Interests and Talents That Do Not Involve You

I was surprised to see this blog mentioned favorably in a recent post on motherhood by Dartmouth undergraduate Clare Coffey in the "On the Square"  section of First Things. Coffey, who discloses in the second paragraph that she has no personal or quantifiable experience in her subject, nonetheless attempts in the piece to unpack certain cultural constructs of what we might call "the new motherhood," and to offer her ideas for remaking it along more humane lines. In case the reader should question her credentials, however, she lightly suggests that "if anything I say seems presumptuous, unrealistic, or stupid," the reader should "just chuckle."

It appears that more readers scratched their heads than chuckled, wondering why First Things would publish such a facile sort of piece that gets so much wrong by an admitted non-expert. Sally Thomas addressed these concerns in detail at Castle in the Sea, focusing in particular on Coffey's assertion to the actual mothers out there that "[it] is perfectly acceptable to say 'No, you’re not doing trombone camp this year, because I have interests and talents that do not involve you, and spending my life in the car prevents me from pursuing them.'” "Only a sociopathic narcissist," Sally counters,

would declare aloud, to her child's face, that he isn't going to get to do something because frankly she has better things to do with her life than drive him around. I don't think there's anything remotely, let alone perfectly, acceptable about saying that sort of thing to a child, who in any case is naturally going to think, "Who said we were talking about you? The subject of this conversation is me and trombone camp."

I have to conclude that the reason Coffey recommended my blog along with the excellent blogs of some of my esteemed friends is that this one (which does NOT, by implication, extend to theirs) has historically been heavy on the "interests and talents that do not involve you." The idea that this blog might be paradigmatic of some sort of platonic ideal of rightly-engaged motherhood has led me to consider, with some chagrin, the course of my own attempts to maintain my activities as a scholar and performing artist while trying to be a good-enough mother.

There was a time a few years ago when this blog had some very active detractors who, in the interest, I think, of correcting me on my evidently bad course, left hurtful and even vicious messages in the comboxes (must I mention that these trolls generally self-identified as orthodox Catholics?). One, after I had written something in a comment about one's art, if one is a mother, being able to flourish more readily when one has cash in hand for child care, helpfully sought to remind me that the arts were for "people with TALENT," which is to say not for poor schlubs like me, international performing credits, scholarly publications, and at-that-time A.B.D. in music notwithstanding. Another real-life former friend, a self-styled apologist with a strong internet presence, incensed by something I had written here on a different topic, similarly blasted me for my "unsuccess" at everything I'd endeavored, from music to marriage to motherhood (this same erstwhile friend, before he started hating me quite so much, had asked me to sing at his father's wake and funeral, which I did, taking a cab from the Bronx twice to another far-off outer borough of the City of New York, vomiting from morning sickness much of the way), and, further, suggested that I wickedly blamed this unsuccess on my children, both living and dead. You have a happy life too, buddy!

But there is enough fodder for a mommy war waged by me against myself right here in the present. I was asked recently to translate some academic-musicological essays from the Italian for a prestigious forthcoming publication from a major publisher. I felt I couldn't say no to a well-paid gig of this nature, which could potentially generate similar money-earning opportunities, and was being overseen by a scholar I respect. As it turns out, though, I've already had to renegotiate the deadline, because I'm fairly fried from my current nighttime parenting duties, and I'm recalling a woman I used to know who also did freelance translating but concluded, after the birth of her second child, that she just couldn't do it anymore.

Then there's The Magic Flute.  While it's an opera I've never done, the only roles for my voice type are ensemble roles, so it seemed like a low risk to agree to cover those two roles (Second and Third Lady), especially when the chance that I would go onstage in one of them was miniscule and the conductor welcomed my children at rehearsal. But as it happened, I took him at his word. I brought my children to rehearsal.  While the conductor continued to be supportive, saying it was "a delight" to see them there (the fact is that, out of the entire cast and production staff, he was the only other parent; such is opera), the stage director and his staff begged to differ. It seems that Maestro had asked the stage director not to curse in front of the wee ones, and the stage director made it clear that that was "how he worked," and that children were not an appropriate ancillary to his method (in all honesty, Maestro needn't have been sensitive on my behalf; I curse like a truck-driver, though I try to remove myself to another room when I feel like I have to, or else do so in Italian, though I know neither of those tactics are exactly praiseworthy). This has meant that, because of the sudden and unexpected need for child care, I've been to attend only a few rehearsals, and that, as a result, I wouldn't be able to execute the staging in any kind of admirable fashion if I happened to get a last-minute call that one of the mainstage singers was sick. I've done covers before, but this is the first time in my life that I haven't been prepared for the eventuality of going onstage, and it's a very uncomfortable feeling, not just because of that eventuality, but also because it's in violation of my own strict work ethic. I am grateful to the conductor for making accommodations on my behalf, but the truth is that few other people would have done so.

When my older son was an infant, I was asked to chair a panel at an international conference on British music being held that summer in Vermont. I explained that I would need to bring him along, as he would be seven months old and couldn't be away from me. The conference organizers -- all men, fathers and grandfathers -- were happy to oblige, and so were most of my male colleagues. But I was not prepared for the reaction of the other women at the conference, who looked at me and my baby, whom I wore in a wrap, as if we were the shit on their shoes.  I asked a colleague if it would be all right if I brought my son to his panel, and I sat on the floor in the back of the room with him to minimize any disruption he might cause, and to have easy access to the exit. Luckily my baby was fine, only making a few baby sounds here and there, and no one seemed to mind. The keynote address was scheduled for later that day, and I was eager to hear it, as it was given by a scholar whose work interested me keenly. When I entered the hall, however, with my son in his wrap, another scholar, an up-and-coming young Englishwoman, fairly snarled, "If you're sitting there, I'm moving. I heard your baby in that panel discussion," and she swept up her things and flounced to another seat far from us. I got up and left the hall with my son and burst into tears, and ended up spending the keynote sitting under a tree with him and crying. Ironically, one of the conference organizers, a gay man who had recently adopted an infant with his partner, brought his own baby in on the last day, and father and son were swarmed and cooed over by the same women who had shunned me. My contribution to this love-fest was to give the dad a copy of Mothering that I had brought with me and finished. I won't take the time now to unpack this whole experience. but any conclusions you might draw are probably fairly accurate. Just trust me when I say that the world of academia is no more child-friendly -- if you're a mother, that is -- than the world of opera.

I was also a little embarrassed recently when I had to contact an editor who's involved in my own book project about a deadline missed because of my new son's baptism. If I were a man, this would never need have been mentioned.

Although I have no evidence, I'm fairly certain that the long-ago combox troll who reminded me that the arts are for people with TALENT was neither a mother nor an artist, and I would pretty much bet my life that she wasn't both those things at the same time. And while his scathing email ended my friendship with the "friend" who had suddenly become a self-appointed music critic and, though unmarried and childless himself, a marriage-and-parenting authority (this friend also helpfully brought up the "unspeakable crime" I'd committed against my unborn child years before he knew me, and years after being absolved), and while I no longer follow him nor his fairly prolific work for various online outlets, I would be willing to bet that he has remained unmarried and childless, because, seriously, with a personality like that what are the chances?

But I digress. My point, I suppose, is that, pace Clare Coffey (and thanks for the shout-out, Clare; it's a nice difference from the haters of yore), I'm hardly a paragon of, well, anything. But nonetheless (and this is probably what riled up said haters), I firmly believe that if you give up your whole prior life when you have children -- if, that is, your whole prior life contained anything that you found beautiful, nurturing, or salutary for your soul -- it's going to come back and bite you in the ass. I don't believe in what you might call "professional" motherhood, unless that's a life you've been trained for and have always wanted, which is undoubtedly the case for many mothers. And on a related note, I'm convinced, whatever lurking trolls and former friends might think, that the only way to maintain some sort of culturally-defined "success" -- the flip side, that is, of my troll-former-friend's concept of "unsuccess," the kind of "success" that the other arts-critic commenter seems to have imagined is the natural outcome of being a talented person in the arts -- is to have access to some kind of reliable child care, in which someone other than you, the artist-mother, cares for your children for certain periods of time during which you practice your art. And the cultural imagination notwithstanding (I have it from someone who knows that Angelina Jolie has six nannies, one for each child!), not a lot of artist-mothers have this access, so a lot of artist-mothers stop practicing their art. If you, dear reader, have any thoughts that suggest otherwise -- and generally the thoughts I give credence to are those that can be backed up, if not by quantifiable evidence, then by anecdotal experience; they are generally not, that is to say, wild guesses about what motherhood must be like, made by non-mothers -- then kindly let me know, in an un-troll-like fashion if you can manage it.

Parenting as Path

There's an interesting discussion about attachment parenting (commonly known by the acronym AP) on Erin Manning's blog, with a lot going on in the combox.  When my son was born I joined a hard-core group of AP moms in New York City (everything undertaken by New Yorkers ends up being hardcore), but I became disenchanted when the group leaders began insisting that the only true AP was UP -- i.e., Unconditional Parenting, the vague and somewhat kooky parenting philosophy promulgated by non-doctor, non-psychologist, non-scientist, and non-teacher Alfie Kohn -- and that to say no to one's child was an act of aggression.  There was a prevailing ideology in the group that by AP-ing your baby, you would create kind, compassionate, loving, empathetic children, and would thus change society, but I began to question that premise.  And then there was this guy who joined the group and would complain on our email listserv about how he believed firmly in AP, but his wife did not, and why weren't we all just hooking up with each other anyway?  Although I met my best friend, Really Rosie, in that group, the whole thing was over for me before very long.

I also used to go to La Leche League meetings in the Bronx, and that was the group I really preferred.  The LLL meetings on the Upper West Side that many of my AP confrères attended were full of the subtle judgment and oneupmanship that are endemic to every style of parenting in New York City, but submerged, here, in the crunchy ethos of groovy, conscious mothering.  My Bronx meetings, on the other hand, were full of relaxed, funky Orthodox Jewish moms of many children from Riverdale who would tell the new black and Latina moms not to worry if they had to supplement with formula, that even trying to breastfeed once in a while counted -- rather unorthodox advice, pun intended, for La Leche League, but suited to the reality of very low breastfeeding rates in the nation's poorest urban county.     

My own sister is becoming something of a Buddhist parenting guru.  She writes articles on parenthood for a Buddhist publication, and has started a blog about parenting as a tool toward enlightenment. 

As for me, in the end, however, I suppose that all parenting philosophies, like all ideologies, are bids that we put our faith in in the hope of not completely breaking down and flying off into a million pieces in the face of the entropy that is both parenting and life.  Back where I come from, there is a very strong and compelling illusion that hangs over everything and permeates the very atmosphere like a sort of noxious gas, which encourages us to believe we can make things happen, that we can do it, that we can get it -- in short, that we are in control of our lives (this may not be a notion peculiar to New Yorkers, but I suspect it's more pronounced there than elsewhere, because of the concentration of highly capable people in the city siphoned off from other locales).  It seemed to me when I was in my AP-NYC group that attachment parenting was being wielded as a kind of talisman in the face of chaos, with the devoutly-believed-in premise that if a mother AP-ed, her kids would be okay.  When other people's kids were not okay, it was because they were not attachment parents.  And when Really Rosie's son started to exhibit challenging behavior consistent with neurological difference, her own commitment to attachment parenting was questioned by her friends:  did she really baby-wear?  Because if she did, surely her son would be kind and gentle, not difficult and challenging (and, in fact, a fellow AP group member had seen Rosie on her way to an audition pushing her child in a stroller, and had shunned her, admitting later that she just couldn't talk to those moms who used strollers).

Now my own son has been classified as a preschool child with a disability, though the nature of that disability has not been clearly defined.  He's going to see a developmental pediatrician in October; we have to go more than a hundred miles away because there are none in our area, and we couldn't get an appointment any sooner.  My son is smart, happy, and deeply empathetic, with a prodigious memory and some striking musical gifts which, I believe, go beyond the genetic and are probably neurological in basis; he is also difficult, challenging, deflective, avoidant, hyperactive, and displays repetitive motor movements when he's excited or happy, which is a lot of the time.  He seemed to be developing fairly typically until we moved here just before his third birthday, and now I torment myself, wondering if his problems are the result of toxic chemical residue in the environment, left over from the time when this town was a manufacturing center (in fact, I found out that my area is a "hotspot" for autism spectrum disorders; one in 55 boys here are diagnosed on the spectrum, as opposed to one in 70 nationwide).  Perhaps moving here was a mistake.  But how can we know?  How can one ever know?

Erin Manning suggests that humility is the most necessary parenting tool, one that trumps ideology.  I believe she is right.  I don't know what I'm doing, as a mother or in any other area of my life.  Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and don't know where I am, both literally and figuratively.  But I keep asking -- no, demanding of, shouting and raging at -- God to at least give me one tiny little clue each day to let me know what I'm supposed to do next.