Buttery Babies And Blogs about Bourbon

One day my sister aim'ed me (remember before google chat?) and said "you should start a blog". Probably because I was bored, and mostly because I had been drinking whisky in the depth of a dark November, I said ok.

I didn't know what a blog was supposed to be and so I went into that safe place for parents and posted pictures of my kids along with descriptions of things we'd done that day.

It was fine, but after awhile I realized that nobody wanted to read it besides my mom. (Hi mom).

Somewhere around this time, my sister (again) introduced me to C.Jane's blog.

I found C.Jane and I said: oh. This is what a blog is meant to be.

C.Jane blogged about the kids sometimes, yes. But more importantly, what she was doing was documenting her experience. With raw honesty and a wicked sense of humor, she was putting her (emotionally) naked self out there. An act of bravery for anyone, but especially for a woman. Especially for a mother. Especially for a person from a religious culture. And I thought ok, I want to write a blog that's as true as C.Jane's.

So that's what I try to do.

It's just the truth.

Today C.Jane has a column in the Deseret News about the term "mommy blogger" and why she doesn't like it. I was thrilled to see this column, because I too strongly dislike the term mommy blogger. C.Jane's post about how she views the term as "buzz words for bloggers trying to drive traffic"is definitely worth a read for anyone interested in blogging, social media, mothering or, dare I say it, feminism.

Which brings me to why I dislike the term.

Here in 2011, we still live in a world in which men are afforded some things women aren't. One of those privileges men have is the privilege not to be identified by whether or not they have children.

There are men who blog, right? Many of those men have children and I bet sometimes they write about them. And yet, have you ever heard the term "daddy blogger"?

Tina Fey was offered the award of "Funniest Mom in America" and she turned it down. Love that woman. I haven't had the chance yet to ask Tina directly, but I'd be willing to bet it's because of this: Nobody is offering to name Will Ferrell, or John Stewart, or Steve Carell the "funniest dad in America". These men are all fathers, but nobody asks them to attach fatherhood to their public identities. It would limit them and define them in ways they probably haven't asked for. They are allowed simply to be comedians.

Men are allowed to be their profession. They are allowed to create their own identities separate from home and family roles. Women are still asked to be their profession PLUS mother. The term "mommy" is sort of like the new suffix "ess". Actress, authoress, poetess, postmistress? Now they are mommy bloggers, funny moms, powerful moms, political moms, CEO moms, doctor moms, etc.

The problem with that is that it limits women. It ties us to certain false identities, namely the stereotypical "mother" and all that identity entails.

Mothering is something that came to me unexpectedly. I've written about the months after having Ayla, the postpartum depression, how overwhelmed I was in that role. One of the things that was most difficult for me was the loss of identity. I wasn't me anymore. I was me plus baby. The buttery baby I wanted, the label I didn't. Before I'd had a chance to become any other thing I'd dreamed of--writer, world traveler, wearer of butterscotch boots--I'd had a label thrust on me. And "mother", it's a heavy label, full of societal expectations and perhaps the world's harshest judgments. Are we harder on anyone else than we are on a "bad mother"?

Mother is a weighty label and under it, I began to drown.

The thing that saved me, of course, was writing. I needed space for myself. Space where I wasn't mommy, or wife, or daughter. Space that was label and expectation free.

I couldn't have survived without that space. Which is perhaps why I balk at the term "mommy blogger". This blogging space, this writing space, is my own open range. C.Jane once quoted an author who told her children, "I will love you with all my heart but not with all my time". That resonated with my soul. We are allowed to save something just for us: a portion of the Halloween candy. An afternoon at the bookstore. The territory of our souls. More than allowed. By refusing to give our children our emptied-out everything, becoming over time dry, dusty soil unable to bear fruit, we nourish our inner landscapes enough that they may flourish. Enough that when we do give of ourselves, our offerings are nourishing and abundant.

This is what saves me. From drowning beneath the label, beneath the world's judgments, beneath my own.

To my children, I'm a mom. (Not even mommy anymore).

Here, I'm just me.

My Awkward, Unweildy Creations

In the midst of the Broncos game I swore, jumped off the couch, and ran to the oven, remembering the chocolate chip cookies that had been in it for the better part of thirty minutes. Why the hell am I even baking these things, I asked myself, drawing my charred chocolate crisps from the oven. It's like I think of myself as some kind of Martha Stewart meets June Cleaver, but in reality I am exactly what would happen if you gave Spike from Buffy and Balki from Perfect Strangers a home to clean and a bunch of children to take care of. The children would turn to smarth-mouthed monsters dressed like flamboyant singing circus freaks and the house is covered in something that might be blood. I decide to make cookies because I don't want to buy them, because store-boughts are full of hydrogenated oils and other bad things I can't name, other nutritional monsters in the closet, and then I spend three full weeks pulling the butter out every morning to soften it and putting it, melted beyond recognition and unused, back into the fridge at night. Finally I muster the energy to stir the ingredients together, a task which I find boring and tedious and only complete for the end product, and then I go and burn the damn cookies and when I wake up from my domestic nightmare-haze it seems I have feed the children Xtra Pizza Goldfish for dinner and not stopped them from coating it in maple syrup. And they've painted themselves again, Indy paints herself like she is the descendant of the Comanches, or Braveheart, or a Raiders fan, and most nights while I am busy burning the cookies and serving nutritionally insufficient dinners I am also busy forgetting things like bath time, or reading charts, because my mind is dreamy, drifting toward the book I'm reading, or the thing I wrote today, and really I am not suited for this at all.

Mothering is the only thing I've ever done that I haven't been good at. I'm not some sort of life prodigy, I've just been able to avoid doing things at which I suck. I don't do math and I don't play sports. I was good at school and spent a lot of time watching tv, and so you see, I succeeded at nearly everything I tried. I mean, I had the tv guide memorized like some kind of savant. I had a good-enough grasp on the Dewey Decimal system, that was all that mattered. Now along comes this mothering thing and truly, I'm an idiot at it. That and housekeeping. I've owned a wood dining table and desk for nine years now. Never once, in those entire nine years, did it occur to me that my wood furniture might need wood furniture polish. I just kept spraying it with Windex and blaming the poor workmanship for the fact that it went dull and lost it's slick lacquer. What I am saying here is that I appear to have the homemaking skills of Al Bundy.

Sometimes I feel bad for my kids. I wouldn't want me for a mother. I'm trying to think what I would want me for. I'm a poor drinking buddy. I don't get entertaining and boisterous, I get tired and pass out. Sure I had a few good moments over Labor Day flinging marshmallows at the neighbors with my sister, but that was an exception to the rule. I am a clumsy mother, a distracted wife. I could get really down on myself, but then there's this: I want my kids to be happy, damnit. Not perfect. Not successful. Not rich or high-achieving, not results-oriented. As adults I want them to know how to follow their souls, not the money. So Ayla told me she stepped on a cactus and I laughed, so what? I swear to god, I thought she said catfish. So Indy packs her own corn tortilla and Nutella sandwich for school. Who cares? She's the only kid in Kindergarten who can't read yet, she might also be the next Nigella. Or Missioni. I mean, have you seen her ensembles? She might be, I don't care if she's not. My kids know I love them. They are given room to explore. To make messes. To create art. Ayla writes in her diary and sketches a massive fudging grasshopper that I have allowed her to bring into the house, that might have peed on the carpet. Indy spins long tales about George Washington riding rockets and killing aliens, I don't think she's certain it's not true. I don't love them with cookies or well-ordered lives. This is how I love them: I allow them just to be. So I can't control what they think or do. It's difficult to control any person, especially if you are aiming to raise an actual human and not a drone. Between my moments of failure we find moments of grace. My children have an actual human for a mother. A complete and total failure. Not a perfect drone. My demands are not on their appearances, or their skills or performance. My demand is on their hearts, and it is only one: that they listen to it. That they honor it and stay true.

Maybe, somehow, we'll be all right.

Nobody's Fool(ed)

Get up off the couch, Tuttle! Your kids are playing Zingo together on the floor. They're not fighting and neither of them has smacked the other yet. There are dishes to be done and a living room to be picked up. Tomorrow's lunch to be packed, the laundry to be rotated. They need baths, you sent them to school today smelling like the woods, remember? Smelling like wild animals, if you're going to be honest. Isn't honesty what you're all about? Isn't your dream to stand for truth, like Tori Amos? You sent your kids to school smelling like camp smoke and matted fur. That dutch apple-scented hair detangler you sprayed in their hair made no difference. You're not fooling anybody.

You have things you need to do. You're supposed to volunteer at two schools now. There are fundraisers already, coupon books to be sold. You wanted to start volunteering for a non-profit this year so that by next year you could be working for one. So that you can afford that excellent education for your daughters next year, because you can't count on any scholarships coming through again, remember? You wanted to launch your freelance writing career. You were going to polish up some blog posts, work up some mock reviews, send out queries to content editors. Send out a resume offering to do anything from make copies to write blog posts for your non-profits of choice.

But you decided to let that go, didn't you? Remind yourself why again so that you don't feel guilty: some little voice in you kept clearing its throat and "hem hem"ing, like Dolores Umbridge at her worst. Something quietly insisted you finish your book first, before you go exploring the non-profit or the freelance thing. You decided to listen, remember? Because Tuttle: what else have you got? You are running on instinct here. You are feeding on raw hope. You believe in little voices. That and omens are your new thing. You didn't know you were on the right track until you started to veer off it. Be glad you didn't veer any farther.

Because maybe something will come of it, and maybe something won't. Maybe your spirit will benefit from finishing it, maybe your pride and your bank account won't. That's fine. Remember what matters more, Tuttle?

Your kids have stopped playing Zingo. They've moved on to the Wii. They're half-naked, dirty-faced, changeling babies. What kind of mother are you? They're eating candy again. They ate apple sauce and bananas and ham and croissant sandwiches for dinner. Call it smorgasbord if you want. Remember again: Still not fooling anybody.

Don't worry, Tuttle. It's better this way. Better if no one is fooled. Try this: Sleep a little more. Worry a lot less. Eat more salmon and spinach, blueberries and dark chocolate. Make time for ritual. Read to your kids. Lie down with a book. Listen to your spirit. Listen to your gut, too. (Especially when it tells you to lay off the ice cream). Forgive yourself. Waste no time on guilt. Believe in the bright side. Be thankful. Remember you are cherished because of who you are. Not for what you do.

Just a gentle reminder, Tuttle.

Who are we kidding? This is a note from your own underground. You don't do gentle.

Tuttle, those are orders.



I am Vesuvius and I edited a pimple out of that photo.

Spiritual Journeys Undertaken In Red Carts

We just returned from Mom Mecca (otherwise known as Target), where the goblins humiliated me so badly I almost cried.

They can be so naughty and I needed to shop for sunglasses and I couldn't--because of the screaming and the kicking and the stroller tipping over backwards. And everyone else staring. Sorry. I realize that my children are the first children to ever have a tantrum in a grocery store. I know it's truly an original sight, and terribly fascinating. But maybe for the sake of the poor mother you could just. . . avert your eyes? Just for a minute? And not stare at the breaking down mother the way you stare at a car accident? Because you and my girls are embarrassing me more than I was embarrassed during my Most Embarrassing Moment--the one that occurred in college speech class and involved a naive parochial-school raised me and a sex toy. (No I am not at all joking about that). (No, I will not tell you the rest of that story. Still embarrassed.)

I walked home glaring into the sun. And onto the heads of my misbegotten offspring.

I have been looking into books involving spirituality and motherhood, but they all read to me something like this:

Are you the perfect mother? No? What is wrong with you? Try to be the perfect mother. Feeling better yet?


I wondered aimlessly through Barnes and Noble on Saturday, feeling unmoored and empty and then I found this book by Sue Monk Kidd. So I ordered me an iced mocha and sat down and read the book and after an hour I felt like a brand new person.

Seriously. I felt like sunshine. I felt so good that when I went to meet back up with Mr.V I knew he was absolutely going to see my inner radiance beaming like El Dorado and fall to his knees praising my beauty and asking me to bestow my newly gained wisdom upon him.

And when he saw me coming he said "Hey. What do you want for dinner?" Which you may not know is IN FACT man's way of saying "Oh ye embodiment of every goddess of wisdom, oh ye who art beauty incarnate, allow me to worship at the altar of you and bring you offerings of goodly iced mochas and the richest red wine, which still is not richer than thou wisdom and beauty ."

It's true.

Now if only SMK (as I like to call her) would write a book on finding some zen when your children go all zany in public areas and not reaching down into the depths of your humiliated soul and finding your inner devil mommy that screams things like "STOP WHINING OR I AM SELLING YOU TO THE GYPSIES!" or "STOP THAT KICKING OR I SWEAR TO GOD I SHALL UNHINGE MY JAWS AND SWALLOW YOU WHOLE".

Did you get that, Sue? Could you manage?


Stop by tomorrow. (You, that is. Not Sue.) I would like to tell you about something I once wanted, and did not get, and have since become very grateful that I didn't get what I thought I wanted..

And no, it's not about wanting this.