I Want a Full Time Job with a Paycheck

This morning I lay down on the floor of my office and cried, silently, so as not to disturb the three people in the room with me who were watching me, disturbed.  Tears streamed down the side of my face, my fingertips rested on my forehead as my hands covered my eyes, and I just released all the crying I had pent up in me.  My five year old left the room and came back with a tissue.  I blew my nose.  She left again and came back with another tissue.  “For your eyes,” she said, softly.

I had my legs open in a wide V and my four month old was on her back on the floor in between my legs, chewing on her fists.  My husband stood on the other side of the baby.

“What’s wrong, honey?  You’re making me worried.”

What’s wrong?  What’s wrong???

Well, let’s see, I have a head cold, my four month old had a fever the night she got her vaccines that kept me up the same day I got said head cold, and now she’s officially rolling over, so I don’t sleep well because she sleeps with me, and now I’m stressed out that she will roll over in her sleep and somehow scoot down to the end of the bed, and roll off, or get wedged somewhere I haven’t thought of and suffocate.  We just passed peak SIDS age, and before I could breathe a sigh of relief, she flipped over from her back to her front.  So now I have images of her flipping over in her sleep, going facedown in the mattress, and suffocating, while I enjoy a heavy sleep because of this head cold.  And the more sleep I lose, the more I worry, because now am I sleep deprived enough to roll over and smother my baby?  Will I fall into a blissful sleep that keeps me from my natural tendency to wake with her every move? 

Also, my five year old has leapt into a more mature physical stage now, so she enjoys riding her scooter barefoot downhill and climbing to the top of rock structures in playgrounds that she would normally avoid. “No thank you,” she would say to her friends when they suggest a nice climb.  She has also leapt into a new level of challenging me and questioning me at every turn on every issue.  She is quite comfortable in the knowledge that I will explain myself and my reasoning whenever asked, which is exhausting.  I’m a mostly free range mom, so I let my kid develop at her own pace, find her way in the world, and explore her curiosities.  I also let her “be bored” and find her own ways to entertain herself that don’t involve screens.  So I come home one night to find a pile of mud swirled with paint and 5 opened bottles of sidewalk paint on my front patio.  At 10 PM. So I get to clean that up.  Or make sure I organize its cleaning. Well, I think, she was apparently entertained. 

Needless to say, being a full time mom keeps me on my toes.  And, sometimes, the toes are stressed.  The toes.  Are stressed.  

Then last night, after I kiss her good night, and remind her to go to sleep and not get out of bed, I get into the shower.  Five minutes later my husband comes into the bathroom to tell me she broke her nightlight.  “But it’s no big deal.”

First of all:  if it’s no big deal, why did you need to come into the bathroom, literally my only 10 minutes alone all day, to share that with me?

Second of all:  it is a big deal.  She was supposed to be in bed, not breaking a nightlight.  Also, the nightlight was an expensive gift from my husband to her when she was younger.  It is a Thomas Kincaid depiction of Winnie the Pooh bought from the gallery in Capitola when she was fully obsessed with Winnie the Pooh. 

So, when I get out of the shower, I head into her room.  The door is open, and my brother is in there.  “I asked Uncle to sing me one more song.”  She says quietly.

“How did you break your nightlight?” I ask.

“Well, I was pushing on it with my foot, like this, and kind of bending it back and forth, like this, then it just broke.”  She reports.

“Wait,” I say, barely holding on to my patience, as I hold onto the towel wrapped around my drying body, “so you were supposed to be in bed, I specifically told you to get a good night’s sleep because you’re coming to work with Mama tomorrow, and instead you were up, kicking your nightlight, a special gift from your father, which you then broke, carelessly, disrespectfully, and now you want another song from your Uncle.

“Do I have that right?”

My tone is serious, incredulous, and barely controlled. 

“Yes.” She responds quietly.

“Say goodnight to your uncle.  Get in bed.  All the way in bed.  Lie down.  All the way down.  Close your eyes.  And go to sleep.  Right.  Now.”

My brother left the room, and I followed shortly after, closing the door with a firm click.

I’m a terrible mother, I think.  I haven’t taught my child the value of gifts, the importance of respecting the things she owns.  I can’t teach my kid anything.  She’s basically raising herself and I’m keeping her alive.  I’m a terrible mother.

I nurse my four month old to sleep and head out to watch a movie with my husband and brother.

“Ugh,” I say, “I can’t believe she broke that nightlight.  I basically just shamed my child to sleep.”

“Babe,” my husband says, having no idea where my temper is at this point, “it’s no big deal.  You always tell her it’s no big deal when she breaks things.  Why should this be any different?”

I can tell from his tone that he is slightly mocking me, because this is true.  I don’t place a lot of importance on “things,” so Celaya draws all over her dolls faces, puts stickers all over her toys and the cabinetry in her play area, and scribbles all over the front patio.  When she accidentally knocks something over or breaks something and gets terrified that she is in trouble I calm her down and say, “honey, relax, it’s just a (insert object here).  It’s no big deal.  It can be replaced/fixed/remade.” 

“This is different because that was a gift, a special gift, and she shouldn’t have been out of bed, and she broke it.”  My temper at this point is just at about boiling point.

“Uh oh.” My brother, who is quite adept at picking up my tone, says.  “Am I going to watch someone else get shamed to sleep now?”

“She’s not scared of you, Shanna.  She does whatever she wants.  And shame doesn’t work on me.”  My husband says casually, slightly playfully.

So now I’ve reached full on explosion boiling over the top of the pot fury.

I spend every waking day of every waking hour raising children or worrying about how to raise my children, wondering if I’m doing the right thing in the right way at the right time to raise strong, independent, civilized, decent (hopefully liberal) human beings.  And my primary means of raising my children, directing my children, guiding my children, is through an abundance of love and affection, and, yes, through fear.  Celaya fears displeasing me.  It is one of my greatest points of pride.  When she is running with friends and I say “stop,” nine times out of ten, she stops.  When I use my mean voice, she comes to immediate attention.  She does, for the most part, what I tell her to do.  I don’t hit, I don’t yell, I don’t belittle or ridicule.  All I have are fear and shame. 

Don’t.  Tell Me.  She’s.  Not.  Afraid of me. 

I say this in so many words, and then we basically don’t speak again for the rest of the night.  He falls asleep on the couch as per his usual Friday night.  I go to bed with the baby and manage not to smother her in my head cold addled sleep, curling around her body in a protective position that all but guarantees her safety even in the event she rolls over.  It helps a lot that when her side is pressed against my front she sleeps deeply and doesn’t move.  And she’s pressed so firmly against me that when she does move I can’t help but wake up. 

All of the week’s worries and stresses spilled over to this morning.  To me lying on the floor crying. 

And I’m thinking to myself, this would all be so much easier if I worked full time.  If I put my baby to sleep in her crib.  If I left the bulk of raising and disciplining to someone else.  If I left the schooling up to an institution. If I got a paycheck at the end of a fifty-hour week that was a tangible reward for the hard work I do.  

My kids would be fine.  Kids with two full time working parents, who go to traditional school, who have another primary caregiver for the majority of their waking time, turn out just fine.  Many of my friends have attested to that. 

And, sure, it would be hard in its own way, time management, temper tantrums, sleep deprivation from trying to “get it all done,” figuring out how to manage a marriage and shared duties with both of us working, and on and on.  That lifestyle has its own struggles.  But I would be getting paid!!  An actual, regular, tangible, proof that my work is valued paycheck. 

But.

Would my five year old be the same kid she is today?  I am quite proud of her, even when she infuriates me.  I can say with complete confidence that there is no child sweeter, kinder, brighter, more secure in her place in the world, or more well-adjusted than my child.  I do not pretend that she is an angel.  She’s not.  Or that she and I don’t have battles of will.  We do.  But on any good day of the year, and I have very few bad days, more like bad moments, I can look at my kid and not wonder for a second whether I am doing all the right things. 

I may be in debt up to my ears.  I may not get tangible, or immediate, reward for the 24 hour on call work I do at home (that’s what the part time job is for).  I may not always have all my ducks in a row.  Okay, I rarely have all my ducks in a row. 

But my husband listened to me as I explained through my tears everything that I just wrote here.  He assured me that the house revolves around my command.  That, yes, of course, everyone is afraid of me (except my brother.  I’m still working on that one.)  That I run the household well and that my work is valued.  That our oldest is who she is because of what I do, and that, I if I can just remember what I did with my oldest and repeat it, the baby will turn out okay too. 

And my daughter finally understood the full impact of what she had done the night before, and she and her father put their heads together and figured out how to fix the broken nightlight. 

So yes, sometimes I want a full time job, with breaks, two tens and one thirty, Starbucks coffee on the way to the office, time alone in my car to listen to my own music, talk on the phone, listen to a book on tape, clothes to dress up in, colleagues to commiserate with, a mainstream to just naturally belong to, instead of having to seek out like minded individuals (and hope they're not too crazy), and a world that sympathizes with the plight of the working mother in America.  And money!!! 

But.

If I had all that, would I still have the daughter who brings me two tissues when I cry?  One for my nose, and another for my eyes. 

I obviously can’t know for sure.

But I don’t think so.

I Hate Vaccines

I hate vaccines.

I cry when my kids cry.  I hate to see them hurt.  I want to wrap them in bubble wrap and cut out a hole for breathing.  That way they’ll never get hurt.  I have spent five years taking Celaya for her shots.  Last year she screamed in abject terror and clutched me in her four year old death grip.  I physically had to hold on to her, pressing her arm against her body, so the nurse could administer the shot.  She then proceeded to cry for a good ten minutes.  Not pretty.

Yesterday my four month old got three shots loaded with multiple vaccines shot into her chubby little thighs, two on one side, one on the other.  She cried for a minute and then got over it.  Yay?  No such luck.  Just as I feel a sore throat coming on last night, Matilda decides to get a nice low grade consistent fever that keeps her restless in her sleep and anxious to eat every three hours.  Meanwhile my throat is killing me and I’m afraid to cough because I might wake the baby next to me whose hold on sleep is tenuous at best.  I’m a fan of letting a low grade fever ride itself out as long as my children are not in pain because I know that a fever is good for the body’s immune system, and may even help the vaccine do its work.  So I was awake and asleep awake and asleep awake and asleep.  Finally, at 4AM, Matilda let out a little cry, and I said fuck it and gave her some Tylenol.  She settled down, but now she was wide awake and looking at me with her little shocked eyes and cockatoo hair standing up on end.  So, there I was, exhausted, throat on fire, rocking, swaying, bouncing in my bedroom to help her get back to sleep, so we could both pass out for a couple hours before Celaya woke up and came in for her good morning let’s all wake up now visit. 

The fever never came back, and her spirits have improved.  I know she’ll be fine by tomorrow. 

But man I hate vaccines.

At the same time, I am so thankful for them.  I’m proud to wave my yellow immunization card for each of my girls.  And while I cringe at the idea of shots, I eagerly look forward to the opportunity to protect my kids a little bit more with each one.  It’s a mixed bag of pain and pleasure.  

I really don't want to do it.  But I really want the benefits.  So I suck it up and I do it.  Because it is what is best for my kids and best for my community.

So you can see why just the word vaccine infuriates me lately.  It riles up all the fury I have over the fact that not vaccinating your children is even an issue, and quite a widespread one at that.  

Recently I overheard a group of five year olds at an alternative school I was considering for my daughter discussing the fact that they’ve never had a shot.  One poor little girl had just gotten her recent round of vaccines and the other kids were outraged:  “what!?  I’ve never gotten a shot!”  “No!  Me neither!”

The little girl taps me on the shoulder as I’m desperately trying to inch my infant out of the same breathing space as these little unvaccinated children and says, “Can you please tell them why it’s important to get your shots?”

I turn to the group of kids and say, firmly and matter of factly, “if you don’t get your shots you could get very sick and die.”

Needless to say, we will not be joining that school. 

I’m not sorry.  I have zero tolerance for parents that refuse to vaccinate their children, opening up the country to the return of all but eradicated diseases, and threatening herd immunity.

It is even more infuriating to me that this is a largely liberal cause, and I take pride in being a liberal on the basis of logic and humanitarianism.  As a liberal I am all for personal choice.  But refusal to vaccinate your child is not a personal choice, it is one that affects the community you live in. 

We talk about choice and freedom in this country as if we all live isolated on islands and those choices don’t affect the people around us.  You say it is your choice to eat unhealthy, smoke cigarettes, drink to excess, drive everywhere instead of walking, and it is true.  Those are your choices, and I would not want legislation passed to mandate any of those choices away from you, but I would ask you to consider that your choice is not a personal one, it is a community one.  Your health affects your family, who lose you or suffer with you if you die early or come down with a debilitating disease.  It also affects the community, who must pay higher taxes and healthcare premiums to take care of the outcomes of our community members who are in poor health.       

And your insistence that not vaccinating your children is a personal choice is the most egregious of all.  Once enough people join together who have not vaccinated, those people are putting the rest of the community in grave danger.  All it takes is ten percent of a community to not vaccinate and the tipping point has been reached; we will see disease and epidemic spread at an alarming rate.  I belong to a homeschool group where many of our members homeschool specifically so they don’t have to vaccinate.  I’m quite sure we in our group have far surpassed the tipping point. 

What hubris it must take to believe yourself intellectually superior to doctors, scientists, and people who have dedicate their lives to eradicating fatal diseases, to saving children, including your own. 

What hubris to wield that kind of power, the power to hurt, maim, or kill my infant with your own infected child.  All with a condescending shrug of your shoulders.  Because you know better.

And then I’m told by some, seemingly reasonable people, that I will never change minds because I am too emotional, too passionate, too divisive.  I’m on my soapbox.

Yes.  I am.  And I just can’t get down.  You could kill my child because you’re afraid of…. What?  Autism?  That paper has been long debunked.  Mercury?  It’s not that kind of mercury.  Research that one a little bit more.  Some long term effect that we don’t know about yet? 

How about death?  That is a short term, immediate effect that actually has happened, that we do in fact, in science, know about.  The science on this is settled.  And I just don’t see how we can possibly move forward as a country, an American community, if we can’t trust the science that is settled. 

Plato believed that we should have leaders called “philosopher kings.”  Not war generals, not lawyers, certainly not businessmen.  Philosopher kings would be the wisest among us, the elders of our community if you will.  And why not?  We have had very few great thinkers lead us in our country, but when we have, consider any great thinker you wish, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, the other Roosevelt, and yes, Barack Obama, they have led us in a forward facing, positive direction.  They all have their flaws, some of them horrible flaws (I’m looking at you Jefferson), but they genuinely believed that they were governing as best they could for the greatest amount of people they could within the constraints of the power with which they had been entrusted.  Also, they trusted science, reason, logic. 

We are so far from that place, from pride in a great thinker as our leader, at this point in time.  Donald Trump is a staunch, confessed, anti-intellectual.  He absolutely promotes a drive of every man for himself.  The will to set out on our own, to make our own way, to take care of mine and mine only and forget everyone else is strong right now.  But we must resist it, if for nothing else, then for the sake of our children. 

Yes. I hate vaccines.  I lay with my baby’s warm body pressed against me last night, pressing my lips against her temple every time I roused from my own restless sleep, feeling her feverish forehead and her warm breath on my skin.  And I thought:  I hate vaccines!

But I imagined what mothers must have felt like holding their babies sick with polio, with measles, with rubella, with diphtheria.  Unsure if their babies would make it through the night.  There was a time when parents didn’t name their children for the first year of life because the infant mortality rate was so high.  We’ve come so far from that, largely thanks to vaccines.  I’ll take one or two nights of a low grade fever every couple months any day. 

Yes.  In the moment, I hate vaccines.

But I hate the idea of my child dying senselessly even more. 

I Mother

I mother.

It's what I do.

It's in the marrow of my bones, the ethereal quality of my soul, the code inside my DNA.

I mother.

I have been mothering since before I can remember, since I first caught infant Tammy's head in my four year old palm as it headed toward the hard tile.  I mothered Tammy when I was 17 and I aimed to wipe dark purple lipstick from her 13 year old lips.  And years later when I cautioned her against tying herself to a small town boy and getting stuck in small town life.  And still more years later when I insisted she take more time off work to be home with her children.

I mother.  I don't always do it perfectly.  It often causes problems with my oldest little sister and me because I know everything and she knows nothing.  Or, as she would describe it, I think I know everything and she's perfectly capable of running her own life, thank you very much.

But what does she know?

I mother.

I mothered Breezy when she was an unruly baby refusing to take naps, and I was a ten year old stroking her chubby little leg as it shot up into the air in a special ops military stand against falling asleep.  I mothered her when she was 7, still thick with baby fat, front teeth still not fully grown back in, and we danced and sang our way through a two person talent show like crazy fools in the front yard of my mother's house.  I mothered her as she entered high school and I moved my unwitting first husband and our whole life 300 miles north so I could be near her for that most difficult of times in a young girl's life.  I mothered her later that year when she snuck out to a college party and I called the cops on her.  I then grounded her to the house for the weekend and put her on hard labor, housecleaning for two days straight.  I mothered her as I insisted the older boy who wanted to take her on a date come inside, show me his driver's license, and open up under my interrogation.

I mothered my baby monkey Teno when I gave him his bottle every morning for his first nap of the day and we watched The Fox and the Hound.  I was 14 then, and just about to run away from home.  I mothered him for years upon years from a distance after the day I ran screaming and crying from the house at 15, fleeing an abusive stepfather.  And even then I left only reluctantly because I was convinced my siblings, my babies, needed me.  I sobbed for weeks upon weeks when I left baby Teno because I just knew he needed me and he would never know me.  Then I put my big girl pants on and remembered that I was a mother, and so I mothered.  I picked them up in my car as soon as I turned 16, and I took them here and there with me.  And when they moved 300 miles north I drove up to drive them back down here for weeks at a time, Easter, Christmas, summer vacation.  I watched WWE on Mondays and Thursdays with my five year old brother, and I learned how to perfectly imitate (Teno would dispute this) The Rock "If you smeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelllllll......... what The Rock...... is cooking."  Nailed it.  I mothered him when I drove up the coast weekend after weekend to watch him play baseball for 12 years.  I mothered him when I offered him a bedroom in my apartment so he could come to the Bay Area and play baseball for the local community college.  And I mothered him when I let him go again, months later, because he was homesick.

I let them all go, all my siblings, and I realized that part of mothering is learning when to not mother. It was time for me to be a sister.  A friend.

And years later, when I had my own child, I knew that all those years of trying and failing and knowing everything and being so certain and falling on my face or sticking my foot so firmly in my mouth had paid off.  My sisters and my brother had made me into the mother I always wanted to be for my own children.

Now, when I watch my children learn something, when I hold them close, when I smell their hair, dirty with sweat and dust or clean and fresh from a bath, when I nuzzle their necks and kiss their round cheeks, I try to remember to let go, but I worry.  I worry in a way I never did as a mothering big sister.  Often and deeply, I worry.  But I don't worry, as you may think, that I will lose one of them.  I worry that they will lose me.

You see, I have built a force field of love around my children, as my mother did her own children.  My mother swore that as long as she was alive, her children would live, because, she says, with a steely confidence unlike her, she cannot survive the loss of child.  So, quite simply, she won't have to.  I give my children that same gift.  They will be fine.  They will fall and get up, they will get hurt and heal, they will suffer, but they will survive.  They will be human, live human lives, and, ultimately, thrive.  Because I made them that way.

But my greatest fear is that I have worked so hard all my life to be the kind mother I always wanted to be, and that my children will miss that somehow.  Something will take me out of their lives.  I never felt my own mortality, never for a second worried about death until I had my daughter.  Of course I cannot live without my children, that goes without saying.  But what strikes me is how they could ever live without me.

Who will cry with them when they get their shots, when a friend betrays them, when they fall from their bikes, when they work hard for something and still don't get it?  Who will help them navigate when it's okay to just sit and cry and when it's time to dust themselves off and get back out there?  Who will savor their dirty sweaty scent before bath time?  Who will look at them with love, albeit a frustrated, exasperated love, even when furious at some juvenile misdeed?  Who will reprimand them, unafraid to discipline and help them become civilized human beings, but never for a second failing to love them deeply?  Who will there be that they know will love them no matter what?  Who will always make their needs a priortiy throughout their entire childhoods?

No one.  Let's be honest.

So I worry.  So I mother.

I don't think being a mother is "hard."  It feels very natural to me.  It flows through me like a river through a valley.  But I do think it is all encompassing, draining, taxing, and exhausting.  Mothering takes everything you have and rarely gives back in full measure, and almost never does it give back immediately.  That river cuts new paths, smooths rough rocks, changes the landscape entirely, never thinking of what it is doing, just doing.

Just mothering.  

So I am a firm believer in the airplane analogy.  Put on your own mask first.  Then put on the masks of others.

Even when I am taking care of myself, filling my own vessel, it is so that I can use my vessel to fill that of others.  So that I can mother.

I head out of my house to run most days of the week so I can stay healthy, so that I can be patient with my kids, so that I can live longer for my kids, so that I have energy for my kids.  I work so that my daughters see their mother proud of what she does outside of the house, contributing to society using the skills she has to give to others.  I try hard to have a loving, stable relationship with my husband so that my children see what goes into a strong marriage.  But I also do not hesitate to call my husband out for what I see as missteps because I think it is important my daughters see a woman stand up for herself and hold her own as a partner in her marriage.

My girls' eyes are always watching me, shaping themselves after me, trying to do what I do.  My five year old uses my words, my tone, and my body language.  My four month old already mimics my facial expression and the sounds I make.  I am their first teacher, and since I am homeschooling, I will be their primary teacher for years to come.

So today, on Mother's Day, I breathe through the worry that my children will lose the foundation under their feet, and I work to let go of the worry.  I take care of myself.  I take time alone.  I reflect on all the mothering I have done for almost forty years, some good, some not so good.  I take myself to a movie.  I enjoy a few peaceful moments in the bath before my five year old companion bursts in. And I remember the letting go.  I remember letting go of my brother and sisters.  Letting go of the need to control.  Realizing that I had done all I could as a mother, and that time was over.

And while my time as a mother will never be over with my own children, I can let go.  I can let go of the worry.  I can sit at the end of each day and know that I gave all I could, that I took what I needed to take, that I taught what needed teaching and let them learn on their own what they needed to.  I can let go of the worry that they will lose me because the reality is that I am doing what I can to be around, and beyond that, I have no control anyway, so worry is only wasted time and energy.  Because of my brother and my sisters, because of my own mother, who, although she doesn't always practice what she preaches, has taught me to practice what she preaches, I can let go.  I can enjoy my glass of wine, I can feel grateful for all the mothers in my life who have become my village, I can sit in my house at the end of the night, house quiet and candlelit, and rest in the comfort that I mother.

In the trifecta of maiden mother crone, I skipped right past maiden and went straight to mother.

And I remember that force field my mother placed around me.

And I rest easy knowing that someday I will be crone.