Mamarati

Are the Republicans trying to ride on the wave of pride leftover from the Olympics or something? Do they know they aren’t campaigning in China? It’s really weird to me to see all that chanting start up. Ummm, we’re all Americans here. I think no matter what side of the issues you are on, most of us just want what’s best for the country.

I don’t know, I think there are enough things that we disagree on that we don’t need to add a fake thing. It’s strangely alienating.

Now, I said I was going to talk more about politics, because it’s a pretty big part of life in this household. But… this is a conversation so large and complex, I just don’t think I can even begin.

I will try, though. I always think it must be nice for those people who are absolutely 100 percent sure of how they feel or believe about anything. I’m not that way. There are very few issues that are black and white for me. And there is no platform that I am 100 percent behind. I lean lately more toward the Democratic party not so much because of what they are but what they aren’t. And because of who I am right now. And because it’s one of the few two choices out there.

I think it’s really unfair that a candidate has to line up with a party so completely. There are very few say, Republicans that are pro-choice. Or Democrats that are against choice. A few. But it’s like so much hinges on that issue, for example. And if you believe the opposite way of how you’re “supposed” to for your party, it’s like you’re some kind of traitor instead of some kind of person who has come to a different conclusion about a thing. It’s like you’re forced into believing (or at least saying you believe) a certain way.

And I think that’s terrible. And it’s so terribly dishonest. And it makes the media coverage of things like elections or crises a big lie. You see these spokespersons and pundits up there one minute talking about how much they love McCain and think he made a great choice about picking Palin, and they’re all smiles and joy and bubbling with support. Then you go off camera and, Oops, open mic, and the story is completely different. They’re saying the exact opposite and slamming his choice.

And then there’s all this fakery about how we shouldn’t talk about Palin because she’s a woman, we shouldn’t talk about her being a mom. We shouldn’t talk about her kids. We shouldn’t talk about her pregnant teen. We shouldn’t question whether she can do both things. That’s anti-woman. Look how hard we’ve fought for blah blah blah blah.

No. Anyone who says we shouldn’t be discussing these things can just go on and stop talking about them. But for me, I will continue to talk about these things. Because some of these things are things we haven’t been talking about and quite frankly they are just the conversations we need to have. Can we, as women, as mothers, balance it all? Can we do it all? Are we superwomen?

I mean, you can continue to be a martyr if you want and you can say bring on the challenges. Bring on the adversity. Make it hard, as hard as you can. Don’t give me any slack just because I’m a woman or a mother. To that, I say NO. We do need to be protected on the job against discrimination. WHY? Because discrimination against moms happens. We do need privacy and more breaks for pumping milk. WHY? Because not everyone wants to feed their kid formula and because that’s how breastfeeding works. Supply and demand. We do need flexible work hours. It’s not a 9-to-5 world any more and why should it be anyway? It would help more than just moms, it would ease traffic burdens and energy costs, too. We do need flexibility about where to work. Because not every job requires my butt to be sitting in a seat in an office somewhere when I could be doing it (and probably even more efficiently) at home, thus reducing child care costs, etc.

So, with this Palin stuff, I am afraid that some people are going to get this idea that, WOW, here’s this powerful woman and she’s doing it all. How amazing. If she can do it, anyone can do it. She went back to work just days after having a baby. So you can back to work just days after having a baby. She got on the plane when her water had broken, so you can, too. She has five kids and is going to try and be the Vice President, so what’s your problem that you can’t work a few hours or 20 of overtime?

Know what I mean? And I’m sorry, she may have that small-town background, but make no mistake that what she’s doing now and what she’s been doing for the past few years is not at all middle class. I don’t know too many poor folks or even middle class folks that can afford a nanny and a housekeeper. I also know that most families don’t have kids spread out that far apart where the teens can take care of the babies and younger kids. Most of us do not have child care that is so flexible we could leave the house at a moment’s notice without completely disrupting our kids every time. Most of us do not have husbands that stay home with our kids.

Of all the women that I know with kids who also work, very few of them have husbands that do a significant portion of things like taking care of the kids or taking care of stuff around the house like cooking or cleaning. Certainly nothing like half of it even though they may be working as many or more hours than their husbands. There are exceptions to this, of course, but not an overwhelming amount. Not many of their husbands woke up in the night with their babies or do laundry regularly or sweep, mop, dust… and very few cook regularly, plan the meals or shop for the food. If the kids are sick and someone needs to stay home with the kids, most of the time it’s mom. If the kids need to go to the doctor, it’s probably mom that takes them. And this goes beyond just the people I know, too. I mean, my kid has tons of health issues, and when we’re sitting at the allergy shot clinic, it’s 98 percent moms with the kids. Ditto all the other doctor’s appointments. This is how it works in my neighborhood.

So, the expectation that moms are just so wonderful and they can do anything and they can balance and juggle it all… that’s all sweet and quaint. But it’s not true. There’s a lot of sacrifice in there and a lot of suffering and resentfulness and guilt and we need to keep talking about it so it can get better. Of course motherhood without having an outside job is full of times of sacrifice and suffering and whatnot, I’m just saying that we don’t all have to put on this stoicism and run around like a bunch of friggin’ martyrs when we can talk about it, hash it all out and figure out what can make it better for women and for their kids and families overall. For society overall. I know many of us would like a little more joy and a little less hardship and I think we can get that if we keep this conversation going and not act like it’s taboo or it’s going to collapse everything that women have worked so hard for. Give me a break. We’re still working hard. Palin is not evidence that we’ve arrived, by far. Hillary isn’t either.

So, in short, regarding the working mom thing, I don’t think that anyone should confuse what Palin is doing with what working moms are doing. Palin is making sacrifices that are above and beyond what should be EXPECTED of a working mother. I’m sure she’s doing it because she feels she has a calling that goes beyond what she feels called to do directly for her family. Don’t kid yourself, no matter what you hear in the media… She knows that she’s not giving her family 100 percent. The only way you’d be so clueless is if you were in complete denial. BUT, that’s not to say that she doesn’t feel that what she’s doing is going to provide an even better life for them, for their kids, for their kids and generations on… there’s something to be said about making sacrifices now for huge change for the future.

But for your average working mom, that’s not what’s happening. And the support network that Palin has in place does not one iota resemble what that everyday working mom has to contend with. And the EXPECTATION should not be the same. It doesn’t even compare. And of course I realize that you can work and still be a good mom. But I also know that you can work and be a mom who is doing her best but is still leaving a lot to be desired in the parenting arena, whether you realize it or not. And I realize, too, that sometimes, these are the sacrifices that have to be made because food has to be on the table and a roof has to be over your heads. But I’m also saying that not talking about it and pretending that everything is perfect and fine — that’s not going to bring about any changes.

We have come a long way, but we need to keep going. When I was growing up, for example, and I lived with my dad and step-mom… there were a variety of tough things going on. I had lots of emotional problems, my mom was an alcoholic and I couldn’t live with her any more after the divorce, we had a big family (13 kids) that was just full of drama all the time… I could go on and on. My dad would leave the house before I ever woke up. He would get home many times after I’d gone to bed. My step-mom worked a split shift as a waitress and would be in bed or getting ready for work when I got up to go to school and would sometimes work till late in the evenings and I wouldn’t see her either. They were so tired when I did see them that they hardly had the energy to deal with me. I was the baby of the family so I’m not sure they had the energy left to deal with me anyway. On the weekends, she would still work or they would do housework, yard work or do their own thing. My dad was obsessed with our ginormous yard. It looked like a friggin’ golf course. His battle with moles is the stuff of legend. When I came home from school and let myself in the door (from about 2nd grade on) I was responsible for myself. I could wake up in the morning and roll off the side of my bed between it and the wall and my parents would think I’d gone to school. I could then go play in the woods all day long. Maybe that’s typical for a teen to do once in a while. No, I was doing this from 4th grade on. In 5th grade, I was in the office almost every day getting swats and I never did my homework. I was so clueless in math, so behind in it that when I looked at my assignments it was like trying to read a foreign language.

OK… my parents didn’t even know 99 percent of this stuff. And half the calls they got from the school they just ignored. Were my parents neglectful? Absolutely. But then how much choice did they have then when they had to stay afloat and my dad was an criminal defense attorney and could not cancel people’s court dates and he always had to be somewhere meeting with a client… and my stepmom would lose her job if she took time off to deal with me. This was the reality. Were they good parents? Actually, no. They weren’t. That is also reality. There was no one for me to talk to about my problems. No one told me about my period. No one explained the world to me. No one cared for me. No one noticed if I didn’t take a bath for a month. No one helped me recover from failing grades. No one noticed I had asthma or allergies. No one was happy to see me in the morning or at the end of the day. Hell, half the time I didn’t even see anyone so wouldn’t know if they were happy to see me or not.

I try to be forgiving and understanding when I look back at that time, but it’s not easy, really. I look at the sacrifices and I’m not sure what they were all for. They weren’t for me. I didn’t need that big house or those 8 acres of land. I didn’t need fancy lighting fixtures or a giant pond or a new Ford Mustang or plastic surgery or 50 trees to line the driveway. I needed an inhaler, an antihistamine and some help with my homework. I needed someone’s time.

I realize that my upbringing may not have been the most typical, but I know I’m not alone. And the more Burby parents can argue that they do get to spend time with their kids and that they do meet all their needs. Awesome. And other parents will argue that they may not meet all their needs but that they try their best. WooHoo. And there are other parents who are trapped in an existence that is so bleak, working two or more jobs or working and going to school and barely making ends meet and I don’t know what they will say… And I don’t know what to say to them. But I do know that what I won’t say is, “Hey, shut up. We don’t talk about this issue. You suck it up and deal with it because you’re a woman and this is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

There are so many different levels here and to deny the level another person is on is just nuts. I realize I’m rambling at this point, but hey, like I said… it’s complex. And there is no black and white. And your life is not someone else’s life so you should reserve your meanness and harsh judgment… but you should never stop talking about it or scrutinizing it or rolling it over and over in your mind to try to figure out what it all means. Because there is no one truth to this all. And it’s certainly not anything at all like what you see on either end of the political spectrum. Take down your defenses and look deep down inside and think about what you really want for your life and what you really want for your kids, for your sons and daughters… for their friends and their friend’s mothers. And don’t ever stop talking about it.

I feel like today is the first day of something for me. First day at work. First day at school. First day of something. I finally feel relaxed. My kid started middle school and so far, he hasn’t had sex, joined a gang, failed the metal detector, smoked pot, skipped class, worn his pants so low that his underwear show, flipped off a teacher or otherwise taken part in any offenses that would land him in the office or hot water, been made fun of, shoved into a locker or been the victim of a swirly.

Not that I thought any of those things would happen, but those are my worst, most paranoid fears for 7th grade (or any grade, really. Haha). How do I arrive at all this craziness? Well, if I buy into the bit about kids doing stuff at a younger age than we were back in the day… The rebel years should start any minute.

I’m lucky, perhaps. My kid is a really great kid and we’re pretty open about discussing all this stuff. I didn’t have a lot of sound, solid adults to bounce my concerns off of when I was a kid, so I’ve always wanted to make sure that my own kid wasn’t flailing around in a sea of misunderstanding and confusion. At least not any more than already goes along with being a teen…

7th grade. I can’t believe it. It’s like he’s maturing every single day, too. I see so much difference in him even from just a month ago, and certainly much more than during his last weeks of being in 6th grade, which is still elementary school around here. I look at the kids at pick-up time, though, and I realize that he’s not nearly as mature as many of them. I’ve sheltered him a bit. I’ve kept his exposure to some things minimal. I question doing that some days. Other days not so much.

So far, though, I couldn’t be more pleased. He’s happy about his teachers. He’s interested in his classes. He’s bonded with one of his teachers and wants to stay after school talking to him. He’s so observant and talks to me every day about the things he sees and his take is so interesting. I am thankful for the time we have in the car, where some of our best conversations take place on the drive home after school. He really opens up. He’s not seeming anxious or nervous about anything and said to me yesterday, “I think I’m really gonna like this middle school thing.”

Phew.

So, now that he’s settled… I feel like I’m settled and I can get back to business.

Back to writing and working and being productive. Back to having moments to think. I feel relaxed today. This despite two cups of high-test coffee. It’s a little bit exciting at the same time. I feel like I need to go to Office Depot, though, and get some new school supplies. Nothing says “time to get busy” like a new pen.

—-

In other news… politics have been incredible lately. I don’t talk about politics too much because of the “work” site. I have my own personal beliefs, of course. Some are strong. Some are pretty liberal. Others are incredibly conservative. I took some quiz one time that identified me as both liberal and libertarian. I have my issues where I’m not going to be swayed and others that I have not fleshed out enough to say where I stand.

I think that a lot of folks are like that, no matter what you may be seeing on TV or reading on blogs or wherever. I think that this race for president is bringing out a lot of issues that people are arguing about, sure, but I also think that a lot of the “conflict” is going on within ourselves. I can only truly speak for myself, but I’m tellin’ ya — I’m thinking about issues and figuring things out for myself that haven’t ever come up before.

And the truth is, while I don’t usually talk about politics online because I work here and I don’t necessarily want my personal politics to be used for or against me in any way… and I want to be as unbiased as a person can be who is offering what mostly consists of advice rather than pure journalism… I have a lot to say about politics. I’ve been involved in this process. I’ve had relatives run for office and I have been to rallies, watch parties and the like. I’ve campaigned for candidates. I’ve dragged my sick, flu-ridden self to the polls to vote. I ran a friggin’ caucus here in Texas and boy was that a rush. I’m excited by the Democratic process. I like thinking about all this. I think that things are in a state of change right now and it’s really interesting to me to consider things I haven’t before. To be confronted by issues that I’ve never had the opportunity to consider and weigh.

Sometimes I hear my son say something and I think that he’s getting it from me. Sometimes it sounds extreme coming out of his mouth and that reflects on me. It gives me a chance to think about the context of how he heard me discuss that issue and how it came across to him. It gives me a chance to play Devil’s advocate and give him the other side of it. It gives me a chance to say I may not be right about everything and even that there may not be a perfect right or wrong way to think or feel about an issue.

More on this… because I am going to write about it. And this is my space, so I’m going to use it because I’m tired of remaining silent on these issues that are so important to me just because it’s such a charged arena. It’s so much more complex than that, and I have so much to say that some days I’m about to burst. And, too, I have so much more to work out for myself, and this has always been the place where I’ve done that. Do you remember what you told yourself, woman? That all this self-censorship was like cutting out and discarding a part of your brain? Yeah, I’m tired of that.

I’m really not that much of a holiday person. Truly, I’m not much on celebrations, period. Holiday days feel much like any other day to me, and it’s rare that I put a lot of energy into holiday type activities and I don’t really talk a lot about holidays before they happen.

Now, that doesn’t mean I’m down on those who do enjoy holidays and do lots of preparation to make a day seem special or who really get in the spirit of celebration. That’s all fine, too. Sometimes those folks can drag me in and make me have a good time. But my natural inclination is toward calm, quiet reflection and time spent alone, with family or with a very small group of people I’m close to.

Today, my son went with his father to swim. Yesterday, my boyfriend, son and I watched fireworks from the car one street behind us. It was a serendipitous occurrence; we were driving back from getting something to eat and saw some cars parked looking toward the railroad tracks. Not something that happens around here on a daily basis. Then we remembered that we could see the fireworks at the lake from our back yard last year and we decided to stop. It was a nice show. About 20 minutes.

When my son was leaving, something got into my nose and eyes and turned me into an allergic train wreck. I took some Benadryl and napped for a bit. My boyfriend and I then went to go get some tacos. We drove by the place where we have made a habit of watching fireworks in the years since we bought this house. It was bumpin’. I thought about driving back, but find that my heart is really not in it. I don’t feel like that’s something I have to do in order to celebrate this day.

As I was eating my tacos, rung up by and prepared by a Spanglish crew… I did think about today and what it means, though. About folks coming over here from other countries. Declaring independence. Starting new lives. Struggling. Having fun. Making new ways. Keeping old ways. Fighting wars.

I thought about Texas and the people who lived in Texas before it was a state. The flags that have flown over this piece of the land… I thought about the border fence. I thought about the Alamo. I thought about this High School.

I thought about how my 12-year-old poked fun at some instructions we got with some new purchase recently. Because they were in Spanish and English. And that’s how he’s grown up. With things in two languages… or more. And he doesn’t take issue with that and it’s funny to him that others are so hung up on it and want so badly to make everything in English.

I thought about a book I read in college. And I thought about how many generations it takes for a group of people to forget where they came from for the most part and only remember here and now. One may know how to make tortellini from scratch, but may not be able to speak a word of Italian (unless you count the dirty words…)

I thought about my Native American roots and also the roots from somewhere else that give me my auburn hair, fair skin and freckles.

I thought about how the song God Bless the U.S.A. always fills me with emotion and makes me cry. And then I thought about how the song America, Fuck Yeah always makes me laugh my ass off.

I thought about the last 8 years of life in this country and my pervasive feeling of despair… mostly about things in government or the political scene… but mostly not things in my neighborhood, say. Those things have stayed pretty much the same no matter the party lines… aside from the bitching and moaning about gas prices.

And then I thought about the recent surge of hope. Oh, the audacity. It makes my every day a little brighter thinking about November…

And that’s how today has shaped up for me. Happy Independence Day… to EVERYONE. No matter how you got here or who you had to kill to get your freedom… no matter what side of the fence you’re on or what language you speak. If you’re here, you’re here. That’s the bottom line for me.

So, have a great day!

I somehow think that if my keyboard clicks louder I will want to write more.

For this reason, I am seriously contemplating stealing your keyboard, boyfriend. You are so attached to the MacBook Pro these days anyway…

But then I got you that keyboard as a gift, so it would be completely wrong of me to steal it from you, wouldn’t it?

But I would just be borrowing it. Indefinitely.

OK, I will leave it there. But I really want the clicking. I am using the best keyboard ever made, after all… It even has the sweet rainbow apple on it.

Still, yours clicks louder!!!

Must.Have.Clicks.

Other stuff… I was driving to pick Jacob up from school on Monday and I saw one of the high school boys on his walk home through the neighborhood and he was reading a book.

While walking. Paying little attention to the world around him. I tried to get a look at what the book was as I passed, but I couldn’t tell.

I like that I got to see this. It renews my faith in books. Not that my faith was ever waning, but you know… I worry about the future of books.

We just got back from vacation. It was relaxing, yet I was kind of anxious to get home. And I don’t know why this is. I mean, really, I was just torn between the impossibility of staying on vacation forever and the reality of having to go home.

I love home. But I love vacation. I don’t have the money or freedom to stay on vacation for very long, especially not in the disconnected-from-the-world fashion we were traveling in.

The news is pissing me off. Not really the news, but what’s on the news. Tony Snow. What a crock. He acts like the American people don’t want a transcript. I’m an American person and I want a transcript. I want oaths. I want to know what the deal is, and I want more than just a one-liner from Congress declaring what they have concluded the truth is.

So much of it is crap. I want journalists and bloggers and real people to pick apart the transcript and debate it and get it all out in the open.

I think I’m liking MSNBC better than CNN these days. And way better than FauxNews. It’s a little more balanced. I mean, there’s left stuff and there’s right stuff and then there’s just stuff. It’s better than the all-right Faux and the all-left CNN.

This is what’s pissing me off about this whole thing with the current investigation. Why is everything about left and right these days? This is the first time in my life that I remember it being so much so. I mean, there were times in my life when I could identify with any party. There were times in my life where I could say I was Republican leaning… and you know what? I am not the one who has changed. The parties have changed. So, when Tony Snow or Bush get up there and want to act like this is all some Democratic ploy, it pisses me off. They’re talking about how the American people don’t care about this and just want the truth and that it’s a big circus set up by the Democrats… it just pisses me off.

Because I do want to know.

I mean, this is a bigger deal than the Lewinski crap, and they sure as hell dragged Clinton himself and everyone else and their dog in front of them.

And who is them? Congress. Not Republicans or Democrats. Farkin’ Congress.

See, back then I didn’t see it as a Republican/Democrat thing. I saw it as something that went wrong and had to be looked at and I saw that Congress was doing it. I didn’t pay attention too much to the people on the fringe of it… I was looking at the people who could just see that this was something that needed to be investigated.

Just like this needs to be investigated.

Now, granted, the Lewinski thing did turn into quite a show… but that has to do with people, I feel. Like, people. People who read People.

And the thing that pisses me off about that situation becoming such a circus is not the people aspect of it, because I was just as guilty as anyone, laughing about it and wanting to know what was up.

What pisses me off about it is that stuff has been going on that is way more serious, stuff has happened since then that has been way more important that hasn’t been covered by the media or Congress with near the fervor that the Lewinski thing was.

That is what pisses me off. Sure, I want to hear all about that sordid kind of stuff, but I want to hear about the real issues, too. We’re not all stuffy, boring people sitting at home watching C-SPAN. And that’s not required to be a person who cares about politics. And just because some of us like to hear about the gossipy side of politics, that doesn’t make us idiots either.

I don’t know. I’m just so tired of DC being in its own little world and acting like they can do whatever the hell they want and it doesn’t have any affect out here in the real world.

I am not terribly happy about the news this morning. North Korea has tested a nuke. There’s yet another school shooting. Police forces in Iraq were poisoned. Gas prices are about to be going back up.

Really, the world we live in today is so scary.

I sometimes can’t even believe that I worry about the things that I do in light of all that goes on.

that’s what I thought it was anyway. It was the weirdest thing… Something woke me up, but I wasn’t sure what. And then Jacob came in all sleepy eyed and quiet like and told me he thought someone was at the door.

No one is at the door, I thought, but there must have been a noise. He crawled in bed with me and fell back asleep, but I couldn’t. It felt very off.

When the building was bombed back home, it was like that. A noise like that… woke me up the same way…

So when I turned on the TV and I saw nothing but a screen filled with a streak across the sky, no captioning, nobody speaking any words to say what this was that I was looking at, I thought- we’re being bombed. This is what it looks like when a nuclear weapon is heading for you… I literally almost pissed in my bed. I thought, I have maybe thirty minutes to tell everyone I love that I love them… Thank God Jacob is with me today…

And then, I was unfortunately relieved to see that it was the space shuttle. How sad to find relief in that, but I was just glad that all of humanity as we know it wasn’t about to be wiped out.

And then when they started showing the crew… the first Indian woman in space, who went to the school where I will soon be going… her footsteps all over that campus… The first Israeli, son of holocaust survivors… And I remembered what it was like when I saw the space shuttle explode so long ago… sitting in class, everyone excited, TVs on in every room of our junior high school to watch the take off, and all the silence and shock when that tragedy occurred… My math teacher, the look on her face- I don’t think she knew quite what to do or say… It was such an important day for teachers everywhere, that mission.

And you know what- I cried. Not because I’m sappy or overemotional when it comes to stuff like this… I know I am. But because I really just felt sad, and I felt so… patriotic in some way. Like I really just love this country, and I love what we represent- good things, good life, peace, democracy, the pursuit of happiness, all those ideals… and this felt like such a blow to this country that I love so much. Like these people, who know the risks involved in going into space took those risks anyway for all of us. And now they’re gone.

I hope everyone cried. And I hope everyone felt that… I really do. I feel like, those images of people breaking down that you see of when Kennedy was shot, or those joyous ticker tape parades in NYC at the end of a war… just all those things seem to be missing these days. That unified feeling of loving our nation and doing whatever it takes to defend her or further her ideals… it just seems to be so much less these days. And I don’t think that can be good for us.

Anyway… I don’t know. It’s just sad.

More later, I have things to talk about, but I promised myself for the eightieth weekend now that this pile will be gone. And it’s still not.

Must.Eliminate.Pile.From.Life!