Adele Q&A: Women’s Issues

Adele: Mommy, this is contrived.

Mommy: Just ask me, honey. You’ll see. It gets better.

Adele: Mommy, what are women’s issues?

Mommy: Women’s issues are evidence as to why women aren’t equal with men. Like the wage gap. That’s a women’s issue.

Adele: I’m equal to boys! I’ll show them! I’ll stomp them!

Mommy: The fact that you need to show them you’re equal is a women’s issue, too. You shouldn’t need to show anyone anything. But you do.

Adele: But I want to show them. I’ll pound them! I’ll let them have it!

 

Seeing

Dear Adele,

Your father is away, and you’re in day care with your brother, and I decided to use these few hours to walk in the park, the park you’ll grow up in, the park full of trails and buttes and creeks that runs through the middle of our town. I tried to do what Annie Dillard does in Pilgrim in Tinker Creek–I tried to see. I hiked up a butte and watched the panorama of the town in the distance, the clear sky and the houses and a low strip of cloud. Then I hiked down a different butte into a canyon and deliberated sitting on a rock. The rock was covered with black blobs of lichen, a low tree shading it.  I wanted to meditate, or something–I wanted to be where I was, to free my perspective from malaise and upsetedness and worry about my life, about your life, about children everywhere. So I sat. I stared at the grass and watched a tiny fly or maybe a giant gnat land on a blade and spread its wings, and its wings were so thin that I could barely see them at all–transparent black wisps in the shadows of the branches. I looked away for a second and couldn’t find the fly again.

 

Adele Q&A: Barbie

Adele: Mommy, what’s Barbie?

Mommy: You, at 9 months old, are the perfect age for a Barbie.  You could pull her hair out, gum her, and whack her against the slats of your crib.  It would be wonderfully cathartic for me.   I mean you.  You.

Adele: What’s cathartic?

Mommy: Cathartic is when you release a lot of pent up emotion in a way that you find gratifying.  I’m actually just kidding.  I don’t have anger at Barbie anymore.  I’m just thinking that on this 50th anniversary of a doll that actually, tangibly, and undeniably has the potential to make girls feel like shit about themselves and objectify themselves and bow over toilets and make themselves vomit after they consume a lot of fast food or candy or meat that’s ground from the bodies of sick animals–I’m thinking that maybe someone from the producer class should step up and change this.  I mean, really!  Is any capitalist retailer going to grow some ethical balls and just say, enough?  We care about the children and girls in this country and we’re going to stop producing this crap?  Or maybe produce something else that will sell and be, I don’t know, less harmful?

Adele: What are ethical balls?  Can I play with them?

Mommy: Moral leadership.  I mean moral leadership, Adele.  I mean volunteering to take responsibility for the power you have.  And no, you can’t play with them.

Adele: I’m going to cry if you don’t give me some ethical balls.

Mommy: You have ethical balls, Honey Bear.  I mean, you will develop ethical balls through reading and writing and talking to me about things and enduring my advice and counsel on things that you come across, like miniature sex blow up dolls that we think are fun and harmless for girls to play with.  Can I play with this, please?  You might ask.  And I’ll say, Hell no you can’t play with that–that doll is an example of sexism molded in plastic and you cannot have it in the house.  And then I will try to explain, but maybe I’ll come at it from a different angle, like the fact that plastic is poison or something, and you will not cry until I give in, because I will take you to the park instead.  I will take you on a nature walk and we can watch tadpoles and wade in the creek and look for frogs that don’t have 3 heads and extra legs.

Adele: Extra legs!  Extra legs!  Can I have one?

Mommy: Where was my mother, huh?  And anyway–where was my father?  I realize that taking me to a goddamned park was too much for him, but god.  Maybe some conversation about what I was playing with?  A word of caution?  Anything?  You’d think the men in this country wouldn’t want their daughters playing with miniature sex blow up dolls, but I guess people are okay with this in general.

Adele: I want ethical balls!  I want ethical balls!

Mommy: Me, too, Petunia.  On this 50th anniversary of the Feminist Anti-Christ, let’s all have some.  Ethical Balls for everyone.

 

Growing in the Window

Dear Adele,

As I walked toward the car yesterday afternoon to run an errand and opened the driver’s door, I glanced at our house and saw your brother Ian, his 3 year old, blond head a little human circle at the bottom of his bedroom window.  I waved.  He smiled and waved back and I saw his mouth say “Mommy.” 

Ian spent a lot of time in his room yesterday, playing with a new (I now realize crappy and cheap) Thomas the Tank Engine plastic play set I bought for him.  And I realized, Adele–after I recovered from the horrible fact that I had bought my son another cheap plastic thing, when a giant cardboard box will do just fine–that as he grows older, he will spend more time in his room.  By himself.  Making games and machines and forts and telling stories, creating conversations between his stuffed rabbit and his Winnie the Pooh and his Tinker Toys, directing their attention to make-believe cheese and crackers (his favorite food, which he says like this, “I would yike some crackers and some cheese”). 

He will also spend a lot of time looking out his window, making sense of what he sees and remembering the view out his window for his entire life.  I flashed forward in that moment, Adele, and thought of your brother looking out that window as a teenager, when his head will be higher than the sash, his hair a different color, his voice low.  And I wondered how things would look to him then: the Crepe Myrtle smaller, the park not as far away, the street unintimidating, the light more orange.  And I wondered if he would be smiling, or wincing, or reading, or on a computer, playing the guitar, a little man in my house and in his.  (No, he will not be thinking about sneaking out.  Forget it.  You can forget it as well.)

Adele, I found myself missing Ian, even though he was right there, and missing you, too.  Because as you grow up, you grow away, you grow into your own mind, your own desires, your own friends and loves.  If there is a natural order of things, this is it–along with our unwillingness to let time go by, to allow a moment to recede, to neglect the spaces in time we experience with our children.   

I love you.

Mommy

 

Adele Q & A: Technology

Adele: Mommy, what’s technology?

Mommy: It is the best thing that has ever happened to the world.

Adele: Like boobies?

Mommy: Better. It enables us all to connect.

Adele: With each other?

Mommy: Yes, Petunia. We can keep in touch no matter what. We can find out all about people we used to find annoying or unimportant or attractive through Facebook, say. People just love Facebook.

Adele: I love faces!

Mommy: I know you do, Petunia, so Facebook is probably just the thing for you. And then there’s Twitter. I learned about it just last night.  Everybody’s doing it.

Adele: Twitter like birdies?

 

Pregnancy Potential

Dear Adele,

Valentine’s Day is over, and the gift I received was my period. My first period since I became pregnant with you, Adele. You’re nearly 8 months old now, and all the nursing you do kept it away until now. It lasted only two days. Some very minor cramping, a little mysterious pain in my pelvic region. No big deal.

I am of course lying to you right now to make a point, Adele, because periods are a very, very big deal, but I am of course angry about them because no one ever educated me about them. In my experience, not very many girls or women really understand what happens to your body when you bleed out of your vagina. There. I said it. That’s what happens, Adele. I’m sorry. It sucks, really. You have to figure out how to soak up the blood and keep it from staining your clothes–which still happens even to experts like me. You can get tired and cranky. But most importantly, you can get pregnant if you have periods. It means your body is saying, here you go, get pregnant if you like.

Well, our bodies don’t know shit about what’s right, Adele.

 

Adele Q&A: Valentine’s Day

Adele: Mommy, what’s Valentine’s Day?

Mommy: It’s a day where corporations and restaurants make lots of money. People buy stuff.

Adele: I thought that was Christmas.

Mommy: People buy stuff on Christmas, too, but they don’t go out to eat. So corporations still get the money, but yummy local restaurants don’t.

Adele: I think yummy local restaurants should get money, too. Can we go out to eat this Christmas?

Mommy: No, Petunia. I like to make turkey and stuffing and all kinds of other meals for you on Christmas.

Adele: That’s not very giving of you. And I thought we all need to spend money.

Mommy: We do. But no one has much of it to spend.

Adele: Then how are things supposed to get better?

Mommy: Obama, Petunia.

Adele: Our President.

Mommy: Not just our President: our liberal-centrist President. He has taken out an enormous loan for our country that might fix some things.  Except education.

Adele: Will it feed people?

 

Feeling What You Know

Dear Adele,

I want to be honest with you.  Very, very honest.  Which is why you probably won’t read this until you’re a lot older.  But you need to know that I really dislike taking care of you and your brother at the same time.  It overwhlems me and makes me angry and frustrated, and I can get to feel miserable after only an hour or two of it.  I get impatient and worried because I cannot meet all your needs.  I just can’t.  I try and fail and try and fail and it exhausts me.

I am ashamed of myself.  I’m sorry.  If I had a blog to your brother Ian, I would apologize to him, too.  I am a wimp, weak-willed and spoiled, and when you need something and I cannot get it for you or when Ian needs something and I cannot get it for him I just flip out.  I worry and stress and feel guilty.  It is ridiculous.  What am I, five?  I know you’re both fine–great, in fact, lovely and cheerful and contented children in a safe and happy home.  And, as my therapist pointed out to me yesterday, children need parents to fail in some ways so they can learn to take care of themselves.  It’s natural.  It’s part of the whole deal of growing up when it happens in a positive and healthy way. 

 

Adele Q&A: Therapy

Adele: Mommy, what’s therapy?

Mommy: A giant wheel, Petunia.  You get in and then run and run and run around like a hamster.  Like a long trip on a ferris wheel, or a log-rolling competition in your nearest pond.  It’s a wonderful and endless circle.

Adele: I love circles.  Your boobie is a circle.

Mommy: Yes, Petunia!  It is.  You would know a circle when you saw one.  No mystery to you.

 

Adele Q&A: War

Adele: Mommy, what’s war?

Mommy: It’s when countries or groups fight each other for something.

Adele: For what?

Mommy: Land, money, control of the government, access to something, what one group might consider honor or dignity or love.  But what we don’t tell children about war, especially when they’re as little as your brother, is what it’s really about, Adele–so I’m going to tell you now. And it’s really, really horrible. Sit down.

Adele: I don’t know how yet. I’ll fall over like a wounded Weeble and hit my head on the floor.