On Parenting

At the end of White Oleander, both the book and the movie (which I recently re-read and saw, respectively), Ingrid Magnussen admits to her daughter Astrid that when Astrid was a toddler, Ingrid left her with a neighbor for a year, “give or take a few months.” She confesses what a relief it was to be free,

To go to the bathroom by myself. To take a nap in the afternoon. To
make love all day long if I wanted, and walk on the beach, and not have
to think, where’s Astrid? What’s Astrid doing? What’s she going to get
into? And not having you on me all the time, Mommy Mommy Mommy,
clinging to me, like a spider…

Ingrid tells Astrid that she felt like a hostage. Astrid retorts, “That’s what babies are like.”

Fitch commented in an interview:

A child will take up 100 percent of you if you let them. It’s only
natural for them to want that, to try for that. So motherhood’s a dance
between individual needs and the needs of your child…Ingrid’s failing
is that she had a child but refused to dance with her.

When Janet Fitch originally wrote the short story that was the genesis for the novel, Ingrid was the protagonist. Everyone hated her, thought she was a monster, said you couldn’t possibly tell the story through her eyes, no-one wanted to empathize with her as the main character. And so the book took shape as Astrid’s story.

It’s a great book. And a lot of bad stuff happens to Astrid in a series of foster homes. But even after reading about the shooting and the foster-mother’s suicide and the blowing juvenile delinquents for weed and the eventual growing to adulthood without her mother, when Astrid confronts Ingrid at the end of the book, I think, well, yeah, no wonder Ingrid needed some time alone. She’s an artist.

I think it’s worthwhile to do reprehensible things for the sake of making art. That’s why art must be good, why we cannot settle for average in our work. It must be worthy of the time spent cheating on the spouse, avoiding the friends, half-heartedly grading the students’ papers, ignoring the crying child kicking at the locked door of the room of one’s own.

I suspect I will not be a very good parent.

In fact, I strongly suspect I’m not really fit to be a parent – I’d rather make great art than a great person (I think). I also don’t believe in an ideal childhood, and I actually hope I can settle for average in that field instead of frustrating myself by reaching for the unattainable. Everyone I know is, to some extent, fucked up by their parents. Not that they were beaten with coat hangers or burned with curling irons or molested in the kitchen while the rest of the family sat down to Sunday dinner, but that no matter how much love we receive, it’s never the amount we desire. The yearnings of unfulfilled desire are what make us discover and seek and create, in an effort to attain the recognition and love we feel we deserve. Survivors are a lot more interesting than the protected, and probably contribute a lot more to the world.

If you like who you are, you have to be okay with what you’ve come from. Bad times make us tough. We know we can survive. And if we’re inclined to making art, they give us subjects for our work.

My mother is a lovely woman. Pleasant, pretty, nurturing, handy around the house, cooked lovely meals, made some of the kids’ clothes, mostly a stay-at-home mom. But it’s my dad about whom I blog…

Morning

This morning I was lying in bed, enjoying warm blankets and a cat at my feet, and the phone rang - I had forgotten I agreed to babysit for the neighbor for an hour this morning. Client lunch at noon, but I think I'll be able to make it.

Neighbor home a little late, so I call the client, get his voicemail, ask if we can make it 12:15 or 12:30.

I am taking the world's fastest shower when he return-voicemails me back - he'd been hoping I could be early, guess we'll have to make it another time. I call him immediately to suggest that I can be there in 10 minutes and perhaps we could just have coffee? I again get the voicemail. Turn your damn phone on, buddy.

He doesn't call back. Which is just as well, as I discover upon hanging up that Husband has taken the blow-dryer out of town with him, and I suspect my drowned-rat hair will not lead to booking an appointment.

On a side note - the neighbor's children are adorable. Husband and I have proceeded from debating whether to debating when. I am frankly terrfied.

1) Not really a kid person, though I hear it's different when they are yours.
2) Perhaps this is shallow, but I like having a tight pussy and I'm worried it'll get all stretched out.
3) I'm worried, not that I won't be able to continue my sex life, but that I won't want to.

How's that for morning reflection?