My Level of Awareness

Or, how I became an attachment parent and didn’t even know it. 

I haven’t really blogged about my son in a while, so I figure I can, with a certain amount of legitimacy, claim that I have avoided becoming one of the my-son-is-so-fantastic-oh-my-god-just-look-at-him parents that cause others to inwardly groan when they pull out the wallet photos.  For my child-hating friends out there - suck it up.  I am still a mom.  It’s a mom thing.  It comes with the territory.  The doting interest in every inhalation by our offspring is a survival tactic built into our genes and we simply can’t help it. 

There were certain advantages to waiting until all my friend’s children were adolescents before producing my own.  Namely, if you are at all observant, you get to see a pretty wide range of what works and what doesn’t.  You have a reasonable idea of what to expect.  And you know that, despite the forewarning, a lot of your carefully thought out observations and opinions are going to go right out the window.  The only real surprises are what things end up defenestrated, and what things you are surprised to find out that you actually follow through on.

Being a scientist, and therefore overthinking everything under the sun, I read the owner’s manuals.  Mostly baby health and development books, because like every person in a medically-related profession (and I mean EVERY ONE), we tend to lean toward the hypochondriac.  It’s the burden that a little too much knowledge of the oddities of medical science gives you.

I studiously avoided anything that smacked of parenting philosophies.  As a “hard” scientist, I always have the faintest mistrust of psychology (sorry Bambi!) because I often wonder if the overanalysis of our deficiencies is a crutch to keep us from getting on and dealing with it, for the love of God.  But, that’s a subject for another rant.  I will bookmark it and save it up.  So when I had another mom ask me if I was going to be an attachment parent, I must have gotten a completely blank expression on my face.  I had no idea what she was going on about.   So I did what any child of the information age did.  I Googled it. 

My reaction? Over-permissive psychobabble bullshit. Way, way too demanding on the parent.  Next.

And along came Harry. 

What you learn from being a parent, is that if you are like probably 90% of the parents out there, you don’t really have a “philosopy” of parenting.  Trust me, at 2am, with a wailing baby and in the throes of sleep deprivation, Plato wouldn’t have a philosophical thought in him.  But after the first few weeks of actual sleep, when diaper-changing is a process so automated that you don’t realize you finished it until you are holding that rolled-up dirty in your hand and can’t figure out how it got there, then you get to sum up what you have gotten yourself into, the resolutions you threw out the window,  and the promises that you, amazingly, managed to keep.

Out the window:

1. I will not cosleep.  Riiiigghhht.  Harry slept in a bassinet near the bed until he was almost six months old.  Then he went into his crib.  Let me tell you a secret - that sleeping through the night crap?  It’s a lie.  To most parents, sleeping through the night means 4-5 uninterrupted hours.  The first time it happens it is so shocking, it just feels like eight.  Now, Harry was never a huge bother about it - give him a pacifier, pat his back, and he was back off to sleep, but he did wake, and he did want that pat and that paci.  Three times a night.  Net result - he starts every night in his crib, and he ends every night in our bed.  It’s just easier when he wakes that first time for me or Kris to haul him out of the crib to our bed.  We ALL got more sleep that way.  And you know what? He now sleeps from 9pm-5:30 am completely uninterrupted.  I don’t think two hours in our bed is going to kill anybody.  If we have to put our foot down about the time he wants to bring girlfriends home, so be it.
2. I will never feed him fast food.  Oh, please.  Puhlease.  Every parent I know says this.  Every parent I know breaks it. I am only proud that I made it until he was well over a year old. Generally, it’s at least milk, apples and yogurt parfaits, but believe me, he has a healthy American taste for McDonald’s fries.
3. I am going to make his baby food - no canned baby food for my kid.  I don’t know who I was kidding with this one.  I am a working mother.  In a compromise to assuage my deep feelings of guilt, Harry did get all-organic baby food, no fillers, and we have almost always mixed it with table food.  He still eats mainly organic food at home.  But, I can tell you that the food mill is pristinely untouched. 
4. I will NEVER drive a minivan.  This is the one I am most ashamed of.  I just can’t say any more about it.  It hurts too much.

Things I surprised myself with:

1. I am going to breastfeed him until 4 months old.  I was personally dubious that I would make this milestone.  I know I am a wimp, and I didn’t think I could managed the logistics of returning to work.  But partially because of Katrina, and partially because Harry turned out to be a REALLY easy baby, we made it to six months exclusively breastfeeding, and he finally self-weaned completely at 11 months.  His decision, actually, not mine.  Truthfully, I can tell you that I did it out of sheer laziness.  There was no way - NO WAY, I was going to get out of my bed at 6am and make a warm bottle.  So, I get to hear kudos from my pediatrician because essentially I am a lazy-ass.  Yay, me!
2. I will not get freaky over germs and sanitation.  I never have and never will.  I never sterilized a THING that Harry came in contact with.  Warm soapy water has been it.  He plays on the floor.  He plays in the dog water.  He eats grass.  And he is as healthy as a horse.
3. I will not get in power struggles with my child over food.  This I refuse to do adamantly.  If he’s hungry he eats.  When he’s done, he’s done.  No child ever starved themselves to death.  Harry is a bit underweight, but not radically so.  Considering his parents and his culture, I don’t think it’s going to hurt him any.

Things I didn’t even bother with self-deception over:

1. The cloth vs. disposable debate.  Wanna throw a BOMB into a mommy’s bulletin board discussion?  Just remember DBV - Diapers, Breastfeeding, Vaccinations.  Bring up anyone of these, and the blood will flow within three posts.  I PROMISE you.  Sit back and watch the slugfest.  But, as far as I am personally concerned there is a short list of things that can be solved by throwing money at them, and baby poop pretty much tops that list.  I will chalk it up amongst my environmental sins, right next to owning a minivan, and I will say confession and do penance every week for it.   But there was no way, no possible way, that I was cleaning a load of dirty diapers every other day.  I am a PhD rather than an MD for several reasons, and bodily fluids make up a fair number of those reasons.
2. Pacifiers.  The kid won’t go to Kindergarten with a pacifier.  I can take away a pacifier.  I can’t cut off his thumb.  I have two words for it and they are Peace and Quiet.
3. I will never compare my child to other children.  At least I realize I am only human.  So far, he’s doing pretty good. He isn’t a baby super-genius (I can only deceive myself so far), but he is, in the words of Garrison Keillor, above average.  You are completely free to read any level of parental exaggeration you please into that statement.  All babies are above average.  Statistics lie.

 And I discovered, much to my chagrin, that I was an attachment parent.  I coslept.  I babywore.  I breastfed.  I let Harry make his own transitions when he felt ready for them, breast-to-bottle-to-cup, bassinet-to-crib, self-feeding-to-spoonfeeding, crawling-to-walking.  When Harry is ready, he just does things, and I just follow.  It’s the ultimate in low-maintanance parenthood.  Whoever thought procrastination would be so trendy?

Pardon me.  I am off to eat my granola for lunch.

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They needed a study to learn this? 

Any woman on the street could have told you that.  One quick survey and millions of dollars would have been saved.  Of course, it took a woman scientist to even think to look.  There’s some irony for you.

Sorry guys.  Now we have proof.

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About the Mondays and Fridays thing.  I was actually out sick yesterday (and most of the day Sunday).  And, as my husband reminded me - out sick, means not working.  Which translates to “don’t try to do anything of substance while I’m around, Lady.”  So I spent a lot of time napping and playing quietly with my son, who obliged me by being extra super sweet yesterday. 

We are coming onto the last week of September - which means, the question of the day is:

Who wants to start with the GAMBLE review? 

I will be done with the book by the end of the week (I had delays in starting the book), but somebody more enterprising can forge ahead.  I don’t think you are going to be giving away any spoilers.

Thank goodness for the book club.  It saves me from hard writing at opportune moments.  I have a lot on my mind right now, but it isn’t making it through my fingers.  It’s a hangup I have.  I can write about things that I am passionate about in the abstract, but the closer we get to subjects of my personal life, the harder the words come.  When I was in my early twenties, I was going through a rough patch (read complete nuclear detente) with a boyfriend and on top of it had developed some health issues. I tried to talk to a co-worker that I had been friends with at work.  I was working double-shifts for Folgers at the time - I don’t think I had friends that weren’t co-workers.  He told me “You know, people really could care less what goes on in your personal life.  It’s nothing against you in particular, but in general principle, people really aren’t interested in each other.”  

It stuck with me.  There’s a point, isn’t there?  Isn’t the worst kind of boor the one that is always either whining about their health problems or bragging about how perfect their kid is?  On the other hand, I found it rather sad. We are the only people that have ownership of our lives, so OF COURSE we should want to talk about them.  It’s kind of tragic to think that nobody else would really care.  I have made a concerted effort to really listen when people are going on about their lives and not belittle their problems or their pride, even on the inside.  Yes, some people really do create their own crises, and I admit a little impatience with it when it becomes repetetive, but does it really hurt to have a little human sympathy with our fellows?  Is our time really so important that we can’t spend a minute really listening to somebody else’s pain? Is it really too much to take a few moments to hear the oh-so-familiar stories of a child’s first steps, or a cherished pet’s antics?  We all seek to define ourselves, our lives, to grant them importance, significance, some form of singularity.  Wouldn’t that be the ultimate sadness - if after all our joy and pain, nobody cared?

Nevertheless, I am far more comfortable in the sympathetic ear role.  There is a nakedness that comes with sharing fear, or even intense love, that I cannot bring myself to touch.  I cannot bear those uncomfortable silences that stretch to ticking hours in the space of that moment where people search for the right words to say, even when there really are no right words.  Occasionally things will come out in an outpouring that I will immediately regret, and feel compelled to cover with laughter.  Or things I can only mention in passing, between pauses in conversation, and then go on to the next gossip of the day.  It is easier to care than to be cared for; there are weaknesses we can love in others but despise in ourselves.  If we are honest, we immediately and shamefully recognise the hypocrisy, but we will not break it for the fear of becoming that boor, the one avoided in the hallway, as if there was no happy medium of intimacy.  And is there?  A happy medium?

So. 

About that book…

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After sorting, rearranging, pondering and occasionally deleting the drafts I had sitting around, I have decided that I don’t really feel like saying anything relevant today.  The weather is sufficiently moody for deep pondering - dark, rainy, and gloomy - but the contemplative state of mind just isn’t falling in with the program.  The sum total of my ambition for today revolves around polishing the edges of a couple of protocols for distribution, revising some procedures that are in some serious need of revision, and going to the mall with my husband and my son.  I am not much of a mall person, but a coffee and a mindless walk in the temple of materialism seem like just the antidote to the current state of blahs.  A times, the most satisfying things to contemplate are how I am going to put up Harry’s swing in the backyard tomorrow, and whether or not I feel like watching that “Eureka” marathon I have saved up on the Tivo.  Sometimes, it is good just to be a shallow American suburbanite.

So, in lieu of anything of real substance, I can give you something of surpassing loveliness:

I present to you, James and Sarah Gibson.  Way to go, baby brother! 

And if natural beauty is more your style, the wedding site was almost, just almost, as breathtaking as the bride:

And, quite possibly, the second loveliest lady at the wedding:

Once again proving that the Gibson Girls can produce some awfully cute kids.

Have a good weekend.

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As of 11:56 am, CST 

Post on Chivalry - 12

Post on Concrete Mexicans - 20

Sigh.

(and I am as guilty as anyone)

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And now for something totally different:

Sabine at one point mentioned that she was thinking it was desirable to aquire a family of concrete Mexicans.

Well girl, I have found the mother lode:

Complete with Burros. 

Where, you ask, is this heaven on earth, this place of sublime statuary?

Halfway between Memphis and Corinth, MS. 

And that’s not the best news.

Brace yourself.

It’s for SALE.  Yep.  I foresee a complete career change.  Forget real estate, I think you have a future in being a purveyor of concrete Mexicans.  I think there is a huge untapped market.  There is one catch.

About 5 miles up the road toward Memphis THIS:

Is poised to give you a run for your money.  You will have some marketing advantages.  Apparently, although claiming to have the largest selections of fountains in the Mid-South, they are too haughty to stock concrete Mexicans.  They deal in higher class items.  Like, well:

Concrete Gorillas,

Somewhat disturbing were-rabbits,

And,

Their piece-de-resistance in the place of honor:

THE CEMENT CHICKEN!!! (Okay, rooster, but it just doesn’t have the same ring, does it?)

Seriously - I see this as a growth industry.   A few well-placed product endorsements, and everyone will want them.  Shall I give you the number on the sign?

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Okay - for all you non-SCA readers, keep those fingers in your ears.  Same song.  Second verse.

Your rant-of-the-day is going out to the men.  It will (and this should be obvious, as it is coming from ME) apply to a few women out there, but I am going to function on the premise that the vast majority of the armoured combatants in the Society are men.  And I am pretty sure I won’t fall too far off the mark.

Guys, we hit each other with clubs until we bruise.  That’s the bottom line.  The only thing that separates us from a bloody, pugilistic, underground, backyard, bare-fist fight clubs is the general lack of bleeding and how we choose to dress it up.

Unfortunately, too many of us take the term “dress up” far too literally.  Oh, we certainly look the part, all right.  We spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on brass-chased helmets, linen surcotes, custom leather boots and hand-made maile.  Don’t get me wrong, there is a certain level of self-respect demanded by this game, and you can tell how seriously a man takes himself by how he presents himself on the tournament field.  I don’t have much admiration for those who, given enough time and acculturation to our little game, present themselves in slabs of plastic pickle bucket. 

But I think far too many of us spend too much time perfecting the outward without so much as a glance inward.  And that is where we fail.  That is why I said that we where poor inheritors of the virtues of Chivalry. 

It is true that Prowess is a virtue in the Knightly class.  But prowess was meant to be pursued in the service of all of the other virtues of chivalry.  Prowess pursued exclusively for it’s own glorification progresses into the sin of vanity.  And vanity, at its worst, turns us into bullies who prey on the easy mark to rack up our scorecard and our reknown in our own eyes.  We avoid anything that could prove a challenge to our own self-conceit.  And what should be glory descends into infamy.   Prowess pursued in isolation becomes, not a virtue, but contemptible and cruel, the precise thing the code of Chivalry evolved to prevent.

Oh, we carry our favors upon the field, but too many do not carry them in their hearts.  When you do honor to your lady before a fight, do you think upon all those things she represents, the sacrifices she has made, the gift of attention she gives to you?  Do you fight with honesty and strive, knowing that she is there, watching you with pride and love?  Do swear to yourself to perform no act upon the field that will dishonor you, bringing whispers of disdain upon yourself, and by extension, the lady you represent?  Do you temper the brutality of the tournament with control, or do you vent your anger and frustration at defeat by throwing your helmet upon the ground and speaking ill of your opponent, so that the eyes around you turn away in embarrassment and disgrace? 

Do you leave your virtues upon the field?  When outside of the tournament, do you honor the gentle dedication and sacrifices of the ladies that strive with arts more gentle to gild your fierce appearance?  They, who with nimble fingers and bent heads, stitch the banners that proclaim our presence in the wind, who quilt the linen that cushions our blows, who keep the children safe from harm while we are pursuing our name upon the field.  How many of you offer the choicest portions to your lady at the table before taking your own?  Do you refill her glass when it is empty?  Do you carry her burdens and defend her against those that speak ill of her?  Do you praise her beauty and her diligence in your best voice?  Or do you criticize her and defame her in front of your fellows, thinking this enhances your image of manhood?  Do you speak harshly to the children and the elderly in her care?  The man who does not recognize the equal importance of women’s work denigrates his own.  He disgraces his Queen and his Kingdom.  He is worthless in the eyes of civilized society.

These words are harsh, but I am saddened by the lip service that so many give to the honor of our consorts.  Their behavior shows that they place the favor of their ladies on their sleeves, but they do not write their honor on their souls.  They are nothing above the savage brutes swinging clubs of bone and living in squalor, and deserve no more notice.

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Those of you who are not in the SCA might want to click off now, or put your fingers in your ears and sing “lalalalalala”.

It really doesn’t apply to you, and will probably be incomprehensible, melodramatic, or, worse, boring.

Disclaimer over.

Sarah wrote the best, most kick-ass blog about the abrogation of responsibilities displayed by some of the so-called sources of inspiration in our tournament-based administrative system.  I will admit in my distant past, I have been a less than perfect consort.  My only excuse then is that I was young and a stick-jock myself, and tended to focus on my own fights more than my significant other’s bouts.  I got better.  By the time I had been in about a decade, I got hit with the proverbial clue-bat, and now I am one of those converts more rabid than those born to the religion.

First, a bit of history - in a history based society, fancy that.

The Cult of Chivalry, romantic as an ideal, had roots in practical, even desperate, motivations.  It arose during a time where a class of people, largely by right of birth, held a great majority of the cosmic cards.  Better fed, better educated, far better armed, they could take what they wanted by violence if necessary with few moral and ethical rules to temper their power.  If not engaged in active warfare, local terrorism was their active outlet.  It was a situation that arose, ironically, by political stability and the concurrent drop in warfare where they had previously limited their casualties to their own class.  The Church didn’t originate the code of Chivalry, but they certainly adopted it, sanctified it and popularized it.  Whatever the long-lasting consequences of the Crusading lust that followed, it had the desired effect.  By charging those with physical power with the protection of the weak and the defense of Christianity, it maintained feudal order for several hundred more years.

But don’t take my word for it. 

We in the SCA claim to be the inheritors of that Code.  But in many ways we fall far short of being worthy of that heritage.  The fighters (and, in brutal honesty, I am talking mainly men here) have a share in that blame.  But that’s not what I promised Sarah to write about, and is fodder for another rant.  I am talking to the distaff side, here.

Mores of the medieval culture notwithstanding, the evolution of Chivalry was the one true attempt by the Church and by European culture (modern times included), to bestow power back upon the ideals of the feminine.  Power pursued justly could ONLY be done in the service of virtue, and in the honor of the feminine ideal.  However unrealistic that ideal may be, however ridiculously exaggerated and unattainable, it was still an attempt to glorify the gentler aspect of humanity.  Our track record, aside from that shining exception, has been relatively dismal. 

And now, I will stoop to crudity purely for shock value and thus fulfilling my own prophecy:  By acting like twittering ninnies, we are fucking it up.  We are proving ourselves to be unworthy of the sacrifices and the acts of glory being laid at our feet.  More than those men who give lip service to their inspiration, we are refusing to participate in the very act being done in our honor.  Shame on us.

Even if it is a convenient fiction to justify ritualized brutality, without the contribution of the feminine, the system fails.  It becomes simply brutality.  Without our eyes to witness and judge the deeds, we lose the disapprobation that keeps the cheater and the liar from plying his trade upon our field.  If we do not take the care to present ourselves as the ideal of feminine nobility, we prove ourselves unworthy and belittle their efforts to make in fact what they believe in their hearts.  Let us not show that we hold their love, adoration, and respect cheaply.   Because if we cannot honor this promise, how can we show to the populace that we will honor any others?

As a fighter, I can tell you that this role is not mean fancy.  While, by definition courtly love was chaste and therefore impossible between husband and wife, I have chosen to ignore that particular aspect to honor the core of the belief.  The first and foremost thought in my mind, every time I step on the field, EVERY TIME, is to prove myself worthy of the honor of my husband.  His pure belief in me and support of me both inspires and humbles me, and there can be no greater spur to ambition than the fear of disgracing that trust, that faith.  I will defend him as he has defended me, and I will show my love by deeds of renown that I will lay at his feet. 

And that, my dear ladies, is what it is all about.

(further disclaimer - if this is rushed, blame it on being a command performance…  Here there be editing for the resultant piss-poor grammar)

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Sorry, folks.  I have at least four drafts started, but I am just not feeling deep enough today for substance.  I am frantically getting ready to fly out to New York to see my youngest sibling get hitched.  That I can trade the lingering summer heat of Arkansas for the autumn leaves of the Hudson River Valley is a big fat bonus. 

I would be entirely thrilled with the expedition, except for that little thing that makes traveling sad and scary nowadays:

Who can not miss kissing those chocolate-covered cheeks in the morning? 

I will admit that travel now holds that faint, repressed fear that each separation might be the last, and that there is faulty equipment and evildoers lurking on every airplane.  The thought is almost physically painful to contemplate.  Poor Harry has had to suffer the requests for ”one more sugar” with reluctant stoicism.  Anything to delay those little bye-bye waves and his tiny face receding as the car drives away. 

Sound melodramatic?  Wait ’til you have kids, you’ll understand.

Breathe in.  Breathe out.

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One of my personal heros and role models died today.

Ann Richards, Former Governor of Texas, lost her battle with esophageal cancer at 73.

She was at once nail-tough and achingly humane, both towering icon and touching, fallible, human being.  She showed the world that women could play hard-ball in the rough and tumble field of Texas politics, in a gubernatorial race that couldn’t have been harder or tougher.  She gave the working woman her mantra, by resurrecting the Faith Whittlesey quote -  ”Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels.” 

Only she didn’t do everything her male predecessors did.  She did a lot more.  Breaking racial and gender barriers in Texas public service, overhauling both the state’s education system and it’s male-dominated cowboy image.  And she did it in all in four years, before losing her re-election race to George W.

 A reformed hard-drinker, she celebrated her 60th birthday by getting her motorcycle license.

 And what would she have done differently?

 ”Oh, I would probably have raised more hell.”

Thanks, Ann, for putting a little of the devil in all of us. 

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