Shutting the door

It's been a week or so since I've had my main camera, having sent it off in a package to New York City so that someone in a repair shop can cut and paste in new parts.

It's been a while longer since it has worked properly. Mostly I muscled through, appologizing to people for the random clicks that just didn't sound right as every other frame the shutter stuck open.

In the past when I've been without my main camera, I've felt anxious and edgy. Missing something important in my life.

But when I sent it off this time, with it's cracked gaskets and sticking mechanisms, I felt relief. I didn't want to haul the heavy body here and there; or drag it out at the mortification of my children. I didn't want to be the official photographer of our lives or someone elses.

I thought I might even break out the film cameras, or the toy ones that once intrigued me enough to make it a moniker. But I didn't.

I took a few snaps with the old camera, and actually said "NO" a few times to my kids, who asked for me to take a picture of something or other.

Today, as I trucked over to the FedEx office to retrieve the package containing my reconditioned camera, I realized I wasn't excited to have it back.

I didn't dig it out and affix a lens.

I didn't test it to see if it was in better working order.

I just trusted it would work when I needed it to.

Then I tucked it away in the back of the trunk and shut the door.

Calling it as we see it ...

I was all ready to pick up and hurl the first stone Atlantic Monthly essayist Sandra Tsing Loh metaphorically suggested in her painfully personal work “Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off” in the July/August edition of the journal, wherein she bluntly and unabashedly revealed her part in the failure of her 20-year marriage, and as a result questions whether the institution has outlived its usefulness in modern society.

Her question: When modern convenience and modern technology has not only freed us from the drudgery of work but also the statistical likelihood of an early demise, would it not seem logical that the idea of making a life-long commitment to another human being would also be rendered obsolete?

Recounting her own mid-life crisis and those of her female acquaintances she wonders why anyone would not only commit themselves to something that has a statistical rate of failure of about 50 percent, but also defend such an institution with such a defective track record so vehemently.

Perhaps, it's just habit; a foolish consistency of little minds. Or perhaps it's something else.

I found the piece, oddly enough, when I noticed my Web site’s hit counter leading hapless readers to my site and an identically titled essay critiquing another piece Tsing Loh wrote for the Atlantic a few years ago on the so-called Mommy Wars.

As I read her latest treatise, my heart was telling me that she is a woman who is going through one of the more painful, demoralizing, defeating moments in life; a moment that – while perhaps a construct of some antiquated system of social support – is no less tragic for a family’s individual members.

But my mind was agreeing with her.

In as much as I am one of the 90 percent of Americans who willingly went into a marriage knowing the rate of failure; knowing that there would be times when the “work” involved could eventually outweigh the value of the relationship; I also believe that if I had made such a decision in my 20s … even in my late 20s … I might not be married now.

Should we live with such mistakes for the sake of the children?

Tsing Loh makes an interesting, and seemingly logical point in her article that while statistics continually indicate two-parent homes are best for children, single-parent homes are not far behind. The problems, as she quotes the experts, comes when parents continually bring new paramours into the mix, wherein children are forced to bond or compete.

It makes me realize that where she’s standing isn't such a strange place to be. There’s no one way to live a life, even though there are socially accepted norms.

It seems to me we are naturally moving toward new understanding of these obstacles, too.

Even in a generation, it seems, we’ve slowed the process immensely.

By my calculation, Tsing Loh would have been about 27 when she married the man she’s now divorcing 20 years later. In some eras 27 would foretell spinsterhood. But today, a woman in her 20s is expected to see the world, and make her mark before she settles down. Ask Rebecca Woolf, writer and essayist, who found herself unexpectedly pregnant at 23, marrying her boyfriend and trying to work family life around her rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.

Woolf has parlayed her journey into a memoir and a popular blog site despite worries that motherhood would more than likely derail her potential for career success.

And yet, only a generation ago, Woolf’s age wouldn’t have been an issue at all in the framing of family life. Many women had careers and marriage by the time they were out of college; 22, 23, 24 years old.

Now the 24-year-old mother is a unique and suspect being.

Still, I can’t see myself objecting to my children living with their love interests before marriage; in fact, I can more likely see the drawbacks of a more traditional scheme from my own narrative. Had I married the first (or second) person I lived with there’s no doubt in my mind I’d be in my third marriage as I sit here typing.

Yet, in as much as I agree with her theory, I am not ready to give up on marriage.

I’m not ready to file away the 50 percent rate of divorce under the heading of “failure,” any more than I would give up the experience I got from living with the two men I didn’t marry.

Perhaps, in time, Tsing Loh will realize that throwing marriage out with divorce is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Ambiguous

impressed, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

Dear Annabel,

I know what this look meant. I was there, listening.

The girl - a stranger you'd met on the playground - was telling you about how fun it was to play just the very way you two had been playing.

You were in emphatic agreement and slightly star-struck.

She was a bit older but nevertheless impressed that you'd already lost two teeth.

She also liked your name. And you liked hers.

The crinkle at the top of your nose is always there when you are listening intently. Your closed smile tightens your eyes.

I look at this picture and I see its ambiguity ... the face of a girl who's smelled something just a tiny bit off or saw something with a touch of derision.

But neither was a part of this moment when I snapped the shutter.

What was there, a few feet away, was another girl: A taller, blonde girl not so very different in age or appearance than either of you. Yet, I noticed your conversation -- even if she didn't hear -- soon made her so.

When you asked her to join you on the swing and she refused, you decided your games were better anyway. Without any meanness, you just moved her into another category. A different category than the one you were currently filing yourself and your new friend.

Is this how it begins? Where playground politics get their platforms? Their lobbyists? Their stranglehold on the developing child? There must be a natural order to growing up: A Darwinian struggle resembling survival of the fittest.

I remind you about all the times you didn't want to climb to the top, or slide on the curly slide. I remind you about how you sometimes like to play by yourself.

You agreed ... and then you told your friend "moms are always reminding you about stuff like that."

Perhaps it's because I remember this look. I understand it as sure as I know my own face. I know it has so many meanings beside the one that was behind it.

Love and observations,

Mommy

An empty room

The Champ’s room is empty save for a trundle bed bought for a handful of dollars at a yard sale and a corner dresser filled with clothes he’s still months away from fitting.

A beige towel – remaindered and untouched from the last overnight guest - lays folded on the chest’s blonde-colored top. It serves as a rough terry mattress for a smattering of keepsake toys with which he’s never played.

The corner boudoir – more extension of hallway than bedroom – has been a concern since the moment the ultrasound technician detected his wand with hers.

Thus he’s never spent a night in his room. He rarely spends the night in his crib.

His clothes – the ones that do fit him - are straining a cheap chest of drawers pushed into the back of my closet. The ones he’s outgrown make their way to a bag tucked in beside it, presumably to be left, like an orphan, on the steps of a charity in a moment of eyes-closed-shut resolve.

My husband wonders if we’ll have to wait until he goes to college before we get our room back. His jokes have sharp teeth that he wraps in humor to dull the effect on my soft flesh.

I refuse to talk about it.

I don’t want to give voice to all that I am thinking.

... That we are showing a kind of deep seated favoritism to our boy as we shuffled our girl off a room of her own when she was barely a year old.

... That he is my last child, and losing his baby-ness with each passing day.

... That things are progressing in the other house - the house that is not the home we brought them into but the one in which they will grow up - and that means more change.

... And that he will finally have a room that rivals his sister’s.

I don’t want to be reminded that my babies are growing up even though the fact of it confronts me each day at breakfast. Each day they get taller and taller, able to reach previously unattainable objects as they perch on tippy-toes.

Such happiness I feel in their accomplishment, and yet a somber tone sounds in my head '... soon they won't need me.'

The day is coming when we will have our room back. When we look at each other and have to figure out how to be alone again. How to just be us.

I don’t want think about that day if it means it will be missing the equivalent of the children’s weight in joy.

Love and Logic

One of my favorite bloggers showed me the future. And it frightened me.

I wasn't able to sleep last night after reading her open letter to the parents of Casey; one of the students she's encountered in her role as substitute teacher in a Texas classroom.

The letter starts with a little background: The child, one of the smallest and youngest in the second grade class, had moved into the area from another state over the summer. He’s left behind everything he knows, has made no friends and is getting penalized daily for being unprepared.

One of the penalties for not being prepared: The child must sit on a wall and watch as other children play at recess.

It seems only the child (and this teacher) cares that it matters not whether it was the child being forgetful or the parents being lame when they didn’t investigate his bag for homework. The hurt and embarrassment of having to sit out recess stings either way.

The premise is unmistakable: This boy’s parents are fucking up.

They are perpetually late. They are disorganized. They’ve not taught their kid how to pronounce words. They don’t sit and eat dinner together. They have not made his education their priority, or even a distant second.

They make excuses rather than remedies. They send notes begging for leniency for their son, whose homework got misplaced under a bunch of crap that should have been sorted out by now. They didn’t think to correct their son’s pronunciation, probably because “fought” is so much cuter that “thought” in toddlerhood. Or maybe they thought a teacher would just sort all that stuff out.

I suppose it was this teacher's last line that hit me the hardest:

“Be the parents ... so we can get back to being his teachers.”

At that moment, I pictured Casey’s mom, and decided she probably looked a lot like me.

I felt the disorganization of being in unfamiliar territory. I felt the terror of the knowledge that the hours I work are not entirely conducive of conventional life. Dinner won’t ever happen until after 7 p.m. When will homework get done? I don’t even want to think about the commute.

Will I have to quit my job? If I do will we have enough money? How will we get health insurance if my job disappears? What if my husband gets hurt on the job? How will we save for college? None of the basics seems so basic anymore.

And then there’s making friends. I am the last person who can teach my child how to make friends.

I’ve lived in my town for nearly 10 years now. I’ve gone to community events. I’ve volunteered. I’ve invited people over for parties and dinners and cookouts. The friendships haven’t materialized.

It’s probably me. I suppose I’m the same person I was when I was in second grade: the same little girl who’d bend over backwards to have someone take notice. I’d give away any Barbie in my collection – Hell, you could have them all – if you’d just be my friend. No one wanted my Barbies then. It shouldn't suprise me they don't want my potato salad now.

It's true that we've lived here longer than we've even been parents, but we spend most of our time in other places. Our children have even gone to other towns for preschools and daycare. Come next September, when the reality of Kindergarten comes to pass, we will all feel as if we just moved from other place entirely.

But even in my own awkwardness, I don't think I'm alone.

I am not the only one who commutes or gets home after dark. No one else is at the park on weekday evenings. Playgroups don’t meet on weekends, they didn't even meet in the summer when I was last on maternity leave. Only laundry sees me eye to eye.

I think about how long it takes a person to settle in, and I realize it could be a lifetime. I suppose the neighborhood 'Welcome Wagons' have always been an idyllic convention of Hollywood. That's what churches are for, heathen.

We've all said it before: "Why are people so idiotic?"

We wonder with our pointy fingers, "Why can't they see that their children should take priority? It doesn't take much; just a little more attentiveness."

But wanting change doesn’t make it happen, just like wanting my husband to take the recycling to the curb won't actually get it there. Screaming and ranting generally don't produce desired results either. But figuring out what will work just isn't fair to me ... especially when I'll just end up taking it to the curb myself anyway.

There’s no such thing as an even playing field, no matter how much we’d like it to be. Love doesn't always mean logic.

There’s always going to be someone out there who doesn’t play by the rules, or who doesn’t realize the importance of the rules. There’s always going to be the people who do it all wrong, and whom clobbering over the head will only build up resistance not effect change.

I suppose what frightens me most is that there is that Casey really is the victim in all of this. He’ll find himself fighting two systems, at home and at school. Home where time is too short; and school where there are few accommodations for the basic failures: there’s too much to cover already.

I have no answers. I just hang my head and hope I can manage to avoid receiving this letter.