It started to rain. The kids wanted to play in it. I went to make sure there was no lightening.
Come out in the rain with us Mommy.
I did. It felt lovely.
Then the little one came at me with a mud clod and threw it at me.
Laugh or lecture?
Before 3, everything they do is so adorable, I couldn’t help but laugh.
I remembered a multitude of mud fights out at my grandmother’s house in Utah. We would have the best time, my brothers and cousin and I, hurling mud at each other.
I do like mud.
It stopped raining so we turned on the sprinkler.
This is how Daddy found us when he came home from work.
Covered in mud.
We ran to a group shower to hose ourselves down and wash our hair.
I don’t know if Ainsley’s white shirt will ever come clean – it’s been soaking in Oxyclean for a few days.
As I pull crayoned notes out of your Kindergarten backpack and read, Ainsley loves Brayden, my heart longs to make you understand that it’s just not about them.
At the dawn of my 34th year, having given birth to my second and last child and knowing my childbearing years were over, I felt a wave of liberation wash over me sitting in yoga class.
It was, I think, the decision to have no more children that set me free. Or perhaps it was the vasectomy, which finally liberated me from the love chase I’ve been on my whole life.
This liberation feels like finally taking possession of my own brain. I look back at my own history and think of all the disrespectful positions with men that I’ve been in and wonder how I ever let myself be so compromised. I look back and wonder what on earth could have been wrong with me to have chased those particular men. Why would I put up with abusive, disrespectful or negative behavior? What the hell was I thinking?
It’s all so droll and disgusting. I can gloss it over and make it feel more respectable than it was, but it feels like my entire existence was controlled by my biological clock and my need to create these two perfect and wonderful children for 33 years.
Now that I have, now that I’ve accomplished my mission, I feel a sense of liberation that will allow me to demand more respect for myself than I ever felt worthy of before.
It feels like coming into my self.
Like a birthing of me.
My children are like the culmination of a struggle that I am allowed to leave behind now.
I am mother. Already. Done. Finished. Mission Accomplished.
It’s like I’m giving myself permission to move on. And in the moving on I notice that how I think and feel about my self in relation to men is vastly different.
My biological clock is off and now my real life can begin. My life, my existence, my soul, my well-being, my identity, my womanhood, my femininity isn’t about men. I no longer feel relational to them, not even your father. I don’t feel my life is about what I can offer them, give them or get from them.
Romantic love and sex no longer hold the same attraction or urgency for me anymore. It’s hard for me to even fathom why it was ever so important to me. It’s not my main purpose as it was for all those dating years that I look back on my wanting with a sense of regret.
What if I could have avoided all that desperation, longing and wanting? Maybe that wasn’t necessary to create these wonderful children. What if that was just a complete waste of my emotional energy?
What if I inherited my desperation from my mother and she from hers? What if that longing, that allowing men to define my worth by whether they wanted me, desired me, loved me or claimed me was passed from one generation to the next.
“Why does Brayden like Cat instead of me?”
“Brayden said I was cute today.”
As I listen to these precocious words fall from your six-year-old mouth I wonder, have I done this to you? Have I passed on my desperation and longing?
How I wish I would have learned that it’s just not about them before I brought you into this world.
As I imagine your future of crushes, dating and heart breaks I want to pass my post-mother, post-birth, mid-life, newly discovered knowledge on to you in an effort to save you some drama and pain: The process of being You, Ainsley, is just not about them.
It’s effective to make some rules when children are still very young to ensure a healthy self-image, including body image.
Most parents forbid name calling when it comes to siblings or friends.
It’s appropriate to make the same rule for name calling against themselves.
I punish my children for saying “I’m stupid” and “My legs are fat” the same as I would punish them if they said, “You are stupid” or “Your legs are fat.”
Children learn to respect, accept and appreciate their bodies and skills or they learn to self-deprecate.
Respect, acceptance and appreciation doesn’t lead to anorexia, self-mutilation or other self-destructive behaviors.
Self-deprecation has been shown lead to self-destructive behavior, depression, low self-worth, drug use and suicide.
Children learn from a Do As I Do as opposed to Do As I Say. Obviously mothers (and fathers) will have to forgo self-deprecation as a form of humor or bonding with other women.
Naomi Wolf said, “The mother who radiates self-love and self-acceptance vaccinates her daughter against low self-esteem.”
A woman can not stand in front of the mirror annihilating her body and her reflection and expect her children to have a positive self esteem. That’s just not likely to happen.
My daughter holds me to this standard. I’ve spoken with her about my own accountability in this area. If I cut loose with an, “I am so stupid!” she will call me on it and has actually sent me to “time out.”
I did go to time out, because I want her to know that what I did by calling myself a name was very, very wrong. If I refuse to live up to the standard I set for her then essentially, the message is that it’s “not really that important.”
Participate in this writing exercise by finishing this sentence:
People should not buy high heels for infant girls because . . .
The company, Heelarious, thinks dressing infant girls in their first high heels “is hilarious.”
I think it comes dangerously close to sexualizing infant girls and certainly it crosses the line in genderizing baby girls.
Please, don’t start giving this at Baby Showers – what, really, is the mother supposed to say when she opens it? Wow, I’m sure she’ll really learn to walk in these!
To be perfectly candid I allowed Ainsley play high heels that she received for her 2nd birthday and would even allow her to wear them in public on occasion – for fun.
I have also purchased for her these tacky little 1″ heels that she wore every day for about a year. She wore one pair out and I bought her another. We handed them down to another girl. It made her happy. People thought it was adorable.
If infant high heels are over the line, did I cross it myself with those tacky plastic 1″ heels? Or is the line somewhere in between the two shoes?
My personal hope is that heelarious goes out of business for lack of consumer interest. In other words, Don’t buy them.
Another instance of sexualization of infants I saw this week was on an E*Trade commercial.
The computer generated baby boy says,“What a bad girl.”
I hit pause – and questioned my reality,
“Did I hear that right? Did that B-A-B-Y boy just make a P-O-R-N reference?”
Nice E*Trade. Real Classy.
What do you think? Are heelarious and E*Trade sexualizing infants and is that fine with you?
Image Sources: You Tube, heelarious, and The Girl Revolution.
