But Ryan called because he had dislocated his right shoulder while playing raquetball. He said that, and I knew at once that several things would be different for him. I knew he’d have some serious decisions to make before he submits his missionary papers in January. I knew he’d probably never play raquetball, or tennis, again, and maybe never swim the crawl again. I knew that immediately he’d have pain and weakness, and later, a lingering ache.

And right then, I knew we had to get his shoulder back in, because the wrongness of it being out it is almost as distressing as the pain. His roommates were with him, and I spoke with Phillip who, besides being a mechanical engineering student like Ryan and the son of a doctor like Ryan, is also our cousin. I tried to describe the three-dimensional spatial manipulation he needed to do to bring Ryan relief. My dad taught Mr. Bennet and me an acronym (Tension, External, Movement, Internal) to remember the procedure years ago, and I stumbled through that.

I was a bit hazy at first. It’s been a couple years since I’ve needed a shoulder reduction, and we had also just gotten off an airplane. I was simply grateful that I actually had my phone near me, that it wasn’t dead, and that I had felt like answering it, for once. It’s a difficult process to articulate over the phone, definitely something easier to show than tell, even to someone like Phillip.

(Now is probably a good time to say that my orthopedic surgeon says nerve damage is not the concern with our sort of problem, and that this post is not intended as medical advice. Please do not take it as such, and if you do, do not even think of suing me if you hurt yourself. I would be tempted to countersue you for being a dumbass.)

I am the oldest of five children, and Ryan, the youngest, is fourteen years younger. I dislocated my shoulder for the first time when I was only a few months older than Ryan is now. Perhaps his injury is different. Perhaps it was an isolated incident. Perhaps he does not have the same sort of weak connective tissue I have that causes my joints to hyperextend and to be much more flexible than my flabby frame would suggest.

Perhaps he will not require two surgeries, physical therapy, and a slightly altered view of what life will look like, day to day. (Perhaps he will never worry about dropping his newborn if his shoulder comes out at the wrong moment.)

But if it is, if his shoulder is like mine, he should know: 1) It could be worse. (Of course it could always be much, much worse.) 2) Still, it is bad enough, and if it prevents him from serving a strenuous mission, or from joining the military like he is considering and like my dad and my other brother have, then I am sorry. So, so sorry. 3) I know a great orthopedic surgeon, and now that we know what it took to really fix the problem, how extensive the damage can be, surely he can get it fixed earlier and to much greater effect.

Is it true that we have more genetic material in common with our siblings than with our parents or our children? Ryan and I have the same coloring, the same height (he says he is taller, but that is wishful thinking). He goes to the same college I did (but then so does everyone in our family). We share a temper, an arrogant opinionatedness, a way of seeing things in black and white. Though I see more grays every year, I am still partial to the absolutes. I had a talent for making our father mad, and Ryan’s talent was even more prodigious (or he is simply younger).

We are not completely alike, of course. Our childhoods were quite different, even with the same parents and similar DNA. I was told that Halloween was a pagan holiday to be shunned while Ryan was trotted around the local trunk-r-treat from infancy. Our adulthoods will be superficially very different too, mostly because we are what is called traditional.

But this physical flaw we probably (though hopefully not) share makes us seem conclusively alike. And it feels, irrationally, like my fault. Though if I were going to apologize for embodying a foreshadowed flaw fourteen years before my brother, I should apologize for my temper and impatience and susceptibility to addiction.

Because, 4) Physical flaws have much less to do with happiness than the other sorts of flaws.*

*(Unless you need a root canal, in which case, don’t even bother trying to be happy until you’ve been to the dentist. I only mention it because you might have teeth like mine.)

But now, two months later, I crave Dew’s lemon meringue-y chemical sweetness more than my lover’s arms. I wake up fantasizing about that first cold slip down the throat, the pop and hiss as you open a can or the still-slightly-illicit-thrill of making an unnecessary stop at the gas station, genuflecting at that holy miracle, the soda fountain machine, from which pours the heavenliest of nectars, unceasingly.

My tooth hurts, my voice is ravaged from swine flu (Dick says I should cut back to one pack a day. Of swine? I ask.) I have a few projects on deadline and I’m still sad about my weight (and my baby, though this would be what they call an unpropitious time to be pregnant.)

Mountain Dew is the ultimate comfort. The shangri of my la, the pot of gold, the beautiful oblivion from all cares and curses. Maybe if I promise to start running every morning I can afford just one taste of bliss each day. Or what if I stop yelling? Swearing? Complaining about the basketball-sweaty socks strewn about my bedroom? Surely there is some indulgence I can trade for the sin I covet.

(And before you suggest diet Mountain Dew, don’t. It’s spectacularly disgusting. And, anyway, it’s the caffeine too, as well as the sugar. I see myself as someone just crunchy enough to despise artificial stimulants while keeping well under the doesn’t-use-toilet-paper true-granola barrier.)

this Halloween I’m going to be a enchantres. I have a dress that’s velvet and Gold triming. I will have magic powers and fly. my mom got me that dress and i Love it! she got it from the chepest place! Di! i wonder why anybody would give it to Di. it’s the Best dress ever!

today I woke up and had Breakfast. But when I poured my creal I found out I had magic powers! I ran upstairs and found my piggy bank and made more and more money and then Bought a scooter. then I turned my sisters into toads. But my mom made me turn them back. I was not very happy.

Observations:

1. I’m glad Sally has given up the idea of being a vampire. She doesn’t even know what a vampire is, so I don’t know why she wanted to be one.

2. That dress really is awesome. I don’t know why anyone would give it to DI, either.

3. Having kids old enough to get their own breakfast is the first step on the path to parenting nirvana. Of course, it’ll be eclipsed in quality-of-life improvingness when she’s old enough to babysit, but for now, it’s a glimmer of hope.

4. I like that she went to her piggy bank to make money. Like an ancient alchemist or any Einstein-ian scientist. You can’t have matter from nothing, right?

5. Sally has been talking about a scooter for months, so we bought Susan and Spot scooters for their birthdays this month. By the time Sally’s birthday comes around it’ll be snowy. So really we should get her one now, but we didn’t. Cruel, I know.

6. Sally is so in touch with her feelings (not to mention personal choice, responsibility, and consequences) that I don’t think she’s going  to need very much therapy at all.

On the way home, the tickle in my throat turned, in one slow-motion curve of the freeway, to throbbing temples and a full-body ache. Spot and I were the last holdouts against this cold, not the swine flu (which is what we are telling ourselves anyway so that Dick can go in all good conscience to contaminate the good people of Austin).

In times of sickness, any mother (especially any temporarily-single-mother) knows the most important thing is provisions: drugs, vitamins, food, liquid, tissues, barf bucket, cleaning supplies, movies, books, maybe a large shotgun in dire cases. (For self-inflicted wounds, stop worrying about my kids.)

So I planned to stop at the library (no one was coughing or feverish at this point, and we’d be really fast), the Walmart, and Little Ceasar’s pizza. But after I stocked up on Anne Stuart gothic novels and several books recommended by my friend Susan, I had no heart for stopping anywhere else.

In terms of the provisional heirarchy, a good book (and the movie Big Business I think my girls will like as much as Marcy and I did) is simply more important than Pumpkin Spice eggnog (though wouldn’t that have been throat-soothing?) and $5 hot-and-ready pizza.

Anyway, we’ve got fixins’ for hot chocolate in the pantry, and for lunch?

Seagull Fountain Ramen Noodle Special:

2 packages chicken top ramen w/ seasoning packets

water

2 handfuls classic coleslaw mix (shredded carrot and cabbage, for roughage)

1/2-1 cup home-canned chicken (for protein)

1 tsp curry (for spice)

1 (or three) tblsp heavy cream (for love)

I think I should submit this to the New York Times High-Low segment, though that’s usually fashion, and even the Low end of whatever ensemble they’re pimping is way out of my range. Kinda like this Ramen Noodle concoction. Not just anyone has this stuff available year-round, you know.

She mentioned something about the XYZ affair, early 1800s, John Jay, and things started ringing a bell, but I was going seventy on the freeway so it really wasn’t an optimal time for historical conjecture.

I got to Mama’s house (I don’t ever call my mother “mama” but right now I wish I did) finally and we started bumbling our way through canning my forty pounds of $1.29/pound chicken from Macey’s. Mama can sew anything. Anything. But she’d never canned meat before, so we were both studying the directions and calling her friend who does it all the time.

I asked if she’d decided what she’ll study in school when she goes back in January. Mama has twenty-three college credits from thirty years ago, and now that my youngest brother Ryan is the fifth and last of us to trot across campus to the testing center, Mama is going back.

She’s scared. Even though she can do anything, fix anything, build a family, and bring the nurture so the Giving Tree looks like a selfish putz, Mama’s anxious about going back to school.

I am tickled for her. Maybe even more excited than when my Sally started school for the first time.

Oh, the places you’ll go! (Mama!)

We laughed over Karin’s frantic phone call (Mama got one too and was also in the car at the time. Karin got lucky with our sister, Marcy, who it’s also not like she’s always in front of her computer). Later, as my fingers turned numb from half-frozen raw chicken and my skin cracked from repeated hand-washings, Karin called again and told Mama she was jealous that we were canning stuff and that when she’d called Marcy for last-minute cramming she was reading a book while grinding wheat.

Mama says Karin, who has three more semesters of school, is feeling the pull of the domestic. (Her boyfriend returns from a two-year mission for our church in a couple of weeks). I’ve already told Karin she has to graduate before having kids — even though if Mama had done that I probably wouldn’t be here.

So what are you going to study, Mama, I asked? And Mama said she’s been rethinking her plan to do nursing. Now she’s probably going to study something in the humanities, maybe everything in the humanities, because she’s been doing practical things all her life.

Of course I think back to college and wish I’d been more practical. It’s nice to know where to place a comma and that Aphra Behn was a foremother of the modern romance novel, but sometimes I wish I’d picked up some tax-return fundamentals along the way.

But for Mama? I hope she absolutely revels in the impractical, now that her season has changed.

Hello Mari,

I wanted to tell you about a new month-long Bubbles and Bubbly Contest powered by Wisk High-Efficiency detergent, which your readers will surely enjoy. To enter to win, just answer a true or false question that tests your Bubble IQ and no matter if you get it right or wrong you are eligible for a grand prize drawing of a fabulous red HE washer & dryer.  And because we know that all HE machines require HE detergent, we’re also giving away one-year supplies of Wisk HE detergent to 5 lucky runners up. Also, each day 5 people will win a free bottle of Wisk HE.  You can enter up to once a day for a month for the chance to win, so do come back each day for a new question and another chance to win!

Please let me know if you have any questions and if you can help spread the word to your readers.

Best,

Kathleen

@LaundryHE

Done? Okay. Here’s what I came up with:

1. My name is not “Mari.” I’m happy to be called Shannon or Jane; even “MommyBlogger” would be preferable to a name that is not my name. Sally has been reading too much Calvin & Hobbes lately so she calls me “the Mom-Lady,” but she’s eight, you know?

2. “which your readers will surely enjoy.” Yeah, my dad is really interested in Wisk High-Efficiency detergent.

3. “Bubble IQ.” Really?

4. The statement I got upon visiting the site was “True or False: If you swallow bubble gum it will stay in your stomach for 7 years.” I asked Sally this question in case I was dismissing it too quickly. She gave me the look and said, “that’s impossible.” If your quiz doesn’t at least require my eight-year old to think for a minute, why would I enjoy it?

5. The contest entry requires that you submit both your street address and phone number. Uh, I don’t think so. And, maybe you could have mentioned that in this email. I can’t in good conscience encourage people to leave that kind of information on a site that has no visible encryption or privacy policy.

6. The results are the same whether I get the answer right or wrong? Why use words like “question” and “tests” and “IQ” if this is really one of those pinko feel-good non-contests where everyone is a winner (as long as they’re chosen randomly)? Kids gotta learn that not everyone can be the next American Idol.

7. Whatever you do, don’t say what brand the washer and dryer are (as long as it’s not Maytag — like the kind Dooce, oops, it is a Maytag.) But they’re red! (same kind as my laptop) and fabulous!

8. You just said that High-Efficiency detergent is only for those fancy HE machines, right? If you do a simple site search of my blog with the word “laundry,” the first result is this post, which has a picture of my old, ugly (yet reliable) machines. I know, your time is too valuable to pretend to do any research, even the most obvious and easy two-second search. You’re too important to waste time personalizing things for me. I get it. (thanks for the ego hit.)

9. Even if I did have nothing better to do than enter a quiz that isn’t a quiz every day for a month, you think I’d want to broadcast that fact?

—

I noticed this email (among all the other bad pitches I’ve gotten recently) because a guy I met at a blogging for business conference emailed me the other day asking for consultation about a pitch he’s working on. (SMART GUY.)

Seems like it shouldn’t be too hard to write a successful pitch, if you truly love a product and if you’ve ever written a letter to your mom. But of course PR people can’t expect to love every product they work with, and they probably don’t have mothers, either. Maybe if they could get into some sort of headspace where they believed in X product so much they simply HAD to write home to mother about it, the email boxes of mommybloggers across the land would be a much happier place.

—

Now I feel bad. I sent a link to this to Kathleen, and she responded so graciously. I’m a jerk. (But everything I said is still true. — I guess this is what they meant by cognitive dissonance.)

Also, Dick tells me they’re legally required to enter you in the contest whether you’re medically braindead or not. So, my bad.

Sally had a friend’s birthday party to go to, but in the packing for and going on of our trip to Idaho this week, we lost the invitation. By “we” I mean probably Susan or Spot saw the pretty princess card and put it in a special place. But I neglected to email myself the details (the only way I can be sure to remember something).

Things like that I can’t shrug off easily. Neither can Dick. Sally was upset, quietly for once, eyes brimming with tears, bursts of anger at Susan who admitted to playing with the card. We looked everywhere, convincing Dick that some serious stuff-straightening was necessary.

We searched the church membership directory online, called information for Sally’s teacher’s name (I don’t know if she would’ve given us a phone number anyway).

I even stopped on my last-minute shopping trip at the house of a family with the last name of Sally’s friend. I asked if they were having a party today, and they said, do you want us to?

I drove on, knowing that at least we had done just about everything you could imagine. I wasn’t sorry much that Sally would miss a party, but I have enough entertaining anxiety memories to imagine the other little girl sad when no one showed up because all the girls had younger sisters with epistolary kleptomania.

I thought to myself: I wish I could pray about this. I wish this was something I could bother God about — I see myself holding a divining rod, eyes closed, led to the house with the birthday party. I have faith, if only this were the sort of thing you would pray about.

I stopped at our new Dollar Tree first. (I know, how awkward is my dollar-store enthusiasm?) In the book and puzzle aisle, before the fake flowers, I heard a mother behind me tell her daughter “You can pick three things for Anna’s present.” Head turning in what feels like slow motion, I apologize and promise I’m not a stalker, but is your daughter going to a party for a girl in Mrs. W’s third grade class? In Seagull Fountain? Today? What time is it at? And where, exactly?

Three hours later, I dropped Sally off at a house where the door opened and a happy birthday girl swooped down on her saying “Sally you made it! How come I haven’t seen you at school lately?” (I couldn’t make up this ladies-who-lunch dialogue — and Sally did miss three days last week for our trip.)

It’s an absurd story, of course. Over an unimportant event, coincidental, and, why would God answer this unspoken prayer and not those more deserving?

Except to say that He can, and does, even when the answer is no.

With several grown-up books to choose from, I agreed to lunch at Carl’s Jr with the big play place. We should have driven to a play place in the next school district over, but I am blessed to block out almost anything while reading. Two mothers near me were breastfeeding their babies.

They were both modestly covered with hooter hiders.

Some women are a lot more reasonable about this than I am. I told Chrysanthemum that if women want to wear hooter hiders, why stop there? Why not go for a burqa or a niqab? Chrysanthemum says she’s comfortable, but wants to make sure other people are comfortable too. (Which is only thoughtful.)

Saturday night I held Chrysanthemum’s baby while she ate with the menfolk after the priesthood session. I burrito’d him and rocked him in the granny recliner my mom has in her living room. I had been dying to get my hands on him all day, but I couldn’t take his sweet weight drooping in sleep for long.

I promised Chrysanthemum that I really won’t kidnap him, mostly because she knows where I live anyway, but also because when he cries, I can’t comfort him if what he wants isn’t a bounce or a bundling or a burp. I am not equipped, right now, with what he needs.

—

I’ve never loved my body (has any woman?). Stupidly, even when I was in high school and thinner than I’ll ever be again, I was unhappy with this bulge and that blemish. I was also not happy to be growing breasts. They budded and blossomed, right on time; not too big, not too small, but the mere fact of them, the changing from child to woman was not welcome. I know most girls look forward to the bras and the makeup and the high heels as markers of maturity, but I did not.

I hated that I had to wear a bra. It felt like a betrayal, a shrouding of my ribcage, a constriction of my breathing, an infringement on my freedom and rights and autonomy. And no, I wasn’t melodramatic as a teenager at all, why do you ask?

I still hate wearing a bra, but I’ve resigned myself (in public). I sometimes feel frumpy and flubbery and (I don’t say “fat” around my daughters), and I don’t mind the religious obligation I have to cover up because I have no desire to show my thighs in a short skirt or my belly in a bikini.

But at some point I started appreciating what my body can do rather than what it looks like. Function superseding form, form respected for the function that follows. My hands can knead bread, my feet can peddle the bike that pulls Susan and Spot for a ride. My womb can grow a child. (It can also miscarry, but that is normal.)

And my breasts? They sag and stretch. (I even get a few wild hairs now and then. Don’t tell Mr. Bennet.) But my breasts can feed a child all she needs for the first year of her life.

Which is almost as miraculous as never once feeling self-conscious or unsatisfied with how my milk-swelled breasts looked. Even when a stranger glimpsed a patch of blue-veined flesh.

I thought I was in control. That my kids were coming, more or less, as I wanted them too.

Now I wonder. Mr. Bennet has a colleague with twelve children. I’ve never wanted or thought I could handle (emotionally, physically, mentally) that many kids, but I thought it was my choosing that kept our numbers down. I can choose whether to have sex or not, after all: I can choose to try to conceive, and I can choose to try not to.

But I think now I really wasn’t in charge all along. I think even if I had been trying to fill a preconceived quota, my body (my life) wasn’t actually made that way.

My sister can’t have any more than three kids right now because she no longer has a husband. My friend can’t ever have any more than three because she needed an emergency hysterectomy. My sister-in-law is hoping (still, faithfully) for a first.

Sometimes I feel panicky because my life isn’t shaping up as I once thought it would. That April birthday I thought would work so well, is not going to happen. And now I think I don’t know if there is another birthday to add to our family ever. It’s not that I’m ambivalent about whether we will try or not again, but that I feel more open to Someone else making the decision, having the final say.

Because I think that Someone else had the final say all along, I just didn’t realize it.

I mentioned how yummy my compost is looking, from the point of view of next year’s seedlings. It’s dark and earthy and rich. Except for the golden zucchini plants I haphazardly chopped up into it. They’re resilient buggers. When I ripped them from the earth, I discovered my poor, stunted cantaloupe* vines cowering beneath. One of them has an runty melon on it, about two inches in diameter, rind withering prematurely. I mourned the loss, after tasting the magnificent fruit my mom’s ministrations produced.

But, said my mother, I thought you didn’t like cantaloupe?

Well, I do like cantaloupe now, actually, though it was Susan who picked those plants.

I like a lot of foods I hated as a child.

Foods I hated as a child that I now love

avocados

onions

nuts

garlic

bell peppers

olives, black, canned

shrimp

most all other seafood, though I think I used to choke down fish sticks

mushrooms (still hate canned mushrooms, ick)

cantaloupe, honeydew melon

pickles

asparagus, brussels sprouts

eggs over-easy

ginger, sparingly

crunchy peanut butter

celery (used to make the inside of my ears itch. I don’t really love it now, but it gives a crunch, doesn’t it? Kind of a necessary evil, like water chestnuts).

Foods I still don’t like despite pretensions to a sophisticated palate

corn tortillas

sesame seeds, except in awesome Asian-style sauces

stinky cheese

octopus, squid (I do like a good fried calamari)

kimchi, except in very small amounts as a prelude to awesome Korean barbecue

wasabi, no exceptions

gourmet olives (you know who you are)

poppy seeds, unless drenched in glaze atop lemon muffins

malt, even disguised by chocolate

I think there are a couple lessons to be learned here. 1) If you have a picky eater, don’t despair. 2) You can take the girl out of Utah and introduce her to the best cheese and olives Zabar’s has to offer, but you can’t make her like it.

I wonder if I like as many more non-food things as food things now?

What foods do you now like that you used to hate?

I wanted to get my ears pierced. My friends must have had pierced ears, and it seemed unfair that I had to wait till I was 16 (or 14?) before I could get mine pierced. My dad, in a nostalgic move (I was the oldest, and there is something about the oldest, something about the first experience of being a parent). Anyway, he made a deal with me. I could get my ears pierced at eight if I’d cut my hair to a short bob, how he liked my hair when I was three and four and singing into Great-Grandma Belle’s four-legged cane/microphone.

I was stubborn, though (maybe I didn’t realize how scarecrow my hair looked?), and in the end he paid me twenty-five dollars plus getting my ears pierced so I would let Mom cut my hair. I bought two ugly dresses with that twenty-five dollars. (This must have been right before I stopped wearing dresses for fun).

The weird thing about this is that I usually think of my dad’s parenting style as on the authoritative side of things. Really.

If you know my dad, and his dad, you believe this authoritative interpretation I’ve held for thirty-two years, but reading this story, he doesn’t have a very heavy hand, does he?

So you can imagine: My dad is authoritative yet he bribed me with something I wanted most at the time to cut my hair a way that suited his picture of me as a little girl, a way he thought suited me best.

With that as a baseline (Dad=Authoritative, Eight-Year-Old Me=Complete Autonomy in Matters of Hair), you can appreciate maybe why the story of a daughter (age eight, the age of my oldest girl, my old self’s age) not allowed to have her hair as she wanted, filled me with . . . indignation.

I apologize for taking it personally enough that I was mean with it.

—

That wasn’t the last time Dad made a deal (or dare) with his kids. When I was twelve-ish? Before Karin and Ryan were born anyway, we were staying at a hotel in St. George in the winter, and Dad bet us money (again, $25?) that we wouldn’t jump in the winterized outdoor pool. We did (Marcy, Brad and I), and I remember I bought a phone for my bedroom that time.

In high school we made fun of beauty pageants by calling them cattle auctions, and Dad bet me I wouldn’t participate in one, so I did. I think I got fifty dollars that time, plus pageant fees and my (long-suffering) mom’s expert seamstressing of a gorgeous Snow White evening gown. I also learned a lot about poise and self-confidence and interviewing.

—

I wonder what I can get Sally to do with the right incentive?

(And Dad, you were a lot more fun than I sometimes remember.)

Still, my children get excited to cuddle in my bed in the morning, and Sally, who leaves early to ride her bike in the cold morning, eats the oatmeal I make and thanks me for her lunch. She goes out the front door and I open the garage as she comes back for her helmet. Her friend looks on as I approach. Sally slows, tips her cheek up for my kiss (had I telegraphed my intent?) and, after my lips brush her soft, smooth cheek, she smiles a bit and says, “Gross.”

In other news, Spot ran to tell me that Susan found her bunnies under the blanket on the queen-sized bed they now share. Spot had thought, so they tell me, that those odd under-blanket lumps were the Holy Ghost.

That night we were doing math. Mr. Bennet helped her first the night before, but he does not see math as clearly as I do, so I took over. Sally tells me that she doesn’t like math, isn’t good at it, it’s hard.

This breaks my heart. Why? Because I was good at math. Ergo, the oldest fruit of my womb is also good at math. Naturally. (Ergo, also, anything she wants to master she can, though we are not responsible for musical aspirations.)

(And when I explain it to her visually, concrete-ly, metaphorically, the light does go on.)

I asked her about piercing her ears at eight, because I was eight when I got my ears pierced.

She likes many foods that I did not as a child, but when she gags at the thought of onions or garlic, I smile tolerantly. More for me, I say, and you might change your mind when you’re older, I say.

I joke a lot about not looking forward to the teen (and pre-teen!) years with my three daughters. If they are anything like I was at that age, we are going to need a lot more kleenex, several beater cars, and patience as vast as the Sargasso Sea.

If they are anything like they are now, and barring alien personality-transplants they should at least resemble their current selves, it’s going to be awesome, a cross between Little House on the Prairie, Rainbow Valley, and Little Women, only with better hair, fewer Presbyterians, and no infallibly-wise Susan Sarandon mother figure. (Just me).

I read a post the other day where a mother was complaining about how difficult her daughter (also eight) is. Mother and daughter fight over what the daughter will wear to school. The daughter throws a tantrum to end all tantrums after not being allowed to cut bangs in her hair like her older sister. Mom and dad prefer their girl with long, thick hair, so no bangs it is. The daughter holds it together at the stylist, then cries inconsolably for an hour once home over wanting her hair how she wanted her hair.

And all the comments, many from mothers of similar daughters, commiserate. So sorry you have to deal with such a recalcitrant daughter! So headstrong! So willful! So impossible!

I check my calendar. And my passport. This is the twenty-first century, right? This is America?

Of course there are forms of self-expression that I will try my hardest to stamp out. Smoking. Sex before marriage. Swearing of the excessive and uncreative variety.

But bangs? Plaids paired with polka dots?

H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks, GIRL, shave your head if it makes you feel better! Wear magenta with burgundy! Ride your bike faster than all the boys! Get mud on your face! Everyday!

(Just don’t say math is too hard.)

What can I say? Moms know everything. Which is why we take our kids to Thanksgiving Point a lot, because not only will my kids have fun and learn something, but I won’t be annoyed, as I am by some specialty childrens museums. Although to be honest, I don’t know if a family pass is going to be in the budget next year, which is why we’re going a lot in the coming months.

This Saturday (September 26th) PBS’s Design Squad is filming at Thanksgiving Point and I’m thinking of sending Tom and the kids (I will be going to the first-ever Sew Day with my mom and sisters). The filming is free and open to the public at 11:30 am. The Museum of Ancient Life also has a new Magnets, Motors, and Mind exhibit which I think Susan would really like.

And since I knew their PR rep in college (just kidding, she totally still doesn’t remember me, but I’m lucky enough to be on her list), I have a family four-pack of tickets to the museum to give away. Today I’d like to reward a faithful commenter (okay, and save myself the trouble of forgetting to pick a winner and so forth), so I took the top five commenters for this month (see widget in the sidebar) and ran a random number generator:

Congrats, Sharla! You’re going to Disneyland The Museum of Ancient Life!

A couple weeks ago, Sally rushed into the house with a roar of MOM that was half-way between mad and hurt. At least it sounded mad a bit, but turned out to be all hurt, and a baby cub’s aggressive appeal for comfort. She had fallen off her bike on the way home from school and busted up her chin. I gave her sympathy, hugs, ice, and decided after a couple minutes that I was glad I’d showered that day because a trip to Insta-care was in our immediate future.

Sally got scared when I mentioned stitches. Years ago, when she was our only child, Mr. Bennet and I taught her to say please before she took her medicine or got a shot, on the theory that she’d view them as desirable if she had to ask for them politely. Sometime in her seventh year she wised up and regressed, shaking and crying (quietly, which is even worse in these situations) before any traumatic medical intervention.

I said it wasn’t a very deep cut, but since it was on her face, she’d probably want stitches so there wouldn’t be a scar. And she asked me, “Does it matter?”

I know part of that was her fear of pain, but a good part of it was her really asking if scars matter, and I am still trying to think up a good answer for her.

It would take all of my fingers and all of my toes to count up the small scars on my body: on my shoulder from two surgeries, my hands from cooking and carelessness and living, my forehead and knee from chicken pox, my abdomen from appendicitis, my shin from the time Rory chased me on the bleachers in high school.

Does it matter?

Last week was our first time to drive Susan’s preschool carpool. We pulled up to her friend’s house and his mother said for us to go ahead, she wasn’t done doing his hair yet. At my blank look she reminded me that it was picture day. I looked at Susan, with her bedhead hair for afternoon preschool, and the outfit she’d put on: blue shirt under a pink and green plaid jumper. And I shrugged, half-rueful, half-proud.

When Sally turned eight I asked if she’d like to get her ears pierced; at first she wasn’t interested at all, and I didn’t push, but several months later when it came up again, she asked if it hurts. I said it did a little, but not bad at all, and she asked for clip-on earrings. Those pinched, and now she is thinking it over, or would be, if she hadn’t already forgotten all about it.

Then yesterday I noticed something odd in the laundry. Sally’s pants, bought over the summer on several trips to DI do not have holes in the knees. I lamented for years over the holes in Sally’s pants, not that she was active enough to rip them, but that pants are expensive. Three wearings from Sally the Horse or Sally the Cheetah, and even the nicest jeans from the Gap (a gift) were shredded at the knees.

Now her pants are un-holey. A bit grass-stained and stretched out at the knee, but not holey anymore.

So to answer your question, Sally, three weeks and four stitches later: Scars don’t matter, and if you need to get holes in your pants to play the way you want to play, please do.

Last Friday there were only a few crickets enjoying the last gasp of hot weather, but somehow each one was directly in the path of my front tire. Each one, at the last possible moment before the rubber rubbed him out forever, flung himself up and out, towards the brush that lines the asphalt, sometimes making it, sometimes splatting just a ways down. Crickets do not look before they leap, at least not when faced with death by squashing.

They land awkwardly, legs and joints akimbo. Sometimes even on a wing or tipped to the side. I didn’t stop to see how the recovery went, but the aimless, frenzied flight, the fearless self-flinging was as exhilarating to watch as that moment on the runway right before your plane takes off and you hold your breath.

Those crickets reminded me of Mr. Bennet, because he has this thing where he’s writing a page a day without any special goal in mind. Which really isn’t a stretch (much less a wild, fantastic leap) for a technical writer with a blog, but it’s what he’s doing at night instead of watching (more) TV with me.

Usually I am enamored of more purpose-driven endeavors, more exotic goals and expected outcomes. Like cooking 524 intricate French recipes with Julie and Julia, spending no money with Bye Bye Buy, forgoing toilet paper with No Impact Man, and fasting with Sister Kent from my parent’s ward who decided as a teenager to not eat until she heard from God (it was three days before He spoke).

The more extreme and impossible-to-sustain in the long run, the more inspired I am. I tell myself that as soon as I find my passion, I’ll sprout this devotion to live it madly for a year. (A year seeming to be the accepted limit for moonstruck deliberation.)

I have been telling myself this for twenty years.

In the waiting time, though, as each solstice and equinox beguiles with hints and promises of new starts, I add one or two small things from my list of envied dreamers of dreams. I start making yogurt and baking bread again (though not from a cookbook); I resolve to buy less, especially as I realize that the waste I now compost is not nearly as large a fraction of what we throw away everyday as I thought it would be. I stop drinking Mountain Dew, so that when Fast Sunday comes along, I can commune without wanting to take a chainsaw to my skull.

Next spring I will plant my beans and peas earlier, and tally my costs like Thoreau. And I will write one page a day, because what else would I do while Mr. Bennet ignores the dishes in the long winter evenings?

Someday I will fling myself into something, and like the crickets, I won’t think first of my landing.

It’s funny. “Bad Fathers,” I think, are men who suffer from strained (or non-existent) relationships with their children. “Bad Mothers,” it seems, are women who suffer from strained relationships with other women.

At first I thought this was the most profound thing I’d ever heard or read on the good/bad mother issue. Then I felt defensive — my relationships with other women are just fine, thank you very much. Now I’m back to thinking Josh is really (really) smart.

Because it is my relationship with this women that I mourn. I no longer look forward to spending time with her. I don’t want to share with her what is going on in my life. I can’t imagine opening my heart up or being honest about my worries.

(And if I am apparently such an inadequate mother in her eyes, she can’t possibly want to spend time with me, either.)

Josh is especially right that the good/bad mother label, as I now see it, as we feel it projected on us or think in our minds about each other, is not about the kids, how healthy and happy they are, but about how we compare, how we differ, from other mothers.

And that STINKS.

I also wondered, in the weeks after this experience, if I have often been so sanctimonious and insufferable to other mothers, and you know that I have. I know that I have, especially when I was first a mother. The older I get, the more conviction I have that the choices I have made are right for my kids and myself, and at the same time, I have less and less conviction that they are necessarily right for other people. Even the things that I love/value/admire most about being a mother (like breastfeeding) — some otherwise charming and delightful women get tunnel vision with their issues and I gotta tell you it is the opposite of appealing, no matter how much I like them personally.

I don’t even want to make a list of the things I do or believe in as far as mothering goes, because this isn’t about the disposable diapers or public schools in Utah or atavistic rejection of all things babywearing and co-sleeping — it’s about any woman thinking she knows what’s best for anyone other than the people who live at her house. (Sorry, I snuck a list in there, but if you’ve read this website before, you’re probably not surprised by anything on it.)

I guess my main point is: An apology to good mothers/bad mothers everywhere. May I never use either term ever again. Please forgive me if I have ever made a judgment verbally or to myself about the way you go about being a mother.

The End.

I got a new camera for the unique purpose of taking cute photos of my kids (and because Best Buy had no-interest financing and Mr. Bennet still felt bad about the belated Valentine’s Day camera I returned last February.) In August Tara and I road-tripped to San Francisco by way of Vegas (not a very direct route, if you’re wondering), where I took a crash course in real photography from Nicole Hill. And what I learned there is that I really don’t want to take photos like Nicole, I want to be Nicole.

But I needed something a little more long-term to cement the aperture and ISO thing, so I started a community ed photo class last night, where I was shocked to see the room full of other thirty-something women with brand-new DSLR cameras who want to take cute photos of their kids.

For some reason my love of technology is not really translating to a desire to memorize the f-stop thirds and shutter-speed intervals, so I worry that our “investment” will pay off sometime in 2028, when Sally makes do with a fuzzy image for her wedding announcement.

But I can’t complain about the quality of the models I have to work with here. Looking at them through a nice lens is about as forgiving of their naturally irritating tics as watching them in sleep.

(Let’s also call these our back-to-school shots, since that actual morning I put the camera on automatic by pointing the arrow at the big A which turns out to be “aperture-priority” or some such nonsense and those didn’t turn out so well. I know Nicole told us to never set our cameras to automatic again, but it turns out I have a latent talent for disregarding instruction.It hardly needs saying that these have not been retouched, as the only thing I hate more than Wordpress (which I love! keep working for me, baby!) is Photoshop.)

Mr. Bennet and I can both roll our tongues, so Sally’s genetic virtuosity has not caused any problems.

Susan got her eyes from my mother, who has one brown eye and one green eye (both with gold-ish undertones).

Spot tells me I can only eat her up “a little bit.”

I took out Sally’s stitches right after this picture. They’d scabbed over a bit, so a couple of them I had to finish pulling out while she slept that night, after coating the area in triple antibiotic ointment and promising Heavenly Father I’d never sin again as long as I didn’t have to admit to the InstaCare that I’d tried a bit of homedoctoring.

When we were shopping for backpacks last month, Susan pleaded for a pony play kit similar to one her cousin has. I conceded that her cousins do have lots of pretty shiny toys, then finally in a fit of frustration I said that their daddy doesn’t live with them so sometimes he gets them expensive presents to play with, and wouldn’t she rather have her daddy around all the time, even if it means not having all the latest toys? And Susan said, no, she’d rather her daddy stayed away because she would really like to have that pony stable set.

Spot still has Duane Syndrome.

When we drop Susan off for preschool two days a week, Spot is disconsolate. Once she’s home, the Jane Austen/Louisa May Alcott/Rainbow Valley rejoicing in sisterly affection lasts until Spot bites or Susan hits. Reminds me of the good old days when I used to kick Marcy under the covers at night. Now I kick Mr. Bennet every so often, but it’s not quite the same.

I’ve changed my mind.

Honestly, in my eight years of being a mother, I had never experienced the sort of criticism or judgment that these women described as the reason for wanting to carry the Bad Mother banner.

And then I did.

Recently I spent time with a Type-A, Alpha, Helicopter, hyper-focused maternal being who made me feel inadequate, defensive, judged, combative.

I wanted to park my kids in front of Phineas and Ferb for six hours while I gorged on bad carbs and made love to Spot’s leftover disposable diapers.

I wanted to smash her smug face in.

The way some women act, mothering should be an extreme sport or an Olympic event in the constant orchestration of a perfect childhood. And not just “a” perfect childhood, but “the” perfect childhood. With extra marks for each nutritional supplement and organized activity, bonus points for organic cleaning supplies and never desiring a babysitter.

I want to shrug it off. I want to go back to being a good mother and ignoring the corrosive effects of competitive mothering, something I so recently dismissed as easily ignored.

But now I’ve seen it, heard it, felt myself shrinking in and shutting down, giving up on sharing what works for me and mine, I wonder why we women do this.

Is it a female thing?

Do men sneer at the non-homeschoolers as they play pick-up basketball? (Maybe they do, but Tom has never come home wringing his hands over class sizes.)

Is it a cultural thing?

“Society” and the magazines at the doctors, the guests on Oprah, the blogs of perfect mothers, the parenting books by experts, all those things I can easily ignore. But when it’s your friend at the park, your neighbor at church, the checker at the grocery store, a sister or mother or the in-laws, then it is harder to disregard. Especially if that person points out your flaws out of “love” or “concern.”

Or, as C. S. Lewis put it:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Is it an identity thing?

From the time Sally was one month to eighteen months old, I worked at Columbia while Tom stayed home until his evening classes. I was so happy with that arrangement. My supervisor was supportive of my pumping and condensed schedule, my baby was being cared for by her father, and I was talking with adults every day. Later I was the stay-at-home parent.

That’s been up and down, mostly up, recently, but there’s a huge difference in how I stay at home and how he did. When Tom stayed at home he didn’t join playgroups or sign Sally up for classes. He fed her and napped her and took her to the park. He wrote his novel as he watched her in the baby swing. He put wooden letters from her puzzle on her head and took silly photographs.

Staying at home was what he did, not who he was. As soon as I started staying home, I set out to create a new identity for myself. It wasn’t what I did, it was who I was.

And now I think that was largely the problem.

The good mother/bad mother thing is a female thing because we’re naturally pretty competitive creatures, especially when it comes to our offspring. We fought for power and influence on the playground and now we fight for moral superiority . . . on the playground.

It’s a cultural thing too, because there are all those books and blogs and experts and a national holiday. And because your friend, your neighbor, your sister probably does things differently, and in order to feel a success, the things she does (the things I do) become the better way, the best way, the only way.

And, most of all, for me, it’s an identity thing. Attack my mothering, and you criticize not what I do, but who I am.

If that’s what it takes to be a Good Mother?

I hope there’s room in the Bad Mother tent.

That was when I decided to have another go at surgery for fixing my chronic, “non-traumatic” shoulder dislocation problem. My first surgery, in 1999, was a nice little present for my new husband. There we were, in our last year of college, married nine months, and there I was, loopy on percocet and immobilized in my writing arm for the six weeks leading up to graduation. I defended my undergraduate honor’s thesis before I had a chance to wash the iodine off.

My first surgery cost a lot more than we expected, even though we were well-insured. The school-affiliated orthopedic surgeon forgave my share (10%) of his fee. Our out-of-pocket was still a thousand dollars — quite a bit for a student working part-time on the fourth floor of the Harold B. Lee library.

My second surgery ten years later cost about the same, only this time I was conscientious about my physical therapy (figuring $25 copays twice a week for four months was worth a squeeze in the budget) and eighteen months later I go several days without even fearing a dislocation.

T. R. Reid has a new book out about health care, framed around his search for treatment for a “stiff shoulder”; he travels to nine countries and the U.S. to see what a doctor will recommend, on the current assumption that incentives and reimbursement of providers dictates care. The different reactions to his chronic problem (hopefully described more in depth in the book) are fascinating, and supposedly provide a a worthwhile baseline for comparing health care systems.

But I’m not buying it. Reid’s orthopedic surgeon in Colorado is “quick to recommend a shoulder replacement.” Few foreign doctors consider this a wise course of treatment, instead suggesting physical therapy, second opinions, steroid injections, etc, with the obvious conclusion being drawn that the American system is whacked because specialists are so eager to recommend the most invasive, expensive treatment.

And this is why I have a real problem with all the discussions of the American health care system (and many other political issues). Reid’s anecdotal evidence (praised in The New York Times as an “unusually well-controlled experiment”) doesn’t resemble my own experience in any way. What kind of journalism is it to call one man’s self-reported consultations as any kind of “experiment,” let alone a “controlled” one?

And how can I take policy suggestions seriously from someone who is, in direct contradiction to my own experience, so sensationally selective in his analysis?

I saw orthopedic surgeons in New York, Florida, and Utah about my shoulder. Each one said the same thing: that surgery was necessary, that physical therapy afterward was imperative, that I’d never play tennis again.

The orthopedic surgeon I saw in Cairo (reportedly the top guy in Egypt) said the same thing.

But what about the shoulder replacement? Surely one of those money-crazed American orthopedists suggested that? Actually, no. In fact, I begged my last surgeon for a total joint replacement after my grandma’s knee replacement allowed her to hike like a forty-year old again. And (maybe he hadn’t seen the fee schedule comparison recently?) he said it wasn’t a good idea, that joint replacements are last resorts, and that we could expect better outcomes with a new (much cheaper) laproscopic procedure.

And he was right.

So I’m left floundering when it comes to health care reform. Is more government regulation the answer, or less? If wonks and journalists describe a health care system (especially health care providers) I don’t even recognize, why would I trust their analysis of the causes, characteristics, and solutions to the problem? If they misrepresent the American system so egregiously, how can I learn from their (seemingly competent) assessment of how we already incorporate many parts of each country’s system?

If this is the best reporting our “free” press can provide, I think we’re screwed.