Winter 2005

CONTENTS

SOAPBOX: A Total Eclipse of the Woman

BACKTALK
This is how we do it.
Our readers' family traditions.

ESSAY: The Last Hurrah
by Katherine Ozment

In the midst of my reverie, the saleswoman returns, several bras clutched in her hands like caught fish. She stands in the doorway staring through thick-framed glasses, and it takes me a moment to realize that I am to continue disrobing, strip-poker-like, while she watches. Obediently, I remove my black bra. She instructs me to lean forward, and as I do, she whips a particularly thick, textured, flesh-colored thing around the front of me, pulls it taut, and latches it together across my back. I feel lassoed.
I look up and see my grandmother. No, it's me, but my breasts are trapped like objects never to be viewed or even thought about. I feel mummified.


ESSAY: Duty Free?
by Kathy Plonsky

As the date drew near, I began to fume. If I were employed full-time, going to jury duty would not be that big a deal. My kids would be in day-care anyway. But as a mostly stay-at-home mother who worked part-time, I already scraped together a few hours of care per week from family and friends. What if I got stuck in a long trial? What was I supposed to do with my four-year-old, who was not in school yet? Why was there a jury duty exemption for people who cared for disabled relatives, but not for a parent with primary caregiving responsibility for her young children? I should call my senator! But, not even knowing who my state senator was, I decided to get informed.

DEBATE: Is It Okay to Read Your Kid's E-mail?
Lucy Sankey Russell says check away
Libby Gruner says no--that's private

ESSAY: New Day, Neurosis
by Amie Klempnauer

Jane and I feast on each other's anxieties. One of us worries about something, anything, reasonable or not (but best if it contains a kernel of possibility, a morsel of fact), and plants the seed in the other's head. It takes root. It grows. We offer half-hearted reassurances: "I was just reading about encopresis, which is really terrible, but it usually doesn' t occur until later. She probably won't develop it." Meanwhile, each of us knows that the fear is growing, that the assurances are not heartfelt. And just as we know this, we know that we are feeding our own neuroses. And just as we know that, we become less and less able to do anything about it. We each withdraw, pulling back behind our own veil of worry.

ESSAY: Mom Blame
by Katy Read

Why do we so confidently trace the behavior of children, even of the adults they become, to the actions of their parents? Why are we so certain that fathers and mothers (let's face it, especially mothers) have control over how their kids" turn out" ? It's a measure of how deeply these assumptions are embedded in our culture that the questions themselves seem almost absurd.

Sure, most people believe, theoretically, in some confluence of nature and nurture. But the nature part is invisible and baffling; even scientists have barely started to grasp the complicated machinations of our genes. Nurture is much easier to sift through for clues.
And, man, we are desperate for clues.

Feature: My Life as a Queen
by Elizabeth Bauchner

To see us walking down the street together no one would think," There goes a poverty-stricken mother and her child."

This disjunction between appearance and reality was illustrated clearly one cool and bright Saturday morning in November 1994. I awoke to find that my housemates had stayed up all night and eaten every single edible thing in the house. There was no food bank on Saturdays, and the community center religious service wasn't until dinnertime. With a hungry child to feed and no other options (aside from murdering my housemates), my daughter and I walked to the farmer's market and I began" spare-changing" --asking people for money.
 
A college student smirked at me when I asked for change to buy my daughter breakfast. I guess she figured I was lying. It was ten a.m. and my daughter was lying on her belly on the ground, playing idly with some stones. The college girl offered my daughter a whole carrot. She took it hungrily and ate it right away. The girl looked shocked for a moment, then terribly sad, and then handed me a five dollar bill. I thought she was going to be ill. I thanked her and took my daughter to the bakery for bagels and juice, coffee for me. Then I went home and cried.


ESSAY: Before Your Very Eyes
by B.E. Pinkham

"So, Ellen, what do you do?"

He wants me to say it? Say what? At-home mom? That's what I'm supposed to say. But he wants me to come out and say it? There's got to be a better way for me to answer that question, but I don't think that it would make sense without the soundtrack and visuals. I'd need flashbacks to represent all the resonance his question inspires in me. Each day of my life is complicated with memories of my own childhood; with small reminders of movies, novels, and songs I've loved; and with impressions of my mother's life and my beliefs about the lives of my sisters and friends. Could Randy have any idea about all that? I mean, did he even see The Hours? Maybe not.


ESSAY: How to Kill Twelve Hours
by Jennifer Mattern

When you park in front of your house, the three-year-old demands to hear the soundtrack from the movie Chicago. "ALL THAT JAZZ! I WANT ALL THAT JAZZ RIGHT NOW!" Ignore her. Sit in the car with both children until your husband pulls up behind you in the other car. He gets out and waits dutifully on the curb. Admire his insight. Hand him both children. Flee into the house and up the stairs.

Give yourself a time-out. Sit on the toilet. Try to relax.

The three-year-old bursts into the bathroom. Leap off the toilet seat. Pee down your leg, into your sock.

"You have to give me a bath," she yells. "Or I will die."


ESSAY: There When I Need You
by Stephanie Farrell

I have learned a lot from my mom. One of the things I learned is that you can be in a great deal of despair and still get up and put cereal on the table and change a dirty diaper. You can take the kids to Monroe Falls every day in the summer, teach them to swim, and laugh at their antics even though you secretly long to die. You can sing silly songs to them, read stories, and comb their long hair, being gentle because it's so tangled. And you can act like everything is okay and fool most of the people most of the time. But not your kids.


FICTION: The Second Baby
by Kathy Leonard Czepiel

"When?" Caitlin asked. "When did you bond with me?"

"Oh, I don't remember," Martha said with a little laugh. "It's all a blur."

But she was surprised to feel a dry catch in her throat. She searched for something to say. "It wasn't the first time they brought you to me," she said, and she knew in her heart that this was the hard truth.

"When was it?" Caitlin asked.

That was harder to say. Martha shuffled through her memory, but came up empty. Caitlin watched her, dark circles underscoring her watery eyes. "It was probably a few weeks after we brought you home," Martha said finally.


REVIEW: Revising Ophelia
by Tracy Mayor

It's undeniable that Reviving Ophelia played the pivotal role in inspiring teachers, parents, health advocates and others to fight back against gender bias, sexual harassment, and "girl-poisoning" popular culture.
But it's equally undeniable that we shouldn't be reading it--or is that obsessing on it?--anymore. Read the actual book, as I did recently, and you'll find it's badly dated and, in places, needlessly inflammatory, and we can't help today's teens of either gender by relying on old information. It's time to thank Ophelia for all her good work and come back to our own decade.

Plus: The Reading Chair
Creative with Kids by Elizabeth Roca
Cool Title by Jennifer Niesslein

MOTHERWIT: A Letter from the Suburbs
by Meredith Greene

I'm tired of getting brochures about childhood obesity from Baby's school. He's a bear. I'm tired of trying to tread lightly on the neighbor's lawn; I'm eight hundred pounds and, like it or not, I'm going to leave a pawprint. And do I want to relive the break-in from a decade ago every time I meet someone new? Do I need the judgment about the goddamned softness of my bed from them? No. No, I do not.
 
 

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