The Road Not Taken

I'm in touch, sporadically, with a couple of old boyfriends. We're not really friends, but we do email now and then. One of them - the first guy I ever went out with - is now married and they're expecting their first child in a couple of weeks. It gives me a funny quiver in my gut to look at their online photo albums: the two of them setting up the crib, him with his arm around her shoulders at the baby shower, shots of her in profile documenting her increasing roundness each week. They look like they're very happy together. Even the captions on the photos express what a cute, bantery relationship they have, full of inside jokes and affection. I'm really glad for them. I loved this guy, back when we were together, and I wanted the best for him even if we weren't right together. It's great that he is about to experience the amazing roller coaster trip of parenthood.

Still, there's that funny quiver. Why do I feel this way? Is it jealousy, because it's hard to ever accept that someone who once loved me doesn't love me any more? Do I just feel left out because they're basking in all the attention now as glowing soon-to-be-parents, and it's (rightfully) all about them, whereas with a two-year-old I'm old news and people no longer stop me in the street to coo over my baby? Is it a flicker of annoyance that whatever I had to offer him, it wasn't enough, and what she offered was better? (even though, as I recall, I left him.) Is it just imagination whiplash, because we were on that marriage track for a while, and I thought that we would be setting up a crib together someday, and it's just odd now thinking about what might have been?

We broke up for good reasons, and we each married people we're better suited to than one another. But I can't help feeling, when I see his happy grin, that he was really a nice guy with a lot of good qualities, and feeling a bit sad that I'm so shut out now from his life. Being selflessly happy for someone else is not always that easy.

If Money Were No Object

One more quote from the motherhood book, by Daphne De Marneffe, got me thinking about what I'd buy if resources were unlimited.

Money is a necessity; it pays for food and shelter, it can make the difference between the life we grew up with and a better life for our children. Money also buys advantages, from safe neighborhoods to SAT prep courses. And discretionary spending really does make one feel better. It meant a lot to me when I was able to get rid of that Naugahyde recliner and decorate my baby's room... Such seemingly superficial uses of money can confer an almost primal sense of pride and satisfaction.

These days, I always feel like I shouldn't spend money on anything beyond the necessities of rent, diapers, transportation, and food (though with food, I give myself a lot of latitude - we often eat out or buy things like avocados and salmon that I love but could do without). If a windfall comes my way, I tend to stick it in the bank right away. That way I have no regrets because I've basically postponed the decision of how to spend it - whereas if I exchanged it for something, I might easily wonder later if I'd really bought the right thing or if it was worth it. But I know exactly what De Marneffe is talking about with the primal sense of satisfaction.

So, I was daydreaming about a scenario with strict rules where I had to spend the money on myself or lose it (no putting it in the bank, no giving it to charity or a friend). Some things I might buy:

* A new carseat for my daughter - clean, with flat unwrinkled straps - not like the hand-me-down she uses which is mottled with old food stains I can't get out.
* A trip to the beach for our family.
* A "Mommy & Me" swim class at the local pool with my daughter, who loves water.
* Our wedding cake, again - it was a yellow cake with the most delicious white chocolate icing in giant swirls and flakes festooning the top and sides. I could eat a lot of it, then freeze the rest and have it a slice at a time for months.
* A plot in the neighborhood community garden and labor to help me tend it. I had one for two years, but had to give it up because I didn't have time to weed it. But I miss those fresh tomatoes and beans.
* A house.
* A bunch of science classes at the university. Ecology, evolution, natural history, Spanish, botany, insects, and animal behavior.
* Dance classes for me and my husband.
* Shoes that I can wear with a dress. Right now I have only four pairs of shoes: sneakers, dress shoes for work, and two pairs of sandals of a style that no one under 65 wears. They are comfortable, so I keep wearing them, but I should invest in something nicer.
* A warm winter coat for my daughter for next year.

That's all that comes to mind right now. I'm fortunate that everything on my list is a luxury, not a necessity - that we can afford to buy what we really need.

Kenison on Motherhood

More quotes from the motherhood book. These are from an essay about how to celebrate the holidays with your children, by Katrina Kenison. I love her fresh, friendly voice. She just sounds like the kind of mom I'd like to be friends with.

In part the culture is to blame - as each holiday rolls around, we confront an ever-expanding array of merchandise to go with it. There is more to see, more to do, more to buy, than ever before. And how easy it is to fall into thinking that living well means partaking of all that's offered.

***

Whether you're decorating the Christmas tree, making latkes, or coloring Easter eggs, remember that the process is more important for your child than the outcome...Celebrate small blessings and offbeat occasions. Once we take the pressure off ourselves to do things in a big way, we find more reasons to celebrate life's little moments. My son Jack and I once made a birthday cake for Curious George. Half birthdays are reason enough to enjoy a special meal. Hot summer days suggest impromptu lemonade parties. For children, every day holds potential for celebration and ceremony - the first day of spring, the first snowfall, the harvest moon. A song, a poem read aloud, a ritual, or a special snack - it doesn't take much to create a celebration that affirms life and connects us to the natural order of things: animals, wind, sky, and earth.

Yes! That last sentence just says it all. I love traditions because they provide structure that helps make sense of life and keeps track of the passing time, and because they provide reasons for happy anticipation. Our family doesn't have very many yet, just a few like Thursday night sushi while we watch a favorite TV show, Sunday night visit to my parents' house, seasonal visits to a particular local farm and to favorite parks or hiking trails, annual bed-and-breakfast weekend for our anniversary. Just knowing that one of these things is coming up brings me so much pleasure, it's almost better than the event itself. I want to build in more traditions as time goes on. And especially to make them celebrations of nature. I would like my children to feel the same fascination for the natural world and derive the same joy from being outdoors that I did throughout my childhood.

Am I Fat or Not?

I can't decide.

This is important, because being on the fence about it means I can never sustain the willpower I need to follow through on diet and exercise plans. Half the time I look at myself in the mirror and feel like I'm fine, I just look the way everyone starts to look in their thirties, post-childbirth, with a bit more of a gut than I used to have. I tell myself that, after all, life is short, and not to stress about indulging in sweets from time to time. Those are the high morale days when I feel generally good about myself.

Other times I think my stomach looks awful, saggy and paunchy, and when I suck it in it's covered with wrinkles, and how can it *still* look this bad when the baby is almost two years old already? and what if it never goes back to the way it was, no matter how many sit-ups I do? and it's so ridiculously unfair that there are women who are part elf who zip back to adolescent leanness within weeks of childbirth, whose stomachs are so flat that no one would ever think they had been pregnant, and that I'm not one of them. On days like those I make drastic plans about giving up sugar for Lent (which I did, successfully, not that it made any difference), and suck in my stomach until my muscles ache.

Technically I'm underweight, for my height. But I wear mom jeans, the kind with extra room for the paunch. I haven't even gotten my period back yet, since the baby. But at a recent family reunion, I was terrified that some well-meaning relatives would eye my gut and ask if I'm pregnant with #2.

It doesn't matter how often my husband says "You look great." I keep ricocheting back and forth between feeling like I look all right (if not great), and feeling not all right, at all.

Roiphe on Motherhood

I read some great quotes recently in a collection of essays about motherhood. Here are two that really struck me, by Anne Roiphe:

There is inherent in motherhood a continual giving up of self, and few of us take to that without resentment, which itself creates a river of guilt.

***

The hard truth is that our ability to appreciate something is affected by the time we devote to it. Whether it is a person or a pursuit, one way we treasure it is through the time we give to it. The more time we spend on a relationship (with a child, with nature, with a piece of music), the more we know and the more we appreciate, and the more facets there are to love.

I don't think I have a river of guilt about being a mother, but perhaps that's just because I'm lucky enough to have a flexible schedule, so I have a lot of time to spend with her. I also don't have outside forces in my life pulling me to do other things besides take care of her. But I can still sympathize with those feelings of resentment and guilt. Especially in the early days, she needed me so much and spent so much time screaming, and I just felt like my constant, patient, loving efforts were going unappreciated. But then she stopped screaming and started smiling and looking around her at the world I was only too glad to show her. And now she is full of giggles and so much fun to be with. The second quote just reminds me that there's no need for me to be stressed or feel overburdened - everything I take on is a choice. So I might as well lavish the time on without regrets and enjoy the experience.

In Ten Years

I had a pseudo-job interview today - a conversation with someone who's hiring for a position that I might be interested in. I was calling just to find out more about the job to see if I wanted to apply. I thought I'd be asking all the questions. Instead, she started hitting me with stuff like "what do you like or dislike about your current position?" "what is your greatest strength?" and the real biggie, "where do you see yourself in ten years?"

As soon as she asked that, a range of completely inappropriate responses flitted through my head. Still married and loving life with my husband, of course. I'd like to have a second child by then. I'd like us to have a house of our own, with a nice back yard where the kids can play, maybe a dog. I want to have read a lot of great books. I want to have written something significant of my own - either finished my coming-of-age novel, or put together a reasonable collection of poems, or packaged my other essays into a memoir. I want to have the time and freedom to spend with family, enjoy the outdoors, visit friends, and pursue hobbies. I'd like my own vegetable garden.

I have no career aspirations. For me, a job is just a way to get money so you can get by. I don't particularly want more responsibility (even when I chafe at the hierarchy in my current position), or underlings, or a grandiose title. I just want to do something that isn't too stressful or boring that won't interfere too much with what I consider to be real life. None of which you can say to a prospective employer, so I just burbled on about wanting a position that would engage me and where I could make a difference, etc. It is a bit scary to contemplate the future though. I hope I can make that idyllic future that I picture for our family come to pass.

An Elegant Hedgehog

I'm reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery for my book club. I don't really like it so far. The central twist around which the story revolves is that the main character has a menial profession and everyone thinks she is without education or culture (an impression she works hard to maintain), but secretly she loves art and great literature. What I don't like is the way she secretly sneers at the people she meets, criticizing them for not giving her more credit. But at the same time she actively hides her interest in "culture" and goes out of her way to appear dumb, so what are they supposed to think? I don't see why she can't just talk about reading Tolstoy last weekend, if she wants to. It's not like the social order of the world would crumble. Maybe it would hurt her too much to reveal her true nature and realize that honestly, nobody cares.

But, sprinkled throughout the book there are occasional thought-provoking or nicely written passages that I do like. There's a lovely description of a Dutch still life painting (it goes on for six pages, actually), so vivid that I can practically see the painting before me. And there's this passage which definitely gave me something to chew over:

"I have no children, I do not watch television, and I do not believe in God - all paths taken by mortals to make their lives easier. Children help us to defer the painful task of confronting ourselves, and grandchildren take over from them. Television distracts us from the onerous necessity of finding projects to construct in the vacuity of our frivolous lives: by beguiling our eyes, television releases our mind from the great work of making meaning. Finally, God appeases our animal fears and the unbearable prospect that someday all our pleasures will cease. Thus, as I have neither future nor progeny nor pixels to deaden the cosmic awareness of absurdity, and in the certainty of the end and the anticipation of the void, I believe I can affirm that I have not chosen the easy path."

When I read it the first time, it was a bit like a knife to the gut - augh! Someone sees through me. Here I am with a dead-end job, no idea where my career is going, finding most of my pleasure and satisfaction in my home life, wanting more kids because taking care of the first one makes me so happy, trying to figure out if just being a wife and mother is enough and I can dispense with the terrible obligation to have a career as well. But Muriel Barbery is on to me. So probably this is something that everyone knows, or secretly suspects. Probably children are a way to avoid confronting the need to make something of ourselves. Because they absorb so much energy, we try to fool ourselves into thinking that they are a purpose in life, all on their own.

I'm not sure about the rest of the passage. Television is sometimes used to fill the vacuity of modern life, but more often it is used by people I know to relax - after a long day at work they're burned out and long to just be passively entertained. It helps them empty their racing thoughts, rather than helping them fill an empty mental landscape. I'm also not sure about the bit about God. I think it depends on one's own brand of religion. Some visions of God fill people with fear and dread of doing the wrong thing, and aren't reassuring at all. And often people turn to God for a sense of comfort that even though things seem pretty bad in their lives, it's all part of some cosmic plan. They're not even thinking about the afterlife, just trying to derive reassurance that their current sacrifices have some purpose. So, it depends.

We shall see what other nuggets of wisdom the hedgehog can dispense in the remaining 147 pages.

Stars

When I was a kid, I used to wonder how the ancient Greeks ever saw enough stars to make constellations out of them. Most nights the sky was overcast, or there was so much light pollution that the stars were far and few between. (For a while, I also didn't realize I needed glasses, and I remember thinking, "how did they see any stars at all?")

Then one night I went on a camping trip, and we camped in a field miles and miles from any towns. The stars were blazing with cold blue-white light, billions of them, sprinkled so thickly over the sky I couldn't count them. I was awestruck. I kept saying, "WOW, look at the STARS!" Periodically I'd see a meteor slide down the curve of the sky, leaving a trail of light behind it. It wasn't a meteor shower or anything special, just a regular night out in the country. I realized, this is what it looked like all the time before electric lighting. It was an incredible experience.

Rain and Cakes

It's late at night. I'm typing away with the glow of the Christmas lights draped over the doorframe, and the whsssh of cars going by in the rain, for company. My man is out of town so I'll be taking care of our daughter by myself all weekend. Whenever this happens I get a kind of power trip - I feel strong, and excited, that I can actually take care of her all on my own, that I have such awesome responsibility for myself and another human and will, over the course of the next few days, prove myself worthy of it. I feel like doing all the fun stuff with her that my mom used to do with us when my dad was on business trips. Like spontaneous trips to the zoo, and breakfast food for dinner.

Of course, maybe that's just because I can smell pancakes cooking in a nearby apartment. Mmmmm. Right now there's nothing I'd like better in the world than for it to be Saturday morning, to be in the kitchen with my husband frying pancakes and making coffee together, with the whole day ahead of us. It can be raining - that increases the coziness. And on the pancakes we would have powdered sugar, and fresh blueberries, and whipped cream.

The Questions

These are questions from an evening brainstorming session that seem to have no answers - at least none my husband and I could come up with, without getting off the sofa and doing any actual research.

1. People who live at high altitudes often have larger than average hearts and lungs. Why are these disadvantageous to living at lower altitudes?
2. Can nearsightedness be reversed by doing eye exercises, and if so how does it work? How can one prevent the development of myopia in the first place?
3. Why do women in Africa perpetuate female genital mutilation? They know first-hand how awful it is, yet they don't stop it, and in fact are responsible for continuing it.
4. Why is Harry Potter such a success?
5. Why do street lights wink out just as you pass under them?
6. How come it doesn't itch when you shave your legs, but it does itch when you shave some other parts of your body (that's as much as I'm going to say about that one)?
7. Are single mothers more likely to have daughters, because somehow their bodies "know" they are in a difficult position and that a daughter is slightly more likely to thrive than a son, so they favor the implantation of eggs fertilized by X-chromosome sperm?
8. Why are some people unable to accept animals' awareness of the world, to the point of denying that animals can even suffer or appreciate better conditions?
9. Why do people prefer political leaders who subscribe to belief in a higher supernatural power?
10. Why do women accept - even embrace - sexist and unfair codes of conduct in some societies? 11. Why do people feel attracted to the people that they do?
12. Is it true that UV radiation is worse on cloudy days, and if so, why?
13. Why are women more often cold than men, even though they have a higher percentage of body fat? Is the fat in "strategic" locations that do not efficiently insulate? Are manly muscles better at insulating or producing heat than fat? Do men burn more calories/kg?
14. Why are some doctors/nurses so mean to women who want a natural birth?
15. Is eye color regulated by more genes than skin color?
16. Why does acne persist beyond the teenage years? and why isn't it selected against so vigorously - acne-affected individuals failing to get dates or reproduce - that it would disappear?
17. Is there a universal standard of beauty?
18. Is Larry Summers right?
19. Why does labor have to hurt so much and be so risky? Why do some fetuses develop heads that are bigger than their mothers' pelvic openings (when before the advent of C-sections, they would have automatically died, and their mothers too)?
20. Is olive oil actively good for you, or just not as bad as other oils?
21. Are low light levels bad for your eyes, and if so why?
22. Why do some women get urinary tract infections and others never do?
23. Where do guys like Tony Cox get their motivation? (he's a vet who vigorously defends big corporations that use antibiotics routinely as growth promoters in animals, thus compromising the effectiveness of medical antibiotics in humans) Does he really believe use of antibiotics is necessary for farming to be profitable? Is he just prostituting his morals for money? Does he secretly know he's wrong but he's repressed that knowledge?
24. Why don't men want to have children? It's easy for them - and risky and resource-intensive for women - yet women are usually the ones pushing to have babies.
25. Why do women get emotional/social benefits from marriage and men don't (or don't think they do)?
26. If a child of British and American parents can have dual citizenship, and a child of Swedish and French parents can have dual citizenship, and those individuals marry, can their children have quadruple citizenship? Does it ever end, or can people collect citizenships without limit?
27. Why do I always get hiccups on Sunday nights?
28. How do you keep someone loving you forever?

Cold

It's been really cold here lately. The kind of cold where the wind starts blowing, hard, blasting into your face, and you wait for it to stop so you can take a breath - but it doesn't stop, it just keeps blowing and blowing, and finally you have to breathe anyway. It's so cold that I wonder how people in areas of the country that are famed for their chilly winters, like Minnesota and Wisconsin, even survive. And I especially wonder how people who lived before the advent of central heating survived. Here I am feeling sorry for myself because I have to be outside for, at most, an hour a day in order to commute and run errands. But I can be indoors in 65 degree comfort, with still air, the other 23 hours of the day. Before central heating people never got a break from the winter until springtime. The Jamestown settlers had to struggle through wearing winter clothes that were all homemade, not like the microfiber and insulated coats we have today. They had to work outside all day, live in unheated buildings, curl up to sleep in below-zero temperatures and wake up with snow on their quilts. Laura Ingalls Wilder describes going out for sleigh rides with her beau, in weather so cold the horses couldn't even stop running or they would freeze. How did people keep their spirits up? Either they were made of far, far stronger stuff than we are today - or they were so inured to discomfort, from earliest infancy, that it didn't seem so bad to them - or they were miserable but saw no point in complaining. I should follow their example.

Fear and Loathing

I have an unreasonable fear about sidewalk grates. I hate walking over them - the way cows and horses hate walking over grids - because I always picture the grate collapsing under me and falling into the cellar below. Has this ever happened, to anyone?

My other gripe of the day is that I hate getting ready for bed in the dark, which I always have to do because I'm always the last to come to bed. I tiptoe around getting undressed in the pitch blackness, barking my shin on furniture and trying not to curse. Half the time I can't find my night clothes and have to just crawl under the covers wearing underwear or nothing. Not being able to see, and having to guess where things like my glasses case and jewelry box are as I get ready for bed, really annoys me. I fumble around for them knocking stuff off the bookshelf and dresser top. We can't have a nightlight in the bedroom or it would keep the baby and my husband awake.

I think wistfully of TV land where couples get into bed with the lights on. They lie back on their pillows chatting about the day's events, instead of having to be quiet (for fear of waking the baby, whose crib is right next to the bed). They can lie in bed and turn off the lights when they're ready to sleep. What luxury! If we ever get our own bedroom with bedside tables and lamps and it's all ours, I will never forget to appreciate it.

Read Read Read

One of my friends is a voracious reader. She's also really smart and great at literary analysis. Listening to her talk about books she's read (a huge variety of genres and authors) is like listening to a gourmet chef describe food. She has a way of explaining the premise in just such a way to whet your appetite without giving away what happens. Each title sounds juicier and more innovative than the last. I sit there thinking, "Yes! I want to read that too! Oh - I have to read everything that author has done, he sounds great!"

Then I go on one of my twice-weekly jaunts to the library and check out about 3 new books. The problem is that I don't have much time to spare for reading. I have periods of downtime each day, but I tend to burn them on crunches, or washing the dishes, or doing the crossword. I love reading, but I probably only read one book a week, which means that the unread books are piling up faster than I can dispose of them.

Right now, here's what I have sitting on my shelf:
Last Child in the Woods
Your Children Will Raise You: The Joys, Challenges, and Life Lessons of Motherhood
Ripening Seed (by Colette)
The End (the last in the Lemony Snicket series)
Love for Lydia
White Apples and the Taste of Stone (poetry)
Unpacking the Boxes
The Boat of Quiet Hours (also poetry)
Water for Elephants
The Extra Man
Love and Shadows
Smilla's Sense of Snow
Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
Life Class
Silent Spring
Outgrowing the Earth
Winter World

I am excited to read all of these - actually I'm partway through about a dozen of them right now - but the list is a bit ridiculously long, is it not? At this rate, especially if I keep adding new books, I will never finish.

You Get What You Pay For

Lately I have been trying to save money. I go to sometimes ridiculous lengths to save a few pennies here and there. I'm a bit myopic about investments - I know if I was informed and made the right decisions, I could save much more money that way. But I don't know how to do it. So I stick to things I understand, like buying in bulk at the grocery store when things go on sale, and walking a mile to avoid spending .35 on the bus. And, instead of buying new baby gear, I've been trying to get the clothes and stuff my daughter needs on Freecycle.

It's a little frustrating though. I wanted to get her a booster seat, for example, so she could have her meals sitting in an actual chair. I went to the baby store and found exactly the model I want. It costs $25 brand-new. Then I posted a "wanted" request on Freecycle and our neighborhood list-serve. I got a couple of responses, and, because I didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth and thought it was kind of them to donate their booster seats to a total stranger, told each of them that I would love to have the seat.

One day after work I went to pick up the first seat. The couple who had offered it lived in a big house in the ritzy neighborhood a couple miles from our apartment. I felt more than a little outclassed as I opened the iron gate and proceeded up the front walk, which was paved in flagstones and surrounded by acres of well-maintained lawn. When the husband answered the door, he was dressed in expensive casual clothes, had a nice haircut, etc. Behind him in the living room, a grand piano shone. He greeted me warmly and invited me in. As he went to fetch the booster seat from the back porch, I gazed around at the art on the walls, the vases of flowers on the mantel, and the warm Oriental rugs on the floors. There was classical music playing on the piano. His eight-year-old daughter capered around, showing me the cartwheels she had recently learned to do in gymnastics class. When he returned with the booster seat, I saw right away that it wasn't what I wanted. It was way too big, was an ugly gray color, and had a fussy tray that took a fair bit of strength to snap in place. It was also grimy from being outside the past few seasons. But I thanked him profusely, said how kind it was of him to give it away, and took it. Then I walked the two miles home carrying it.

A few days later I went to pick up the second booster seat. I figured I would keep whichever one was better, and give the other to Goodwill. I didn't meet the second giver; she left the seat in a bag on her front porch, so I just picked it up there. Again the house was gorgeous though, giant and surrounded by nice landscaping. Through the cut-glass window next to the front door I caught a glimpse of elegant newel post and curving banister, and a table in the hall with a lamp and a mirror hanging over it. When I looked in the bag, the seat was the same model as the one I'd wanted in the store. It was the right size and was a decent color (white with a green seat back). But again it was filthy, and the plastic was scratched and scuffed. And the tray was missing. I can't use it without a tray - what am I supposed to put her food on?

I don't know now which seat to keep. I feel like I went to a lot of trouble just to save $25. And I still don't have the booster seat I want. I also feel that the people who donated the seats exist on a completely different social plane from me. I should be grateful that they gave me the seats, right? Not grousing that they didn't even bother to clean them off before handing them to me. But I just wish I was in a place financially where I could feel comfortable going to the store and buying the thing I want. With Freecycle, you get it free but you also usually get crap.

Capering

Right now it's so easy to be a heroine in mu daughter's eyes. We go to the playground and I run in circles around her as she stands there giggling, or I start skipping, or climb up on the big blue plastic hippo. She thinks I'm hilarious. She admires me because I always have the solution to every problem - I can disentangle the strings, find the right hole for each shape in her puzzle, and even tie my own shoes. In just a few years, maybe she'll think I'm dumb and out of touch. She will notice things like, my shoes have holes in them and are the same pair I've been wearing since 2002.

If only, someday when she's a teenager, I can win her back by capering a few laps around the playground.

Bellyaching

If I see one more banner ad with a 19-year-old model who has never been pregnant looking down at her perfect concave stomach in mock surprise and delight as she holds up the ends of a measuring tape (as though it measured any different from the last time or the time before that)... it'll be one banner too many.

Alas, here we are many, many months after the baby and even after I finished breast-feeding (after which, I promised myself, I would go on a strict diet and get back my girlish figure). I've been doing crunches almost nightly since April, and recently started running again. I'm a few pounds below my pre-pregnancy weight (the same weight that I was all through college and my twenties). My breasts are nearly nonexistent. But I still have a belly that looks like I'm about 3 months pregnant. Why, oh why, is my body hoarding fat there? I have exactly one pair of pants that is comfortable and that I wear continually up until the moment I must leave the house, when I put on a pair of pants that cut into my stomach. I don't understand why most women find it so easy to get back their flat stomachs after the first pregnancy (the second one, though, seems to be a different story) - but apparently this hasn't happened for me. When I run, I can feel my belly wagging slightly from side to side in front of me. Ugh.

I guess part of this angst is just my unwillingness to accept that I am getting older. I don't want to admit that I can no longer blend in on a college campus, and wear all the same clothes with the same ease that I did back then. I want to present an appearance to the world (as some women are capable of doing, and real women, too, not just celebrities) that says, "Child-bearing didn't change me. Here I am, still the same lithe and beautiful person as ever." But, clearly, child-bearing did change me. I have the marks of it all over my body - more stuff sags, more stuff is stretched out, there are pale, feathery marks all over my flanks. I wanted to manage the whole biological event with the utmost of grace. Instead, I have daily reminders that I am mortal.

Separation of Church and School

I was talking to a blow-hard recently about kids and schooling. He has some young kids he's planning to enroll in Catholic school. His reasoning was, "It's too confusing for kids to get the different messages from home and school. I don't want my kids being told these contradictory things, and having to go to their teacher with, 'but mommy and daddy say this,' or 'my priest says this.' " I felt a sudden, quick, burst of sympathy for teachers who might be faced with such children. If I was a teacher, my blunt reaction would be, 'So what? I don't care what your priest says, this is how it really is.' It's not that I'm anti-religion. I just think that a lot of it is parables and poetry, and I don't have patience with people trying to substitute it for reality.

The blow-hard's other complaint about public schools was that science class never goes into the morality of certain issues. I guess he means sex ed doesn't tell the kids that premarital sex is sinful, or gay people are evil. I suggested that there was no moral consensus across cultures and that morality wasn't a scientific judgment anyway, so that was why schools didn't go into it. But I think my words fell on deaf ears. I know some people do emerge from the private school system with intact logic and reasoning, and a few even go on to become scientists. One of the smartest guys I know attended Catholic school. But I feel like a school that could mix morality with science (in fact, that deliberately planned curricula to do so) would stack the deck against its students. Oh well. If this guy wants to spend the money to send his kids to private school, I guess there's nothing I can do to convince him otherwise. I just feel a little that the kids aren't getting a fair deal.

Journey

Today I was thinking how awesome and bold my husband is. I've lived in this same city all my life, including for college, and have never been more than a short drive away from my parents (who are still my best friends, and whom I still visit at least once a week just to hang out and chat). But my husband left his family of origin eight years ago and created a new one, in a totally new environment. He came east to attend a school hundreds of miles from home, where he didn't know anyone. He found a place to live, learned where to shop, learned how to get around on the public transportation system, made friends. He found a wife and started a new family. It seems to me that he's so brave for building a new life like that. Maybe it's easier for men to strike out on their own that way, and maybe it's easier for people who aren't quite as close with their parents. But he still gets props from me for doing it.

An Actual Serious Question

This might come across as frivolous, but here's the burning question that is currently occupying my mind: How many kids should a couple have, for optimal happiness?

The whole time I was growing up, I worried a lot about the environment and the population crisis and vowed that I'd never have more than one or maybe two children, to avoid adding any more burdens to the earth.

Then the night my daughter was born, I was so over-the-moon full of joy I remember thinking, "That was great! I did it! I want to do it again - I'd love to have about four kids!" And so far parenting has been the best time of my life. I love being with my husband and my daughter, taking care of our family. I feel like I'm so much better at that stuff than I am doing my jobby job, earning my way in the world. In my daydreams I quit my job and stay home with the kids (lots of them) in a big rambling house in the country, and we all make our own butter and cheese, and the kids tend a vegetable garden, and we're all happy as clams.

But realistically. I'm too old to have a bunch more kids. And the environmental problems are still there, including climate change which threatens life as we know it, and is a menace no generation has ever had to face before. And even if it was guaranteed that the world we love is going to go on forever, and will be safe for our children to grow up in, I'm not sure my husband and I could afford to have more than one more child - not and provide the quality of life that I want for them.

So a lot of this speculation is just that, just hypothetical dreaming. If we *did* want to have two more children, the time to get cracking on that would be right about now, since I'm already 32 and I wouldn't want to take the risk of pregnancy past age 35. One of my friends who had her baby about the same time that I did is now eight months pregnant with her second child. I'm amazed. I haven't even gotten my period back yet. I'm physically incapable of becoming pregnant again, and here she's almost done carrying #2!

Anyway, back to the question of the hour. I can see that having one kid, even if it's a lot of work and fundamentally changes your life together, still leaves time for snuggling and the occasional date night and all the little joys. And one kid is portable - I can get around town on my own, carrying her and the stroller and her bag of stuff, and it's doable. But if I had two, I don't know how I'd manage to go anywhere. I just don't have enough arms. I can also see, based on the couples we know who have two young kids, that two soak up all available time - not that there is a whole lot remaining after the first one. These couples are in crisis all the time, slamming through the days, constantly struggling to keep food in the fridge, keep the house from descending into chaos, and collapsing into bed exhausted every single night. No more date nights, for sure. One tired mother told me, "One was fun. But two is just - I mean, we love him, but - we don't have a life any more. We're just hanging on and hoping it will get easier in a few years." Which means that three kids is a level of madness I can't even bear to contemplate.

But! but but but. Having a baby, the first time, was so great. And I loved watching her grow and learn. I couldn't even tell you what my favorite stage was. Wouldn't it be wonderful to get the chance to do all that again? and again?

So, back to the question again, which is: Have there ever been any scientific studies to determine the optimal number of children a couple should have in order to achieve or maintain happiness? The research would have to be relevant to young urban/suburban Americans living in environments similar to mine, of course. And the outcomes would have to be various, including both marital happiness for the parents and long-term happiness and positive feelings about their family for the kids. I wouldn't want to have a family where the kids leave home asap and never want to return even for holidays.

My hope is that if you sample enough families a pattern emerges, like - two kids bring about the perfect balance between adult and kid pursuits within the family, whereas three kids make the marriage strained. Or, three kids are optimal for allowing different personalities to flourish within the family and to create a well-rounded whole. Or, four kids is just right for creating that warm tribal sense of belonging. I just don't know.

I would be really interested to learn more about this. Maybe I'll check out the department of family and child psychology at the local university and see if they have any leads.

Sanctuary

This lion cub was rescued by Wild Animal Sanctuary from a Mexican circus where she was being mistreated. She's living on the Sanctuary grounds now. Some of the rescued dogs that also live there serve as her adopted litter-mates - giving her opportunities to play, socialize, and feel comforted. Usually I don't go for super-cutesy pictures of puppies and kittens cuddled up together - it just looks staged or anthropomorphic - but this is real, two real animals that have suffered abuse, have been rescued, and are deriving comfort from one another now. It's a good thing that organizations like Wild Animal Sanctuary exist.