September, 2008

The Wild Washerwomen now represent a rallying cry around here.

Martin and Chris, when they’re fired up about something, getting ready to sprint across the lawn, or just feel moved by the spirit, pump their fists in the air and yell, “Washerwomeeeeeeeeeeen!!!!”  I’m not even going to try to explain it to the neighbors.

When we go to the library, Martin stuffs one book after another into my bag until I can no longer hold it–and I’m surprisingly strong, so it’s a hell of a lot of books. When we get home and look through them, we end up with some fabulous kids’ books and some mind-numbingly stupid ones. When I pulled The Wild Washerwomen out of the bag, I groaned to myself. Great, a book about women doing laundry.

Well, not quite…

These wild washerwomen, Dottie, Lottie, Molly, Dolly, Winnie, Minnie, and Ernestine, certainly begin the story as women doing laundry–and they are the greatest washerwomen around. But they object to how their authoritarian boss, Balthazar Tight, treats then, so they revolt. And I do mean revolt. After burying Tight under a mountain of dirty laundry, they go on a somewhat destructive rampage through the countryside, gleefully wreaking havoc and escaping the clutches of the men trying to capture them. Villagers live in fear, and set up watch towers to look out for them as the rampage stretches for days since “the washerwomen were having so much fun that they didn’t want it to end.”  The wild washerwomen splash mud on people’s clean clothes, steal food and hats, and tip stuff over, for “all that washing had made the washerwomen very strong.”

There’s something about these washerwomen that I like. I know, I know, stealing, and breaking things, and scaring people . . . not good. But I dig these wild washerwomen and their strength and their joy . . . and their rampage. They’d had it. I get that.

Now, the “happy ending” is that they get married at the end–personally, I would have preferred their merry band continuing the rampage, or at least the adventure.  But it’s quite clear, in words and pictures, that the wild washerwomen don’t settle down in a traditional role.  They and the woodcutters they’ve married live in the woods, and ALL do laundry, cut wood, take care of the children, and cook the food, everyone helping each other, gender roles be damned.

I heard someone else reading The Wild Washerwomen to my kids, at my suggestion. When the washerwomen start to steal apples, which is just after they overturn all the stalls in the marketplace, she gasped, “My goodness, these are naughty washerwomen!”  They are.

(Go, Naughty Wild Washerwomen, go!)

Martin and Chris set up their chairs to pretend they were driving in a car. A baby doll rode in the back.

“Mom, we’re dads. This is our baby. We’re going to the Amazon on an adventure.”

Pretty typical; they go to the Amazon, Australia, or Maine every day for adventures. What with my obsession with how they’re figuring out gender stuff, though, I got curious. “So, is there a mom?”

“Nope, no mom. We’re the two dads. That’s our baby, Baby Bob.”

Nice to know that even though they happen to be part of a family with a woman and a man parenting them, they can slip into other types of families when they play. Two dads, two moms, one parent . . . any family makes sense to them.

I hope no one messes with that as they grow up. Awfully discouraging when people like senators and Presidents of the United States can’t model the simple acceptance and love that a pre-schooler can.

The four year old named the baby Hot Fireshot when they met, and will call him only that. Even I tend to use it. Slightly indignant grandmothers will not, citing a very real concern that the name will stick.

When I was pregnant for the first time, I got a bit of advice from chirpy parenting magazines and a bit more from everyone else, all pretty predictable: “Sleep when the baby’s sleeping! Running the vacuum will help if he’s fussy!” But when my young, beautiful aunt with the two perfect children told me about not wanting anything to do with her first baby when she was born, I sat up and listened. Huh? Aren’t new mothers supposed to be joyfully dressing their infants like dolls and strolling through the park with beatific smiles on their faces? Especially gorgeous, intelligent, and hip new moms like her?

She told me the truth: her truth. About bringing her new baby into her office for the first time for a visit and the colleague who gushed, “Oh, I bet you can’t even imagine your life without her!” She thought, ‘I sure as hell can imagine life without her, and I want that life back.’ And so it went–the guilt, the loneliness, the sadness, the resentment that characterized her first few months with the baby . . . and the warning to me that mothering an infant is not all tiny outfits and leisurely stroller-pushing.

These stories that mothers tell each other, the ones that aren’t shared at baby showers and in polite company, weave their way through other relationships and support systems. While I ended up having an uneventful and content postpartum period, a friend who gave birth several months later did not. And when she finally confided that she could barely stand caring for her newborn when he screamed at night, and that she thought again and again about throwing him against the wall. . . I was ready for her.

I’ve noticed that I seem to want to move and/or have a baby and/or chop my hair off every year or two; moving and baby-having is done for this year, so I guess I’ll leave my hair long this time and change my blog site instead.