Things might be better than I thought.

A few days ago I wrote a rather uniquely revealing post about myself: I am better than you. I kept asking myself why I wanted to publish something like that in such a public forum. I guess, it is like setting a marker.  It is out there, now I have to look at it in all seriousness.


And guess what?  Upon a lot of self-reflection, beating myself up, examining my motivations, and dissecting actions and experiences, I realized, that I was completely wrong.

1. I do not think, I am better than you.  
2. However, I am extremely attached to my ideas. I spend a lot of time and effort picking them out, thinking and improving upon them. The ideas I hold are the most important part of my identity.
3. Bad ideas can offend me. I recently saw a mother spank her child to get him back in line - at a Montessori school event of all places! I froze, unsure how to respond, until I remembered that spanking is not really abuse by any means.  It is just so far away from my experience with parents I know, I forgot it is ok with the vast majority of the culture. Nonetheless, it is now the most notable thing about the woman who did that.
4. I judge people on the basis of the ideas they hold - often even more strongly than on their actions.
5. If you hold bad ideas in an area that is the basis of our relationship, I will be disappointed, and that basis will be gone.  In other words, if we spend time with our kids on the playground, you may hold bad ideas about software - but it is important that you are a reasonably good parent. Otherwise, what is there to talk about?

I acknowledge that I do not hold a multitude of easy, casual relationships with people.  We meet, we get along, we start spending time together, then we either fit, or, more likely, don't. In the two and a half years I have spent living in our current location, meeting various parents at Alex's school, I met one family, with whom I will remain friends. We have many things that are different, most notably, they are catholic, while I am an atheist.  But our kids are friends and they put as much energy into parenting as I do, doing their best within the realm of positive discipline, montessori education, respectful relationship with their children and putting their time together ahead of everything else. There is never a day that we fail to share something important and insightful that helps us both along on our journey.


And finally, the million dollar question: is it something I want to change? Well... in a manner of speaking.  Not my commitment to ideas, nor my strong emotional attachment to my judgments. There is one thing though... I do need to meet more people that I like. Parenting is a horrible social selector, and it is the entirety of humanity I have been exposed to for the last five years. 


I do have to change my life. As to how - to be continued....

Bobby McGee

Do you know that old Janis Joplin song?


"But I'd trade all of my tomorrows for just one yesterday
To be holding Bobby's body next to mine..."

It is unquestionably one of the most poetic pieces I have ever encountered. Few songs can create the time and place like this one... The truck, the people, the music, the "windshield wipers slapping time..." Perhaps that is why I got to feeling how sad it truly was. 


I imagined the life in which one is willing to give up all of her tomorrows for one single yesterday... We can all related, at least a little bit. I, for instance, remember the early relationship my husband and I shared. Our early dates, sexual experiences, long evenings spent in the candle light.  That time will never be back. No amount of candles will bring back the crazy passion of those days...


And now I look at giving up *any* of my tomorrows to bring it back... Just as Lily and Alex are beginning to fall asleep to the sounds of daddy singing...

I am better than you!

America is a guilt-based culture.  What I mean is, we tend to use guilt as a primary manipulation tool. On the other hand, from what I read about the middle east, it is a fear-based culture. People manipulate each other through fear. Women are afraid to step out of line because of consequences. Men are raised from babyhood to listen to their elders and follow the line.  I grew up in Russia, a shame-based culture.  Children frequently hear, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" "You are a bad girl. I don't love bad girls!" "What would your daddy say if he saw you like this?" Students get to stand up in front of the entire class as they are being dressed down for stupidity or some other flaw. Everyone is always worried about what someone else might think, they are doing badly.


The flipside to shame is a kind of second-handed pride, which sounds like, "I am better than you" "I come from a better family." Or, from others, "A girl like Kate would never have the wrong kind of friends."  I recently discovered that while suseptibility to shame and second-handedness generally are character flaws I have successfully dealt with over the past decades, this misguided snobbishness is something that still lives within me, hurting my life every step of the way, despite my best efforts.


Today I was able to zoom in and identify this as the key problem I need to resolve in the coming months and years.

• Do I sound in my blog like a know-it-all and is it costing me audience?
• Did you know, I have a hard time reading other people's blogs because of the pain involved in discovering, I am not as good a parent as you?
• If you and I met, how long do you suppose it would take me to run through a mental checklist and become profoundly disappointed that you are not the person I thought I looked up to?
• How many times a day do I register a mental giggle over the *obviously* ridiculous notions other people hold, actions they take and consequences they suffer?
• Do you have any idea how angry I am almost all the time at those close to me for the ideas they hold, ways in which they behave and stuff they value or don't value?

I do have a few friends. None of them are women. All of them come as close to holding the same core values as me, as it is possible for someone with a different lifestyle. None of them are involved in my life on a daily, weekly, or usually, even monthly basis.

And what I want is to have people I connect with everywhere I look. I fall in love quickly and easily. I crave intimacy and connection. I have no guile, no persona I present to others. For the most part, I enjoy being me, enjoy the company of others, and most of all, enjoy sharing my life with those close to me.

Today I set a goal of being a better human being for the simple purpose of my own happiness.

The credits

The movie is over. You are sitting in a dark theater, filled with the smell of spilled popcorn, too little fresh air, and some musical score the composer felt you should be left with as your last memory. In a moment, you will be speaking to your friends, gathering outside the bathrooms about your experience, what you thought, who should have done what, and the errors in film editing. But the next couple of minutes are yours. The hero is gone; he will never speak another word, nor kiss another girl. There will never be another explanation for the things that happened and those that didn't, except for what you work out inside. Slowly, you pull out of the reality that had been temporarily constructed by the movie makers and are able to assess the story from the outside, now that you are no longer living it.
  
The credits are rolling for me today. There will be no baby. Never another addition to our little family, never a mind opening up to the wonders of reality, coming into consciousness for the first time. There will never be another first step, nor a first word or a first potty success. That part of our lives is over. What does that leave us with?

Well, actually, a pretty bright future filled with love and values.  We have two highly intelligent and wonderful children who are past the stage where every movement needs to be monitored, every basic need attended to. They walk, and play, and express themselves and (on a good day) brush their own teeth. They are now in school for half the day, allowing me a secondary focus in my life. This is also an end to one of the most difficult aspects of my situation: the forced loneliness and separation from humanity that was bearable due to the joy in the task of parenting, but nonetheless difficult for someone whose primary values surround people. I never did find real adult companionship, real partnership with other parents, and I lost the part of my life that used to make me happiest: the interaction with other minds in a creative process.


Today I am looking ahead at the years of watching Alex and Lily grow, turning into the individuals I will love, not as my children, but for who and what they are. Also, at the return of the values I had given up for the priority of bringing these kids into the world and giving them the start in life, full of joy, self-confidence and love. I see myself growing alongside them, still spending every waking moment that's possible in their presence, but gradually nourishing a separate me.

I would have loved another opportunity to go through a babyhood and watching a tiny infant grow into a reasoned person. We had decided, this was our last pregnancy, win or lose. And now that it is a loss, I am ok. I have a lot to look forward to and, though I am by no means emotionally over the experience, I can move on... and build the rest of my life.

 

The dead baby saga

A few days ago, I was going to post the following, then got distracted and it's been sitting in my drafts:

Yesterday came the big blow: dead baby, no heart beat. Anyone who has gone to that first ultrasound after having had a miscarriage previously knows the feeling: it's the moment of truth.  Do I get to enjoy a healthy pregnancy and look forward to a little person in my arms and at my breast, or is this another dead end? You look over at the monitor, watch for the form of a little tiny being inside come into focus.  Is it moving? 

It wasn't. Nope - still nothing.  The doctor moved the big dildo around in the hopes of finding another angle. No good.  Bottom line: my body has three weeks to expel that near-perfect being I had a glimpse of, or they will go in with instruments and do the deed for me. 

If I were religious, I would say, there is still a chance for a miracle.  Next week, I am coming back to confirm and do a checkup.  "So, is there a chance, we look next week - and there is a heartbeat?!" I asked the doctor.  "I am always happy to double-check."  "Yes, but is there a chance?" "No, I don't think so." That's what I needed to know.  Still, should I pray to an omnipotent being to make an arbitrary exception in my case? Hmmm... now that I put it that way, it sounds like it is a reasonable approach. Anybody got an 800 number for the local office?

OK, this was horribly irreverent.  Still, failing an 800 number, I found one with a (626) area code. Dr. Sutton has been worth the hour and a half drive for my previous pregnancies.  Having switched this time for convenience, I knew where I had to turn in a panic.

"I know, you do not do ultrasounds this early," I explained on the phone.  "Is there a chance the problem is with the test?" "Well, it is very hard to prove, something is not there," Dr. Sutton, the scientist, Caltech & Stanford graduate began. "Failure to find one is inconclusive. The gestational age may not be accurate."  "But the baby measured exactly right,  at 8 weeks four days!" I objected.  "The measurement itself is not precise. So exactly is not always exact." Oh, right.  What was I thinking?  He gave me that speech many times before! "So, after something like this happens, we normally do two blood tests, a few days apart, to look at your HCG levels and see if they are rising." We exchanged a few more words as I was beginning to regain the calm, not of certainty, but of knowing the right thing was going to happen.  "Come see me Wednesday," he said. "We'll figure it out." 

I was ready to cry. Just a few days ago, I was out eating sushi and drinking sake (oops), mourning a dead baby inside my body. Today I was reminded that technology is no substitute for man's mind and competence. It is very likely, still, that the baby is dead. Tomorrow is unlikely to bring me any comfort, either. True, we might find a heart beat, after all, but if not, more tests will follow, with each step down the path bringing an ever-increasing certainty that this baby is lost to me.

This experience, however, is a firm reminder to me, that people like Dr. Sutton, those that are firmly attached to reality, to science, possessing the supreme competence in their own field, make our lives better, set us on better paths, and are worth an infinite amount of trouble... So whether or not, this baby comes to be, it came into my life with a lesson baked into its DNA...

Eight weeks: is it a blueberry?

I am feeling scared today, absolutely terrified.  I am now almost eight weeks pregnant.  Two weeks till that magic line when the risk of miscarriage goes down to almost none. That's like being in the semi-finals and the pressure is on.

I feel great physically.  No nausea. No soreness anywhere, really, with some occasional familiar pain in the abdomen, signaling that things are moving around, trying to make space. I love those: a gentle reminder that there is something going on in there.  But it's the only one! Am I really pregnant?  I remember a story that happend to my coache's wife.  She went for her first ultrasound and they found a dead baby... Scooped it out, got her cleaned up.  Mine is a week away.  Can I please have permission to jump at shadows for the next week?

OK, as my husband so eloquently pointed out, I am not completely symptom free:  "You have certainly been insane enough" he remarked as I was bemoaning the lack of symptoms.  I am so mad! No, not because he said that.  But I keep being mad at different people: my mother-in-law, the sight of whom is causing me to shake, a Realtor that sent me too many listings, yes, my husband, who has a way of not being perfect when I need him the most - and you!  Yes, YOU.  For not sharing my blog on facebook, not leaving comments, and just plain not wanting to be my friend.  OK, that's only in the lowest moments.  Really, don't leave!  I like you here.  :-)  Seriously, though, I want to stop being mad, and scared.  I want to get to that glorious point when you find out the baby is no longer an IT, has fingers and toes, and a perfect heart beat - and everything is going to be all right.  You look like you are armed with a large watermelon and strangers smile as you waddle around.  NOW!  Before I get mad!

There is one salvation: I have been a perfect parent!  I don't know how I am doing it, really... I don't yell at my kids, don't even usually get mad at them.  I pick them up from school and revel in my time with them.  It's like, I have created a little world for myself, in which I have these perfect creatures, living with me in Heinleinian harmony, the source of my life and self-esteem, and hope and happiness.  I am not usually like this, so that observer inside of me is quite perplexed.

The baby, they say, is the size of the blueberry....  Eight days till the heartbeat.  Or a dead baby scoop.  Counting down....

Feel good meme

OK, memes feel like LiveJournal of the 1990's to me.  But they are still fun.  This one comes, compliments of Kelly Elmore and her five star challenge.

Five things you love about yourself.

Five things your body can do.

Five things you’re grateful for.

Five things that make you happy you’re alive.

Five people (or pets) who you love.

It's a hard one for me to do right now, because I feel down on myself and the world.  So I decided, I should do it for that reason alone.

Today, Five things I love about myself.

1. I feel happy and confident as a parent.  Parenting is so *hard* - I remember the complete despair I felt when my oldest was nearing his first birthday.  I began to question the decision to become a parent in the first place.  That time is so far behind me, and has never come back.  Not only, do I feel like I know what I am doing, I frequently want to celebrate the day.  I know this rubs off on my kids.  "How are you doing?" strangers ask them.  "Great!" is their unfailing response.

2. I am a doer. Give me a problem, just mention that one exists - and I have an uncontrollable drive to take action, to solve it, to change the world.  This comes back to bite me sometimes as I find myself overcommitted and drowning, but for the most part, it is exhilarating to know I can do it all and to have the desire to do more.  "Mommy, I wish we could..." "Hmmm... let me think... I know!" So many great days have started that way.

3. I love and connect with people. I come from a culture that is far more emotionally open than the US. People laugh and cry and call each other names and scream.  There are definitely downsides to this approach. But on the other hand, I have never lost my ability and desire to surrender defenses and be completely in the moment with another. I often notice that people find it easier to display anger than true gratitude, push than pull. So I choose to hug, offer genuine effusive compliments and tell those around me how much they mean.

4. My friends comment on my child-like unabashed sense of life.  I will jump for joy in an office, cry at the sight of man's accomplishment (I really did cry watching the John Galt line in the Atlas Shrugged movie), and delight in all things that are good.  Lately, I have noticed that my joy has become tempered, its expression reserved, and decided, it's one of the most unique and special things about me - so I am keeping it!  (Has anyone counted exclamation marks in my blog?)

5. I can and love to express myself.  One might say, I love to hear myself talk.  No, it's really true!  I do.  I love writing, talking, sharing, public speaking, blogging. I love telling my kids about my thoughts and feelings, about my past life. I love remembering stories from my childhood growing up in Russia.  I enjoy teaching people about technology, offering advice about parenting, sharing my recipes in CaveKitchen. It is fun to open my mouth or sit at the keyboard and never fear that a word won't come.

Positive Discipline Card: Words without action

I recently purchased the Positive Discipline cards iphone app.  Kind of awesome - really - to glance at a card once every day or so to remind myself some of the principles that go forgotten in the midst of the daily chaos.

Today I came upon one that I don't like.  Really, it represents my greatest divergence from Positive Discipline.  The card recommends that I explain consequences that are about to take place to the kids, make sure they understand, and then act "kindly and firmly" but without words. For instance, I might pull the car over while they fight, then read a book silently until they let me know they are ready.

I understand the intent is to create almost natural consequences. They know what they need to do and they can choose to act on it as soon as they have processed everything that is happening.  Sort of like rain - no words, no threats, no pleading, just wet.  Once you decide you've had enough, you get an umbrella, or hide in a cafe.

Only, I am not the rain. I am not impartial, not a fact of nature. I am their mommy, the person that will remain sympathetic, willing to help and teach, always on their side. I will never be one to give them silent treatment. I will not become unmoved by tears, ignore questions, stand by their misery. 

This does not mean, I need to change my mind, be wishy-washy, inconsistent, or in any other way contrary to my main goal of helping them learn to deal with the world, reality and its consequences.  Instead, I can offer comfort if I judge that it is necessary. I can provide tools for problem solving if advice is sought. I can express my feelings if I think, there is confusion about why we are in the current situation. Most importantly, I can express love.  That one is so critical, particularly if we are dealing with something unpleasant and if that thing was created/imposed/influenced by me.  As a child, did you ever imagine how sad your parents would be if you were dead?  "Then they wouldn't do all those bad things they do," you thought if you were anything like me. Alex once told me that he was going to have to go down to the village and get himself a new family because of something I did, or didn't do.

The problem isn't the consequences.  It is the pain of loneliness that comes when you feel, your family is no longer on your side. It is worst when you are aware that no one is particularly angry - they just don't care. They are willing to stand by and watch you cry, look on as your sibling destroys your possessions or even just says hurtful words, walk on despite your apologies as the realization that you screwed up hits you.

My approach would look something more like this:

"I love you so much and I know you are so frustrated! [love and sympathy] I just can't drive the car while you are jumping in your seat. [explanation] And now, after all the stops, we can no longer make it to X and get back home in time for Y. [natural consequences]  What do you say we try again tomorrow? [hope] May be when we get home, we can do Z. [I am always on your side.]

I don't always pull it off.  Sometimes, I do, but only after I apologize for snapping at everyone earlier. But for those mistakes, there are other cards.  :-) And when I do pull it off, I know it is a success, because I am surprised every time how easily the children accept what happened. There is no pain, just a quiet understanding.