evidence that I participated; my "projected finishing time" (calculated based on where I was at the last checkpoint) printed under my name. I stared. Although I had received an email alerting me that these were being mailed out, I certainly hadn't digested the significance. This was the last step of a process that had started almost exactly a year ago. This should have been the "frame-able" memento of my undertaking. But I felt no connection to this piece of paper, or to my "projected time". That time never existed in marathon reality. There was, in fact, no marathon underway at that moment; I'm not even sure if the race clocks were still functioning. I wondered where exactly my family was, at the moment of my projected finishing time. Whether we knew by then that everyone was physically ok. Looking at the certificate, it seemed to me like a fictional end that I did not want. An effort to close the time-space vortex in which I currently find myself; to end the limbo. Because it was this time last year that I debated whether to run and then applied to be on Spaulding's Boston Marathon team. It was this time last year that my running partner and I started pushing our miles a bit on the weekends; just dipping our toes in the water to see if, in fact, this might be within our reach. And part of my brain doesn't seem to recognize that a year has passed. That this experience is actually "over". That the Runner Certificate, albeit projected, signifies the real end to something that in many ways feels like it never started.
Suddenly the feeling I've been having all fall is not that hard to pinpoint. It is the stuff of love poems and breakup songs. I am realizing that the Boston Marathon cycle has moved on, with me on the sidelines, and that I am jealous of others (younger, prettier, "trophy runners"...with better hips) who are running next year for the first time, just starting their process from registration through their own "Runner Certificate". I haven't had many bad breakups thankfully, but if Adele has taught me anything it's that what I'm feeling right now is, simply, heartbroken. And what I want to say (dare I, sing?) to the Boston Marathon is: "Never mind I"ll find someone like yoooooooouu"; or, more aggressively, "Well I'm here, to remind you, of the mess you left when you went away"; or, more definitively, "We, are never ever ever...getting back together. Like ever." But I know I'm not really angry at the Boston Marathon (or even my hip for that matter); in fact that would be irrational. It's just that if we are going to break up, for real this time, I can't help but want to be the one who does the dumping. Because it hurts too much to have that decision taken away from me again.
My hip has been getting progressively worse since I injured it while training for the Boston Marathon this year, and over the summer it got to the point where I could no longer run or really do any form of physical exercise. With an upcoming MRI scheduled, the doctor was clear: no running until they figure out what is going on. I understand that in the larger scheme of things, this is not a big deal. People get injured running and pursuing other physical past-times. People go to orthopedist's every day. Hiatuses from exercise for various lengths of time are common (although for me, tortuous). Physical therapy is a cottage industry. There are others, many others, whose physical recovery since April 15 has been of a magnitude I cannot even begin to imagine, but I follow the coverage of their progress in the news with intense interest, relating in my very small way to the long road this has been on so many levels for anyone there that day. My hip injury is not special or exceptional, nor is my situation particularly tragic or deserving of sympathy. However, when the orthopedic fellow asked me to explain how I ended up at their office, I could not manage to provide a standard medical history without the emotions of the marathon rising uncontrollably and rapidly. What should have been a cut and dry explanation of the progression of my injuries became words backed up in my throat, escaping haphazardly: "I ran in the Marathon"..."Boston"..."My first"..."the hip...it's all connected"...Was all I managed before the tears came. The kind fellow immediately passed me the Kleenex. After a few moments hiding in my tissue, I lamely joked "You probably don't get many people breaking down at the ortho's office?"
"Oh you'd be surprised," she said; "pain is a very powerful thing."
The past few weeks I had been waiting anxiously for my appointment. Counting on the fact that the doctor would know what to do. That all I needed was a shot of Cortisone, or a chiropractic adjustment; that there would be an easy prescription to follow and everything would be better. That at least physically I'd be in control of my decision whether to run again next year. And that my physical rehabilitation would somehow complete the emotional. But now I lay on the X-ray table, officially on the DL, with no sense of the time or effort it would take to be whole again (and the realization that I no longer know what being "whole" looks like, and that it probably will never look quite the same again). My hip pain, an external manifestation and constant reminder that, in fact, I remain broken on many levels; putting the pieces together for sure, but the cracks where the glue has dried still evident and ever so fragile. "Handle with care" I want to label myself. "Contents may have shifted."
Until very recently I had intentionally accumulated only a vague sense of what happened to my family on April 15 as they stood on Boylston Street waiting to watch me finish the race, in a spot that turned out to be directly across the street from the second blast. All I knew were really just the snippets that were told to me on that day as we walked in a fog across the city to find our car, most of which I was too stunned to really digest, and a few details my children have since shared. I have not been able to look at photos of my family from earlier in the day, enjoying the race and waiting for me to arrive. It evokes the feeling I have at the start of the movie Titanic, watching the steamer trunks loaded on the ship as the heroine Rose, stunning in her wide brimmed straw hat, looks up at the unsinkable masterpiece. You feel the excitement and the beauty in real time, while another part of your brain is screaming "Don't get on that ship!! Don't do it!! I know how this ends!!" I cannot bear to see my kids' smiling faces in these pictures, knowing that moments later their world would be upside down, with me unable to help them; trapped 3/4 of a mile away. The other night I finally wanted to know. I wanted my husband to go through it moment by moment. I wanted to know what it sounded like, smelled like, felt like; what their faces looked like, who was crying, what were they saying. I wanted to know how many minutes it actually was before they knew I was safe (and I knew they were alive). How long were they in total chaos. Where did they wait and how exactly did they find each other and then me. I needed to know whether it was better, worse, or a little of both, than how I have pictured it over and over in my head, almost unconsciously. And as I continue to connect these dots, as the blurry watercolor settles into a still life, I am finding relief.
A man walked by me the other day wearing a Boston Marathon jacket and I found myself asking him if he had run this year. "Yes, you?" "Yes." I answered, smiling slightly. "It was a bad day," he said. I nodded, although in truth when I answered his question what I felt was not sadness and anger, but more a wistfulness akin to learning that an old boyfriend or girlfriend is getting married; a softness for what you shared together, framed by the time and space that separates that experience and a recognition that you no longer have (or want) a claim to it. "Are you registered for next year?" he asked. I paused; "Well, I'm registered", I said tentatively, "but I'm not sure I'll be able to run. My hip is still really messed up..." and then in a moment of over-sharing, I added "and so is my emotional state." He slowed down to actually look at me. "Well, I think you should worry more about your emotional state than your hip," he said.
When I got home later that day, the mail, wet from earlier rain and our defective mailbox, sat in a damp pile on my counter. I went through tossing things out one by one: catalogues, credit card solicitations, the local newspaper that was disintegrating from the rain water. I reached for a plastic wrapped magazine that looked like another running catalogue and was moving towards the trash when I saw the label warning me not to throw out the address card because it contained a "Runner Certificate" on the back. And then it came together. The "magazine" was in fact the "Racers' Record Book" from the 117th Boston Marathon and the certificate was my evidence that I participated; my "projected finishing time" (calculated based on where I was at the last checkpoint) printed under my name. I stared. Although I had received an email alerting me that these were being mailed out, I certainly hadn't digested the significance. This was the last step of a process that had started almost exactly a year ago. This should have been the "frame-able" memento of my undertaking. But I felt no connection to this piece of paper, or to my "projected time". That time never existed in marathon reality. There was, in fact, no marathon underway at that moment; I'm not even sure if the race clocks were still functioning. I wondered where exactly my family was, at the moment of my projected finishing time. Whether we knew by then that everyone was physically ok. Looking at the certificate, it seemed to me like a fictional end that I did not want. An effort to close the time-space vortex in which I currently find myself; to end the limbo. Because it was this time last year that I debated whether to run and then applied to be on Spaulding's Boston Marathon team. It was this time last year that my running partner and I started pushing our miles a bit on the weekends; just dipping our toes in the water to see if, in fact, this might be within our reach. And part of my brain doesn't seem to recognize that a year has passed. That this experience is actually "over". That the Runner Certificate, albeit projected, signifies the real end to something that in many ways feels like it never started.
Suddenly the feeling I've been having all fall is not that hard to pinpoint. It is the stuff of love poems and breakup songs. I am realizing that the Boston Marathon cycle has moved on, with me on the sidelines, and that I am jealous of others (younger, prettier, "trophy runners"...with better hips) who are running next year for the first time, just starting their process from registration through their own "Runner Certificate". I haven't had many bad breakups thankfully, but if Adele has taught me anything it's that what I'm feeling right now is, simply, heartbroken. And what I want to say (dare I, sing?) to the Boston Marathon is: "Never mind I"ll find someone like yoooooooouu"; or, more aggressively, "Well I'm here, to remind you, of the mess you left when you went away"; or, more definitively, "We, are never ever ever...getting back together. Like ever." But I know I'm not really angry at the Boston Marathon (or even my hip for that matter); in fact that would be irrational. It's just that if we are going to break up, for real this time, I can't help but want to be the one who does the dumping. Because it hurts too much to have that decision taken away from me again.
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