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Wednesday we went to the fair

Jul 232010

It’s an annual tradition. My mom celebrates her birthday by taking my sister’s family and mine to the fair and spoiling the kids rotten. My kids look forward to it like they look forward to Christmas or Halloween. The very first words Madison said to me that morning were, “I’m going to have Italian ice and an elephant ear both!” The kid was still trying to focus her eyes but she was already planning ahead!

The fair we go to is the local county fair and it’s teensy-tiny, which makes it absolutely manageable on a weekday night. It’s always brutally hot and humid and sometimes it rains (not this year thank goodness) and there are just a handful of rides. It’s smallness makes it perfect because the boys can take off on their own without worrying anyone and it’s pretty impossible to lose anyone. You can also do every single thing two or three times if you want and still have time to check out the animals.

This year Madison was too big for some of the little kid rides and too small for most of the big kid rides. That was hard on Noah when it happened (later than it happened to Madison — she’s very tall for her age) but Madison took it in stride. And that picture there is her with Brett riding The Drop. First words when she came down the stairs after? “I am never doing THAT again!” But said laughing and excited and she is already planning to do it again next year.

The fair bookended a week of crazy fun for Madison. She had the PDX cousins in town and that meant visits to the ice cream shop and late nights through the week. Then Pennie took her out on a date (we watched Roscoe and Tommy had to work so it was just the two of them). Then Pennie and Tommy and Roscoe took her swimming and out to dinner and for more ice cream.

Let’s just say Madison’s bedtime routine has been a wee bit ganked and now with this awful heat, none of us is sleeping all that well so it’s been a bit crazy around here.

After her swim date with Pennie and family, Madison came home and cried and cried. She was sorry that it was over. She said, “I don’t want to be home with you! I want to be having fun with Pennie!” I said, “It’d be great if fun things never ever had to end.” And she said, “I don’t want them to end!” Then she conceded that I was fun “sometimes” because I let her walk on the low wall by the ice cream shop but that I am not as fun as Pennie because I was making her brush her teeth. I said, “Listen, honey, when Pennie chose me to be your Mommy Mama, she assigned me the job of being the mama who makes you brush your teeth. That’s my job but we can sit here while you’re sad for awhile more.” Eventually Madison brushed her teeth but she did not like it! And she only sorta liked me.

Honestly sitting there, I felt kinda like the divorced mom with the non-custodial dad who wines and dines the kids and then drops ‘em off, you know? I felt a little bit like that. I felt a little bit sad that I couldn’t be the Fun Mama. It’d been a long day and I was hot and tired and I’ll admit that I drooped and had to close my eyes and take a deep breath about it.

I want my kids to have great times with lots of folks and I don’t always have to (or want to) go along. And of course, I especially value Madison’s relationship with Pennie and I am grateful when they get to be with each other. I also LOVE that Madison is old enough to grab her carseat out of the van, stick it in Pennie’s car, climb in and wave good-bye. I love that she is old enough to take ownership in that way. Still. I had a moment there on the couch. A droopiing moment.

I was thinking, too, about them all heading out to go swimming. Roscoe looks just like Tommy and Madison looks just like Pennie and they are a beautiful little family together. I was thinking about that and about the glorious intimacy of swimming. Yanking on that sticky swimsuit, washing Madison’s hair free of chlorine afterward in the shower. The two of them having that time together makes me very very happy. (I know that being Pennie’s best beloved fills Madison’s heart up in indescribable ways and I believe it fills up Pennie’s heart, too.)

But, as I was telling LiaNotJuno (not linked here because I’m not sure that she needs/wants the traffic), I can see how this can be a challenge for people.

LiaNotJuno asked me how I got to this place in open adoption and I told her that in general (because in particular it has so much to do with Pennie) I can see three things that played into my orientation towards open adoption:

I’m a feminist so I believe in Pennie’s right to create her own version of motherhood. (Note: My feelings about her freedom to do this have changed since learning more about the way the adoption industry works but I still absolutely believe every woman has the right to create her own version of motherhood.)
I’m a crunchy granola earthmama who believes in a child’s intrinsic tie to the woman who grew him and gave birth to him.
I’m a child of divorce and I understand that the boundaries of family are permeable.

Although I felt like the put upon divorced mom for a minute there sitting on the couch, I also know that in a zillion ways our open adoption is nothing like that. But I get that feeling and I was thinking on how that feeling might sit with someone who has a more troubled open adoption or has less faith in (or is more threatened by) the idea that their child has a profound tie to this other parent or who is a child of a much more contentious divorce and experiences that feeling as CONFLICT.

I have been trying to put myself in the place of parents who struggle more with their children’s relationships with their first parents because I feel like I really need to learn some more compassion and understanding around this. Earlier this summer I was put in the position where some parents with whom I philosophically don’t agree have been reaching out to me for support and even though some of what they said made my spine freeze up, I realized that if I want to be a counselor, I really need to tone down my activist reactions and start listening. Obviously online discourse is very different than one-on-one in-person discourse and I learned a lot by listening and then trying to dig through my own experiences so that I could identify with what they were seeing even if I still had strong feelings about what they needed to do. And what I found is that if I’m listening, it’s not that hard to understand where someone is coming from and I become a lot more useful to them AND a better advocate.

So as I sat there on the couch watching Madison drag herself to the bathroom to brush her teeth (tears, oh the wailing and the tears!) I thought, “Remember this right here and imagine what it would be like not to be interested in shrugging it off or not being able to shrug it off. Imagine making decisions from THIS PLACE of exhaustion and insecurity.” Because I want to be able to be a counselor who can say, “I get that. I hear you” but who still is working to get people to work through that and get back to where they need to be for their kids.

I hugely value the online activism that I have been fortunate enough to witness and sometimes participate in but now I want to do less of that to focus more on in real life service and learning, which is why I’m excited about school. I think that will make me a better activist long-term, too. So I’m gonna shut up and listen more.

Mostly. Because I’m still gonna talk.

From Kate Harding: Sarah Palin, False Prophet

Feminism/Politics 5 Responses »

Jun 112010

Feminism did not leave conservative Christian women behind. Conservative Christian women rejected feminism. This is not a trivial distinction.

Heres a story. My late dog, Lucille, hated bananas. But more than that, she hated my dads late dog, Guinness, getting anything edible that could be hers. So one day, my dad drops a banana chunk on the kitchen floor, and we both watch Lucille pick it up in her mouth, make a face, then drop it again. Guinness swoops in for the banana chunk, at which point Lucille immediately picks it up again — only to remember it grosses her out and drop it. But then Guinness moves in once more, so she growls and picks it up. Except… still gross. Drop. Swoop. Grab. Ew! Repeat. Comedy gold, as long as you had nothing invested in that banana chunk.

This is what I think of whenever I hear people talk about conservative Christian women “reclaiming” feminism, or blaming those mean and nasty “traditional” read: “actual” feminists for keeping them out. You don’t even want the fucking banana. But you’d rather turn it into a lump of mush that nobody wants than let anyone else have it.

via Jezebel

Weekend List Post

Adoption, Grad School 14 Responses »

Nov 212009

1. Got heads up on a project to try out for that has me kind of excited. I like the start of things — the research and planning and learning something new. I love it!

2. I wrote a guest post on the Bitch blog on (surprise!) adoption and it got hit by a troll. It’s true that there are a few (very few in my experience) women who do not grieve the loss of their children to adoption but I don’t think we should create policy based on people who AREN’T hurt. To me, that’s a little bit like not putting seat belts in cars because most people don’t crash.

3. Also? I don’t like it when people think that adoption criticism automatically means anti-adoption. I’m not anti-adoption; I’m anti-adoption industry. (And when I say industry here, I don’t mean the ethical professionals who do their best to serve women, children and adult adopted people well — I’m talking about the industry that’s about making money.)

4. It makes me realize how deeply ingrained our stereotypes are though, whenever I talk to people about adoption who aren’t in adoption-land like us blog people. There are all these assumptions about birth parents and adoptive parents (birth parents are automatically incapable of parenting, adoptive parents are automatically worthy) that run so deep. I can remember having those assumptions up-ended for myself and the cold water shock of realizing that I had never really thought critically — not truly — about adoption. Sure, I knew exceptions but my assumptions were all based on stereotypes.

5. I bought advent calendars last night and this is the course of Madison’s conversations now: “Do they all have the same amount of candy? Does one have more? They have 24 pieces? They both do? 24? There are 24 pieces? And they have the same? Can I eat one now? Why not? When is December 1st? And then we each get the same pieces? But it’s hard to wait! It’s very hard to wait when you’re five! Does Noah have more candy or does mine? Did you put the calendars up high? Why? Can I see one? Can I have one? But it’s hard to wait!” Seriously. I don’t know if I can make it ’til Christmas. I may sit her down and eat all 48 pieces in front of her as punishment for driving me insane. Ok, I won’t because that would be mean but I might contemplate doing it.

6. You know what’s harder than waiting for something when you’re five? Listening to a five-year old wait for something when you’re almost 40. I know whereof I speak.

7. My grad school application is officially in progress. I’m missing one reference letter and just wrote a follow-up. I can see this on the OSU site — it’s wandering through the process. After Thanksgiving I’m going to apply for my back-up school.

8. I figured out my OSU GPA with my PSU GPA. My OSU one was not so hot and my PSU one was white-hot. I was worried that I would end up with a sucky cumulative but actually it’s not bad. In fact, it’s good. This despite a D in French and an F in Russian. Look at how I can’t brag on myself without reassuring you that I am still an idiot! Yeah, it’s fun to be in my brain! (Dawn’s brain: Dawn you ROCK! But not comparatively so don’t go getting a big head about it!)

Girls Rock

Parenting 4 Responses »

Dec 042008

We’re seeing a bunch of movies playing at the Wexner Center family film festival. Four of them we’re seeing as part of an in-school (for us, homeschool) program but tonight Kristen got us member tickets to Girls Rock. It was fab. I cried off and on through it and I’m sending Madison straight to Rock Camp when she’s eight (quick note: Susie Simpson, local camp founder, was also a HighBall Volunteer and works at Stonewall Columbus –obviously she rocks, too).

Besides making me think of my own growing up and my ex-boyfriend who is apparently dating a founding member of Bikini Kill, (which makes me wonder how he’s changed since he was no feminist back when I knew him), and about Madison’s future especially given her small tantrum before we left because none of her dresses have BOWS and she likes her dresses to be FANCY and have BOWS, it also made me think about Noah.

See, it’s not just girls who get screwed by gender roles and even though boys have the power and the privilege, as the mother of a boy I have to worry about the cost for my son who is currently sweet and kind and gentle (like his father). After all, I’ve seen the hits his dad has taken and my own brother and even that jerk of a boyfriend who may or may not be a nice guy now.

I wish there was a camp for boys that would be less about learning to be loud and take up space (since boys don’t need to be told they can do that) and more about having feelings and owning feelings (since that gets kicked right out of them.) Although I think there’s more leeway for boys to be who they are (and not diet, pluck, shape or cinch themselves into something else), I do think they get wedged into other roles that can feel if not as dangerous certainly stultifying.

I feel an urgency for both my kids. This stuff is pretty easy when they’re little but as the teen years loom, I can sense how much trickier it gets to be. But the movie made me feel hopeful. I feel like there’s a lot we can do as parents if we keep our eyes (and our minds) open.

One-issue voter

Feminism/Politics 25 Responses »

Sep 052008

When it comes right down to it, I vote primarily on the issue of choice. I’m a pro-choice, pro-reproductive rights, pro-sex ed voter because I don’t see how I can be a woman who cares about women and vote otherwise. I don’t see how I can be an adoptive mother who cares about adoption reform without supporting abortion rights. I don’t see how I can be a mother by birth and not understand the toll that an unwanted, unplanned and unsupported pregnancy can take on a woman.

I care about the war and the environment and education and the economy (boy howdy) but the issue that is most important to me is choice period.

So it’s hard for me to understand women who feel otherwise. I just don’t get it. You want to stop abortion? Quit cutting social services. Stop eliminating support for single mothers and teen mothers and families who are struggling. Make birth control more effective and more available. (Remember McCain thinks vaigara should be covered by insurance but not birth control.) Work to bring better sex education to the schools and while you’re at it, set up a daycare there for the teens who get pregnant anyway. (Because it sure looks like whatever we do, some teens will get pregnant anyway.)

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be against abortion but refuse to do the things that you need to do to make abortion less needed.

But even if all of those prorgrams were in place, I’d still vote on pro-choice issues because ultimately the decision about whether or not to be a parent needs to lie with the woman facing the positive pregnancy test. Only she knows whether or not she’s ready, willing and able to make the sacrifices it takes to be a parent. Anyone reading my blog knows that adoption isn’t the easy-out for any unhappily pregnant women.

We deserve access to ALL of our options. We can have our own conversations with God (as we understand him/her/it). We don’t need the government intervening for us.