The concept of threesomes has been employed by unhappy spouses (or marriage partners with superior imaginations, depending on your view) since time immemorial. As an antidote to the occasional doldrums of monogamy, it seems perfectly wise and preferable to adultery. Why then can’t we imagine a similar relief from the monotonous isolation of modern-day nuclear families? My husband and I could both really use a helper sort of person around the house. Someone like Donna Reed, pretty and cheerful and wearing gowns of one kind or another, who fetches our slippers when we get home after a long day so we can lounge around and read the paper. Just the thought of this evokes deep feelings of peace and love, similar to how I feel watching Daniel Craig emerge from the blue ocean in “Casino Royale,” like all is right exactly where it should be.
Who wouldn’t want another adult around? I think kids need an adult-child ratio of at least 1:1. When you’re tired or they’re sick, 2:1 is probably more like it. Grandparents can provide some of this type of assistance, especially if your crew is as divorced and remarried as mine, but grandparents usually come with strings attached, and much less energy than they need to wrangle little people. When we have a babysitter around (every other year or so) to help with bath-time or cooking or cleaning up, it is astounding how much easier childrearing becomes. I think some of the wisdom of days gone by (boarding schools and governesses and “children should be seen and not heard”) is not fully appreciated by modern parents. We are so hands-on much of the time. Even when we work full-time, we’re full-throttle with the child psychology books and the guilt and the creeping belief that every little thing we do will land our kids in years of therapy.
Read more today at Imperfect Parent…
By now we’ve all heard about moms going in for post-baby surgery (tightening of loose things, raising of lowered things, perky rather than paunchy, etc.), but what about all the daddies? Don’t they care about their post-baby bodies? Anyone who has heard of couvade can’t believe that women are the only ones impacted by pregnancy….
Over at Strollerderby, I’m imagining a world where dads would go under the knife and what those surgeries might be called….
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On another note, I’m celebrating 4 months of sobriety this Friday with a trip to see my BFF from college, darling sexy Michelle, waaaay over on the East Coast (and her husband and her 3 babies). What fun!!
One thing about going to meetings with other people in recovery, you certainly are given plenty of food for thought. Sometimes it’s a bit much, but then it’s leavened with laughter and hearty joking and all is well again. There was much discussion last night about one of my greatest challenges as a mom: fighting the tendency to protect my kids from all pain and anguish. Since I can’t even bear it when they say they’re hungry (for the fifth time after they declare their dislike for dinner), I have a long slog on this one…
Last night a woman shared her recent news: the father of her kids (who are in their young 20’s) has recently been diagnosed with brain cancer and has only weeks to live. She shared the hell of watching her children grieve and being unable to take the pain away. I sat there completely immobilized by fear. If I cannot stand watching the girls get their feelings hurt, how would I ever bear something this terrible? Nothing like borrowing trouble to keep one in a constant state of anxiety and angst.
One of the seasoned codgers weighed in with this gem: We are here not to protect people from their pain, but to help them sort through it. To love them and support them on their journey — but not to take that journey away from them. And I felt my shoulders drop, took a deep breath, and thought “yes.”
I drank too much and too often largely to kill off all the huge feelings — the unmanageable feelings of motherhood — personhood — and it’s a common story in the Halls of these meetings. Sensitive people cannot stand what life presents them, so they slowly try and douse the emotions –not realizing they’re also making joy and happiness impossible as well.
Looking around the rooms at the faces and listening to the stories, I’ve never felt so included… so represented by similarly afflicted spongy hearted wanderers.
What about you? What’s your philosophy of protecting your loved ones? Karen asks this question over at Strollerderby today
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Meanwhile, have you checked out the League of Maternal Justice yet?
We all know that breasts merit attention, and that many women (and men) are happy to attend to them with adoration, ogling, grabbing, and gentle administrations. But once the boobies become part of the breastfeeding equation, fun and playfulness depart for warmer climes.
We like to look at the boobies, but talking about what we do with them (or not) in regard to feeding children? That is political. And exactly why conversations like this one happening right now over at StrollerDerby need to happen.
