the modernity ward

The Cross or the Bodhi Tree

Let's start with some music, okay? Here's Peter Mulvey's "Shirt," from which I lifted my title. Get it going before you settle in.

Technically the "cross or the bodhi tree" year would be thirty-three, but you know, converting to Judaism takes a year. Today is my birthday (mine and Henry Winkler's), and I am thirty-two (and he is...not), which is sort of shocking considering that I used to blog about things like turning twenty-seven. Sean gave me the best pairing of gifts I could ever hope for: an English/Hebrew Tanakh, and pork chops for dinner. It sums up certain dilemmas of conversion rather nicely. Though I feel compelled to point out that Mister Cooks-Pork-So-Dang-Well is the Real Actual Matrilineal Jew, here.

But why on earth am I converting? People ask. A lot. Sometimes with discernible shock and a tinge of horror -- not at the thought of Judaism itself (I presume) but at the idea of taking on any sort of organized religion, especially one of the Big Patriarchals. It's a reasonable question, tone aside. Why would somebody who summarily rejected the Christianity she grew up with on grounds both earthly (personal experiences with the church) and theological (I ain't buying the Messiah thing) pick a religion that, you know, goes around proscribing things, and seems fixated on a particular patch of desert?

A million years ago, back when I was blogging about turning twenty-seven, Getupgrrl (remember her? She's sort of the Sarah [as in Abraham] of the fertility blogosphere) recommended I check into Reconstructionist Judaism. Which was a damn good call on her part. I started reading, and was astonished that somebody had already invented exactly the religion I was looking for. What was I looking for?

Ritual, for one. Tradition, for another. A sense of awe at the beauty and wonder of the universe, and a set of ethics that meshed with what I believe. Ties to nature and earth. A focus on the world right here and how we can make it better. And most important, a community.

The more I learn, the more I love it: the attention to knowledge and learning combined with the necessity of practice. The ways Judaism is growing and changing (especially with respect to women, and especially within Reconstructionist Judaism). The huge volume of stuff to read! -- the complexities of centuries' worth of law and thought. The otherworldy feel of an entire prayer service in group song, and the earthiness of Sukkot. Rosh Chodesh -- a new moon celebration.

There's a lot that I was looking for, and even more I didn't realize I needed. I love lighting the Shabbat candles with Sophia, and man, did she go nuts for the sukkah! I have a framework for discussing the world with someone who asks, "Mama, who made the trees?" (the answer involves science and a non-supernatural God), and a year to mark with rituals that mean something to her now, but may mean a whole lot more as she grows. I also didn't want her to lose her connection to Judaism.

There's more, and the decision is constantly evolving, but there you have it. It's right; it fits. (We can talk about brit milah later. Sigh.)

So back to the song. If you didn't get the MP3 going, here's an excerpt:

years go rolling
you're thirty three
It's time
for the cross
or the bodhi tree
but you'd
like to cry when you
skin your knee
man's it's hard

and it's the same old friends on new years eve
the same snow falls on the same old leaves
and there's the same old joy and the same old hurt
same old corduroy shirt

old storm windows,
the broke-tail squirrel
and the
grocery lists and the
skateboard girls
and your
rusty brain cells give you a twirl
Oh no

kitchen radio,
coffee's on
oh you'd
like a month just to lean up on
but this
open road wants to
get you gone
off you go

and it's the same old jar of car keys by the door
the same old scuffed up floor
the same old thirst for more until they put you in the dirt

And I love the song, the lyrics and the music and how it makes me feel like I'm sitting in an old kitchen with worn-out linoleum on a featureless November day with a gray-white sky and the last of the leaves gumming up the weatherstripping. Except instead of feeling listless and melancholy I feel comforted, energized, by the discovery that even in my cozy frayed nest things are eternally new, rich and ornate, knotty and thorny and endlessly fascinating.

So how's it going for you, this getting older thing?

OMG, Y'all

Somehow I got REAL PREGNANT without paying much attention. Not that I would be so fortunate as to go into labor at 38 weeks (hey, we're holding out hope for "into labor, on my own, period"), but theoretically, if I did, that would be in seven weeks.

Hrk.

I just threw up on my lap. Or rather, I would have, if someone had not deposited a watermelon in it already. That's what that is, right? It's kind of...moving...

Anyway, I am using the remaining time before The Event Which Shall Not Be Named or Precisely Scheduled to knit some longies, rearrange the furniture thirty or forty times, and make Big Household Decisions. That last one is largely accomplished for me, thanks to the swirly Dairy Queen turd with a partially digested cherry on top that is the economy these days. Too bad it doesn't take care of the knitting or the furniture. Ahem. Anyway.

Sean has landed hisself a great job at a great school, to begin at some point late this summer. Initially our idea was to take a (paid-for!) trip out to Nashville this summer, and somehow find a house and buy it and then be homeowners, la la la. Never mind the difficulty inherent in finding just the right house in a town you don't know in the space of a week when accompanied by two (!) demanding little people. That was the plan.

But now...there are further wrenches in the plot. One being that we don't have a huge down payment saved up, and unless we go with some local Tennessee bank that's willing to take a contract at its word for what Sean's salary will be, we're going to march into the lender's office with a set of W2s that belong to a post-doc (laugh along with me, academics!) and some pocket change for down payment. Har har har. A year ago that would have gotten us a mortgage for sixty frillion dollars, no documentation required and here's your free pound cake, but times have changed (for the better, in truth) and today that might cause bank staff to rescind their offer of free coffee, and ask me to spit out the hard candy I took from the dish on the desk.

Blah blah blah blessing in disguise, really, because the idea of having to settle on a neighborhood, let alone a particular house, in the space of a week is...distasteful. We did that once; it did not go well, unless your idea of "well" includes living a block away from The Murder House, and being accosted by hooligans every time you go out the door, and showering in powdered lead paint.

So we'll rent for a while, build up a reasonable down payment, figure out where we want to live in the city. Plans for big gardens and chicken coops and funky painted walls will have to wait.

It would feel like more of a loss, if it weren't for the fact that most condo rentals in the area have swimming pools.

Because I'm Dope on the Floor and I'm Magic on the Mike

Awesome:
-finding beauty and meaning in a holiday I didn't know existed a year ago
-knowing that I have, at minimum, 7 weeks to go before this baby can safely be born
-and knowing that at maximum, it'll only be 12 weeks
-(eek)
-the sting of certain familial disappointments (long-term and ongoing) tempered by the unexpected safety net of really good friends and other family, by blood or by marriage
-feeling healthy and (relatively) energetic at 30 weeks pregnant
-not minding that I can't do but five minutes of the Pilates in Pregnancy DVD, because I can knock Pregnancy Yoga out of the park
-a preschool where problems are dealt with lovingly (on both sides), and where if my hulking three-year-old needs to be carried around and babied for a few days, there are teachers happy to oblige
-Phillies in the World Series! Not that I even follow baseball. But ever since my niece was born the night the Red Sox won the series (and two weeks before Sophia was conceived), I've checked in. This year it's the home team, so you know I'll have it on in the background as I knit. Also, it won't be safe to leave the house
-finding Sophia spontaneously putting away her puzzles today
-6:56 p.m.: SHE IS ASLEEP!

Smitten

Not so long ago I was posting about the torment of parenting a newly three-year-old child who had just struck the mother lode of stubborn defiance. I open with this fact to remind myself as much as you, because while there is no "perfect" when it comes to parenting, there are hard stretches and there are more tolerable stretches, where the hard doesn't take it out of you so bad and maybe there isn't as much of it, and we are into the good shit here, people.

I am in love with my kid.

If you do something nice for you, she rewards you with her version of Spanish: "Graspias," she says, with a perfectly enunciated P intruding right in the middle. If you thank her, she says, "De nawa." However, if you respond to "Graspias" with "de nawa," she will correct you. "It's de nada, Mama."

She is generous with her thank you's in any language, and polite in a very ladylike way for someone who has to be prevented from digging in her underpants whenever the mood strikes, which is every fifteen minutes or so. Should a single drop of tee-tee end up in her undies, they must be changed, no two ways about it; rather than look a gift horse in the mouth, I gather up all the floor underpants at the end of the day and give each pair an olfactory inspection. Most of them go right back in the drawer, since underpants get changed every time any clothes get changed, which is, oh, seven or eight times a day. She usually puts the rest of the clothes back in the drawer -- so again, gift horse, not to be examined too closely about the mouth.

Sophia has memorized -- in entirety -- The Sneetches and The Cat in the Hat, and several other bedtime favorites, and "reads" them to her dolls, Truck, Stench, and Raggedy Ann (guess which ones she named!). There are conflicts, sometimes, between Truck and Raggedy Ann; there was hitting. But I heard her performing gentle and appropriate acts of discipline -- "You hit Truck," she told Raggedy Ann. "Now he is crying. How can you help him feel better?" I love just to listen to her.

Every day, in lieu of the nap she gave up a year ago (!), she has Quiet Resting Time after lunch -- we set the alarm, and she hangs out in her room for an hour, hour and a half. An introvert, she clearly draws her energy from being left alone sometimes, and emerges refreshed even though she doesn't sleep. I hear her in there, reading stories, singing songs to her dolls, playing with who knows what. After a bumpy first two weeks, she really got into it, and now if she feels cranky in the afternoon (say, if we drag her all over the city in the early afternoon) she tells me, "I need my Quiet Resting Time!" Man, I love that.

She's got a -- not bossy, exactly, but something like it, streak -- that leads her to direct other kids at preschool. Clearly she's modeling the grown-ups, and sometimes it actually works -- reports from the field indicate she turned back a gang of rowdy kids ready for drum class, when the room wasn't clean yet. Sometimes I have to remind her that grown-ups need to handle certain things (i.e. you are not responsible for corralling the kid who disappears down the hallway -- let the teachers do it!), but sometimes she amazes me. Yesterday Polly and Jack were over, and there was some dispute over who got to use a favored truck; Jack was crying when Polly wouldn't hand it over. Sophia patted his back, then found him a different truck. This is not to say she's Gandhi or anything; she relies heavily on a friend (Polly) who is a developmental stage ahead of her, and compassionate enough to give in on certain matters, and one (Jack) who is a little younger, and to whom she can yield without feeling like she's lost face. (Also, he's pretty chill about things anyway.)

So there she is, three years old, her little self marching down the sidewalk and holding doors open for neighbors. She comes out of the tub every night damp and cold like a little salamander, smiling and shivering and ready to be jammied and read to, demanding to be carried the ten feet to her room. And I do it, because she won't want it forever. For now, she wants to have one hand on me while she falls asleep; for now she wants to sit on my lap while we watch a show. No matter how much I thought I understood it, I couldn't have known the brevity of her babyhood, how fast we'd get to here. And once in a while I can stop myself and pay attention, now, because everything I adore now is changing already, and that piping little voice will change, and those baby lips will change, and maybe she won't come to me for a Band-Aid, preferring to nurse her own hurts in private.

But for now I have my little salamander, my deranged sea monster who RRRAAAARRs and springs naked from the sofa cushions. "Nakin' around! Nake nake nake! Nakin' around!" she shrieks, and I laugh, and let her be wild in the safety of the sofa cushions heaped on the floor.

This Birth is Your Birth, This Birth is My Birth

Commenter Appreciative said, in response to the last post:

Thank you so much for noting that you are "afforded the privilege of making the decision" to plan for a home birth because you are [generally healthy and are] "having a normal healthy pregnancy."

Well, shucks, no problem! But it got me to thinking: Does anyone actually expect women with, say, complete placenta previa or preeclampsia or breech twins to plan for a homebirth? And I think that sometimes, the answer is...yes.

Wait, wait. Not you. I certainly wasn't talking about you! No, I mean those other people! Here, let me explain:

The Categories of People Who Will Give You Crap for Your Birth Choices

1. People Who Totally Don't Understand Midwifery

These come in two flavors. The first is probably the more obvious: your acquaintance/relative/lady behind you in QuikTrip who overhears your cell phone conversation. This person doesn't really know anything about midwifery other than that it's something done away from the prying eyes of doctors, and involves eye of newt. He or she is heavily invested in warning you of the imminent demise of your and your baby, and possibly your house pets; he or she knows a whole lot of women who "would have died if she hadn't been in the hospital." She or he is most definitely unaware that most midwives today carry wacky newfangled inventions like oxygen tanks and syringes full of oxytocin, and know how to use them -- and the ones that don't, know when to get you to someone who does. Oh, and that, and I am just speaking generally here, NOBODY DECIDES TO STAY HOME FOR THE "EXPERIENCE" WHEN IT IS MEDICALLY NECESSARY TO TRANSFER. No, Flavor One will compliment you heartily, with lots of OH THANK GODS, on your wise decision to finally go to the hospital and presumably away from those medieval poultice-wielding midwives when your blood pressure starts hanging out around 180/110.

The second flavor is the one who will tell you to "just find another midwife" if yours has to transfer care because your placenta is made of Milk Duds and thumbtacks. Because, you know, most midwives' liability insurance covers Milk Duds. And if she transfers you out of her care for Thumbtack Placenta, it's because she's heartless.

2. People Who Did It The Only Right Way

Again, two flavors: One who had an epidural so comprehensive that it verged on facial Botox from the seventh month onward, and one whose first and heretofore only labor was "painless" and composed of "rushes" that allowed her to "breathe the baby out." You know, once she realized she was in labor. (Note that I think it should be required by law that you get to have one of these for any and all subsequent births; but a slightly humbling experience that doesn't leave one thinking that the only source of pain in childbirth is fear/resistance/doing things wrong is not a bad thing. It's kind of like when people get really easy first babies, and can't figure out what everybody else is doing wrong -- the somewhat humbling experience of a demanding or fussy baby can be, in the long term, a good inoculation against some judgement.)

3. The Meeting of the Twain

These people are simply insufferable in any combination, and I suggest you avoid them. Which may mean limiting your computer exposure to online sudoku and I Can Has Cheezburger.

4. ?

I suspect there's a fourth category of person who is so defensive that nothing anyone does can be right. I have encountered this category once, in print, in some parenting magazine (maybe Parents?) that I picked up in the laundry room. This person wrote a letter to the editor expressing disgust at the evil breastfeeding police (want to guess what word she used for them?) for trying to get more women to breastfeed -- because she had had a double mastectomy and would be using formula, thankyouverymuch.

I am going to give this woman the benefit of the doubt here, that she is simply very emotionally raw after having a double mastectomy at what must have been a relatively young age (since she was pregnant), and hypersensitive to anything lactation-related. (What in hell the editor was thinking, on the other hand, I cannot say). But does she really fear the wrath of La Leche League leaders who, I don't know, expect her to regrow her breast tissue and begin producing milk at gunpoint?

In the end, what's it to any of us? I'd like to second Brooke's comment on the previous post (bolding mine):

And now having done it, I am more committed than ever that women have the information and ability to make choices about their births, but I care even less what they choose with that information.

Amen to that. As long as our laws protect midwives, and our right to the pregnancy and childbirth care of our choice (and our health care providers' choice -- remember that we want HCPs making the call when it comes to late termination to save the life of the mother, not politicians), y'all can do what you like, and I won't say boo as long as you don't impugn my choices.

Sadly, it's the first half of that sentence that's the hard part.

Birthing from Within (One's Uterus) (Through the Vagina)

Ah, childbirth. Is there any topic less fraught with emotion, more universally agreed upon and cheerfully discussed among women? I certainly don't believe so. Unless it's which is the best flavor of International House instant coffee, which we all agree was Suisse Mocha. Though you do have your Bavarian Mint holdouts, so perhaps childbirth is the winner after all.

We are planning a homebirth again this time, because we believe that a woman's right to experience in her own home the crushing sensation of one's uterus being plunged 20,000 leagues under the sea, then hauled up to surface, again and again for hours, is more important than the infant's access to lifesaving medical technologies. Oh, dear; that came out all wrong! What I meant was, women who have cesareans are snake-headed monsters who deserve to be shunned! Or maybe they're just too posh to push! Or their obstetricians are lazy! I don't remember. It's hard to remember when you drop a lot of acid and chase it with a pint of applejack. I'm sure it's fine, or the midwife wouldn't have given it to me.

At this point the more literal-minded of you may be either too alarmed or too disgusted to read on. The rest of you, I assure that I am merely making a point, which is that in today's Birthing Climate (tm) (temperate with a distinct rainy season) it is damn near impossible to talk about why you do what you do without someone coming away feeling like she has a bootprint on her forehead. That, and a lot of people have a lot of stereotypes about a lot of things, some of which are loosely based in fact and many of which are heavily based in The Crazy. I am going to absolve myself, right here, of having to refute every stereotype in this post, though it seems almost necessary as a disclaimer to any post about childbirth. Validation for all! Anyway.

My main reason for choosing homebirth is that I remember the last birth, and as I recall, it was all candlelight and orgasms, soft music playing in the background while I luxuriated in a Jacuzzi full of bubbles, champagne flute at my side. No, wait, ha! I'm remembering the conception.

Oh. No. That was actually an R&B video I saw. No, the birth was an exercise akin to painting the exterior of a house: We wore raggedy old clothes and sweated through them; it was hot and there was a lot of hollering and beer bottles all around.

No, wait: that was the conception.

While I can't actually feel the pain of back labor as I type, I have been otherwise denied the blessing of childbirth amnesia. I remember it pretty well, and what I don't remember I can reread, and all of it sucked. It was hard and it hurt and damn it, I did it, and for my trouble I got a baby who hadn't been affected by drugs (which would not have been a good thing, in this case) and an amazingly quick recovery. Oh, and a badge for my Brownie sash. It's kind of graphic, the badge, an embroidered picture of a baby crowning, but Brownies these days, they grow up so fast; they probably see worse on television.

Oh yeah, and? I didn't do it at home. We transferred. I got to experience home and hospital, and let me tell you, as long as it is medically advisable to do so, my ass, hemorrhoids and all, is staying right here in this apartment, thankyouverymuch.

And that's the kicker. All things being equal, home is where I want to be. It's a safe choice, a perfectly reasonable choice in a place where I have midwives who carry oxygen, pitocin, and other emergency equipment, where I'm five minutes away from a hospital, where I have access to a never-ending supply of hot water, and where my baby and I am a whole lot less likely to pick up MRSA (thanks, Hospital!). Since I am having a normal healthy pregnancy and am afforded the privilege of making the decision based on, more or less, aesthetics (okay, and a whole lot of research regarding maternal and infant outcomes), the neighbors will just have to deal.

They're all vet students, anyway. They'll have to take part in at least one livestock birth.

So there you have it, as far as coping strategies: I am going into this birth prepared for things to SUCK. They'll suck at home, they'll suck at the hospital, but as long as I'm home, at least I'm at home.

Pragmatic, no?

Oh, About that Debate Thing

The thing which made me giggle amidst the empathetic stomach-knotting:

Tom Brokaw, nagging and wheedling like an ineffective parent about the time limits. It would have been only slightly worse if he'd started promising them ice cream WITH SPRINKLES if they stuck to the limits THAT THEY AGREED ON BEFOREHAND, AND I AM REALLY SERIOUS THIS TIME YOU GUYS.

Do you think he'd like to borrow my copy of Setting Limits for Strong-Willed Senators?

Oh My God, You Have to Go

to the new Please Touch Museum at Memorial Hall. Seriously. It was amazing. There were things that defy description. It was like a non-candy version of that scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where everyone first sees the magical land of candy whipped-cream mushrooms and a chocolate waterfall, except without candy or Oompa-Loompas. Boo and yay, respectively.

The space itself is breathtaking -- beautifully restored, grand in scale and rich in detail. I would go there without kids, even, just to stare up at the ceiling in the entry hall. It's lovely in its own right, but compared with the own space it's even more impressive -- where the old space had places that were cramped and places that were empty and boring, Memorial Hall has its exhibits arranged in such a way that there's plenty of breathing room for each activity, but you proceed through well-thought-out spaces in between. The beloved and nicely freshened-up SEPTA bus and various cars lead to stairs that take you into tiny versions of real-life city things (a gloriously restocked grocery store, kitchen, hospital, shoe store, and construction site), and as you go down the stairs you look into all the spaces. You move through multiple toddler exhibits, a huge reimagined Alice in Wonderland area complete with hedge maze, and up into the water play. I liked the exhibits in the old space, but here there's a magic to the unfolding, if you will. And there's just so much more to do. Check out Cecily's post for some descriptions and pictures -- I am even in one of them, making a stupid face!

Sophia's favorites were the carousel (on which you can see Tori, in the link above), the construction site with its numerous brick-throwing and -cranking and -lifting activities, and the Flight Fantasy area, which I challenge you to describe to someone who hasn't seen it (and that someone will be you until you go, because the picture in the link has nothing). Oh, and the SEPTA bus. We drove to California. In real time.

Miscellaneous other good things: the McDonald's area, while it did have a McDonald's sign above it, didn't have any other Mickey D's stuff in it. So they got their sponsorship without being ridiculously overbranded -- good for them! Also, the plastic burgers looked far more appetizing than any real McD's burger.

Oh, and the huge cafe! And the ample parking ($5 for non-members, which isn't much in this town)! And the park setting! And the four bus routes that stop nearby!

Back in the day (you know, a month ago) when the PTM occupied its old space, I loved it, I enjoyed it, but I wasn't always sure it was worth the cost of admission, and I certainly wouldn't have considered it a destination museum. Now, I'd say it's worth a trip to Philadelphia -- it's that good. 

And do let me know if you plan to come. I have a membership and a kid with a clear future as a bus driver, and I'll be there as often as I can, for the rest of our last Philadelphia year.

Please Touch Me

A certain awesome blogger who is a hell of a lot better at PR than I am managed to snag me an invite to the press opening of the new Please Touch Museum. It was mind-blowing, and I will tell you all about it as soon as I have recovered from four solid hours of glee.

In the meantime I will cop to applying for BlogHer ads, because times is rough, y'all, and I keep having these fleeting fantasies of babysitting again (with...another baby of my own...while Sophia is in preschool...because I am, bless my heart, dumb as a bag of hammers) or doing seasonal work at Sam's Club (which nearly drove an otherwise imperturbable friend of mine to homicide; thankfully she was able to murder the offender's loaf of white bread as she bagged it, instead). I don't know what makes me think the latter would be a good idea, since my plans for the Christmas holiday this year include the emergence of a baby from my vajayjay (or somewhere around there, I'm not exactly certain on the geography Down There). Oh, and turning our celebratory focus to Chanukah instead.

About which, a post, soon.

So. One, I am selling out, or at least trying to; Two, we will talk at length about the new Please Touch Museum; and Three, how to handle the Dueling Winter Holidays whilst in a Religious Transition. That last being complicated or made easier, I haven't decided, by the fact that some people on the goyische side of the family (mine) are beginning to celebrate Jewish holidays, and some people on the Jewish side of the family celebrate (an admittedly secular) Christmas.

Oh, and confidential to John McCain: I am MOST ASSUREDLY NOT your friend, asshole.

SOS

Dinner last night was creamed chipped beef on toast -- Shit on a Shingle, for those few of my readers who did not serve in the military during World War II. It's always been one of my favorites, and made with local grass-fed chipped beef (thank you Amish people!) it was just amazing.

Of course it looked like creamed vomit. So I expected Sophia would turn it down and stick to the toast, maybe accidentally eat a pea or two. She did wail, "WHY do I have BEANS for dinner?" in an aggrieved tone better suited to the death of one's entire extended family in battle, but she tasted the SOS.

And tasted some more.

And then ate it ALL. GONE.

"I like this, Mama!" she announced. I was too busy cramming my gullet full of the stuff to respond much, but duly noted, sweet girl. I'll make sure to fix it once a week until spring. Stuff has enough animal fat in it to keep the entire Weston A. Price Foundation* convinced of my fitness as a dietitian, so I figure we don't need to buy new winter coats this year.

*A note on the WAPF: While I find some of their ideas compelling, I find others supremely kooky and dubious. So while we will agree to agree on the suitability of rendered animal fat for pretty much any purpose, we part ways when it comes to things like homemade baby formula and the Magic of Cow.