Mother-eff’ed

Merry Something-or-other

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 13:24:48 -0500

(as seen in the NYTimes “Motherlode” column)

My daughter, who is one month shy of her third birthday, just asked me what Christmas is. When I opened my mouth to answer, all that came out was a raspy, choking sound. It was more awkward than the time she saw me coming out of the shower and asked me why I was wearing socks on my kiki (I probably don’t need to explain what kiki means, but suffice it to say I have not had it waxed in a long time. And by “long time” I mean never).

Here’s the thing: I was born to a pair of card-carrying, dope-smoking, radical hippie jews in Winnipeg, Canada. I didn’t know a lot of jews in Winnipeg, Canada, and I knew even fewer card-carrying, dope-smoking, radical hippie ones.

My parents were “free-thinkers” (when they weren’t stoned, anyway) and felt that organized religion was a “thin construct of a shallow, emotionally enfeebled culture”. As a kid I didn’t have the foggiest idea what that meant (I still don’t) but it didn’t matter because on Sunday mornings while my friends were waking up at seven ayem, pulling on itchy wool dresses and dusty tights for church, I was cocooned in a warm blankie, laughing at Bugs Bunny cartoons while jamming handfuls of Count Chocula into my face. There I was, all those Sunday mornings, gloating at my good fortune with brown marshmallows stuck in my teeth.

And then December would roll around.

Hannukah would slide past our house without a nod, but I was fine with that. Since I didn’t know any other jews – for a while I considered them mythical creatures – as far as I was concerned Hannukah was the homely, mouth-breathing holiday that no-one wants to admit they’re friends with. Who cared if I didn’t get to light a candle every night, for, what is it, eleven nights?

No, my soul-scarring pain belonged to Christmas. My holy-day grail, the one holiday I desired more than anything in the world. I would have gladly sacrificed Halloween for Christmas, and I worshipped Halloween. The gifts! The songs! And the trees, oh, the trees! All those innocent pines garishly adorned with tinsel and lights, as delightfully tawdry as a 10-year-old Brooke Shields in high-heels and tranny makeup. Oh, Christmas Tree!

But in the Stein house, Christmas was the most despicable of religious holidays. My parents rejected its rampant crass commercialization, it’s judeo-christian-fascist-hypocrisy (again, their indecipherable words). Mostly they hated the idea of being forced to spend time with extended family members who weren't supportive of their "alternative lifestyle" (ie. their frequent consumption of pot brownies).

But my parents, god (or somebody?) bless ‘em, they also had the presence of mind to realize that even though they had their principles, we were weird enough already. Depriving their kids of presents during the holiday season was just one toke over the line.

And lo, “Stein Day” came to be.

In the early years, “Stein Day” fell on December 26th (Boxing Day, aka: “The Great Canadian Fire Sale”) when, sometime around mid-afternoon, mom, dad and the big blue Rambler station wagon would pull into the garage, filled with half-price Legos, out-of-the-box Erector Sets, and several bags of Chinese food. And while the kids happily played with their loot, mom and dad would spoon out the chop suey, drop some acid, and that was that. Happy Stein Day, everybody! No gate-crashing relatives stinking up the bathroom. No insincere toasts about gross things like family togetherness. There was no downside, really. Just fun.

But I wanted more.

By the time I was old enough to appreciate it, Stein Day had gotten even more casual, if that’s possible (and yes, it was). My brothers were teenagers, and couldn’t be paid to hang out with their parents, even if they did have the best pot in town. The magical cavernous Rambler, now dead, was replaced by a VW Bug in which my mom would drive me to Sears and hand me twenty bucks with the instructions to “go get yourself something and bring me back the change”. While I appreciated the strings-free cash, I wanted more.

I asked her if we could take a crack at celebrating Christmas, maybe even get a small tree? She laughed long and hard, then gave me her stock answer of “don’t be ridiculous”, because underneath all that tie-dye beat the heart of a pragmatic dictator.

And that’s when my personal search for Yuletide satisfaction began.

For the next few years my Christmas Day drill was the same: I’d shower, dress and, before anyone else was awake, I’d leave the house to make my rounds. I’d organize the day with military precision so as to enjoy breakfast with the Taylors, brunch with the Herberts, and dinner with the Ricketts.

After each cycle of eating I’d take the opportunity to do some much-needed research. “Stein Day”, as lacking as it may have been, was a mere 24 hours away, so the chance to test-drive my friends’ freshly un-wrapped booty was a gift in itself. It allowed me to determine that Sea Monkeys suffer from an acute case of false advertising, and that an EZ Bake Oven is pretty freaking cool, even if is just a light bulb encased in plastic.

Often I’d cash in on the sympathies of a confused parent (“Stein Day? Oh my goodness… have another popcorn ball, dear”) who would hand me one of the “floater” gifts from under the tree, usually an address book or photo album, or if I was very lucky, a box of candy.

And then I’d walk home with a full belly, loaded down with gifts, leftovers and a feeling of… “so that’s it”? Aside from finally understanding what those emergency gifts were for, I was no closer to comprehending Christmas.

Then when I was fourteen my boyfriend Matthew took me to his church on Christmas Eve. It was a nice, well-rounded Catholic joint, and as we held hands and sang songs about frankincense and reindeer, my heart welled with emotion and the spirit of Christmas. Unfortunately, my swollen heart got stomped on two days later when Matthew broke up with me, saying that he didn't have enough love in his heart for both Jesus and me, though I think now it may have had something to do with my request – and his adamant refusal – to feel me up in the coatroom behind the chapel (I swear it was the communion wine talking).

That year – the year that Jesus stole my boyfriend (then subsequently gave him to Joel Bendarchuk) was the year my Christmas fixation took its first hit. I tried hard to hold onto my belief in Christmas beliefs. A few years later when I moved into my first apartment I went out and bought the biggest tree I could find, then blew $200 decorating it with enough bows and balls to choke Martha Stewart. I insisted my mom come over and see it. She admitted it was pretty, in a “ridiculous” sort of way, though I detected a note of jealousy in her voice when she said it. (She and I have not spoken of the tree since, although sometimes when she comes over I’ll douse my apartment in pine scent, just to freak her out.) I kept it up until February when I dragged the slouching, dried out, needle-shedding fire hazard outside, then quickly stuffed it into the garbage bin of the dive bar down the street.

I swore that I’d celebrate Christmas every year after that, but I haven’t. Sure, I’ll enjoy a slice of Christmas ham when offered, and who am I to say no to a Cup o’ Nog? But after all this time, I don’t have a real connection with Christmas. It doesn’t feel like family to me -- it’s more like a Facebook friend that I enjoy checking up on now and then, but I wouldn’t think of inviting him to crash at my house for a week.

My husband feels the same way. He’s also a semi-semite, and the first year we hooked up we agreed to skip the whole holiday “thing”, and instead pooled our money and went to Vegas for the weekend. We had a great time and felt like we’d beaten the system, which is, I think, what Stein Day was all about in the end. Well, that and sticking it to the commie-fascist-establishment.

But now, the kid. I’m not sure how to break it to her that her parents don’t celebrate Christmas. I remember how badly it pissed me off, but the truth is that it would be weird for us to force it. We will do something, because, like my parents, we’re weird enough already. I have a feeling it’s going to look a lot like Stein Day. We’ll probably throw a few chocolate draidels into the mix, but beyond that I think we’ll be loading up the Rambler and beating the system. Except maybe without the bong.

How to Survive a Mid-Air Disaster

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 12:51:39 -0500

(as seen in the NYTimes “Motherlode” column)

I am at the O’Hare airport with my daughter and the guy she calls “dada”. We are about to board a Florida-bound plane to visit my mother-in-law.

But the child is losing her shit.

After two years of being the perfect travel companion she has suddenly developed a fear of flying. For a toddler she’s pretty smart (I’m not bragging when I say that… it actually creeps me out) and I wonder if maybe she’s worked out the physics of what we are about to do. Perhaps she has come to realize, as I have, that manned flight is a practical impossibility and is certain to end in our fiery deaths.

Or maybe she’s just toying with me.

Whatever is going on in that reptilian brain of hers, she is yelling at the top of her lungs, “NO AY-PWAY! NO AY-PWAYYYYY”!

I pour the screaming mass down the gangway. We board the airplane and take refuge in our seats. Luckily we’ve scored the bulkhead. Actually, luck had nothing to do with it. I had flirted mercilessly with the ticketing agent, a very fit man with impeccable hair, who my husband later informed me was clearly gay. But whether I’d seduced him, or whether he’d simply taken pity on a woman with zero gaydar, the result was the same: I’d scored. But in this moment I take no comfort in our rock-star seating, because there is a demon in my lap who is trying to separate my scalp from my head.

People file past us, with varying looks of pity and horror but mostly relief that they are not sitting next to the kid screaming like a mongoose that’s been stabbed with a rusty steak knife. And even though the titanium-haired stewardess has announced that the flight is full, the seat next to me remains suspiciously empty. Perhaps my neighbor-to-be saw the Tasmanian Devil in my arms then chose to de-plane and take a 96-hour Greyhound bus ride home instead.

The husband glares at me. I glare back, peeling my lips over my teeth, skeletor-style. Every parent recognizes this wordless exchange which, roughly translated, means “I WILL DIVORCE YOU IN THE NEXT FOUR SECONDS UNLESS YOU FIX THIS, YOU FUCKING FUCK-FUCK!”

His response is to rub the child’s back, softly saying “it’s gonna be okay” over and over. I don’t know who is more annoyed by it, the kid or me. So I take control of the situation, ransacking the diaper bag, presenting my findings to the child in hopes that something will distract her: snack-pack… stuffed animal… crayons… super-plus tampon hanging out of a torn wrapper… Nothing. The child just gets redder and louder.

I reach into the seat pocket on the wall of our BULKHEAD SEATS (!) and pull out the SkyMall magazine. Nothing thrills me more than the SkyMall. Where else can you buy a one-person submarine for only $9000? Evidently my daughter does not share my love for the Mall of the Sky. She rips the magazine out of my hand and flings it and the tampon onto the lap of a businessman sitting two rows back.

The captain’s voice comes over the loudspeaker, “Ladies and gentlemen”, he says, “we realize this is a full flight, but we cannot take off until everyone” which can only mean me, “takes their seats”.

By this time the stewardess is sending me a look that is 40% concern, 60% irritation. I offer her a “hey, whattaya-gonna-do, right?” smiley-shrug combo, then wonder if USA Today will pick up the story when we are ejected from the flight.

As a last ditch effort I grab an air sickness bag from out of the wall pocket. Using one of the rejected crayons I scrawl a face on the bottom of the bag. I reach inside, turn it into a hand-puppet and say the funniest thing I can think of: “Ooga booga”. The child stops crying. Then smiles. Then giggles.

“You like the puppet?” I ask. “MO PUPPA!” she says.

The orange-level threat has been averted. Herr Stewardess smiles, blessing me with a nod. I couldn’t be prouder if I’d just disarmed a hijacker with a Uniball pen and a lavender-scented sleep mask.

I think maybe I should write a parenting book – or a column. Yes, a monthly column, maybe in Family Circle magazine, or the New York Times -- where I will offer helpful parenting advice under headings like, “Keeping Your Cool Amidst Chaos” and “Saving the World, One Diaper at a Time”.

The child – now human again -- interrupts my fantasy publishing life. “Mo Puppa, momma!”

I kiss her head, thank the gods above for imbuing me with such natural parenting ability, then think to myself, “sure, one puppet is fine, but two puppets – now that’s a show!” I reach into the wall-pocket in front of my husband and take out his air sickness bag. I draw another face, this time taking a little more time and care with my creation. I give it curly hair, long eyelashes and glasses so that it looks a little bit like me. Nice touch.

I stick my hand inside.

And then my world contracts.

Seems this air sickness bag has been used before, but not for a puppet show. No, it’s been used for the purpose that god intended.

There is puke in them thar folds.

A weak cry crawls out of my throat. My husband looks at me, understanding immediately what has taken place. He is horrified, though I think I see the tiniest hint of a smile creeping across his face. After deciding that I will divorce him the minute we land, I turn to the matter at hand… on hand. On my hand. IT’S ON MY HAND!!

You think that having a child has prepared you for dealing with the bodily functions of humanity. Until you’re wearing a glove made of the puke of a stranger.

I spring out of my seat, afflicted digits still in the bag.

Of course there is no lavatory in the front of the plane, where we are, in the bulkhead seats. I curse my flirtation skills then make my way to the bathroom in the back of the plane.

The aisle is filled with humans lumbering to their seats. My instinct is to crawl between their legs, leapfrog over them, fatally stab the stewardess… do whatever I have to do to get to the bathroom in the rear.

Finally I claw open the lavatory door and lock myself in.

I take a deep breath, then pull out the hand.

It is covered in a substance that is not quite warm, but it is wet. Viscous. Bubbly. Clearer than I imagined, but interspersed with flecks of something. Honey-roasted peanuts, maybe?

As I wash my hand in water hotter than I can bear, I think maybe I should save the bag for its DNA, just in case I acquire some rare, undefined flesh-eating disease and need to i.d. the mystery cookie-tosser. But no, I think, I’d rather go to my death than have to look into the face of the person whose guts I have touched.

Now clean, I take a moment for a full body-shudder, and another to marvel at the perfect storm that has just occurred:

Roughly two million people fly the friendly American skies every single day. How many of those travelers feel nauseous enough to reach for, and then use, an air-sickness bag? (I travel often and can count on one clean hand the number of times I’ve seen it happen.) And of those phantom pukers, how many would choose to tuck the vomit-filled vessel back into the wall-pocket? And then, what’s the likelihood that a cleaning crew would overlook the sack o’ sick? And finally, what are the odds that all of this would become the perfect set-up for one arrogant idiot who tries to make a hand-puppet out of a barf bag?!

Fuck me.

As I exit the bathroom, I stare into the faces of the last hurried stragglers boarding the plane. They all look agitated, each one facing the prospect of a middle seat. You think that’s bad?! I want to say. If that’s the worst thing that’s going to happen to you today, then you, my friend, have hit the jackpot. Because you’re looking at a woman who has seen into the abyss.

I hurry all the way back to my (goddam bulkhead) seat. The child is now asleep, clutching the original vomit-free bag to her chest like a teddy bear. Normally an episode like this would send me into a deep and lasting rage, long enough to write at least half of an angry letter, but as I watch the sleeping baby, my fury deflates.

I will not judge the poor sick bastard who, in a moment of lapsed judgment, has made my arm-length list of life’s most disgusting experiences. Who am I to cast the first stone? I’m a grade A asshole myself. If somebody filmed all of my questionable life moments, then edited them together, the resulting movie would be about 3 hours shorter than my actual life span. So no, I will not condemn the Barfing Bandit.

All I can do is chalk this one up to experience. Parenthood is a mine-field of unpredictability. Sometimes the mines are made of tears, sometimes they’re made of undigested food.

Anyway, it’s possible that the occurrence of this mathematical improbability has created a statistical vortex by which we are virtually guaranteed that this plane will land safely. So thank you former passenger of seat 1B, wherever you are, for saving our lives with a single, well-placed heave.

My Bodies / Myself

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 12:45:53 -0500

I grew up in Winnipeg, which is an Ojibway word meaning “Stagnant Waters”. Our house sat on the banks of the Red River, the very stagnant waters for which the city was named. On days that the Carling O’Keefe factory wasn’t wafting its yeasty stench in our direction, it wasn’t a bad place to be. The summer of 1980, it was phe-freaking-nomenal.

Friends were in short supply, that summer after seventh grade. I was no longer speaking with Theresa Spak. She’d refused to believe me when I told her I was the one who’d started the custom of saying “Number One” and “Number Two” when discussing bodily elimination. “Someone had to invent it, why is it so hard to believe it was me?!” I’d screamed at her over mayonnaise sandwiches. Years later I would come to realize that I was probably wrong, but by then there was too much water (and number one) under the bridge to do anything about it.

Then there was Elena Hrabiuk. We’d met at camp the previous summer. Elena had wide-set eyes and usually smelled of fried onions. Seeing that my only alternative was to spend the afternoon with my brother Aaron while he farted “This Land is Your Land” on my head, I decided to call Elena and invite her over.

We hung out in my room for forty-five minutes or so, crying to the greatest hits of “Air Supply”. After the batteries on my boombox died we went out to the backyard where my dad was standing over the barbeque, swearing at a plate of raw hamburger. My dad was once a radical hippie and back in the day he had marched at Berkeley. But now he was living in Winnipeg and the only remnant of his hippie past was the three hits of acid chilling in the refrigerator crisper.

He suggested we “go play down by the river”. Since Elena was raised in Eastern Europe and unfamiliar with the concept of irony, she led the way.

We climbed down the bank through the slimy grass and discarded beer bottles, and jumped onto the wooden dock that belonged to our gay neighbor Ken (whose sexuality was so exotic to us that we only ever called him OurgayneighborKen).

The Paddlewheel Queen chugged past for its daily afternoon cruise. We jumped up and down, waving and yelling obscenities at the boat whose passengers consisted of a few drunken old ladies and some retarded kids from a nearby group-home. The boat sent a ripple of waves toward the dock, disturbing the dark water. My eye caught something floating, maybe fifty feet out. I picked up a rock and threw it at the object, nailing it (which is odd for me, since I throw like a girl with no arms). The object pitched and bobbed slowly with the weight of something quite dense.

I decided instantly that it was a human head.

I told Elena my suspicions. She squinted and shrugged her shoulders. I remembered then why I didn’t like her.

I opened my mouth to call for my father, then stopped. Instinctively I knew that this would go over like a lead fart due to my reputation of making, what some might call, questionable claims. For instance, earlier that year I’d tried to convince my family that our house was haunted by 17th century fur traders. In third grade I pretended to have stomach cramps so severe that I ended up in the hospital (then made a sudden and complete recovery during my first rectal exam). And I’d once faked a very credible seizure.

But the majority of my claims involved corpses. I’m not sure when I’d gone from happy-go-dorky kid to “The Night Stalker”, but I couldn’t remember a time when a pile of leaves was just a pile of leaves and not a hiding spot for a headless corpse… or a freezer at a yard sale wasn’t clearly holding two dead bodies, chopped up and stacked like logs. Attics, closets, crawlspaces, porta-potties– all were fair game for my corpse-based suspicions.

I looked again. There was no way I was wrong about this one. That floating head was so clearly the real deal it made all my other dead-body-hunches seem like the ramblings of a madwoman.

I yelled for him. “Dad!”
No answer.
I called again. “Dad!
Finally, a response: “Fuck off, I’m cooking!”

Elena looked confused – there was no time to explain to her the intricacies of my family, or the fact that it was likely my father was stoned at that very moment. I left her there and ran up the grassy slope, up to the barbeque where my father was attempting to swat a fly with a greasy spatula.

I spoke carefully, “Dad, I need to show you something. We – I… I found a head”.

“Can’t you see I’m busy?” A piece of hamburger flew off his fly-swatting spatula and hit me in the cheek. I gave him a serious look, the kind I’d seen Lucy Ewing give JR any number of times.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake… alright, let’s go”.

I led him down to the dock, shoving my way past Elena. We were joined by my brother Aaron who was taking a break from terrorizing the cat. I pointed to the bobbing head in the water.

My dad squinted. “That? It’s just driftwood. Probably upturned by that asshole with the speedboat who’s been racing around”.

I begged him to look again.

Aaron snickered. “Oooh. Maybe we should call the river patrol”! I agreed. “Yes, please call them! And when you tell them about me don’t call me Jojo. Or Gooch. Use my real name.”

My father considered it. “I guess I could call. It’ll give me a chance to register a complaint about that commie fascist bastard with the speedboat. FUCKING ASSHOLE!”

He called, and in twenty minutes two moustachio’ed officers from the River Patrol pulled up in a motorboat. I waved frantically, pointing to the spot where my detached head was bobbing.

Mustache Number One drove the boat, circling around my soon-to-be-validated discovery. Mustache Number Two lowered a length of rope into the murky sludge, then hand-over-hand, pulled the rope into the boat.

On the end of the rope was not a head but an entire fucking body.

I held my breath while they lifted the old man’s corpse into the boat, then drove it over to OurgayneighborKen’s dock where they laid him out. I pressed every wrinkly crease of my brain into service, recording the details of the unfolding event: The red and white plaid shirt. The bald head that held a few soggy wisps, one above each ear. The brown leather shoe and leg brace on the right foot, and the shoeless black sock on the left.

One of the officers pulled a wallet from the dead guy’s pocket. He opened it and retrieved a water-logged driver’s license that showed an address, just three blocks away. I caught sight of a huge wad of cash, possibly as much twenty dollars, then wondered if I could claim the money using the “finders keepers” rule (and hoping OurgayneighborKen wouldn’t invoke the “possession is nine-tenths of the law” rule, considering the body was now on his property).

A couple of houses over was a tiny strip of public land where they found a cane and some muddy footprints at the river’s edge. “Looks like he just fell in”, said Mustache Number Two. As his partner radio’ed a call back to the police station, my family started back up to the house to eat dinner. I was stunned.

“How can you eat? There’s a dead man in our yard!”

“Ask him what he wants on his burger”, my dad said as he walked up the steps, then pulled the sliding screen door shut behind him.

I stayed with the River Patrol until two more official-looking men with moustaches showed up, put the body onto a stretcher and carried it to a plain white van in our driveway.

As the van pulled away I sat on the curb and pondered my future. Surely I’d be getting a call from the police for my minute-by-minute eyewitness account of the whole body-finding event. Then I’d probably hear from Sylvia Kuzyk, the pretty blonde anchor from CKY-TV, with a request for an exclusive interview. And when school started in September Principal Reese would undoubtedly arrange an assembly so I could give a speech and sign autographs afterwards. I ran my fingers through my hair and silently cursed my mother for not letting me get my ears pierced now that I was going to be famous.

But Sylvia didn’t call. The police didn’t call. Nobody called.

A week later I heard that a family friend, a man by the name of Norman, found another body in the river. Norman lived about a half mile up the Red and the whole neighborhood had turned out to see his body, that of a young woman. Evidently she’d been dead for several days and was blue and bloated and much more impressive than my mere day-old corpse. I was furious. Just because Norman was inattentive and let his body sit for several days before finding it, he was being celebrated? Spare me!

By the time school started again a month later my dead body was old news. Also, Tammy Pepidadis had cut off her pinky while washing dishes and that was the talk of the school. But I was fine with that. By that time my bitterness had been replaced with something much more lasting: sweet vindication. They thought I was weird for thinking dead bodies were everywhere; turns out I was right. Anyway, that was just my first. I’m still looking for number two (and by “number two” of course I mean my second body, not poo). There’s a world of corpses out there. And those bodies aren’t going to find themselves. That’s why I had my ears pierced. You just can’t be too ready.

The Reich Way

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 12:24:30 -0500

(as seen in www.sahmmy.com)

For the longest time I was not ready to have kids. I was on the pill, used a diaphragm, and would have my husband triple bag it on our bi-annual lovemaking occasions. And then one day we realized we’d been wasting valuable time when we could have been declaring a decent deduction on our taxes sharing our love with another being.

There’s nothing like the arrival of your first child. The creation of “family”, the shared sense of purpose, the built-in excuse generator:

“Sorry I can’t make it, the sitter cancelled”…
“Can’t talk right now, the baby’s about to fall out the window”…
“What smell? Must be the baby, I think she had burritos for lunch”.

But I was not prepared for the Club of Motherhood. Evidently shooting a wad of humanity out of your hoo-ha renders you fair game to the criticism of other mothers, mothers who are doing it better than you.

”Supermommies” (or “Über-mutti” as they are known in Germany, “Madre Estupenda” in Spain, and “BesteMoeder” in Holland) are militant about raising kids the right way, and if you don’t heed their warnings, a horrible fate awaits you. Have you ever been shunned by the Amish? Trust me, it’s worse. Consequences can include finger wagging, loud public reprimands of “you’re not really going to let your child (fill in the blank), are you?!”, disapproving stares from shark-like eyes, and threats to call 911.

Supermommies can be recognized by the mark of the beast (666) on their scalps. However, if you are unable to shave one, here are some other identifiers:

1. THEY have perfect pregnancies and natural deliveries and love to describe them in real time, saying things like, “the contractions felt like an exquisite 12-hour orgasm”.

And by comparison, ME: I tried to have a natural childbirth, but after that first contraction hit me like a baseball bat to the face, I grabbed the needle, gave myself a double epidural and never looked back. (Also, I used my placenta to play a practical joke on a friend. True story.)

2. THEY push European-engineered strollers with exotic names (like Stokke, Bugaboo, and Zooper) that cost more than I am worth.

ME: Actually, I have a pretty fancy stroller. I kinda stole it. And ps, I am worth approximately $372, dead or alive.

3. THEY only buy baby products that are educational, recycled, organic, or handmade by endangered gibbons.

ME: I like my shopping like I like my men: cheap, easy and hairless. And shopping at Target gives me an exquisite 12-hour orgasm.

4. THEY use phrases like, “positive reinforcement”, “child-rearing philosophy” and “attachment parenting”.

ME: I use phrases like, “Hey, I kept the baby alive today. Score!”

5. THEY do meaningful things with their free time (“Free time? What the mother-effing eff?!”) like volunteering, writing books and curing rare diseases so that they can inspire their children to learn by example.

ME: I got nothing.*

As you can see, compared to the Supermommies, I don’t have my shit together. In fact, my shit is about as together as a bag of loose meat (which, coincidentally is what it looks like under my Spanx®… loose meat or melted candlewax, it really depends on the lighting). But just because I haven’t enrolled my daughter in Ballet classes taught in Mandarin… and no, she wasn’t potty trained by six months… and yes, I did just let her eat a moldy cupcake while watching eight minutes of “Scarface”… that doesn’t mean I’m doing it wrong. Not all the time, anyway.

Supermommies seem to think that they’ve discovered motherhood, when the reality is that motherhood – not prostitution – is the oldest profession in the world. And like prostitution, there are lots of ways to do it, and no-one can claim to know everything. (Except for Heid Fleiss, re: prostitution. I’m pretty sure she does know everything.)

Über-mutti, I’m not asking you to change your ways. All I’m asking for is a little more understanding, and a little less scrutiny. While I protect your right to be incredible, high-achieving parents, please respect my right to be a slovenly, unmotivated, and exceedingly average one. And screw the rules, because in a year they’re gonna change again anyway. Maybe by then it’ll be “cutting edge” to let kids put boogers in their hair and call it “mousse” (believe me: it’s not only environmental, it’s economical too).

* Actually, I do. I’m working on bringing female facial hair in style. So when you see Kate Hudson gracing the pages of InStyle with a “Fu Manchu”, you can say you saw it here first.

Unconventional Wisdom

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 12:15:35 -0500

(as seen in www.womensconference.org )

You’re going to be dead soon.

That’s what I say to myself every morning when I look in the mirror.

And no, it’s not my corpse-strength morning breath rising up into my own nostrils that inspires such sentiment (though you should pray to god you never have to experience it yourself).

I say it because if I don’t remind myself that I’m on the morgue-train then I may spend another day watching Victoria Principal infomercials, reading ex-boyfriends’ Facebook postings, and obsessing about the time I asked a woman in a bikini “when are you due”, only to have her respond that, no, she was not pregnant.

Basically, if I don’t remind myself daily of my own mortality, then I spend my time wasting it.

We have a bad habit in this culture of casually forgetting that we have a finite amount of time on this earth. We behave as though we’ll all be hanging around for eternity, wearing jetpacks, experiencing virtual sex with robots, and flying around the universe as disembodied heads in jars.

The unfortunate truth is, we probably won’t.

(Disclaimer: I do have a sneaking suspicion that I alone possess the gift of immortality… but just in case I’m wrong, I’m working on a contingency plan of preserving myself by eating massive amounts of Starburst Fruit Chews and Duncan Hines Frosting from the can. I’ll let you know how it works out.)

All this points to one thing: I’d better get my ass in gear.

I have stuff to do. Not just bill-paying, thank-you-card-writing type-stuff. Important, give-life-meaning type-stuff. The stuff that is really fricking easy to put off, because it’s really fricking hard to try.

Or, more specifically, to try and then to fail.

Like “write that script”, “take that class”, “say that thing”, and “live a life that will make my daughter proud” (not an easy feat, considering that I have the sense of humor of a 14-year-old boy).

I don’t go much for self-help books, spiritual tchotchkes, or weekend retreats filled with yoga, tofu and crying. The first time I lit a meditation candle it proceeded to burn my bedside table, my curtains, and my relationship with my landlord.

Don’t get me wrong – if these things work for you, then do them, buy them, attend them. I’m all for it.

But me, I get inspired by telling myself “you’re gonna be dead soon”. That’s my version of a positive aphorism. I just need that little kick in the ass every day to remind myself that life, health, and time are fleeting, and that big ol’ party-crasher Death is coming for all (most) of us and I’ll be ding-dong-danged if I’m gonna let that cross-dresser stand in the way of me and my plans.

Those five little words force me to tackle the biggie questions, like:

What do I want out of life?
What am I putting off?
What would I regret if, tomorrow, I were to choke on a cherry pit, get my guts gored out by a bull, or take a wrong step while juggling chainsaws for my latest YouTube video?

If you have trouble asking these questions of yourself, ask someone else to do the prodding. I prod all the time.

When my friend says she wants to start a flower business, I say, “get on it, your daisy-pushing days are just around the bend”.

When my neighbor says he loves his girlfriend but he’s not sure if he’s ready to take the next step, I say, “figure it out soon buddy, time’s a-wasting and so are you”.

When my mom says she’s thinking about taking salsa lessons, I say “hurry up ma, it’s hard to dance with rigor mortis in your legs”.

And when I start to think I should write a piece about procrastination I say to myself, “do it now, Stein. This is important, and you may not have internet access in your coffin”.

And here’s the ironic upside. Once you accept that you and everyone you know will be dead one day (except maybe me), when you do attack your goals with death-defying fervor, you find yourself less attached to the outcome. So maybe that script you write won’t win a squizillion Oscars. Who cares, you're gonna be dead soon! And so what if you suck at trapeze lessons… who gives a Flying Wallenda? (They don't, they're dead!) And yeah, I once asked a chubby woman if she was prego, but what’s the diff? In a hundred years, nobody's gonna remember that (other than her kid, because I swear to baby jesus, that woman was pregnant, she just didn’t know it).

So do it. Everything you intend to do.

And smile. Because the news is good. You are going to be dead soon.

1 Comment
Deanna
Call me when you get the starburst thing figured out, they're my fav.

another fantastic read, love it.
Thursday, November 12, 2009 - 10:46 PM

Sweet Gloppy Revenge

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 12:01:32 -0500

(as seen in “Babble.com” and “Jezebel.com” )

So I’ve just squeezed a nine-pound girl child through my hoo-ha. She’s being cleaned in the hospital nursery while her new, freaked-out father keeps watch. I am still in the delivery room, feeling exhausted, slightly throbbing, but mostly happy that it’s over and I no longer feel like I am passing a solar flare through my lady parts.

My nurse cleans up what looks like the aftermath of a murder. She is tossing bags of goo into a bin marked “human waste” or something equally demeaning.

On the counter sits a large plastic vat containing the placenta. Unless you’ve recently expelled one you may be unaware that it’s the organ responsible for nourishing the unborn child. Think of it like a bag lunch that lasts nine months and looks like some Hungarian dish that contains too much sauce.

SIDEBAR: I have a friend, a good friend (who I’ll call K) who is sweet and funny and adorable and once took a shit in a box, tied it up with a bow, and gave it to me as a joke. Unlike her, I shit you not.

It was K’s birthday, so when she handed me the beautifully wrapped gift the only thing I could think of to say was, “but it’s your birthday”.

I was shocked. Disgusted. But mostly I was impressed. And ever since that day I have been plotting my revenge. My poo revenge.

And here it is, in Delivery Room 6b, staring me in the face, about to be tossed out like so many pounds of glop.

I imagine how the deed will go down: I will hand K a hefty box tied with ribbon. She will look at it and say, “but you’re the new mother…”

It will be sublime.

The conversation with my nurse goes something like this:

“Sooooo, that’s the placenta, right?”
“Yes.”
“Can I have it?”
Long pause.
“Why?”

I consider telling her that I want to do what countless hippie pagans do with theirs: Boil it, bake it, bury it, bathe in it, I don’t know. But I can’t lie to her. I feel that we have really bonded over the past few hours and something in me wants to impress her. So I tell her my story. My poo revenge story.

Wrong choice. Apparently seeing a human being spring forth from my loins hasn’t bonded her to me in the same way.

“I can’t do that.” She says. “I’d lose my job”.

But I will not be kept down by the man, even if that man is a woman in a blood-spattered nurse’s uniform. I’m thirty-nine-years old. I stand a better chance of getting dry-humped by George Clooney during an autumn hayride than conceiving another child.

So I beg.

She stares at me with an an expression that lives somewhere between contempt and fear.

“I’m going to leave the room for a few minutes. What you do in that time is your own deal. I don’t want to know anything about it.”

And ten minutes later I am being transported to my private room in a wheelchair. On my face is one very wide grin, on my lap is one very large pillow, and below that is one very goopy, Tupperware-encased, contraband placenta.

When I arrive at my room I hide the placenta-ware in a dark corner and settle in. My husband is sitting on the bed, cradling our new baby daughter. It is then that I remember why I’m here. Not to get even with my box-crapping friend. I am here to be with the brand new human that my husband and I have created. So I turn my attention to my beautiful family. And for 36 hours the placenta sits in a plastic tub under a pile of blankets and luggage, doing god knows what. Rotting? Maybe. Creating another life, I don’t know.

So when K calls the following day to announce that she will “be there in five minutes” I stumble around in a panic. I’m not ready! I haven’t giftwrapped it! I should have refrigerated it! What if it stinks?! What if when she opens it the smell is so offensive she screams and draws the attention of a passing ethics committee…

I tell myself that it doesn’t matter. This will be good. This will be just.

And then K walks into the room and when she sees the new baby she begins to cry, I begin to cry, the baby begins to cry and the whole thing is so moving I lose my nerve. Thirty minutes later K leaves with no knowledge of how close she’d come to being face-to-face with my insides.

Twenty-four hours later we are discharged. But I can’t leave the evidence in the hospital, I gave Nurse Ratchit my word. So it comes home with us, along with the baby, some balloons, and about 20 pairs of disposable panties.

And once we’re home I can’t throw it in the trash -- it’s human remains, I can’t do that to my garbage man, though apparently I have no problem doing it to a close friend.

So into the freezer it goes. I tell myself that I will follow through with the plan. But the sad truth is that it falls down the priority list, somewhere under “keep new human alive” and “try to find a pair of pants that fits my now hamburger-shaped vagina”.

Until my husband gets a new job and we are suddenly in the throes of moving to another city.

Now I am in a bind, one that gives me a newfound respect for serial killers. You don’t realize how hard it is to dispose of human organs until you’ve got one about to be evicted from its under-the-Haagen-Dazs hiding place.

I consider burying it in the yard. Not for hippie voodoo reasons, just to get rid of the damn thing. But there’s an offer on our house and with my luck the housing inspector will uncover the evidence and the buyers will back out on the basis that the house has been built on fertile Indian burial ground.

Meanwhile, we finish packing. My husband leaves to drive the dog and his stamp collection across the country. I tuck the baby under one arm, the frozen entrée under another, and the three of us head out to spend our last night in town at a skeezy hotel by the airport.

That’s when K calls, suggesting that we spend our last night at her house. She’s out of the country, but her Aunt Ellen is house-sitting and she won’t mind.

There is. A god.

So off we go. Into a very nice guest room, inside the belly of the beast.

I consider leaving the placenta-sicle in K’s freezer, but after all this time that just feels lazy. Also, I don’t want to risk her aunt thinking it’s a tray of leftovers and trying to reheat it. Surely that must be illegal in most states.

There is only one conceivable option. I must bury it in K’s yard.

Now it is the morning of our departure. The baby is napping. The airport shuttle will be here in twenty minutes.

It’s now or never.

It’s raining. Not wanting to endure a five hour flight with soggy shoes, I take them off, then grab the thawing organ. I run outside in my bare feet, heading straight to K’s gardening shed. I grab a shovel and in the pouring rain I run down the old wooden staircase that leads to the garden. It is then that I lose my footing.

Up into the air I, the shovel, the placenta, we all go... slipping and sliding, down countless stairs, no shoes to stop me.... as I watch the shovel spin in the air above my head it occurs to me that I may die in the next moment. I will have made it through childbirth only to be killed by the placenta almost nine months later.

The shovel comes down on top of my leg, leaving me with a three inch gash.

I am alive. Bleeding, in pain, and laughing hysterically, but alive.

I continue down the stairs, limping towards the back fence where I find a small Charlie-Brown looking shrub, under which I dig a hole. I plop the big bloody ice cube into the hole, then bury it. I give it a couple of solid pats and say a small prayer that Aunt Ellen's Chihuahua “Mister Pants” doesn’t dig it up.

I run back up to the house.

Aunt Ellen is standing on the back deck, holding a cup of coffee, staring at me.

I am dripping wet, bare feet caked in mud, blood streaming down my leg. I am holding a shovel. There is no question that I look like a sloppy murderer.

I can hear the cab honking in the driveway. And though there is no time for it, I tell Aunt Ellen that I've just buried a placenta in her niece’s yard.

She smiles. “How sweet. You planted fertility in her garden”!

My jaw tightens. She's right. If you believe in that crap, that's exactly what I've done. Not only have I not gotten my revenge, I've actually provided K with the hippie voodoo means to produce a child, including a placenta which will one day most certainly find itself in my hands -- or, knowing K, in my digestive tract, courtesy of a plate of home-cooked plasagna.

So here I am, back at square one of my poo revenge plot. I’m thinking now that it’s time I took a simpler “eye for an eye” approach. My birthday is next month. Until then I’ll be stocking up on gift boxes and eating plenty of roughage.

Spoilt Milk

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 12:00:34 -0500

(from “Afterbirth: Stories You Won’t Read in a Parenting Magazine”
edited by Dani Klein, St. Martin’s Press)

My daughter was born two weeks after she was due, and even then she had to forcibly evicted. But really, who could blame her? She enjoyed being inside of me as much as I enjoyed having her there. Yeah, I’m one of those jerks who just loved being pregnant.

Even the delivery was a rockin’ good time. After the epidural worked its rubber-legged magic I was joking and laughing, and then I squeezed out that 9 pound 10 ounce baby like I’d squeeze a watermelon seed through my fingers.

A few seconds after she was born, my kid grabbed right onto my nipple and nursed like she’d been doing it all her life. Which, if you do the math, she had been.

Even my recovery was pretty much trouble-free, right down to that first poop. Mine, that is. They warn you that your first post-delivery poop will be excruciating, and when I felt the tell-tale abdominal rumblings on day three I trudged into the bathroom, squatted and braced myself for tears, but the experience turned out to be downright pleasant. In fact, when it was over I felt renewed, as though my bung-hole had been replaced, as though god himself had picked up the Grand Canyon, shaken it out like a damp towel, and let it settle, although this time the valleys had become peaks and the peaks valleys. I called it my “brand new anus”, just another perk of the motherhood game… the game that I was clearly winning.

Until our one week pediatrician appointment revealed that our perfect little girl had lost nearly twenty percent of her birthweight – double what was acceptable. Failure to thrive, he called it. Even though she was nursing every three hours, she was literally starving.

My tits were failing me.

My tits have always been my best quality. I’m not bragging when I say that. They are great, relative to the rest of my body, which is a gallery of horrors in comparison. There is so much wrong with what’s below my belly button there’s not time enough to list it all (although if you’re familiar with the myth of Medusa, then you’ve got a pretty good idea of what my pubic hair looks like). By default my tits were my best girls, and historically the first things to be revealed on a first date, a game of strip poker, or during a sale at the Home Depot.

The pediatrician suggested we switch to formula right way.

Whoa dr. cowboy! This is not my beautiful motherhood experience. I know what happens to children who don’t breastfeed. They become drug addicts, serial killers and socialites. I know that Michael Jordan was breastfed until he was three, and that Michael Jackson was not breastfed at all. But since I’m 200 years too late to locate a wet nurse, I conceded to use formula until the had gained the requisite amount of weight, but it would end there. After that I was determined to breastfeed my child for one year. Minimum.

It was suggested I visit a lactation consultant by the name of Binky. If Binky wasn’t available I was to see Corky. Those names are so real that I don’t even have a joke to go with them.

We drove to Binky’s office in Woodland Hills and she proceeded to examine my breastfeeding technique.

Her findings? What was coming out of my nipples was something closer to puffs of milk-scented air than actual milk. My supply “sucked”. That was the bad news. The good news is that it was the baby’s fault, not mine.

The baby had a bad latch, which led to my breasts being engorged, which led to my milk supply drying up which led to me sitting in a small office in Woodland Hills while a grown woman named Binky milked me.

Yeah, that’s right. She milked me.

Binky grabbed my nipple and pinched it hard, rolling it between her fingers…. I know this sounds like porn for Teletubbies, but it was about as sexy as b’acne, which is to say not very.

Binky pinched my nipple hard, jammed it about 12 inches into the baby’s mouth. At that moment, the moment of my first proper latch, it became perfectly clear to me that my baby was part piranha. I’m not sure how I managed to conceive a child with a carnivorous freshwater fish from South America, but it seemed the only way to explain the excruciating pain.

I stamped my foot on the floor repeatedly. That was to keep me from punching my baby in the face. Truth is, I would not punch my baby. But I may wait until she’s thirteen years old and give her one retroactively. I’m fairly certain she’ll deserve it by then anyway.

Two hours and several hundred dollars later, Binky sent us home with a hospital grade pump which I was to use every three hours until my supply could match my daughter’s demand.

When we got home, the husband bottle fed the baby while I zipped on my hands-free pumping bra, turned on the pump, and watched as it stretched my nipples through a transparent sleeve like Augustus Gloop going through the pipes of Willy Wonka’s chocolate river.

Now that I could actually see the milking process, I understood the problem. Milk wasn’t flowing, it was eking out of my nipples, like beads of flop sweat. One hour of Hoover-strength milking left me with a grand total of a half ounce of milk. And most of that came from the right breast. The left was completely useless. If my right breast was a slacker, my left was its illiterate cousin who lost half his brain in a tragic pig-farming accident.

But I would not be beaten.

Over the next few weeks my husband bottle-fed my daughter, while I pumped every three to four hours for up to an hour at a time.

I learned all about galactagogues, which though it sounds like an alien form of governance, is actually any substance that encourages lactation. As a result I ate oatmeal in large amounts, drank Guinness beer in small amounts and ingested an herb that made my skin smell like a combination of maple syrup and curry. Mostly curry.

I took a prescription medication for reflux, one side-effect of which is increased lactation; another side effect of which is depression. A hilarious situation for a new mother, if you think about it.

I went to breastfeeding support groups and listened to other new moms complain about their problems with overabundant flow, saying “ohmigod, I’m absolutely gushing. I could feed an army with what comes out of these”. I smiled with empathy while imagining punching them in their overflowing gazongas.

And I pumped.

Until little by little, drop by drop, my milk started to flow – or at least dribble. Not nearly at the rate the child was drinking, but enough that I could supplement her formula feedings with a little of my own milky love.

I was winning. Soon we would be the very picture of skin to skin maternal bliss.

But as one slow-flowing nipple said to the other, “not so fast”.

The child did not want the breast.

When I offered my ever-so-feebly lactating nipple to my daughter, she would give it a look and a suck, then scream into it like Henry Rollins yelling into a microphone. Worse, she could only be calmed by a pacifier. By a silicone version of my nipple.

This is what is known in the breastfeeding world as “nipple confusion”. But if you asked my daughter, she would say there was no confusion. That savvy four week old knew exactly what she wanted, and she couldn’t have been clearer if she’d emailed her thoughts to me and bcc’ed her lawyer.

It was hard not to take it personally. Almost as hard as it is to saw through a silicone pacifier with a steak knife.

So I continued to pump around the clock, and poured my liquid gold into little bottles that I or my husband would then feed her. I did this for four months and that’s when I gave up. As much as I believe in the benefits of breastfeeding, I believe that the six hours a day I was spending with the pump would be better spent with my child. So I 86’ed the pump and decided to let nature take its course.

For a while I tried to fool her into sucking on my nipples. I’d make her laugh and while her mouth was open I’d try jamming my nipple in there. But she never took to it, instead would just stare at me like I was some kind of pervert.

So now, two months later my child is one hundred percent formula-fed. She’s healthy and growing and I’m at peace with my choice. And that last part is a complete lie.

I am still tortured by it.

I worry.

I worry that there will be a chemical explosion and the city will be under siege by robots who take over the water supply and my baby will die because I won’t be able to breastfeed her during the ensuing apocalypse.

I worry that she’ll grow up to be a high school dropout, and date a guy with a tattoo of a snake on his face who tries to rob a liquor store and in the process shoots and kills kindly old Sheriff Jenkins and my dum-dum of a daughter gets blamed for it and ends up on death row where Susan Sarandon tries but ultimately fails to spare her life.

I worry that she’ll become an asshole.

And that’s why I still fight the daily urge to jam my dusty nipple in her mouth. I just hope I can get over it by the time she turns thirteen.