In our house, we try to fight against Christmas becoming all about gifts. Our children get presents, but since we buy sparingly I spend a lot of time considering what to purchase, because I want it to be meaningful. We have four girls, so while considering toys this year I couldn’t avoid the GoldieBlox phenomenon.
For those who missed it, GoldieBlox is a toy company whose stated mission is “to get girls building.” Concerned that men vastly outnumber women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) jobs, GoldieBlox designs storybook and construction sets for girls. Their “Princess Machine” commercial, in which three girls design a Rube Goldberg machine throughout their house, went viral this fall — and, no doubt, sold lots of GoldieBlox sets.
My own finger hovered over the “Add to Cart” button on the GoldieBlox website. Then I stopped, because something I couldn’t quite name was bothering me.
Life with four young children being what it is, I don’t spend much time looking ahead at the calendar. Most days I can tell you the number of minutes until bedtime, but I’d be hard pressed if you asked me the specifics of next week’s schedule – let alone what’s happening next month. This past November was a particularly busy month for our family, so all of my energy was focused on just getting through Thanksgiving.
Right after Thanksgiving, I ran into a friend at a Middlebury College family dinner. She asked about our holiday, and I said, “It was wonderful, and I’m feeling much more relaxed now that we’ve survived November.”
“That’s great!” she said, “November must’ve been pretty crazy if you’re feeling relaxed with only three weeks until Christmas.”
That’s how I learned that, this year, there were only three weeks – THREE WEEKS!! — between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Heading out…. (Yes, this is how our girls sometimes go outside to play).
Dear Friends,
I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving — and I hope that you’re continuing to feel gratitude as you wash out the final Thanksgiving Tupperware and head on to the next holiday. We Gongs had a lovely harvest feast, complete with a set of grandparents and a dusting of snow — doesn’t get much better than that! We also managed to keep Gracie apart from the turkey, to take a family photo in which just about everybody has their eyes open and is looking in the same direction, and to take the girls cross-country skiing the morning after Thanksgiving — all feats requiring a mix of luck and Olympic fortitude.
Where we live, there are many cornfields. Having lived here three years now, I’ve observed how cornfields are plowed and planted for a few years, and then allowed to rest for a season. Come summer, I’ll notice that a certain field is no longer an orderly series of cornstalks, but instead is dressed in its natural grasses. This allows the soil to breathe and replenish before the field is planted again. Lesson here: Creation takes effort, and everything needs a rest.
So now I am going away (virtually speaking) for a little bit. As you can imagine, the holiday season at our house is a little crazy (as it probably is at your houses, too!), and this year it feels particularly busy. Whether that’s due to having more — and older — girls, a baby who’s still not quite sleeping through the night, or the near-constant stream of (very welcome) houseguests we’ve had since Halloween, I’m not sure. Probably all of the above.
Bottom line: I’m tired. And I haven’t had as much time to think or to write as I generally need for optimal mental health. At the same time, I’ve been trying to keep up with the pace I’d set for this blog, where I’ve been churning out at least one new post a week for two years (minus a few weeks of re-posts when Abigail was born). For two years, I’ve loved every second of writing The Pickle Patch, but it’s starting to feel like…work. A grind. Unsustainable.
So, since I’m my own boss here, I’ve decided to take some time off — send myself on a “Pickle-cation,” so to speak. I’m not going to publish any new material for The Pickle Patch at least through New Year’s. I’m keeping the end date of my Pickle-cation open, but I expect to be back here by February. I will continue to publish new material for On the Willows and The Addison Independent, because those are outside commitments, and I’ll post those links here in case you’re going through major withdrawal.
I plan to use my Pickle-cation writing a lot, but with the leisure of not having to publish weekly. I plan to sit back and reflect on what I’ve got to say, to think new thoughts, and to play around with new ideas that may or may not have anything to do with this blog. Above all, I plan to enjoy the holidays with my family without resenting early mornings or missed naps or late nights that might take me away from writing. My hope is that you’ll thoroughly enjoy your holidays, too, without feeling the need to read anything new from me!
In all the places our family lived before moving to Vermont, we felt that we were part of wonderful, caring communities. There are kind people everywhere, people who take care of each other. But I’ve been especially overwhelmed by the kindness we’ve experienced since coming to Vermont. This past year in particular, throughout my pregnancy and the birth of our fourth child, I never felt alone. Even before Abigail was born, we were the recipients of countless meals, childcare, and transportation for our children. Our list of “People to Take the Kids if Baby Arrives Before Grandparents” ran into the double digits.
I look around our town and I see little acts of goodness everywhere: people volunteering to serve meals to the hungry, moms watching other moms’ children so that they can go to doctor’s appointments, friends generously sharing the bounty of their fields and kitchens. It warms my heart.
In a way, it’s unfortunate that Thanksgiving is an official holiday.
Don’t get me wrong: I love the turkey feast with all the trimmings, love the excuse to gather family and friends, love telling my daughters about that first Thanksgiving at Plymouth in 1621 when the English settlers thanked the Native Americans for helping them produce a successful harvest.
But sometimes I think that the act of proclaiming an Official Holiday has the unintended consequence of trivializing the very thing we’re supposed to be celebrating. When we set aside one day in honor of something, most people — because we’re lazy and selfish and busy — tend to feel like we’re off the hook for the other 364 days of the year.
Of course there’s value in holidays, in celebrations. But have you ever thought, for instance, that Valentine’s Day is a little strange? Aren’t we supposed to show love to those we love every day? Why set aside February 14 for that specific purpose? I feel the same way about Mother’s Day. I even wonder whether the birth of Jesus would feel closer to us all year long if we didn’t confine it to December 25.
The forecast calls for rain today in our part of Vermont, which is causing some consternation among our daughters. Whether or not we get to trick-or-treat outdoors, we’ll be in costume and eating candy. The theme this year is apparently “wings;” the Gong girls will be dressed as a ladybug, a pegasus, a bumblebee, and a chicken. Here’s a little reflection I published last Halloween in The Addison Independent. Happy Halloween!
It’s Halloween again, the holiday our daughters have been anticipating for the past nine months.
Halloween is generally acknowledged to be a “fun” holiday — nothing too deep involved, a brief diversion — particularly if you have children under the age of 10. But it’s come under attack in recent decades, what with its pagan origins and rampant sugar-consumption. At the very best, it’s meaningless entertainment for children; at the worst, it’s something evil to which an alternative distraction must be found.
Last Halloween, we took our three daughters trick-or-treating, with the rest of Addison County, along Middlebury’s South Street and into Chipman Park. This was the first time our two-year-old had been trick-or-treating outside of a stroller, and in her mind it was a race to the finish. It was like somebody wound her up and let her go: The minute her feet hit the sidewalk, she barreled ahead of the rest of us, sparkly shoes and Cinderella dress blurring in the twilight. It took her a while to grasp that we had to stop at each house for the ultimate goal: candy. When we got to the first house and managed to head her off toward the door, she burst right through the open door, past the baffled teenager holding the candy bowl, into the living room, where she finally skidded to a stop and looked around with confusion. Where was that candy?
My daughter’s faux pas, her lack of understanding that Halloween etiquette requires stopping at each open door, got me thinking about a deeper meaning to Halloween, apart from the costumes and the candy and the pagan undertones. The really remarkable thing about Halloween, it seems to me, is that it’s a night when we open our doors.
It’s so rare that we open our doors to each other, even to those we know and love. Usually, when passing our neighbors’ houses, we see closed doors, few signs of life. But on Halloween, when the colder weather is beginning to drive us further behind closed doors, we open our doors not just to those we know and love, but to total strangers. Not only that, but we give them treats and receive very little in exchange. Sure, the occasional cute kid or clever costume make us smile, but having been on the candy-giving end, I know that often the best one can expect is a mumbled “Thanks.” Still, we keep the treats coming. It’s so seldom that we practice this kind of grace in life.
And for those who are on the receiving end, it’s not just about the candy. Each open door on Halloween offers a chance for connection, with neighbors we know and neighbors we don’t. Through every doorway, we see snippets of lives a lot like ours, with pictures on the walls and the smells of food in the oven and over-stimulated children running wild. Sometimes there’s a party going on inside. Sometimes it’s quiet save for the television. Two years ago, trick-or-treating in Northern California during Game 4 of the last World Series in which the San Francisco Giants were playing, each house we visited provided us with score updates. In a world of closed doors and computer screens, the open doors of Halloween allow us to reconnect with our community, our humanity.
Of course, the doors will open wider and the grace will be given even more freely during the holidays that follow Halloween. But from now on, I’m going to consider the open doors of Halloween as the official start of the holiday season.
Last month, Erick and I celebrated our 11-year anniversary. That’s the Steel Anniversary, if you’re the type who follows these things. I’m not, but Erick is; last year, he went to a great deal of trouble to track down aluminum jewelry as a gift for our 10th (Aluminum) anniversary. Yes, it turns out, there is such a thing as aluminum jewelry. The bracelet and earrings that Erick gave me are beautiful, and just about as durable as you’d expect (think aluminum foil….).
I much prefer the symbolism of steel over aluminum when it comes to marriage. Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon (and other elements), and it’s made by blasting iron with extreme heat so that its impurities burn off and carbon is distributed evenly. The result is greatly improved strength. Sounds a lot like marriage to me.
Anyway, Erick and I didn’t exchange steel gifts for our 11th anniversary, because we weren’t actually together on our anniversary: Erick was thousands of miles away in Kenya, setting up a research project. Since I was celebrating my marriage at a distance from my husband, I spent some time reflecting. I thought back to where we were in July 2002, in contrast with where we are now. And I realized that, if our marriage has a unifying theme, it’s that we’ve spent these past 11 years being downwardly mobile:scaling back our lifestyle and ambitions in a way that might look crazy to an outside observer.
Actually, it looks crazy to us, too. We didn’t plan any of this. So little of where you end up in life is intentional.
Here are the specifics:
When we first met, Erick and I held degrees from prestigious, private (expensive) Williams College, and prestigious, public (less expensive) UC Berkeley. I also had a Master’s Degree in education, and was living in Manhattan and teaching at the prestigious, private (VERY expensive) Nightingale-Bamford School. Erick was living in the upscale, exclusive suburb of Greenwich, Connecticut, where he worked at a hedge fund making more money for the already-super-rich.
Dating a hedge fund manager brings certain perks. For the two years leading up to our marriage, Erick and I led a pretty fancy life: we went to fancy parties with fancy people, ate in fancy restaurants, and got free tickets to concerts and sporting events. Our wedding was pretty fancy, too: in a church right on Park Avenue, with a reception just up the block at the Colony Club. After honeymooning in Bora Bora (yes, really), we moved into the apartment we’d bought on the Upper East Side. It was on the 28th floor, with views of the East River. Our first major purchase, after the apartment, was a king-sized four-poster bed.
Things started going downhill almost immediately. Just before our wedding, Erick’s boss decided to get out while he was ahead and close down the hedge fund. Erick stayed on for a couple of years to manage the shut-down, which gave him enough time to return to school for a Master’s Degree in economics. Inspired by a trip we took to Africa, he chose to focus on development economics — NOT the money-making kind of economics. At the same time, I quit my teaching job and went back to school to study photography — definitely NOT a money-making move.
When Erick’s job at the hedge fund finally ended for good and he received his M.A., he decided to keep going for a PhD. in economics. Thus began his five years as a professional student. We moved to Berkeley, California. We rented a tiny, dark apartment that I always thought of as our “Hobbit hole.”. The king-sized four-poster bed was the first thing to go: it wouldn’t have fit in any of the three places we rented in Berkeley. Inspired by that same trip to Africa, I worked for two nonprofit organizations that offered minimal pay and no benefits.
Then, we started having children.
That history might come as a surprise to people who know us now. NOW we live off of a single assistant professor’s salary. I stay at home with our four daughters because a) I’d have to love any job I took, since all of my income would go towards childcare at this point, and b) there aren’t many jobs I’d love available in Middlebury, Vermont. Our house is the largest we’ve ever inhabited, but that’s due to a combination of our family’s size and the low cost of Vermont real estate. We sleep in a full-sized bed with a dust ruffle that’s ripped from our daughters climbing up to snuggle. And just the other day, Erick and I had a budgeting discussion in which we concluded that it’s neither affordable nor logical just now for us to buy a slipcover for the armchair with stuffing-spilling holes in both arms.
I’m not making a value judgement on our life then or our life now; I’m just stating facts. But this trajectory that our lives have taken isn’t what you’d have predicted if you’d met us 11 years ago. What should have happened is this: Erick should’ve continued to work in investment banking, making ridiculous amounts of money. I should’ve continued to teach at fancy prep schools, or maybe gone into administration. We should’ve moved to a fancy New York suburb (with that king-sized four-poster bed) and had two children. We should’ve continued to go to Broadway shows and sit courtside at Knicks games and take exotic vacations.
I can’t take pride in being a pioneer who went against the tide, because it turns out that the downwardly mobile course my life has taken is something of a trend. There’s even a book about it: Homeward Bound by Emily Matcher which, according to a blurb in The New Yorker, “follows college-educated, middle-class American women who have rejected cities, consumerism, and corporate culture in favor of very old-fashioned house- and family-keeping.”
Actually, I can’t even claim to be one of Emily Matcher’s women, either, because the blurb goes on to say, “They grow their own vegetables, knit their own clothes, and homeschool their children. Some run their own farms.” Good Lord, I do none of those things.
Which leaves me stuck in downwardly mobile limbo. I’m sitting here with the phantom of my earlier promise hanging over my head (high school valedictorian, $100,000 liberal arts education, two graduate degrees), and I’m not even canning my own beets or doing flashcards with my kids. I bailed on the workplace in favor of home, but am I failing on the home front, as well?
Sometimes I feel guilty about these things, about my place in society’s big picture. But mostly I’m just grateful for my life right now, and happy. I think that’s the story of our marriage, and of this blog, too: There’s a sort of sweet bafflement about where life has taken us. Never did I expect to be a stay-at-home mother of four in small-town Vermont. But never did I expect that downward mobility would bring so much joy upward.
My husband and I didn’t discuss much about child-rearing before we had kids; in the early years of our marriage, kids themselves — let alone how to raise them — were far from our thoughts. But there was one topic that we did wrestle with, long before any kids entered the equation: Santa Claus.
Originally published in May 2012 — one of my all-time favorites. After reading through almost two years of Pickle Patch archives, I also think this post sums up a major theme of this blog: motherhood is a humbling, imperfect, messy, and grace-filled thing, and we should tell each other the truth about that.
I am happy to report that, during the first month of her life, I did not drop Abigail. But there’s still lots of time….
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Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, so I’m thinking about motherhood.
I remember reading (sometime, somewhere) about the different mothering trends of the past few decades. There was the ultra-competitive power mothering of the 90s and early 2000s (Get your child the right stroller! Get them into the perfect school!). This was followed by a backlash that the author termed the “bad mother” trend (embodied by Ayelet Waldman’s memoir Bad Mother — which is, by the way, an honest and funny and touching read). “Bad mothers” proudly confessed to their failures, forgetfulness, selfishness, and use of vodka shots to get through the day. I’m not sure what you’d call the current mothering trend, but between last year’s hot mothering book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, and THIS year’s hot mothering book, Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting, I’d call it “comparative multicultural mothering” (“Here’s how Asians do it!” “Oh yeah? Well here’s how the FRENCH do it!”).
I don’t really fit in to any of the above categories. I think I’m a mom who shows up every day and tries my imperfect best (with the help of God and coffee). A pretty good mom.
But I’m a pretty good mom who dropped my newborn.
I still remember vividly the first time Fiona got hurt. She was around 6 months old, and we were sitting on the floor of her room looking at books. As she was pulling out books from her bookshelf, a book from a higher shelf fell out and hit her right next to her eyebrow. It left a nasty red mark, and Fiona screamed for a few minutes, then recovered and forgot all about it.
I, however, did not forget. I cried harder than Fiona over her pain and my helplessness. How could I let such a thing happen to my child and not prevent it?!? That book COULD have landed in her eye! She’ll never forgive me for sitting there and letting her get hurt! I am clearly an unfit mother.
If you’re expecting me to tell you that things got better with time and additional children, you’re wrong.
Because when Campbell was about 4 days old, I was nursing her in bed late one night. I always read during late-night feedings in an attempt to stay awake, and I was reading that night. But despite my best efforts, worn out from the challenge of caring for a 20-month-old and a newborn, I nodded off with Campbell still in my arms. And woke up to a loud THUD and my baby wailing.
Campbell had fallen off the bed; more accurately, since I’d been holding her when I nodded off, I had dropped my newborn. I was completely beside myself. How COULD I, a second time mother, be so stupid?!? How would Campbell ever recover a sense of safety or trust after being dropped by her own mother at 4 days old?! Thankfully, our bed was only about 18 inches off of the floor, or it might have been a lot worse. We took her to the doctor the next day (where I was sure they’d call Child Protective Services on me), and she checked out fine. As far as I know, Campbell has no memory of the event and doesn’t hold it against me, although lately she has taken to saying, “Mommy, I wish I was back in your tummy.” I don’t know what that’s all about, but I’ve wondered whether she’s thinking, You know, things were a lot better back before she could get her hands on me.
And THEN, when Georgia was about 5 months old, I was trimming her fingernails one morning and nicked a little chunk of skin out of her tiny finger. She cried, and bled, and bled, and bled. She bled for the better part of an hour, through two washcloths and countless tissues. The only reason we didn’t take her to the doctor was because Erick was home, so he did his research (when there’s a family crisis, I handle the emotions and Erick handles the research) and determined Georgia was probably fine. Which she was.
Once again, I was the one who wasn’t fine. How many hundreds of fingernails had I trimmedwith our previous two children, and I slice open our third daughter?!? How could I be so careless?!? Would Georgia ever trust me to cut her fingernails again?!? Happily, Georgia continues to submit to manicures, so I assume she’s let bygones be bygones. (I can’t say the same for her older sisters, who witnessed the event and remind me of it every time I go to trim their nails).
It goes without saying that this will NEVER be a parenting-advice blog. In fact,I no longer read parenting advice books or websites. (I know there are many excellent parenting resources out there that have helped countless people, but I started to notice that reading this advice made me anxious and confused). Not that I don’t need any input or advice, but these days I get it by talking to friends — friends who are in the trenches with me, or friends who are further along the parenting path and have great kids to show for it. Sharing stories, I’ve found, is the most helpful.
So that’s why I shared these stories with you: because I hope they might be helpful to other moms, especially moms who are struggling. (Is there any other kind?) I shared these stories precisely because they were stories I thought I’d never tell. They were too embarrassing, too traumatic. Back when they happened, I never would have predicted that I’d write them up and post them on the internet, let alone be able to chuckle over them a little.
Still happy, despite the blood loss. (Photo by Zoe Reyes).
Here is my Mother’s Day thought: I don’t think that time, experience, or more children necessarily make you a better, more competent mother. They just make you an older mother. Personally, I’m just as capable of dropping my third child as my first (maybe even more so, because I’m more tired and distracted). BUT, I DO think that time and experience can give mothers the gifts of perspective and humor. Things that seem so crucial — even shameful — at the time, later turn out to be things we tell virtual strangers with a chuckle. I’m only four years into this game, but if this is how I now see some of my darkest mommy moments, I’m guessing that in another four years we’ll all be chuckling about naps and potty training and kindergarten — the things that seem so important right now.
Bottom line: I think that it’s possible to be a pretty good mother and still drop your baby (metaphorically or actually). We are human, and imperfect, and all the love that we have within us will never be enough to make our children feel completely whole. All we can do is show up every day and try our imperfect best. Love — and laughter — and especially grace — really do cover a multitude of sins. And usually our children bounce back from our mistakes more quickly than we do.
So, Happy Mother’s Day. I wish my fellow mamas the gifts of perspective and humor. Remember that you’re still a pretty good mother, even if you drop the baby once in a while. And when it comes to motherhood, pretty good is good enough. Maybe it’s even great.
Check out my beautiful Mom (she’s the one on the right, of course). She’s one of the greats, and I’m pretty sure she never dropped me. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! I love you!
ADDENDUM: My mom just read this, and has informed me that I fell off the changing table when I was a baby. So there you go!
I’m part of Generation X. I don’t do patriotic, or nostalgic. I grew up in the era of MTV, “Greed is good,” and the Internet explosion. My generation had it easy, so we’re often (rightly) considered selfish, cynical, and apathetic. For most of my life, the U.S. government has done embarrassing things in public, which tends to discourage a sense of national pride. What was there to be proud of?
The Pickle Patch 