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Tuesday, November 4th, 2008A Family
Monday, November 3rd, 2008I watched you care for your sons at our children’s school fair; a mother helping the older son get a sno-cone and tie his shoes and a mother cradling a newborn, and wondered what it would feel like to have my family under assault the way yours is.
I tried to put myself in your place, and to imagine that groups of people were getting together in the streets and on the internet and on television to pool their might and money to attack my family and relationship. I would hope that I could find the eloquence and energy to mobilize and inspire like Lesbian Dad and Vikki at Up Popped the Fox in the face of such bigotry. I’m not sure I could.
But it isn’t solely up to gay Americans to defend themselves. How dare these proponents of Proposition 8 in California try to strip any American of her rights or tell her what her family ought to look like? This assault on gay relationships and families is an attack on every American’s rights, gay and not gay, and we can’t let it happen.
Title: love & hate, by *_Abhi_*
Happy Halloween
Friday, October 31st, 2008“Give it one big eye, Dad! And teeth–big teeth! More teeth! Lots more teeth! More sharp teeth, Dad!”
“What happened to your pumpkin? Where’s the face?”
“It was making me nervous.”
Hungry Two Year Old Carving Pumpkin
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008
Man in Suit
Sunday, October 26th, 2008This post should end like this:
And then, with a roundhouse kick Sydney-Bristow-style, I drop that sneaky, pompous shithead, and then he starts to cry, and begins to crawl away from me on the cold supermarket floor while muttering his apologies…and an undying oath to always respect little children and their caretakers…
It won’t end like that though, because, of course, I’m peaceful and restrained and realize that there are more pressing issues to be outraged about today than this. But, just quickly . . .
Chris and I were at the supermarket’s cafe, selecting a muffin, and Hot Fireshot was tucked into the baby carrier strapped to my chest. Man in Suit came up next to us, all up in Chris’ personal space, so I moved him over a bit. Moved Chris, not the Man in Suit, which was a mistake–after all, the Man in Suit encroached on Chris’ space, so, really, I should have taken ahold of the Man’s shoulders and moved him over. Then, Man takes the glass muffin case door from my hand and opens it wider to create just enough space to squeeze by me, brushing up against Hot Fireshot’s little back, to grab his muffin first. He might as well have had a thought bubble over his head, reading something like, “I am a Man in a Suit. I am Busy and Important, and this Mother and her Little Brats shall not slow me down.”
Fast-forward a minute later, and he cuts us in line. Squeezed his arm in and tossed his bakery bag onto the counter just before us. Message received: He is Busy and going Somewhere Important. We are not.
*And this is where that Sydney-style ass-kicking ought to have gone.
Sisterhood and the Gas Company
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008A bit after we moved into this house, we lost our hot water. Oh, right, it’s a natural gas water heater, not an electric one. Forgot to get the gas turned on. Oops.
Preschoolers are lurking about and an infant is sleeping in my arms when I go to make the call to the gas company. I break out the popsicles, turn on PBS Kids, and nurse the baby until he’s begging me to stop. I sneak into the bathroom to dial the phone, hoping not to trip their she’s-on-the-phone-let’s-freak-out alert system. I detest these sorts of calls, and I already have a bad attitude. They’ll give me a hard time because I was an idiot, and we’ll have to wait three weeks for hot water, and the person who answers the phone will be a jerk….
“What’s your address, ma’am?”
8393 Fairview Drive.
“40258 Fairway Road….”
No, no. It’s 8393 Fairview Drive….
Argh. But then:
“And your occupation?”
I’m home with my kids.
“Well, I’ll tell you–they need a whole new name for that, because there’s not a label out there that gives enough respect for it.”
Huh?
And so the conversation began–with her asking things like, “And how do you find that you stay inspired?” and explaining her own stay-at-home then back-to-work journey and conundrum. And me asking how it felt to go back, and how she managed it all without a partner, since she did all of the parenting and all of the work and all of the money-earning by herself.
All this and I got my hot water back on the very next day. I started out hiding in the bathroom with a bad attitude, and ended up forging one of my favorite, and unlikely, bonds with a stranger.
Spirit of the Wild Washerwomen
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008The 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.
The Wild Washerwomen
Monday, September 22nd, 2008When 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!)
So Simple
Monday, September 15th, 2008Martin 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.
Hot Fireshot
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008The 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.
