The Hidden Dishwasher & the Pursuit of Perfection

The Hidden Dishwasher & the Pursuit of Perfection

by | May 27, 2011 | Family Life

yellow dishwasher disguised as cabinet

The official religion of Oak Park is home design and renovation. It is practiced in one degree or another by almost everyone who lives here.

A couple of weeks ago I went on one of Oak Park’s annual pilgrimages, “The Kitchen Walk.” The Kitchen Walk is a fundraiser for a local not-for-profit. It consists of, walking around and looking at how other people have redone their kitchens … for several hours … on a Saturday afternoon … and paying big money to do so. Hey, I come from a religion that circumcises and wears beanies, so who am I to judge a different faith?

I noticed something very strange at the Kitchen Walk (in addition to the fact that I was actually on it), the hidden dishwasher. As you can see from the picture above, the dishwasher is disguised as a cabinet. This idea has been bothering me for weeks. I get wanting a smooth, minimalist look in your kitchen. Since having kids I too crave a clear counter, a calm, orderly look. I’d give anything to have a refrigerator not covered in magnets and drawings. But, hiding the dishwasher?

Why do these people want to pretend that they don’t have a dishwasher? Why do they want to pretend that their kitchen isn’t actually a kitchen but a “kitchen”? What’s next, a bathroom with a hidden toilet? It reminds me of a roommate my husband used to have. She arranged cookbooks in their kitchen in such a way that you couldn’t cook in the kitchen. She also refused to allow his magazines in the living room because they messed up the aesthetic. She may have also been the one that kicked him because his parents called too often when he had a cold. This is the one thing I do not fault her for, I’ve considered it myself.

I think the hidden dishwasher bothers me so much because it seems to be a new form of competitive perfectionism. There have always been women who refuse to leave their house without their hair and makeup  “done.” There have always been women who have to bake the best brownies, have the cutest husband, raise the best children, or outshine the other moms at the PTA. Women who present themselves as perfect.

Until recently, these perfectionists could only present their “perfect life” to their own social circle.  Women who knew that the perfect ones weren’t actually perfect, but flawed and insecure like the rest of us, possibly more so. When you live in a community with people you learn their flaws and strengths. Maybe Ms Perfect is a pain in the ass, but she still brought you a meal when your dad died. Maybe the perfect mom was back to pre baby weight in two months, but you know her husband is a jerk.

Today though, thanks to the Internet, we are all bombarded with perfection 24 hours a day. From famous perfectionists like Martha and Gwyneth to less famous ones like “The Pioneer Woman” and your local mommy blogger with her perfect manicure and perfectly decorated birthday cakes. You don’t know these women and their faults , so you start to believe that maybe they are perfect.

I see it in the wedding space, with blog post after blog post of perfectly designed and styled wedding shoots that are supposedly DIY affairs. Recently there’s even been a “scandal” that some of these “real wedding posts” aren’t actually real weddings, but “inspirational” shoots. (Hey, we work with weddings, there’s not a lot of scandal, we take it where we can get it).

I think this relentless pursuit of the perfect house, the perfect kids, the perfect party, the perfect wedding is driving us all perfectly crazy. It’s why we have Bridezillas, women who have been pressured into believing that this day must be PERFECT and if it isn’t, their marriage will suck. It’s why we have Momzillas who believe that they and their children must be perfect. It’s why we now hide our dishwashers.

It’s not enough to have a great kitchen now you have to pretend that you don’t eat in it, too. Personally, I’m tired of all the perfection.  There’s no rest because even the people you do know now hide their imperfections behind carefully constructed Facebook posts. A friend called me one day to say, “Have you seen X’s Facebook? I’m exhausted just reading about her outfit.” I couldn’t agree more.

So, if I redo my kitchen I won’t be hiding my dishwasher, in fact I may not even wash my dishes.

It’s Alright to Cry, Except When I Have to Listen!

by | May 18, 2011 | Family Life

As the child of 1970s’  era second wave feminist parents, Free to Be You and Me was part of the soundtrack of my childhood. My mother especially seemed to take one song to heart “It’s Alright to Cry,” sung of course by football legend Rosie Grier. Rosie’s point was mainly aimed at young boys who may have been taught that it wasn’t manly to cry.

But, my mother, not a boy, took it as her own personal anthem. She cried, screamed, yelled and carried on at impressive levels over pretty much anything. After all, as Rosie said “Crying lets the mad out of you,” and for whatever reason, my mother had a lot of mad to let out.

Personally, I always admired the Southern/Waspy repression of my friends’ families. Oh what joy it must be to receive an icy glare and a thin-lipped grimace in response to a mistake instead of hysterics worthy of a soap opera actress.  Oh how I longed for the quiet, non-talking dinners that today’s parenting experts say lead to eating disorders. I’ve got news for you, eating in the middle of a tornado, also not so good for healthy eating habits.

All of this is why I find my daughter’s current phase so difficult to handle. These days M will cry at the drop of a hat, or rather, the drop of a candy bracelet. She’ll cry if you tell her that her brother gets to pick a TV episode first, that her father is teaching that night, that she has to share a balloon, or that we’re out of watermelon. Mainly, she’ll cry if you tell her, “no,” or tell her that her previous behavior is unacceptable.

My first instinct when the waterworks start is to retreat to my childhood and run into my closet to hide from the noise. I do not miss much about my childhood, but oh how I miss that sunny yellow walk-in-closet. Sitting on a shelf, surrounded by prairie skirts and cowboy shirts (remember, I said 1970s) is the safest, most peaceful place I know. Occasionally, on trips home I still try to find a few minutes to stand in the middle of the closet (now filled with my mother’s off-season purses and shoes) and breathe. My second instinct is to retreat to my teenage years and grab a cigarette, or a warm body. But, I’ve outgrown those behaviors too, for different reasons.

To be fair to my daughter, she has yet to reach my mother’s heights of hysteria. She can usually be calmed down fairly quickly. Within the limits of seven-year-old logic, she probably believes she has a reason to cry. But, oh my god, how freaking annoying is it?

My mother is no longer quite as hysterical as she used to be. Part of me wonders if she was so quick to cry in her twenties and thirties because she had been repressed as a child. My mother was the oldest of four. Her father was a former street kid turned career Marine, gone through most of her early childhood.  Her mother was a former rich girl who suffered from post-partum depression and loved to be taken care of. My guess is there wasn’t a lot of room for my mother to have normal little girl tears. Perhaps she stifled them as a child, and then found the stresses of raising her own children to be too much?

I know that because my mother used up the family’s allotment of crying time, there wasn’t much room for me to cry as a child. Maybe something similar happened to my mother.

So, I want my daughter to have the room to express herself, to feel bad and to tell me that she feels bad. I want to be a source of strength and support for her. I don’t want to dismiss genuine tears or upset, but I also don’t want to raise a crybaby. I don’t want to raise a child who uses her tears to manipulate others. I don’t want to raise a child who feels her own need to express her disappointment or hurt takes precedence over the needs of everyone else around her. I don’t want to raise a child incapable of getting up, dusting herself off and moving on.

I hope that M actually IS trying to be manipulative. I hope that she’s trying to figure out if tears are an effective way to get what she wants, and that she’s learning that they aren’t. I hope that this is a phase and that I’m not about to spend more years dodging the tears of a highly volatile person.

I love my daughter. I want her to be herself. I’d just appreciate it if the self she was cried a little less.