More Than an Oyster...

I'm reading this book, "Loving Frank" by Nancy Horan. The short summary is its historical fiction about Frank Lloyd Wright and his mistress, Mamah Borthwick. It takes place around the turn of the century, so there is a lot of early feminism in the story, as it is told from the woman's point of view. The title of this post is from a quote in the book by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: "It is not enough to be a mother. An oyster is a mother." This book has prompted a variety of thoughts to come bubbling up which of course I will now share with you, whether you actually wanted to know them or not! I guess if you didn't want to know them you wouldn't be reading my blogs anyway.

So, first of all it may surprise you that I actually know a thing or two about Charlotte Perkins Gilman to begin with. She is someone I studied very closely in my Women's History class in college. Have you ever read, or seen the movie version of, "The Yellow Wallpaper"? It's totally insane, literally. It's about a woman who goes crazy essentially because she is forced into being what society and American culture said a woman ought to be, basically a brainless individual with no ability to think for herself. I did a big paper on Gilman my senior year that, if I recall, was actually pretty good. Of course I don't remember much about it as my brain cells have moved on to more pragmatic ways of thinking. But I was quite influenced in my college years to lean a bit towards feminism. I read "The Feminist Mystique" and loved it (don't ask me why, I don't remember at all!). Perhaps I was just reacting to what I felt was a hopeless situation in my then-engaged-relationship, and was looking for some sort of empowerment. In spite of any new thinking I may have been harboring, I know I still intended one day to marry, have kids, and stay at home with said kids. So I guess I was never much of a feminist at all.

I am finding this book incredibly frustrating on a number of levels. It is an interesting and entertaining read overall, and I am anxious to finish it and see what the outcome is. What frustrates me is that here is this woman, Mamah, who is married with two children who she claims to love fiercely. Yet she totally abandons them in an effort to be true to herself and her love for Frank Lloyd Wright. I can understand to a degree the collapse of her marriage, but she speaks of how it breaks her heart to see how her affair has affected her children, how she misses holding them, the daily contact she had with them when she was at home. And yet she does nothing, she continues on her path of self-discovery and fulfillment, in spite of her acknowledgement of the damage she has done. So many times she has the chance to turn around and do something differently, but she continues on. It seems incredibly selfish to me.

Which makes me realize just how far removed I am from the necessity of a feminist movement. In spite of small inequalities, as an American woman I have basically the whole world at my feet. I have educational and career opportunities that are unlimited. I have an incredibly supportive husband, and the ability to speak my mind. I can vote, I can get birth control or get an abortion if I was so inclined. Mamah Bortwick had none of these things, even the divorce she managed to attain came at an incredible price. But to me, that's just a story in a book, it holds no meaning to me, the struggles and sacrifices that women before me went through to achieve even a measure of equal standing with men. That's probably a similar problem facing many African-American youngsters who can't identify with the Civil Rights Movement because they never had to go to a separate school or eat at a separate lunch counter. I really have no framework for the feminist movement except from a purely historical standpoint. I can nod and say "yes, oh it was awful back then wasn't it? Hmm...terrible, terrible, yes." It doesn't mean a whole lot to me though.

But back to the oysters--I am more than an oyster! Yes, perhaps an oyster is a "mother" in the sense that it produces offspring. (How do oysters produce offspring anyway?) Unlike an oyster, or even an animal, as a human I am capable of LOVING and caring for my offspring. Does an oyster feel? I don't think so! Granted, motherhood doesn't guarantee love for the child. You certainly hear plenty of stories of mothers who fail to bond with their children, or who never wanted the child to begin with, or whatever. I am not one of those mothers! I care deeply about my children and would do just about anything to ensure that they are safe, happy, loved, cared for. That's not to make me sound like I'm so great--I can only thank God for giving me His love to pour out on my kids. It IS my job at this point, and I wouldn't want to be doing anything else! Are there days I want to pull my hair out, days when I feel mad or depressed or frustrated or bored? Heck yes! But I felt that way in any of the jobs I have held in my life--maybe my problem is that I have never found a career or employment that I am passionate about. I don't know any people who have a "perfect" day every day, regardless of what it is they do for a living, that's just not real life! There is always something more fun or exciting or fulfilling you could probably be doing. Then there are those days when it is perfect, when I hold Kendall after her nap and her cheeks are red and she's sucking her fingers and she has that sleep smell about her and we just sit there until she decides its time for a snack. Or when Julia gets really excited about something she's just figured out, or she has made me yet another picture and left it for me on the table--"To Mommy Love Julia". Or just listening to Xavier talk and discover and seeing his cute face and smelling his baby smell and kissing his delicious velvet cheeks. Or when the 3 of them are all playing together and laughing together and loving being with one another...THOSE are perfect days, those are days I would never get if I were in an office and they were in child care. And I know that soon enough they will all be in school and those moments are all that I will have, and I can assure you that if I have any regrets at the end of my life, I WILL NOT regret having devoted my life to mothering.

So to all you Moms out there-stay-at-home or otherwise, you are MORE THAN AN OYSTER! Remember that when you're cutting up your thousandth hot dog or changing your billionth diaper or picking up your child from the babysitter and wishing you hadn't missed that big milestone. Being a mother is a beautiful thing, a God-given thing, and we should embrace it and cherish it, in spite of all the messes (literally and figuratively!) that it may bring.

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Facebook is a very funny thing. I like it a lot, I check it pretty much every day. I'm not sure why--how come I feel the need to keep up on what people I know are doing at any given moment and why do I have to tell them what I am doing? Who knows--my husband makes fun of me for being on Facebook and refuses to be a part of it, but I think its entertaining and it certainly creates some unusual phenomenon in your life.

If it weren't for Facebook, I wouldn't know what anyone from high school was doing, if they were even alive or what. Not that it matters a whole lot, but I guess it gives you a better sense of history when you can actually point to someone and see where they are and what they're doing. "I knew them and they knew me"--I guess its validation that your younger self actually existed, that you weren't always a 36 year old mother of 3 with graying hair and a flabby abdomen. I didn't really keep up with many people from high school. (or even college, for that matter. Breaking off your engagement a month before the wedding tends to burn a lot of bridges for you.) In fact, if it weren't for the internet I probably wouldn't have kept up with anyone from high school at all. Plus, I have moved so much in the last 20 years that I have left lots of friends behind. It gets difficult to keep up with everyone you've moved away from, time and distance become natural barriers to communication. Its something that saddens me sometimes. My family is very disjointed, as a result of divorce, so it almost feels like I have no roots, no place to call home that I can go back to and feel a part of. I know people who are still friends with their best friend from middle school, and there is a part of me that envies that.

Its funny how Facebook brings all these random people together--I am "friends" now with old high school friends, college friends, people I knew before I was married, current friends...its like all these worlds colliding and it is strange sometimes to see a post from my old high school boyfriend right below a post from a current friend here in Wyoming. Or when they both join the same "cause" or become a fan of the same thing. People who will never, ever meet one another yet are linked because of me. Its even better when you get a friend request from someone you were never friends with in the first place. I'm like--we never spoke to one another before, why should we now? I don't feel the need to "friend" everyone who went to my high school. Facebook is superficial enough, why make it even more so. On the other hand, it is nice to see that in many ways we've outgrown all those stupid things that defined us when we were in high school--the people we wouldn't talk to because they were uncool (or we were uncool), now suddenly we can get along. It makes me wonder if high school wouldn't be a whole lot more pleasant if we could go back now, having lived our lives and figuring out more of who we are.

It's weird to look at the people from your past and see them as who they are now. When you don't see someone for 10 or more years, they get stuck in the last place you saw them (mainly idiotic 17 year olds). And yet it seems that most of us have turned out pretty well--married, careers, kids--its so strange to picture the "kids" I went to high school with as moms and dads, as grown ups. It is nice to see, it gives you a good feeling though, knowing we've all grown up and gotten past all the stupidity that defined us when we were so young. I am genuinely happy when I see these people in their lives as they are now, its kind of hopeful. Will we still be on Facebook when we're going through cancer treatments and Alzheimers and dying? Maybe then it won't be so enjoyable.

They say that things like Facebook have brought up this weird phenomenon of people connecting with their "first love" or past love at any rate, and suddenly beginning to think that they can rekindle that romance, even if they may be married or in a relationship at the time. It is kind of funny--I reconnected with a guy who broke my heart my senior year of high school, and I admit it gave my heart a little flop the first time I heard from him. But then I was like "Hello--this guy was part of your life for a year almost 20 years ago. GET REAL! You know nothing about each other, and you didn't really then either." I can see how people in unhappy relationships or who aren't happy with their lives could be fooled into thinking they can recreate some past happiness. We get a bit sentimental about the past, blocking out the bad stuff and only focusing on how great everything was. There's a reason people broke up and moved on. I'm glad my life is how it is now--I have an awesome husband and amazing kids. Why would I risk all of that for something that is only real in my reminiscences?

Anyway, Facebook is fun for now--I wonder what our kids will be "into" when they are in high school and college? Things have changed so much since I was 18--and that includes me and my old friends. And if nothing else, I'm glad there's things like Facebook because it is proof of how far we've all come. (just look at your old high school yearbook and tell me it's not so--unless your high school yearbook is less than 5 years old!)

Penny and Me

So, I just finished reading "Marley and Me", and yes it made me cry at the end when Marley dies. Anyone who has ever loved a pet would cry, I think. There is a lot of variation on the spectrum of human relationships to pets, from outright hatred to over the top animal rights activists. How we treat and feel about animals says a lot about us, I think. But that's not what I was going to write about--reading about Marley got me thinking about the 2 main pets I grew up with, specifically Penny, our basset hound. As I read "Marley" one of my first thoughts was "my God, what a nuisance this dog is! How did they put up with him!" The more I thought about it however, our sweet adorable Penny had some pretty inconvenient quirks of her own!

So my dad brought home Penny the pup right around the time I was born, much to the chagrin of my non-dog loving mother. So she has a newborn baby, her first, and a puppy to deal with. My dad was busy with his job, and did his best to train her--you would think that my mom being home all day would've been a great help in the puppy training department. However, a combination of my mom's lack of affection towards dogs, her lack of knowledge of training, and her preoccupation with a newborn led to some gaps, shall we say, in Penny's training. I think she knew my mom wasn't a dog person, (somehow dogs always know, don't they?) and for the rest of her life took complete advantage of that.

Penny was a notorious escape artist. In our first home, one day my Nana was babysitting me, and looking out the window holding me. She sees a pretty little brown and white basset go trotting by the house--"Oh, that looks like Penny!" she thinks. Well, hours later they all finally realize it is Penny, and somehow someone finds her trotting across the bridge into Hudson, miles away from where we live. In our Hudson home it was the same--she had this big pen in her backyard, and she would dig and dig and dig under the gate until there was just enough room to squeeze under it--like Peter Rabbit squeezing under the gate into Mr. MacGregor's garden. We would often be coming home from somewhere just in time to meet her as she was ambling down the driveway off on some adventure. Most of the time she would head down the street to our friends the Caldwell's home, so at least we knew where to find her.

Apparently she was also very appealing to the dogs in our neighborhood as well. When she was a younger pup my dad had bred her with another basset, producing an adorable batch of long eared darlings who looked the epitome of cute hanging in my dad's hockey skates like the most perfect stocking stuffer ever. My dad hoped to replicate this same litter at least another time or two, and yet he was thwarted twice by the neighborhood ruffians who could not resist Penny's charms. Her second litter was a toss-up--would they be pure bassets, or a mix of the big sheepdog we'd seen hopping out of her pen one day? My mom tells me that when the puppies came out black and white (obviously a tribute to their black and white sheepdog dad), we were lucky my father didn't take his shotgun and hunt down the poor creature that had defiled his darling girl. The next and final litter was a lovely mix between Penny and Molson, an Irish Setter from 'round the way who swelled her belly so big it literally looked like she'd swallowed a watermelon.

In an effort to get back at my dad any time he'd leave, Penny took to peeing (we called it "piddling" for some reason) around the house if he was gone. If dad was at work or away we could never have her up in the house with us because she would ALWAYS pee all over the place, just to spite my mom and dad for upsetting the balance of power between them. My sister and I were always very sad when this would happen because we loved having her up and around with us, but there's only so many oceans of pee you can clean up in an evening.

She could be a scrounger too--my dad tried to make her lie down in the dining room whenever we were eating dinner, but she would scooch forward little by little by little until she was right at someone's side, awaiting a handout. One Christmas we left our bags of chocolate coins in the living room while we ate breakfast--when we returned she had torn open the little mesh bags and eaten the coins, foil wrapper and all. For good measure she had also torn open her box of "Liva Snaps" and eaten most of that too.

One year as she got older she developed this calcification on her neck, and for a long time (6 months maybe?) she couldn't lift her head but a tiny bit off the floor. She spent most of that time lying on a pillow, we had to feed her off of a paper plate and give her this medicine that we had wrapped in a piece of American cheese. My dad had to carry her around everywhere, one time this almost was the death of them both as he carried her down the basement stairs, tripped and fell halfway down the unfinished stairs to land hard on the concrete below. Somehow they both managed to avoid getting hurt. Also as she aged she began to get all these tumors--we were constantly having her in to get them removed. In our state of near-bankruptcy I'm not at all sure how we managed to pay for all her medical treatment, but she was such a part of the family it was just something we did without thinking about it.

I have so many warm and happy memories of Penny--taking her for a walk in the fall down to the field near our house--she was always a big sniffer and walks took a long time! Lying with my head on her near our wood stove, her fur all hot from the heat of the stove, reading a book while my dad watched hockey on Channel 38. Her curled up like a croissant in a sunbeam, saving pizza crusts for her to eat after we'd eaten at Bob's Pizza. Her licking my arm, just licking and licking and licking until I couldn't stand it anymore...towards the end it was just so sad because she couldn't really control her peeing at all, not even when dad was around, so she spent most of her last months in the basement. My dad turned his workshop into a place for her, he built a little platform up off the cold ground, and there was a red heat lamp and fresh wood shavings all around but it wasn't like being upstairs where everyone else was. I would just go down to her room and cry and hold her because I felt so bad. As much as I hated to have her put to sleep, I was almost glad because I felt like her life had become so pathetic in the end, it was better for her to be at rest.

We buried her in the side of our yard, a little space where the rock wall went out and came back--we'd had our sandbox there when we were small. I was almost 17--she'd been around my entire life and it was awful to imagine life without her, plus my parent's marriage was in the midst of self-destructing, I was getting ready to leave for college, and our house was in the process of being foreclosed on. It was a terrible time in so many ways. I remember thinking how small she looked in the box we buried her in--old age had truly ravaged her body. Her once-copper colored fur was pretty much white all over. We wrapped her in a blanket--I know we put some kinds of mementos in there, I just can't remember what. One of the things I hate the most about not having our old home anymore is knowing that she and Daisy, our cat, are buried there in the yard. They've probably been dug up for that stupid pool the people have in the backyard now. It felt like a betrayal to leave them. The summer after we had to move I went back to the house several times--it was empty still--I tried to drag out her old dog house and clean out all the cobwebs and dirt and grime that had settled in there over the years. I don't know what I planned to do with it, and I never did get it out of there.

So, here we are years later, and we're talking about getting a dog for our family, and while I can't imagine putting up with stuff like peeing and breaking things and chewing on things, the main reason I want to add a pet like that to the family is because I think having a pet makes you a better person, I really believe that. Being able to love and care for another creature is enriching, and I miss it, and I want my kids to know that and to have that as a part of the fibers of who they are. I do hope that if we do get a dog, its not like Marley in his rambunctiousness, and I do hope I can do a better job of training a dog than my parents did with Penny, but I also hope that whoever he or she is, that they bring the love and joy and fun to our family that both Penny and Marley brought to theirs.