Dear Mom – Day 5
Today concludes the five-part series on motherhood. To see past articles or full panel disclosure, click here. This piece was such an amazing one to write and I cannot thank the participants enough for both their time and candor. Here’s hoping for the loveliest of mother’s days…
dp Names say so much. I think naming a child would be incredibly hard – how did you and your husband choose the names of your kids?
Mommy A I was pretty adamant on giving my children middle names that honored my parents. I felt it important because of my parents’ cultural belief to have our family name passed on. Since I could not pass on my last name in the most traditional manner, I chose to include a Korean name as a middle name. Plus, once I had children, I really started to understand cultural beliefs or practices that insist on same race marriages. I realized that my children have the potential of having blonde hair, blue-eyed babies. By the time my grandchildren have children, all of the Korean will be gone! This thought kind of makes me sad. There will be no more of my parents left in the bloodline.
Dear Mom – Day 4
It’s day four in our five-part series on motherhood. To see past entries and full details on the amazing panelists click here.
dp Did you find out your child’s gender while you were pregnant? Did you try to predict? Were you correct?
Mommy E Yes – we just found out we are having a boy, and are so excited! This was one of the discussions that was agreed upon before even getting pregnant. My husband is a planner and wanted to know! I could go either way, so maybe in the future we could keep it a surprise. Because I have been having such an easy time with pregnancy, I was feeling boy at first, but was also very partial to having a girl. I am so excited for the outcome, but either way I think we would have won the lottery.
Dear Mom – Day 3
It’s the third part of our motherhood series. Click here for a full scope of the participating panelists.
dp For those of you with mixed gendered children, is there an easier sex to raise – girls or boys?
Mommy D Boys seem to be easier emotionally, but they are much noisier. Girls tend to be more emotional and dramatic.
Dear Mom – Day 2
The motherhood series continues. Click here to see the full stats on the panelists.
dp In your opinion, how has child rearing through the years changed?
Mommy A There’s a lot that has changed. Spanking is controversial. If you spank your children, it’s because you’ve lost control and are an ineffective parent. There’s too much coddling and not enough discipline. I read a book by Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture, and he wrote of the way parents and teachers are afraid to give honest feedback to their children and students. Everyone is great at everything. This leads to an inability to accurately assess one’s self and ultimately stunts the growth, development, and learning of an individual. Children today are getting away with so much more than I did as a child.
Dear Mom
I’ve had the privilege and joy over the last few years of seeing some of my closest friends as well as my sister and sister-in-law become mothers. It’s made me realize that for as many hats as we women wear, being a mother appears to be, quite possibly, the toughest.
That has made me think more often of motherhood in general and my own relationship with mine. I can’t say I’ve ever written a letter to my mother. Sure, emails. Sure, lengthy telephone conversations with both of us carrying on about nothing in particular. But, an honest to goodness pen to paper letter – not so much. If I were to write her, I’d likely start with a simple thank you and then express my gratitude for her nurturing and her patience throughout my life (not counting the few late high school/early college years where we couldn’t stomach the sight of each other).
In honor of mother’s day, I’ve conducted a sociological experiment of sorts. Below is the beginning of a five-part series that I’ll be posting throughout the week. I interviewed nine women – eight of whom are mothers and one who is just about to be. Each gave me such amazing honesty and insight and they made this piece what it is; and for that, I am humbled. This article reflects their caring, their time and their generosity.
Happy Mother’s Day, a five-day tribute.
Editor’s note
While I chose to not to interview my own mother here in the interest of journalistic distance, it should be noted that all photos in the series are of her and are some of my favorites.
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The Jump
“There are almost twice as many suicides than homicides in the United States in any given year.”
Recently, I e-mailed an old friend – a friend who has drifted in and out of my life for years but nevertheless a good friend that I think of often. More time than usual had passed since I’d last heard from her and I just felt I needed to reach out to her.
Interesting how – if we’re listening – our instincts are usually telling us something…
Her return e-mail held devastating, shocking news. Last August, she told me, she attempted suicide by jumping from the roof of a five-story building. After the initial shock, I found myself with a lot of questions, some big and existential, but some trivial…like – did she leave her keys in her car when she parked it in front of that building? Or eat a special meal right before? Did she dress up for the occasion? Did she leave dirty dishes in the sink? I think I found it easier to focus on those smaller questions than to hear the answers to the really big ones.
Like, how do you get to that place, alone on the roof of a building, ready to jump? I don’t understand. I do believe we all have light and dark, good and evil – it’s how we balance it all. Some of it shines through brighter at different periods of our lives. At that point, her light had dimmed to nothingness – she clearly wanted to die. Yet, she didn’t succeed. Where do you go from that?
The Boss’ House
Almost spring – a time for cleaning out the cobwebs – both the real ones and the metaphorical ones. Clearing out a welcome in hopes of warmer, sunnier days to follow. A time for thinking about all things new and paradoxically, all things old, like home. When you’re an Army brat like me (man, I really dislike that term) growing up wherever the military sent you and with parents well past the typical age of first home buyers, where do you call home?
For me, it was the Boss’ house, a remarkable loft conversion warehouse in Leavenworth, Kansas. Remarkable not only because it was structurally unique but because my parents and us kids transformed it into our home with our own blood, sweat and tears. And it represented the culmination of everything my parents ever imagined they’d have in their dream home while chained to military housing in Panama, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Illinois, Kentucky and Hawaii.
Up Around the Bend
We all have dreams. Some big. Some small. Some professional. Some personal. Some we share out loud. Some we clutch tightly to our chests forever, never allowing them to see the light of day.
For years, I’ve had a dream – to run a half-marathon – a somewhat abstract and impossible dream – but one that steadfastly waited for me, tucked way in the back of my mind – waiting for me to let it out of its hiding place. And I can’t say exactly when that occurred, but it did and I did…I ran 13.1 miles. Done. Check that off the life list. And maybe add another…
Be Better
I am not hugely into New Year’s resolutions. But, usually there are goals I set to start the year off – sort of the notion of approaching the year with an intention. That intention generally involves some sort of growth process. For instance, this year, I really want to work on my Spanish comprehension. That’s so I don’t end up with a ginormous whole chicken for an afternoon snack when I thought I was ordering vegetable empanadas in Costa Rica. Or so I can hold my own when I am well aware I’m being screwed out of a ridiculously high cab fare because I’m “not from around here.” You know, useful, practical stuff.
My husband has this great friend from back home whose motto in life is to just simply be better. I think we could all use that phrase from time to time. Be better with choices in life. Whether it is allowing a moment of pause before reacting (om before ape shite), driving a bit off the beaten path for an authentic roadtrip meal instead of hitting the Arches, or not being as wasteful (Is it normal to go through a box of tissues in a week? Would Kimberly-Clark’s stock plunge to all time lows if I stopped using Kleenex?). Whatever it is, this year should be about being better across the board.
Nissan – the Japanese automaker is potentially embracing the be better mantra. I came across an article about a prototype they have for a new car concept called the Nuvu (new view). It was unveiled in 2008 at the Paris auto show. To say it’s slightly cartoonish is an understatement…it’s beyond something George Jetson would commute to work in, but perhaps our picture of a vehicle should advance alongside technology. The buzz around Nuvu is that it’s being touted as the future of urban transportation. It operates through solar panels on its glass roof and the power generated is fed through a battery, allowing the car to function electrically with a top speed of 120 km/h. While the nuts and bolts of the car are impressive in design, so is the interior, which uses natural, organic and recycled materials. Pretty sweet.
Holiday Bound
It was in March when my father died, suddenly and tragically. That left our family with just under a full-term pregnancy’s worth of time to prepare for and dread the Holiday Season.
By mid-November it was evident that we could not and should not spend any holiday time at my parents’ home. So my older sister agreed to host Thanksgiving at her house out of state. I claimed a work crisis that made it impossible for me to be in attendance for the turkey dinner party. From what I heard, it was a day awash in several liters of Riesling, never-ending pours of Jack Daniel’s and meltdowns galore (something about empty chairs and too many individual salt and pepper shakers)…to this day I’m slightly sorry I missed it.
So, after this complete disaster of trying to perpetuate tradition when tradition had just been forever altered – my family in its usual highly democratic manner (rock, paper, scissors – kidding – majority rules) decided to spend Christmas in New York City (NEEEW YOORK CITEE said like the Pace picante voiceover guy). I won’t bore you with the minute details, but rest assured that staying in a postage-stamp-sized apartment rife with 7 grieving adults was either the worst idea ever or an unplanned stroke of genius in its power to distract.
