Spirituality for Atheists

Like any decent parent, I have PTSD.  I am Jewish, not in the sense that I believe in God or anything (Let's not get carried away.), but in the sense that I have a unique cultural blend of rational thinking and neurosis.  I believe that this makes me superior.  And there is nothing wrong with that.  If I didn't think Jewish moms were awesome, then I wouldn't be one.  Right?  I hope that every parent believes that his or her parenting is superior.  That is as it should be.

Back to my PTSD: mostly, mine stems around Ari's asthma.  There were the usual stresses about sleeping and waking, talking and walking, listening and rebelling, eating and pooping.  But the asthma SUCKS.  Ari's first bout of RSV was in July, 2008.  He was four months old.  He was hospitalized for days, mostly as a precaution, but either nobody told me that, or I was too distressed to hear it.  What followed basically involved my weeping in some doctor's lap, him running out of the room for a psych consult (mild exaggeration), and all three of us (that is, the two mommies and the cat) freaking out every time the baby coughed Forevermore.

Ari recently had what was probably RSV again, and he left a new trail of contagion.  Barbara and her boss and I had bronchitis and pneumonia and sinus infections which lasted weeks while Ari was well in about five days.  Anyway, we are all always sick, though it seems (Please, Jesus!) to be better this year.

To keep our selves from dying of stress, B and I have developed quasi-humorous rituals.  We kneel at the foot of our bed and pray.  We bow down before Allah and meditate to become one with the Buddha.  We make deals and promises and melodramatic proclamations to the Norse gods and the Egyptian mummies.  Whatever.  We don't want to miss anyone.  Just in case.  It is a lot of worship and prayer for a house full of atheists.  We giggle at our contortions, but we feel okay about the giggling because no well-meaning deity could fault us for giggling while doing our best to honor him or her.  Right?

I feel we are a study in what happens to PTSD victims/survivors who have no faith.  We waffle in our faithlessness because honestly, what sane parents put their beliefs in front of their children?  I would become a Republican evangelical in a heartbeat if I thought it would keep Ari healthier.  Who's with me?

Laundry pile, Cat, and B

On a good night, it goes like this:  We hear a cough over the baby monitor, and we discuss whether to go and give him a treatment like two rational, atheist mommies, and then one of us, needing some tension relief, starts to pretend pray.  The other one checks on him, and he's breathing slowly, sleeping soundly, what asthma parents call "moving plenty of air."  She comes back to find the other still prostrate in devotion and announces, "he's fine."  Our eyes meet over the heap of unfolded laundry, and the standing one pulls the other one up off of the floor.  Then there is some kind of a romantic moment, somehow, with us half entangled in the laundry and engulfed in gratitude for so many, many things.  Free breathing, midnight make out sessions, humor in trying times, the love of our absolute lives in this house in the form of our three imperfect selves.  There's a spirituality to it, even though we're only making fun.  And then, oh excellent deity, we throw the laundry aside and sleep.

Three Muskateers (Cubed)

Last June, I quit my job as a retail manager and went back to school.  I'm in a school immersion master of arts in teaching program, which basically consists of 39 credits, a student teaching internship in an urban public high school with a mentor teacher, and a very long commute.  It's a ten month program, and I graduate in May.  Most of my experience has been positive in that I feel very close to the 15 other people in my cohort, I have a great mentor teacher, and the students are sweet.  I have dealt with the commute by using Audible.com, and no, they did not pay me to write that.  (Oh, but I wish they had!)

I have two friends in my cohort who complain with me more than the others.  (Though they are all excellent complainers, which is a fine quality indeed.)  Min and Shardae are my favorite complainers.  They have style.

Min is a stealth complainer.  She is very earnest, smart, and hard working.  One would never know that she complains at all.  In fact, I hardly do.  We are too busy to really talk anymore, so we gchat (and Google didn't pay me to say that either, sadly.)  She chats me about papers and students and professors.  Her complaints are all quite reasonable and mild, which makes me feel superior somehow to the things and people we are complaining about, since Min and I are both clearly Supreme Beings if we can be so level-headed when irked.

Shardae is more of an irreverent slacker.  She is an eye roller, a sigher, a blatant texter during lectures, and she sees the pointlessness in almost everything.  This is, I have found, an underrated skill.  She complains so well I almost want to cheer.  Truly, one has to be grateful when one's friend is capable of turning shared misery into a standing ovation.  Plus, she procrastinates, but never panics.  She is sneakily supportive about my pathetic job search, and she's funny.

I'm grateful for my cohort in general--I don't know how anyone gets a masters in ten months without one.  But I am extra grateful for Shardae and Min.  This kind of effortless friendship always seems to happen in threes.

Ari is in a new (3-year-old) classroom at his school.  He moved there in January.  With all of the snow days, illnesses, and staffing changes at his school, it has been a rough transition.  His teachers have been complaining to me that he is not always listening.  Because I am training to be a teacher, this sends me into an absolute tizzy of fear.  I imagine he has oppositional defiant disorder and 17 other emotional-behavioral disabilities.  You know, the ones I see in my students and learn about and study every single day.  Of course he has no other symptoms and is generally quite eager to please, but logic has about as much to do with parenting as marshmallow peeps have to do with shoes.

Today I arrived at school to pick Ari up, and his teacher told me that he had listened so poorly that he was not allowed to go outside during recess.  He and his two friends Lulu and Ms. Hunnicutt (I share her last name because I like the southern sound of it.) were all throwing toys on the floor and laughing hysterically.  They all had to stay in during recess.

For some reason, the idea that it was a group rebellion made me relax about the whole thing.  Watching Ari with Lulu and Ms. Hunnicutt, I saw their bond more than their disruption.  I saw his pleasure in being with them, and it reminded me of some non-listening, disruptive moments in my own life.  It reminded me of Min and Shardae and I, all grown women, whining and refusing to listen to the instructions for our papers and research projects.  It reminded me of another time, too.

When I was in seventh grade, I was on a school bus with two of my friends, Gabriella and Amy, and we were doing something disruptive.  I don't remember what it was.  The window was open, and I was sitting in the seat next to it.  Gabriella was on my left.  Amy was across the aisle, standing up.  (She was supposed to be sitting.)  The bus was moving; the wind was in my hair; the sun was shining.  Someone was yelling at us.  We were not listening.  I was smiling, and I recall this feeling of unity with Amy and Gabriella, this feeling of knowing my place and being at home in it and knowing that my friends and I were rebellious and cool.  It is one of my favorite memories, in spite of its vagueness, because it holds a feeling which I have rarely reclaimed.  Still, when I think of it, I am almost breathless at the sense of well-being it evokes.  It was a euphoric moment, one that I would not trade.

So, when I think of my son not listening with Lulu and Ms. Hunnicutt, throwing toys on the floor and laughing, I hope for him to have that kind of joy.  I hope that when he is 38, he has a memory like mine.  And I don't worry anymore.

Those Special Someones

Ari and B at the park

So, being a queer mommy is a lot like being a straight mommy.  (I imagine.)  Even when there are two parents (in our case, both hard-working, non-shirking, and engaged) and only one child you feel somehow, eternally, outnumbered.  I have been toying with potential solutions.  There is the age-old one of hiring a nanny, preferably someone who will live in your enormous home, somewhere removed but always accessible.  Someone who speaks several languages, has no discernible prejudices, has endless energy, no romantic aspirations but no social diseases would be ideal.  In other words, the impossible.  And then, when you find that person, you can't afford to pay them and, if you are me, you don't have the enormous house anyway, so what is even the point of looking?  And I don't.

But I do have an imagination, and for the past threeish years I have been toying with the idea of marrying someone else.  Not as in leaving B (Heavens no!), but as in adding to the number of adult parents in the domestic situation.  Because, as I said before, we are somehow outnumbered.  Even though there are two of us, and we both work as hard as we can, we can't keep up.  The world is ahead of us.  Ari's cup, which has 570934972097 parts that must all be washed by hand and are shaped like bendy straws, lies dirty in the sink, and no matter how many I buy, eventually I have to wash one.

Yesterday I made him pink cupcakes with pink frosting and sprinkles because he asked me to.  He has eaten exactly one half, and I hate them.  (Too pink tasting.)  But I cannot complain about him not eating enough sugar, can I?  It is all so complicated.  Today I made him banana bread which he refused.  He is perfect and an icon of kissability, but an endless chore-creator.  Even shopping for his clothing, which I do almost all online, is a daunting undertaking.  He is long on top, short on bottom, and evidently the skinniest toddler in the United States.  Yes, I know, I should take him to the store and have him try things on, but have you taken an almost three-year-old clothes shopping?  He is agreeable and will happily try things on, but then he wants 12 of the same shirt and cries when he can't stay in the suitcase store all day.

Again, I digress.  I have been looking for other couples to marry.  Not romantically.  (Though I would have to like them, and they could not be ugly because life's too short.)  But, domestically.  I think we should find some other couple with good parenting skills and shack up in an enormous mansion which we could easily afford on the four person income.  We could then take vacations together and help raise each other's children and babysit for each other on date night and be friends and use energy more efficiently by combining laundry loads and whatnot.  Sounds complicated, I know, and I'm probably just trying to be cute and trendy by even considering it.  But I can't help myself.

I spend time sizing up the potentials.  When Ari was first born, B's best friend Cindy came to visit.  She held the baby while I shoveled grapefruits down my throat.  All I wanted to do those first few weeks was sleep (Ha!) and eat grapefruits.  She made protein shakes I actually liked.  She made excellent dishes, which I was too exhausted to commit to long-term memory.  Though of course I realize she was on her best "new baby support" behavior for the days she stayed with us, I considered her.  She was already B's best friend, so obviously they got along.  If it hadn't been for her husband, whom I just don't know well enough, I might have proposed to them.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.

We have other friends who might do.  One couple has this cute little boy and works very hard, both domestically and career-wise.  They are fashionable and funny, even cute.  There is, however, this mammoth dog who lives with them, and I guess he would have to move in, too.  Forget it.  There are others--some pregnant couples--one of whom makes their own beer.  Some of them already own nice homes.  Of course, we'd all have to move to make a "joint" decision about where to live together.  And the couple who makes their own beer would have to cut back on their hours at work.  And the other couple has a lazy man in it.  That would not do.

Is this normal?  Do other parents dream of dividing the labor by marrying their friends?  When Clinton said "it takes a village," was she kidding?  Was it a cruel joke?  Or does she just not realize that THERE ARE NO VILLAGES IN THIS COUNTRY!  I love Hillary more than anybody, but the only way to make the village is polygamy.  Preferably the queer kind.

That Damn Cat

Let me start with the cat.  Her name is Sasha, which my son pronounces "Sassa."  He sort of lisps when he says it, which I guess is standard two-year-old pronunciation, and normally I think it's cute.  Right now, though, nothing is cute, and I can't decide if I hate my hair more than my cat.  My hair falls into my eyes whenever I look down, and I am annoyed by this 75093-485-74597324 times a day.  (Please ignore hyphens.  I don't have a number pad on my laptop, which means my frustrated large number creation spaz attacks don't even work properly.)  Anyway, back to the hair.  I would  cut it, but there is the aesthetic.  Luckily, I don't usually have sharp objects in my possession during my fits of irritation, because I would probably stab own eyes out in attempt to cut hair off.

But I said I was starting with the cat.  My mother in law is visiting, and she keeps forgetting her glasses.  She cannot read, see, walk, or hear (I know.) without them, so I am unsure why she ever takes them off.  When I ask her she says, "Stupid habit" and then takes them off again.  I am learning to avoid the topic.  I love my mother in law.  I truly do.  She is sweet and eccentric.  She loves my son, and Ari loves her.  She spends time playing with him when I and my wife are sick and/or exhausted.  She tries to teach him to read.  She cuddles him and brings him large bags of clothing and the best toys he's ever gotten.  But I swear to God if I had a staple gun, I would staple those glasses to her eyeballs.  And if I had a tube of Superglue, I would glue them to her face.  Because every time she enters a room, even somehow if it is THE ROOM HER GLASSES ARE IN, she says "Oh, I forgot my glasses" and turns around (which takes her 15 minutes) to go back for them.  The only way to avoid her long disappearance is for me to leap up, race to the place where I know her glasses are, somehow get around her (She invariably is blocking the door in these crucial moments.), and retrieve her glasses before she leaves.  Alternatively, I can try and distract my son who wants desperately to play with her until she returns, but this is time consuming and he typically likes her better than me, so I take one for the team and race off to fetch them.  I do this several times an hour.  It is exhausting.

But I said this was about the cat.  In the midst of my glasses retrieval missions, I have the cat to deal with.  She is crazy.  She wants fresh water, with ice cubes, 57924852098-6235543 times an hour.  She meows and meows at me for this.  She inserts her fuzzy little body in front of my feet, tripping me, yearning madly for fresh water, which must be cold, and must have left the Brita within the past ten minutes, or is rejected.  (At the reject times, she digs with her paws on the linoleum to "bury" her water bowl, I guess to protect it from other animals in case she is ever desperate enough to drink the abhorrent, 11-minute-old water.)  My mother in law has taken to giving Sasha fresh ice cubes whenever they are in the kitchen together.  The two of them stand there in the kitchen, my MIL making mishaps by dropping ice cubes and knocking over cups of fluids and then slipping on the spills and banging her head accidentally on the freezer door with Sasha weaving lovingly through her legs.

I know to stay out of the room.  Still, I am grateful at these times to have them occupying each other.  Nobody needs their glasses.  The water refreshing is happening without me.  My son looks on from the safety of the living room, giggling happily.  I am not stupid: I know a gift when I see one.  I sit on the couch and take a breath, and all, for now, is well.

Secret Gossip

I just saw my former friend, whom I will call "T."  She was once a good friend of my wife and I.  Then she was rude to my beautiful wife in a convoluted way I no longer remember, and now I hate her.  She came into the bookstore I run.  I thought people should know that she:
a) is fat, with more chins than both the baby (who is supposed to be fat) and his recently-pregnant mother (i.e. me, who has a damn good excuse)
b) wore a hideous scarf with roses (!) on it, in attempt at cool-pseudo-old-lady-retro, but instead appearing like actual-old-lady-doesn't-know-scarf-is-gauche
c) was mistaken at her work place for a republican (probably because she looks like one now, what with that scarf, which I think I saw on Cindy McCain the other day)
d) is miserable at her job and cannot find another one
e) STILL hasn't gotten married to that slacker fiance of hers
f) is not even living with that slacker fiance of hers, who is too "southern" to live with her, which is bullshit because I know "southern", and we shack up without marriage like nobody's business.

I was super-nice to her, in that way we are with the people we hate.  And I elicited all of this information without directly questioning her.  But since she thinks I am dumb, she probably bought it and walked off wondering why she ended up telling me all about the many loser things in her loser life.

The Final Stretch

In my first trimester I thought I was tired, but really I was just sleepy.  And then in my second trimester I thought I was tired, but really I was just a little piqued.  NOW, I am tired, and I am having cravings.  I thought I had cravings before, but I was mistaken.  I went to Safeway for my Smores ice cream, and they were having a sale on both Ben & Jerry's and Haagen Daaz, so I bought four tubs.  Also, a frozen pizza, a frozen burrito, a bunch of diet soda, bananas, two boxes Pop-tarts, one bag doughnuts, one bag Oreos with double stuff chocolate filling, a Blue Machine, chicken parm Hot Pockets, a grapefruit, and I think much more.  I cannot help it.

I have been hungry since last week, and in spite of my stomach being squashed into a space the size of a grape, I never seem to be full.  Some man in a suit was considering (I could tell. . .) giving me a look while I was in the cookie aisle debating for ten minutes over whether I needed 16 bags of cookies and if so what kind.  I think, as is usual with simpletons, he was confused by my 4 cases of diet soda and many boxes of Pop-tarts co-mingling in cart.  I glared at him and stuck out my belly and thought, "Don't you even look askance, you skinny mother-fucker.  I will kill you.  I will sit on your stupid head."  So, he left without bothering me.

The cashier (another skinny white man) was wiser when I told him to hurry up and scan the doughnut bag so I could eat it.  He did not dare consider giving me a look--just smiled and did what he was told.  Good boy.

So then I took all to car, and somehow it seemed safer to drive to the residence office to pick up my package of baby gear with a Poptart in one hand and a doughnut in the other than to delay eating for a single second longer or to delay driving and risk melting the ice cream.  And of course I had to bring them inside the office with me, where the woman asked when the baby was due and commented on my foods without realizing her life was in jeapordy.  Poor stupid woman did not know whom she was messing with, so I didn't kill her.  I just picked up my package and left.  I hope that these people are grateful when I refrain from killing them.  I hope that they appreciate it.

Then when I got home I had to unload everything one at a time so as not to break pregnant self, and it took like ten trips, and of course then I was starving all over again.  So I put pizza in oven and ate cookies in the meantime. 

Those people--the ones who say pregnant women only need 300 additional calories a day are nimrods.  Just like the people who said pregnant women's heartburn doesn't increase later in the pregnancy.  Why are we even doing studies about these things?  All you have to do is ask any of the 4895723905720582348 women who've ever made it (somehow) through an entire pregnancy, and she will tell you that she needed no additional calories in the beginning and 6000 extra per day in the end, and that the heartburn gets worse as the baby gets bigger.  That is that.  What's to study?  They just don't believe us because we're pregnant.  Grr.

I spilled on myself twice already today, trying to eat too quickly I guess.  Funny how everyone says you will need six outfits a day for your newborn, but nobody tells you that you'll need just as many for self in last trimester, due to clumsy food shoveling.

Pregnancy Is not for Sissies

Today, I told my friend Everett that they must call it morning sickness, not because it only happens in the morning, but because it is the morning (as in, the instant you become conscious) when you realize that you are sick.  And it is not until the next morning that you have a chance to recover.

I was doing quizzes on the internet about whether I will have a boy or a girl, and one of the questions was which do you crave: meat and cheese or fruits and vegetables?  Who the fuck craves fruits and vegetables?!?  The only two people I can think of are Mother Theresa and Ghandi (him with all that fruitarian nonsense, and she's such a goodie-goodie), and I don't think either of them was ever pregnant.  Today I craved pizza with onions and green peppers, but that doesn't count as craving vegetables.  If you gave me a green pepper or an onion without the pizza, I'd just look at it.

Yesterday was my first official day of morning sickness, and it is really and truly like motion sickness, no matter what you eat or don't eat, nothing matters.  Everything reeks horribly, and I wonder what is wrong with people.  Why are they so desperately, hopelessly, insistently self-hating that they would ON PURPOSE go without deodorant or dental visits or clean underwear and then sit in that stench, again ON PURPOSE, WITHOUT DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT?????  And how can people drink tap water?  I can barely stand to shower in it.

Apparently, pregnant people have more saliva than non-pregnant people.  There is a name for it.  It's called "always about to puke".  No, I'm kidding.  It's actually called "ptyalism".  They actually don't know if pregnant people produce more saliva or just have more because we're so sick we can't even swallow our own spit.
Furthermore, no one has any real solution to morning sickness, but evidently it's more common and more intense than anyone expects.  AND SOME WOMEN HAVE IT THE WHOLE TIME! I only had one day so far, and I am already contemplating suicide except that every possible method of offing self makes me sick to think about.

I am truly not amused that the Mayo Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy thinks that merely vomiting a couple of times a day is no cause to call a doctor.  It thinks I need to be vomiting several times a day with inability to hold down fluids before I bother the medical professionals.  That is crazy.  In what other situation does one take vomiting so in stride?  If men had morning sickness, pregnancy would be like knighthood, bad breath would be a felony, and there would be places to brush one's teeth with bottled water supplies all along the streets like parking meters.