The Red Tent

This week I felt my age and lot in life.  On Thursday I was speeding in my mini-van trying to get my hot home-made breakfast casserole to a "mother's group" on time.  I know, I know, I just said mini-van, casserole, and mother's group all in the same sentence. But this group is good for me, it's full of the type of women that I am slightly embarrassed to tell that I had never made a breakfast casserole before.  They also do daily things like praying the rosary and always seem to know what Novena is good for what.  And I nod along like, "Oh, of course you say the Novena to St. Rita of Cascia when you need personal courage!" And all this is good for me, I need a little of these women in my life.  I need to see women who handle their children's cancer, take on foster kids, and bake bread all while homeschooling like it's as easy as breathing.  And if I did say a Novena to St. Rita and actually had the courage to tell these ladies that I hadn't ever made a breakfast casserole before, they would whip out their day-planners and binders and start passing me their best organic recipes without an eye-roll.  I love it, it keeps me balanced.

Well, every group session starts with a group prayer, and every person is supposed to say out loud what they would like the group to pray for.  This part, I hate.  I am not a good group prayer person and always feel like I have to make up something important and meaningful to pray for.  But I was late this time (you know, making a casserole) and they were almost done with the group prayer.  I sat down relieved that I had missed my turn until the group leader said, "Leah, you can go now." Ugh. I asked for prayers for my husband to have an easier time with his job and then I considered making up a marriage problem or ailment but all I could think of was that I just saw another penis two days ago. So, I told them all that I had just found out that my fourth child would be a fourth boy and I would like to ask God to help me appreciate that.  Everyone nodded solemnly like I had just prayed for someone in hospice care and they closed the prayer.

Today we had a play date birthday party for my little guy.  He turned two this week.  Friends from Boston, Greg and Jess were in attendance.  Along with David's gift, Jess handed me a present as well.  After the play date party was over and the guests had left, I reached my hand inside the gift bag and pulled out a book.  I saw the woman on the cover and my heart stopped.  "The Red Tent" someone whispered in my mind.  It was me whispering from the past, 12 years ago, in college and I had just finished the book. 

I double majored in college. Gov-Law and Religion.  Most of my religion courses where taken in "Jewish Studies".  I am fascinated with Judaism and basically have had a love affair with it since the time I was 10 and picked up my first Chaim Potok fiction.  Judaism is everything I love about religion and studying it made me love and understand my own Catholicism more.  Most of my courses had to do with the Old Testament or the Jewish experience in history.  I even had one heart wrenching course on human suffering and forgiveness dealing mostly with the Holocaust and reading Elie Wiesel.  I left that class feeling shell shocked and tired and scared that there was something inside of me that I did not know.

Then I took a cross-over course dealing with women in literature, and that's where I  first saw the cover of "The Red Tent".  I was excited to read it.  I loved the biblical story of Leah and Rachel and all the sons they had and Leah's one daughter, Dinah. But "The Red Tent" turned out to be an emotional roller coaster for me and I didn't want to buy another ticket too soon.  It starts out with the story of my name-sake and continues with a fictional account of the life her only daughter, "Dinah" might have had.  Dee-nah... Dee-nah... I can hear her saying her own name.  The name is as soft as music and as powerful as a scream.  I haven't opened the book since.  I remember seeing it catch on and end up on best-seller lists, I remember noticing it in the check-out line at Target and pretending that I didn't see it. "Dee-nah" the book said to me.  "I don't know you", I said and turned away.

One of my favorite nerd authors, George Martin, in his book "A Dance with Dragons" wrote, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” I couldn't re-live Dinah's fictional life in 12 years.  Now, I open the book to Dinah's voice in the prologue.  One passage reads:

     "My mother's were proud to give my father so many sons.  Sons were a woman's pride and measure.  But the birth of one boy after another was not an unalloyed source of joy in the women's tents.  My father boasted about his noisy tribe, and the women loved my brothers, but they longed for daughters, too, and complained among themselves about the maleness of Jacob's seed.
     Daughters eased their mothers' burdens - helping with the spinning, the grinding of grain, and the endless task of looking after baby boys, who were forever peeing into the corners of the tents, no matter what you told them.
    But the other reason women wanted daughters was to keep their memories alive.  Sons did not hear their mothers' stories after weaning.  So I was the one.  My mother and mother-aunties told me endless stories about themselves.  No matter what theirs hands were doing- holding babies, cooking, spinning, weaving - they filled my ears.
     In the ruddy shade of the red tent, the menstrual tent, they ran their fingers through my curls, repeating the escapades of their youths, the sagas of their childbirths.  Their stories were like offerings of hope and strength poured out before the Queen of Heaven, only these gifts were not for any god or goddess-but for me."

The rest of the book is not easy.  Dinah gives birth to her own sons and her love and experiences with motherhood are painful and wonderful.  The book is rough for me, the want of a daughter and the love and blessings of sons, the trials and tribulations of womanhood, motherhood, midwifery.  The book feels earthy and ancient, transporting the reader back to a primal time.  The beauty of the novel is hard and painful, just like the beauty of the red tent itself.  I close the book.  "Dee-nah" it whispers.  "Yes. I know you." I reply with wet eyes.

For every pregnancy, I'd have had to mourn the idea of a daughter even just a little.  I want my Dinah but I also am Dinah.  For every lost memory un-shared with a daughter is the very present and cherished memory made with a son.  I have four chances to make lots of memories and leave sons that will appreciate and love their possible wives and daughters.  That will be the gift I leave for posterity.  I may be forgettable blip in the family tree just like Dinah's short paragraph life in the bible.  My story may not be passed down on the lips of my daughters, but my son's lives will echo my
name in their lives and lives they create.

Two nights ago I was walking down a dark hall in my house and my teenage son came up behind me and scared me.  I shrieked and then laughed.  "James! You can't scare a pregnant lady!  I just pee'd in my pants!"  "Oh my God! That is so gross"  He choked as he doubled over in laughter.  My other two boys joined in dancing around and laughing at Mommy peeing her pants. I even felt the little boy in my womb wiggle.  Ah, my boys and our memories, what would I do without them?  The tent I create with my sons may not be red but it is definitely colorful.

Holes

You know when people really upset you and you struggle between feeling really, really angry at them and trying to convince yourself that they really don't matter.  I hate being there.  I think it would be easier to dig a 6 ft hole in the middle of winter.  But I usually go ahead and dig.  I dig through the angry part even when the soil is cold and rock hard and sometimes tears are involved but I usually end up at the other side of the earth in Go- Fuck-Yourself-Land where I continue to happily reside as commander and chief of my own life.

But while you're digging away trying to get to your happy place, let's admit it, it's awful.  You put the shovel in and pull out a heavy load of, "Who the fuck do you think you are?" and then the next one is an equally hard, "Who the hell cares who they are? They don't matter to my life."  Then you hit a large rock that says, "They don't get me, they don't care to get me, they are just so freaking miserable and judgmental and they just want to put their know-nothing foot in the door of my life and bring me down."  That rock takes a bit of work to get out.  You have to put the shovel in at different angles until you find the right one, then you might have to stand on the shovel to get the right leverage and strength.  It's hard labor, it's a real pain in the ass... and there you are digging a very deep hole just to get back to where you were... confident, happy, yourself.

You wouldn't have to be digging if people would just leave you alone, but that becomes harder with Facebook and a blog. I kind of put myself out there a bit.  I like to laugh at myself and others.  The things I write are dry, sarcastic, sometimes funny, sometimes angry... but I do strive to be honest. However, not honest in that cruel or "up-in-your-business" sort of way that people use to hurt you or get in your face about something.  They say something hurtful and then follow it up with "but, I'm just being honest!" or "I'm just a very honest person." And I'm honestly going to punch you in the face.

So, I'm pretty sure my single, childless, brother-in-law thought he was just being "honest" (honestly out of his league) when he posted two links about fetal alcohol syndrome under one of my funny posts on FB. I was at my father's 70th birthday brunch and partook in my family's Bloody Mary tradition.  Just one, in the midst of a breakfast buffet that I eagerly filled my belly with.  I am 5 months pregnant now, and my alcohol consumption has been consisted of a glass of excellent Greek wine on Valentine's day and the now infamous Bloody Mary.  Except for my first pregnancy (I was too young to drink or vote or be pregnant for that matter), I have had a drink here or there during pregnancies 2 and 3.  And it's 2013... we are past the Mad Men era of constant drinking, smoking, and weird prescribed drugs during pregnancies and the follow-up backlash against it all.  In 2013, I have plenty of information and maternity experience to make my own informed decisions.  And my FB friends know me... either personally or via my posts.  I'm a concerned parent but not neurotic, a little bit of a hippy, and a bit saracastic.  So, when I posted the comment, "Bloody Mary for the pregnant lady? Eh, why not, it's the 4th baby."  I expected my friends to get it... and they did.  Except for my brother-in-law who took it down the "You are maliciously hurting your unborn child" road and now I'm digging a damn hole.

But let's not stop there... remember that VBAC blog I did titled, "Intellect and Eve"?  My husband's family is suddenly full of medical experts. Apparently all you have to do is have access to the interwebs and know a doctor, any kind of doctor... and you suddenly know more than me, my obstetrician, and my medical history combined.  And with this wealth of knowledge you have acquired, you are going to let my husband know all about how wrong my decisions are.  Because, you know, that's what matters in all of these medical decisions, my in-laws comfort level.  And I keep digging that hole faster and deeper.

Now, I wouldn't tell anyone how to throw a football, or swing a bat.  I certainly didn't advise my father on his recent bout with prostate cancer.  He is intelligent and had good doctors.  I could be online for weeks filling my head with internet prostate knowledge and still not feel comfortable telling him what is right and wrong.  Likewise, I could hang out with a pro-baseball player and talk hitting technique and never even dream of tweaking any of my ball playing relatives swings.  And that's just g-damn baseball which these people take seriously enough, imagine them trying to get in the middle of my motherhood.

In my head, as I'm shoveling, I’m like - haven’t I shown everyone what a caring mother I am?  Do you really think I would “maliciously” harm any of them?  I guess you do, and that is upsetting.  I have been pregnant 3 times before and have birthed 3 healthy, intelligent children.  I’m on my 4th pregnancy have been pregnant more times than anyone alive on either side of our families (except for my mom and g-mom, who each had 4 pregnancies). You really think I don’t know how much alcohol/coffee/tuna fish/lunch meat/allergy medicine/soda/exercise/etc. is too much?  And let’s say I don’t, is it really your place to advise me as opposed to say... my doctor?  How many healthy children do I have to birth or raise before anyone has an ounce of trust in me?  Or at least says, “Hmmmm, That makes me uncomfortable but it’s really none of my business.”  This will probably never happen, which is why I need to figure out how to stay on my side of happy so I don't even have to begin digging a hole to get back there.

And then there's the single factor in this.  My biggest critics are single well into their late 30's and early 40's, and who cares until.... until they fucking stick their nose where it doesn't belong.  Then it's a fast trip to "what the hell does he know?  He's never had children or a wife or even been in a 60 mile radius of anyone giving birth besides attending his own."  And this causes resentment for the single person.  They think, "Oh, just because I'm single it means I can't offer parenting advice or tell you about maternity issues?" Uh.... Yeah, that's EXACTLY what it means! Think about it professionally.  Do you feel comfortable taking legal advice from someone who is not an attorney? No. Would you pay someone to make your wedding cake that wasn't an experienced baker or licensed caterer? Probably not. Do you take medical advice to heart from someone who is not at the very least a nurse... oh, wait, ha! Then why the hell would you think that anyone wants to hear what you have to say about their parenting, marriage, or pregnancy? No one does, get over it. I am an experienced parent and pregnant lady and even I don't feel comfortable dolling out advice unless asked. Who the hell do you think you are? There, that was big shovel load.

Ok, time for some inspiration.  Have you read "Pride and Prejudice"?  Remember Elizabeth Bennet telling off the only in-law she would possible have - Lady Catherine?  It was awesome.  Elizabeth finally says after enduring cajoling, manipulation, and straight out insults from her future in-law, "I am only resolved to act in a manner that will constitute my own happiness without any reference to you or any person so wholly unconnected with me." Sigh. Put that shovel down Miss Bennet, you made it to the other side.

So, how do I get there and stay there?  There will probably always be a little bit of shoveling through hurt feelings and downed confidence.  But I'm pretty sure that as I continue to get more confident, the shovel-loads will get lighter, there will be less rocks, the soil won't be so hard and cold and the actual trip back to Go-Fuck-Yourself Land will be shorter and shorter.  Until one day, I am as rich in confidence as the new Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy was in money and satisfaction, and I will reign supreme of my own happiness.

Then a friend from far away (that's where you have to be sometimes to see these things clearly - far away), wrote to me with a suggestion for letting go of what people think and not giving them my energy for digging holes in the first place.  She told me to pray.  Pray for those who piss me off.  Pray until I mean it -  for them to have the best of everything - and when I do mean it, I will start to feel compassion for them and it will free my head to do the things I enjoy more.  She finished, "Maybe you've already tried that. I figured you'd be open to it since you practice a religion/spirituality."

Uh, no, I am embarrassed to say I haven't tried it. And that type of thought process is straight out of Catholic school.  How could I be so remiss?  And funny enough, it took a gay, feminist, tree hugger to slap my knuckles and send me to the confessional. 

 

Another friend of mine is Mormon.  When I asked her to keep my Boo Radley situation in her prayers she said, "Well, Mormon's don't pray for specific things or outcomes but we do say, 'Let God's Will be done." Hmmmmm, that's tough and cool at the same time. It is very hard to give up control and leave it up to God or the Universe... but if you can get there I bet it's awesomely free.  I bet in "Let-God's-Will-be-Done-Land" you aren't digging any holes.

 

But these two have great points, I need to pray or meditate and find a way to be at peace more consistently and that takes internal work.  Working in your mind or soul on yourself is the hardest type of hole to dig and you can be digging a long time. But that type of digging is completely worth it.  It's good, wholesome labor with a good outcome.  The shovel loads can be prayers and the dirt thrown away is relieving. You end up with a big pile of yesterday's worries and a hole straight back to your true self.  And don't worry, God will fill it back up with good soil to keep you from going back there.

 

 

Counseling with the Enemy

My sister is incredible.  She's taken her taken her God given rights as woman and done what she wants with them and in the end she will get the finish line of woman-hood having had a slice of it all.  She is college graduate and worked as an accountant in NYC and/or Newark when she met my brother-in-law, got married and had her first child.  From then on, for the last 20 years or so, she's been a stay at home mom.  Now her youngest of three children is a freshman in high school and my sister has started classes in graduate school for a Masters in Counseling.  She gave up her career early (probably around age 26) and was there before and after school for three kids, was home-room mom, and volunteered in the cafeteria and library, she made it to sporting events and even coached tennis.  She was there even through the teenage years when her kids probably didn't appreciate it and would have preferred a working mom. She ate the slice of the stay-at-home mom part of the woman pie (pie would work so much better if wasn't also funny) and it was delicious.  Now, as her youngest is matriculating towards adulthood, she is preparing to re-enter the workforce. She's only in her 40's and has plenty of career woman years ahead of her. I am so proud of her.

This weekend was my dad's 70th birthday party and we were all together.  I was expressing my feelings about my over-involved parents and my sister was asking me questions about it.  Half-way through I realized that I was in the middle of a counseling session with her.  She was using her new skills to evaluate and help me think of the situation in a new way.  It was funny once I realized what was going on and at the end I thanked her for the session.  She quipped back that she'd mail me a bill.  Truth be told, I am burned out on counseling as of late...

Boo Radley wasn't always the enemy.  As of late he has become one.  But, in the beginning and for many years afterwards he was pretty much a nothing.   When I was 16 I loved him as much as a 16 year old can love.  Now I know that my ability to love at 16 isn't even a decimal of my ability to love at 33.  This is one of the strongest reasons why teenagers shouldn't have sex.  I remember watching that Scott Baio reality show a few years back (I admit, I loved it).  It was basically him struggling to come to terms with his relationship and his impeding fatherhood.  At the end he went and visited his home Catholic parish in NYC.  There a nun told him, "The greatest gift you can give your children is to love their mother".  At 16 the capacity to love anyone other than yourself is so insignificant, that the consequences and feelings resulting from sex can be disastrous.  Please kids, for the love of God (or in your case yourselves), please wait to have sex even if contraception is not an issue.

Quickly, any love I had for Boo Radley turned to disgust when I was pregnant.  My ability to love was growing faster and more complex with each beat of my new baby's heart inside of me. It made the teenage selfishness around me hard to swallow.  I recently found a letter that Boo's parents wrote to me.  The were/are super Christian-y in that annoying protestant kumbaya sort-of way. But as sadly happens sometimes with those that claim to be in Jesus's inner circle, their support and patience only lasted as long as things were going the way that Jesus told them it should.  The letter they wrote to me sounded very much like a letter that fundamental Christians would write to a gay teenager. It was all about praying to God to help me make the "right" decision and that God didn't want me to keep the baby, and that if I prayed God would show me the way. "Jesus Christ!" I thought, re-reading the letter in adulthood.  These fuckers ditched me the second that God told me something different than they thought he should.  And they probably think it was my fault.  I probably didn't listen hard enough or I twisted his words.  Whatever it was, my relationship with God wasn't strong enough and now I am the day to day mother of an excellent young man... and he was an alter boy!  Who has Jesus in their corner now, Radley's?

Well, since I didn't listen to Jesus, Boo has been a non-issue in my life.  I met my husband at 18, and he being 9 years my senior, had a more mature heart than I did.  At 18, I loved him as much as I could at 18, which still wasn't as much as at 25, and now at 33, I feel like the greatness and complexity of my love for my husband is amazingly more than even at 25.  But all of this wouldn't have been possible if he hadn't loved me with a heart so much more ready for it.  His love was like a giant safety net catching and bouncing me be back up.  I grew strong and complete under his love, and when he quickly loved my child as unconditionally as any father, it was the greatest love story of the ages. Boo Radley was a distant memory, a non-issue....until....

Until the end of January, when I was sitting next to him on a couch across from a counselor.  This was session number 1 of court-ordered counseling, and I was so nervous I almost threw up on the way there. I have tell you how I felt, and when I told this very thing to the counselor during the session, his expression darkened and he asked, "Can you think of a different way to say that?",  "No I can't.", I replied honestly. I felt insulted to be in counseling with Boo Radley.  It insulted my motherhood, my parenting, and my family. I felt like I was being forced to make something out of nothing. I have had little to no relationship with Boo... no conflicts, little communication, just nothingness.  And here I was with him and a counselor to talk about what? He hasn't been a parent and I had to sit there and act like he was my equal? Insulting.

I get this type of counseling for two people who have had a relationship, it failed, and now they need to learn how to co-parent.  These are usually at the very least two moderately involved parents that just need to work out the kinks and bad feelings that are preventing them from presenting a dual force to their children.  My in-laws could have made good use of this... then maybe 30 yrs out of a divorce my MIL wouldn't get mad seeing her kids tagged in pictures looking happy with their father and my FIL wouldn't act like he was the one screwed around on every time he gets the shaft on a holiday and their kids wouldn't act so peculiarly protective and insecure about their childhood nuclear family. But I'm getting off track. 

The term, "co-parenting" gets thrown around a lot in these sessions.  I'm like, "Uh, I have a co-parent, he's at home taking care of our three children while I sit here and humor this stranger I'm sitting next to."  And let me tell you, Boo's answer's and statements were painfully scripted.  It was like his attorney/wife sat down prepped him.  This just made me feel even more frustrated.  They were like interview answers, it was everything you are supposed to say, while I'm in there saying stuff that even gets the counselor a little flustered. At one point I said that Boo wasn't a parent.  Boo finally got a little heated and said, "Yes, I am!" like a third grader in a verbal altercation on the playground.  I said, "No your not, your just some guy I had sex with when I was 16." I could see this statement slowly sinking in, and saw a mixture of anger, surprise, and maybe hurt settling in his eyes.  I quickly looked away. I have a tendency to easily fall into the trap of feeling sorry for people and Boo wasn't getting that from me, he already had his wife and his mom wiping his ass for him.

Session number two quickly repaired any pity I might have felt, because this time Boo got a little deep and admitted that he felt no guilt about his relationship (or lack of) with James.  "WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!" Every primal ounce of motherhood screamed inside my head.  I could feel the blood rushing in my veins and every hair on my body stood on end.  The counselor looked at me so fast as Boo spoke these words of blasphemy that I thought he would get whip-lash and even the Blessed Mother Mary herself came down and put her hands on my shoulders and whispered in my ear, "Be still child, but if you want to run him over later in the parking lot, I will make sure God isn't watching."

Session three was the most interesting.  Boo had gotten bored of talking about his lack-luster history and came with a game plan for our supposed parenting future (I threw up a little in my mouth just writing that).  I however, wasn't quite sure he was "getting it".  I asked him what he thought James was mad about, like, why does he think James doesn't want to see him? He honestly couldn't come up with an answer, even with encouragement from the counselor, who said, "Yes, that's a good question because it takes a lot for a person to not want to see someone."  The only thing he could suppose was that I was bad-mouthing him to James. This made my head spin.  Really?  That's all you can come up with? You don't see anything else? Let's say I was bad mouthing you - between the reader and I, I honestly don't have the time or energy for bad-mouthing Boo.  In fact, I would have considered even thinking about him beneath me.  But that's it? That's the only thing?  It's not the lack of involvement or support? It's not seeing two parents sacrifice and love while a third party does what he wants? Its not that he might feel pain for his teenage mother or his abandoned infant self?  It's not the occasional Christmas card signed, "From, Boo" instead of "Love, Dad"?  You can't think that any of that might leave a teenager a little bit put-off?  I told Boo all of this... and he said, "This is all new to me, you are showing me myself in a way that I haven't seen myself before". OM-fucking-G.

So, Mid-March we have a session with James, Mom and Boo Radley, while Dad is home taking care of the other kids.  Good times, good times.  Boo is reluctant to talk about why he abandoned him when he was born. He suddenly is worried about hurting James, "But won't my answer hurt him?". Great, now he grows a conscience.  I told him he better just be honest because James already knows the bad answer in his head and if Boo comes up with anything else that kid will walk right out of there.  This is unsettling to Boo, I mean, who wants to do something hard, right? The counselor suggested that Boo come up with a good way to say it and then maybe run it by me on the phone.  My jaw must have hit the floor because the counselor looked slightly amused.  Can't this joker do anything by himself?  Now I have to be in charge of helping him come up with some good answers? Instead I suggested he could just run it by his attorney one night after dinner, after all I am being sued over this. 

Keep us in your thoughts, prayers and good humor... after all, "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?"