On mommyness—

Jan 16, 2009

            I’ve probably said this before, but if I had to choose some identifiable brand for myself, it would probably be Shakespeare’s Bottom.  Yes, yes—the joke is built in.  Of course, I’m talking about Bottom the Joiner from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (I say “of course,” but if you haven’t read your Shakespeare then God bless you.  That’s another allusion, by the way, for those who wonder).

            Actually, my brother and I are both Bottom, but I am more civilized than Mike is. 

The part about Bottom I find the most undeniable is (and I am not quoting because I am not in the mood to get off the couch and pull the book down) this: while the parts for the revelry are being assigned, Bottom keeps trying to talk them into letting him play all of them – the great lover, the tragic female romantic part, the raging lion (Oh, let me play the lion too – I will roar ye as any sucking dove-).  And because he takes himself so seriously, he ends up wearing an ass’s head (gift of the fairies) through most of the play.  “They think to make an ass of me,” he says, as his friends take one look at him and run off screaming. 

I taught this play in to my high school students (after having played Puck a plethora of times over four years under the tutelage of Robert Stoddard who will never know that I have just made him famous since he never reads my blog).  When we’d get to this particular place in the play—you know, doing a little readers’ theater thing with the kids reading the parts—there’d be this  sudden fluttering all around the room, kids cutting their eyes at each other and laughing behind their hands.

OH MY GOSH.  As though the jokes weren’t a good two hundred years old and counting.  “You idiots,” I’d say to them (it’s too late to fire me).  “That’s EXACTLY what he meant when he wrote it. YOU THINK I DON’T GET IT???????”

            Anyway, you could probably cut to the chase if you just summed me up with: I’m a jack of all trades, master of none.  Which comes very, very close to my point, but without the silliness, which I would sorely miss in my life if you did.

            And why am I breaking this tale, pray tell?  (More Shakespearean language – get it? Get it?)  Because I’m thinking about what a lousy housekeeper I am, and how little closet space I have because most of it’s given over to felt, paint, files of genealogy, soap making supplies, Christmas ornaments, choir music, beads and quilting fabric (not to mention . . .oh, never mind).  Most of which I haven’t touched for YEARS (except for the Christmas ornaments).

            Evidently, I want to do almost everything.  And when you want to do almost everything, you have to buy the raw materials and the book, and the tools you need to do almost everything.  And once you buy these things, you have to keep them forever because, even though you only spent three days (three weeks, sometimes three years) doing a thing, and then stopped doing it, who knows?  You might want to do it again someday, which you will clearly not be able to do unless you keep all the stuff you need for doing it.

            Do I make myself clear, here?

            Chaz and I were going to attack this stockpile problem.  May I add to the above the fact that I am the historian of the family?  I gather the old things, the odd ancient embroidery, the beaded dress Mother Jeanne wore in 1922, every tiny thing every one of my kids ever made, certificates, my old marbles, legal papers—just call me catacombs. 

We started with the upstairs cabinet in my room on her day-off-from-being-an-anthropologist.  Except, it wasn’t really a day off from that, because isn’t that what anthropologists do?  Dig through middens and stuff?  Anyway, we started up there and it took hours, and all we ended up doing was throwing away some bits of packing material and old receipts and then piling all the stuff right back where we’d found it. 

            Clutter.  Yes.  That’s me. 

Me.  And dust, that seems to be me, too.  And in places, very small places, even grime.  And I don’t CARE.  (HA. Then why are I writing about it?)

            Because of my mother.

My mother, who has now grown beyond my reach.  She’s in another state – both of head and body.  And I think about her all the time.  In some ways, I am terrified of having to try to live without her input.

            But in other ways, I have to understand—I am now her.  Like accepting a mantle.  A calling.  In a skewed, through-the-looking-glass sort of way and for my own children, I have become Mom.

I’m the one who Knows What To Do.  I handle the money.  I stand between the family and the Tax people (me and my accountant).  I read my own contracts.  I deal with the utilities and the city government.  I’ve done twenty two years of cooking, some of it adventurous, if not successful.  I’ve had four kids—all Lamaze.  And all of them survived past their eighteenth birthdays (no guarantees after that).  Of course, I don’t know what to do in every situation (enter the government, aliens or floodwaters, and you got me trumped), but I can figure it out.  And that’s one of the most important things my mom taught me: that you can figure it out.  That you handle situations one moment at a time and you don’t give up. Because you are the citadel, the last defense, The Guy.

And she taught me this: that you can be whatever you decide you really want to be, and you don’t have to apologize to anybody for it.  You don’t have to choose the safe things like being a banker or supermodel, things that get you instant “respect” and free sky miles.  You can choose to live in the trenches, going for the hard stuff, like making sure the family corp is solvent.  Like having a child (or seven children) and guiding that child through the million hours of culture acquisition, conquering basic physics, lingual acuity, all the time keeping him safe in the face of the fact that kids come wired to self-destruct.

My mother set the bar very high. And now that I can’t talk to her about these things, I find myself with so many questions.  Some of them are “how?”, some “why?”—funny, considering how many hours we spent talking to each other over the years.  You forget to ask the most basic questions sometimes (like you forget to take the basic pictures). 

I write about my mother now in past tense, because I am writing about the mom I grew up with, the mom I knew as my best friend in the world.  She is still my mom, but now it is her turn to be cared for—and I am very far away, sorting through memories.

Mom was not a great cook.  Least I be maligned for this observation, let me hasten to explain that this is a quote.  From Mom.  According to mom, she was a plain cook.  I didn’t know that as I was growing up—she made absolutely the greatest fried chicken and mashed potato gravy, the best meatloaf (which I actually, at one point, started ordering as my birthday dinner), hamburgers, vegeroni – whatever, I loved her food.  She wasn’t impressed with herself, evidently. But I was impressed.

I have written that my mother’s gift was in order and plainness.  She loved systems, put them in place, and kept them rolling.  By plain, I am not using the word the way people do when they are talking about the opposite of beauty.  I am talking about beauty, unadorned.  She loved her home, and never did our houses feel empty or sterile; I’ve seen plenty of inhabited sterile houses—the people who live in them could moved away without taking anything, and the house would still seem totally empty and echoing. 

But our houses (and we lived in six of them) were always homes, warm, pleasant places of character.  They just weren’t fripperized.  She liked strong, simple lines, blocks of color, clear designs, and once they were in place, she let them be.  She leaned to the early American, which is really just a redundant statement.  She added the spice of a piece from Egypt here, a bit of the Holy Land there—and the hearth-true touch of walls of books.

Behind all of this, everything was organized, from every cent that came into our house, to every linen, every heirloom, every supply.  Her house was not, in short, like my house.  It was not a workshop.  She did not farm and harvest dog hair.  Whether she got pleasure or enjoyment out of keeping all of this up or not, I don’t know. I never thought to ask.

[She did try to help me to tweak my attitude, once when I was complaining about eternally being stuck doing the dishes.  She, herself, finally addressed that problem by buying a little TV for the kitchen so she could watch it while she did the dishes. That weirded me out a little.  It didn’t seem like Mom – who hardly ever watched TV while I was growing up – at least, not at night – and really didn’t seem to approve of it much.  Now, I think about that and I want to kick myself across the parking lot: that my mother would have to buy a TV because I was too thoughtless and entitled to spend that little time helping her.

She told me, every time I picked up a spoon, I should imagine I could see in it the face of one of the loved ones I was serving.  She told me this to save me from my bitter resentment. But all I could see were the faces of the people who were out there watching TV and playing games together while I was stuck in the kitchen, doing the dishes left from a meal it had taken me HOURS to put together.  The people I kept hoping would notice I wasn’t with them.

I’d stand there over the sink, nearly in tears and angry enough to throw every one of the dishes at anything that moved.  I really could have handled things differently.  I could have been civilized like Hartman Rector’s wife – she stood at the front door and called out to him – sitting in the car, waiting for wife and kids to come out so he could take them to church: “Tell you what, Hartman.  Let’s trade: you come in and get three children under five ready for church, and I’ll sit in the car and honk the horn.”  But I didn’t feel that confident.

Years later, the confidence came, and I did handle it.  I walked out into the living room and said very sweetly (even to guests): get your butts in there and help me clean up.  My mother would never have said “butt.”]

Anyway, at the very least, I am sure she found her work and the results gratifying.  And, really it doesn’t matter.  If she cheated and chose to do all this work because it was fun for her, or if she simply girded up her loins and did these things out of love and with marvelous grace, the end was the same for the fam.  We were pretty happy people.  Safe.  Inspired.  Welcome. Encouraged.  And brought up to believe in hope.

 I would say that I have failed miserably at achieving what she achieved, except that I honestly don’t think I have.

Alright, I get no thrill from cooking.  I did it three times a day for twenty two years, using Mom’s recipes  as the heart of my repertoire, but I never enjoyed it, not even once.  Cutting vegetables for a salad is something I wish I could do in my sleep.  But then, I’ve always been afraid of knives, so that wouldn’t be good. (Mom used to cut up chickens WITH A KNIFE, like a butcher, but the only time I remember her ending up at the doctor was when she sewed through her thumb making me a doll dress on her FeatherLight.)  And whatever day or year you happen to read this? I admit it, my bed is not made.

 I hate house cleaning.  It depresses me.  I feel oppressed when I do it, and then I resent EVERYBODY ON THE PLANET.  Is this bragging, do you think?  Like this makes me superior, somehow, to the people whose gifts in this area?  OF COURSE NOT.  Do I envy someone who gets absolute pleasure out of making things spic and span and organized and clean as a whistle?  You bet I do.  Because I LOVE the results.  If I could BUY the results, I would have them myself.  But I cannot want to do these things, as hard as I may wish for it.  Except, I don’t even wish for it.  I’m that much of a loser.

You may call this being domestically challenged.  You may call this slovenly.  Call it what you will, it is my life, and I choose it because there are other things I find I must do, and there are too few hours in the day as it is.  The things I choose instead are NOT defensible, they are not better, and they are not debatable.  And my mom would have taken you down if you tried to mess with me over them.   They are simply the things I choose.  And never mistake me: having a book published is not more admirable than making of your home a work of art.

Thus, if I have gifts, there are definitely elsewhere.  So I slog along with that example of my Mom’s looming over my shoulder, trying to play catch-up.  My best hope is that nobody ever comes to my house and notices the baseboards or the windowsills or the dust because, while I find I can live with them, I cannot live with them in front of an audience.  I don’t see these thing when it’s just us at home.  I only see them when other people are around, and then I feel the sharpest shame and embarrassment, and run around putting my body between the guest and the dead firebugs on that danged (all the danged) windowsills.  There.  I’ve said it.

So why do I write this out here where there is no shadow of a rock to hide me?  Because I’m sick of women who have careers pointing at women who choose to stay at home as though this is a lesser choice.  At the same time, I am sick of stay at home mothers being self righteous and pointing the other way.  Every life is different.

[ 2nd Digression: the sticking point is children—I am glad to point, and would do so with my buggy whip, at people who do not choose to live with and bring up their own children where they easily could—and then go around setting the results loose on the world to wreak havoc and do damage other people’s lives.

I have never been great at any of the things I’ve done.  But I’ll tell you what – dust, books, Christmas ornaments, whatever aside, I poured my guts out into the effort to give my children a full box of tools, love first among them, but including self-discipline, accountability, selflessness, strong bodies, strong characters, strong minds, creativity and an odd-ball view of reality.  This EFFORT is what I have to lay on the alter.  And lay it I will, for the good or for the bad: this is what I have done with my life.  It’s just this: I tried.  I honestly, really, tried my very best.  And I never put anything before it.   At that one thing, my very best.  I did. End of Digression.]

So if you come to see me, have mercy.  A little selective blindness.  Oh, just don’t close the blinds while you’re here (Wow—you guys must have a significant soot problem in this area).  And do NOT open them too quickly. (Is it snowing in here?)  Please don’t wear gloves if you plan on touching anything. (While both black and white gloves one pose problems, even the brown ones aren’t welcome).  Do not ask to use the bathroom (though G cleans those when he can), and if you do, just don’t look at the walls  or the corners of the floor.  Mostly, you can look at the mirrors.  Oh, yeah.  And speaking of walls?  It was a total shock to me when I found out that people actually wash them. Like, why?  Do you walk on your walls?  I say that, but after I took a close look in the upstairs hall the other night, I actually know why.  Do not open any of my cabinets or closets—my insurance won’t cover that.  Do NOT check out my George Forman grill. And please do not ask to eat off my kitchen floor.

If I get a little too snotty when I talk about these things (which I have done), please understand it is not disdain for housekeeping that you’re hearing, but defensiveness.

If you feel that you must withdraw your friendship after this, I will understand.  But I will not bring you any Christmas treats next year if you take this step.  Then again, after reading this, maybe you’re not all that interested in my Christmas treats.

It is certain that I have not succeeded the way my mother did.  I am not selfless and peacemaking as she has been, not organized, not as plain and clear and direct, maybe not as strong—but I still feel that, in my odd-ball, black sheep way, I did her proud.  Anyway, that’s what she’s told me, over and over again through the years.

So whatever I write about my mother, remember this: she was my hero.  She still is, in her fight against this thing that has crippled her brain and stolen her memories.  I don’t want her fate, but in some odd way, to follow her even into this would be an honor.