My Dream Mother’s Day Gift

Posted on May 10, 2013 by

I’m pretty sure I know what I’m getting for Mother’s Day this weekend. But if you want to know what I really want it’s this: I’d like an entire month where I don’t see another article that explains why American mothers suck and everyone else does it better. Actually no, what I’d like is an entire month where I don’t see another article that explains why American mothers suck without acknowledging and explaining that we aren’t parenting in some vacuum. Maybe it’s because my own mother is a sociologist, but just once I’d like to read a parenting article that acknowledges that parents are part of society and our actions are a reflection of and reaction to that society.

You know all the articles about the Amazonian 5 year olds who use machetes and how Americans are afraid to give their kids butter knives? Guess what, that Amazonian 5 year old uses a machete because every one in his village uses a machete. Since birth he has seen people use machetes and he has learned how to use one safely. You know what else, he needs to know how to use a machete. My children do not live in an Amazonian village, they live in the Village of Oak Park. They have never seen anyone use a machete and will never need to use a machete. They will however need to know how to use a cell phone. Luckily, since birth they have watched everyone in their village use a cell phone and they know how to use one safely. My work here is done.

What about the Japanese kids who don’t ask for snacks and learn to wait to eat dinner until everyone is home to eat dinner together? That would be great, except of course, in our SOCIETY very few of us have nights where we all eat dinner together. Between T-ball, Hebrew School, and work my family has not had a single night this week where we could all eat dinner together. Please don’t tell me that I’m a typical, stupid American mom who has over-scheduled her children. My children are in group sports because we live in a SOCIETY that does not have adequate physical education during the school day, so it has to be provided outside of school. Also, the skills learned in organized group sports are actually skills that our society values.

We also live in a heterogenous society that values cultural diversity. That means my children do not get religious education at school. It’s something that we take care of outside of school. Pain, yes? But, still overall better than living in the homogeneous shtetl in which my grandparents were born.

Every society around the world educates their children to be functioning members of that society. The way children play, eat, and learn reflects the needs and values of that society. The way parents parent reflects the realities and needs of that society.

I’m not saying that American parents are fantastic, that we do everything correctly. I am saying that we don’t do anything alone.

That’s what I want for Mother’s Day, although I will gladly accept the massage appointment.

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My Mother’s Pills

Posted on April 29, 2013 by

The following things have been known to give my mother a headache: rain, cold, heat, hunger, arguments, stress, breathing. So, I knew when we were out the other night and I needed something for a headache, she would have it.

My mother took out a small pill box. “I need to be careful, some of these have codeine and others don’t, and they’re about the same size.” My mother has not been able to read a billboard without glasses for about 10 years, but she proceeded to sort through these pills without her glasses and hand me two. They didn’t match.

“Marcia, these don’t match, how do you know which one has codeine?”

I should explain that from an early age my mother taught me to call her by her first name in public. It’s not that she’s embarrassed to be my mother (normally). It’s that there are lots of kids running around yelling “Mom” and how is she supposed to know which one means her? It’s not really relevant to the story, but it’s taken me a long time to appreciate my mother’s logical and unsentimental approach to parenting, so I thought I’d mention it.

“Oh, those are the same, just from different batches, see, here’s the one with codeine,” she said handing me a third pill.
“Mom, two of these are exactly the same, which one is the codeine?”
“Hmm, I guess you can’t tell them apart after all.”

All though by this point I really wanted the codeine I thought that since I needed to drive my children, husband and parents home, I should probably ask my dad for one of his heart attack preventing asprins instead. This is one of the good thing about parents aging, they always have drugs on hand. Feeling better, I return to my mother’s issue.

“Marcia, why are you carrying around codeine in your purse? If you need codeine shouldn’t you be home?”
“Well, I had this day where I had a horrible headache and lots of meetings in different places, and I knew I would need the codeine. So I just added it to the pill box with my tylenol.”
“Mom, you know you’re not supposed to drive when you take codeine, right? Doesn’t the prescription say that?”
“Oh, it’s not prescription, it’s over-the-counter from Canada.”

Because you know what your mother always taught you, “As long as its black market not a prescription, it isn’t a problem.”

 

 

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Fear and Lock Downs

Posted on March 19, 2013 by

Yesterday my children’s school was on “soft lock down.” There had been a home burglary in the area and the police requested the lock down as a precautionary measure.

I didn’t find out about it until the lock down was over, and I found out about the lock down and the reason for it at the same time, so, I was not worried. I was a little freaked out when I found out that the suspect had last been seen a block from my house, but not too concerned.

I was fine with the lock down. I was fine with my children telling me the difference between a “soft” and “hard” lock down. They were not afraid and I was not afraid.

Last night we got an email from my son’s teacher. She explained what had happened, and how the students had handled it. She said they discussed the differences between the lock downs, and various “what if” scenarios. Then, there was this line, “To be honest, the scariest thing for them was the possibility of being in the dark.”

Of all the things, that made me cry.

My son is in first grade. I can easily pick him up. He still fits perfectly on my lap when we read and I can “puzzle piece” him for a good cuddle. He explains complicated football plays to me and dreams of being a professional athlete. He is a little bit afraid of the dark.

He is the same age as the victims of Newtown. He is afraid of the dark, and they were afraid of the dark. Several months later, it is still too hard to think about. I think that for a long time, we will all be a little bit afraid of the dark.

Posted in Education, Family Life | 1 Comment

Sheryl Sandberg & What We Really Need

Posted on March 15, 2013 by

I’ve read articles about Sheryl Sandberg’s new book, Lean In that make me want to read it. I’ve also read articles that make me want to run away from it. One of the articles I read discussed the idea that women should not turn down career opportunities because they expected to get pregnant. Rather, they should accept opportunities and deal with the potential complications later.

I was thinking what horrible advice this was, that it was the exact opposite of what I did. When I got married I hoped to have kids quickly. I purposely switched careers to find something more flexible. I was feeling smug. Then, I remembered – I’m not a high powered executive. I’m not even a low powered executive. I’m not an executive of any sort, and actually, I don’t want to be.

I want to have meaningful work, that pays me decently and leaves me time to spend with my kids. I imagine there are plenty of women and men who feel the same way. I imagine if you swap “kids” for “family” or “life” there are plenty of single and childless people who feel the same way as well.

In a lot of the discussion of Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg people are debating the wrong things. The question isn’t if women should still be able to become CEOs if they take maternity leave. The question isn’t even if parents should be able to reach the highest levels of work life if they take flex time or parental leave.

Maybe they should, maybe they shouldn’t. There are very few high powered jobs that can be done part time, or 100% from home, or can be achieved if you leave for a year every two years to have a baby. It’s not sexist or anti-feminist to say that people need to make choices about what’s most important to them. It’s sexist for employers (or society) to decide FOR a woman (or a man) that she will or should make certain choices. It’s sexist to deny people the right to make those choices for themselves.

We do not need more ways for women (or men) to have satisfying family lives and very high powered careers. There are relatively few men and women who will ever become CEOs. Worrying about how to get more of one gender or another in those ranks, doesn’t seem that important to me. Learning how to make life more comfortable or balanced for that cohort also doesn’t seem that important to me.

What we do need though is more ways for women and men to have lives that are satisfying both professionally and personally. We need more jobs available to men and women that pay a decent wage without requiring 50 plus hours a week of work.

We need more ways for men and women to do their mid-level and upper-mid-level and low-level jobs and still have time for their families. We need more low-level jobs that pay a decent wage.

Yes, any woman who wants to work 80 hours a week should have just as much a chance at becoming CEO as any man who wants to work 80 hours a week. But honestly, most of us don’t want to do that.

Where are the manifestos for the rest of us?

Posted in Family Life, Money/Finances | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Cancer Sucks

Posted on March 1, 2013 by

This post is part of the Donna Day blogging event to raise money for St. Baldrick’s.

I have been thinking a lot about cancer lately. I’ve been thinking about two children I know and love, who are now both battling Leukemia. I’ve been thinking about a friend I recently became reacquainted with who is recovering from breast cancer. I’ve been thinking about a woman I do not know well, but whose ability to live in peace with herself and nature inspired me to completely change my life twelve years ago. She too was diagnosed with leukemia. Thanks to aggressive chemotherapy she survived, but now, in her thirties she is facing hip replacements and all sorts of other injustices. I’ve been thinking about my dear friends’ son, a boy who shares a name with my own son, a boy who recovered from Stage 4 Liver Cancer, and is now a teenager with severe hearing loss as a side effect of chemotherapy.

I’ve been thinking about cancer in a weird, philosophical way, too. Ronald Reagan first used the word “AIDS” in 1985. I was 15 or 16 and it seemed like for years we were all obsessed with AIDS and the dangers of AIDS. Perhaps it was more my group of friends than others. Perhaps we were right to be obsessed because we did begin to lose our friends in the 1990s. AIDS was an external threat, something that keeping to yourself and tamping down your desires could control. But now it seems that in my life at least, cancer has taken over as the threat. Cancer is harder because it is a threat that is part of us, perhaps living inside us as we type and read this. I feel like that difference must say something about the different eras, something about the way our world has changed, or I have aged.

But I’m not writing about cancer because I think you really want to hear my psycho/social/literary babbling. I’m writing because when I think about cancer I think about Donna, the daughter of friends of mine who died of a brain tumor at the age of four. Because of Donna I’ve learned a horrible truth about healthcare in this day and age. The more popular your disease, the more likely you are to survive it. If you have a “good cancer” like the children I know with ALL Leukemia there’s been a lot of research and so there are a lot of treatments. If you’re unlucky enough not just to have cancer, but to have a less popular form of cancer, you’re forced to fight for funding for research for it. You’re forced to have bake sales and lemonade stands and ask others to “vote” for your cancer in various contests. Because you know, your child’s life is really the same as raising money to go to band camp.

Even though they lost their own child, this is what my friends Sheila and Jeremy, Donna’s parents, do. Here is some of what I’ve learned from them:

  • More US children will die from cancer than any other disease, or many other diseases combined;
  • Before the age of 20, 1 in 300 boys and 1 in 333 girls will be diagnosed with cancer;
  • worldwide, a child is diagnosed with cancer every three minutes;
  • the cure rate for the most common form of pediatric cancer, ALL leukemia, is as high as 90%, but most other childhood cancers do not have that success rate. Brain tumors have a 50/50 cure rate, and some, like DIPG, are known to be fatal with no known treatment or cure;
  • 73% of kids who survive their cancer will have chronic health problems as a result of their treatment and 42% will suffer severe or life-threatening conditions like secondary cancers.

Information regarding why childhood cancer is so poorly funded can be found here. What you read will shock you.

On March 30, 2013 Jeremy and Sheila, and their Not for Profit, Donna’s Good Things, will be hosting their second annual head shaving event to raise money for childhood cancer research. Last year’s event raised $79,000.

Cancer is terrifying. Some of us have the luxury of sitting around philosophizing about it, others do not. To donate to Donna’s Good Things St. Baldrick’s Event, to help fund research so that more children, even those with unpopular cancers have a fighting chance, follow this link to their team page.

Posted in Family Life | 3 Comments

Marissa Mayer, This Time it Is Personal

Posted on February 25, 2013 by

When the then pregnant Marissa Mayer became CEO of Yahoo I did not rejoice. I wasn’t happy or unhappy for her, I don’t know her. Given the huge differences between her career and mine, I didn’t really see how her getting this job would have any impact on my career.

When Mayer announced that she would only take two weeks maternity leave I did not take to the Internet to complain that she was setting the cause of working mothers back. In most families at least one parent goes back to work within the first two weeks of having a baby and why shouldn’t it be her? Especially given the support system she must have, and the responsibility she has to a major company and its employees.

When she said in an interview that her baby was “easy” and motherhood in general was easier than she had been led to believe it would be, I did not join the howls of outrage. Because some babies are easier than others. I had one baby so difficult I thought I might never be able to take a shower again. I had another baby so easy that he made me think I was capable of running a major Internet company (side note: they’ve totally changed places).

Also, personally, I think that  if in the past we were all led to believe that motherhood was “easy” and “natural,” today the pendulum has swung too far the other direction. We’re constantly inundated with messages that motherhood is horrible and “the most difficult job in the world.” I’ve shared my thoughts on that absurd statement before.

But this weekend, Marissa has finally gotten on my nerves. This weekend it was revealed that Marissa was ending Yahoo’s work from home policy. In a memo “leaked” Mayer said, ”Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.”

Maybe that’s true of Yahoo. Although really, is that such a smart thing for someone heading an INTERNET company to say? Isn’t the point of the Internet that it brings us together? Maybe just like I wish others wouldn’t take her maternity leave personally, I shouldn’t take her thoughts about how Yahoo works personally. Except today, one of the owners of the company I work for posted a link to the article on Facebook with the message, “She gets it.”

Did I mention that I work from home? Now, technically, I’m a contractor, not an employee, but for the past two years I’ve had one major client (like 90% of my income major) and as I’m sure the owner would agree, I’ve done a kick ass job for them, from my home several states away.

I’ve worked at least partly from home for the past nine years, since my first child was born. I actually moved myself to a slightly different career path right after I got married so that I would be able to have a more flexible career when I did have children (in direct opposition to Sheryl Sandberg’s advice). Working from home has it’s challenges, and it’s downsides.

But, I would argue, that I, as the employee bear the brunt of those downsides. I’m the one who makes less money, has less security, and has to struggle to make sure my words are not misinterpreted with the lack of face to face contact. I’m the one who does not get the fun side of a coffee break, or a business lunch, or drinks after work. Because working from home is so important to me, I work twice as hard to make sure everyone knows that I am in fact working.

Many companies without work from home policies encourage employees to compete to see who can spend the most hours in the office. Guess what boys, I literally LIVE at my office. How macho is that? Yes, I do laundry while I work, and I pick my kids up from school, and sometimes I run out and go to grocery instead of taking a lunch. But, I also check my email 16 hours a day. I don’t mind Tweeting and Facebooking on behalf of my company on a Sunday night because my work life and my home life or intertwined. I can get my work done and have a life. I don’t make separations between the two the way I did when I had more traditional work environments.

Working from home isn’t just about work life balance. It’s about finding the best person for the job wherever they live, and wherever your company is. It surprises me that my client, located in a small town, doesn’t more fully embrace telecommuting. Think of the talent that would become available if they didn’t have to life in a tiny Connecticut town!

Working from home is about letting people with disabilities, of the obvious and the less obvious kind work. What would happen in companies that need tech, financial, and creative people if those notoriously difficult groups could spend less time trying to figure out how to share a kitchen and more time simply getting their work done?

Working from home is about letting people do the work they do best and in the way that they do it best. How can that be bad for anyone?

Posted in Family Life, Marketing/Social Media, Money/Finances | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Please Be Quiet

Posted on February 10, 2013 by

Lately, I really want my children to stop talking. I am running out of patience for being quizzed on the rules of baseball or hearing any more about the Patriots and their  record, or why Lovie Smith of the Bears should not have been fired. I do not care what color Valentines they are making or the significance of which friend gets which sticker. I do not want to hear the same story about the funny, or unfair, thing that happened at school three years ago.

I am tired of trying to explain news stories in a way that makes sense to people who have zero world experience, so please, quit asking questions. Also, for the 1,000th time I really do not care whether the cracker you are holding is actually a whole cracker or a broken cracker that you are carefully holding together so that it looks like one cracker. Just please put it in your mouth so that I can have two seconds of quiet while you chew.

I know that when my children are reticent adolescents I will mourn the days when I knew everything that happened at school. One day I will beg them to take the headphones out of their ears and talk to me. I know there is a mother out there who really cannot wait to chastise me and tell me how much she would love it if her child spoke at all, let alone too much. Before you do lady, I get it, I’m grateful. I know that if (god forbid) something terrible happened to my children these words, this plea for quiet, would come back to haunt me and probably drive me insane with guilt.

Perhaps it is this guilt that makes this so difficult for me. Because  it is not that my children are being particularly loud or obnoxious, or even that the conversation is about poop. Those are times when I can  say “That is not appropriate” or “We do not talk about that at the table” or “You need to leave the room.” Those are times that I have an excuse to ask for quiet.  But using the word “mommy” five times in the space of one sentence, a sentence that contained zero new or useful information is not a punishable offense.

I recently started reading “The Flame Alphabet” about a world where children’s speech becomes toxic and although the book isn’t my cup of tea, I totally get it. The every day constant chatter of my children is slowly driving me insane. But there is no way to say to your beloved child, “Could I please just have five minutes where you are not you, where you are a quiet person” without causing psychic harm. It is why I am very careful to never tell my children to “shut up,” no matter how angry I am. I do not want them to “shut up” to shut themselves off or up, to stop being themselves, I simply want quiet.

If that’s too much to ask, if I am alone in this secret desire, please don’t tell me. I really don’t want to hear it.

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