Foam and Twerk

Spoiler alert: I've Arrived Late to the Miley Cyrus Meltdown.

It takes me a little longer than most people to fully form my opinion on controversial topics. I'm always impressed by 5,000 word blog posts and articles that appear seemingly moments after something newsworthy happens. I could never be a journalist for this exact reason - by the time I'd finish writing, 14 more relevant things would have already happened and I'd be like, "I'm still ruminating on that one." (Side note: someone recently said to me, "I'll have to marinate on that and get back to you," and it made me physically recoil. I don't want to envision you slipping around in lemon juice and a zesty blend of spices like a pale raw chicken! Try ruminating on it instead, it's a lovely little word with no bacterial connotations).

So I woke up on Monday, and as many of us with internet access and without concerns of imminent famine or bodily harm found, social media had completely exploded in the aftermath of the VMAs. I'd actually gotten texts from a few friends the night before that said Miley Cyrus was making them sick, but I wasn't watching the VMAs and to be completely honest, I'm not a fan of hers so this didn't really strike me as newsworthy. Which it obviously was. I still haven't seen the entire performance, which seems unnecessary in light of the constant news coverage since and the fact that I read several play-by-plays of the foam and twerk extravaganza. I don't want to see that.

I think at another point in my life, I would have had a very blase attitude the whole thing. My initial reactions were along the lines of; some people will do anything for the shock value, some child stars will do anything to shake off their Disney Channel image, is it me or does Miley Cyrus have dinner rolls glued on her head?

But then I saw a gif of her mom jumping up to give that performance a standing ovation and that was the hell no moment that woke up my lazy mama self. What in the world we were expecting from a girl whose own mother is applauding her degrade herself and flaunt her lack of self-respect? Because the point is not really whether or not you believe that performances like that are exploiting or embracing sexuality, the point is not really that Miley is uncomfortably young and Robin Thicke is getting rich this summer off a song that assumes men know what women want when they aren't cognizant of it themselves. Those things are certainly upsetting, and certainly worth discussing, and most of the world did that on Monday. But to me, as I arrive late to the party, the point is that this is a girl who is saying, what I do with my body is the most important thing I want the world to know about me. The only thing that separates me from the Hannah Montana Miley is that now I live my life right out of the urbandictionary playbook. I know Molly. And all that's lewd and crude about sex? I want you to know that I'm down with that.

And there's her mother, giving her a standing ovation.

If there's anything that I want my own daughter to know, it's that her body is the very least important thing about her. Oh, it's entirely important to be healthy, to be strong, to have self-esteem, to embrace and not loathe all the scars and ripples and curves she will have. It's important for her to have a healthy sexuality and self-respect. But her mind, her intelligence, her passions and her interests are far more valuable to this world than anything about her physicality. It's painful for me to realize that someday Matilda may love a benign show like Hannah Montana, and then could end up watching whoever the 2022 version of Miley Cyrus is declare that she's all grown up now, thanks to sex and drugs. Not because she got an education, or because she has an awareness of world issues, or even because she's matured and grown as a performer and entertainer. Those are all great and respectable things, but instead we've got Miley Cyrus in a nude bra, shoving her sexuality in the face in a million young girls, saying, this is what growing up is all about.

It sure as hell is not, and it offends me, the mother of a daughter, that Miley and her mother (who has been one of her managers and who was highly unlikely to have just shown up and been as surprised as the rest of us by what followed) chose to display that narrative through her VMA performance. It's hard enough to raise girls in a world that values flesh over brains in almost every arena. It's even more complicated when it's laid out this explicitly, and the subsequent uproar is positive in that it makes us reflect on what we're seeing and negative in that it drowns out the truly important things that happened this week. How do you even begin to prioritize when you're raising a girl in a world where CNN spends equal time discussing chemical weapons unleashed on Syrians and a foam finger being used inappropriately on a washed up pop singer with a one-off summer hit? I'm glad this performance didn't go by unnoticed, because that says that we aren't all ok with it, but I'm conflicted over the fact that instead it just played on a loop for days and certainly many more young girls who didn't watch the VMAs have seen it since.

Matilda's new favorite game is to pretend - anything and everything. Pretend we are taking naps. Pretend that her stuffed kangaroo needs a bath (he really does, though). Pretend that we are making eggs and pancakes in her toy kitchen. Is it so much to ask that in a few years she pretends to go to college instead of pretends that she's a Disney star? We cancelled cable recently, for a lot of reasons, but suddenly it feels like that was a really important parenting decision (it was not at the time, I wish I could claim that but really we were just trying to live a little more simply). I'm not at all knocking little innocent shows, but the industry of transitioning child stars into adult ones is one that values sex appeal over all other personal attributes. It's all blurred lines and subtle messages that either women are for men to use, or that their power comes only from their sexuality and how they use it.

I guess what I am saying, days late and paragraphs too long, is keep that away from my girl. I'm not stupid, I know you can't peel yourself away from these messages completely. I was a teenage girl, and I know what it's like to fumble around trying to make your mark and discover yourself as an adult. It's all awkward and uncharted but I don't think it's too much to ask that Matilda never thinks her life will be improved by twerking and getting to know Molly, pleaseGodplease. (Molly is ecstasy. It's already Friday so I've just been assuming you all googled it by now if you didn't already know). And I'm positive that she's never going to get a standing ovation for anything she does along those lines. This is the message I want little girls to know - that it should not be expected that your mother stands up and applauds you doing something stupid, something demeaning to who you are and what's important about you. That you are so, so much more valuable to society when you keep your clothes on in public and fling your intelligence and your insight and your curiosity out there at the world instead of your ass.That you are making the world better for every girl when you don't allow yourself in the same room as anyone interested in crossing blurred lines, let alone dance with them. That achievement is not ripping your clothes off for the viewers at home.

So sit down, Miley's mom. Put your clothes back on, Miley. Write an apology note to the foam finger company. Go to college. At this point, nothing would be more shocking than that.

the dog days are (almost) over

 Joshua and I have always had a sort of an obsession with light. Natural, artificial, too much or too little, we are very conscious of the role light plays in our life. And since we've been together now for over ten years and we've watched the seasons fade into each other approximately forty-twoish times, you might think we would stop mentioning the changing light each year. But we never do. I can't think of a summer where I haven't said a dozen times that this is my absolute favorite time of day. This happens most frequently around 8pm on clear days in July, when we're passing by fields or even an empty overgrown lot that's lit up in the evening sun, and I am all, "look at those amber of waves of grain! I love it here in America!" because the light makes me feel this strange mix of childhood nostalgia and patriotism (other things that make me feel this way: dogs playing fetch in the backyard, every version of Don't Stop Believin' ever made, anything involving football).

Tonight Helo and I wandered through the neighborhood, well before 8pm, and the light had already settled into a just-before-sunset bronze. It's this time of day at this time of year that makes me run right home and tell Joshua that fall is right around the corner, I can SENSE IT! As can anyone else who calls planet earth their home, or owns a calendar, but it feels like a personal and bittersweet epiphany each and every year. 

Despite all that I love about summer; the evening light, the smell of sunscreen slicked into Matilda's curls, the way that it takes thirty seconds to throw her in a dress and sandals and run out the door, I'm practically clapping for every brittle and fallen leaf I see these days. A change will do you good, and all that. I'm not usually the one who takes Helo out in the evenings, and it felt serendipitous that I decided to spend this fading part of tonight outside. It's going to be scorching all week, but it's not really the heat that makes it summer for me. It's the light.

I could not love this adorably threatening sidewalk chalk barricade any more. I was a little worried that tiny children were going to jump out at me as I went ahead and strode into their sacred space, but I think they had been hauled off to homework and bedtimes so....Do Not Pas this Lin, summer! We are moving on to crisper and brisker things.

This Has To Be A Record for Posts In One Week Written By Me

Joshua is home from the summer of productivity/doom and he is ready to party!

yeah...

That was approximately two hours after he arrived home and exactly 34 minutes into an episode of the West Wing, which I will no doubt recap for him when we start the next one and he has no idea what's going on. His exhaustion was completely legitimate, but now that I'm thinking about it, Joshua stays awake for approximately 75% of anything we are watching. He's lucky that I haven't exploited this entertainment narcolepsy. (Such a bummer how Dwight brutally killed Michael in a fit of rage as part of Steve Carrell's exit from The Office, right? I'm going to try this one.)

The house was pristine when Joshua arrived last night, because I'm really good at shoving things in closets and drawers and lighting candles and creating the illusion that our home life is nothing if not a well-curated Pinterest board. I do not just survive my solo parenting weekends, I thrive!

However, this morning I was reminded that toddlers are little vortexes of destruction, hell bent on ruining your dreams of catalog living. If the work of childhood is play, the work of parenthood is not punching yourself in the face after picking up the same blocks and beads and crayons a zillion and one times a day. And we weren't particularly neat or fastidious people to begin with, so you can imagine that when our powers combine, the outcome is that on mornings like this one we are one dead cat away from a hoarders episode. 

In the picture above, Matilda was explaining in no uncertain terms to Joshua that her beads needed to come out of the whale tub (which is still kicking it in her closet as a toy) and he was politely but firmly declining her request on the basis that we had reached our limit of Items Underfoot.

We decided the best thing to do when faced with a major clean up project would be to leave.

And now for a quick and not very cohesive report on life outside our chaos-littered condo...

We are on the cusp of fall, people. See above! For every luscious heirloom tomato someone picked today in the community garden, ten chlorophyll-depleted leaves hit the ground. 

Matilda apparently loves hats and was especially fond of this jaunty herringbone number. Also, to my great shame, I'm wearing sunglasses inside in that picture and I apologize for falling victim to one of my own pet peeves. It was just so bright that I forgot to take them off. Joshua was literally turning into a sunbeam at the exact moment I snapped that shot, so...I promise it's not a thing I do regularly.

Chicago is so gorgeous in every season, and we couldn't possibly see enough of it these days. We are so grateful that this is our city. I'm thankful that we can walk outside and feel a sense of relief that we are 1) not as likely to slip on a pile of crayons and break something as we are indoors and 2) that we are most certainly living our lives in the place we are meant to be right now. Days that we are all together exploring and wandering and being a "really nice family!" (Matilda's words, and the sweetest ones since the last phrase I deemed the sweetest) are just so precious.

She is gentle! She is wild!

She's a riddle! She's a child!

She's a headache! She's an angel!

She's a girl!

now with a picture AND a video

Joshua travels for at least one big work event every summer, sometimes more. This year he had two, plus the frequent weekend trips he took for his new business and it made this summer long and often lonely and not exactly filled with the same kind of golden memories as summers past. He knows I am extremely proud of his hard work, so with great affection and support for his endeavors I say: thank God this summer is over. Joshua's arrival home from California tomorrow marks the official end to the traveling circus and there are no more trips planned other than ones we are taking together. There is some kind of intense emotion that I feel about this, a mixture of joy and relief and despite my best efforts, a lingering sadness over how stressful it was. Kind of like the way a dog feels right after a bath, I imagine. I am the wet dog, and this summer was my bath.

I'm not sure how to recover from that analogy (I'm clean now? this is going badly), so I will move on to the fact that these summer trips have gotten so much easier now that Matilda is older. The stressful part of the trips is the part where I work 56 hours in 6 days in order to be off the entire time Joshua is gone -not the part where we are home together sans Daddy. I really look forward to having time just with her - especially now that we can just chatter away to each other and paint our toenails and go on long walks where she demands to sip my coffee every few blocks and I let her because hello, antioxidants.

I loved Matilda's babyhood because she was so happy and content and squishy but this age is far and beyond my favorite (I did not love 18-24ish months. There was a lot of climbing furniture and falling off furniture and rageful head banging and rigor mortis tantrums and not a lot of talking. We are verbose people, Joshua and I. We needed this child to speak and voila! She also sings). She has strong opinions on what she wants to wear and where she wants to go and what she wants to eat and do and play with and it is incredibly hilarious and more seriously, incredibly satisfying for the part of my soul that wanted to be a mother above anything else in the world. Today I took Matilda to get custard and as I was buckling her into her carseat for the ride home, she said, "thank you for the treat, Mama." (Naturally, I cried right there on Belmont outside Scooters). She also says the things we've always told her about herself, "I am really smart! I am really strong!" and I feel like if I literally did not accomplish one more thing in my lifetime other than for her to keep saying that into adulthood, that would be more than enough.

(She also says, "I am really cute!" and I'm going to check it off in the positive self-esteem column as opposed to in the reinforcing shallow stereotypes for girls column. For now).

Of course, this morning a sweet older woman was passing us as I navigated the sidewalk of our busy street with the dog and Matilda, who insists on walking "by myself. No help, Mama", and the woman made the mistake of saying hello to Matilda in the middle of one of her declarations of stroller independence. My really smart and really strong daughter told her, "STOP IT! I'm not talking to you", and then I died on the inside/passed out from embarrassment/disciplined her promptly/choose your own adventure, mine was shame. Parenting is humbling, in a literal scrape yourself off the sidewalk way. 

And then we have this video, taken moments before the sweetest thank you she's ever given me - I apologize in advance for how loudly Eleanor Rigby was playing and for the fact that I laugh like someone who has recently hit the sidewalk.




There are no pictures

Whenever I return from my regularly scheduled three to sixth month blogging absence, I usually feel like I need to make excuses for my absence (because the three of you reading this missed my self-deprecating quarterly family updates so much? I don't know).

But I am not going to do that because the year two thousand and thirteen has left me in a space where I really don't need to make any excuses. I wasn't here blogging because I was out in the real world dealing with all sorts of (insert four letter word here. and here. and here. and I'm only describing the things that happened between February and May. Are there five letter words I could use for June and July? I'm the mother of a toddler. I'm rusty).

Just to sum up, things about this year that were awesome:

....
....
....
....I've thought of a few.

Joshua started a media production company. I could not be more proud of him, and also a little jealous because now I want to start something and be flooded with work from day one and suddenly have Fedex dropping off business cards and promotional sunglasses. Matilda continues to be the reason we all get up in the morning - first because she's screaming, "I NEED TO GET OUT NOWWWWWWW", and secondly because she is the walking, talking, breathing embodiment of all those well-worn parenting cliches. Light of our life. Center of our world. Hope for the future. The sun we revolve around. The lamest thing about those phrases is that they don't even come close to expressing the bittersweet joy of watching a child grow up, but since this has been a Four Letter Word Year, I'm going to allow it for now.

When Joshua started a company but still kept the day job that he very much enjoys and is also fairly important to our mortgage company, he started working on the weekends. And since I was already saving lives on the nights and weekends (I have to make it sound as dramatic as possible, now that he gets promotional sunglasses), that meant everyone suddenly became very, very, very tired all the time. I think we stopped making our bed in April, right around the time that someone was sleeping in it alone approximately twenty two hours a day. We have been extremely blessed by Matilda's amazing grandparents helping us through this - in fact, Joshua's dad retired just in time for us to start shipping her off to them for weekends at a time. In order of Amount of Fun Achieved, we use these breaks to 1) work, 2) sleep, and 3) drink to excess (please don't tell the grandparents, they're such wholesome people). Also, 4) watch the West Wing, which is our summer Netflix obsession.

Side note: unfortunately, we just got to season five. We recently discovered after googling "why are all the characters acting ridiculous in West Wing season five", that it is the first season where Aaron Sorkin stepped away from the show. Dear Aaron Sorkin circa 2003, 10 years from now an overtired and tipsy Chicago couple will be really bitter with your decision. THEY FIXED SOCIAL SECURITY IN 43 MINUTES AND DECIDED NOT TO TAKE ANY CREDIT FOR IT?? I know all the four letter words, and I'm saying them to your 10-year-younger-self.

Can you tell that the year two thousand and thirteen has derailed us a little? It's true. And if you know me in real life, I also know that you are all, "she needs to shut up about the West Wing," and believe me, I should listen to you. It's just that this year has created a deep need for escapism and we decided to wrap that up into staggeringly idealistic televised politics. But don't worry, this former political science major has also rediscovered the fervency of my interest in actual politics, and that has led to deep soul searching regarding my career choices. And the less lofty pursuit of draining away the time that I do have reading Politico, which is where idealism goes to die in the face of realities like the New York City mayoral race.

How did I end up here? I think the downward spiral occurred because the entire time I've been writing this, my sweet, spirited daughter has been screaming that she needs to GET OUT (see above). Unfortunately, it's nap time and I am the boss of her, but still...the high pitched demands wear on a person.

Lastly, I apologize for the vagueness with which I am approaching What Has Happened Since I Last Blogged. It is a combination of little annoyances and vast griefs that run the gamut from unspeakably boring to just unspeakable, and I'm sure everyone has suffered through months or years of trials that feel similar to ours. Maybe someday, this year will be something I put into written words, but for now you get diatribes on decades old TV and absolutely no pictures of us whatsoever. Matilda has ringlets and does somersaults and I'm depriving my vast readership of photographic evidence of this, but if we are all lucky, I will blog again before she goes off to preschool.

(Social security in 43 minutes, I mean really...)