It's Halloween today, and I'm bleary-eyed—not from getting ready for the holiday, but from helping my youngest son practice his Spanish presentation.
It wasn't a huge deal of an assignment. Just two minutes about someone deceased—he chose President Kennedy—for a Day of the Dead celebration in his Spanish II class. However, he also had homework for English, algebra, physics and Western Civilization—on a weekend.
He's a freshman in high school, and it's been a rough transition for him. His four older brothers and sisters all went to public schools, and they were whipped into shape early by homework drills: endless math sheets, word searches, posters. I gave up ever trying to clean off the dining room table, because somebody was always doing a project--or having a breakdown because a project wasn't done. Sometimes it was me having the breakdown.
These four older children all went to great colleges. Three have now graduated and actually have jobs, amazingly; the fourth is in her senior year and working on her college thesis. Good for them, right? And great for us, too, of course.
Did all of that homework get them there?
I have no idea. I never would have questioned the idea of homework—it was drilled into my head, too, that you should always have papers to keep you busy, even if it meant staying up until midnight to get it done—except that my youngest son went to a Montessori School. The Montessori philosophy was, hey, if you need to review something, here's some homework that can help you. Otherwise, go outside and play, cook dinner with your family, or draw a picture.
“He wouldn't be having so much trouble with high school if he'd gone to a 'real' middle school,” my cousin grumbles.
Maybe. But the thing is, our youngest son isn't really having trouble with high school. He loves his teachers, comes home repeating incredible stories about Chinese philosophers from his Western Civ class or trying out new physics theories. He loves to practice Spanish. He is making friends and shaving minutes off his time at every cross country meet. He's a successful high school student in every way—except for that struggle over homework.
The thing Montessori taught him—and me, too—is that there are lots of important things to learn in this world. Maria Montessori, in fact, had a theory that kids in early adolescence shouldn't even go to a traditional school, but to a farm school, where they could exercise their bodies as well as their minds and become truly engaged in the world. They should do community service and—gasp--hold down a small job, all as a way of stimulating intellectual curiosity.
Instead of doing homework, our son would rather be practicing flips on the trampoline, hiking with his dad and me, working in his father's wood shop, fiddling around on the bass guitar, and, of course, playing video games online.
“Computer games are ruining our kids,” a friend suggests.
Really? Why? Because he's playing games online with a team of kids from Canada, Spain, Germany, and the U.S.? Because they Skype and learn how to work on team strategies together, learning about how each of them lives along the way? Is that why those games are bad?
“He's always fooling around,” my mother argues.
I suppose that's what it looks like from the outside. Having been through Montessori, though, makes me question whether doing seven hours of homework on a weekend is necessarily more valuable than doing everything else that commands our son's attention.
Don't get me wrong—I'm highly impressed by my son's high school instructors and curriculum. And, given what research show about brain development—that our brains are the most plastic they'll ever be until age 16 or so, which means that whatever those brain synapses are doing during middle and early high school years truly impacts what kind of thinker your child will become as an adult--I'm delighted that our son is stretching himself in many different directions.
It's just the homework that gets me. Why isn't it enough to focus on academics all day, and then give it a rest?
In the incredible documentary “Race to Nowhere,” we see a series of students who have been crushed by homework, while parents and academics wonder how they can keep students engaged and inspired. Duh. If homework kills the creative buzz, why are we still letting it bleed into evenings, so that there's never time for a game of cards, never mind chess? Why do our weekends have to be spent figuring out physics vectors instead of hiking in the White Mountains?
The counter argument, I know, is that homework teaches accountability, reviews topics covered in class, and prepares your child for college. In college, though, students are older and more motivated to organize their time. (Plus, let's not kid ourselves, there's more free time in college than in high school.)
Meanwhile, what message are we sending by piling on the homework in high school?
Here it is: Stress is good for you, kids! See how stressed Mom and Dad are? That can be you, too! Stress is what you have to look forward to in college and beyond. Forget friends, fun, family, or even sleep! You'd better focus on school if you want to get ahead—so that you can take on even more responsibility later!
Really? Is that what we mean by preparing children for a lifetime of learning? Sounds like the School of Hard Knocks to me.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
What Your Car Says About You
Yes, I know it sounds stupid, but I cried all afternoon over selling a car.
Not just any car, mind you. This was my 2003 Honda CRV, a beat-up red car with probably enough forgotten food in it to sustain a family of five for a week. At 200,000 miles, the air conditioning had stopped working, only one door lock worked, the shocks were gone, and the brakes needed replacing. All signs pointed to the inevitable: it was time to get a new car.
Yet there I stood, weeping as if someone had just dumped my new Porsche into a river.
“You always cry when we sell a car,” my husband pointed out. “I still don't get it. You're going to be driving a better car. I would think you'd be happy.”
I am happy. I hated worrying about that car breaking down on some dark, nameless road while I was driving my children and elderly mother around. But I am sad, too. A car isn't just a car. It has a life of its own. Or, more accurately, your car contains your life.
For example, one of the first vehicles I ever owned was an ancient, wheezing Renault that my brother kept going with pliers and duct tape. But, whenever I drove it, I felt like a French actress, able to live on croissants and love. It represented who I thought I might become someday: a woman of mystery with many lovers.
The car I owned when I finished graduate school? That was a green Pontiac Sunbird with a six-cylinder engine, courtesy of my mother. She was understandably horrified when I informed her that, with this car, I was going to drive across the country—by myself—to start a new life in San Francisco. That adventure included getting stopped by the police in Colorado because I was driving 90 mph.
“If you were my daughter, I'd throw you in jail just to teach you some common sense,” the cop growled as he wrote out a ticket worth half my month's rent.
That ticket was worth every penny. My Sunbird symbolized my cowgirl self. It was a symbol of freedom and frontier daring—especially when I took that stick-shift dragster up over my first hill in San Francisco and landed with a cinematic thud on the other side.
Next came my sensible working woman's car, a powder blue Honda Civic: good on gas and easy to maintain. I invited that car to come back East with me when I married my first husband.
When I divorced and married for a second time, I added two stepchildren to the two children I already had. This meant buying a car that could fit us all. I went for an Audi Quattro wagon with a clever rear seat. The kids fought over the privilege of riding backwards and making faces at all of the drivers behind us. That Audi represented my determination to remain oh-so-cosmopolitan, giving a nod to my blended family status while stubbornly refusing the stigma of a minivan. I should have stuck with Hondas: that Quattro proved to be such a lemon that it cost more than our mortgage in monthly repairs.
Still, I cried when I sold it. I cried when I sold the Sunbird, the Civic, and even the Honda Odyssey, the beloved (and reliable) minivan I bought after I ditched the Quattro.
Why, why, why the tears?
Because a car isn't just a car. It is who you are, at least for the moment.
Inside your car, there are crumbs on the carpet and sticky wrappers forgotten under the seats. More importantly, there are those conversations you had while driving, the children soothed, the teenagers listened to (or lectured). There are great vacations, the time your best friend told you she had cancer, the year you got divorced, and the summer you landed the job of your dreams. All of those memories are there, embedded in that car as if trapped in amber.
When I sold the Sunbird, I grieved because I had reached an age where I would no longer rocket along the highway at 90 mph. Saying goodbye to my Honda minivan meant no more car seats—and no more babies of my own. So sad.
The Honda CRV? That had the college stickers on the back window. As I watched the guy drive it away from the curb, I wept for the trips I had made to those colleges, with or without my children in the car, mourning the fact that my kids had nearly completed the long, sad, happy process of becoming independent.
With one more child still at home, I now have a new car that I trust and love—a blue Honda CRV. I may not go 90 mph, but I can still plow through snow. This car has already taken my family to Prince Edward Island and back again. Once my new car was covered in that familiar red dirt, I started to feel at home in the driver's seat.
My new life has begun—and adventures await.
Not just any car, mind you. This was my 2003 Honda CRV, a beat-up red car with probably enough forgotten food in it to sustain a family of five for a week. At 200,000 miles, the air conditioning had stopped working, only one door lock worked, the shocks were gone, and the brakes needed replacing. All signs pointed to the inevitable: it was time to get a new car.
Yet there I stood, weeping as if someone had just dumped my new Porsche into a river.
“You always cry when we sell a car,” my husband pointed out. “I still don't get it. You're going to be driving a better car. I would think you'd be happy.”
I am happy. I hated worrying about that car breaking down on some dark, nameless road while I was driving my children and elderly mother around. But I am sad, too. A car isn't just a car. It has a life of its own. Or, more accurately, your car contains your life.
For example, one of the first vehicles I ever owned was an ancient, wheezing Renault that my brother kept going with pliers and duct tape. But, whenever I drove it, I felt like a French actress, able to live on croissants and love. It represented who I thought I might become someday: a woman of mystery with many lovers.
The car I owned when I finished graduate school? That was a green Pontiac Sunbird with a six-cylinder engine, courtesy of my mother. She was understandably horrified when I informed her that, with this car, I was going to drive across the country—by myself—to start a new life in San Francisco. That adventure included getting stopped by the police in Colorado because I was driving 90 mph.
“If you were my daughter, I'd throw you in jail just to teach you some common sense,” the cop growled as he wrote out a ticket worth half my month's rent.
That ticket was worth every penny. My Sunbird symbolized my cowgirl self. It was a symbol of freedom and frontier daring—especially when I took that stick-shift dragster up over my first hill in San Francisco and landed with a cinematic thud on the other side.
Next came my sensible working woman's car, a powder blue Honda Civic: good on gas and easy to maintain. I invited that car to come back East with me when I married my first husband.
When I divorced and married for a second time, I added two stepchildren to the two children I already had. This meant buying a car that could fit us all. I went for an Audi Quattro wagon with a clever rear seat. The kids fought over the privilege of riding backwards and making faces at all of the drivers behind us. That Audi represented my determination to remain oh-so-cosmopolitan, giving a nod to my blended family status while stubbornly refusing the stigma of a minivan. I should have stuck with Hondas: that Quattro proved to be such a lemon that it cost more than our mortgage in monthly repairs.
Still, I cried when I sold it. I cried when I sold the Sunbird, the Civic, and even the Honda Odyssey, the beloved (and reliable) minivan I bought after I ditched the Quattro.
Why, why, why the tears?
Because a car isn't just a car. It is who you are, at least for the moment.
Inside your car, there are crumbs on the carpet and sticky wrappers forgotten under the seats. More importantly, there are those conversations you had while driving, the children soothed, the teenagers listened to (or lectured). There are great vacations, the time your best friend told you she had cancer, the year you got divorced, and the summer you landed the job of your dreams. All of those memories are there, embedded in that car as if trapped in amber.
When I sold the Sunbird, I grieved because I had reached an age where I would no longer rocket along the highway at 90 mph. Saying goodbye to my Honda minivan meant no more car seats—and no more babies of my own. So sad.
The Honda CRV? That had the college stickers on the back window. As I watched the guy drive it away from the curb, I wept for the trips I had made to those colleges, with or without my children in the car, mourning the fact that my kids had nearly completed the long, sad, happy process of becoming independent.
With one more child still at home, I now have a new car that I trust and love—a blue Honda CRV. I may not go 90 mph, but I can still plow through snow. This car has already taken my family to Prince Edward Island and back again. Once my new car was covered in that familiar red dirt, I started to feel at home in the driver's seat.
My new life has begun—and adventures await.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
After Buying Our Canadian Dream Farm, Now What?
In two weeks, we're going to face our dream – or our nightmare. That's when we're going to actually start living part-time in our Canadian farmhouse.
The house lies in the far eastern corner of Prince Edward Island in the Canadian Maritimes, about a dozen hours northeast of our house in Massachusetts. We drove past it one day in August – back when there was grass on the ground instead of two feet of snow – and decided to buy it on the spot. The house is a century old and has a sharp peaked roof, like the house that Lucy Maude Montgomery used as the setting for Anne of Green Gables, the island's most famous export other than potatoes. We couldn't get inside the house when we looked at it, but we made an offer anyway, lured by the two barns, an acre of rich farmland, a view of the neighbor's sheep grazing in the fields below, and the red clay road leading to our favorite beach.
My husband Dan and I made the offer by phone – an offer worth less than my brother just paid for his used BMW. We drove back up to the island last October to see the inside of the house with a home inspector, alternating between feeling giddy with excitement and terrified that we were buying a money pit.
We had reason to feel both extremes. Friends who actually live in Canada, and strangers, too, agreed with us that Canada seemed more peaceful and civilized than the U.S. Certainly it's a country less prone to doing things like, say, bombing Libya without a lot of discussion. Others warned us that Canadians want nothing to do with Americans, and reminded us of the blizzards. “Who would want to retire in a place like that instead of Florida?” many asked.
“We would,” we answered.
When we drove up for the home inspection, I was so excited to cross the Confederation Bridge that I leaped out of the car as soon as we stopped – only to have the door of our Honda nearly blow inside out in the wind. My face was needled with freezing rain and my jacket was soaked through in seconds. We had definitely arrived.
We'd arranged to stay in a wonderful B&B in North Lake called Harbour Lights http://www.harbourlightshouse.com To my surprise, the B&B was owned by Americans not unlike ourselves – a couple who had worked until near retirement in the U.S., then decided their hearts belonged on PEI. Bruce and Pat served us a fantastic home-cooked Chinese meal to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving, and we invited them to our home inspection the next morning.
The weather was gorgeous that night. We took a sunset walk along North Lake Beach that was doused in brilliant pinks, peaches, blues and plums, the sand glowing gold under our feet as we admired the dunes and fishing boats. It was paradise.
The next day was anything but, with weather that included lashing rain, winds, and freezing temperatures again. To add to our discomfort, the utilities in the house had been shut off for the past year.
We were nervous about what we'd find inside. But, instead of the usual horrors of an old house renovated and ruined, we were amazed to find original woodwork and hardwood floors, century-old charm in every room. The house even came with furniture, much of it antique and appealing as well.
“I could live here,” I thought, despite my chattering teeth, as I stood on the porch and looked at the sheep huddled in the fields below.
The house, in every possible way, called to us. We signed the papers that week, and for months afterward, indulged in looking at photos of the house, imagining what we'd do when we lived there. Raise alpacas? Make cheese? Start an arts cooperative? Keep working as a software consultant and a writer? Anything seemed possible!
And then things intervened, causing our house – and our future – to fade from view, to become a backdrop in front of the frenetic light show that is daily life for working parents everywhere. I have an elderly mother to look after, plus a young son still at home. My husband's company laid off half the employees and left everyone else scrambling to meet deadlines. Our four older children, two of them still in college, came and went over the holidays and spring break. We did the taxes. And, in the cracks between, we did the recycling and grocery shopping, volunteered and had occasional nights out with friends. It's a good life, but the kind of life that leaves you gasping at the end of every day, because you've suffocated yourself with obligations.
Now it's spring again, and it's a shock to think that we're going to start turning our dream life into a reality. In two weeks, we will see if our Canadian house is still standing. Meanwhile, I'm arranging meetings with the electrician, the plumber, the roofer, the mower, the heating guy, the painter...and probably more who I haven't thought of yet. If we can get the house liveable, we'll spend as much time as we can there – two months at least – between now and next Christmas. We want to give our future a true test run.
By the time our kids are all launched, with homes and families of their own, we might live in Canada and perhaps become dual citizens – or just travel between the two countries, with an apartment near our children. Who knows where that will be? Our children are all talking about different states – even different coasts – at the moment.
Are we crazy? Will our lives in Canada be saner, more content, more creative? Or will we just transfer the craziness North, and add more stress to our lives?
There's no way to know for sure, of course. But right now Dan and I are looking at each other across the dining table with a fresh glint in our eyes. We're on a new adventure together – with every reason to look forward to the next chapter of our lives.
The house lies in the far eastern corner of Prince Edward Island in the Canadian Maritimes, about a dozen hours northeast of our house in Massachusetts. We drove past it one day in August – back when there was grass on the ground instead of two feet of snow – and decided to buy it on the spot. The house is a century old and has a sharp peaked roof, like the house that Lucy Maude Montgomery used as the setting for Anne of Green Gables, the island's most famous export other than potatoes. We couldn't get inside the house when we looked at it, but we made an offer anyway, lured by the two barns, an acre of rich farmland, a view of the neighbor's sheep grazing in the fields below, and the red clay road leading to our favorite beach.
My husband Dan and I made the offer by phone – an offer worth less than my brother just paid for his used BMW. We drove back up to the island last October to see the inside of the house with a home inspector, alternating between feeling giddy with excitement and terrified that we were buying a money pit.
We had reason to feel both extremes. Friends who actually live in Canada, and strangers, too, agreed with us that Canada seemed more peaceful and civilized than the U.S. Certainly it's a country less prone to doing things like, say, bombing Libya without a lot of discussion. Others warned us that Canadians want nothing to do with Americans, and reminded us of the blizzards. “Who would want to retire in a place like that instead of Florida?” many asked.
“We would,” we answered.
When we drove up for the home inspection, I was so excited to cross the Confederation Bridge that I leaped out of the car as soon as we stopped – only to have the door of our Honda nearly blow inside out in the wind. My face was needled with freezing rain and my jacket was soaked through in seconds. We had definitely arrived.
We'd arranged to stay in a wonderful B&B in North Lake called Harbour Lights http://www.harbourlightshouse.com To my surprise, the B&B was owned by Americans not unlike ourselves – a couple who had worked until near retirement in the U.S., then decided their hearts belonged on PEI. Bruce and Pat served us a fantastic home-cooked Chinese meal to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving, and we invited them to our home inspection the next morning.
The weather was gorgeous that night. We took a sunset walk along North Lake Beach that was doused in brilliant pinks, peaches, blues and plums, the sand glowing gold under our feet as we admired the dunes and fishing boats. It was paradise.
The next day was anything but, with weather that included lashing rain, winds, and freezing temperatures again. To add to our discomfort, the utilities in the house had been shut off for the past year.
We were nervous about what we'd find inside. But, instead of the usual horrors of an old house renovated and ruined, we were amazed to find original woodwork and hardwood floors, century-old charm in every room. The house even came with furniture, much of it antique and appealing as well.
“I could live here,” I thought, despite my chattering teeth, as I stood on the porch and looked at the sheep huddled in the fields below.
The house, in every possible way, called to us. We signed the papers that week, and for months afterward, indulged in looking at photos of the house, imagining what we'd do when we lived there. Raise alpacas? Make cheese? Start an arts cooperative? Keep working as a software consultant and a writer? Anything seemed possible!
And then things intervened, causing our house – and our future – to fade from view, to become a backdrop in front of the frenetic light show that is daily life for working parents everywhere. I have an elderly mother to look after, plus a young son still at home. My husband's company laid off half the employees and left everyone else scrambling to meet deadlines. Our four older children, two of them still in college, came and went over the holidays and spring break. We did the taxes. And, in the cracks between, we did the recycling and grocery shopping, volunteered and had occasional nights out with friends. It's a good life, but the kind of life that leaves you gasping at the end of every day, because you've suffocated yourself with obligations.
Now it's spring again, and it's a shock to think that we're going to start turning our dream life into a reality. In two weeks, we will see if our Canadian house is still standing. Meanwhile, I'm arranging meetings with the electrician, the plumber, the roofer, the mower, the heating guy, the painter...and probably more who I haven't thought of yet. If we can get the house liveable, we'll spend as much time as we can there – two months at least – between now and next Christmas. We want to give our future a true test run.
By the time our kids are all launched, with homes and families of their own, we might live in Canada and perhaps become dual citizens – or just travel between the two countries, with an apartment near our children. Who knows where that will be? Our children are all talking about different states – even different coasts – at the moment.
Are we crazy? Will our lives in Canada be saner, more content, more creative? Or will we just transfer the craziness North, and add more stress to our lives?
There's no way to know for sure, of course. But right now Dan and I are looking at each other across the dining table with a fresh glint in our eyes. We're on a new adventure together – with every reason to look forward to the next chapter of our lives.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Grooving with Rihanna, S&M and the Kids in My Car
For the first time in my mothering life, I almost turned the radio off today.
Here's what happened: I was driving my 13 year-old son and his three friends to a skateboard park. The boys were busy doing what most teens do: multitasking with the help of an iPod, two cell phones and a Nintendo DS. As if that weren't enough, they wanted the car radio on, too.
Meanwhile, I was doing what most moms do: multitasking. I had tuned everything out to mentally plan my Saturday circuit: skateboard park, post office, grocery store, hardware store, skateboard park, dinner.
We were stopped at a red light when my son asked me to turn up the car radio. “Hey Mom, here's that song I was telling you about.”
“What song?” I turned up the volume. Frankly, as the mother of five, you could probably let a pair of rhinos loose in my car and I wouldn't even blink. I'd forgotten the radio was even on.
“Rihanna's Spaghetti and Meatballs song. Listen.”
You can see where this is headed, right? I turned up the radio, and there was Rihanna, whose music always has that wonderful danceable beat, but whose lyrics are so repetitive that I usually tune her out with the rest of the noise in the car.
This song, though, was enough to make even four teenaged boys fall silent.
Cause I may be bad, but I'm perfectly good at it
Sex in the air, I don't care, I love the smell of it
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But whips and chains excite me
This is one of those teachable moments that all the experts tell parents about, right? Well, I sure could have used one of those experts in my car right then.
I decided to play the dumb mother card. “I don't get it,” I said. “Why do you call this Rihanna's Spaghetti and Meatballs song?”
“Keep listening, Mom,” my son said.
Lord, did I have to? Well, it couldn't get much worse, I figured. I could survive this teachable moment. After all, just the week before, I'd managed to make it through the entire Greek exhibit in the Museum of Fine Arts with a pair of eighth grade boys, despite the seemingly endless array of ancient vases ornamented with satyrs chasing nymphs, penises thrusting like swords. Not to mention all of those paintings of nude women sprawled on couches, beds, chairs and fields. Sex in the air, indeed.
Alas, Rihanna wasn't through yet. Here came the cheesy spaghetti and meatballs chorus on a platter:
S-S-S & M-M-M
S-S-S & M-M-M
Oh, I love the feeling you bring to me, oh, you turn me on
It's exactly what I've been yearning for, give it to me strong
And meet me in my boudoir, make my body say ah ah ah
I like it – like it
“Huh,” I said. “What do you guys think of this song?”
“It's kind of boring,” one kid piped up.
“Yeah,” my son agreed. “You'd think somebody who writes as many songs as Rihanna would be better at it by now. All her songs are about how turned on she is.”
“What about what the song's saying?” I asked. “Do you think she really likes whips and chains?”
“Well, they probably look good in her music videos,” my son's other friend offered. “But most girls probably wouldn't like that.”
“No,” I agreed. “It's a bad idea to hit girls, right?”
“Duh, Mom,” my son said.
Duh, indeed. The boys went back to their conversation about skate parks and video games. Meanwhile, I put the grocery list out of my mind and concentrated on what Rihanna had to say:
Na na na na
Come on, come on, come on
I like it – like it
Come on, come on, come on
I like it – like it
Come on, come on, come on
I like it – like it
S-S-S & M-M-M
S-S-S & M-M-M
S-S-S & M-M-M
S-S-S & M-M-M
I remembered Chris Brown, suddenly, and his assault against Rihanna a few years ago, and I couldn't help but wonder: Is this the song of a liberated, powerful, sexy woman with a message not just for my 13 year-old boys, but for all of those high school girls getting excited about prom night this spring? Or for all of those middle school girls giggling as they share the ear buds of their iPods and talk about boys? Really, Rihanna? Is this the best you can do for them?
Na na na na. You can do better than this.
Here's what happened: I was driving my 13 year-old son and his three friends to a skateboard park. The boys were busy doing what most teens do: multitasking with the help of an iPod, two cell phones and a Nintendo DS. As if that weren't enough, they wanted the car radio on, too.
Meanwhile, I was doing what most moms do: multitasking. I had tuned everything out to mentally plan my Saturday circuit: skateboard park, post office, grocery store, hardware store, skateboard park, dinner.
We were stopped at a red light when my son asked me to turn up the car radio. “Hey Mom, here's that song I was telling you about.”
“What song?” I turned up the volume. Frankly, as the mother of five, you could probably let a pair of rhinos loose in my car and I wouldn't even blink. I'd forgotten the radio was even on.
“Rihanna's Spaghetti and Meatballs song. Listen.”
You can see where this is headed, right? I turned up the radio, and there was Rihanna, whose music always has that wonderful danceable beat, but whose lyrics are so repetitive that I usually tune her out with the rest of the noise in the car.
This song, though, was enough to make even four teenaged boys fall silent.
Cause I may be bad, but I'm perfectly good at it
Sex in the air, I don't care, I love the smell of it
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But whips and chains excite me
This is one of those teachable moments that all the experts tell parents about, right? Well, I sure could have used one of those experts in my car right then.
I decided to play the dumb mother card. “I don't get it,” I said. “Why do you call this Rihanna's Spaghetti and Meatballs song?”
“Keep listening, Mom,” my son said.
Lord, did I have to? Well, it couldn't get much worse, I figured. I could survive this teachable moment. After all, just the week before, I'd managed to make it through the entire Greek exhibit in the Museum of Fine Arts with a pair of eighth grade boys, despite the seemingly endless array of ancient vases ornamented with satyrs chasing nymphs, penises thrusting like swords. Not to mention all of those paintings of nude women sprawled on couches, beds, chairs and fields. Sex in the air, indeed.
Alas, Rihanna wasn't through yet. Here came the cheesy spaghetti and meatballs chorus on a platter:
S-S-S & M-M-M
S-S-S & M-M-M
Oh, I love the feeling you bring to me, oh, you turn me on
It's exactly what I've been yearning for, give it to me strong
And meet me in my boudoir, make my body say ah ah ah
I like it – like it
“Huh,” I said. “What do you guys think of this song?”
“It's kind of boring,” one kid piped up.
“Yeah,” my son agreed. “You'd think somebody who writes as many songs as Rihanna would be better at it by now. All her songs are about how turned on she is.”
“What about what the song's saying?” I asked. “Do you think she really likes whips and chains?”
“Well, they probably look good in her music videos,” my son's other friend offered. “But most girls probably wouldn't like that.”
“No,” I agreed. “It's a bad idea to hit girls, right?”
“Duh, Mom,” my son said.
Duh, indeed. The boys went back to their conversation about skate parks and video games. Meanwhile, I put the grocery list out of my mind and concentrated on what Rihanna had to say:
Na na na na
Come on, come on, come on
I like it – like it
Come on, come on, come on
I like it – like it
Come on, come on, come on
I like it – like it
S-S-S & M-M-M
S-S-S & M-M-M
S-S-S & M-M-M
S-S-S & M-M-M
I remembered Chris Brown, suddenly, and his assault against Rihanna a few years ago, and I couldn't help but wonder: Is this the song of a liberated, powerful, sexy woman with a message not just for my 13 year-old boys, but for all of those high school girls getting excited about prom night this spring? Or for all of those middle school girls giggling as they share the ear buds of their iPods and talk about boys? Really, Rihanna? Is this the best you can do for them?
Na na na na. You can do better than this.
Friday, February 25, 2011
My iRobot: Can a Useful Gift Be a Romantic One?
The newest member of our family, our iRobot Roomba, arrived as my designated gift on Valentine's Day (http://store.irobot.com). I went out to walk the dogs early that morning, and when I returned, my iRobot was vacuuming the kitchen. To his credit, my husband did glue big red hearts all over its pristine white carapace.
“What the heck is that?” I asked, noting poor McDuff, our elderly Cairn terrier, quivering in his dog bed.
“It's the iRobot 530 Roomba,” Dan announced. “I got it on sale,” he added. “You know how you always say you don't have time to clean. Well, this can help you!”
“Um. Thanks, honey,” I said, watching the iRobot zoom down the hall. “Nothing says I love you like a new vacuum cleaner.”
“This will give you more time to write!” By now, my husband was looking slightly desperate around the eyes. “It cleans while you sit at your desk and create!”
Okay, I had to admit that the idea behind the gift was good. It's true that I'm always complaining about housework. I work out of a home office, so I literally put my hands up like blinders when I walk to the kitchen for a cup of tea. Otherwise, I'm tempted to pick something up or wipe a surface. Then it's like that children's book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie: one damn thing leads to another.
I watched as the Roomba returned from the hallway, apparently satisfied with its job there. It was pretty cool, I had to admit. But was a useful gift the same thing as a romantic one?
In the living room, the poor little robot ended up eating a Nintendo cord and nearly choking to death. I freed it and set it gently back down by my son's desk, where it started overdosing on spilled cereal and stopped.
“It's full,” Dan said. “I need to show you how to empty its tray.”
I tried not to glare as he demonstrated the little drawer, pulling it out and dumping the contents into the trash. This was too reminiscent of another gift that Dan surprised me with recently: a giant litter box for our cats that also has a drawer, and a roof, too. You tip the cat box on its side and – stop me if you've heard this before – you pull out the drawer and empty it into the trash. If only those iRobot people would make a Catboxa, I'd be all set.
Since Valentine's Day, I've been thinking more about marriage and romance. Is a cleaning robot the height of romance after fifteen years of marriage?
The Roomba is certainly cuter than the tooth flossing tool Dan gave me one Christmas. And it's nowhere near as pitiful as the gift my friend Francine's husband presented her with this Valentine's Day: a new iron.
“He said it's so it won't take me as long to iron shirts,” she said. “Now I have something to clonk him over the head with.”
It took me a while, but I gradually embraced my Roomba. I've started thinking about it as another pet, albeit one that cleans up after us instead of the other way around. I suppose that's because it sleeps at its iRobot docking station under a side table, right next to McDuff's dog bed.
I've decided that my Roomba is romance at its best. Dan has given me plenty of jewelry and chocolate through the years. I have no doubt that there is more to come (especially after my tepid initial reaction to the Roomba). In giving me an iRobot, Dan was truly thinking of what I need to write more. And what could be more romantic than a husband who believes that his wife deserves more time to create?
“What the heck is that?” I asked, noting poor McDuff, our elderly Cairn terrier, quivering in his dog bed.
“It's the iRobot 530 Roomba,” Dan announced. “I got it on sale,” he added. “You know how you always say you don't have time to clean. Well, this can help you!”
“Um. Thanks, honey,” I said, watching the iRobot zoom down the hall. “Nothing says I love you like a new vacuum cleaner.”
“This will give you more time to write!” By now, my husband was looking slightly desperate around the eyes. “It cleans while you sit at your desk and create!”
Okay, I had to admit that the idea behind the gift was good. It's true that I'm always complaining about housework. I work out of a home office, so I literally put my hands up like blinders when I walk to the kitchen for a cup of tea. Otherwise, I'm tempted to pick something up or wipe a surface. Then it's like that children's book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie: one damn thing leads to another.
I watched as the Roomba returned from the hallway, apparently satisfied with its job there. It was pretty cool, I had to admit. But was a useful gift the same thing as a romantic one?
In the living room, the poor little robot ended up eating a Nintendo cord and nearly choking to death. I freed it and set it gently back down by my son's desk, where it started overdosing on spilled cereal and stopped.
“It's full,” Dan said. “I need to show you how to empty its tray.”
I tried not to glare as he demonstrated the little drawer, pulling it out and dumping the contents into the trash. This was too reminiscent of another gift that Dan surprised me with recently: a giant litter box for our cats that also has a drawer, and a roof, too. You tip the cat box on its side and – stop me if you've heard this before – you pull out the drawer and empty it into the trash. If only those iRobot people would make a Catboxa, I'd be all set.
Since Valentine's Day, I've been thinking more about marriage and romance. Is a cleaning robot the height of romance after fifteen years of marriage?
The Roomba is certainly cuter than the tooth flossing tool Dan gave me one Christmas. And it's nowhere near as pitiful as the gift my friend Francine's husband presented her with this Valentine's Day: a new iron.
“He said it's so it won't take me as long to iron shirts,” she said. “Now I have something to clonk him over the head with.”
It took me a while, but I gradually embraced my Roomba. I've started thinking about it as another pet, albeit one that cleans up after us instead of the other way around. I suppose that's because it sleeps at its iRobot docking station under a side table, right next to McDuff's dog bed.
I've decided that my Roomba is romance at its best. Dan has given me plenty of jewelry and chocolate through the years. I have no doubt that there is more to come (especially after my tepid initial reaction to the Roomba). In giving me an iRobot, Dan was truly thinking of what I need to write more. And what could be more romantic than a husband who believes that his wife deserves more time to create?
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Our Muses, Ourselves: Why Women Like Me Run Away From Home
As my friend Susan Straight and I cross the border from Maine into Canada, the customs agent follows the usual script: Where are you going, are you carrying firearms, how long are you staying?
Then he trips me up: “What is the purpose of your visit? Business or pleasure?”
Susan and I glance at each other. Business or pleasure?
I'm not sure.
Susan and I have crossed this border together before. We met in graduate school and have stayed friends despite the fact that I live in Massachusetts and her home is in California. We usually meet in New York when we both have business there. And, for the past decade, Susan has flown east every summer so that we can drive ten hours north from my house to Prince Edward Island.
This year is completely different because we're actually sitting in the same car. On previous trips to Canada, we always brought so many children that we had to caravan in two vans. We have eight kids between us (me, five; her, three). We've also brought stragglers, whenever this child or that one begged to bring a friend. One summer we topped out at ten kids.
Those vacations were fun – endless hours of sand castles and board games – but crammed with chores: cooking and laundry, grocery shopping and vacuuming. Susan is divorced. For understandable reasons, my husband always opted out. So Susan and I were left on our own with the children like some wild combo of Sherpas and camp counselors.
This week, we're traveling to Canada alone in search of our inner muses. We have disguised our sudden decision to have a creative getaway as a janitorial vacation, since we're also opening up our summer cottages – she bought one on Prince Edward Island shortly after I did, and we rent them out to help support costs – but our goal is to devote uninterrupted hours to writing.
This goal makes me feel clammy with guilt. But why should it? I wonder about this as we meander along the Bay of Fundy. Guilt is a useless emotion. Yet I'm prone to it, especially when faced with a choice between what I “should” do and whatever I want to do most – as if doing something that makes me happy will make someone else unhappy.
Oh, wait: Escaping the home front to write does make the people I love unhappy. When I left this morning to pick up Susan at the airport, my husband was griping about having to leave work early to care for our youngest son, who stood with his forlorn face pressed against the door. My four older kids wanted to know if I'll have email and cell service, “just in case.” Even our dogs looked miserable.
As Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote in her timeless book, Gift from the Sea, my husband and children, my mother and friends, my home and pets, my neighbors and coworkers represent “a whole caravan of complications.” Leaving them behind for the sake of creativity makes me feel like I have phantom limbs: I itch all over.
Susan isn't doing much better. Luckily, we have time to talk about this, to shore each other up as we drive north, despite our cell phones singing with alarming regularity as our various children and work colleagues reach out to us through the state of Maine and most of New Brunswick.
Why the guilt? Like most women, Susan and I are people pleasers, willing to charge in to fill the black holes of need around us, even if that means sacrificing the time and concentration we need to be creative. Making art – whether it's music, drawing, dancing or writing – demands full attention and passion, but that ability to focus is easily worn down, especially for women with families.
Especially because, in our culture, art so rarely pays enough to put food on the table. With no money in art except for those lucky few breakout writers and artists, there is no power in doing it. Making art definitely feels like a luxury. Maybe that's because art takes so much time, and it's our precious free time that the people around us want most.
I can feel the hot breaths of everyone I left behind on the back of my neck as I drive.
*
I had imagined us rising early to write. After all, novelist Virginia Woolf proclaimed that every woman needs a room of one's own to do so. But Susan and I are so exhausted by the time we arrive at my house on Prince Edward Island – a modest summer cottage overlooking Malpeque Bay – that we can barely force ourselves out of bed once we have those precious rooms to ourselves.
Instead, we lie in our separate rooms as if we've been clubbed over the head. This isn't exhaustion from the drive; it's more like battle fatigue. Or shell shock: my ears are actually ringing a little. I think it's the silence.
We spend the first day doing chores, like that essential trip to town to replace everything from garbage bags to shower mats. We also go walking. The first day, we traverse the red beach around Darnley basin as if our lives depend upon making it from one end to the other, taking long, purposeful strides, arms pumping.
On the second day, house chores behind us, we take a different sort of walk. This one is a meandering stroll along the shore road that ends at Shipwreck Point. We see people doing more ambitious things: mowing lawns, jogging, carrying groceries into a house. It's almost like watching a movie of real life while we're in motion. We carry no cell phones, no purses. It's just us and the wildflowers and great, billowy white clouds that look like props for a theater piece.
That night, some sort of magic happens. We eat a simple supper of sandwiches and then get to work.
I sit at the little desk in my bedroom overlooking the potato fields and write almost maniacally, churning out sentences which build paragraphs that I might or might not keep. I don't turn out the light until 2 a.m., because there's nothing to stop me: No big kitchen cleanup waiting downstairs, no cell phone service, no email, no cable TV, no husband. Susan sits downstairs editing her new book galleys. We are completely separate, yet it's perfect, since each of us knows that the other is blissfully working.
I have so many good things in my life. Yet being here makes me realize how fractured my life is, with bits of my attention scattered everywhere like pocketfuls of gravel.
How did I let my life get so crowded?
*
Susan's summer house is an hour's drive from mine. One of her tasks is to buy new mattresses for the twin beds, so we track down a place that sells them at discount. We already have a carload of stuff. Still, rather than make another, separate trip to pick up the mattresses and waste valuable writing time, we jam the mattresses into the back of my Honda CRV on top of everything else.
The mattresses are so long that we have to remove the headrests and put our seats all the way forward. I have to keep my neck bent forward toward the dashboard; it's easy to imagine getting decapitated if we stop too suddenly. I do a little praying that the Canadian Mounties won't arrest us for driving with no visibility.
Then I have this comforting thought: This being Canada, the jail cells are probably really, really clean. If I'm locked up, the guards will let me write and I still wouldn't have to dust or cook.
We make it to Susan's house, then spend the rest of the day vacuuming up millions of fly corpses littering the windowsills and clearing out closets. We're both sore and exhausted by the time we finish. It's too late to go out to dinner, so we dine on fried sausages and potatoes. Then I set up my computer in the dining room and write for four hours. I can hear Susan tapping on her laptop in the kitchen. She is an award-winning novelist whose newest novel, Take One Candle Light a Room, is a gem. My memoir, The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter, was put out in paperback this year. We're pleased to be published in this rocky economy. For us, though, the excitement has always been about the actual writing.
I have never been so content as I am right now. Men have always claimed wives and mistresses as their muses. Susan and I have ourselves and, for this week, we have each other. Are we writing masterpieces? Are we even writing something that other people will ever read?
It doesn't matter. The joy is in the creative act.
Women have always found satisfaction in being helpful. There is joy in that and love, too. Women are also creating some of the most exciting and challenging art today. Yet we still aren't catching up to our male colleagues in the arts. Look at the numbers for everything from cinematography to writing, from painting to conducting music, and men win out every time.
Feminists would probably say that there is a glass ceiling in the arts, as there has been in nearly every other field. I'm certainly a feminist. Still, I wonder if more women artists, musicians and writers aren't household names because we don't have enough faith in our own pursuits to give ourselves the time we desperately need to be transformed by a creative vision. Maybe that glass ceiling isn't really made of glass at all, but of sticky little fingers, dishes piled in the sink, and mortgages that demand two incomes.
Not long after my first two children were born – 16 months apart, so close together that I was in a coma for the first three years of motherhood – I went to a book signing by a famous mystery writer. He mentioned that he, too, had young children, so I eagerly approached him after the event to ask how he managed to find time to write fiction with young children at home.
“I have a wife,” he said.
It's true: Even when women have partners or spouses, our significant others often send messages that they'd rather do something – anything – rather than take over child care and housework. It's easy to rant about this, to say that women's lives would be easier if men did their fair share around the house. However, even when our partners are willing to shoulder domestic duties in equal measure, we often get in our own way by refusing to let them. We want to read that bedtime story. We think we're the only ones who can pack the right school lunch. And we long to be the ones greeting the school bus in the afternoon if we can arrange our work schedules to do so.
Many women arrange their lives around the people they love. Unfortunately, that arrangement takes up most of our days. And, as the writer Malcolm Gladwell has pointed out, genius isn't a matter of genetics, but of opportunities and persistence: He estimates that it takes 10,000 hours to get really good at doing something.
Nobody will give us those 10,000 hours. We have to take them for ourselves.
*
At the end of the week, we walk on St. Margaret's Beach. I'm in beachcomber mode, stooping to pick up stones that catch my eye. Susan wants to climb the cliffs. She hikes ahead of me and is soon clambering around on distant rocks, farther than I want to go without any shoes.
When I'm tired of picking up rocks, I decide to return to the car and get my book so that I can read until Susan returns. Then it dawns on me: she has my car keys.
For a moment, I'm irritated – why did she have to disappear like that? – and then I feel helpless. What will I do, all by myself on a beach, without even anything to read?
I sit on a boulder, disgruntled, and pile the rocks I've collected beside me. There's nothing to do but watch the waves wash in and out, frothy and pink on the red sand.
Watch the waves, and think. I remember another book signing I went to a long time ago. This one was by the political activist and short story writer Grace Paley. I asked her the same question that I'd asked the arrogant mystery writer: How did she find time to write with young children at home?
“Day care,” she said. “Don't ever be afraid to pay for writing time.”
Easier said than done. For most women, paying a babysitter so that they can write, paint, make pottery or dance is out of the question. Even for women without children, trading hours that produce income for hours that produce “only” art seems like a foolish decision.
What a loss for the world, though, to have women's voices silenced because art is our last priority. Even if we aren't making great art, or commercial art, the very act of creating it is a joyful, transformative experience, one where we explore new emotions and perspectives, ideas and values.
I think hard about this while I sit on the beach. I think about the pages I've written this week, too, and about the way my novel is progressing.
And then, after a while, I'm not thinking much at all, just contentedly watching the force of the ocean, and how the waves make the rocks roll around and create such beautiful patterns in the smooth red sand. I build a little pyramid out of the rocks I've collected. I watch some pulpy kelp become draped over a rock, then wash out to sea again. I dig my toes deeper into the sand. I admire the swallows darting in and out of the cliff above me. My mind is clear.
I am just here. I am here, just me. Through writing, I have discovered a wonderfully still place inside me that I've never seen before. It's good to be here.
Eventually, of course, Susan returns from her walk. I write again that night, staying up until well past 2 a.m. solving a particularly vexing dilemma in the plot of my new novel. The images are fresh and there is tension on the page.
The drive back is lovely and uneventful. Our cell phones chorus again in the middle of New Brunswick, and by mid-coast Maine we've talked to all of our children. Everyone has survived.
We reach my house just before nine o'clock. “Well?” my husband asks. “How was it? Did you write anything you can sell?”
“I don't know,” I tell him. “I missed you,” I add.
I toss dirty clothes into the washing machine, clean the kitchen after dinner, check my email, walk the dogs, help my son order new parts for his scooter online. I make a grocery list.
During all of this, I can feel my brain starting to thrum with activity. The still place inside me has disappeared again. But at least I know how to get there, and who to call when I need help on the journey.
Then he trips me up: “What is the purpose of your visit? Business or pleasure?”
Susan and I glance at each other. Business or pleasure?
I'm not sure.
Susan and I have crossed this border together before. We met in graduate school and have stayed friends despite the fact that I live in Massachusetts and her home is in California. We usually meet in New York when we both have business there. And, for the past decade, Susan has flown east every summer so that we can drive ten hours north from my house to Prince Edward Island.
This year is completely different because we're actually sitting in the same car. On previous trips to Canada, we always brought so many children that we had to caravan in two vans. We have eight kids between us (me, five; her, three). We've also brought stragglers, whenever this child or that one begged to bring a friend. One summer we topped out at ten kids.
Those vacations were fun – endless hours of sand castles and board games – but crammed with chores: cooking and laundry, grocery shopping and vacuuming. Susan is divorced. For understandable reasons, my husband always opted out. So Susan and I were left on our own with the children like some wild combo of Sherpas and camp counselors.
This week, we're traveling to Canada alone in search of our inner muses. We have disguised our sudden decision to have a creative getaway as a janitorial vacation, since we're also opening up our summer cottages – she bought one on Prince Edward Island shortly after I did, and we rent them out to help support costs – but our goal is to devote uninterrupted hours to writing.
This goal makes me feel clammy with guilt. But why should it? I wonder about this as we meander along the Bay of Fundy. Guilt is a useless emotion. Yet I'm prone to it, especially when faced with a choice between what I “should” do and whatever I want to do most – as if doing something that makes me happy will make someone else unhappy.
Oh, wait: Escaping the home front to write does make the people I love unhappy. When I left this morning to pick up Susan at the airport, my husband was griping about having to leave work early to care for our youngest son, who stood with his forlorn face pressed against the door. My four older kids wanted to know if I'll have email and cell service, “just in case.” Even our dogs looked miserable.
As Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote in her timeless book, Gift from the Sea, my husband and children, my mother and friends, my home and pets, my neighbors and coworkers represent “a whole caravan of complications.” Leaving them behind for the sake of creativity makes me feel like I have phantom limbs: I itch all over.
Susan isn't doing much better. Luckily, we have time to talk about this, to shore each other up as we drive north, despite our cell phones singing with alarming regularity as our various children and work colleagues reach out to us through the state of Maine and most of New Brunswick.
Why the guilt? Like most women, Susan and I are people pleasers, willing to charge in to fill the black holes of need around us, even if that means sacrificing the time and concentration we need to be creative. Making art – whether it's music, drawing, dancing or writing – demands full attention and passion, but that ability to focus is easily worn down, especially for women with families.
Especially because, in our culture, art so rarely pays enough to put food on the table. With no money in art except for those lucky few breakout writers and artists, there is no power in doing it. Making art definitely feels like a luxury. Maybe that's because art takes so much time, and it's our precious free time that the people around us want most.
I can feel the hot breaths of everyone I left behind on the back of my neck as I drive.
*
I had imagined us rising early to write. After all, novelist Virginia Woolf proclaimed that every woman needs a room of one's own to do so. But Susan and I are so exhausted by the time we arrive at my house on Prince Edward Island – a modest summer cottage overlooking Malpeque Bay – that we can barely force ourselves out of bed once we have those precious rooms to ourselves.
Instead, we lie in our separate rooms as if we've been clubbed over the head. This isn't exhaustion from the drive; it's more like battle fatigue. Or shell shock: my ears are actually ringing a little. I think it's the silence.
We spend the first day doing chores, like that essential trip to town to replace everything from garbage bags to shower mats. We also go walking. The first day, we traverse the red beach around Darnley basin as if our lives depend upon making it from one end to the other, taking long, purposeful strides, arms pumping.
On the second day, house chores behind us, we take a different sort of walk. This one is a meandering stroll along the shore road that ends at Shipwreck Point. We see people doing more ambitious things: mowing lawns, jogging, carrying groceries into a house. It's almost like watching a movie of real life while we're in motion. We carry no cell phones, no purses. It's just us and the wildflowers and great, billowy white clouds that look like props for a theater piece.
That night, some sort of magic happens. We eat a simple supper of sandwiches and then get to work.
I sit at the little desk in my bedroom overlooking the potato fields and write almost maniacally, churning out sentences which build paragraphs that I might or might not keep. I don't turn out the light until 2 a.m., because there's nothing to stop me: No big kitchen cleanup waiting downstairs, no cell phone service, no email, no cable TV, no husband. Susan sits downstairs editing her new book galleys. We are completely separate, yet it's perfect, since each of us knows that the other is blissfully working.
I have so many good things in my life. Yet being here makes me realize how fractured my life is, with bits of my attention scattered everywhere like pocketfuls of gravel.
How did I let my life get so crowded?
*
Susan's summer house is an hour's drive from mine. One of her tasks is to buy new mattresses for the twin beds, so we track down a place that sells them at discount. We already have a carload of stuff. Still, rather than make another, separate trip to pick up the mattresses and waste valuable writing time, we jam the mattresses into the back of my Honda CRV on top of everything else.
The mattresses are so long that we have to remove the headrests and put our seats all the way forward. I have to keep my neck bent forward toward the dashboard; it's easy to imagine getting decapitated if we stop too suddenly. I do a little praying that the Canadian Mounties won't arrest us for driving with no visibility.
Then I have this comforting thought: This being Canada, the jail cells are probably really, really clean. If I'm locked up, the guards will let me write and I still wouldn't have to dust or cook.
We make it to Susan's house, then spend the rest of the day vacuuming up millions of fly corpses littering the windowsills and clearing out closets. We're both sore and exhausted by the time we finish. It's too late to go out to dinner, so we dine on fried sausages and potatoes. Then I set up my computer in the dining room and write for four hours. I can hear Susan tapping on her laptop in the kitchen. She is an award-winning novelist whose newest novel, Take One Candle Light a Room, is a gem. My memoir, The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter, was put out in paperback this year. We're pleased to be published in this rocky economy. For us, though, the excitement has always been about the actual writing.
I have never been so content as I am right now. Men have always claimed wives and mistresses as their muses. Susan and I have ourselves and, for this week, we have each other. Are we writing masterpieces? Are we even writing something that other people will ever read?
It doesn't matter. The joy is in the creative act.
Women have always found satisfaction in being helpful. There is joy in that and love, too. Women are also creating some of the most exciting and challenging art today. Yet we still aren't catching up to our male colleagues in the arts. Look at the numbers for everything from cinematography to writing, from painting to conducting music, and men win out every time.
Feminists would probably say that there is a glass ceiling in the arts, as there has been in nearly every other field. I'm certainly a feminist. Still, I wonder if more women artists, musicians and writers aren't household names because we don't have enough faith in our own pursuits to give ourselves the time we desperately need to be transformed by a creative vision. Maybe that glass ceiling isn't really made of glass at all, but of sticky little fingers, dishes piled in the sink, and mortgages that demand two incomes.
Not long after my first two children were born – 16 months apart, so close together that I was in a coma for the first three years of motherhood – I went to a book signing by a famous mystery writer. He mentioned that he, too, had young children, so I eagerly approached him after the event to ask how he managed to find time to write fiction with young children at home.
“I have a wife,” he said.
It's true: Even when women have partners or spouses, our significant others often send messages that they'd rather do something – anything – rather than take over child care and housework. It's easy to rant about this, to say that women's lives would be easier if men did their fair share around the house. However, even when our partners are willing to shoulder domestic duties in equal measure, we often get in our own way by refusing to let them. We want to read that bedtime story. We think we're the only ones who can pack the right school lunch. And we long to be the ones greeting the school bus in the afternoon if we can arrange our work schedules to do so.
Many women arrange their lives around the people they love. Unfortunately, that arrangement takes up most of our days. And, as the writer Malcolm Gladwell has pointed out, genius isn't a matter of genetics, but of opportunities and persistence: He estimates that it takes 10,000 hours to get really good at doing something.
Nobody will give us those 10,000 hours. We have to take them for ourselves.
*
At the end of the week, we walk on St. Margaret's Beach. I'm in beachcomber mode, stooping to pick up stones that catch my eye. Susan wants to climb the cliffs. She hikes ahead of me and is soon clambering around on distant rocks, farther than I want to go without any shoes.
When I'm tired of picking up rocks, I decide to return to the car and get my book so that I can read until Susan returns. Then it dawns on me: she has my car keys.
For a moment, I'm irritated – why did she have to disappear like that? – and then I feel helpless. What will I do, all by myself on a beach, without even anything to read?
I sit on a boulder, disgruntled, and pile the rocks I've collected beside me. There's nothing to do but watch the waves wash in and out, frothy and pink on the red sand.
Watch the waves, and think. I remember another book signing I went to a long time ago. This one was by the political activist and short story writer Grace Paley. I asked her the same question that I'd asked the arrogant mystery writer: How did she find time to write with young children at home?
“Day care,” she said. “Don't ever be afraid to pay for writing time.”
Easier said than done. For most women, paying a babysitter so that they can write, paint, make pottery or dance is out of the question. Even for women without children, trading hours that produce income for hours that produce “only” art seems like a foolish decision.
What a loss for the world, though, to have women's voices silenced because art is our last priority. Even if we aren't making great art, or commercial art, the very act of creating it is a joyful, transformative experience, one where we explore new emotions and perspectives, ideas and values.
I think hard about this while I sit on the beach. I think about the pages I've written this week, too, and about the way my novel is progressing.
And then, after a while, I'm not thinking much at all, just contentedly watching the force of the ocean, and how the waves make the rocks roll around and create such beautiful patterns in the smooth red sand. I build a little pyramid out of the rocks I've collected. I watch some pulpy kelp become draped over a rock, then wash out to sea again. I dig my toes deeper into the sand. I admire the swallows darting in and out of the cliff above me. My mind is clear.
I am just here. I am here, just me. Through writing, I have discovered a wonderfully still place inside me that I've never seen before. It's good to be here.
Eventually, of course, Susan returns from her walk. I write again that night, staying up until well past 2 a.m. solving a particularly vexing dilemma in the plot of my new novel. The images are fresh and there is tension on the page.
The drive back is lovely and uneventful. Our cell phones chorus again in the middle of New Brunswick, and by mid-coast Maine we've talked to all of our children. Everyone has survived.
We reach my house just before nine o'clock. “Well?” my husband asks. “How was it? Did you write anything you can sell?”
“I don't know,” I tell him. “I missed you,” I add.
I toss dirty clothes into the washing machine, clean the kitchen after dinner, check my email, walk the dogs, help my son order new parts for his scooter online. I make a grocery list.
During all of this, I can feel my brain starting to thrum with activity. The still place inside me has disappeared again. But at least I know how to get there, and who to call when I need help on the journey.
Friday, January 28, 2011
My Superhero Underpants
I came upstairs last night and found my husband Dan pulling something out of the laundry stacked on his bureau. He looked puzzled.
“These aren't my underpants,” he said. “Whose are they?”
I snatched them out of his hands. “Mine,” I mumbled.
“They look like superhero underpants,” he said. “I should buy you a cape to go with them.”
It was true. This particular pair of panties – a bit high in the waist, Lycra, and deep purple – definitely looks like something Wonder Woman might have worn, if she'd ever wanted to change up the star-spangled bottoms she favored before DC Comics updated her outfit recently http://www.dccomics.com/dcu/comics/?cm=16261.
It wasn't my intent to get into superhero role playing, fun as that would be. I'm just always on the prowl for underpants suitable for women of a certain age. I'm not talking about trying to be sexier. My husband thinks I'm a hot temptress even in my ankle-length black down coat, which makes me look like Shamu the killer whale. I just want attractive underpants that won't divulge my secrets or make me twitchy as a sixth grader in social studies.
Forget thongs. I've tried them all, from those Hanky Panky brands that come in fun little balls of Easter Egg colors to wider, more modest pairs. Whether I'm sitting at my computer or pushing a cart full of groceries, wearing a thong guarantees that I'll get a wedgie. Then I have to remind myself: Oh, wait: that's not a wedgie, that's my thong! Plus, the way jeans are designed these days, if I bend over, everyone knows my favorite color.
Bikini panties are comfy, but it's tough to find styles where the lines don't show. That leads to teenagers walking behind you and thinking, “Ew, gross.” Plus, after you've had children, wearing a bikini just reminds you of how it felt when there was something between you and tying your shoes, because the waistband slices you right where those last stubborn post-pregnancy pounds hang out.
The obvious solution was boy shorts, I thought: good coverage, but still lacy and sexy. Unfortunately, boy shorts seem to be made for boys. Every pair I tried had leg bands so tight that my thighs looked like sausages pinched at the ends.
Maybe the answer was underwear that went right up to my bra, I decided last summer, when I got a dress and the clerk talked me into buying Spanx for a smoother look. At home, I laid out my new dress, put my makeup on, and did my hair with a mounting sense of excitement. After all, Spanx has been giving Oprah a waist for over a decade http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Howd-They-Do-That/2.
At last, I was ready for my miracle foundation garment debut. I pulled the Spanx out of its slim packet. It was skin-colored and felt crunchy between my fingers. It stretched like pantyhose between my hands, but had an odd shape: a square top and legs cut off at the knees. It looked like a preschool craft project. There was no crotch. I tried not to imagine the disaster that might unfold if I guffawed at someone’s party joke and needed to pee.
Nonetheless, I inserted one leg, then the other, wriggling the garment over my thighs. When it came to getting the Spanx over my hips, it was like being swallowed by a boa constrictor.
My new dress did slide more easily over my waist and hips. However, just as a miracle bra gathers flesh from back to front to make you look like you've strapped on a pair of bowling balls, the Spanx gathered everything in my middle and squeezed it up under my ribcage. I was gasping for air like a dying trout.
Dan came upstairs and slid his arms around my newly tight waist. Our eyes met in the mirror. “Great dress,” he said, then cocked his head. “It fits kind of funny around your waist.”
“What waist?” I said with a moan.
“Your sexy, gorgeous waist.” Dan says things like this to me every day, and means them. But now he grabbed my hips and winced. “What the hell are you wearing? It feels like you’re made of cement.”
He wasn't trying to be critical. Dan is an engineer who just likes to know how things work. I hiked my dress up to show him.
“Jesus!” he said. “That can’t be very comfortable. Why are you wearing it?”
Why, indeed? My Spanx has been in my top drawer ever since, along with my discarded thongs, boy shorts and bikinis. Meanwhile, my superhero underpants have risen to the top of the heap. They're comfortable enough for Spin class and don't show panty lines even under leggings. I am Wonder Woman, after all. Time to go shopping for that gold belt.
“These aren't my underpants,” he said. “Whose are they?”
I snatched them out of his hands. “Mine,” I mumbled.
“They look like superhero underpants,” he said. “I should buy you a cape to go with them.”
It was true. This particular pair of panties – a bit high in the waist, Lycra, and deep purple – definitely looks like something Wonder Woman might have worn, if she'd ever wanted to change up the star-spangled bottoms she favored before DC Comics updated her outfit recently http://www.dccomics.com/dcu/comics/?cm=16261.
It wasn't my intent to get into superhero role playing, fun as that would be. I'm just always on the prowl for underpants suitable for women of a certain age. I'm not talking about trying to be sexier. My husband thinks I'm a hot temptress even in my ankle-length black down coat, which makes me look like Shamu the killer whale. I just want attractive underpants that won't divulge my secrets or make me twitchy as a sixth grader in social studies.
Forget thongs. I've tried them all, from those Hanky Panky brands that come in fun little balls of Easter Egg colors to wider, more modest pairs. Whether I'm sitting at my computer or pushing a cart full of groceries, wearing a thong guarantees that I'll get a wedgie. Then I have to remind myself: Oh, wait: that's not a wedgie, that's my thong! Plus, the way jeans are designed these days, if I bend over, everyone knows my favorite color.
Bikini panties are comfy, but it's tough to find styles where the lines don't show. That leads to teenagers walking behind you and thinking, “Ew, gross.” Plus, after you've had children, wearing a bikini just reminds you of how it felt when there was something between you and tying your shoes, because the waistband slices you right where those last stubborn post-pregnancy pounds hang out.
The obvious solution was boy shorts, I thought: good coverage, but still lacy and sexy. Unfortunately, boy shorts seem to be made for boys. Every pair I tried had leg bands so tight that my thighs looked like sausages pinched at the ends.
Maybe the answer was underwear that went right up to my bra, I decided last summer, when I got a dress and the clerk talked me into buying Spanx for a smoother look. At home, I laid out my new dress, put my makeup on, and did my hair with a mounting sense of excitement. After all, Spanx has been giving Oprah a waist for over a decade http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Howd-They-Do-That/2.
At last, I was ready for my miracle foundation garment debut. I pulled the Spanx out of its slim packet. It was skin-colored and felt crunchy between my fingers. It stretched like pantyhose between my hands, but had an odd shape: a square top and legs cut off at the knees. It looked like a preschool craft project. There was no crotch. I tried not to imagine the disaster that might unfold if I guffawed at someone’s party joke and needed to pee.
Nonetheless, I inserted one leg, then the other, wriggling the garment over my thighs. When it came to getting the Spanx over my hips, it was like being swallowed by a boa constrictor.
My new dress did slide more easily over my waist and hips. However, just as a miracle bra gathers flesh from back to front to make you look like you've strapped on a pair of bowling balls, the Spanx gathered everything in my middle and squeezed it up under my ribcage. I was gasping for air like a dying trout.
Dan came upstairs and slid his arms around my newly tight waist. Our eyes met in the mirror. “Great dress,” he said, then cocked his head. “It fits kind of funny around your waist.”
“What waist?” I said with a moan.
“Your sexy, gorgeous waist.” Dan says things like this to me every day, and means them. But now he grabbed my hips and winced. “What the hell are you wearing? It feels like you’re made of cement.”
He wasn't trying to be critical. Dan is an engineer who just likes to know how things work. I hiked my dress up to show him.
“Jesus!” he said. “That can’t be very comfortable. Why are you wearing it?”
Why, indeed? My Spanx has been in my top drawer ever since, along with my discarded thongs, boy shorts and bikinis. Meanwhile, my superhero underpants have risen to the top of the heap. They're comfortable enough for Spin class and don't show panty lines even under leggings. I am Wonder Woman, after all. Time to go shopping for that gold belt.
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