Papoe

Parenting is just one long experiment in method acting

Rather, it’s trial and error. Or, a game of Connect Four where you plunk down three disks in a row, Bam Bam Bam, but keep getting blocked from winning, every time.  

Jocelyn is not a morning person. This is something that I know well myself, but the soul of a toddler cannot be soothed with a brewing pot of coffee. If she wakes up on her own she is pleasant and cordial, like the dutiful daughter that exists in my dreams. This morning, Khary woke her up with a nudge, and she began screaming. Crying. But the kind of crying that involves more yelling and shrieking and sucking in air than actual tears.

Our reactions vary depending on the sun’s magnetic pull. The morning routine dictates that Khary dresses the girls while I get ready for work. Then we switch. Her tirade had yet to cease when I entered the lion's den, and I just didn’t feel like yelling.

I looked at her sprawled out on the living room floor. Her nose was scrunched like she had just sucked on a lemon and she squeezed her eyes, trying desperately to shoot tears directly towards me.

I was calm but firm.

“You can be happy or you can be quiet!”

I walked back into the kitchen.

She got quiet.

Could this be the miracle cure for toddler tantrums?

I can be sure that this won’t work tomorrow. If I wrote a parenting book it would be called: This Will Only Work Once. When All Else Fails, Go Back to Bed.

I’ve mentioned before that I'm skeptical of parenting books and parenting trends. There was an article on The Bump today about wacky parenting trends, like never saying no, or biting the baby back. I read them and laugh and, quite frankly, judge. To each his/her own, right? I often shrug and I want to ignore them all together. But it’s like a giant turd that I don’t want to look at, yet it’s my daughter’s first, so I want to take a picture. Motherlode is beginning a book club, of sorts, where the topic is parenting books. My first thought was, no thanks. And then she explained her first choice: “TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career and the Conflict of Modern Motherhood,” an anthology of essays by 47 women exploring how they navigate the need to nurture and the need for work.

I’m a working mother. I nurture. But I don’t really feel conflict—not in the way that many parenting articles try to cure. I have had to adjust since returning to work full-time, and it has been hard, but it’s the small things that are hardest: going to the store, trying to run simple errands between leaving work and making the daycare cutoff. I miss the girls, and I occasionally stare at their pictures above my desk, but I know that they are cared for each day, and they are taught and inspired and encouraged. They bring their new vocabulary and their new ideas and new skills home, and I feel like it’s worth it. At times I wish that I had savored my part-time-work-at-home status a little longer—my ability to have a leisurely breakfast and then take the girls for a walk. But I’m not looking at it as a choice. I didn’t choose work over my children. I chose work AND my children.

It’s questionable whether I’ll even find the time to read TORN, but I will certainly follow the chain of comments on Motherlode to determine if it’s this modern take on motherhood is really modern or just a familiar story of biting babies back.

Do you read parenting books? If so, what do you feel you’re gaining as a parent? If not, why?

Children and books are not part of our past, so don't get rid of our children's books

Children and books are two things that I love, so imagine my surprise when the New York Times reported that children's picture books have lost their luster. Sales are down, less books are being published, and parents are (apparently) demanding more challenging texts. But who says that we can't learn and relearn from picture books.

My new article on Blissfully Domestic, Picture books are more than pretty pictures, talks about how I can use one book to teach Jocelyn now, in two years, in four years, and six years. One book. Imagine what I can do with her whole bookshelf full of books.

An EPL machete is on order

I wasn't going to write about Eat, Pray, Love anymore but then I had a moment to read this morning. No, I still have not finished the book. I was reading The Daily Beast, when an article by Rachel Skukert called Elizabeth Gilbert's God Obsession caught my eye. Rachel has written her own memoir, also based on her travels. She describes said travel as the "Drink, Scream, Ill-Advised One-Night-Stand variety." She did not find God.

I sent Rachel a tweet to say that I loved her article. She wrote back to say thanks, and told me that I had to watch this video immediately. Hence, the machete. 

Lewis Black Protests Eat, Pray, Love.

[The New York Times must not like me, so it's not letting me upload the video directly. Please click on the link above.]

If I were to write my own memoir, I think I would like QVC to honor the film version by hawking bottles of Two Buck Chuck, pairs of black Converse, and used burp cloths.

For more Eat, Pray, Love critique (papoe-style) you may enjoy these posts:

I like to eat. I don't pray. Love is everwhere around me

Il bel far niente

I like to eat. I don’t pray. Love is everywhere around me.

In preparation for the release of Eat, Pray, Love I am putting my reading on the pot into high gear. Or should I say, I’m making use of even a short pee to try and get through the book. I’ve talked before about how I think that Il bel far niente is a crock of shit. I have only progressed another ninety or so pages; I am just now learning that a quiet mind can save my life. I find this interesting because I didn’t realize that my life needed saving. I thought that I was doing pretty good without spending hours asking the heavens to hear me, or listening for the all mighty being (in whatever form he or she may take) to tell me to stop watching so much television.

I don’t mean to bash Elizabeth Gilbert. I actually enjoy her writing. I also saw (on youtube) a speech she made for the 2009 TED Conference about nurturing creativity. One of the many things she talked about is the idea of genius, and how back in Roman times they thought of genius as an actual thing—a being. Each artist had their own genius, which usually lived somewhere in their house, perhaps in a corner in the back room. If the artist were to be a success, it would be partly due to the help of the genius. If success was unattainable, it was not all their fault. It was their crappy and inept genius that was to blame.

I like this idea of genius. We try the best we can and the only way we can achieve success, in art or in life, is with the help of others. Surely we can be the lone source of failure, but I think that perhaps we’re listening to our tricky little genius in the corner. Next time, we’ll make a better choice.

My beef with Eat, Pray, Love is its transformation from memoir to self-help for the masses. I’m sure that is not what Elizabeth Gilbert intended for her work. But by coming to the party late in the game, I’m unable to read it without the presence of something other than genius in the room. I feel the presence of meaning. As though each section is supposed to have meaning in my life as well. Perhaps I can find meaning, but that feels very touchy-feely. Instead, here is my mantra: I like to eat. I don’t pray. Love is everywhere around me.

I don’t discount prayer. I know that Khary prayed daily during the months following Aja’s birth. Perhaps he still does. I just don’t find solace in prayer. For me it conjures up memories of forced family counseling sessions (a punishment for getting caught stealing with my girlfriends). It was 1989 and the town was still recovering from the Loma Prieta Earthquake. I remember looking up at the ceiling and praying for another earthquake just to get me out of that room. It didn’t work. Later, when the counselor wanted to see in me a session by myself, I brought a book and read. For an hour. Without looking up or answering any of her questions.

That was our last session.

Writing is the thing that quiets my mind. If I were to ever write a memoir (I say facetiously) I hope that it ends up being rewritten into a graphic novel, because I think my girls would be awesome little superheroes.

Kick, Your, Ass.

Quiet was winning until we started wishing

I started thinking about wishes this morning. Not because of the pennies I threw in the water at the Japanese Tea Garden on Monday, but because of Sesame Street. In between the screams for crackers, no raisins, no bottle (Jocelyn), and the shrieks from the teething monster (Aja), I needed a moment of quiet.

Quiet was winning until the start of Abby’s Flying Fairy World, an annoying little cartoon segment. On cue, Jocelyn went from singing along with the opening sequence to whimpering. Today the genie scared her so she ran to sit on my lap for a short cuddle. Meanwhile, I was forced to divert my attention away from the computer to the television. It’s really a stupid little cartoon and I’m a bit disappointed that it has been included in show this season (because overall I’m a huge Sesame fan). Anyway, the fairies get wishes, they get stuck in the bottle, they need to use more wishes. Hence: wishes.

Wishes are interesting because when it really boils down to it I just want my family to be happy and healthy. That being said, we could all use a little help, right?

I’m into reading blogs these days and I’ve come across a post or two where the writer offers up a picture to illustrate a particular mess in their house, and it all looks so perfectly placed. Therefore, I wish that my design skills were so successful that even my messes had their own unique style. I would never have to clean because people would want to come over just to see what new thing I did with the apartment. Because right now my mess looks a lot like Jocelyn’s.

I watch television, and so I always perk up with the Emmy’s are announced. Friday Night Lights rocks and should have gotten a drama nod. But more than that, I wish that they gave out Emmy awards to television viewers. I would put mine in the bathroom. Right next to a picture of me with Kyle Chandler.

Baseball is huge in this family. Jocelyn already knows the “Let’s Go Oakland” chant. I wish that Joe Buck would stop commentating. I repeat, I wish that Joe Buck would stop commentating. Just stop.

We have a corner in the living room designated as a reading nook. Jocelyn likes to read, or shuffle through the titles, or just pull everything off the bookshelf. I rediscovered a book that we were given as a gift: The Rainbow Fish. This book has won awards. I wish it hadn’t. Supposedly this book teaches kids the joys of sharing. But when you have a fish that thinks he’s too beautiful to play with other fish, and then is told that he’ll only have friends if he gives his scales away (leaving him less-beautiful), what is this really teaching kids about sharing? Maybe I’m sensitive because I’m the mother of girls and I’m still going be the mother of girls that are in middle school, when life equals pain, wrapped up in a beautiful bow.

And I wish that we all got richer with age. All of us, even the Republicans (if I have to be fair).

What would you wish for?