Why Did You Have Children?

...mother's day is particularly strange for me...each year it gets harder and harder to find a card that properly expresses my feelings...in general, i avoid all sappines--i don't get warm fuzzies when i think of my mother and i'm not one of those "my mom's my best friend and has always 'been there for me'" women...i'm the type who sends her mother a card that reads "they say the nut doesn't fall far from the tree...and that scares the hell out of me" (which is the one i chose this year, and i'm pretty sure i've given her some variation of it since i was a teenager)

...grandma--the woman who raised me and was for all intents and purposes both my mother and father--has been dead for seven years and when i stand in front of the cards at my local target, i can't help picking up one or two labelled for grandmas and thinking of her and all her faults...these are the sappy cards that profess years of love and understanding and wisdom...inevitably, i tear up because whether i like it or not she was a terrible parent who actually managed to be an amazing parent...her faults set an early example of what i didn't want out of life, and her joys--gardening and antiques and musicals and love stories and color-coordination--were things i'd eventually treasure...every card i picked up seemed to thank her for these things and this year, because my hormones are on overdrive from the twins' pregnancy, i nearly burst out bawling under the fluorescents...

...i also came across a massive number of cards that would have been mean to give to my mother...like the one my husband chose for his mother..."mom," it read on the outside, "there were times growing up that running away would've been the easiest thing to do"...on the inside it read, "i'm glad you didn't"...another card read, "it's not your fault i'm the way i am...50% is dad's fault too"...

...what these cards say to me is that there's a standard of motherhood out there--who sets it, who follows it, and whether or not it's a reality aside--that can take this humor in stride...there are families who welcome levity, treating mother's day like a celebrity roast...women who get these cards never run (though they probably wanted to at times), and are either still married to the man who sired their kids and don't mind sharing the humor (and probably blame those men, on occasion, for their children's questionable behavior) or are divorced and enjoy getting off the hook 50% of the time...

...these cards make me ask myself the question no mother is supposed to admit to asking (at least, asking in an earnest way): why did you have children?

***

...on mother's day, a writer i respect and admire, a woman who i'm not ashamed to admit is one of those writers who makes be believe that i, too, will eventually have my books published, posted a short message on her facebook page addressing all of the women in her life (including herself) who "elected"
not to have children...she went on to say that they're all "fabulous" and that mean remarks they've endured because they've not had children are untrue, and that children do not make a woman happy, complete, or better than women without children...

...i didn't have my children to make me feel fabulous, happy, complete, or better than anyone else...i didn't have them so that i could eventually be an "i'm always there for you" mom or an "i'm your best friend" mom...maybe i'll eventually earn a sappy card, but that wasn't the aim of motherhood for me...nor was motherhood a mission or a goal or a milestone i held from a young age...i didn't have children so i could make shitty comments toward women who've "elected" not to have kids (adam said this decision is sometimes just as selfish as women who have children to fulfill themselves, but i don't buy it)...or so that i could pity women who want children but can't conceive (something i'd actually been told in my twenties)...i honestly don't care who does or doesn't have kids...it's not a factor that makes me say "i can't respect/like/dislike/admire her"...i don't begin conversations with women asking how many children they have...

...i'm sure these distinctions stem from the fact that grandma was insanely fallible...that she often said things like, "i could've had a life if it wasn't for you"...that she criticized mothers who worked, who lived on food stamps, or who turned their children into "mealy-mouthed cry babies who couldn't step two feet away from their mammies"...she criticized women with husbands and small broods of kids, saying, "he's five seconds away from leaving her fat ass"...or if a woman was a single mother she'd whip out, "she couldn't keep a man because she treats those kids like the center of the world"...

...clearly, grandma was an equal opportunity discriminator, which definitely forged my attitude to most everything: if you're not hurting me with what you're doing, i couldn't care less...so i don't care whether or not a woman "elects" to have a child, just like i don't care if she elects to drive a certain car, eat meat, vacation in the summer...her life choices are not my business...

...but what bothers me is the nearly militant "i'm a real woman because i don't have kids" voice that seems to permeate feminist culture and polarizes the issue of motherhood...i'm no less of a feminist because i have kids...nor has motherhood caused me to lose a certain number of brain cells that would somehow make me reproach women who don't have children...what i've come to see, through the lens of apprehensive motherhood, is that american culture is nearly anti-mother...sure, the cards come out once a year, the sappy platitudes, and we proclaim ourselves a country based on "family values" (what that actually means i have yet to understand), but i've experienced more prejudice against me in the workplace, in social settings, and at restaurants because i have a child...nasty things have been done and said to me by mothers and non-mothers alike making me realize that as hostile as my culture has been to women, it's even more hostile to women with children...specifically, young children...

...a while back, another friend of mine posted that she regularly parks in "stork parking" because she doesn't think women with children or pregnant women deserve preferential treatment...she doesn't consider pregnancy a handicap or a reason to dole out common courtesy...when i dissented and told her that i just flat disagreed, an entire slew of women and men jumped down my throat, accusing me of being lazy, raising lazy children who think they should be given special treatment, of being on welfare, of thinking the world owed me something...seriously?...it's polite to give up a seat on a bus for an elderly person, but i suppose these folks would demand we  just make the geriatrics stand since old age is just another part of life, nothing to be treated with exception...i used to work with a woman who thought this way...in the five years since i've had my first child she has become increasing hostile to people with children that she's been known to openly badmouth kids simply because they are kids...she's invented a  new low when it comes to ageism and forged it with sexism against her own gender...and i've yet to hear anyone in her close circle--women with children--challenge her views...as if having children is a fault, something that can't be defended, shouldn't be defended, lest the militants accuse a mother of creating "mealy-mouthed cry babies"...

***

...i do think that women who are mothers tend to understand other mothers better than women who do not have children, though there are exceptions to this rule too...there are lessons that motherhood teaches some women--and i'm one of them--about love, sacrifice and selflessness that women without children won't understand...but there are shitty mothers out there too who--because of age, or circumstance, or mental illness, or whatever--are immune to these lessons and wouldn't relate to me just like i don't relate to the "my child is the center of the universe" mother...and there are lessons that women without children will experience that will teach love, sacrifice and selflessness, lessons that i won't experience because my life is different from theirs...but this doesn't anger me...doesn't make me feel like i have to point out on a federal holiday (or the other 364 days a year that don't celebrate motherhood) that i'm fabulous and worthy...it just reminds me that we all have different lives...and an assumption about what i've "elected" to do in my life is just as annoying as assumptions about what people have "elected" not to do...

...i suppose it makes me a "bad mother" to admit that i've had no plan when it comes to having children, and have worked overtime (and after the birth of my first child) to study up on how i actually want to raise my kids...i suppose i'm someone who will never experience all of the "joys of motherhood" completely...i'm perhaps even just a shadow of a mother to those women who've been planning families and baby names since their first baby dolls...

...i like being a mom...i love cuddling with my daughter and giving her lip-smacking kisses...i love that she loves these things too, that her little heart seems so happy to have me for her mother...i fail all of the time, but part of me likes to think that my short-comings have taught her that i'm human like everyone else...i'm not perfect because i'm a mom...and like her i'm fallible...

...and now here i am with two more ready to unwind their little lives from mine and i still don't know why i "elected" to have children...i'm a bit wiser when it comes to the physical and emotional needs of children (my first kid was a great guinea pig)...but i have no clue why i chose this role...

...to love them?

...to fall in love?

...because it happened and i wanted them as soon as i knew they were there?

...i'm not sure there's a way to answer "why did you have children?"

...perhaps like it's opposite, "why don't you have kids?" it's not one that necessitates an answer...

Big Dumb Baby

...this is a long-ish piece about why i'm unable to make friends...

Big Dumb Baby

I was raised by my maternal grandmother who—among teaching me the finer points of smoking non-filter cigarettes and ironing a perfect crease into polyester slacks—made sure I grew up understanding the one true pillar of friendship: “Most friends,” she’d say, the word oozing from her mouth like some fine poison, “wouldn’t piss in your ass if your guts were on fire.” So many times was this phrase repeated that it should have been etched into our family crest and set above the front door to keep out would-be friends.

I knew Grandma to have only two friends. The first, a woman named Linda who was several years Grandma’s junior, seemed to come around only when the two of them were going on cruises to Mexico. Linda owned a pizzeria and as a kid I spent afternoons inside the small restaurant feeding quarters into the pinball machines in the back while the two of them sat at one of the small tables and smoked and laughed over pictures of their latest trip. The last time Grandma saw Linda I was nearly an adult. We were both invited to her wedding—she was on her fifth or sixth husband by then—and while we were welcome at the ceremony I remember feeling as if we’d crashed the reception. Grandma didn’t know anyone at our table and spent much of the afternoon trying to make her way to the one with Linda’s adult children. By the time she got there, sitting down next to a tanned young man who looked just like his mother, he seemed to not know who she was. Taking her place in the receiving line, ready for a warm response from the woman who’d accompanied her on so many vacations, all she got was a short hug, a brief introduction to the groom, and a complicit smile.

The only other friend Grandma had was a German immigrant named Gretta who called our house three or four times a day. Each time Grandma picked up the phone, perhaps hoping to hear from Linda, she’d cheerfully say, “Hello,” and then roll her eyes. “Hi Gretta.” For the next hour she’d be roped into listening to the thick accent, the woman recounting her most recent complaint about her daughter or her newest physical ailment. When she hung up she’d say, “God I hate that damned woman.” But she still picked up the phone every day. Eventually, one of Gretta’s many ailments proved fatal and the day after her funeral—where Grandma was the only friend in attendance—the phone rang and Grandma joked, “That’s probably Gretta calling me from beyond the grave.” She picked up the receiver only to find dead air. This happened more than a dozen times over the next month, and I came to believe that when friends died their spirits were haunting.

Oh. My. God. Grandma Was Right.

...men are sorry sons of bitches...

...it's what she said time and time again...and it was a mantra i refused to believe because, while some grandmothers might have said it with a heavy sigh, with tears in their eyes from a broken heart that evoked sympathy and conjured images of lost love, mine screeched it out while she puffed a cigarette and recalled her string of bad marriages...

...she had reason to believe men were sorry, i'll give her that...her fifth and final husband cheated on her...her earliest marriage happened before her 15th birthday to a man nearly twice her age (no telling when went on there)...she stood by helpless while my father's crimes ruined my mother's life...if anyone had a right to stereotype, it was grandma...

Grandma, in curlers, watches as her two daughters
attempt to kill each other

...still, i just couldn't believe her completely...my experience with men was limited to school teachers--who were kind and patient and accommodating...then as i got older my experiences with men were limited to those sensitive types that frequent coffee houses...eventually, i landed as my husband one of the most not-sorry men in the world...i'm 35 years old and had nearly forgotten grandma's warning...

...but over the last few weeks i've watched as several men i know have fallen victim to the "i'm divorced from my wife so i don't need to see or support my children" syndrome that seems not just to be sweeping the nation, but has also become accepted, a social norm...i guess when a nation is piloted by a man who was raised by a single mother it's time for us all to realize, if we haven't already, that the "traditional" family is a thing of history (if it ever really existed at all)...but that shouldn't give men the right nor the morality to broadcast seed like a scott's fertilizer tiller and then abandon their children when they find a new lawn...

...specifically, i'm thinking of one man i've known for over a decade who has three children...when faced with the prospect of paying his soon-to-be ex-wife the state mandated child support amount, he balked, telling her he wouldn't have enough money to survive...this guy brings in just over $3000 a month and the state said he owes his kids $1000...i'm to believe that a single guy, living in an apartment, who has given up parental rights to his children save for seeing them every other weekend can't manage to live on $2000 a month? my growing family (3 soon to be 5) manages it...i'm perplexed...i was further perplexed when their mother accepted a $300 cut in support in exchange for him taking the children every weekend...weekends he then shuffles them onto his sister or, get this, girlfriend who has two kids of her own...

...blah...the type of woman who would 1. date a man who isn't even divorced 2. date a man who won't financially care for his children 3. get involved in the lives of children who may or may not understand what is going on between their parents is a whole other ball of wax...

...meanwhile, the mother of these children, who has been a stay at home mom for over a decade, had to find a part-time job...she works less than 20 hours a week, must pay for an apartment big enough for her and three children, feed, clothe, and otherwise care for these kids on her own 5 days a week...on the few days she's gotten more hours at work that conflict with being home with her kids, she's asked their father to come over and watch them, to which he's replied "i have better things to do"...one of those things is taking off from work to spend time with his girlfriend and her two children...

...i'm disgusted...not just by his behavior (which as i talk to more people i'm realizing is run-of-the-mill) but by a culture that allows this to become normal...and i'm not sure there's a solution...

...i grew up with absentee parents...my father was in prison and my mother left me at grandma's house where i was raised until just before my 18th birthday...grandma didn't work and we lived on credit cards, $300 my mother gave her for my care, and a small alimony check grandma got from her cheating ex husband...there were nights i went to bed with a piece of toast and a glass of milk in my belly and that was it...i was loved, well cared for, and clean...but my life was very empty and lonely...i grew to believe that i was worthless, that no one except grandma loved me...in part i felt this way because when my mother came around i got the impression she was there out of duty, as if her feet were being held to a fire she couldn't wait to escape...

...i also grew up hearing stories about men--fathers of classmates, neighbors, and, years later, boyfriends of classmates--who worked under the table so they wouldn't have a tax trail, thus their wages couldn't be garnished and they wouldn't have to pay child support...one man even opened a business in his new wife's name so his ex, to whom he'd never paid money for his child, couldn't sue him for back child support...what type of people do these things?...okay, you hate the stupid bitch who you divorced...fine, great, more power to you...but then you go out of your way to hurt your children...

...i just don't get it...where are the emotional ties, the thoughts centered around what the kids are doing at that moment, the sense that when you look a child in the face you see yourself looking back?...how can men be so callous?

...i asked my husband (who is among an elite class of men i call the "awesome, amazing, most incredible men on the planet")...how he would parent if we suddenly got divorced...he couldn't even imagine not seeing our daughter every day...not seeing me he was fine with(!), but life without his little girl he just couldn't even get his head around...

...why aren't men like my husband the new trend in fatherhood?...where are they all?...why aren't they out there proving grandma wrong?

This is Hell, and There's a Spinning Jeep in It

...my grandmother left the south for california when she was in her twenties and spent the rest of her life belittling and berating it..."the people are backward trash," she'd say, "you can't even shop for good clothes"...for a woman with a panache for fashion, the inability to score a decent pair of pumps made for the penultimate reason to flee...

Grandma, shortly after moving
to California

...during my early years, i got the impression that the relatives she'd left behind were a clan of rugged outlaws, akin to the dukes of hazzard (my favorite show at the time), who would tar and feather me just as easy as look in my direction...i came to believe that the tidy, orderly, compulsively clean home grandma kept was a direct response to the life she'd lived on a farm in east texas, where she shared a bed with two of her four sisters, and once in her youth nearly chopped off her own leg with an axe...i was the well-groomed, well-mannered miniature of herself, perhaps the equivalent of the "city cousins" she mentioned whenever she spun her southern yarns...those relatives who came to the farm and made fun of her homemade hand-me-downs...she openly hated them, and was secretly jealous, hoping each time to be taken back to the city and allowed to live a life of manufactured clothing and factory processed saltines...

...even with her visceral displeasure of the south, every summer from the time i was ten until i turned eighteen, we traveled from california to east texas for a few weeks to visit her relatives...by then, grandma had lost her father and one sister and her mother had had a series of strokes...so i found myself sleeping on a pallet on the hard linoleum of my great-grandmother's retirement apartment, a four room place on the eighth floor of a depressing gray building just outside of downtown beaumont...i spent my days reading louis l'amour novels and pushing my great grandmother along the urine-smelling corridors...for an hour or two each afternoon i was allowed to spend time in the stifling humidity, where i usually gravitated to an ancient rusted swing set--once sliding my feet along a soft bed of upturned earth and suffering the rest of the summer with weeping sores up and down my legs from fire ant bites...or i'd be permitted a game of pool in the always-empty recreation room on the first floor, grandma watching on as if any moment i might turn to her her and give her the fright of her life by saying, "i love it here"...

...my time restricted to a stale building with condensation dripping down the windows, surrounded by the dying-forgotten i became convinced that texas was the pit of hell i'd been warned about...

Grandma on the far left, with Nancy, Faye, and Sissie;
her father sits in the chair,
and my uncle Bud crouches beside him

...then, one summer, grandma took a reprieve from the sad building long enough for us to travel to hemphill, her girlhood hometown, where her brother still lived on a plot of land that had once belonged to their father...my uncle bud was a lanky man who was missing the tip of his pinkie and a good portion of his ring finger..."i picked my nose," he told me, "and a booger bit it off. if you look up there you can see my finger bones"...i spent a few minutes believing him and looking into his nostrils the first time he told me this tale...but as i got older, and the trips to his home became more frequent, i simply laughed along side him on the small back porch where he and my grandmother smoked cigarettes and talked in a slow drawl i came to understand only because i'd been surrounded by it for weeks...

...when i turned fourteen, uncle bud decided i needed to learn to drive so he enlisted his youngest daughter dana--a high school senior i thought was the coolest girl in the world because she had feathered hair and a deep tan--to teach me the gears of a stick shift in a hollowed-out jeep...we bumped along the back acres of scrubby brush and tree stumps, nearly thrown from the carcass because there were no seat belts, no doors, no windshield...no one lived for miles around so we could holler as loud as we wanted each time it stalled and we were thrown forward...eventually, i lost all control and we ended up perched on a tree stump, all four wheels off the ground and no way to get the jeep moving again...each time we gave it gas, we spun in a circle, a mechanized version of a playground merry go round...eventually, uncle bud found us stranded, the jeep out of gas from all of our spinning, and had to tie it to a tractor to pull it free...by then grandma had put a stop to my driving lessons...

...one forth of july, uncle bud piled me and his grandson, mike, into his huge truck and we headed into the small town for fireworks...i'd lived my entire life in a desert and had only seen firework shows at the local high school...i'd never heard of a black cat or m-80 or roman candle, but uncle bud loaded me down...at sunset he lit a candle and held it high over his head while the red and blue sparks shot into the sky...dana, mike and i lit entire rows of black cats in the middle of the country road, then became more daring and started lighting them in the old metal mailbox...the pops cracked my ears--they rang for days...

...it's hard to say what, exactly, those summers at my uncle bud's house meant to me...his wife, sarah, made blueberry crumble and chicken spaghetti (a recipe so good and rich it still eludes me)...i launched myself from a tree house via an ancient tire swing whose rope never did snap...i traveled to the family cemetery and listened to stories of my great-grandfather william whom i'd never met but whose grave i could eventually find with my eyes closed...i helped shell peas and cut okra, learned to can corn...i was introduced to a very southern tradition, the town square, which in hemphill was a series of dilapidated brick buildings surrounding a central grassy area with a small courthouse and ancient jail...i learned that defunct service stations were the best places to find wild flowers and old tin signs perfect for sling shot target practice...as i neared my eighteenth year, those days came to represent calm and quiet, a time when i could actually take a walk and listen to my own breathing...

...within a short span of two years, my texas greats began to die...first my great aunt sissie, then my great grandmother...great aunt nancy went next, and so ended the summer trips...by then i was in college, beginning my own life, and like most uppity know-it-alls i tried to distance myself from my family as much as i could...but eventually the south beckoned me back and at twenty-two i found myself living only a day's drive away from the crumbling homestead my grandmother fled a quarter century before my birth...

Uncle Bud with Great Granddaughter
in 2012

...i thought often of my uncle bud, one of only three of my remaining aged relatives, and when a family reunion was announced, i informed my grandmother i was going to attend in her stead...by then she was too frail to make the journey, and only a year later she, too, would die...i took the opportunity to impose myself on my uncle until nearly three in the morning...we sat up talking about every little thing, smoking cigarettes, and laughing at his tall tales...he told me of his diagnosis of mesothelioma, saying of it only, "baby, we've all got to die some way"...and he finally did, two weeks ago...

...my god...it's been nearly a decade since i sat with him into the wee hours, listening to cicadas hum in the trees on his land, but i can hear him as plain as if he were sitting beside me...his easy drawl, the voice like a pulled cello chord, the wavering of his breath like a breeze over hot gravel...the way he always called me "baby" like he did his own daughters...

...i suppose for a kid like me--growing up without a mother and father in a sterile california town that prided itself on shopping malls and lawn ordinances and watering restrictions--those summers represented wildness i would never know again...as i got older, my life fell into an orderly picture painted by the simple headings of "what to do" and "what not to do"...but always in my memory were my sweat-stained t-shirts and mud-wrecked keds and a jeep perched atop a tree truck, spinning and spinning like a top with two young girls behind the wheel and my lanky uncle swaggering toward us in his requisite white t-shirt and faded blue jeans, shaking his head and wiping away tears of laughter...