momsecrets

I am loving this new University of Phoenix "I am a Phoneix" advertising campaign, which by the way is EVERYWHERE. Wow, this organization must be the only one in this economy that can do a roll-out the way it ought to be done. I mean, massive billboards, bus-stop posters, TV advertisements, print ads. Heartening to me to see that the tried and true "real person photo and testimonial" approach can be done in such a wowing way. And I can only imagine the poor copy writers muttering, "What am I going to do with a "phoenix"?" How do I make a mythological firebird fly in a 2009 ad campaign? (Though Harry Potter and Dumbledore did bring it into modern consciousness...)

Well, it totally works, the calligraphy flourish on the font, the photos of these interesting looking people, including the Asian guy who's wearing the big headphones. There's something so diminutive about him in the crowd of people he's standing in and the two toned jacket, that each time I pass the billboard on the freeway, I think he's a jockey. But they get me to look twice at it. He's not a jockey, he's a PHOENIX.

Secondly, I'm really glad they didn't trash Michele Obama on her one-shouldered bedspread inaugural gown. She looked tired and self-conscious and the dress was ill fitting and it just was a big mess. Thankfully, she looked so fabulous most of the day in the gorgeous sunshiney (ahem, my blog colors) coat-cardigan-suit outfit. Don't even get me started on those girls...I kept watching CNN for that one shot from below that they had of Obama during the swearing in in which I got to see Sasha's tights and those adorable orange shoes...yep, you know I dallied with the idea of the vasectomy reversal so I could get me some girls...

Why was Rachel Maddow so deferential to Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews during MSNBC's inaugural coverage? I kindof remember thinking the same thing during the election night coverage, mainly, when are those other buffoons going to shut up and give Rachel some air time? Chris Matthews went on and on the other night about his fall-flat story of Muhummad Ali winking at him in an elevator, and I really just wanted him to shut up so Rachel could be smart and cutting and beautiful.

Last but not least, the sex expert Dr. Laura Berman said on Oprah's new Best Life webcasts last week that women in their 20's and 30's, when they feel happiest, and most sexual in their lives, ought to go into their doctors and have a hormone panel done to establish the levels. Later, when they have children and their hormones wax and wane as they age, and libido problems and depression eeek in, doctors can use those "got my groove on" blood levels as the goal for treatment. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Girls, get thee to the hormone doctor!

Most of you know that my parents were active--and continue active--in the civil rights movement, so I hope you'll indulge me a few thoughts before the enormous historic moment tomorrow in which Barrack Obama will be sworn in as President. My sister and I gave fleeting thought of finding a way to get my parents to the inaugural tomorrow. But I assure you the emotions of the day will be enormous enough, from the armchairs of our living rooms in Kansas City, Santa Fe and San Diego.

The history for my family is quite different than those of African Americans who will stand on the Mall tomorrow, the descendents of slaves who laid the stone foundation for the Capitol. Indeed, my father is a descendent of a family that owned slaves in Tennessee. The sterling I put out on holidays dates back to that plantation. Even so, even with those beginnings, my dad became a liberator.In his teens Bill went out late at night to rescue a black friend who had arrived in St. Louis and couldn't find lodging. He did so, even if it raised eyebrows when he brought his friend home.

I don't know where my mom got her chutzpah either, since her father was intent on crushing her spirit. But when a local black clergyman's wife came looking for a dress at the department store in Cape Girardeau where my mom was a clerk, Joyce flaunted the store rules and snuck the pastor's wife into the white-women-only dressing room.

Together of course, Joyce and Bill were twice as much trouble. They funneled money to the share-cropping families that my dad's plantation-owning relatives evicted. After my dad finished seminary in Chicago, they worked with inner city youth and revived downtown churches there and in Indianapolis. Mom manned the strollers and the runny noses and the diapers for the countless hours that dad was at organizing meetings, protests, and once when he was jailed for civil disobedience. She watched the news when dad took the buses to Selma and Washington to march with Martin Luther King.

They created for my sister and me, and for so many people who worshipped with us at my dad's church, a special world in which the color of your skin didn't matter, nor the price of the dress you wore, not any other dividing line. Having lived in a mixed race neighborhood and gone to mixed race schools, my sister and I learned the code words people use to discriminate against others. So that when I was applying to Dartmouth for college, and the stodgy white alum who was interviewing me disparaged my 70 percent black high school, I knew exactly what he was disparaging and told him so. And after I was mugged by a black man when I lived in Boston, I filed a complaint about the white cops who, in handling my case, suggested that "the blacks have gotten out-of-control since the Malcolm X movie came out."

With this legacy, I'm so glad my parents--and the activist parents of so many friends--get to see tomorrow come. For me it's strangely akin to the aged Red Sox fans who finally got to see a glory day, after so many years of passion and disappointment, though this is of course a trifling compared to the civil rights struggle. I remember the night Reagan won, the tears my parents shed. I remember vividly my mother's threat, during my rebellious years as a young Republican, that she would never speak to me if I went to work for the first Bush administration as a speech writer. I remember at the beginning of this race, when I was still pulling for Hillary and for women, and my mom said America would never elect Obama. She had seen too many disappointments, too much pulling apart, to believe it was possible.

And yet, change has come. There was momentum rising, even as I was singing "We Shall Overcome" to Patrick and Liam as a lullaby and telling them what Nana and Papa did when I was my children's age. We can hope that the momentum for change will continue, since my parents are now, in their "retirement years," fighting for veterans' rights and gay rights.

I'm so glad that tomorrow, the crowd will walk where my dad marched, and feel all the great hope my mom did, watching on TV and cheering him on. We're going to be back by the box tomorrow--my parents, my sister, our children, and me. Except tomorrow this monumental moment will no longer be in black and white.

Thanks for letting me share with you.
With love to you all, and in tribute to all those who worked towards history being made,
Marg

Wow. It's been more than a year since I've blogged. It's no wonder when I read the entries from this time last year, and consider where we've been. It was a year and a two months ago that our Liam was hospitalized for an adverse effect to an antidepressant, placed on a three-day hold and kept apart from us for medical observation for an agonizing separation. He had his seventh birthday the final day of the hospitalization, the day we took him home and held him, and held him, and held him.

I only now have a voice to say that the way we treat children's behavioral health is unconscionable, that there is so little that doctors know, and too many risks being taken. It's only now that Liam and I are ready to wean ourselves, to allow a grown-up-boy bedtime rotuine to return instead of a traumatized mom and boy holding fast to each other, never to trust an outside opinion again.

We have, over the course of the year, found a treatment that works for Liam. We've moved back into our home, after two years of construction and overhaul, and have been engulfed by its calm, its beauty, its space for everything and then some. Life has not gotten back to normal, because the anxiety, agitation and anger Liam experienced for several years leading up to this, kept any semblance of normalcy away. But we are having an incredible summer, a do-nothing, stay-home-and-watch-movies-and-play-cards kind of summer, in which we rarely rush to go anywhere or do anything. I cannot even put into words how soothing that is. If you felt the breeze coming in my window right now, the sixth perfect 70's and sunny day in a row, you'd know. We are being filled up again.

I've of course struggled over the last year to imagine what I could write about our life. Liam wasn't self-conscious about telling his classmates he went to the hospital because he had anger issues, though of course it was far more complicated than that. I was too tired in the midst of all of it to write about the medicines, herbs, acupuncture treatments and homeopathic remedies. About diagnoses and IEPs and bullshit, bullshit, bullshit in which all sorts of people pretend they know what's wrong. I only know that there is a freckle-faced boy who adores his big brother, loves to play football, is an ace at Swiffering and vaccuuming the house, but who just hates school, abrupt transitions, the dark and being alone.

We have come a long way. So the gorgeous house we can't believe we live in, and the peaceful hours we bask in now, and a few words you can piece together without crying, are everything, everything a heart could want.

I've recently been collecting childhood horror stories. Not traumas, mind you, that parents have inflicted on children but the opposite. These are stories in which kids -- let's face it, boys -- have put their parents' hearts through a grinder, causing outrageous havoc, crime, what have you. Yet, like the TV show "House," all the plots I have compiled have happy endings -- endings in which parents emerge the triumphant diagnosticians, and children emerge...well, alive...and uncannily, successful in adulthood.

Of course I am collecting these stories because the emperor's clothes, Lucky brand jeans and Lily Pulitzer-like colors, have been wrest from Duke and me in ways that are too painful to enumerate in recent weeks. No matter how many doctor shows I watch, I'm no better informed to heal my family and the genetic dispositions and behaviorial mysteries that beset us. But it reassures me somehow to collect these post-mortems, these stories of kids who went to a better place -- namely, adulthood.

There's one particular sermon my father gave when I was an adolescent that sticks with me more than all the others. It was a meditation on how to help people in distress, and how truly un-helpful it is to try to cheer people up by comparing their situation to that of a quadrapalegic or some other catastophe. Because when friends are in pain, their pain is palpable, consuming and very real to them. Minimizing it, with the hope of brushing their little boo boo under the rug, does them little good.

To the contrary, I'm strangely cheered by my Little Shop of Mommy Horror Stories. So far, I've unearthed...
--a boy who set a fire in the bathroom trash can at middle school
--a boy suspended from school for calling another child a fag
--a boy whose "Ritalin rebound" in the afternoons shook the walls of the house
--a boy whose college fund was emptied to pay for his mishaps -- car accidents, vandalism, etc.
--a child who ran away from home for three days (all the above are from school teachers and administrators, god love 'em, who felt oh so inept at raising their own kids)
--a girl who shoplifted (now a successful well adjusted adult)
--a boy who accidentally killed the family pet (now a veterinarian)
--a boy who stole cars, got into repeated fights (now a mensche of a guy, married, kids, job, the whole nine yards)
--a boy who turned over chairs in his second grade classroom who is now happy, well adjusted, and not the school bully
--a boy so mean he hit other kids with sticks throughout childhood (this guy is a paramedic now, saving lives every night of the week)
--a boy who sold drugs and was arrested (now a surgeon who flies all over to third world countries on medical missions)
--a boy diagnosed as bipolar who gave his parents no ends of fits and who is now functioning beautifully in graduate school
--a boy who had a suicide plan as a young child who has just graduated from the Air Force Academy, and who didn't benefit from pharmaceutical drugs

Wonderfilly, most of these stories make my kids' meltdowns feel like misdemeanors. I'm not diminishing the seriousness of what they've done or of the pain it's caused us. Dr House does not have enough painkillers in his stash to numb the pain we feel, trying to get at "Why?"

But after you've spent hours on the parent forums on the internet, after you've read the thousandth parenting book and taken the tenth parenting class, looking for the gold ticket that will transform your child's life, the tale of the "bad kid gone good" is a wonder tonic. After all, these are stories from other parents who CSI'ed their family lives and who shopped homeopaths and acupressure tappers and all the fringe practitioners to avoid drugging their kids. These are survivors of the tower of terror called "growing up" in which gravity feels like the only predictable quality of life.

Funny enough, this little shop of horrors is where veteran parents pedal a drug, a fix that I'll seek out in any grimy back alley and abandoned building. There, amid a pile of burned matches, soiled clothes, and lost sneakers, is a flicker called hope.

An article for a local paper....

Back To School Realities Hit Moms Hard:
An Assignment-Filled Syllabus for Parents
By Marg Stark

The first day of school used to give me goose bumps. I cherished the sight of fathers hand-in-hand with kindergarteners and mothers choked up at classroom thresholds. I imagined tender first meetings with teachers, and harked back to childhood shopping for school supplies at the dime store.
Now the mother of two school-age boys, my back-to-school reality is more Red Bull than rosy cheeks. More Floyd Landis than it is Norman Rockwell. By late August, I’ve endured my own Tour de Summer – a marathon of pick-ups and drop-offs at far flung day camps; epic battles over sunscreen and wet suits left on hardwood floors; and the even rockier terrain of sibling squabbles and Play Station limit-setting.
My sportsmanship falters, too, when I blaze around the corner at Wal-Mart, my cart a blur of new thermoses and sneakers, only to find 10 shoppers ahead of me in the check-out line. So that by 6 AM the first morning of school, I’ll resort to Ritalin, bribes, Lunchables – anything! — to get the kids out of their beach sand-strewn beds and off to classes again.
Trouble is, I barely have time to stir my celebratory mojito before the demands of a new school year set in. For those of you moms and dads who have yet to read the syllabus, get out your Big Chief tablets. Because with the following school year assignments, parents have to make the grade, too:
I. Wash Dishes or Sell Your Firstborn to Pay for His Education.
Here’s a fun exercise for parents: Count how many days it takes for the first notice of a school fundraiser to come home in Johnny’s backpack. Whether it’s cookie dough or car washes, gift wrap or book drives, schools are so desperate for funds, the school and its organizations would prefer to sell you something before your progeny is even registered.
Pretty soon, I expect strapped schools will go the way of the struggling airlines. Chalkboard-facing seats in classrooms will come at a premium. Teachers will charge for Kleenex and broken crayons. And tiny nuggets of brain food will be parceled out, and be expected to last all semester.
After moving to Spring Valley in the sixties, my husband’s father dropped him at school the first day, expecting the second grader to get himself enrolled and ensconced in the education system. Today, parents are expected to dig much deeper – into time-banks and bank books.
Never mind the $200 million the United States spends per day on the Iraq war, you might as well sell your firstborn -- and then stock up on cookie dough and gift wrap -- to pay for his education. Even if you pay private school tuition, volunteering is still expected. It’s like paying the restaurant tab and then donning an apron to wash patrons’ dishes.
II. Let the Diagnoses Begin.
When I was growing up, kids fell into two broad categories: normal or weird. But this fall, with the exception of students at the brand new local school -- Normal Heights Elementary -- no normal child will be left behind -- that is, in the rush to diagnose, label and medicate.
Newbie parents, you probably thought it was a standard developmental phase for a kindergartener to shove another kindergartener. But on a zero-tolerance playground, expect zero Duck, Duck Goose and dozens of school counselor referrals instead. Have a boy, and you’ll have no deficit of attention-deficit, hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) verdicts. Got a girl? Then she’s inevitably got GAD, or generalized anxiety disorder.
All the more reason to pucker up to the new power player: the school nurse. With 2.5 million children in the United States medicated for asthma and another 2.5 million medicated for ADHD, the nurse wields a mighty clipboard. This is the gal who asks your verging-on-obese child to step on the scale, and the one who knows precisely whose kid started the lice epidemic. She polices peanut allergies and bee hives, drops the dime to Child Protective Services and harangues you if you bring cupcakes instead of jicama sticks to class on your kids’ birthdays.
Indeed, you don’t want to cross the school R.N., unless you’re bringing her an apple.
III. Guilt Begins at Your Home-School Bus Stop.
Starting in September, San Diego City School buses no longer afford parents the luxury of stopping a few streets over from their homes or day cares. Now, buses only pick-up and drop-off students in front of their “home school.”
In other words, parents who worked the system to bypass a school in their neighborhood and chose to bus their children elsewhere as many of us in mid-town do, get to hang out now at the school they abandoned. Yes, abandoned begins with an “A,” the scarlet letter I’ll be wearing when more than 30 of us white, affluent Kensington parents cluster at the bus stop in front of Franklin Elementary, the predominately low- and middle-income Hispanic school in our neighborhood. Everyday, we’ll put our pasty-faced, Lands’ End-clad children on the bus, overlooking a poorer performing school we might have chosen to help populate, empower and perhaps transform.
It’s enough to drive a liberal mom to home-school. Still, I’m going to save a lot of Starbucks dollars at the new bus stop. Because who needs a Venti Latte when you start each day with a jolt of white guilt?
IV. Moms Get All the Dull Nicknames, and All the Gut Work.
Here’s the most sobering lesson of all. If you’re a mother, you’ll get as many loaded nicknames as you’ll have jobs. Carpool mom, working mom, room mom, soccer mom, PTA mom, helicopter mom, single mom, all these shorthand societal titles land on women with children.
Of course, marketing people give us these pigeonhole nicknames to better sell products to us, or gain our votes. But the back-to-school reality is, we hover over our kids like helicopters or spend the better parts of our days in minivans, because we’re expected to raise perfect children, and to do so largely on our own backs. With 75 percent of moms in the workplace, we still contribute 80 percent of child care, and perform 10-15 more hours of housework every week than dads do. And moms are the first ones blamed if Chloe, Pedro, and Latisha aren’t buckled in, helmeted up, value-guided, play date and sleepover-scheduled, athletic minded, culturally exposed, scrap-booked, birthday partied, and test-prepped.
Sure, there are dads who do their share and single dads who rise to the occasion. And research tells us that for temporary spates, Mister Moms will pitch in full-time. But there’s a reason moms cackle these days with a half-masked pitbull sarcasm. Relentless demands lead to nasal-toned maternal whining and by day’s end, random shouting and nonexistent libidos.
So yes, I still get wistful about the start of school, the opening of books, a fresh roster, and the gleam in a devoted teacher’s eyes. But then, I get extraordinarily busy – raising money and volunteering, processing my guilt, helping with homework and bolstering my kids. It’s back-to-school all over for me.

Hi all,
Though I'm afraid some of these places will be a hike from north of the 8, these are my favorite discount haunts. I save a ton of money shopping at them regularly and I've detailed below what I tend to buy at each place. Also, with the links, some will send you coupon or newsletters.

I know it seems like a time consuming quest but I have managed to build some of these places into my regular routes and by stopping in and buying things when I don't necessarily need things, I keep a regular stock of cheap buys in my house. Enjoy!
Marg

http://99only.com/sd_county.htm In my book, the only 99 cent stores worth going into-- clean, well lit, well stocked and roomy aisles. I hit the refrigerated and fresh sections first -- believe it or not, I buy frozen salmon fillets for 99 cents each, chicken burgers, Canadian bacon, 3 pack breakfast burritos, pints of raspberries and strawberries, string cheese packets, Yoplait yogurts (3 for 99), bags of pears, bananas, lemons, peppers, etc. Risa, get your energy drinks here -- 2 for 99 cents. Bottled water is 6 for 99, brand t.p., paper towels much cheaper! Also, big brands seem to introduce products here, perhaps as a way to test them so you'll see some South Beach diet entrees, and other newbies for very cheap.

GTM Wholesale Liquidators: Okay, so it's a schlep to Santee or Lemon Grove but this is the outlet store for Costco, Whole Foods, and others. Anything ever so slightly dented or damaged from Costco ends up here so there are tons of clothes, electronics, jewelry, furniture, toys, otc medications, and nonperishable groceries. I got Ugg boots for Duke here for $35, a teak dining table for 12 for $350, etc. It's a crapshoot but I always come home with something...

GTM Discount Store
7663 Broadway (And there's a 99 only and a $5 store nearby)
Lemon Grove, CA 91945-1607
(619) 460-2990

GTM Discount General Store.
8967 Carlton Hills Blvd.
Santee, CA 92071. 619-449-4953

http://www.biglots.com/ Never buy a birthday present for full price again! Get your picture frames, your wrapping paper, any holiday decor, wine (used to be dubious but now they are carrying some passable table wine), kids' lunch fillers, juice boxes, bottled water, school supplies, candles, birthday favors, etc. I used to get diapers and wipes here, too. This year, they had incredibly expensive Brown Jordan lawn furniture marked down to a pittance....

DSO (Department Store Outlet) 1.866.SHOP-DSO for locations: Last but not least, I occasionally get to DSO, most of which are in El Cajon and the south bay. DSO is the step down for Macy's, Bloomingdales, Robinson's May, Sears, etc. They have some amazing clothes, nothing over $15. The catch is you can try nothing on. You have to buy on faith but you can exchange things that don't work. All name brands like Liz Claiborne, Ralph Lauren, INC, etc. My friends have found dresses for special occasions there for really cheap. Unfortunately no shoes but men's and kids clothes are there.

$5 stores: University and 62nd not far from Kroc Center, and on Broadway in Lemon Grove next to 99 only: For the truly should-be-committed, discount shopper, I bought $5 tea and cookie sets from Neiman Marcus here for teacher gifts one year! Harry Potter action figures, Gap clothes for the kids galore. It's hit or miss of course but I've scored lots of basic tanks, tshirts, towels here.

Happy bargain hunting!
Love,
Marg

Well, a mum in the UK has fired a shot heard round the playground world...

Here's the link to Helen Kirwin-Taylor's provocative article from London's The Daily Mail. In a nutshell, she's said what all of us feel -- that the way we do motherhood today, maniacally concerned that every eyelash on our kids' heads is in place, is wretched and boring. This journalist mom has opted out altogether -- of going to her kids' cricket matches or birthday parties, of playing Legos with the kids or taking them to museums on school breaks. She's said what most of us today feel -- that she'd rather be at work because work is less taxing and more fun than taking care of her kids.

Kirwin-Taylor is outlandish though, which got her published and made her article the lightning rod it's become in the UK and soon the Western mommy world. But she does take things a tad too far. After all, what mom doesn't like taking the kids to a museum? We prefer the art gallery anyday to a trip to Chuck E. Cheese or worse yet, an afternoon at home of when-will-it-be-naptime already playdough and peek a boo.

Sure, I'd rather be having drinks with girlfriends at a cafe, or getting my nails done. But I don't write off my kids entirely. I just figure out a balance that enables me to sustain myself during ho-hum children's movies, get my husband more engaged in the activities I can't take, and suck up the rest. I take a weekend to myself now and then, telling the kids, "You know how much you all like to play video games? That's how much Mommy likes to write, so that's why I need a writer's weekend sometimes."

Kirwin Taylor is so right to say that being at your kids' cricket match shouldn't be the be all, end all. I don't want my kids involved in extra curricular activities all year round; we have opted out of that "norm" because we need time together to do nothing, to hang out at home, to take walks or do chores, to eat dinner together, and to ignore one another entirely if we'd rather read a book or watch a baseball game on TV. I also despise the arch parents do at the end of soccer and baseball games, in which we seem to worship our little athletes. The game and the time we spend there is enough, why do we have to hail the conquering heroes for doing what kids ought to do -- getting exercise, learning team work, having fun?

One mom who commented on the Daily Mail article had it so right, saying that while she enjoys every minute with her kids, she applauds Kirwin Taylor for her honesty about seeing it differently. That ought to be the goal really -- letting moms pick different paths to making motherhood enjoyable and meaningful, whether that's a mix of child care and work, a mix of Candyland by day and manicures by night. Forcing moms to put up and shut up means that more of us will be drinking heavily and passing out, rather than playing Candyland. Or more of us will be depressed and zoning out, rather than engaging our kids in pithy educational chats.

I've found moms with whom I can confide my tales of woe, and who support my patchwork attempt at getting through days with young children. So good-oh to Kirwin Taylor for saying the forbidden thing, for giving bored moms a primal published scream. Now we can sit back and listen to the salvos fired back and forth, and laugh at the silly outlandish claims moms will make against one another. Meanwhile at home, we'll be engaged in the private everyday battles we call the balancing act.





http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=397672&in_page_id=1879&ico=Homepage&icl=TabModule&icc=FEMAIL&ct=5

I've had it all wrong. In the months I've been writing -- or more accurately, not regularly writing -- my blog, I've skipped many days of entries because I didn't have anything of consequence to say. Sure there were daily insights I might have captured had I had a dictophone in the minivan on my way the boys'swim lessons or in the grocery aisle at Vons. But often I kaboshed ideas before they ever materialized on the blog because they just didn't merit the effort.

The whole point of blogging, however, is of course to say a lot of little things, most of very little consequence. That's not to say I don't like the medium, or the idea of giving voices to everyone, despite the weight of their message or their adeptness at delivering it. But I've decided to loosen up a bit and blog like the real bloggers do, with less forethought and more verbage.

I think it is the preacher's daughter in me that wanted to treat blogging like little sermon vignettes. Instead, I need to draw my inspiration from being part of the Seinfeld generation, a groupie of sitcoms that are based on, well, nothing, or close to nothing. Because minutiae when well told, can be pretty darn hilarious.

So here it is. Let's march out into the forest of my life, pick a random tree, stick a tap in it and see what goo comes out that might eventually be boiled down to something sticky.

First of all, Soil Love is the new love of my life. I have been going through life buying a lot of t-shirts at Marshalls that were pristine all of four minutes before they got stains on them. I disguised the stains under belts or scarves or some days just wore them and felt self conscious. No more. Because I finally bought Stain Love in the green bottle at the 99 cent store and just rescued three shirts that had succumbed to salad dressing or lip gloss or chocolate.

What else has rocked my small world? Legumes. I've lost 10 pounds, with Weight Watchers and exercise, and more to come. But the key to my feeling full everyday has been vegetarian chili, chock full of fiber and protein because it has pinto beans in it and some kind of soy flour they form into little nuggets that look like hamburger. Who knew the kids would like navy beans? They had previously turned up their noses at black beans, which I thought were the perfect entry item into the world of legumes, and the fat free refried beans had been refused out of hand. My guys are begging for edamame, for pork and beans, for white beans, it's uncannily healthy stuff to pour out of a can and into a saucepan.

Last but not least, buy your middleaged husband or the one who prematurely thinks of himself as middleaged, a really nice guitar. Because every father of two, who works a nine to five job and tries to be a good husband and an attentive father and a good citizen, needs an escape fantasy. Duke's escape fantasy is, around these parts, known as the Japan Plan. He's read about aging and washed up rockers from the States who continue to have lucrative careers and faithful followings in Japan. So he and his Stratocaster have decided to skip the preliminaries -- the success in the States -- and go straight to Japan for the spoils afforded bush league rock and rollers. Japan is, evidently, the Branson of his dreams, and meanwhile, the kids and I have a happier, calmer man around the house, who sits on the porch strumming his electric guitar. Escape fantasies, legumes and Soil Love: now that's a blog!

Like most moms, I didn’t expect the arrival of children to cause the utter upheaval of life as I knew it. I expected to throw my adaptable offspring into a backpack or stroller and go on with the full and exciting life I’d previously pursued. Instead, my beloved but colicky newborn Patrick held court from his crib. Though just a few weeks old, he dictated when I’d sleep or be permitted a phone call. He demanded my full attention and mocked any attempt I made to have a coherent conversation, career or moment of composure.
Like most of the 100 plebe mothers I interviewed for my book WHAT NO ONE TELLS THE MOM (Perigee, 2005), I fought little Patrick’s hold on me. As much as I adored him, as kissable as his checks proved to be, I kept trying to shore up a life of my own. I took on work assignments during my maternity leave. I planned ambitious weekend trips for our exhausted little family. Throughout his first year of life, I continued to entertain friends with lavish dinners despite the stress we’d endure to prepare them.
Eventually though, a kind friend and mentor in motherhood told me it was okay to say “uncle.” At the time, it was unthinkable for me to throttle back. I’d just published my first book, my young marriage thrived on travel and adventure, and cooking and entertaining felt central to my personality. Even now, eight years into my motherhood odyssey with Patrick now a third grader, I feel the sting of having had to “let go.”
Nevertheless, saying “uncle” was the single most important key to my happiness and to my family’s wellbeing. I discovered that apart from getting published or being able to say I traveled somewhere exotic in my Christmas card, I became defined by the value of hard work and the sense of adventure I pass on to my kids. Though my marriage once enjoyed great restaurants and spontaneous jaunts, it now thrives on TIVO and going places for which we have coupons.
At first, admitting you can’t keep up, and agreeing to a simpler life feels threatening. But like the rose gardener who each winter cuts a plant drastically to enable it to bloom in the spring, you must trust that this is a process and that it assures your long-term sanity and health.
“Uncle,” too, is a light-hearted admission of defeat. Having walked away from one thumb wrestling match, you allow yourself to think more freely about how you will approach your next test of your endurance. As in progressive companies, nimble families test-pilot solutions and stay flexible. After all, the child care that worked beautifully for one sibling may be intolerable for the other. The Bunko and girltalk night that once made you feel human may now drain precious energy. The Saturday night sex may need to give way to Sunday morning, if the Sandman inhibits romantic follow-through.

What No One Tells the Mom includes loads of ideas about enjoying motherhood more, and feeling less deprived by the sacrifices you make for your kids. Mostly though, pruning starts with small steps. Let your Travel & Leisure subscription expire. Go to work with undone nails. Let the little darling take an occasional Lunchable to school, or watch a six-hour span of TV one Saturday while you sleep. Bark at the relatives who insist you host Easter dinner. In other words, find ways you can cut back on being sensational so that you have a little humor, patience and kindness left for those you truly cherish.

I penned these sentiments for my guys yesterday and read them aloud to my Valentines at the dinner table:

Liam:
Wonder boy, capable of hanging from the tree house ladder upside down for hours on end.
Wonder boy, afraid of nothing, racing the wind on your razor scooter, racing the waves on your boogie board.

You wind your arms around my neck at snuggle time and I never want to leave.
When you laugh, it brightens our whole house.
Fury of Paul Bunyan, your might could tear the house down.

Soft touch, you can heal me with your hand in mine.
You are the breakdancer, certain to break hearts.

You are the brother I wish I had had, the kindest and most thoughtful sibling a kid could have.

You slide into bases, sending dust tornadoes across the field.

I love you in most fiercely, because perhaps you need me most.

My sweet, Liam Valentine.

Love,
Mommy


Patrick:

Miracle son, beating all the odds to hang tight in my tummy.

You pee at coreman, you walk in your sleep.

You snarl at us, and we have to hide our laughter because your face looks so funny in a scowl.

You start in the middle of stories to jumpstart the fun, and slay us with accents both Scottish and Jamaican, sometimes all at once.

You want to be everyone’s friend, and your hurt sears us all, when you are rejected.

You love the ice and the ocean beneath you, no matter how it sends you flying.

You draw knights on scraps of paper, while carrying a nobleman in your heart.

You fight with your blankets, and with the world’s misdeeds.

You are my spitting image, and the Valentine that made me a mommy.

Love,
Mommy


Duke,
Dog’s name, Nerd’s name,
Man on a dock always looking to the horizon for the adventure to come.

You think you are square,
Yet you keep our lives shaking all the time,
With your desire,
With your zeal for living,
With your impatience with imperfection,
With your need for us to be a better family,
A better set of lovers.

You used to surf, and scuba dive.
Your back is scarred.
But in the meantime,
your heart and soul have traveled so deep and so far,
Carrying us through a tunnel that seemed impossible.

You teach the boys to love the earth,
To swear,
To adore their mom,
To read and wonder,
To relax and play.

You teach me to hold fast,
To wait for the wave,
To sleep on it,
To let the morning bring healing I can’t force.

You are so, so wrong,
So much of the time.
And yet you always think you are right.

What a steel trap Jeopardy mind.
What a gorgeous, 40 some year old body.
You are the weight bearing wall of this old house,
The one who takes all the punches.

Let it be Valentines day for you,
Kinder and far more slothful,
Less apt to quip and nag.
Let it be Valentines for you more of the year,
In my wretched attempts
To love you better.
Love,
Marg

Yesterday I saw my acupuncturist, and it happened also to be the first day of my menstrual period this month. According to Chinese medicine, and not those ridiculously active feminine product commercials, women are supposed to take it easy the first two days of periods. Then again, Chinese medicine wants us to slow down and rest for just about every circumstance under the sun. It makes me wonder how the practitioners of the world's oldest form of medicine ever got anything done.

I've been chasing a state of health for the last year. Last winter I must have broken records for the number of times an individual can take antibiotics. I've actually made an incredible investment in my own wellbeing, between personal trainers and gym memberships, Weight Watchers and naps, massages and herbs. Truth is, I am healthier, and considerably less stressed out. But perversely, I torture myself, wondering how much better book sales might be, had I devoted all that zen time to publicity?

Last night the boys wrestled the entire way up the sidewalk at the house we're "elfing" this year. The whole point of our "Twelve Days of Christmas" is to get them focused on the true meaning of the holiday. Nothing like using the stage whisper to scold them, as they're knocking each other over for the part of gift-giver.

I'm in the business of making memories. I want the house to smell like evergreen and cookies. When they are 40 and therapists are telling them to slow down, I want the boys to have snapshot memories of little white churches dusted in glitter, of the old Stark bible open to the Christmas story, and of the bells we carry when we move from house to house on our church's caroling trip.

There are indeed signs that all of it is seeping in. Patrick pulled each ornament from tissue this year with an eerily familiar sense of wonder, that which I taught him, oohing and ahing and explaining the story behind each one. Duke and I were moved to comment that the whole crazy mess of putting up the tree was not nearly so stressful this year. Near-electrocution only threatened twice. Neither of us yelled more than twice.

So this is Christmas, when occasionally we do slow down. My chest hasn't been taken over by phlegm. My boys aren't exhibiting untold greed. And though there are shoving matches down the shepherd's path, and the angels have to tell us more than once to slow down and experience the awe, we're beginning to see the light.

I love the bit in Ellen Degeneres' stand-up routine when she makes fun of our diagnosis-spastic society. It used to be, she says, that we just had "crazy people." No one was "attention deficit" or "Aspergers" or "bipolar," there were just crazy people.

I know I've been crazy for the last year and a half that we have been trying to "diagnose" my youngest son. Liam is by all accounts, a handsome, energetic, smart, highly verbal, very social, driven, athletic boy. This would seem to qualify him with some degree of normality, maybe even extraordinariness.

But Liam is also defiant, moody, scared of small spaces and of being alone, annoyed by having to transition between activities, intolerant of his brother and prone to kicking and hitting when he's mad. He's also a pack rat, collecting the most random of trash, gadgets and cardboard boxes. Again, if it were my childhood, these traits in a five year old wouldn't raise any eyebrows.

But in today's world, Liam is deemed "unusually headstrong" -- wonder where he gets that?! When we mentioned his behaviors to a pediatrician, we were told he ought not to be kicking and hitting his brother or throwing temper tantrums that often at his age. (Though I remember physical fights with my sister into our teens...)Thus began our journey into the world of diagnoses...

Only now that Liam has successfully transitioned into Kindergarten, and demonstrates only hints of dyslexia but not much else that can be overexamined, categorized or measured, can I write about this without dissolving. I spent most of the summer on the internet chasing one symptom after another -- he's afraid of the loud flushing of public toilets and doesn't want to poop anywhere but at home; he doesn't seem to realize that his actions impact others, etc. Even the last several days, when he's been tired and irritable, I have worried "This is rapid cycling bipolar behavior typical of bipolar kids his age" rather than wondering if he was coming down with something, as I might have before all this began.

I have friends who have already received diagnoses, already gone through batteries of tests on their three and four year olds and tried to settle into a label of Autism spectrum, speech delays, sensory integration disorder. At one point, a therapist we consulted suggested a big discrepancy between Liam's verbal and nonverbal skills, which pointed to the very scary nonverbal learning disability label, for which he might have required a full-time in school tutor, and god knows what else. Even though I could, right off the bat, say that five out of six major symptoms did not fit him, the threat of that diagnosis looms over us everyday.

All in all, there's a boy in my house who is deeply loved and deeply complex. He is learning to negotiate with us rather than melt down. He is having trouble with letters and numbers, which could very well point to the dyslexia that runs in Duke's family. But otherwise he is the boy that notices when other kindergarteners fall on the playground and shows them where the nurses' office is. He is the boy who remembers everyday to put a dinosaur book or notebook in his backpack so he'll have a special project to do on the bus home. He is the boy who hugs me when he hears me sigh in frustration, and who thinks of his brother often before he thinks of himself.

I guess there is a diagnosis for him: Beloved.

I'm not exactly sure when it happened. But I have turned into a robot bitch. You can tell because my pupils are now fixed, always on the eyebrow hair that creeps across the bridge of my husband's nose or on the ketchup and chocolate smears on my kids' faces. Perpetual, repetitive movement is my specialty, as I pick the throw from the sofa off the floor, fold and put it back on the sofa at least four times everyday.

I am the embodiment of a to-do list, ticking off task by task, from dishwasher to washing machine, from the boys' homework folders to my ever present email. Only because I'm Robot Bitch, a new item is added to the to-do list every time an item is crossed off.

Even when I am relaxing, I'm multitasking. I scarcely know how to watch TV without trying to read a magazine at the same time. Usually I prop myself up with pillows on my bed and scan Tivo recordings while collating and stapling the school's Foundation newsletter, handwriting notes to prospective book buyers who stopped by my booth at Babies R Us, or filing the latest plans for our remodel in my three ring binder. It's no wonder that when it comes time to turn off the lights and make love to my husband, I can't locate the mood.

Duke said last week that he feels like a draft horse most of the time. Robot Bitch showed considerable restraint in that discussion and did not blurt out, "You think it's bad being a draft horse, try being a robot!" It's called empathy fatigue, this tendency we have to one-up each other, even fighting over which one of us has the least spontaneous life.

I have absolutely no idea how to "be in the moment." Even at a friend's side during a crisis or a long-awaited reunion, I am jittery, knowing there is somewhere else I ought to be, something else I am neglecting. Yesterday at the park, when I might have been taking in the fresh air or congratulating myself for getting the kids away from the television, I was haranguing myself for not having practiced stranger danger tactics with the boys recently.

Our upcoming Kauai vacation ought to be a break for Robot Bitch. Except you have to get reservations at the exclusive romantic restaurant two weeks out, and I have to ask the babysitting service if they are licensed and bonded, and there's a two hour time difference to make the calls. And the groceries there are so expensive that I really ought to send a box of snacks UPS this week, not to mention a box of toys. On vacation, Robot Bitch has a big job: keeping Dad from yelling at the kids and ruining the vacation, and the kids from pulling each other's limbs free of their sockets.

Perhaps I have not fully covered the Bitch aspects of Robot Bitch. She is a glass half-empty kind of gal, disgusted at herself for not getting the laundry done though her draft horse was on reserve duty this weekend and she got five loads done. Loading the heavy electric scooter into the hatch, she snaps at her son for bumping her glasses to the ground, when he was trying to help her.

As critical as efficiency is in Robot Bitch's life, she is not mentally enriched enough to think creatively. So mostly things fall into rote patterns, the circles of a draft horse. Last night though, the Robot Bitch tried Strategy 357B from the "Revive Your Libido" handbook, and suggested that she and Draft Horse play backgammon together instead of watching TV. She made her older son pour her two glasses of Prosecco, the bubbly she drank at lunch on holiday last year in Switzerland.

So maybe there is hope for some new circuitry. Robot Bitch will put it on her list.

The Fantastic Four lunchbag is packed. We've read "Franklin Goes to School" a trillion times, and each time followed Franklin's nervous stomach to its eventual calm. We've met the teacher and had all the kindergarteners from the neighborhood over for a picnic so that Liam learned all their names and found a pal for the bus ride home. We've even strung beads on a piece of yarn that Liam can wear around his wrist, a reminder of mommy's love on his pulse point all day.

Even so, I don't know how my little bird is going to react. Most of the summer, I have not written here, because the blog light was too glaring, too unforgiving for me to write about my fledgling bird. He pecks at us incessantly, so it helps to think of him this way--as a frightened creature in our cupped hands, overwhelmed by bloated looking fingers and an expansive, predatory sky. We are trying really hard to understand what he needs, but like the very different species he wants to prove that he is, the source of his distrust and anxiety feel impenetrable to our soothing.

I remember feeling this way with Patrick, as if I wanted to leap across the table in the classroom and tell the kindergarten teacher, Ms. Sward, everything about this precious, complicated five year old. It was torture holding back, turning him over and giving her space to figure him out herself. That she did so so masterfully, and with such a sense of humor, was such a blessing.

Now I'm leaving my tiniest, seemingly sicklier bird with Ms. Sward. It's a relief on one hand, because she knows much more than I do about how to make a kid like him fly. On the other hand, the anticipation is even more unbearable. I think of my nephew, this wide-eyed boy in Keds starting kindergarten in a Spanish immersion class and the image of him--so flooded with change, so ready for new lessons apart from mom--makes my stomach flip-flop the same way Franklin's must have. Liam, too, speaks a different language than the world does, and is about to face a public that wants him in sync.

Same as the blog, the kindergarten spotlight exposes way too much about this fragile, immense love, this beaded yarn that ties this kid to me to an extent I could never have imagined. I want him to fly, even if it's a floppy, convulsive dance only Liam could make take wing. I'm going to serve him pancakes in the morning, the same way Franklin's mom does except without lady bugs in the syrup. I will carry his stomachache with me all day, maybe even all year.

Patrick loves to tell the story of saving a baby bird in our yard, after landscapers cut back a bush and unknowingly displaced a nest.  He became the rescuer, the superhero whose cape he wore at that age.  He felt so good taking the nest in a shoe box to the rescue center, leaving the life that would have been lost without him, in the hands of able caretakers.  I'll conjure Patrick's courage tomorrow, saying a tender but resolute bye bye.  My hands uncupped, I'll shield my eyes from the light, and just as faith-filled and expectant as my oldest boy did, scan the skies for our progeny. 

 

   

Here's a little diddy I wrote for a local neighborhood paper, which I think is fun and widely applicable.

Park Safety for Parents: Perils Lurk But Not the Ones You Expect
By Marg Stark


Normal Heights/Kensington—Is there a weekend day in memory when there weren’t at least two inflatable “jumpies” at 39th Street Park? Didn’t word of the new play equipment at Trolley Barn Park spread like wildfire? Indeed, Mid-City families treasure their parks and playgrounds. Yet, as vigilant as we may be about teaching stranger danger and wiping our children down with antibacterial potions, few of us recognize the hazards of parks specifically for parents.
There are precautions moms and dads need to take, when gathering round sandboxes, picnic tables and playing fields. Oddly, threats to one’s safety in an urban oasis don’t always come from the expected sources. There’s an underbelly to park life that largely goes undetected—pests and life lessons that only the people responsible for raising children will encounter. If you want to play it as safe as your kids do, take heed of the following hazards and precautions:

• Parental Peer Pressure: You feel great about yourself, getting your couch potatoes away from the TV and outside the house--to the library, Little League or the Frisbee field. Then, you strike up a conversation with Laura, who’s watching five-year-old Dylan fill his sand bucket. In your banter, Laura relays that Dylan is enrolled in Baroque Music Appreciation and Chinese Cooking classes—news that brings your world crashing in. You chide yourself, saying, “How could I not have known about the all-day Pilates for Preschoolers sessions at Balboa Park?” or, “Why did I think it was enough just to give my kids love, attention and Playdough?”
Like the “Just Say No” message we teach our children, we parents need to develop thick enough skin to leave the park feeling better than we did coming in. Listen to the little voice inside that says you’re a good parent. Before heading home from the outing, get rid of garbage--Lestats cups and Starbucks bags as well as parental peer pressure and guilt—for the good of YOUR environment.

• Verbal Gymnastics: “Watch me, Daddy, watch me!” sing out our kids out as they perform high jinx on the high bars. Down below, we’re making verbal leaps and sometimes taking very hard falls. I’ve turned a deep crimson, having asked a gray-haired woman about her grandchild, only to have her say “No, that’s my daughter.” My husband, too, has twisted his tongue, complimenting a dad he presumed was giving his wife a morning to sleep in, only to have the father kindly explain that he and his gay partner are the parents.
In Mid-City parks, children play together, without regard to color, class, age or sexual orientation. Parents, too, can get a healthy work out—often stretching our minds and shedding pre-conceived notions in the process.

• You’re In A Fishbowl: Visit the Kensington/Normal Heights library park during work hours on any weekday. If you’re looking to score some high-grade nanny, the way Felicity Huffman’s character wanted to on “Desperate Housewives,” the stroller-pushing set there will hook you up. Just know that if you try to seduce a nanny away from her employer, Big Mother is watching you.
I never knew how Georgina, who watched my rough and tumble boys for four years, kept them from harm at the park. But I got frequent reports from moms and neighbors who saw Georgina and my boys there. Being a part of a tight knit Mid-City community, I always knew—by way of kind-hearted spies—that my kids were in great hands. I also found out quickly, if my babysitter was being preyed upon by prospective employers. In these fishbowls we call parks, be forewarned that both protective eavesdropping and neighborhood tattling are common.

• All Politics Are Local. My kids have sharpened their political teeth at our close-to-home recreational areas. They witnessed the petition process and helped in fund raising efforts that made possible the protective fence around the Kensington/Normal Heights library playground. They know we have to keep on lobbying the City for permanent bathrooms to replace the not-so-beloved porta-potty at our beloved 39th Street park.
So be prepared, Mom and Dad, to explain big concepts like “bureaucracy” and “grassroots organizing” to your park-loving tikes. With city politics what they are today, you might prefer to take on the birds and bees over that of introducing notions such as “injustices” and “the rights of the people.” Yet, of all the lessons you learn as parents at our city parks, you’ll learn that none are more abiding and refreshing than that of “community.” As you repel pests regularly, allow your mind to expand, and recognize that closeness breeds chitchat, treasure most this feeling of community—the feeling of being a vital part of a larger family and a more expansive home in the green, green grass right down the street.

Saturday, Duke and I went to the memorial service tribute to Admiral James Stockdale, who died a couple weeks ago. I got to know Sybil Stockdale, his wife, through the Mount Holyoke Club in San Diego because she is an alum who lives on Coronado, whom I asked to speak at one of our functions. They invited me for lunch subsequently on their porch, where I remember sitting in the sun, shading Liam's eyes as he nursed, and I hung on every word they said. It had been five years since I'd seen them, though the encounters remain among the most important of my life.

Because combining motherhood and career seemed so particularly hard at the time, when I had a three-year-old and a newborn, I looked to Sybil Stockdale to tell me how she survived far more harrowing experiences as a young mother. That was when her husband, a Navy pilot, was shot down over Hanoi and taken in captivity for seven and a half years as a prisoner of war. Because he was the highest ranking inmate, Admiral Stockdale was arguably the target of the most brutal beatings and torture at the Hanoi Hilton. And at home over the span of her boys' childhoods while her husband was away, Sybil worked with the Navy to send secret coded messages to James, lobbied Washington for more information and eventually started the first POW family's association.

At our lunch, I was aware that I was asking mice-like questions of giant sized men and women. None of my struggles--not a battle with depression, not the discrepancy between modern expectations of women and the impossible reality they present, not the passion I have for both writing and my kids, not the bullheaded marriage I chose, nor the bullheaded offspring we've engendered--can compare to the troubles she managed or the sacrifices she made, all the time nurturing four sons at home. Yes, she gave up a teaching career to help a son who needed more from her. Yes, there were two nervous breakdowns. Yes, there were masks she wore, as a Navy wife trying to tow a patriotic line while demanding more compassion and support from the Nixon administration. But as many similarities as I can draw, none overcame the gulf that stood between us: the awe-inspiring sense of honor and duty that existed among previous generations of Americans, and that existed in spades in the Stockdales.

Sybil would have none of that, of course, armed as she and her husband were with a kindness and empathy that cut through any pretense, or gulf for that matter. It was so perfectly suiting that as Admiral Stockdale's flag draped coffin was ushered onto the broad, festooned deck of an aircraft carrier, the sun-wrinkled VFW's dressed in bright Hawaiian shirts and medal-adorned khaki hats held their salutes the longest. Their crisp hands to their foreheads, these retired men in tropical garb outlasted the honor guard, the earnest salutes of Midshipman and those of hundreds of gold-roped and star-adorned officers, even the Medal of Honor winners with their tidy blue ribbons of stature. Honor comes from the heart, the Stockdales would likely have observed, not from the packaging.

Of all the things Sybil talked about that afternoon, I liked most the motto she embraced the first Christmas when James was imprisoned, when the holidays held none of the intrinsic motivation they always had had for her. "I realized I was running a business, and that it was a business of making memories for my boys," she said. As simple as this business of making memories sounds, this little principle has buoyed me in times that felt desperate to me. When I focus on turning the vignettes of everyday life into teaching moments, when I'm tempted to be distracted from the precious time I have with my small albeit challenging children, I find that making memories is a very noble profession.

The secretary of the Navy and other fleet commanders who eulogized Admiral Stockdale spoke of the history he made. But the four Stockdale sons came prepared with eulogies full of memories--camping trips and sporting events, the examples of abiding love they saw in their parents' marriage, the talks and lessons learned over Sunday dinners and beach jetty walks.

Yet, when I left the service on the ship's elevator--one capable of lifting two airplances to and from a hangar--I felt dwarfed again by the Stockdales' sense of honor, by their extraordinariness in an ordinary world. I was disappointed in myself for allowing so many petty matters to keep me from being a bigger contributor in the world.

A few days later, I realize that few in my generation of Americans face anything akin to the struggles previous generations knew. We have little experience with sacrifice. Making history, much less maintaining some purity of soul, in a world bound up in greed and privilege, which worships technological feats and gluts of informaton, is abundantly more complicated.

A dear friend surprised me a couple weeks ago, by saying, "As skilled a writer as you are, your greatest talent by far is that of mothering." It was a surprise, feeling as inept as I do in this newer job of parenthood, thinking of myself as someone defined as much by motherhood as by writing, the overarching passion of my life. Certainly, Sybil Stockdale would say, amid sacrifice--of any size, our character is formed.

So it was that I began honoring myself as the inheritor of a great legacy, that of women who set aside other matters, to mother. It doesn't draw salutes--this business of setting off brain cell firing patterns in your children's brains, forging images, associations, and values that they will draw upon, mind and soul, for the entirety of their lives. In the circle of today's family, perhaps it's extraordinary enough to teach justice and honor, hoping memories will fuel heroes--for generations to come.

Here's the rant, er, editorial I wrote and submitted to newspapers today:

BARBARA WALTERS’ HIT ON NURSING
IS JUST ONE MORE MOMMY DRIVE-BY
Breastfeeding mothers staged a “Nurse-In” yesterday in New York City to protest offhand comments Barbara Walters made recently about feeling uncomfortable sitting next to a woman breastfeeding her infant on an airplane. For those of you keeping score at home, this is the latest pot-shot in a barrage on mothers we’ve come to call “mommy drive-by’s.”
Coined by bloggers on the World Wide Web, the term “mommy drive by” describes the unsolicited comments, judgments and parenting advice with which parents are often deluged—at the grocery store or the workplace, at school or parenting seminars. More so, the term reveals the hostile environment in which many of us believe we parent today.
Indeed, there’s little that’s sacred about motherhood in our society, if you consider the public scrutiny and scorn with which we treat it. Take for example, Tom Cruise’s recent snipes of Brooke Shields for taking antidepressants. Mind you, he was promoting his religious Scientology leanings but what right did he have to criticize a mother who got help, after experiencing suicidal tendencies during the postpartum depression that followed a difficult first birth and a long history of infertility?
Of course, mothers bash other mothers, too. In Perfect Madness, a book seemingly meant to liberate women from the competitive sport of motherhood, author Judith Warner dissed moms who believe in the philosophy of attachment parenting. On her blog nielsenhayden.com/makinglight Teresa Neilsen Hayden reported that even on a thread of internet chat dedicated to reporting obnoxious mommy drive bys, many visitors ended up depositing “drive-bys”—among other things, criticizing moms who don’t breastfeed and moms who breastfeed too long.
This topic that lies beyond Barbara Walters’ and much of the nation’s cultural comfort zone, illustrates the no-win situation parents face today. The American Pediatric Association recommends that mothers breastfeed for at least a year--to promote the health of both Mom and Baby. Yet few public places—not workplaces, restaurants, stores or arenas--are designed with nursing mothers in mind. Airplanes are terribly inhospitable to parents, where in the absence of a changing station, moms and dads have to use the floor to wrestle dirty diapers off their infants. Meanwhile mothers try to keep babies from disturbing other passengers--by breastfeeding in the tightest possible quarters.
Different than previous generations in which women advocated for one another and took injustices to the streets, moms today internalize these conflicts, stewing with shame that we can’t be everything to everyone. We consider ourselves bad mothers for not being able to satisfy wildly contradictory expectations.
After all, the health of our economy depends on large numbers of women being in the workforce today, even though public morays make us feel guilty for working outside the home. As parents, too, we’re tasked with preventing childhood obesity in neighborhoods so rife with predators that we’re told we can’t let a child loose on a bicycle.
Each and every mommy drive-by reminds parents in this country that we’re expected to raise accomplished future leaders without ever impinging on others. This is a ridiculous expectation—pulling parents in opposite directions like Dr. Doolittle’s two headed llama.
This is the real truth, Barbara Walters. It’s time we relieved modern parents of their discomfort—that of being met with a lack of understanding, or worse yet contempt, at every turn. It’s time we understood that as a nation, we all share responsibility for the youngest of our species—and not by way of sniping.

Marg Stark is a San Diego journalist, mother of two boys, and the author of WHAT NO ONE TELLS THE MOM (Perigee, 2005).

Over the last several months, I've encountered two good friends who have been assaulted by mental illness. One is depressed, the other so anxious she is compulsive about things that don't matter.

In these two friends, I so clearly see myself, or the self that could easily have slipped away if I had not gotten help when depression began to rob me of my spirit. Though they cannot see it, I feel as if I stand on the same shore as they do, watching the currents, and knowing now that life is so very much composed of things beyond our control. As chilling as I find their desperation, I nevertheless am ready to wade in and try to pull them out of the muck, to make them believe that a greater peace is still within their grasp.

With the new book, I've been traveling, talking to women about telling the truth--about how it can be miserable sometimes to be a mother, and how we can help each other and make it better. Meanwhile the impact of suppressing, denying, and circumventing reality has been played out on the faces of two of my favorite women. Indeed, like me and most of the women I knew when we were younger, these two friends delighted in the ideal of perfection--which have proved elusive over time, for all of us.

Saving face, that's what we call it when women make things pretty, when women sweep their own needs aside for the good of the family, when women pretend everything is all right when that is far from so. I actually admire the brain for shutting down, for refusing any more input of lies, for choosing a tangent of compulsiveness or a long, long nap in a dark room over another round of make believe. How amazing that our Creator built into us a shunt, an off-ramp so that we might never be overtaken by our impulse for deception.

I'm shaken, too, by the bravery of strangers who reveal to me at book signings that a son is bi-polar or that life with a childhood sweetheart is terribly hollow. Their honesty is so much more piercing than mine; they feel no need to laugh or decorate their truth with anecdotes or poetic phrases.

I think a lot about my mom, how she always disarmed a room of strangers and admirers with her self-effacing humor, how she apologized in many ways for her happiness and good luck by calling attention to her soggy lasagna or a car that was always in the shop. She taught me that truth is an equalizer, that truth can bring hands together to hold, and that truth, like a good hostess, is inviting and comforting. I see that she passed this mission onto me--out of the pain and madness that circled her bloodline, and threatened to take her down, if she had not armed herself with a quick laugh and a keen sense of justice.

I don't know why so many women feel compelled to cover up. I worry that ultimately it means that women have given up on forming our own images and are trying to squeeze ourselves into the paper doll shapes and sizes, internalizing all sorts of acidic blame and shame because we don't fit. Of course, I'm bolstered every time I read an outrageous blog, a truth so big and raw it knocks me off my chair. I hope that this truth torture is yesterday's problem, that my generation is the last to feel its ridiculous pulls.

Then I go to do a reading on the Upper East Side and am discouraged from using the term "postpartum depression" when talking to new mothers--new mothers of privilege, new mothers who better than anyone know the sting of needing to portray perfection. And I'm reminded how critical it is to keep a self-effacing laugh and a keen sense of justice ever ready. Because there are women to save. And truths that have to be told.

This is not the first time I've had this revelation, but it's the first time I'm ready to admit it: When Duke is away on business, I'm a better mom. And probably a better person. Often times, even a happier person.

I've thought for awhile that this admission probably meant something terribly sad about my marriage. But I'm gonna' risk it tonight, because the steps down this slippery slope are even more revealing.

When Duke goes out of town on business, I get enormous amounts of things done. Closets get cleaned. Piles of papers get sorted. The items that have been on my to-do lists for the past three months finally are crossed off. I have control over my schedule and I work the entire time.... that is, until I collapse into bed, take over both sides with my magazines and books, and stay up way too late watching reruns of "Sex and the City" and home decorating shows and "Real World" and whatever other mindless TV is on.

This feeling of being in control again, of being able to set something right in my singular view of our household, is such a rush. It's even more delicious to treat the boys exactly the way I would if I were the only parent. I'm mostly even-tempered and easygoing and I love the way the kids respond to this, rather than to the yin and yang personalities of their parents.

We inevitably go out to dinner or to the beach or on some other fun trip on weekday evenings which we rarely do when Duke is around. My husband has less energy than I do, or he pushes himself less--one of the two, I'm never sure. Yes, I am nearly Quasimodo ugly by the time I get the kids to bed. Nevertheless, there's this devilish pleasure reaped from breaking our routine, from Mommy getting to show off her fun self.

I am such a better person when Duke's out-of-town that I hope Jesus picks his return-to-earth date really judiciously. I think it is the high school debate team part of my personality but if Duke's chipper, intolerably chipper like he is the mornings, I am compelled to be grumpy, or at the very least noncompliant. And when Duke is grumpy, I swoop in with unparalleled happiness. It's as if I pick my mood as a contrast to whatever he's wearing.

But when he's away, I just emote. And the utter freedom of being able to strike any pose I want to, without someone mirroring or opposing me, inevitably makes me happy.

The other truth is, I have no one to blame when Duke isn't here. I can't scowl and think to myself, "Who didn't take the full trash bag out last night?" because I'm busted: I'm the negligent one who didn't empty it. I just do what I have to do for the kids without complaint, and I truly enjoy it more, because I'm not keeping a score card about how little he does and how much I do. I can stay up till midnight doing laundry and get so much satisfaction at completing something--which I would never have done with Duke at home, refusing as I would to take on so much more than he does around the house.

It's true: while I'm a better mommy, a happier and more in control person when Duke's away, I am utterly exhausted, always skating on the edge of a little perfect mommy breakdown. And I don't excel at my work because I expend all my energy on the kids. So that tonight I had such monkey mind that I called Duke at three in the morning his time to, well, name every single burden on my heart and mind, that I was Cool Mom today who took my youngest out of child care for a playdate, and that my eldest was spied on and harassed while in grade school bathroom stall, and that we have such and such money in our bank account, and that I totally forgot to file an application for my son to go to kindergarten, all that.

I really have no idea what any of this means about my marriage. I'm a bit frightened about what it says about me as a mate, that I am deep down such a rebel that I'm not much of a matrimonial team player.

I also have no clue as to what it says about Duke and my parenting except that we come from polar opposite backgrounds, which is not a news flash to anybody. I do know that the boys miss their daddy like crazy. I do know that Duke beckons me to relax when he's home, which doesn't always work, but it's likely a healthy rein on my passions, er, obsessiveness. And there probably, although I am not certain, is a limit to how many times one should see the same episode of Sex and the City.

Ultimately I think it also reflects this inch of my family's time-line. That life is mostly so out-of-control that a dictatorial passage does feel like a holiday. That the demands on me are so enormous that a little bucking and stamping the dust is okay.

And that my marriage is healthy enough to stand up to the questioning, even if the tea leaves look all wrong. Perhaps there's a suggestion here of ways to be less belligerent, less the devil's advocate to my husband's home-again moods. I'm sure there's brilliant compromises written between these lines. But I'm entirely too tired to consider them right now, and it's only four and a half hours till I'm supposed to get up--and be chipper--in the morning.

Tickets for The Wiggles road show sold out in the first hour here in San Diego. Ticket brokers are now hawking them at over $100 per ticket. (BTW, that's the same price I just paid on ebay for Red Sox tickets in Fenway Park four rows behind the dug-out on Memorial Day.) As my friend Edit says, "Further signs that we're living in a parallel universe."

I'm used to living in a parallel universe. Every churchgoer knows there's a stark dichotomy between things "of this world" and things on a spiritual plane. But in parenthood, a realm in which you'd think a spiritual alternative lifestyle would be rigorously pursued, I often feel like the lone occupant of a primitive planet. Why?

--Because I would never, ever consider homeschooling.
--Because I believe one extracurricular per kid at a time is plenty.
--Because I think the tunnel parents form after soccer games through which the kids
run through is ridiculous. (What happened to the fun of the game being enough?)
--Because the idea of serving jicama slices to a scout troop as a snack strikes
me as hilarious.
--Because I trust my children to the care of a teenage babysitter.
--Because I don't interview the parents of prospective playdates nor insist on
accompanying my child on the playdate.
--Because I don't play with my kids very much. They play by themselves most of the
time.
--Because I think spending more than $25 on a boy's outfit, except for special
occasions, is wasteful.
--Because I mostly think I worry too much about my kids, not too little.
--Because I refused a ADHD diagnosis for both my boys at early ages, and the
medication thrust at me.
--Because I bought the expensive wooden castle for my sons, which they hardly
ever play with, as opposed to the cardboard boxes they hoard and make houses out
of.
--Because I believe in living in a diverse, middle class neighborhood instead of
the highest eschalon neighborhood. And I believe in sending my child to public
school.
--Because I believe in taking a nap every weekend, even if my kids are awake and
bored for the two hour stretch of it.
--Because I talk to my kids about world events and politics, nurturing a sense of
justice in my children from the earliest age. I answer questions about Terry
Schiavo and gay marriage that other parents don't believe in talking with a seven
year old about.

And of course because I would never, ever play $100 a piece for Wiggles tickets.

Indeed, this is my weather report from the parallel universe: It's awfully damp, cold and foggy here. Indeed, we feel lucky amid this muck to be able to glimpse our hands in front of our faces.