That statement really struck me because there are a lot of people that I know that don’t want kids, don’t understand why anybody would, don’t understand kids even.  Some of those people think that Abe & I are crazy to have had Magnus let alone have Marit on the way.  To them kids are a burden, an inconvenience & something that should be avoided to stop all the problems in the world.  To know that this Twitter friend, whom I don’t know that well, is happy for me to have the kids I have always wanted was incredibly nice.  It got me thinking too…

Why am I a parent? What is it about having kids that made me want my own?

Let me begin with the disclaimer.  There are days where I would sell my kid for a bottle of vodka, or a movie ticket.  There are days where I want to curl up in a corner & cry after ripping out my hair in frustration.  My amazing Magnus is only 1 so I know I have a lifetime of those days coming my way.  However, there is so much that wipes out those moments/days.

Watching Magnus discover new things is so much fun.  He has been working on eating with a fork; he learned about ranch dressing & ketchup last weekend; & he has been slowly (very slowly cuz Momma says so) exploring our 2 stories of wooden stairs.  It is really fun to watch the world develop through brand new eyes.  Seeing the wonder of discovering a new animal or a new sound…something I don’t remember from my own childhood.  I get to experience everything a second time & truly appreciate the world.

The feel of those tiny arms wrapping around my neck as Magnus snuggles into me with his blanket for a nap.  How can your heart not swell with joy & the purest love in those moments?  And that’s what having kids comes down to for me.  The chance, the opportunity to share life with a new person.  To share in their growth, their triumphs and especially their disappointments.  Nobody will ever be able to protect them from every hurt (no matter how much we desperately want to do so) but we can share the burden, lighten the feeling of loss when it occurs.

That moment when you first look into a child’s eyes & see the love they have for you…in spite of your faults, your failures, your hang-ups.  To know that no matter how out of shape you are or how broke you are that little person doesn’t care.  All they know is you love them & they return it without hesitation.

Sadly, as kids get older that initial wonder wears off, they grow up & become adults that sometimes stray from what you dreamed for them.  There’s a pain associated with being estranged from your older children that I pray I never have to experience.  I’ve watched friends go through it & I can’t imagine the pain it causes.  Yet I know they still would welcome those kids home with open arms if ever they were asked.

Being a parent is the most difficult & yet most amazing job ever.  It is NOT for the faint of heart…it is filled with joy, grief & even fear but I wouldn’t trade my kids for anything.  They are the best parts of me—realized.

A thought struck me tonight though.  I’m more lucky than I maybe realize that I have Magnus.  He loves me.  It may sound like the most simplistic statement ever but it bears repeating.  Magnus loves me.

It doesn’t matter that I don’t have a clean t-shirt to wear, my hair is a mess, I’m hormonal, growing bigger by the second, struggle with depression, have a short fuse on my temper some days or that I fall short every day.  To Magnus I am comfort, fun, happiness and of course food.

I’m hard to love for other people (I think)… I wish I weren’t.
To be the happy-go-lucky, always smiling, positive outlook, fuzzy warm baby snuggles girl would be great. I often wish I were that girl…instead I work hard to have something nice to say. With my friends I really strive to be encouraging, to have the words that will make a positive impact on them.

Whether or not I’m successful remains to be seen. I know I don’t always succeed. Also, because I’m not prone to seeing the positive for myself it is difficult for me to accept when others do. I am (more so now while I’m pregnant) needy & insecure. I feel lonely & at times forgotten by those I consider to be some of my closest friends. I feel trapped outside of the amusement park of life.

There is part of me that realizes this is silly. Everybody is busy with life, work, spouses etc. I know in the logical (and smaller part of my inner voice) that everything remains steadfast…that I’m not forgotten. Still the insecure girl who so wants to be liked worries about whether maybe ~this~ time I really will be forgotten and left behind.

It makes me sad…I just hope that in spite of how hard it may be to love me that people will continue to do so. I give of my love as freely as I can. My hope is that in some small way it compensates those who have opened their hearts to me.

However what struck me was that in the description of beautiful home births I found a hidden barb.  As I read & the re-read the post I started to feel badly about my birthing experience.  I know this was not at all within the realm of the writer’s mind when she was writing the post.  In fact, Willa is the last person who would promote any sort of competition or feeling of ill-will among women.  No all of the sad, inadequate feelings came straight from me.

Suddenly I was feeling like I had somehow failed at being a mother somehow.  That because of complications to my health I delivered my beautiful boy via Caesarean section & somehow that makes my experience less special, less magical.  It wasn’t what I would have chosen…I always imagined that I’d go through labor & delivery naturally.  Well as naturally as possible with a massive dose of pain killers.  Instead I was strapped to a table, numb from the xiphoid process to my toes, and chatting up the surgeons.  I could feel the tugging & pulling going on behind the blue surgical curtain & then I saw Magnus being held up over the curtain so we could see him.  Nothing will ever eclipse the moment I say my son… no matter how he arrived the fact that he arrived is the important point.

What all this made me think of —why do women always feel like they are constantly in competition with each other?  There’s this pressure to have the best, smartest, quickest kid.  Who rolls over, crawls, walks, talks first is inevitably a topic of conversation when mothers are together.  Then there’s what percentile of height, weight, head size to compare—and visiting the doctor every 2 months for the first year where a little graph is charted doesn’t do anything to eliminate this competitive feeling.  I know for me that is one of the first questions my sister-in-law J asks me nearly every time I see her.  Our sons are a month apart (my nephew is older) and there is constant comparison in height & weight.

Thinking about this today I realized that I avoid comparing my son to other kids his age.  I often shrug or change the subject when the comparisons arise.  To me it doesn’t matter if Magnus is the tallest or the heaviest/skinniest baby.  What matters to me is that I can see he is healthy, growing & happy.  However, when it comes to myself I’m the first to not only compare to another woman but I’m certain to see my “shortcomings”.  I’m not the smartest, tallest, most fit, funniest, prettiest or whatever.  The same thing with being a mommy- I tend to look at what another mom has done & find that I don’t measure up.

My goal from now on is to not be a competitive mommy.  I’m happy with how well Magnus is doing…and I am doing my best to raise a happy healthy boy.  When the new baby comes I will revel in the delivery (a scheduled c-section) because that’s MY path as a mother.  No matter what path you are on follow it with conviction— it is your path to walk & nobody else could do it just the way you do.

Recently it was announced that a new edition of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn going to be released.  The reasoning for the new edition is the use of the n-word throughout the text.

The word occurs more than 200 times in Huckleberry Finn, first published in 1884, and its 1876 precursor, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which tell the story of the boys’ adventures along the Mississippi river in the mid-19th century. In the new edition, the word will be replaced in each instance by “slave”. The word “injun” will also be replaced in the text.

The new edition’s Alabama-based publisher, NewSouth books, says the development is a “bold move compassionately advocated” by the book’s editor, Twain scholar Dr Alan Gribben of Auburn University, Montgomery. It will have the effect, the publisher claims, of replacing “two hurtful epithets” in order to “counter the ‘pre-emptive censorship‘ that Dr Gribben observes has caused these important works of literature to fall off curriculum lists worldwide.” ¹

Surely Mark Twain is going to spend years haunting the people who approved this.  Writers (at least the really good ones) choose words for a reason.  They use words to evoke a sense of place, to provoke the reader into the mindset that will carry the individual deep into the text.  Twain’s use of the n-word was very deliberate; part of his social commentary on the era in which the use of such language was prevalent.  That word today is verboten, as it should be, in common speech.  However, to remove it from a text such as Twain’s Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer is not only censorship but also a revisionist version of history.

Our society is so consumed with avoiding the possibility of offending others that we have tossed common sense & critical thinking out with our unrecycled styrofoam.  How can we learn from our history if we are so busy snipping, patching & denying what happened?  Yes there was a time where people used racial slurs on a regular basis…it is a sad part of our past.  We cannot pretend it didn’t happen–doing that not only rewrites the past but it also negates the work done by civil rights activists.

When I was learning about these stories in elementary school we discussed the mentality of the times, the language, customs etc. We were taught why the racial slurs were unacceptable…not just in school but at home too.  Now we treat our children like mushrooms…keep them in the dark & feed them a fine line of crap.  Rather than use Huck Finn as a discussion tool we sanitize it to make sure nobody is offended.  Our educational system should be the finest in the world.  Instead we are rewriting history, smoothing over the ugly parts of classic literature and generally removing the process of critical thinking from learning.  We are creating children who accept whatever they are told.  There isn’t any reason for them to examine what is right & wrong (or socially acceptable–think Golden Rule).

Sanitized literature (and history) does no favors for anybody.  It keeps us from learning, from repeating the mistakes of past generations…as Satayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it”.  I shudder to think what we are dooming our children to repeat by not remembering & teaching our unvarnished past.

First I should say that I adore celebrating other people’s birthdays.  The excitement of finding the perfect card/gift, thinking of ways to make them feel special, surprising them if possible (though never making them think they’ve been forgotten), good food, laughter…the whole schmear.  I love it (plus if I’m lucky I get to  help organize it. Organizing something like that gives me warm fuzzies) & the look of joy on the recipient’s face makes it worthwhile.

I, on the other hand, am not a fan of the surprise.  I like to know what’s coming.  Add to that a birthday a week before Christmas & being the oldest of 8 and there you have it…my dislike of that day when I was born.

Of course all those are surface reasons.  Over the last several days I’ve had an epiphany of sorts.  I feel guilty about my birthday.  Now I realize that just seems ridiculous but let me dive into the whys & wherefores.

One reason I think I feel guilty about it is that Christmas is a week later.  I feel uncomfortable asking people to spend time celebrating when there is a major holiday looming.  It is such a busy time of year with the holiday parties, gift shopping et cetera.  Plus traditionally there are gifts involved in birthday celebrations.  Being so close to Christmas I feel selfish wanting gifts for both occasions.  On the other hand I also feel slighted when I receive a combo gift (birthday/Christmas) because the two days are separate.  I can’t imagine how someone whose birthday is actually on a major holiday deals with it.

Another reason I feel guilty about my birthday is because I am the oldest of 8 kids.  Growing up we didn’t have a lot of extras though my folks were fantastic about making birthdays, Christmases et cetera special days.  Mom always made our favorite meal & dessert.  Gifts may not always have been extravagant but they were always well thought out & special.  However, I felt like I was asking for more than I really should.  I knew that there were gifts to be purchased for the family since Christmas was right around the corner.  What right did I have to ask for something that I wanted as a birthday gift.

That feeling carries on today.  I don’t want to ask for anything for my birthday…I feel selfish & greedy.  I don’t like to ask people to celebrate with me.  Asking makes me feel like I’m begging for the attention…That if I have to ask people will respond out of obligation rather than the true desire to be with me.  I always hope that someone (or several someones) will ask me if there is anything I want to do for my birthday.  Of course I can’t help but build up my expectations in my head.  Every year I tell myself that I won’t create any expectations for my birthday; that way I won’t be disappointed but instead happily excited by what the day brings.  Every year I fail…I can’t help hoping that something fabulous will happen.  A dinner party, family & friends gathered around for cake (or cheesecake preferably), lots of fun & laughter.  Small tokens of their esteem tied up with brightly colored bows in a cluster in the center of the table.  Then home with Abe for some time just for us.

I woke up this morning & the feeling of anticipation weighed heavily in my stomach…waiting to see what today will bring.  The sun is shining so far & we shall see what this year brings.  I have a date with Abe for 7:30 tonight.  Now if only I had pants that fit….

Learned some things this morning when I got up today.  It was all a bit harsh for the unfiltered light of a Tuesday morning.  As I stumbled, bleary-eyed from a night of being up with the Boy, through the bathroom I caught a glimpse of myself in the Mirror of Doom. I have to say on a scale of 1-horrifying it was definitely horrifying with a side of OMG. After that jolt,  I’ve decided that never EVER being naked for any reason is a must. Despite the fact I’ve lost a truly good amount of weight in the last four months things are certainly not looking better. With the vertical scar down the center of my stomach, the bizarre increase of hail damage & stretch marks (which I did NOT have during pregnancy)  I look like a candidate for a Halloween costume model. I light of that moment I proceeded to dress in two long sleeve shirts & jeans. (The fact that it is fall here in the Midwest & quite cool may have also had a little something to do with it.) I have been “exercising”…if you call running up & down the stairs all day, often times holding baby or lugging laundry, exercise. I don’t know that a more consistent regimen would help a lot…it’s like a landslide danger zone rather than a body in progress.

Another lesson I learned is if you ask yourself whether or not the jeans you are about to put on are “Mom jeans” then the answer is probably yes. I don’t know for certain these are but I’m using my educated guessing abilities. I have a couple pair of jeans that definitely are NOT “Mom jeans” but I can’t wear them every day. Again the weight loss is a double edged blessing. I’m into pants that are much smaller than I’ve worn in a long time yet I don’t have any that fit me well. As a fashion plate I am flunking. Too bad I don’t really have a rich relative in <insert popular country currently spamming the world with offers of money>.  I could use that $4, 682, 379, 510, 000 right now for a shopping spree.

That was all the lessons I could deal with for one day…I decided to skip straight to indulging in some snuggles with Magnus.  He’s teething & fighting a wicked head cold. We cuddled & then napped a bit. After he woke up Magnus worked on rolling over…he can roll from tummy to back but hasn’t quite figured out how to reverse that.  He gets from his back to almost all the way over but can’t quite manage to get that one arm around. It won’t be long though. I enjoy watching the new things Magnus learns much more than I did my own lessons today.

PS: Mini-rant~~ What is up with all these bizarre commercials for women & their time of the month? Seriously I’ve seen this commercial the last few days talking about experiencing intense monthly bleeding… “It may be a condition known as ‘heavy monthly bleeding’….” Ummm…. REALLY?? I mean REALLY??!!??!! That’s a “condition”? I honestly can’t believe that there is a “medicine” to combat that now. What other “diseases” are being thought up to make women feel like their bodies aren’t good enough as they are? It drives me up a wall that no matter what a woman’s body does somebody somewhere is busy thinking up ways to make us all feel abnormal & in need of medical intervention. </endminirant>