obesity and overconsumption

I found this article really fascinating. I don't know if we're too fat, or how closely related fat and health are--some of this stuff just sounds like common sense, though. As in, it's better to exercise than not exercise. No, duh!

But this was what really caught my eye:

Overconsumption in America is closely equated with class: The higher up you go the more you consume. The only area in which consumption is inversely related to class is caloric overconsumption. So the American elite project anxiety about the fact that they're massively overconsuming economically and materially through a disgust for fat, lower-class people.

America is just too big. We throw our weight around, our cars are too big, our shopping malls are too big, our houses are too big. Our anxiety about fat is our anxiety about our own bigness. But it's a projection that is so inappropriate when our cars weigh 700 pounds more than they did 15 years ago -- which is politically and economically and environmentally far more troubling than the fact that our bodies on average weigh eight pounds more than they used to 15 years ago.

Now there's some provocative and interesting analysis. Americans are usually so afraid of talking about class. Thanks, Paul Campos, for raising the issue.

another meet

Swim meets are better when it's sunny and pleasant out, as it was today. Things were a lot less chaotic than the first two meets and Nick actually won his heat! A first for him. He's still pretty slow, but he is improving steadily. It's fun for me to watch him get better. As a kid (and even as an adult) I rarely did things that I wasn't good at the first time. This meant I didn't ride a bike until I was 12, didn't really swim much at all, still don't enjoy water sports, dancing, horseback riding, playing piano... you name it. Piano I stuck with for several years--after all, once you learn the notes you can actually pick out a tune when you sit down. But the rest--I gave up early on things. I actually quit ballet twice, two successive years. (Then my mother caught on and I stopped signing up.) So I don't really know what it means to start from scratch and improve in the way I've seen Nick do it. It's fun to watch--and, in a small way, even inspiring.

two weeks in a row...

Mariah made dinner again tonight: parmesan chicken (her old standby), roasted green beans with almonds, and for dessert a cake that Nick & I had baked a few days ago, and espresso chip ice cream. I could get used to this...

feminism and the movies

I've just recently seen both the original Stepford Wives and Mona Lisa Smile, and I've got to say, Hollywood feminism has lost a lot of ground. The Stepford Wives is over the top, yes, but it raises a serious issue in the so-called "gender wars" and doesn't let up. It doesn't have a happy ending; Katharine Ross ends up an animatronic wife just like everyone else. The movie knows that men are threatened by feminism, and suggests that some men might just as soon turn back the clock.

Well, Mona Lisa Smile does turn back the clock. It shows us a version of the 1950s in which a feminist "infiltrates" Wellesley college and gets her comeuppance. I mean, there are glimmers of something else, but in the end it makes the whole issue personal rather than institutional and therefore lets everyone off the hook. The Julia Stiles character gets to "choose" marriage (and presumably motherhood) over Yale Law School because "you always taught us to make our own choices, and this is mine." Well, yes and no. How much support would she, or any woman at the time, have for the opposite choice? Unfortunately the male characters are so shallow, so one-dimensional, that we can't really tell whether this is a good choice or not. The women who end up pursuing their own interests are 'damaged" in some way--the Kirsten Dunst character is divorced, and the Maggie Gyllenhall character has obvious father issues and is, moreover, both Jewish and a "slut." (While the movie doesn't imply that these are related, it's just a fact that she's the only Jewish character and the only really overtly sexual one...)

Yes, the Julia Roberts character seems to have real options--she's turned down at least one proposal, and freely chosen to leave another man, but again, there's no critique of any institutional realities. Nor do we know what she's going to do for money when she gets to Europe at the end of the movie.

I know, I know, it's just entertainment. And if there were lots of entertainment out there that took up women's history, and this were just one, I wouldn't be upset. In fact, I'm not really upset--just noting that this is the way Hollywood seems to work. Take a big institutional problem, personalize it, and then imply that the personal solution will do. Dickens did pretty much the same thing in his fiction over 150 years ago, so it's an honorable and time-tested tradition. But it's one-sided at best and dishonest at worst.

I tend to hate teacher movies, by the way. Especially English teacher movies. (Dead Poets Society comes to mind.) I hate how we romanticize teachers in movies and then don't pay them what they're worth, as if their love of their students was somehow supposed to make up for that. Julia Roberts, in this movie, seems only to teach one class, not to do research, and to have ample funds for all kinds of clothes that were probably not even available in Welleley, MA in 1954. But I digress.

For the sake of full disclosure I should also say that the movie had me tearing up a couple of times, including at the end when Kristen Dunst and Julia Roberts finally reached some understanding. But then I think I'm really weirdly hormonal right now--is this perimenopause? Honestly, I think there's some violin cue that goes directly to my tear ducts, bypassing my brain entirely. It happened at the end of Saved!, too, but that's for another time.

how cool is this?

So Mariah, age 14, has decided she wants to cook dinner for us once a week. She has a fairly limited repertoire so far, but is more than willing to expand. Until yesterday, her succesfully completed dishes included chicken parmesan, a spinach/bacon salad and lemon linguine that she got from watching Nigella on tapes my sister sent, and calzone from a kids' cookbook my mom gave her years ago. Last winter, I received Nigella Lawson's Forever Summer, and Mariah started browsing it yesterday for more recipes. She came up with lemony shrimp salad--sort of like a caesar salad with shrimp, only the dressing is (duh) lemony. And then I gave her No Knead to Need, because Suzanne Dunaway's rosemary filoncino is not only easy but to die for. And then she made a peach/raspberry crisp from a recipe my mom gave her, and we ate like royalty. She's now promised to make dinner every Monday. OK, so I have to take her shopping and be around in case of need (she still has trouble taking things out of the oven), but still--I'll take it. Especially because she likes to eat salad that she makes, and is otherwise close to allergic to vegetables.

swim team

Nick joined the swim team this year. He's six, and doesn't swim too well, but all the parents told us that it was the perfect time to start. He'd learn to swim, have fun, yada yada. So far, though, practice has been a lot of standing in line waiting his turn. Somehow he doesn't seem to mind--maybe because all the kids get suckers at the end. Maybe because being in line with your buddies is not such a bad way to spend fifteen minutes here and there. I don't quite get it, but he seems to like it.

So last night was the first swim meet. Meets start at six, with warmups at five. We got to the pool (it was an away meet) at 4:45, just as a huge storm broke. Thunder and lightning crashed around us as rain fell in buckets. We were told that the meet would probably be held anyway; they wait half an hour after the last thunder is heard before letting anyone in the pool, so we should wait in our cars until then. Yeah, right. We decided to drive up to the university--Mark needed to check out a book. It would be about a half hour round trip. so we'd be fine even if the thunder stopped right away.

It didn't. As we drove through campus, we nearly hydroplaned a couple of times in the downpours. The road was flooding. Mark went up the long flight of stairs to the library, and we watched a waterfall pour down it. Mariah began complaining of a headache so we drove her home. Lightning jagged through the sky. When we got home I looked up the number for the pool; it was still thundering overhead. The guy who answered the phone said the thunder had stopped there and they'd be starting warmups soon, so we got back in the car and headed out again. It was now almost six.

Mariah stayed home to nurse her headache. By the time we got to the pool, the sun was shining and you'd never have known that a violent storm had just blown through, except we'd seen a bad car wreck and several tree limbs down on our way. Someone was even parked in the lot with their top down!

The scene at the pool was chaotic. Kids and parents all over the place. Most of the kids had "Go Granite" or "Dangerous When Wet" in sharpie marker on their backs. The little kids huddled together nervously. They hadn't started warming up yet, so Nick went and sat with the other "mini-mites" and waited.

Eventually, he swam. He was in the second heat of little kids doing the 25-yard freestyle. He jumped in (not off the blocks), and almost immediately veered to the right so he could grab the lane line. (They let the little kids do that.) He probably ended up on the lane line four or five times in the heat, but he eventually finished (last, but who's counting?). He looked wiped out as he came out of the pool--almost as if he couldn't see us.

So that was our first swim meet experience. Despite the late start (it was almost 7 before he was done, and no dinner beforehand) and the thunder and lightning, the crowds and the confusion, he swam his heat and finished, which was the only goal we'd set. Luckily he seems not to mind that he's not winning--in lots of things he's pretty competitive despite not having the skills, and then is devastated when he loses. Not this time, thankfully.

Swimming is its own little world. There are parents who do "strokes and turns," judging to make sure the kids are doing them right. There are timers and runners and announcers and starters and herders (well, that's what I call them--they get the kids from place to place). There are parents who walk in knowing what a 100-yard IM is. We don't live in this world, but we'll be visiting it this summer.

going away, coming back

Sometimes the worst part of going away is coming back. I had a quick trip to California last week, Wednesday-Sunday, and returned early Monday morning on the redeye. Nick's class party was Monday, so I went to it on very little sleep. I did manage a shower beforehand, which was a very good thing. He was delighted to see me, and I didn't even mind that I got hamburger grease all over my top. (OK, I minded a little, especially since there was coffee all over the clothes I'd worn on the plane. But that's another story.) I didn't last too long at the party, but long enough to have a great conversation with his fabulous teacher, the one who thinks he's a gifted artist. (Nothing better than a teacher who thinks your kid's special.)

But the rest of the week has been tougher. There's a leak in our roof, and another in our car (it's only two years old! What gives?), and it's been raining a lot so this matters. And the house is a wreck--well, it was when I left, so it's hardly news--and I have to get back to work, and the kids need me, and Mark's glad I'm home so I can pick up some of the slack (well, he's glad period, but you know...). So anyway it's been hard, harder than it might have been if I'd stayed home.

And yet I'm glad I went. I went to the Children's Literature Assn. conference, which is always a good place to be: lots of people who take children's literature seriously and talk about it with enthusiasm. I heard a fabulous talk by Pam Munoz Ryan, which got me to buy two of her books, and had lots of interesting conversations, great food, etc. And at either end of the conference a visit with my sister and her terrific family, including my amazing nephew Ben (who calls me Ya-Bee, how great is that?). I gave a talk at the conference on Charlotte's Web and feminist theology and it went well enough that I'm pretty sure I can keep at this project for a while. So all that was good.

But it's tiring getting over jet lag and going on with your life at the same time.

Midlife Mama: On Not Learning to Clean

Here's my latest column, none of which (for once!) appeared here first. Midlife Mama: On Not Learning to Clean

done!

all the grades are done. Not submitted, yet, as I'm having a bit of anxiety over a few of them. But I've read all the papers, put grades on them all, and even done the math. So it's really, really close.

I went to the museum with Nick's class today. What a trip! They have an amazing teacher who pretty much lets them loose to sketch in whatever section of the museum they're "doing" at the time. Today it was ancient Greece. Lots of urns, vases, pots, etc. And they really did sketch: pots, details of pots, rams' horns, Medusa's head (very popular), Greek "key" designs, everything. The parents get paper and clipboards and pencils too and the idea is that everyone sketches. You get a little talking-to if you're not sketching what you're seeing--this is not the time for working out your latest Lego design plan, or the Yugi-oh guy you really want next. Some of the kids are really talented, others not so much, but they all drew what they saw and they were all happy to talk about it. The walk back from the museum was the toughest part: they were tired and hungry and tired of paying attention. Still, we all made it in one piece, and then got to see the dump trucks deliver new sand to the sandbox (extra bonus!) while we ate lunch outside. Not too shabby.

the end is in sight...

Not of the world or anything, of course, but of my grading. 16 more papers and the semester is over for me. I'm almost there. I can taste it. No, that's my decaf latte, trying to tell me it's time to do one or two more before bed. But I'm exhausted, and not sure I'm making sense of my students' efforts to make sense. And often they do, even when I don't, so I should be careful.

I'm pretty sure that paragraph doesn't make sense, but I'll let it stand as a representation of my mental state.

Actually the last several days have been fine--not weatherwise, as it rained yesterday, but in terms of the workload. I've had several very gratifying exchanges with students, the kind that let you know you really got through, that the course mattered, that they found something of value in the time you spent together. Either that or they've gotten better at kissing up over the years, and I'll even take that. This time of year anything helps.

Today was National Teacher Day (part of Teacher Appreciation Week) and in honor of the day I was interviewed by the local drivetime radio show. The interview was arranged by the Cup of Comfort folks, who published my piece, "Mama Mentor" in their new book, A Cup of Comfort for Teachers. So that was fun. Live radio is a little too --raw, maybe?; no, just unpredictable-- for me: the host asked me, for example, why teachers get a bum rap in today's society. Well, since that has nothing to do with my story (which he obviously hadn't read) or with anything I teach (which his producer supposedly filled him in on) I was a bit speechless for a minute. Remember, too, this was drive-time radio, and I had not yet finished my first cup of coffee. But he was fine, moved right on to another question. And in the end I guess it went OK. So that was my radio debut.

And now I really do need to grade some more papers. In honor of National Teacher Day, don't you know.

Tiny Updates

I've actually update the viewing and reading logs for the first time in ages. And all I have to say is: "Spinal Tap" is R for language only, so if your kids have ever heard the F word this movie is totally appropriate for them. Or, apparently, even if they haven't. Nick was mimicking what he heard and said, "What the..." And Mark said, "Nick, that's a bad word. Your probably shouldn't say that outside the house." (We're so radical...) And Nick totally thought Mark meant "What the heck!" Somehow he missed the F word, which I then explained rather lamely to him, saying it, saying it was bad, and saying it was a grownup word. Yeah, I'm a radical mom. He is completely confused.

And YA books rock. Read Jasper Fforde, if you've ever read Jane Eyre or pretty much anything else in the English literary canon. And read Lois Lowry if you're alive, though you should read The Giver and Gathering Blue before you read Messenger if you can manage it. I mean it.

And, I've never been on a surfboard in my life, but if you can't find something to like in the Bruce & Dana Brown trilogy of Endless Summer, Endless Summer II, and Step Into Liquid, you may not be alive either.

blogger forgot me...

I guess it's time to post again. I had to put in my user name and password, even though blogger usually remembers me. Sigh. I know, it's been a while. It's been a busy month or two. Spring semester is always busier than fall, and it seemed that this one was particularly bad. I probably would have felt better if I'd been writing, but I never seemed to have time.

On the other hand I have been managing to do some yoga almost every morning, so it hasn't been a totally wastoid couple of months.

There will be more here, soon. This is just a placeholder post to remind myself that I can do this every now and then and to keep my reader(s?) from forgetting about me...

Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It

Here's something fun: essays from Mother Shock in your in-box! Hard to beat...Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It

whining update

OK, so at least my wallet was returned! The custodian in our building found it in a trash can (men's room), cash removed but reimbursable receipts, palm pilot, and IDs all intact. Interesting. So I'm out about 50 bucks and the annoyance of replacing cards that I'd already cancelled, but worse things have happened.

Chicago Tribune | Not your mother's magazines

Nice to see Brain, Child and Literary Mama making the news together here. I did this interview months ago and had just about forgotten about it!

Chicago Tribune | Not your mother's magazines

whining

I had a fabulous weekend in Georgia, hanging out with old and new friends, going to papers about British Women Writers, learning a lot, laughing, eating well. It was tiring, and it was hard to be away for almost four whole days, but worth it.

Then I got home. And Nick was fussy about the present I'd brought him, and I had work to do, and the weather wasn't quite as pleasant here as it had been in Georgia.

But that was OK. I could handle it. Then I had back-to-back-to-back meetings this morning, meetings which didn't quite go as I had hoped. And then when I went to synch up my palm pilot, I discovered that it was missing from my purse. I can only surmise that someone saw it lying at the top of my purse, next to my open office door (ok, stupid me), and took it. With my cash, credit cards, and receipts from the weekend. Yes, reimbursable receipts.

The palm pilot is in some ways the least of it. After all, the data was backed up fairly recently on my laptop. I've replaced two of these already and never lost anything important. But the money, the IDs, the credit cards--all in the snazzy leather case that had come for free with this most recent PP purchase--all that's a loss.

The credit card reps have been nice, sympathetic, all that. I guess I go for a new driver's license tomorrow, and a university ID as well. The cards are already cancelled. The cash is of course a loss, and I don't know quite how much was there (around $50?) because I'd been travelling and not quite keeping track. Again, shame on me.

I could have handled the bad meetings OR the theft. But both in one day seems like too much. Maybe this is my Lenten trial, in which case I guess I'm getting off pretty light compared to, say, crucifixion. But I'm not in the mood for silver linings quite yet. I just want to whine.

which children's author wrote you?

Apparently I'm a Dr. Seuss character.
Here's the quiz:
Which Children's Author Wrote You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Midlife Mama

I was not an adventurous child. And yet somehow I took a train by myself when I was eight years old. My family was staying outside of London for a couple of weeks one summer, and I was sent off on the train to visit a friend. I'm pretty sure I was put on the train at one end and taken off at the other, but as I recall it, when I went back home, no one was there to meet me. Maybe I got off a stop early, maybe I was returning sooner than expected; in any event, my arrival at the station necessitated a phone call in a London call box, which involved pressing buttons and manipulating foreign money. I remember being a little frightened, but finding an elderly man to help me make the call, after which someone appeared pretty quickly and got me back home. In those days, it seems, a young girl could ask a strange adult male for help and be pretty sure of getting it. Or at least no one ever suggested otherwise to me.
Read the rest here: Midlife Mama

checking in

It's the end of spring break and I'm not feeling as if I've had much of one, what with a variety of minor medical things (really minor, but they took time) and grading. And buying a car! But that's all done now, and the break's over Monday, and then it's the mad rush to the end of the semester. In the meantime I've updated the viewing and reading lists and am thinking it's about time to archive them again.

Yes, this is a boring entry. It's how I'm feeling right now. More excitement later. Or check Kate's blog for way too much excitement, and an update on how the American media is probably getting the story wrong.

New review at Literary Mama!

Here's my review of I Don't Know How She Does It. Check out the other new reviews and poetry at Literary Mama.

spring!

Well, probably not really, yet. But it's been up to 80 the last two days, the plum trees are starting to show their clouds of purple, and a few daffodils are out as well. It will get cooler again this weekend, of course, but I've already taken the turtlenecks out of my drawer and worn sandals the last two days. So something's afoot.

Sex and Silence at Yale

Does anyone else care about Naomi Wolf's claim that Harold Bloom "encroached on her sexually" when she was a college student? Here's her long piece about it: Sex and Silence at Yale

If you go to Arts & Letters Daily, you'll find (left column, a few slots down, now) several responses to Wolf. All are from women, and all castigate her, more or less, for betraying the women's movement by crying Wolf. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

The thing is, she's not really trying to claim she's a victim. Or that's not how I read her piece. I think she's talking about how institutions deal with women and their claims of harassment and the like--and I think that's important. Now, Yale claims she is exaggerating their non-responsiveness, and I think it's important to sort out what really happened, who said what when, etc. But if what she says happened really did--not that Bloom put his hand on her inner thigh, though that's gross, but that Yale gave her the runaround when she wanted to talk about it twenty years later--I think that's a problem.

What feminism should be about, it seems to me, is authorizing women's choices (see below on the nanny wars). If Camille Paglia and her friends chose, in full adult manner, to have affairs with faculty members when they were undergrads, that's fine. (I guess, though it strikes me as unlikely that they could really make an informed choice. But say they did.) Wolf says she did not so choose, and that when she didn't she was demeaned, isolated, etc., and that further, when she chose to talk about it, she's been isolated and attacked. Is that right or fair?

nannies and others

My new reading group got together to discuss this article today: The Atlantic | March 2004 | How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement | Flanagan. So, OK, leaving aside for a moment the lameness of a reading group that only has time to discuss MAGAZINE ARTICLES instead of whole books (yes, we're busy, yada yada)...it was an interesting discussion. Only one of us doesn't have children; two had nannies, two used daycare and other options with small kids. Only one of us has a child in daycare or with a nanny now--the rest of our kids are all in school.

Of course I hate Caitlin Flanagan because she has the job I want. Or maybe Adam Gopnik has it, but today I'm thinking it's Flanagan. But besides that, we talked about how the history on which this article rests is pretty shaky--it's not as if women just started working in the 70s, for example. (Not even middle class white women--given the opportunity, they have always worked, and the historian among us pointed out that even in the 50s their percentage in the workplace kept rising.)

And then there's her own smugness. Even those of us who employed nannies didn't have them cleaning for us!! Where does Flanagan get off generalizing from her own experience, using her anecdotes as some kind of yardstick against which to measure other women?

But the thing that irritated us the most was the assumption that women are necessarily competing with each other, oppressing each other, divided. Where are the men in this article? Do the dads hire care, or are they simply irrelevant to this story? Do they feel guilt? Do they agonize over their choices?

Actually, I think they probably do, but you wouldn't know it from this piece. You might also take a look at this one: MOTHER COURAGE by Elizabeth Kolbert, which is similarly dismissive of the problems of white middle class women but seems at least a bit more sympathetic to me, and maybe more on the money, at least in her last paragraph: "Choosing between work and home is, in the end, a problem only for those who have a choice. In this sense, it is, like so many “problems” of twenty-first-century life, a problem of not having enough problems."

I think I want to say more about choice, but I'm not sure I'm thinking clearly enough to do it now. The thing is, even the question of a women's (always a woman's!) choice to work outside the home is rather vexed: I need to work because I make the primary income. But then again, if I didn't, my husband probably would. Or we'd figure something out. So do I really NEED to work? As much as I do? Well, if I want this kind of job, this is how it's done, how much time it takes, etc. But there are other jobs, no doubt, that I'm qualified for. (Stop laughing! PhDs in English are highly employable!) And maybe they would take less time, give me more leisure, more time with kids or the house or my husband (hmm, interesting order there...). Or maybe not. But I think we are kidding ourselves, sometimes, about what's a choice and what's a necessity. And that's all I'm going to say about that right now.

Another poem by Steve

This one is called "Personal at the Podium". It appeared in Poetry Daily: Poetry Archive

In Memory of Steven Barza

A colleague died this week. He'd only been sick for a few weeks, and none of us knew how sick he was. So his death comes as a shock.

Here's a poem he wrote that I like a lot:

Just Up

When we awaken there is a moment
before we remember
the burdens we bear,
that yesterday we lost or won
a fortune or a battle or a love
or that today we must go
to work or to court or to hospital
or we have nowhere to go,
before we start piecing together
who we have been or who we will be,
and in that moment we are simply
consciousness, sensation,
appetite not yet linked to
memory or will.
I like the way we are
in that naked moment
before we are defined,
in that briefest moment
before we don ourselves.

This appeared in the Utne Reader in Jan/Feb 2003, reprinted from Crab Creek Review, Spring/Summer 2002.

Up Too Early

If things seem a little off-kilter here today it's United Airlines' fault. That's right. They were somehow unable to get a plane from Chicago to here on time last night, which meant my sister and her delightful family were unable to make a connection on time, which meant they spent another night with us (which was fine) and had to catch a very early flight this morning (not so fine). The killer for me was my sister's report that the gate agent told her if she really needed to be somewhere on time, she shouldn't book on the last flight of the day. That is, you've got to expect that flights won't run, will be cancelled, will be late, and it's your problem to deal with that.

What??

OK, enough of that. They (my sis & bro-in-law) can write their own letter to United. But all I'm saying is I was up too early.

On to better things. I've added a few books and movies lately to the reading/viewing lists, but I have little to say about them right now. I'm feeling exhausted and depleted, though mostly in a good way. It was my birthday yesterday (thus the family visit!) and I raked in all sorts of new and interesting books, so maybe there will be more fun reports soon. I'd also like to mention that I have two new cookbooks, a lovely new necklace, funky boots, and a check to spend on myself. I have never quite gotten over the love of birthdays, I must say.

It looks like the inside of a snowglobe out my window right now and I am half-way hoping for a snow day tomorrow, even though I don't teach and I'd still probably come in to the office to meet with students and try to get some work done. I have been thinking of snow days as pure annoyance for the last several years and today something just snapped and I'm back in kid mode--a free day off! Snow to play in! I think it's because this snow is just so lovely right now--big fluffy flakes wafting gently downwards.

Literary mama in the news!

TimesDispatch.com | Literary Mama seeks the 'empowered' mom

new comment feature

OK, now I've got comments by Haloscan. Check 'em out.

What I'm reading now

During the academic year, most of my reading is re-reading. I always get the feeling that there are other teachers out there who know their books cold, who can recite poetry from memory in the classroom, who stand in front of their classes and wow them with their amazing recall. I am not that teacher.

But as I reread I learn new things, every time. This semester I'm teaching books I read as a child, books I've read to my kids, and even so I am learning them anew. That's one of the reasons I teach, in fact. Things are new, even when (as so often in my classes) they are more than 100 years old.

Yesterday I taught two books I love, in two different classes. In my children's literature class we were talking about Charlotte's Web, perhaps one of the most perfect novels ever written. This simple story of a pig and a spider never fails to touch me, perhaps because it seems to me essentially a fable about the strength of maternal love. Charlotte sacrifices herself for her surrogate child, Wilbur, knowing she'll never meet her own children, the spiders whose eggs she deposits carefully in their egg sac in the last creative act of her life. My eyes always swell with tears as I read of her death, and Wilbur's careful guarding of her eggs until they hatch the next spring.

In my other class, an upper-division course for English majors, I was teaching a far less well-known book, The Princess and the Goblin, though it's one that I read and loved as a kid. Published in 1872 by a renegade Congregationalist minister, George MacDonald, the novel tells the story of the princess Irene, her great-great-grandmother, and the miner boy, Curdie, who encounters them both. Strangely, though, it's also a maternal story, a story of a (great-great-grand) mother who watches over a child, whose love protects even when she herself is out of reach.

Yet both of these fables of maternal love are actually of surrogate maternity. Charlotte is not actually Wilbur's mother (the mind boggles!), and the princess Irene's own mother is dead (or is the great-great-grandmother actually her ghost? it's not entirely clear…)

As I cast my mind back over my favorite books for children, indeed, I find that mothers are strangely lacking even as their love is extolled, and I worry about what this means for me. Just think about it: in so many of our favorite books, the heroes and heroines are orphans, motherless children, or perhaps even abandoned children. The pattern begins in fairy tales: Hansel and Gretel, abandoned in the woods by their parents (the mother is sometimes called a stepmother, to soften the blow a bit); Snow White, whose mother dies in childbirth; Cinderella, oppressed by a stepmother and an ineffectual father…the list goes on. In picture books, children are often simply on their own: Peter Rabbit in Mr. Macgregor's garden, Max from Where the Wild Things Are, off in his dream-boat, Frog and Toad, Ruby and Max. As we discussed in my children's literature class today, parents get in the way of a good story. Who wants to read about a well-adjusted kid staying home with his or her parents, after all?

Well, I do. And they do exist: think of Bread and Jam for Frances, for example, or Blueberries for Sal (well, even there, Sal gets separated from her mother and starts following around a bear mama instead, but you get the picture). Still, it seems to me that overwhelmingly our literature for children is about independence and separation from parents, not about connection.

So I'm torn as I reread The Princess and the Goblin once again. Do I want to read it to Nick? In the novel I'm reading aloud to him right now, The Magician's Nephew, the main character's mother is dying, and I stumble over the words as I read them to him, hoping he's not really paying attention to that part, wanting him to focus on the adventure rather than the reason for it.

Children's literature means all new things to me as I read it as a mother. I find myself removed, left out, rejected. Stepmothers fare worse--Snow White's kills herself dancing in red-hot shoes at the wedding ball--but the impulse is the same. And in case you think this is all yesterday's news, that today's stories for kids don't do this, just think of Finding Nemo (dead mother), or The Lion King (dead father). It's everywhere.

In The Princess and the Goblin, as in Charlotte's Web, maternal love is miraculous. It protects and saves without smothering or over-protecting. It reaches beyond physical boundaries and blood ties; it partakes, quite literally, of the divine. Charlotte's miraculous web, and the magic string that leads Irene out of the mine, both represent the invisible ties mothers weave from their children to themselves, binding them in a web of love and sacrifice. Perhaps to attribute such things to real mothers would be too overwhelming, too much of a reminder of the ways in which mothers can truly bind and suffocate their children. Perhaps. All I know is, I'm looking for a fun, adventurous mother in the next book I read.

comments gone

Sorry, BlogOut's down and I don't have comments anymore. I'll look into a replacement when I get the chance.

That SuperBowl thing...

OK, Lizbeth pretty much says it all for me here:MOM & Pop Culture. The whole Janet Jackson breast thing: who cares? I saw it (yes, I was actually watching the SuperBowl) and frankly it didn't even look like a blunder to me. The woman I was watching with turned to me and said "She had a pastie on, right?" and we both agreed that yes, probably, she did, and that was that.

Frankly the old man beating up his aged wife to get at a bag of chips was far more offensive. In fact so many ads seemed to be about how American men hate their wives that I stopped counting. Oh, and the farting horse. I mean, ick! I'm hardly a prude, but that was such lowest common denominator humor. Ick, ick, ick.

On the other hand I did like the one where the dog bites the guy in the crotch to get the beer. So sue me.

Another thing--how many people really suffer from erectile dysfunction? And do we really need quite so many ads about drugs to combat it? Am I missing something, or is this really a big social problem that I am just not aware of?

OK, rant over. I'm trying to work on a column about teenagers and letting go and it's just so much easier to rant!

mother-daughter writing

My mom finds my columns a little disconcerting--"Like catching sight of yourself in a mirror you didn't realize was there" she says. Fair enough.

SPOILER ALERT: I discuss the movie Limbo below and I give away a major plot point. You've been warned!


I just saw a movie (Limbo, by one of my favorite directors, John Sayles) in which a mother-daughter writing dynamic is dramatized. The daughter (Noelle) seems to be reading a diary she's found to her mother (Donna) and the mother's boyfriend (Joe), but at a critical point Donna discovers that Noelle is actually making up the story. She allows her to continue to "read" the diary, however, without revealing that she knows Noelle is making it up. The diary is ostensibly written by the daughter of pioneering parents, parents whose marriage goes sour (and worse) during the difficult winter they endure together. The mother in the "diary" ultimately kills herself. After hearing the story, Donna responds as only a mother would, I think. "How selfish," she says. "She left her child. I would never do that to you."

She sees Noelle's story, that is, as a comment on herself. It's the only way she can see it, I think. And yet it both is and isn't. Noelle's a writer, and this is her imaginative construct. It's true she and her mother have issues, and it's true that to some extent she works them out through the medium of the false diary. But I think it goes beyond that for her. She becomes involved in her characters' lives, crying as she "reads" particularly moving passages. They've become real to her, taken on a life beyond her own and her mother's.

I think my mother feels that my writing is always commenting on her, even when it isn't, and I know I feel the same way about my daughter's writing. How can it not be? The identification between mother and daughter is so deep, so difficult to step outside.

I think John Sayles is a genius for recognizing this. He's a rare male director who really seems to "get"--to like, to understand, and to respect--his female characters. Critics find his movies too "talky"--as a storyteller, I like that about them. "Talky" is good. And the talkiness of Limbo is terrific. It's really open-ended, though. I felt cheated for a few minutes at the end. Then I decided he was letting his viewers take over the story, as Noelle takes over the diary. Pretty gutsy.

I Do Know How She Does It - The real supermom message of the original Cheaper by the Dozen. By Ann Hulbert

I just adored the two books about the Gilbreths, Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on their Toes when I was a kid. The new movie looks like a complete travesty. This article actually takes Lillian Moller Gilbreth seriously, and you should too! I Do Know How She Does It - The real supermom message of the original Cheaper by the Dozen. By Ann Hulbert

Midlife Mama: Help Me Hell

My new column is up! Here it is: Midlife Mama: Help Me Hell Much of it appeared here first, so don't be disappointed...

My So-Called Blog

I liked this article--My So-Called Blog--though it also made me a bit nervous. Mariah has a blog somewhere, and I worry (don't all parents) about her privacy with it. But I don't know where it is and I don't think I should read it--like some of the kids cited in the article, I feel as if it would be a violation of her privacy, like reading a journal. OTOH, she's on occasion mentioned poetry she posted and I've read it...though without an express invitation. What's enough privacy for kids? What's too much? What's not enough? These things worry me...

two from Nick

Yesterday we were watching football and two guys got up in each others' faces. Mark commented, "They're trying to kiss, but they can't reach through their facemasks."

Nick's response," That's silly, Daddy. Two boys can't..." Then he rethought it. "Well, actually, two boys can marry each other, but there's usually a girl involved."

Not touching that one. He certainly knows some gay couples, and I think he knows that they are couples. Hmm.

Today when I went to pick him up from school he was looking at his library book, a "fact book" (his term) about cars. The last page shows cars from the future. His friend came over to look and said, "I hate the future."

"Why do you hate the future?" I asked. "You'll be a grown-up in the future."

"That's why," he said. "I want to be a wild boy!" (No problem there, I might add.)

Nick chimes in. "The sad fact about being a grown-up," he says, "is that you die."

No arguing with you there.

DotMoms: The midlife question

Well, I was going to write about this, but Helene at dot-moms got there first. DotMoms: The midlife question

Both my parents are just so funny about me calling myself "middle-aged." I didn't like it myself at first but now it's fun to annoy them (just a little...). Like Helene says, though, really we're in the same age category for the first time, and that's pretty weird.

I want to think more about this but I don't have time now. More later.

Reincarnation

Nick is worried about death. Six-year-olds worry about death. So do 14-year-olds and 40-something-year-olds, so what's new?

Nick was worried about death last night and talking to his dad about it. He has decided that maybe after you die God lets you come back to earth as someone else. He thinks he knows people who have come back--his sister, for instance. He believes this because, as he says, she likes the color blue, and everyone knows girls don't like blue, so she must have been a boy when she was here before.

The breath-taking logic of the six-year-old.

Being fourteen...

...was certainly not my favorite activity. Not being thirteen or fifteen, either. My daughter seems to be better at it than I am, for the most part. She's smart and funny, self-confident (mostly), talented, all good things. (OK, so I'm biased. Still, ask anyone!)

She's also overweight. When she was two her weight hit one of those unmentionable percentiles up over 95, while her height stayed at the 50th, and she's pretty much stayed that way ever since. Without wanting to cause any undue alarm (or an eating disorder), we've gently mentioned, from time to time, that she could use more exercise, that she might not want the second cookie, that fruit snacks are healthier than chips. Like most other "enlightened" parents these days, though, we didn't ever suggest that she should diet. In fact, the doctor told us not to, recommeding--at most--"portion control" and more exercise. She doesn't drink soda, or eat red meat. She pretty much eats what we all eat--which is to say, a relatively healthy diet, hardly any fast food, etc.--but she's pretty sedentary. As I was as a kid.

Yesterday she went to the doctor for her physical and asked about weight loss, and the doctor agreed that she should lose at least ten pounds. (She weighs ten pounds more than I do, though she's 3 inches shorter--and I could stand to lose a few myself.) She wants to do Atkins, and the doctor said she could.

Here's the thing. Two things. Maybe more.

Thing one: I hate the Atkins diet. I love carbohydrates and even more, I love to bake. And, even if I didn't, any diet that rules out whole food groups scares me. I know people lose on it, and the science seems to be changing every day, but that's my gut reaction.

Thing two: Why has the doctor been so careful to avoid talk of weight loss for all these years, only to bring it up now, at the very age when girls are most likely to develop eating disorders and poor body image issues? Does this seem like a contradiction? A problem? It does to me.

So anyway. We've been talking about it and we're going to try portion control, exercise, and modified Atkins principles--cutting way back on carbs, especially "empty" ones (you know, the yummy ones like pasta, white bread, white rice...) but not eliminating them totally. Will it work? I don't know. We're going to try to do it as a family, so she doesn't feel picked on or left out.

Sigh. I hate this stuff. I've never dieted successfully in my whole life, so I can't really advise her. On occasion I've lost weight but never when trying to (except post-baby). I guess the good news is that I survived adolescence feeling chunky and being teased for it (though I weighed considerably less than she does) and not developing an eating disorder despite being around anorexic girls. I know lots of people really think eating disorders aren't much about weight at all, they're about control, and maybe we can give her enough control over both her eating and her life that we all weather this crisis. But I'm sad and angry about it.

back again

Whew! It's been weeks since I posted, weeks since I had time to sit down and even think about posting. Two weeks at the mother-in-law's with only slow internet (and, of course, the expectation that one is "present" most of the time, rather than hogging the computer) is the main reason, though probably holiday-stress would have slowed me down anyway. This is my favorite part of the holidays, in some ways. The kids go back to school tomorrow, we are about to celebrate Epiphany (no hype but lots of meaning), and we have one more week before Mark & I go back to school. Not that a week seems like enough time to construct a new syllabus and revise an old one, but there you have it.

Some random thoughts from the past few weeks:

*is it just me, or was the last LOTR segment incredibly tedious? I mean, I could look at Viggo Mortensen and Orlando Bloom all day, but it feels like that's all I did.

*we may say Christmas is about the kids but it's stressful on them too. Mine, for example, aren't used to having only each other to hang out with for two weeks at a time. And it showed. That's all I'm going to say about that.

*the toy of the moment is always worth giving, even though it will break in the first 24 hours of play. Luckily Nick got two remote-control cars. Only one is broken.

*Legoland is for kids younger than 14.

*Trader Joe's can solve nearly every holiday crisis. Southern California has a grocery strike going on and it was pretty much the only place we could shop--and that was just fine. (Just buy an extra bottle of wine with each load of groceries...) Now if there were only one closer than 100 miles away...

*Am I the only person in the world who really loves holiday letters? One from my oldest, dearest friend began, "Both kids peed on me today." I think this is genius--and a real break from the holiday letters of my past. But I have always loved them, always loved reading about the goings-on of people I might not even have known, or remembered. So much the better when they're about people I do know and love. But as a genre I think they are widely dissed, and I am out to restore their value. Send me your favorite holiday letters, or lines from them!

my Christmas prayer

It may be a while before I post again--or not, depending on the next few days. In any case I wanted to post my Christmas prayer here. I wrote it to be used at our services Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but I won't be here to hear it. It's a concluding collect for the prayers of the people; just a short thing, but it expresses, I hope, how I'm feeling about Christmas this year, and what I'm praying for.

We welcome you, Jesus, who came to us as one of the most vulnerable of all. Grant that we may remember to seek you in the strangest places. Teach us the hope of the expectant Mary and the frightened shepherds, that we may continue to find new life in the darkness of our world. Give us the paradoxical peace of the newborn, which interrupts us in all that we do, to call us back to your presence and love. In your name we pray, Amen.

a little better cooking news

Maybe I'm better at taking orders than initiating today. I took the kids to church this evening to help out with cooking dinner for our homeless guests: we host a group for a week every year at around Christmas time. This was the first night. Someone else had planned the meal, done the shopping, started things off. So I chopped carrots and potatoes, stirred soup, made coffee...everything went fine.

The kids were great, too. They helped pack bag lunches for the morning, peeled carrots and cucumbers, chopped (only Mariah), and generally ran around being useful for about an hour. Then everything was done (there's often a "too many cooks" problem at this event) and they watched Jungle Book for twenty minutes or so until it was time for dinner. Oh well.

bad cooking day

I thought I'd make cookies and spiced nuts as gifts for some folks we won't be seeing at Christmas time this year. I'd made the cookie dough yesterday and it was in the fridge waiting to be rolled into little balls and baked. I got the first batch in, and went on to do something else while they baked. I could smell them as they baked--they smelled good. Then, after a while, not so good. I thought maybe I'd let something fall onto the oven floor and it was burning.

Not so. It was the cookies. Salvageable, but let's just say that's the trayfull we'll be eating here. The other two came out fine.

Then the spiced nuts. I dug up an old recipe I got from Readerville a year or two ago. It looked good, but I didn't have enough nuts. So, off to the store. An hour later, back loaded down with bags. But, yes, I did actually remember the nuts. So now to mix the ingredients together: maple syrup, olive oil, nuts, herbs, cayenne, salt...

And into the oven at 300 for forty minutes.

When the buzzer went off I went to check and they looked good. I was shaking the pan, trying to break up some of the clumps, when something happened. Next thing I knew the pan was upside-down on the open oven door, and nuts were everywhere: on the floor, on the oven floor, in the drawer underneath the oven...

Again, some were more salvageable than others. But maybe this is not the year for food gifts. You think?

reading causes colds

Nick has a cold. Like every other elementary school kid, I might add. We spent about an hour in the doctor's waiting room this morning and I almost packed Nick up and came home, fearing that sitting around there might make him sicker, cancelling out any benefit we had from the consultation. But we stuck it out and now have a prescription for cough syrup.

But, before we went, Nick and I had a great conversation. We were talking about his cold, and how long he'd been sick. (It feels like weeks, but can it be, really?) And after that we were talking about his reading, which is getting much better (unlike the cold, I might add). And he looked at me very seriously and said, "You know, Mommy, last year when I couldn't read I didn't really have very many colds. And now that I can read better I keep getting sick. So maybe reading is making me sick."

He was kidding. I think.

Peg Bracken

I'm "I Hate to Cook"ing tonight. The I Hate to Cook Book, by Peg Bracken, is a classic of my youth. With illustrations by Hilary Knight, of Eloise fame, no less. My copy was purchased at, I think, Small World Books in Venice CA one afternoon when I was hosting a dinner party that evening and just had to have the recipe for Crazy Cake. OK, she calls it "Cockeyed Cake" but somehow it got crazy in our family early on and that's the name that stuck. It's the chocolate cake made with both oil and vinegar, no butter, no eggs...and it is weirdly good. It even turned up in this Moosewood cookbook some years back, somewhat gussied up but effectively the same thing.

The thing about The I Hate to Cook Book is that it's almost a little time capsule. Published in 1960, it assumes moms stay home and dads go to work--and that this drives moms crazy, so they need to occupy themselves with almost anything but child care or cooking. Most of the recipes involve something out of a can, or something in a package, but the cookie recipes are pretty good and crazy cake, while not the best chocolate cake you'll ever eat, is the first one I ever made. And the first one Mariah did. And that's worth something.

I think Peg Bracken is a lot like Erma Bombeck and Jean Kerr, those mom-humorists of the sixties who are almost forgotten now. The cookbook isn't so great for the recipes--and the humor is, as I'm suggesting, dated--but it is still fun to open up and browse through every now and then.

So here's a tidbit:

"It is a lucky thing that little children can't just decide, bang, they're going to have a party, the way grownups do, and then have it. This is one area where what Mama says still goes. What little kids have is birthday parties, and that's it. And actually they're not quite so horrible close up as they are at a distance. The only thing to fear is fear itself."

She then goes on to recommend that all kid parties be tied to a holiday, so as not to tax Mom with coming up with a theme (summer parties where there is no holiday can be, in a most un-PC naming, "hobo parties"). Later she suggests freezing maraschino cherries in ice cubes for the lemonade, noting that "If there are some left over, they're good in Old Fashioneds, too." What kills me is that this turns up as a tip for people who hate to cook, who are assumed to be out of their kitchen as much as possible, whereas today it would turn up in a Martha Stewart mag of some sort, right? Same tip, different audience. Why?

Anyway. She also wrote The I Hate to Housekeep Book, a copy of which used to live in my parents' house but apparently does so no longer. This one I have to find, because--unlike cooking--I truly do hate housekeeping.

By the way I'm making "Elevator Lady Spice Cookies" and "Chewy Fudge-Cake Cookies" tonight, in the hopes that they will be good enough to take to a holiday open house tomorrow.

kids say the darnedest ...

So Nick and I are listening to NPR : Morning Edition for Friday, December 5, 2003 yesterday, and the story about boomer bands reuniting comes on. (Scroll down almost to the end of the show to hear it.) Now, I never know how much Nick hears when I listen to NPR--frankly, I hope not much, especially when they're talking about Ugandan kids killing other kids. (He hasn't mentioned the Lord's Resistance Army lately, so there's hope.)

Anyway they're talking about Simon & Garfunkel, Paul McCartney, Elton John, whoever...and they get to the part about ticket prices. "Ninety dollars!" exclaims Nick. "For ninety dollars those tickets better be made of gold!"

Advent

Here's a nice post on I Advent from Going Jesus. I especially like the prayer from Henri Nouwen.

giving thanks

Tomorrow's World AIDS day so today in church we heard about AIDS and the church. And I'm giving thanks that our church community is inclusive and that my children are healthy. I'll be back with more blogging soon, I hope, but I'm still recovering from ten hours plus on the road yesterday (including more time than I care to remember on the ever-pleasant NJ Turnpike) as well as from T'giving. Actually we had a lovely time, but it's always a bit crazy and I need some down time. So this is it.

baby goats

...are so incredibly cute. Mama and daddy goats are, you know, goat-like. They push their noses through the fence at the children's farm park and beg for food. When they're not doing that they're not doing much.

But the baby goats--we saw twins, born 10/28--are adorable. They frolic. They jump. They twitch in the air while they're jumping. You might even say they dance. They play-fight, butting heads with each other, jumping on top of each other and then immediately falling off. They run up the little ramp someone has set up for them, and then skitter off the upended plastic tub that sits at one end of the ramp. They can't get any purchase on the plastic, so they slide off, jumping as soon as they land and running off again.

They chase each other around, then forget what they're doing and stop.

Good thing the parents were around looking all adult-goat-like; otherwise, we would all have wanted to take a baby home. And have been mighty disappointed when it grew up.

No, this is not an allegory. I'm actually finding my human kids get better with age. Though if they'd jump around and kick their heels in mid-air, that would be cool.

The Gender Genie

This algorithm supposedly can predict your sex based on 500 words of your writing. I posted in my column from Literary Mama and it guessed right. But wait, there's more! I pasted in a book review I'm working on and it guessed totally wrong! So, hmm, academic writing is masculine, my column is feminine? Why am I not surprised?

Thanks to This Woman's Work for the link...

The Gender Genie

Stirring the Cake

Today is Mom's birthday, and it's time to tell the stirring the cake story again. I know I haven't told it here.

You see, Mom's birthday comes at a particularly busy time of the school year, which is really the only calendar I've ever been attuned to. In fact I've rarely seen her on her birthday since I started prep school at age 13. We usually just shift the celebration to Thanksgiving--as, indeed, we'll do next week, since we're driving up for Thanksgiving again this year.

In the fall of 1977, I was living with two other girls in a studio apartment in the basement of our prep school infirmary--apparently the school was overenrolled and a few of us lucked out with these "cushy" digs. (We're talking bunk beds and another single bed dropped on top of ugly linoleum, with a little kitchenette in one corner...not terribly cushy, but access to cooking equipment was always worth something.) Abby was living upstairs in a regular double. According to my palm pilot calendar Mom's birthday was on a Thursday that year, so it must have been the day before that Abby and I decided to go into town and get a cake mix to make Mom a cake. Not that she was going to benefit by it, but it was the thought, right? And Wednesdays were half-days for us then, so that must have been it. (Either that, or this happened in the fall of 1976, when her birthday actually fell on a Wednesday. I can't remember what dorm I was in then, but perhaps Abby & I were roommates and I've just conflated two episodes? Not that it really matters...)

Anyway we went into town, got the cake mix, and came back up to my apartment to make the cake. Abby had a trick for making a peppermint chocolate cake--a few drops of peppermint extract in the mix--so we had done that, and the apartment smelled fabulous. Oh, I can still remember how fabulous it smelled.

The cake came out of the oven and we got it cooling, then decided to frost it. It was still pretty warm, but it smelled so tempting we just couldn't wait. We'd bought a can of chocolate frosting, and we popped it open.

Well, you know what happened. It began to fall apart in big clumps, the frosting sticking to the warm cake and pulling it apart. At first we were crestfallen--all our work, going to naught! But pretty quickly we saw the humor in it. We dumped the whole mess into a bowl and just stirred away, frosting and cake in big gobs filling up the bowl. Then we ate it.

Yum.

So that was the year we "stirred the cake." I think we sang happy birthday to Mom as we ate it. I remember it every year around this time, and it gets better and better in my memory, though I don't think I've ever done it again.

Science: Mother Knows Best

More mother-related science. I teach at the same university with Craig Kinsley, which is sort of a brush-with-greatness for me, since he gets so much national and even international press. I even wrote up some of this research for Brain, Child some years ago. That had to do with the rat-moms getting more courageous about seeking food. Now there's more: ACCORDING TO RESEARCH done by Craig Kinsley at the University of Richmond, mother rats are less susceptible to stress than those who have never given birth. Read the rest here:Science: Mother Knows Best

The thing is, being neither a baboon nor a rat, I'm not sure how helpful these animal studies are. On the one hand, yes, I'm more courageous than before I had kids. And I think the health benefits of having friends--particularly friends who will groom you!--are pretty obvious. But: less susceptible to stress? Um, no.

Baboon mothers

Among baboons, moms with lots of female friends are the most successful parents, according to a new study that supports the idea that social support is an essential part of being a baboon -- or a human. So the big question is whether there is any relationship between baboon mothers and human ones. Read about it here:ajc.com | News | Baboon mothers with social networks are more successful at raising young, study shows

my column is up!

Yep, this is me. Midlife Mama

the other shoe drops

So who else figured out Nick was actually sick, after last night's fight? Yep, as usual, the bad behavior presaged a day at home from school with a nasty cold. I've been at this parenting thing for over 13 years, and both kids have often had this pattern of bad behavior right as they get sick, and I'm still always figuring it out after the fact. Though I do recall that there were times, in the throes of toddlerhood, when we would say "I hope he's sick" as a way of explaining behavior. Sigh.

Anyway the kids spent the day at home (Mariah's still not better, and her school is off tomorrow for conferences, so there goes another week...) and, according to Mark, who stayed home with them, they were angels. Figures. Not that I'm bitter or anything, but by the time I got home Nick was working up to something again. Late day, low energy, no reserves...

Maybe I need a sick day.

Fighting about food...

I know "they" say not to do it--fight about food, that is. "They" say it will cause eating disorders, make meals stressful, all those bad things. We do it anyway. But tonight was the worst. We went out to eat, partly because I'd already been fighting with Nick over dumb stuff and just needed a break. He'd wanted to play on the playground after school, for example, and I'd denied him because it was raining. We'd argued about that ("It looks like it's going to stop soon") all the way to the car. In the grocery store we'd had a battle over which chips to buy. The kid can barely read and he's insisting on the ones that look more like Fritos than the ones that look like Tostitos. Why? I dunno. I want the cheaper --Tostitos-ish-- ones, but I let him win, because I won over the mac-n-cheese five minutes earlier. [Edit: by the way, he was right. The chips he chose were awesome. Mark and I finished the bag today...11/15] Then we fight because I have to call him five times. He says it was just three times. But either way, he wasn't coming when I called, kept going the other direction from where I wanted to go... it sounds petty as I write it down, and indeed it was, but it was also exhaustingly real. This is what it's like some days with a six-year-old.

So, here we are in La Casita. The food has been put in front of us and we need to eat pretty quickly since we're taking Mariah to the high school open house in an hour. We all dig in. Nick's still eating chips. [Edit: not the chips from the earlier fight. Sorry, I guess that really did sound pretty bad!] We remind him he's got a meal in front of him -- the oh-so-authentic cheeseburger and fries. We get ketchup distributed appropriately on the plate. I'm about halfway through my chimichanga. He's still eating chips.

Finally he eats a french fry, after complaining that they're too hot. Then another, and another. Something in me wants to remind him that he's also got a burger. I restrain myself as another five or six fries go down, but then I have to say it. "Nick, eat some of your burger."

He eats another fry, drinks some water.

"Nick, you ordered the cheeseburger and I'd like you to eat some of it."

"I want to eat the fries first."

"But I don't want you to fill up on fries and not have room for your burger. You like burgers -- you ordered it -- eat some, ok?"

Another french fry. Mark grabs his hand as he's reaching for another one.

"Nick, listen to Mommy and eat your cheeseburger now."

"I want to save it."

"Just a bite. Just take a bite and you can go back to the fries."

I'm already wondering why this is important. It's not like anything on the plate is all that healthy. It's not like he would die if all he ate was fries. But it hurts me somehow to see him doggedly shoveling them in, ignoring the slab-o-meat(ish) that he asked for. I tell him so.

"Nick, I just really want to see you eat some of the cheeseburger before you get too filled up on fries."

Well, it went on. And as usual, I was ready to back down after about five minutes. After all, I don't really care. I realize I don't care at all. I realize all I care about is finishing my meal in peace, but that's not going to happen.

Mark cares. He cares that Nick defies my authority, he cares that stable boundaries are set. So he insists while I begin to backpedal.

"I have a better reason than you," I say. "I want you to eat what's healthy first, in case you get too full for it later. You haven't told me your reason."

"I just want to do it this way. I did it this way before and you let me."

"I can't believe that, Nick. I always want you to eat your healthy food first. Or whatever's healthier, anyway. Not that burgers are all that healthy..."

He sees an opening. "French fries are just as healthy as cheeseburgers and ketchup. Maybe more. They're potatoes and you always want me to eat potatoes."

(This is true. He hates potatoes unless they are french fries or chips.)

"OK, just eat. I don't care."

But Mark still cares. "Eat a bite," he insists again.

Nick cares. For some reason he cares more about eating the french fries first than pleasing me. No, he cares more about defying me than anything else. But he's crying, because Daddy is mad at him.

It goes on. My plate is clean. So is Mariah's. The open house starts in fifteen minutes, and it's ten minutes away. Nick is sobbing, having been denied another french fry until he eats a bite of cheeseburger. Mariah is aghast. "Why does this matter?" she asks him.

"It doesn't," I say.

"It does," says Mark.

Sobbing still, Nick shouts, "Fine," picks up the burger, tears a bite out of it, chews through his tears, and picks up another french fry. He eats one more bite of burger --again at Mark's urging-- before finishing the plate of fries. Mark and Mariah leave for the open house while Nick and I sit across the table from each other. I watch him finish the burger, dipping bite after bite into the ketchup still on the plate. He's calm now, not a tear in sight.

"Nick, do you know why that happened?"

"Because you wouldn't let me eat my fries," he answers, reasonably enough.

"But, it happened before. Since I picked you up, you haven't done anything I asked you to. Why is that?"

"I'm not feeling good," he says. "Can we stop talking about this?"

So we do. What's to be gained, after all?

I remember the Salon piece that I linked a few days ago (scroll down). Some days you just don't want to say "no" any more. This was one of them, but I said it anyway, and wished I hadn't.

Writing about Food

Last year I began a document ambitiously titled "A Year in Food." For two months (ok, so nothing like a year) I wrote as often as I could find the time, about what I'd been cooking. Re-reading it this morning was a revelation: the meals I made! The time I spent! Fall cooking always gets me going, and this year fall has started and stopped so often that I've lost track. But still. Last fall I made bread just about every other day, soups, roasts, crock-pot meals... it made my mouth water to remember it all.

I've been wondering why I wrote about it, though. Mom used to keep lists of the dozens and dozens of cookies she baked every Christmas season. I think they are still there, on a back page in her old Joy of Cooking (the one whose spine cracked so long ago that even the tape she used to hold it together has atrophied). She would consult the previous year's list every Advent when she started up again. Did she keep the lists to remind her of what we'd liked? Out of some obsessive-compulsive need for order? To get "credit" for the work she'd done?

At some level I think that's it, with my "year in food" as well as Mom's lists. So much of mothering, so much of living, goes unacknowledged. So many days I wonder "what did I do today?" Keeping a list, writing about food, gives me a tangible reminder of my activities, activities that leave no trace except in the expanding and contracting waistbands of my clothes. As I read through my cooking journal from last year I was astonished at how much I accomplished--the cooking, the feeding, which were my primary focus, but also the things we did with the kids, the academic work I did--I recorded them all (or most of them) and I really did get a sense of how much I had done. All this evanescent work, still there on the screen.

I told Ann the acupuncturist that I thought of my knitting as "creativity lite"--as something I could do relatively quickly, without a full investment of mind and heart, that ended up in a tangible product. More and more I realize I need to be making things, whether it's scarves or cookies or earrings or words on a page. Words on a page may be the most satisfying, but they also require the greatest investment. So last year, I guess, I invested the time in cookies and breads, then doubled their value to me as products by writing about them as well.

I still think a book recounting a year in food could be interesting. But mine petered out in December in the pre-Christmas rush and I never returned to it. What if I started in January?

The body always knows...

I've been coasting along pretty calmly these last few weeks, insisting to all who asked that, yes, I was busy, and yes, there's a lot going on, but --thanks for asking-- I'm really doing fine. Hmm. Lots of people asking. Maybe they knew something I didn't know?

I really did feel fine. I was eating ok, sleeping ok (well, relatively), not really shouting at the kids--

Then I got whacked by the mother of all headaches Saturday morning. And despite naprosyn and naps, it hung in there. Sunday wasn't quite as bad, and today's even a little better. But now I know--

I was really proud of myself for how well I was managing. I've been really working on staying balanced, not getting too frantic about work, keeping calm--and it was working OK, but that pride thing, I think, was not.

Maybe it should have been a clue when my massage Friday didn't really work out the kinks as it usually does.

Maybe I should have paid attention the couple of times I did wake up in the night and couldn't get back to sleep.

Maybe I should have noticed that I was complaining about the kids, even if I wasn't yelling at them.

Why do I have to keep learning these lessons over and over again? I spent 90 minutes with a reading/prayer group last night talking (among other things) about how we need to learn that we're not in control, and here I was thinking I was, all along.

So, note to self: you're not in control. And, especially, try not to take credit for when it feels like you are.

There.

My headache's not gone, but it's a whole lot better. And I'm going to try to get to the gym this afternoon.

Salon.com Life | Letting my kids go crazy

Here's the thing about motherhood: You say the word "No" all the time, and this word and many of its kind slowly begin to strangle your language, like weeds wrapping themselves around the prettier words you imagined using with your child like "Yes" and "Love" and "That's beautiful honey." But "No" forces its way in and eventually you can't help yourself, this urge to curb, squelch, and put a lid on almost everything your kids get into. Not because you're a meanie but because they are constantly pushing you and it's exhausting and ... Read the rest here:
Salon.com Life | Letting my kids go crazy

Silent Lunch

I put a picture of Nick's on the refrigerator the other day. It depicts "the wite wich in hr sled" and Aslan. Yes, we've been reading the Narnia books. But that's not what I want to talk about. After I put the picture up Nick told me that he'd drawn it during "silent lunch." Apparently some Thursdays lunch is silent. I'm not sure if this is a desperate effort by the cafeteria workers to regain their sanity, or a pedagogical plot by the teachers, but it amuses me. I had heard of "silent lunches" before this year and they always sounded bad. Why make kids be quiet while they eat? Eating and talking are two of the great civilized pleasures, best practiced together. We were definitely nay-sayers.

But silent lunch this year is a little different. In the past the kids had to keep quiet and weren't even allowed to gesture or pass notes to each other. This year there's paper and pencils in the cafeteria and they can write notes. So when Nick thought C. was being mean he wrote her a note: "your mean." It got passed around, and she wasn't happy about it, but at least he was communicating.

Apparently M. wrote a note that said "your butt smells," and got in trouble for it. I tried to figure out why. Was it just the word? (Mariah was once punished for talking about Beavis and Butthead, because talking about them entailed saying the b-word.) Was it that it was mean? It couldn't be that it was because it wasn't true...

In any event I think it's fine that they're passing notes. Last year they couldn't even write their own names. Now they're writing, they're communicating, they're using their words. And if what they want to use them for is to tell each other how smelly they are, well, it's better than fighting, isn't it?

(PS--I also love that M. had to ask Nick how to spell his note.)

Mothering in the Ivory Tower

Check it out:Mothering in the Ivory Tower

Literary Mama

Literary Mama has launched! I've got a small role to play with this mag, but it's really a huge joint effort of a lot of very talented women. Check it out! And let me know what you think...

Opting in, opting out

I've been thinking about those articles I linked below some more. Lisa Belkin's piece on Opting Out and the piece from the Chronicle about quitting a tenured position, especially. I have one friend who left her tenured position recently, and others who've never really tried for one, but I don't know many, really, who are opting out in the way Belkin and the pseudonymous professor outline. What I do know are many who are dissatisfied with the way work is--and I think that's the real problem. Belkin gets there in the end, too. We work too hard, we don't know when to quit, the expectations are too demanding... yada yada. Today I was thinking that the same thing is true of school as it is of work. Neither of my kids is really overstressed from homework, but I still see the stress of long days spent doing busywork, long days spent "being good." They come home tired, crabby, anti-social. Not always, but often enough that I wonder what they'd be like if we homeschooled. What we'd be like if home, school, and work were less at odds with each other.

I don't have any answers, just questions.

The Chronicle: 10/31/2003: When Tenure Isn't Enough

This article doesn't really describe my life, but it's close:"I began to wonder if being a healthy adult and being an excellent professor were mutually exclusive at my college." If reading the article requires a subscription, sorry!
The Chronicle: 10/31/2003: When Tenure Isn't Enough

Edit: OK, it does require a subscription. So here's a sampling:

BALANCING ACT

When Tenure Isn't Enough
Overworked and unhappy, a tenured professor decides she wants out

I just resigned a tenured position. I did everything right. I worked hard to earn a Ph.D. I landed a tenure-track job at a small, liberal-arts college. I excelled in teaching, research, and service. The year I earned tenure I also received the highest faculty award given at the college. And then I quit ... with no other job in sight.

...
Gender, personality, and college culture are all factors that swayed my decision. Female professors, especially at my patriarchal college, are implicitly expected to do more of the scut work. Committee assignments, work with student organizations, advising, and assessment all seem to fall heavier on the average female professor.

...
No matter how much I did, I always got the impression that I should be doing more. I remember once questioning why I didn't get the highest rating for college and community service on my yearly evaluation. I had done numerous activities that I thought clearly merited an excellent rating. The administrator told me that I could get the highest rating only if I worked so hard that I totally collapsed at the end of the year. Anything less than that was not considered excellent service.
I began to wonder if being a healthy adult and being an excellent professor were mutually exclusive at my college.



By the way, this particular professor is childless. So it's not only an issue for moms--as she and Lisa Belkin both point out in their pieces, it's an issue for the American workplace generally. Why do we define ourselves through our jobs? And why do only moms get the free "get out of the workplace" pass? Not all moms, not most moms, I know...but there is a tacit understanding in our culture that mothering is important enough to give up even the most important job for. Not, however, fathering. And not at all, being a good person. Or am I overstating?

NATIONAL POST

You've already read this one, right? The Opt-Out Revolution. Salon's Joan Walsh had a great response:Clueless in Manhattan. Here's a sample: "I also believe that modern feminism, disproportionately represented in the '70s by childless women, didn't tell the truth about what motherhood would feel like, which is part of why Belkin and her subjects are so confused, and feel like they're telling some new forbidden truth. It's a truth all right, but it's not forbidden; it's just partial and incomplete."

They're talking about what women want in Canada, too. Here's an excerpt from a great piece: When the rare man leaves the work force to tend to children, it should be noted, no one suggests he's being kept or is a man of leisure. Last year, Fortune magazine ran a gushy cover story titled "Trophy Husbands," which reported on the growing number of men who are staying home to raise families while their supercharged wives work. The subhead enthused: "Arm candy? Are you kidding? While their fast-track wives go to work, stay-at-home husbands mind the kids. They deserve a trophy for trading places."

Meanwhile, its cover on women who dropped out to stay home was titled "Goodbye Boss Lady, Hello Soccer Mom." It's all so predictable.

Read the whole article here:NATIONAL POST

Cinderella...

I just learned that Nick didn't know the Cinderella story. I can't remember not knowing it, and I can't remember first telling or reading it to Mariah--I think at some level I thought it was just one of those stories that's in the culture that everyone knew. (I thought everyone knew who Bob Dylan was, too, but it recently came to my attention that Mariah didn't know what his voice sounded like. And references to Barry Manilow are equally meaningless to her, though that doesn't trouble me quite as much...)

It came up with Nick because he wanted me to read to him, and I was tired of all his books. He's big into repetition right now--repetition of chapter books. So we have read Charlotte's Web, The Trumpet of the Swan, Stuart Little, Mr. Popper's Penguins, and Homer Price over and over again. I have also read him the entire Chronicles of Prydain (the 5-volume set by Lloyd Alexander) once, and some books in it more than once, and the other day we finished reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. But for some reason we just don't have shelves-full of chapter books for pre- and early-readers (I think maybe Mariah skipped this stage) and so I was scanning my shelves for something--anything!--new to read, and I came across Philip Pullman's I Was a Rat!. I pulled it off the shelf (along with a few others) and offered Nick some choices. He was curious about the Pullman book but wanted to know more, so I started to tell him.

"It's about the boy--the rat in Cinderella who gets turned into a boy."

"What rat?"

"Well, the rat who becomes a little coach boy. Remember?"

"No."

"Do you know the story of Cinderella?"

"No."

No joke. So I offered to tell it to him.

OK, big feminist dilemma here. I've written about Cinderella fairly extensively, teach various versions in my children's lit course, know all the parodies and revisions and "PC" versions and everything. I've read The Paper-Bag Princess to Nick a hundred times (give or take...) When I teach Cinderella to my children's lit students they always moan that I've ruined it for them by pointing out the feminist objections to the tale: that it emphasizes female competition, the undesireability of older women, the need for young women to be "saved" by men, the necessity of beauty rather than wit or goodness for that "salvation." There's a lot to object to, and I don't really mind "ruining" it for 20-year-olds, who are old enough to handle some complexity. On the other hand, it's a pretty foundational text in our culture, and it expresses some useful things about sibling relationships, the value of fantasy, and the ability of even the poor and oppressed to make changes in their situations. And, it's a pretty good story--rich with magic and cruelty and happy endings.

So: what to do? Tell him the "real" version (and if so, which one?) or alter it? But wait, I need there to be a rat-coach boy, or the whole thing makes no sense. And really the rat-coach boy is fairly insignificant in my understanding of the tale (which is, of course, why the Pullman book works).

So I told him the classic version, pretty much straight out of Perrault. (No rat boy in the Grimms as far as I could remember...) It was a pretty bare-bones version, nothing fancy, but it did have the pumpkin coach and the various animal transformations.

And that was it. He didn't ask me to read the Pullman book after that, and he hasn't mentioned it again. Instead we read Regarding the Fountain, a complex novel-in-letters and memos and newspaper clippings by Kate Klise. I have no idea how much of it he got--it's really more a book for independent readers in, oh, 3rd grade and up--but he got enough. Puns and everything. And there were no references to Cinderella.

almost

We've got the pumpkins carved and Mariah's been working on costumes so I guess it's almost Hallowe'en. Feels like sacrilege to say it, especially when you've got two kids, but I don't really care about Hallowe'en one way or the other. I actually really like All Saints Day, which is Nov. 1. It's a great opportunity to think about all sorts of saints, canonized or not, people who've made a difference. Plus the music is usually terrific. But I've never been a big one for costumes--not since the days of the gypsy costume made by wearing Mom's clothes, makeup (!), and curtain rings for earrings. Since then it's all gone downhill, if you ask me.

But we've got carved pumpkins sitting on the porch, and I've already bought the candy, so I guess we're all set.

update

So, the phone was out because the phone company was upgrading our line in preparation for our DSL installation. Woulda been nice if they'd warned me...

giving in

Nick's home sick, sort of. He complained of stomach and head aches this morning, and despite not having a fever and eating a perfectly reasonable breakfast he insisted that he couldn't go to school. I was trying to be hard line with him--after all, he really didn't seem sick to me, and I had lots of work to do myself, and I didn't want him to manipulate me. Then I remembered 6th grade, when I missed school, oh, one or two days a week, it seems. And I remember how much my stomach hurt, those mornings, though it's true I usually felt better by mid-day. And nothing was wrong with me, or nothing any physician could diagnose, at any rate. Eventually my pediatrician gave up and prescribed valium. Yes, valium, for an 11-year-old kid. I was so impressed by myself, however--that I actually needed "tranquilizers"! That someone thought I was going crazy!--that I think I only ever took one, and I went back to school. In hindsight it seems that I was anxious about our upcoming move, and having trouble adjusting to the idea of adolescence (in my case, still several years away).

Anyway. I remembered that my mother sighed, and tried to get me to eat breakfast, and sent my siblings off to school, and let me stay home. And I still got into college, yes, and graduate school, so apparently those days spent at home (staring into the windows of my classroom, truth be told, since it was right across the street) didn't do much harm. And being believed, I truly think, helped me.

So I let Nick stay home, though I don't know what it is that he's trying to stay away from. We're not moving, after all. But he's been having a tougher transition to 1st grade than any of us expected--he loves the teacher, and the kids, but he's been having a harder time following the rules than he did last year or the year before, and I'm a bit bewildered by that. And a big part of me thinks the rules are stupid and he's just fine, but then again they are the rules and I'm kind of stuck there.

So he's been home all day. He changed back into pajamas and dutifully got back into bed when I suggested that maybe he needed some more rest, but he's been up and down all day since then, finding things to do, things to talk to me about, lunch to eat, games to play. And, finally, after only 4 hours of that, I suggested Loony Tunes. I admit it, I'm the one who brought up TV. We taped a few hours of Saturday morning cartoons before we yanked the cable last week, and Nick can watch these same few hours endlessly. I hope he doesn't, today, but I was feeling a bit crowded, anxious about my work, and in need of a little quiet. So there it is--he's plugged in and I'm typing away here.

And apparently our phone is out. Or at least I couldn't get a dial tone last time I tried, and, yes, I checked, and the extension in Mariah's room is NOT off the hook (that was the problem last time). So here we are, Nick and me, at home in the world.

time for a change?

I'm feeling antsy, unsettled. This has been going on for a while. A couple of years ago--actually, yes, almost two years ago exactly--I began to think I was feeling a call to ordained ministry. For a while exploring that kept me from feeling antsy--or, if I did, I attributed it to the fact that I was still exploring, not actually making the change. Then, I decided (or was it decided for me? anyway) that probably ordained ministry wasn't my call. So, fine. I had a great summer after that, feeling very centered and happy even if I wasn't particularly getting any work done. I knew I'd be teaching writing in the fall, and working on Literary Mama, and otherwise doing cool stuff, so I felt as if things were going in the right direction.

Now it's the fall, and I am teaching writing, and Literary Mama will launch in less than two weeks, but I'm just feeling stuck and bored. I haven't been writing much (not that you noticed, right?). I'm too busy to really get to work--or that's what I say to myself--but then I feel too boring to write, anyway. I've been knitting a lot, which I decided today is, for me, creativity lite--it keeps me occupied, makes me feel as if I'm making something, but it's not really what I want to be making. (OK, it's fun to make stuff, and I'll get some good Christmas presents out of it, but it's not my life's work, that's all I mean.)

So, what is my life's work? Is it teaching overprivileged kids, maybe getting them to recognize their privilege? Writing every now and then and hoping someone reads me? Raising good kids, loving my husband, contributing to my church? Those are all important, I know, and I am fortunate to be able to do them all, not to mention the luxury of getting paid and having medical insurance. Nothing to sneeze at, I know.

But.

I feel antsy.

Stay tuned.

too long between posts

...and I have no excuse except that I've been watching too much baseball, and my teams lost. (As a Mets fan I have no particular stake except in seeing underdogs win, though, so at this point I guess I'm with the Marlins...)

and I've been busy at work, and we had houseguests, and I think I'm coming down with a cold.

Still, I'll try to get something up this weekend. I started scratching out notes on a pad as I sat on the grass watching Nick's "soccer game" this afternoon (four-on-four, no-defense, half-field, everyone under 8--you see why the scare quotes) and I had an idea or so but I'm just too tired to type it all in now.

TODDLER is out, though! I'm in it! Go buy it!

kids and friendship

Sometimes I envy my kids their friendships. Both of them have friends who have known them almost since birth. In Nick's case, I especially love to see him play with Marina (she of "Help me Hell"). They have the kind of friendship only kids whose parents are friends can have, I think. We have done stuff together as families since long before Nick was even thought of, so he has just been incorporated into the larger group, as has Marina. We're lucky they get along--it doesn't always work out that way. Some years ago we were friends with another couple who had a son Mariah's age. When they were kindergartners, they were inseparable. Mariah hates me to tell this story, but they even used to kiss whenever they met. At one point I swear they were experimenting with making out--when they were in about first grade. But then something happened. We took a joint vacation at the beach one year--I think Mariah may have been in third or fourth grade. And, basically, they refused to play together, only nagged and whined at each other, but also refused to be separated. It was hell. Here we were having this great time with the parents--cooking fabulous meals, staying up late at night drinking on the balcony, hanging out for hours at the beach--and the kids were completely unable to be in the same room without fighting, but wouldn't go into different rooms. Aargh!

Of course now that couple is divorced and we don't see them any more. Not that we had anything to do with that.

But the thing about these friendships is the confidence they seem to inspire. Mariah still does have one very good friend from our earliest days here--they met when she was not quite four--and although they have only spent one year at the same school, in the 10 years of their friendship, they are utterly confident in each other's friendship, care, and love. They don't talk every day, but they are in some significant way deeply connected--and expect always to be.

I know they may not be. I moved when I was five, and again at eleven, and have no friends left from either of those early periods. My best and longest-connected friend and I met on the first day of ninth grade, and I'm pleased and sometimes amazed that we have stayed connected. There have been long periods of disconnect, but we still come back to each other. And there's never anything to explain. Newer friendships, important and strengthening as they may be, always require a certain catching-up, a certain period of sharing histories, before they are fully as comfortable as these old ones.

Sometimes I think it's possible that Mark and I will spend the rest of our lives here, and that in that case our kids will always be able to connect with the friends they've made here. While the idea of living in the same place for the rest of my life is actually a little more frightening than appealing (and I do like it here, that's not the problem), the benefit to my kids makes me feel better about it.

On the other hand travel is good for you too.

hopelessly behind

I can't believe it's been over a week since I posted. Well, of course, I can. It's been busy at work, and I'm trying hard to stay off the internet on weekends. So that doesn't leave much time for updating the blog. Go read Linda's at Plotsville instead! I love what she's saying about Jane Eyre. It's hard to know how autobiographical the novel is. Brontë certainly knew what it was like to be dependent--that's why she and Emily went to Brussels to try to upgrade their teaching and governessing skills. They never did manage to get any students at the school they tried to open in their home, but they did work as teachers and governesses before finding some measure of success as novelists. And writing, difficult though it can be, was a far lesser servitude than teaching, which really was like being a glorified servant when the Brontë sisters were doing it.

I think I'll save Jane and Rochester's first meeting for another post.