July 25, 2010

What I expected

Harriet (aged 14 months) likes teacups, Miffy, and books, and so my job here is basically done. And though she’s changing all the time (starting to walk, starting to talk!), her recent engagement with books has been particularly fascinating. She’s started to make real connections between the books we read and the actual world, pointing out dogs within pages as she does on the sidewalk. When we pull out Hand Hand Finger Thumb, she goes to get her own drum off her shelf so she can play along with the monkeys. We’re rereading The House at Pooh Corner at the moment, and she points up at her mobile when she hears Pooh’s or Piglet’s name. When we read Kisses Kisses Baby-O by Sheree Fitch, and get to the “slurpy, burpy” page, she starts pointing to her breastfeeding pillow. When we read Ten Little Fingers, Ten Little Toes, she shows us all the appropriate digits. Tonight when we read Goodnight Gorilla (on the occasion of a trip to the zoo) she went insane, but I think that was only because she was tired.

It’s all very exciting though, partly because there was once a time when Harriet was about as engaging as a wall. But mostly because I love books and she seems to like them too, and they’re such a wonderful thing for us to enjoy together. It’s the one of the few illusions I had pre-motherhood that has turned out exactly as I’d expected.

July 8, 2010

I would like to give her more

“It is time for the baby’s birthday party: a white cake, strawberry-marshmallow ice cream, a bottle of champagne saved from another party. In the evening, after she has gone to sleep, I kneel beside the crib and touch her face, where it is pressed against the slats, with mine. She is an open and trusting child, unprepared for and unaccustomed to the ambushses of family life, and perhaps it is just as well that I can offer her little of that life. I would like to give her more. I would like to promise her that she will grow up with a sense of her cousins and of rivers and of her great-grandmother’s teacups, would like to pledge her a picnic on a river with fried chicken and her hair uncombed, would like to give her home for her birthday, but we live differently now and I can promise her nothing like that. I give her a xylophone and a sundress from Madeira, and promise to tell her a funny story.” –Joan Didion, “On Going Home” from Slouching Towards Bethelehem

July 5, 2010

Reading like a pirate

Harriet has learned to point, so now she’s the master of her index finger, and this afternoon she mastered it directly into my left eye. Which means that I’m just now back from the walk-in clinic, after four hours of being last in the queue because everyone else was hemorrhaging. It was the longest uninterrupted stretch of reading I’ve had for as long as I can remember, even better than the two hours I spent waiting for a passport last summer. Someone reading a Nora Roberts novel kept trying to talk to me, but I was hardly going to waste such a precious opportunity on small talk, particularly not with someone reading a Nora Roberts novel. No wonder she was distracted, but I wasn’t, which was wonderful. To read for hours, without stopping, without the compulsion to check my email, lacking the means to do so. Seated in a comfortable chair just made for ophthalmology, never minding the fluorescent lights, or that I periodically had to cover up one eye and read my book like a pirate. I read the second half of Katha Pollitt’s book, and reread (for the fifth time) the first third of Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I was actually disappointed when the doctor finally arrived, but not so much when he told me that I was fine. Just a tiny scrape on my cornea, and nothing a little over-the-counter wouldn’t fix, and then it was out of the air-conditioning and and into the heat, and onto the subway to read my way home.

June 30, 2010

Serious print overload

Honestly, today was an amazing In The Post day. I received the latest issue of Canadian Notes & Queries, whose cover is gorgeous (as you can see) and embossed (which maybe you can’t). It gets even better in-covers, with an interior re-design by Seth. It’s “The Short Story Issue”, which means I can’t wait to read it to pieces. I’m looking forward to everything, and a new story by Rebecca Rosenblum in particular.

In another envelope, I received some textual treats from my friend Alyssa (and I get to call her my friend, because I met her once in real life about ten years ago, and we didn’t become online friends until some years after that). Not only did she send a card with a photo of her beautiful son, but she sent me three little books from The Regional Assembly of Text in Vancouver: “Crust Test”, “Things They Loved” and “Encounters with Jesus”. Love it love it love it.

Seriously, this is print overload.

Further, I’ve been magazining it up like a madwoman lately. The day after my post on magazines a few weeks back, I received LRB, Chatelaine, and an subscription offer from The New Yorker in the mail, which I thought was sort of funny. The Chatelaine was even worse than the last one, incidentally. My biggest problem with it was the passages they’d highlighted so I didn’t have to go to the bother of reading the articles, and I was insulted by the idea that had I ten minutes to spare, I’d spend it spray-painting a hideous piece of crap. I don’t like how everything is so rigidly compartmentalized, and how the backyard depicted for relaxing in had a motor boat in the background.

But maybe it was because I was reading Wolf Hall, which really did call for diversions, that I began motoring through my backlog of periodicals. I read one LRB after another, and revelled in the fascinatingness. I can’t remember much of what got me so excited at the time, but the point was that it left me super-stimulated and inspired (and maybe I was just getting used to sleeping normally again). Perusing the archives, however, I remember that I loved this scathing review of the new translation of The Second Sex; Andrew O’Hagan on the moon; a review of a book called Incest and Influence: The Private Life of Bourgeois England; Will Self’s “On the Common”; review of Ian McEwen’s Solar; and then Andrew O’Hagan again.

I also read the latest issue of Room, which was the best one I’d read yet (even though I thought I wouldn’t like it, because I thought it was all about sports. It wasn’t. But even when it was, it was good).

The best thing about all this being that now my periodical backlog is not so backlogged. I’ve got three LRBS to be read, the Lists issue of The New Quarterly, and then the just-arrived CNQ. There is a distinct possibility that I might get caught up, for the first time in over a year.

And it is a bad thing that I reserve breastfeeding for reading magazines, which is part of the reason I haven’t really thought much about weaning?

June 28, 2010

How a mother-centered approach to breastfeeding saved my breastfeeding life

The politics of motherhood are a bit like dealing with those people who live in really awful towns who like to tell you about how much they hate your city. That they could never live there, because it’s claustrophobic, soulless, and so expensive. And you just have to sit there and take it, because you’re not allowed to utter the truth you’re convinced that both of you know– that living in their awful town has turned that person’s mind to gelatin, and that if you had to live there, you’d probably blow your brains out.

Or rather, it is acceptable to write an editorial titled “I formula fed– so what?” attempting to liberate women from the “shame” of formula feeding by evoking saggy boobs and breastfeeding horror stories, but an similar editorial so unabashedly pro-breastfeeding would be considered impolite. Because it would make other mothers feel guilty. And apparently alleviating mothers’ guilt is the structure around which the modern discourse of motherhood is framed.

The problem with this structure, however, is that is devalues some really thoughtful choices. Breastfeeding is only one example of this kind of discourse, but it’s the most pervasive one. The problem with this structure is that it makes everybody defensive, then we all decamp to our various corners to argue about just who can scream the loudest. You either breastfeed, or you are selfish. You’re either free of the shackles of motherhood, or you’re a doormat whose nipples knock against her knees.

The point of all this being that I’ve come to understand why some women become so evangelical about breastfeeding, because I’ve seen how they’re driven to it by a society that supports breastfeeding mothers in name only. A society that seeks to undermine the value of breastfeeding or at least fails to celebrate it, because we don’t want people to feel bad. But I’ve also come to understand that breastfeeding evangelists are really irritating, unless they’re preaching to the choir. And I can’t help but think that there has to be a middle ground.

Actually, I know there is a middle-ground, because I found it once, and it’s the only reason I managed to breastfeed at all. One of the many things I didn’t know before I had a baby (though I was warned; I just didn’t listen) was that breastfeeding is really hard. On the second night of my daughter’s life, I fed her all night long. Watching that clock tick through hours until the sun came up was one of the most agonizing experiences of my life, and in spite of all my effort, she lost 11% of her body weight in her first four days. We didn’t receive terrific support while we were in the hospital– we had a “good latch”, which apparently implied that all was well, and so no one took any notice of the problems we were having. (Most problems with breastfeeding are blamed on bad latches. If a bad latch can’t be diagnosed, then nothing can.)

Eventually, we had to supplement with formula, which I didn’t care about because it meant that I could go to sleep. I was just waiting for someone to tell me to quit breastfeeding, because then I’d have permission to do so (and I’m a textbook case, here, by the way, which is why no one should give a woman permission to quit breastfeeding, in my opinion, but then this is troubling too, no?). The baby was finally gaining weight, but her hunger was insatiable. I would feed her for two hours and she would still be sucking and crying when she was done. It was a growth spurt, I was told, or she was cluster feeding, but neither of these things were supposed to last as long as they did. By two weeks, I was out of my mind and couldn’t take it anymore.

We went to a breastfeeding consultant at a different hospital, one picked by chance from a list of resources, and this woman saved my breastfeeding life. The thing about her, however, is that she did everything wrong from a “lactivist” perspective. The first thing she did was promise me that we’d try to get the baby to feed less at night. I remember her saying to me, “You can go all day, but not all night”, and so much of my agony melted away with that acknowledgement that the awfulness was not to be simply withstood. The second thing she did was weigh the baby, then have me feed the baby (with that excellent latch), and then weigh the baby again to see how much milk she’d taken. In fifteen minutes, the consultant determined, the baby was getting plenty of milk. The baby doesn’t need to be feeding for two hours at a time, she told me. She wasn’t feeding, but simply soothing. These marathon sessions were not only driving me out of my mind, but they weren’t even necessary (which, having a baby who’d lost 11% body weight, I’d be loathe to determine on my own).

I also found out that the baby was constantly sucking and fussing not because she was hungry, but because she had terrible tummy cramps which my constant feedings (and formula supplements) were doing nothing to help. Equipped with the knowledge that she was eating just fine, I started cutting her feedings off and finding other ways to soothe her. We were able to quit formula supplements altogether. Breastfeeding finally became manageable, and I could imagine doing it for some period of time. 13 months later, we’re not even ready to quit.

My problems are nothing compared to what other women go through. I’ve had friends who’ve suffered through unbelievable pain while breastfeeding, receiving no support from breastfeeding consultants because to acknowledge the pain would be to acknowledge that breastfeeding really sucks, undermining the cause. But breastfeeding does suck, in the early days. The early days can extend to about six endless weeks though, and beyond, and it’s no wonder that so many women opt out altogether, and that the women who don’t become so fierce about what they’ve struggled through and what they’ve accomplished. Deservedly so.

I can’t help but wonder though if a more mother-centric approach to breastfeeding would ease the hostilities. If it would put everybody on the same side if we acknowledged that breastfeeding was truly awful, so that those of us who made it could have sympathy for those who didn’t. (And maybe those who never found it awful could just thank their lucky stars.) If those who were tempted to pack it in could receive the kind of support I did, the lately-unfashionable support that dares to take the mother’s well-being into consideration, sometimes even before the baby’s (as long as baby is thriving, of course. And maybe sometimes if baby isn’t. What baby is going to thrive if a lunatic is its mother?). If breastfeeding got a little more flexible, more mothers could keep on with it, and maybe we could ease up on the whole all or nothing “nipple confusion!” “formula is deadly!” etc. paranoia that makes things even less easy.

Imagine if we all decamped from our camps to discover we’re in the same boat? Or imagine if the whole breastfeeding thing became so de-polemicized that I didn’t need to mix my metaphors anymore?

June 22, 2010

Important Artifacts 2

I’ve been thinking more about “thingness” as narrative since reading Carin’s comment on my last post (and it was her review that brought me to read Important Artifacts and Personal Property… by the way). She remarked that the hipster aspect of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris’ life together was probably to emphasize its emptiness, that it all looked very slick but was without substance. That a couple can’t build a life together on vintage bathing suits alone. And so Shapton’s text was to be a counter-narrative to the thingness then, making clear what was going on beneath surface? I’m not totally convinced, but it’s an interesting idea to consider.

What I am convinced of, however, and what the book makes clear, is that these glimpses we’re given into other people’s lives (whether by auction catalogues, lit windows or Facebook data) is often so deceiving. Partly because what we glimpse is so contrived, (which is Shapton’s entire point), particularly since social media is such a performance. Because I’m all too aware of the view of my window from the sidewalk, because I’ve actually spent my whole life cultivating such a view, but you’re never really going to know what happens when I pull the blinds down, are you?

Motherhood is the best example of this, particularly its presentation via social media. I was devastated last year when my daughter was born, and I found my feelings in the days afterwards so far from the obligatory “Kerry is totally and utterly blissed out and in love with her gorgeous new daughter” status update. Everybody writes statuses like that, and I absolutely couldn’t, and at that point I didn’t know how many moms were just more capable of lying than I was (or of being “blissed out in love” in addition to having a pretty terrible time, but the terrible time itself they never cared to mention). All all of us have a “just given birth, baby on the chest” photo somewhere in our Facebook stash, but it so doesn’t begin to tell my story. We let it stand in for the story, because it’s more comfortable that way, but that doesn’t even begin to stand in for the real thing.

Of course, it’s not supposed to. Online anywhere is not the best place for private life anyway, and there is something to be said for keeping some things to yourself. But I must say that I was fooled by the Facebook motherhood narrative. The blissed out love, the dreamy photos, the quiet baby asleep in a bouncy chair– it did not convey the effort it took to get that baby to sleep. The effort it took to get that mom out of her pyjamas. I felt so incredibly inadequate for not being able to put myself back together as easily as my FB friends had, for being thoroughly miserable when I should have been blissed out in love. I had been expecting blissed out love because I’d perused so many of the pictures. And how could a picture lie?

But they do. They don’t just withhold– they totally lie.

There is no longer such thing as a candid shot, if there even ever was.

June 6, 2010

My mind is a toy basket

“A mother’s brain is an ort pile where the cultural guano of the ages of each of her children surives. A composted yellow slice on the bottom of Big Bird feathers and Barbie hair cut with Crayola scissors and old plastic market tubes and Tweety card decks, tiny little shoes, purses, belts, shimmery underwear and skates for Barbie, and the more politically correct stuff made of wood, the popsicle stick dolls and the blocks in every shape, painted, the wooden horses and the sets of foot-piercing dangerous jacks and red rubber balls and the miniature horses and the coveted big plastic horses and the Playmobil and Lego figures and math toys and sets of mazes and puzzles from about twelve dozen sets and the stuffed things– tigersnakelephantarantulapepigiraffeturleagle– and the marvelous tea sets that come in every china pattern and the little furniture and mirrors, the detritus of Vintage Star ponies and Wild Things and Seuss figurines and every McDonalds Happy Meal toy and then, well, all of this compacted together with old Halloween candy mortise into a solid-earthen basement floor of kid knowledge.

My mind is a toy basket filled with tiny, cheap, broken stuff.” –from Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich

May 19, 2010

I receive White Ink in the post

It has been an absolutely bumper week for books in the post. Today delivered my copy of White Ink: Poems on Mothers and Motherhood from Demeter Press. I bought this book for selfish reasons, of course, but it didn’t hurt that my purchase will help to keep Demeter Press afloat. And may I please mention other fine Demeter books Mothering and Blogging: The Radical Act of the MommyBlog and Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to the Experts. As well as the gala event this Friday to raise funds for MIRCI and Demeter Press?

I imagine I’ll be dipping in and out of this beautiful book for some time. For Grace Paley, Sonnet L’Abbe, Rosemary Sullivan, Lorna Crozier, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Ray Hsu (with whom I used to work the Saturday midnight shift at the EJ Pratt Library, I’ll have you know), Leon Rooke, Laisha Rosnau, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath, as well as many poets I have yet to discover.

There is also a Carol Potter. Do you think she is the Carol Potter,the most famous mother of all??

May 18, 2010

Literary Gala Raising Funds for Motherhood Research and Activism

With readings by Miriam Toews, Di Brandt, Margaret Christakos, Afua Cooper, Rishma Dunlop, Diane Flacks, Susan Glickman, Marni Jackson, M. Nourbese Philip, Althea Prince, Jane Satterfield, and Priscila Uppal

In support of the newly established Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI).

Friday, May 21, 2010
7 pm to 10:30 pm
Oakham House
Ryerson University
63 Gould Street
Toronto, Ontario

When Andrea O’Reilly founded The Association for Research on Mothering (ARM), the world’s first feminist research association for the study of motherhood, she was amazed by the enthusiastic response she got. “We started in 1998 at York University, and over the years our association grew to have more than 500 members from two dozen countries, and ARM’s work included an academic journal and press,” says Dr. O’Reilly. “ARM recently moved out of the university and has been reborn as Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI), an independent non-profit organization. Its focus remains feminist scholarship, activism, and community involvement concerning the issues of mothering and motherhood.”

Tickets are $65 per person and available at the website, or at the door.

May 17, 2010

Dispatches from another dimension

“Without question Tess was getting bigger and more complicated every day. But she was also growing her story. Growing a life that acquires its own description. Babies have only a handful of verbs. They eat, shit, cry, spit up, sleep, smile and wiggle. As a new parent, you live inside those few verbs with your child for the first year. In a sense, that’s part of the disorientation on top of sleep deprivation and all the other usual suspects. Some mornings I’d catch myself sitting with Tess and shaking the rattle, as I had the day before, and the day before that, or listening to her cry, or to her feed, and wonder where the hell all my verbs had gone. Could somebody open a window in there?

This might ultimately explain why parents are so punishing with their anecdotes. We are ecstatic, as if thawed from a long cryogenic sleep, with each rejuvenating action taken by our kids, no matter how banal. Like tourists with too many holiday slides, we prattle on to bored strangers, celebrating our return from new frontiers. ‘My god,” we say, ‘you should have seen the baby and the thing he did with the garden hose the other day! And this morning he made a brand new sound, sort of like he said, ‘multifaceted’ but, thing is, we don’t even use that word around the house, do we hon?’ Parents– all of us– send dispatches from another dimension where babies watching dogs, or futzing with garden hoses, is something blockbuster. And it is. Like, wow.

Or maybe you just had to be there.”

–from C’mon Papa: Dispatches from a Dad in the Dark by Ryan Knighton (and my review is here).