CurrentMom

The Still Point of the Turning World

Truth Thursday 

You inhabit the land of grief. You can’t run away from it, back away from it, ignore it. You can’t shroud it in euphemisms – “pass away” – when someone has died. They’ve died. They’re gone. Trying to make it sound easier, softer, gentler, does nothing. In fact, whenever I hear that phrase my body stiffens and I want to scream. 

My mother did not pass away. My infant son did not pass away. They did not “pass.” They died. Call it what it is. Run into it and face it down. It’s the only way to work through it.

“The Still Point of the Turning World” is Emily Rapp’s meditation on grief. Her infant son, Ronan, was diagnosed with the always-fatal Tay-Sachs disease in the first months of his life, even after she had had the requisite genetic tests. 

Rapp is sad. She is angry. She is full of questions, both spiritual and grounded. She uses words to process and delve and deny and question. She paints descriptions of her son’s first and only full year of life – of his body, of his eyes, of her pain and her husband’s pain watching him regress. 

She wonders about the hierarchy of grief. Who is more entitled to be sad? Who has experienced more pain? Those of us who have wandered in these hills understand these questions. My second son died when he was five days old, after a troubled pregnancy and five days of hope and wonder. I grieve his loss, and will to the end of my days.

How To Talk to Your Kids About Climate Change

Guest post by Chuck McCutcheon

With Earth Day here, and summertime following after that, more attention will be paid to the problem of climate change. But even for adults, it can be a confusing topic. Too many Americans still don't believe it exists, and even among those who do, there's a tendency to think that a period of colder-than-usual weather means that the effects of climate change are exaggerated.

As someone who has written a critically acclaimed book for students aged 9 and older, and who has given lectures at schools around the country, I'd like to offer a few helpful areas to emphasize, based on the questions that I most often get asked.

Climate change is real, and people are causing it. There is no debate about this among international scientists. If you or anyone you know doubts this, please look at Grist.org's handy guide. But if your children are confused, you can simply tell them that science is not just like math; it doesn't always produces a single, universally agreed-on answer.

Global warming is a part – arguably the major part – of climate change. Global warming refers to the increase in the average temperature of the earth over several years or decades. Climate change refers to global warming as well as other changes in climate, like more common and intense extreme weather, and a rise in sea levels.

Leaning In

Truth Thursday

I probably didn’t even need to read Sheryl Sandberg’s new book, “Lean In,” because by the time I actually picked it up, I had read so many reviews, and had seen so much commentary about the book and about her everywhere – and I mean everywhere – that I felt like I already knew its basic premise (but for the record, unlike some bloggers who have written about her, I did read it.) 

It’s essentially a 4^th wave feminism theory. It’s not that we need to burn our bras for independence (1^st 20th century wave.) It’s not that we have to dress like men with floppy bow ties and shapeless suits to make our way up the corporate ladder (2^nd wave.) It’s not that we have to be superwomen, balancing work and family seamlessly and pretending that it’s all rose petals and perfection, and at the same time, fight the backlash against women in the world, a la Susan Faludi (3^rd wave.)

It’s that we are still trying to find a way to be the working women we want to be, the moms we want to be, the spouses and partners we want to be, and the people we want to be. And we need tools and support to make that happen. 

It’s actually a really good message, despite its detractors. Sure, many have criticized Sandberg for being elitist, for being wealthy and white, for being high up on the corporate ladder where few women rest and therefore not being able to see down the rungs behind her, for being hetero-normative, for being married to a partner with the ability to be flexible and allow her to stretch her limits with a safety net, etc. etc. 

All of this is true. And there is the whole nagging other side of the question that she doesn’t really address – how the work world does (or does not) support and accommodate women and men and families. But none of this makes her message any less resonant in my mind. 

Alone Again ... Naturally

Truth Thursday 

As I write this, my husband and my two younger children are enjoying a winter break vacation in sunny Phoenix, Arizona. They are gone for almost two weeks, leaving me and my oldest son (nicknamed “the tenant” this year, for we see him about as often as if he were simply leasing his room) alone in the house.

Yes, I was sad not to be able to take a long vacation because of work responsibilities. Yes, I am truly sad not to see my in-laws, whom I love and only get to see once or twice a year. Yes, I am sad not to be in Arizona, which I also love – I derive great inspiration and peace of mind from the Southwestern desert. And yes, I miss my family and it feels a little off kilter and quiet in the house.

But that quiet is enough to cause a great echo and reverberation in our empty front hallway when I kick up my heels and scream,

“Yahoo!!!!!”

For I absolutely, positively, unequivocally love being alone.

Into the Parenting Wilderness - A Book Review

Truth Thursday

I am a reader, and a writer, but I have never before been a reviewer. David Ebenbach’s emotionally engaging new collection of short stories, Into the Wilderness, has changed that.

As a mom who writes about the intersection of life, work and parenthood, I sometimes smugly think that I have the higher ground when it comes to musing about the parenting life; how can a man possibly understand the complicated lives we mothers live? And the few dads who do take it upon themselves to write about their fathering experiences often couch it in standard-issue stupid/funny dad-stuff – teaching their kids how to make icky bodily noises, playing baby-too-high-in-the-air with their young children, and an abundance of pre-adolescent whining about lost youth and opportunity.

But David Ebenbach has created a completely different paradigm of man-into-dad literature. His beautifully-crafted stories take the reader into the lives of his characters, both men and women, and leave us wanting more.

Although each story stands alone, four of the book’s gems follow the life of Judith, a new mother but not by choice. Judith is single, a young and hungry journalist, and like many young urban dwellers, still in search of herself. But a night fraught with indecision and passion leads her to an unplanned pregnancy, which she, surprising even herself, decides to keep.

We meet Judith after the baby, whose name has not yet been chosen, is coming home from the hospital. Her parents, in from Indiana, are crowded in her small city apartment, trying to make the best of a complicated situation. Once they had accepted that Judith was indeed, having a baby, that there was no apparent father, and that she was in it alone, they swooped in, determined to help.

While grateful for her parents, Judith still struggles. The most difficult question is what to name her baby girl. Judith, although not observant, is Jewish, and the question of naming the baby – an important Jewish ritual – takes on gargantuan proportions in her first days as a mother.