For The Love, A Birthers Tale

I have been thinking about the love I experience as a parent for my child. I spend a lot of time on this blog dissecting the identity of being a parent, sharing my trials and adventures. Sometimes I forget to share just how wonderful it is to be a parent to a little one.

I feel so blessed that I get to be with Sweetpea. The second she opened her voice to me with the most adoring squeal I thought, my God, this is my little person. This is her voice! My heart was filled with a warm overflowing cup of love that washes down my back every time I think of it.

Painting by Lenny Dinar Dothan

I knew I was going to have Sweetpea. She decided when, but I knew. The ocean told me. (Forewarning, wooo moment.) I was at The Earth Activist Training and we had one afternoon off. At the training we were learning permaculture. We were doing earth magic and learning how to interpret birds and track animals. We were also designing sustainable buildings and doing water rituals. It was a beautiful and unique training that left me on that day off in a little bit of an ethereal mood and a calm open place. 

I had just walked through a grove of redwoods with some friends. We decided to head for the coast for some ocean gazing. The California coast is inconceivably beautiful. Particularly the Northern California coast is very dreamlike. I love the all encompassing rambunctiousness and power of the ocean. I also marvel at how it is always lapping at our coast line, water is always moving, putting on its majestic show weather we are watching or not. The ocean was wild that day. There were huge swells of waves battering the beach and sucking up whatever got in the way.  I stood right at the edge of the white foam staring into the abyss. The waves were thumping me like a drum. I unfocused my eyes and my mind and stared right into a wall of towering water. A voice within me said, you will have a baby. She will be a girl. You are going to be a mom. When I opened my eyes again one of the huge waves clapped and gobbled up my exposed legs in its wake. I was dripping with salt water, I laughed and cried. I knew the ocean was right. It was so perfect.

2 1/2 years later I was in a hospital in Tacoma Washington fighting with all my might to bring this baby into the world. My fight was long and good and bittersweet. Sweetpea and I were ready for the fight. She still fights in a similar way when she is upset. She presses her body into mine struggling to wriggle free. She cries and wants me to hold her tight while she squirms. I love being able to see her struggle and come out the winner! The fight for life is an amazing struggle. It is something I felt I missed out on. In my birth story my mother had a planned cesarean. The doctor did not think she would be able to have me the natural way because both my brothers were also cesarean. There are a lot of enforcers in society to make it hard for me to fight, being raised female, the only girl and the youngest of two older brothers, just to name a few. This first fight I missed out on though is something I knew I wanted to be different for my kid. It was different. In the end I also had to have a cesarean. After a long hard battle Sweetpea needed the extra nudge to get out. She got stuck and her heart rate went way down. I see this as a metaphor for me in parenting her. When she gets stuck she will need helpers to guide her into the direction that is flowing. Fortunately, as an adult I have set up a community of folks to help me with this as well.

Now, 2 years later I have my amazing toddler to explore with. I have a kid that challenges and enlightens me daily. I have this person in my life forever. I like forever.

A little song I learned and sang for my sweetpea just after she was born rings in my ears. It is the song our family sings at each death and each birth in our lives.

"When you were born you cried
  and the world rejoiced
  live your life so
  that when you die
  The world cries and you rejoice"

All Hallows Eve

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It is Sweetpea's first real Halloween. She has been celebrating this holiday sense soon after being born but this is the first time she has become aware of candy, costumes and getting into trick or treating. As a parent I am conflicted by Halloween. I love the holiday, the DIY qualities of meeting your neighbors, the art installations on front lawns, the costumes and yes, even the gathering of candy. I love that this pagan holiday addressing death in this season still is celebrated in a mainstream way with the lighting of candles and carving of jack o lanterns. 

My main issue with Halloween, besides all the corn syrup, is the idea of witches. Medicine women, healers, herbalists, are the people we call witches. These women were put on trial and often burned at the stake during the dark ages. The villainizing of these medicine women lives on today in our green skinned, crooked nosed, caricatures of women people call witches. She rides around on her broom scooping up children and eating them. It’s a terrible and scary image. Girls dress up like witches today reenacting these “evil” women. Yes there have been some exceptions to this, good witches, Samantha on the show "Bewitched" and more recently Hermione Granger, but most of the time the old, ugly, hag is what I see being the most played out. There has been a lot of reclaiming of the word witch in the pagan community. Now folks wear the pointed hat with pride. What I see in the main stream culture though is a complete lack of understanding of who witches really are. They are different from the other made up ghouls of Halloween.  

 I try to be relaxed about what is enacted on Halloween, every society has a shadow side and this is the place young and old alike get to try things out.  At the same time, the thought in the back of my head is, “really, we are still dragging this old concept of women healers as villains out of the closet again?” I remember being so scared of witches as a young person, It would have been nice to have a broader perspective of these misunderstood women healers. It looks a little like the way folks wear other cultures dress during Halloween and think its ok to pretend to be that person for the night. I think most folks are coming from a place of play with this but I have seen how hurtful it can be to my friends from the cultures that get the most Halloween attention, like Arab and Indian people.

 My family celebrates Samhain, the pagan holiday that honors our ancestors and this season of dying. This morning we watched the sunrise and lit our jack o lanterns welcoming our ancestors into our home for the day. Sweetpea and I decorated our family alter with pictures and memorabilia of family members and pets that have passed from our lives; she decorated with candy and some marigolds. We will make a pumpkin pie to feast on this afternoon and think about all our beloved dead and all the folks that recently lost their lives from the intense hurricane Sandy. After pie and candles we will get dressed in costumes and join the hordes of children and care givers on the street tonight playing in the community game that is Halloween. I hope to give Sweetpea this balance growing up, understanding who witches really are, taking a moment to notice all the amazing people and animals that pass into and out of our lives and the sweetness of family, community fun.  

The Politics of Domesticity

 
Being a stay at home parent is political. We do all the work that keeps a family unit functioning and don't see a dime for all the effort that takes. We hold the emotional and physical stability of a house and a child. The role of a stay at home mom specifically is wrought with sexism and feelings of inadequacy. I recently heard another stay at home mom talk about how she said to her husband, "I want to feel like I am contributing to society. I don't get paid to do housework and take care of our kids." He replied, "honey you get paid in makeovers and pedicures." This is one extreme example of sexism but there are plenty of micro aggressions that happen in the political nature of the stay at home mom.

My child is freshly 2. The "plan" was to have the baby and have me go back to work when she was 6 months old and our money ran out. When I graduated from college and had Sweetpea we were and still are in the middle of a huge economic downturn. The amount of jobs and the amount of people wanting them is way out of whack. When Sweetpea turned 6 months we moved to Austin. We thought Austin would be an easier place to get jobs, turns out being an artist in a very creative and young town makes the competition fierce for anything art related. Daddy was able to get employed quickly with the city in his field, health, education, and advocacy. I on the other hand have been struggling to find good work for a year and half, experiencing multiple interviews and letdowns. This is not just the economy, I am not willing to settle for whatever job and pay the high fees of childcare to be able to do it. It has put stress on our family and depleted any idea that we had about not going into debt. It has also been a great success in making do and being there to experience what really matters.  

Then there is classism. Stay at home moms are looking for community with other parents who are choosing to be full time with their young people. What is one of many things that gets in our way of being connected? The big C of classism. I came into the role of being a stay at home parent because of necessity. Some moms plan it all out and choose that they will be the stay at home parent. The folks that choose this I notice seem to have a good financial cushion. These mostly middle and upper class moms who have personal trainers after giving birth to get there body back. They have their own car to take the little one places, they always have money for museum admissions, date nights with their partners, hired babysitters and infant music classes. I am sure these stay at home moms also battle with the same inner demons of inadequacy, isolation and the stress of holding together the family unit.  It seems that our society at this point largely holds this kind of mom to be what is expected if you are a stay at home mom. I know this is not always the case, just my experience as a nanny and now working class mom.


I see all stay at home parents struggling with this. The stay at home dads I hang out with don't have the added bonus of sexism to deal with but definitely get hurt around their manhood for choosing to be domestic and be with their kids full time. The pressure of keeping the working people in the house happy and getting some time to yourself once in a blue moon is something all stay at home parents have to deal with.

I like that I am getting the chance to be with Sweetpea this much, I like that she sees me prioritize her and gets to learn from my wisdom. I like watching her grow and being there for the big happenings in her development. I wish that it were easier. I wish I had more of a support network, that I didn't feel obligated to do a huge share of the housework because I am home the most. That doing house work didn't feel so degrading because there are centuries of women behind me scrubbing the kitchen floor, attending to their young people and worrying about how to make ends meet.

I start a substitute-teaching job next week. I will be teaching art in after school programs with a really awesome organization called “Creative Action.” I do not know how we will be able to get the childcare we need yet but I am rolling with it and believing the right answers will show up.  This job is a crack in the door of arts education, a field I want to break into. I am excited to see what opportunities come up after I start. I hope to hit a balance with my stay at home mom status by bringing in some much needed extra cash and giving myself a break. I am still figuring out what is fair and how I want house work to go in my home. I will keep you posted. What have you figured out?

Heaven on Earth

I am reading a fabulous new parenting book called "Heaven on Earth." Its focus is on the Waldorf school of thought and I am soaking it in. The book really lays out in easy steps the ways you can incorporate wild, sensual, nature play with your kids and living in a harmonious rhythm. Sweetpea is growing up in a city for now, I always imagined when I had kids I would be living on a farm. It makes me sad she is not getting that sensual earth connection of living close to the land. I think in her lifetime we will live this way but for now I am making it happen in a city way. I grew up in a small city and found lots of ways to live in the wild. In my neighborhood growing up there was secret dappled light hiding spots, flower gardens and a woodsy park. The windows open all summer long breathing in the moist hot air of summer.

I bring Millie to the park almost every day, when there we look and play with the trees but spend most of our time digging pebbles and climbing the play structures. The same in our back yard, she immediately gravitates towards the plastic toys in our yard instead of seeing the whole yard as a place to play. In the book the author talks about awakening your child's imagination to the sensory play of her environment. Today in the back yard I had us look for families of sticks. We chose two large ones for the parents and two smaller ones for the kids, and then there were the babies. We had the sticks sing to the babies, and then tied the small baby sticks to the bigger kids with springs of grass. She loved it and I loved finding toys in nature.

Side note, Millie just awoke from her nap and came in and lied on my belly, somewhere between sleep and awake she lies nestled on me, I smell her sweet baby sweat from the nap, this is very nice.

"Blessings on the Blossom
Blessings on the fruit
Blessings on the Leaves and Stem
Blessings on the Root"

I am now incorporating this earth prayer to each meal we have. It makes Millie laugh with glee whenever I say it. I see the words delighting her and reminding us both that food is sacred and its good to acknowledge that. The book even outlined a simple meal plan to follow that helps when you are super busy and hungry. The plan is to eat in categories Mexican Mondays, Pasta Thursdays, then just choose what meal you want to have from that category. We are trying it out this week, I am excited to have a framework to think about dinners, firstly so they happen and secondly so we will have more family dinner together some days of the week. I am working on Daddy and the housemates around making this happen.

This week we head to the beach for our first real family vacation in Texas. I am excited to see the gulf and be inspired by the waves. Being a coastal child I have always loved seeing the edge of the land and the expansiveness of water for miles. Sharing the ocean with Millie as a toddler will be a sentimental and pleasure filled experience.

Artist Mama

This spring has been crazy busy. In March we moved in with our new housemates. In April and May I got to work making the trailer for my documentary film “Czechxan.” I was story boarding, finding crew, shooting, editing, getting regular childcare and writing a grant. Talk about super mom! It was all made possible by the burning fire I have for my work, the blessing of another mom who could do weekly 5 hour trades, my awesome husband who took over the second he got home from work and occasional sitting from my housemate and a teen I hired for the month of May. Also the amazing support I got from having a weekly goal check in with my mother in law called our “artist hour.”

I have not had time to write this blog and I have missed it. I have been facing the question a lot of artist moms face, "who does she think she is?" BTW, This is also the name of a great documentary made recently about artist mothers. According to our capitalist society, I am choosing to live in poverty, neglecting my child, selfish, can't have it all and need to grow up. If you are not being a successful artist aka making money, there seems to be no reason to continue on other than at a hobbyist level. I am here today to share with you the reality of being an artist mother.

1. I actually have more attention for my art and my child by being both an artist and mother at the same time. I know it sounds wild, but there is a very small window of time in my day I get to work so I use it! The second she goes down I am at my computer or notebook working till she wakes up. In the evening the second she goes down I go to work at my desk for a 3-4 hour chunk and know I have to stop at 10:30pm otherwise I won't be able to face the next morning with her. I get work done, am able to be with my daughter and get mostly enough sleep, shocking!

Because of these intensive spurts of creativity I am able to put it away when she wakes up and get my mind going in a different direction, food, diaper change, play dough or park usually do the trick. I think my artist mind needs the break of being able to be on toddler time, engaged in her growth and development and not thinking to hard about my work. I would even say my work is enriched by the play/out doors time I have with her.

When I was solely focused on my art I spent a lot of wasted time in guilt spirals for not doing enough, lack of accountability and getting lost in silly activity’s. I think parenting is a great focusing tool, helping me to decide what is doable and what is the most important. I still spend a lot of time on facebook and having tv/movie time with daddy, but it feels balanced and a welcome break from always having to be on.

2. Because I am deciding to make my art and parent my young one full time I can have my passionate adult time so I don't feel like my whole life is my daughter. This also gives Sweetpea a chance to have relationships with other loving adults and socialize with other kids. She gets a lot of close time with her dad and she still gets to have a lot of me, in some ways, it is a win win situation.

3. It is f*&^ing hard to really pull off and a constant negotiation. As a co-parent I am not the only one being affected by my life choices. My amazing husband would love it if we were not strapped for cash every month. We also have different ideas about day care and me getting a "real" job. For me, I see having this time with sweetpea when she is young as invaluable and also great that she gets to have a lot of one on one time and not have to join the pack of kids and rules that come with day care. She socializes every week with her friends and her housemates. She is rarely sick and she knows her caregivers have attention for big feelings so her sense of security is strong.

I was not a day care kid, my husband was and he says it was a good experience for him. We have often tried to negotiate ways for her to go to half time care and me to work at least half time for pay. After trying to get lots of different jobs our first year here I realized, the job market is hard and overloaded right now and it was time to start listening to myself and what I really wanted to be doing here in Austin

It is not easy but I have never felt so alive and though we are broke, our quality of life is really good. We have a great time in our city doing free or cheap activities. We live simply and get to have a lot of time together. We miss out on regular big, fancy dinners, far away vacations, gym memberships and new goods and clothes, but it seems like a good trade off, for now.

I am running an online funding campaign to make my film “Czechxan.” It will run till July 18^th. Please check out the trailer and share the link.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1210194179/czechxan-the-film

Imagineria

I remember the sacred domain that is the imaginative play when one is young. I remember the coming together of minds and the fights that happen when two people are trying to decide on the objective of the play. I also remember the sweet, fun spontaneity of engaging fully with a dear friend and having a grand time. I seek this collaborative energy out as an artist. I feel the fiery passion of making an idea happen when I am playing and working with another person.

One of the main games I remember from my childhood was playing radio station on the phone with my friend Harriet. She lived in a town a half hour away. Her mother was my Godmother so we had known each other sense we were very young. We could not have regular play dates so our time was spent connecting via the phone. Radio show was all about Harriet being the disk jockey and me being her sidekick. She ran the radio show and I got to be all the different callers in and various characters that also helped run the station. I remember asking her once on why I couldn't run things and she said she did a better job. When we tried doing it the other way once it was true, she was much more bossy and managerial then I was at that time. Though I was in the sub role in this play I still got a lot of freedom to build up my characters and decide what they would do on the show. We had zoologists on talking about animals, various insider dramas within the folks running the station, romance and adventure. My mom would let us play for hours at a time in the creative soup of our minds.

I am watching the imagination play unfold in Sweetpea. She is now starting to act out things we do with her doll. She feeds the baby her bottle and gives it little toys to play with. She also tries to play with our cat Oli in this manner. She passes him toys and attempts to rough house with him. He is not pleased by this but puts up with a lot of fur grabbing and chasing despite his want for space. I wonder if she will have an imaginary friend like I had. My imaginary friend lived in the laundry basket and came out when I had to go to the bathroom. She kept me company during the many times a day a young person spends on the potty. Having a little made up friend helped me through the potty training process and kept me staying put for a little while.

My favorite imagination play was with my friend Jillian. We would build intricate houses of shawls and tissues for our Barbie’s to live in. The stories we came up with were tackling the hard things we heard about and saw in our diverse city. We had pregnant teenagers and formally homeless women living together. We had kids being raised by grandparents while their moms were in rehab. We also had plenty of fashion shows and classic nuclear families too. But we were always pulled to look at the hard parts of our society and act them out in our games. There was fighting and battles, sometimes fairylands and even a game where one of the characters was a Barbie turned into a horse. Jillian and I worked well as a team, coming up with the games together and enjoying our magical world. We also wrote plays together and put them on for my parents on the front porch of my house. We made big cakes from box mixes and would line them with candles full of wishes to be kissed and to have our first boyfriends. We loved each other fiercely and our collaborations set me up for a lifetime of working best in healthy, artistic collaboration.

My friend Neala and I would play a game called "Adventures in New York." The game was based off an experience we actually had where my family and each of the kids took a friend to NYC to go see the air and space museum. We drove and had a tire pop right before getting to the museum in Queens and had to find a tow truck and good shop to fix it in. This was all fun adventure for Neala and I. At one point we were picked up in a big, black, town car and driven to the garage. I had to sit on my brothers friends lap to make us all fit. This made me blush. Neala and I had each brought a doll and had them act out each part of our city adventure. In the end we had to take the train home and my dad had to come back for the car. The game was played outside her house or in the basement with variations on what happened while we were in New York. We even had a theme song we would sing and a dance we would do down her drive way when we played.

These time capsules are some of my favorite memories. Imaginative play had shaped me as an artist. At the time, it helped me process the heavy stuff that happened around me that I did not understand. It also gave me allies in the process of growing up. I am excited to watch Sweetpea's imagination blossom and play the games with her that she makes up. I can already tell we will be playing the role of dogs for a good long while.