Momma Tried
Today I got my author's copy of a new anthology, The Maternal is Political.
My story in the collection, "First Grade Values," is about the year when my daughter turned six, and shocked me with her innocent recitations of playground politics:
"I'm going to clean up after the boys today, so that we can get ice cream," Aretha said, when I dropped her off at school.
“Miss Rogers says if we don't clean up our snack, then we won’t get ice cream—and the boys never do it, so I'm going to clean up theirs, too."
"I'll give you a double dip of anything you like if you promise me you'll never clean up after a boy again," I said, in my first spontaneous bribe. "You start now and it never stops."
It was fun to read my story again, now that Aretha is turning EIGHTEEN tomorrow. She still comes home and sets my hair on fire with her trenchant observations.
I sat down with my copy of MIP, and read the whole book in one sitting, searching for inspiration. Here's a few that caught my attention:
Marion Winik wants to know why if "Mothers Against Drunk Drivers," is so relevant, why there isn't an even greater need for "Mothers Against Religion and Ideology." What a beautiful writer she is... Speaking of 9-11, she says,
"Faith moves mountains.That may well be true. It certainly knocks over buildings. Wonder, I think, might be a gentler way to live."
Ona Gritz is a physically-disabled mom who has a son with her husband, Dan, who is blind. Strangers are always "congratulating" their family on the street. One day their kid asks, "Why do they do that?" and Mom cracks back, "Because I'm not dead." This is the best-written story in the book, and the one I learned the most from.
Mary Akers: A stepmom who did "everything right," is furious that her 18-year-old stepdaughter, single and flipping burgers, has decided to have a baby. The teenager's birth mom is a born-again who's cheering her on.
I disagreed with Akers' hopelessness assessment, but I appreciated that she didn't mince words. It was good to hear the raw parts. I wonder if she had the same epiphany I had after reading her rant: her stepdaughter is following her birth mother's footsteps, as much as she criticized them all the previous years. The urge to reproductively "make it right," seems to be the greatest force in the world.
Well, this is what happens when you have a serious mental break after childbirth, realize you'll be dancing with a bi-polar diagnosis for the rest of your life, and you want to explain to your kids, "what happened to mom." Her candor is gutsy, and eyeopening.
Cindy has the best titled-chapter in the book: "Good Riddance, Attention Whore." She is sarcastically quoting her enemies and doubters, unconsciously echoing Nixon's famous press conference in '62 where he told the press they wouldn't have old Dickie to kick around any more.
In this statement, written a year ago, Sheehan announces her resignation as the bruised "face" of the American anti-war movement, and bitterly concludes that after what she's seen, she believes that her son Casey did indeed, "die for nothing."
Since she wrote this, Cindy got some of her mojo back, and mounted her own senatorial campaign, against Nancy Pelosi, who also has a story in this book. (Nancy is every bit as circumspect as Sheehan is transparent).
Cindy didn't have a chance of winning, but she wanted to highlight the spinelessness of the Democratic Party for their failure to initiate impeachment proceedings against W. The Dems found out Sheehan wasn't some cute little putty-pacifist housewife eager to play ball. And because she was such one-woman show, it was easy to attack her personally, to make sport of her convictions, and act like her private failings made her... politically suspect.
This is a typical sexist shithole that so many female activists get trapped in. We might be bad in bed, rude housewives, fight with our kids, slobs who pull out the TV dinner and say "Fuck it." But, you know what? Cindy is right— Bush should be impeached. The Dems are culpable for their war-enabling. "Patriotism" is insufferable.
There is no graceful way to talk about being a martyr when you really are one, and that's why I like Sheehan's painful talk. Ego involvement goes along with the job of jumping into fires. You have to believe something beyond reason to take the risks, and make the sacrifices. The next time someone holds a gun to your belly— be prepared for others to call you "self-centered" if you go public with it. For men, it's normal to be outraged— for women, you might as well put on your Whore Paint right now.
I might not have jumped in to read this chapter, except that Rebecca recently made Tabloid Headlines in the Daily Mail of London. She described her mother, Alice Walker— an icon of American literature and feminism— as an incompetent, narcissistic, bitch, who abandoned her daughter for celebrity and the chance to live as a "feminist," i.e, a woman unencumbered by motherhood.
Yowza!
According to Daughter Walker, she was abandoned as a child, and when she called her mother to celebrate her own first pregnancy, Mumsie hung up the phone and hasn't spoken to her since, let alone seen her only grandchild.
My question was, "What are the family-of-origin issues in play here?"
Rebecca, however, chalked the whole thing up to "mother's feminism," which is what made me drop my shot glass. I'm sure it's not Alice Walker's POLITICS that caused this rift with her only child. It never is.
Rebecca's story in this anthology seems written by a different person than the one in the right-wing Daily Mail. The Rebecca in MIP is one of those dutiful progressive parents who worries how to feed her kid pure organics and teach him to be a good environmentalist. She also mentions fighting sexual slavery. It's on the "twee PC" side. I wouldn't have raked it over with a fine tooth comb if it wasn't for the back story!
I can't feature why Rebecca would wash her dirty laundry in public... unless she were desperate for money. Or losing her mind. Or both. And even then— how are you suppose to reconcile with your family after this? I guess you pretend they're dead. But they're... not. R. says A. has cut her out of the will, which is presumably worth millions. For having a baby? Does money really drive people this batshit? You feel like calling each member of the Walker family into the room, and interviewing them separately. What a tragedy.
I fought a lot with my mom from puberty on, when I first began to critique the human condition. I thought I had her all figured out by the time I was 14. My best friend and I would sit around and hash out how screwed-up our parents were, every detail. We were forensic psychologists.
And yet around strangers, or anyone my mother came up against, I would ferociously defend her. I still do. Nowadays I have the pleasure of my own daughter giving me scalding analysis when I behave badly, and this very cycle makes me forgive my own mommy a tiny bit more.
For family high drama, all you can do is dedicate a song. Let's send this one out to the Walker Women, and to every mommy and baby who can't always get it right. My favorite version is Joan Baez, singing with Jeffrey Shurtleff:
I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole.
No-one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried.
Mama tried to raise me better, but her pleading, I denied.
That leaves only me to blame 'cause Mama tried.
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