Drink More Liquor
(you're gonna need it for this post)

This post is dedicated to: Pam, M.S.S., D.G., Lucille, Laurie, Shar, Sid, Cindy, Sue, Nicole, Vespabelle, and Riana- provided the condoms don't break!



The first thing I want to say today, because it is ceaselessly floating around in my head, is:

Jock Itch Is A Bitch.

(But I'm not going to tell you how I know this.) I can't get that sentence out of my head. Maybe now that I've said it out loud (sometimes the pen is much louder than the voice) it will fade into obscurity.

There are a number of things itching at my brain right now. One of them is an intensely personal issue I have that makes me feel like a five year old. I don't like feeling like a five year old, in case you hadn't realized that from all the times I've mentioned how much I hated being a kid. And it isn't jock itch that's making me feel like a five year old, in case you were jumping to conclusions. No no, it's much more of a hot subject than that and one that comes up here just as frequently as beer and food does.

No, I better not talk about it.

How about instead I tell you how I'm tired of being a -

No, it can't be avoided. The unsurprising fact of the matter is that I am a very contrary person. I don't particularly find this a comfortable way to exist but even with medication the edgy lines that ceaselessly rub against each other in a war for space inside my brain spark constantly, igniting little fires that I must put out, or at least contain. One of them is that whenever I find out that a friend is going to have another baby, or try to have another baby, I feel joy for them that they are achieving their family dream.

But I also feel like a five year old whose parents have just announced that they are having triplets and I am going to be elected to take care of them. I feel slightly betrayed.

This childish feeling is one I am extremely uncomfortable having. I try to erase such feelings from my head. It is so selfish and unfair to want everyone in the world to only have one child, as I have chosen to do. It isn't just friends, either. Every time I see a pregnant woman the same thoughts come into my head. "Why is everyone always having babies?!" and "Why is one never enough for anyone?!"

The thing is, it isn't about these other people really. I truly am happy for my friends to fulfill their own family needs. I realize that for most people having kids in the plural is as primal a fulfillment as hunting and killing their own dinner. (Except that very few people do that anymore.)

What it's really about is feeling lonely in my chosen path of the one child family and the defensiveness I have felt in my decision because I can tell you a million times that I made the decision intellectually and for the planet and I know every time that I am lying. The truth is that having another child would ruin mine and my family's life because I find it almost impossible to be a good mom to one child and I don't have the slightest desire to bring more chaos into our lives. I don't have one tiny pang of desire to have another child. In fact, I would rather die than have more kids. I'm not being melodramatic.

And that's how you know I'm crazy.

Even most mothers in the one kid club have more benign reasons for having only one child than I do.


So I feel alone. I feel vulnerable and stupid. Watching other women blissfully rub their growing bellies and pushing new people out of their hoo-has feels like some kind of weird happy family wonderland from which I was excluded. Being pregnant was awful for me and not because I had anything go wrong. I just didn't like it. Labor and childbirth were not beautiful, it was torturous and don't bother thinking that I would have had a different experience if I'd had a peaceful home birth. Nothing on this planet could have made it seem beautiful to push a melon sized human head out of my lady bits.

Why did life not let me experience these things as "beautiful" events? Why was I not allowed to feel joy in the disgusting and painful process of creating another human being to suffer on this earth with me? Why wasn't I issued a pair of rose colored glasses? Don't I deserve to get all soft and fuzzy about the details of labor?

The part that's so funny is that I actually enjoy hanging out with babies. I enjoy seeing them grow up. I have loved getting to be a part of my friend D's baby's life. I get a lot of joy seeing him light up with the discovery that my nose will not come off of my face. She's going to eventually try for more children. (She has mentioned a desire to have five!) Another friend of mine who has one child will be trying for another soon. And when that baby comes I will feel the same excitement for her and I will enjoy watching that baby grow up and learn about the world.

This duality is one that I loathe. Why does part of me wish everyone would just be satisfied with one child? Why does part of me always feel kind of hurt and lonely when I find out that someone who already has one child is going to have another? I'm going to end up loving their babies and being so happy for their happiness, so why do I always have to feel betrayed first? Is there no way to bypass this tricky brain tangle?

Being crazy sucks.

I have possibly made a couple of new friends* from my Master Gardening class. The two women I've met that I really enjoy talking with happen to be mothers of one like me. When I found out I instantly thought (but don't think I shared with them) "We're all in the one-kid club!" and I felt ridiculously happy. I felt instantly more comfortable and safe.

Yes, SAFE.

I can't help but wonder if some of the problem is that I don't want things to change. I make friendships and I don't want them changing. They change with more kids. The more kids you have the less time you have for friends, or when hanging out with friends the more your brain is multi-tasking on caring for your kids. It also becomes exponentially more difficult to make plans, to go places, to do things. I don't know how to be friends with someone who has five children. What would we have left in common? What could we possibly do together that wouldn't be child-centered?

I tend to adjust to change quite well once it's under way but I generally approach it with deep trepidation.

Now that I have finally alienated absolutely everyone I know- I am going to really nail the lid of my coffin on tight with something else that's on my mind:

If any parent of a truly picky eater has actually tried the method of forcing their kid to eat what they want their kid to eat based on the theory that "Kids will never starve themselves", please speak up now. Tell me how long your kid held out before eating what you wanted them to. Tell me how often you've done this and if it transformed your child into a non-picky eater?

I am absolutely tired of people saying that a child will never choose to starve. Because, so far, not a single parent who's trumpeted this line out for my benefit is the mother of a picky eater and has not apparently had to employ this strategy of force to their own children.

My child would absolutely starve himself if he could in such a battle but he would actually bleed to death first since he would be so upset at the battle over food that he would force open his capillaries and gush until he passed out. I don't know, but I suspect, that every parent who has glibly suggested I just make him eat regular food, would not be able to deal with my kid in such a situation.

My grandmother tried to force me to eat a pork chop once. I was (as you all know by now) raised as a vegetarian by my mother. I can tell you that we sat at the dinner table for hours and I would not eat that pork chop. Had she tried to get me to eat meat the next morning? After going to bed with no dinner? I would have held out. I would have rather starved than subject myself to the vomit-fest that trying to swallow meat would have provoked.

So if anyone has had a child like me or Max and managed to win the war of food through forcing the issue meal after meal, I want you to tell me all about it. Because I resent my dead grandmother to this day for trying to make me eat food that made me gag. I don't relish such a relationship with my one and only lambini. How did you do it and not have your child hate you for life? How did you apply this fabulous method of feeding your child? How many hours, days, weeks did it take?

I define picky eating as the number of items a kid will eat being ten or less.

Parents of kids who eat everything are often so smug about it. As though it's through their great parenting that their kids eat well. I say it's luck and it's the kid. (Well, in cases where good wholesome food has always been on offer. It could be a parent's fault that their kids are picky if they don't eat well themselves.)

Anyway. The next person who says a "kid won't ever starve themselves" may try working their magic on my kid for one week. Let's see their excellent good sense and strong parenting skills transform my child. We'll switch. Let me experience what it's like to feed a kid who eats like a normal kid.

Any takers?

Well, it's been nice knowing you all. So long. I understand that you can't be friends with me anymore. I'm going to miss you.

*Of course, if either of them are reading this, they may be rethinking being friends with me!

Little garden graves

The store isn't open today, so I plan to work on my garden beds. When we first made them we all joked about taking pictures of us "buried" in them because they look like graves. Now every time I see this picture I think about that. It also makes me remember Max asking me (recently) if I want him to bury me in the garden when I die. It reminds me of how weird it is to try to explain to my son's bright little face why it's illegal to bury your dead in your back yard. Kids know a lot of dark things. If you think they don't, then your own memory of being a kid has dimmed beyond recognition. Maybe out of a sense of self preservation? Maybe it's just age that has helped you to see childhood as vast expanse of innocence.

Alright, maybe you just had to start life in a hippie commune to have so much knowledge in your head by the time you're four. Knowledge of life, death, and maybe even taxes. Well, at the very least, we knew about bodies. We knew about a lot of things bodies are used for. I knew that bodies don't last. I knew that they were some how connected to earthy things like food, grass (ah, of many kinds, if you catch my drift...), the weather, and each other.

Max didn't grow up in a commune, yet he knows dark things. Dark ideas present themselves to him all the time. They always have. When he was three and I was trying to explain why he had to wait for me to cross the street with him, I avoided saying anything too scary. I don't personally believe in over protecting children, but even so, I have never wanted to scare mine either. So he asked my why he had to wait for me to cross with him. I told him "Because you can get hurt crossing the street." and he replied "Do you mean I might get smooshed by a car?" I never told him that. He made the obvious connections. It percolated in his brain. Without me to tell him.

One of the hardest parts of parenting, for me, is knowing that Max is going to know things that no one wants to know. As his parent, knowing that as his life unfolds, he's going to have to go through the whole spectrum of experiences is a difficult truth for me. I didn't particularly love the first nineteen years of my life. The kid is only six and is already worried about becoming an orphan, fighting in real wars, and asteroids hitting our house. He is also already fighting waves of self loathing that seem to rise up suddenly when he is not proud of himself. There is no middle ground for him. He is either a good little boy, and therefore should have every toy on earth as well as every privilege, or he is a very bad boy who doesn't even deserve to have a mom and a dad or a bed to sleep in. He comes up with a lot of creative punishments that we should visit on him when he feels he is among the undeserving.

While so many parents out there are devoting many hours to the planning of their children's brilliant futures and signing them up for college, I am just hoping mine will make it safely to adulthood. I just want mine to be healthy, keep all of his limbs, and be alive. While so many mother's out there are busting their butts to be the perfect moms, to give their kids all the best in nutrition, stimulation, exercise, and time lovingly devoted to their bairns, I sit here and worry about all the pitfalls that await my child: puberty, girls, aggression, competition, mental illness*, homework enough to bring down a genius, and fast food.

I have been known to make a lot of parents uncomfortable. Bet you're not wondering why.

I was thinking recently of starting some kind of club for parents with one child. There is a part of me that feels the need to find more people out there with a single child because I'm still in the minority. In the early days I felt extremely defensive of my conscious choice to have one child, which I was certain about the minute my baby was pulled from my bloody, broken, ripped, and cut body.

I was defensive because very few mothers could understand why I wasn't already planning for the next one. Not all parents of single children experience this, but people in grocery stores would ask me when I was going to start on the next one and I can't tell you how many times I heard this "Oh, you can't just have one! You have to give your little guy a brother or sister." I HAVE to? HAVE TO? At what point did I sign a contract with the universe to provide my son with a sibling? It was also extraordinary how many mothers seemed to take my decision to have just one as an automatic criticism of their decision to have more.

The defensiveness that my decision to have one child brought down on both myself and others who decided otherwise actually created a weird judgment in me of parents with more than one. Why do all these parents feel they have to have multiple children? Why are they doing this to themselves? How can any woman go through giving birth more than once? How can she find space in her life for herself when she keeps creating less and less time to meet her own needs?**

Honestly? I realized that part of the defensiveness came from realizing that other women, women having more than one child, were made of sterner stuff than me. Having one child, consciously, made me the loser in the invisible mighty woman contest that exists out there whether you want to participate or not. It's the same competition that exists in child birthing, there is some unwritten, largely unacknowledged, belief that women who get through birthing with the least intervention from drugs or doctors, are stronger and better than those of us who needed an epidural. And an episiotomy. And two doctors and two nurses. And an oxygen mask. Or maybe a C-section. No one wants to admit it, but women who just squat down and bite ax handles to bring their kids into the world are the winners of the strong woman contest.

I have come to see things a little differently now. The feeling of defensiveness is slowly wearing off. Most of my close friends have more than one child. Do they make me feel inferior for this? No. Do I feel like I made a better choice for just having had the one? No. Well, OK, maybe a tiny bit. Maybe just a tiny bit of me feels like a lot of women would be more whole, would be happier, would have more to give to a child if they had only one.

That is maybe the dirtiest parent truth I have ever admitted to.

I'm not judging anymore. That's what I'm here to say. That's what I want to say right now: I have finally come to a point where I see that for some women, having more than one child is as important a choice for them as having one was for me. I have come to respect that for some women it is way more natural for them to have a couple of bairns romping through their lives than it would be for me. I am not only coming to respect their choice, I am getting to a place where I can appreciate their choice.

I have made peace with the whole strong woman contest too. It doesn't matter to me that some women can squat down in tub and squeeze their baby out like toothpaste. I think that's wonderful. It isn't going to make me feel defensive of my own VERY DIFFERENT experience of child birth. I don't think they're better than me, or even stronger. We all have strengths and our lives will reveal what they are. I don't even feel that I have lost out as a woman because I didn't actually enjoy being pregnant and I don't think giving birth is a beautiful experience. So if you loved it, I'm happy you got to see that side of it. We can still share this experience of being moms. Of being women. We still have a lot in common. I'm more interested in searching out our commonality than measuring our differences.

So I realized that creating a group for parents of only children will not engender the kind of open mindedness I am trying to improve in myself. I hate feeling excluded because I'm different. It's natural for me to enjoy talking with other parents with one child, we have a lot in common, but I realized that creating some kind of club only for us would exclude a lot of people I love. I don't want to be a person who builds walls between people. I'd rather foster greater understanding. Now that I've started to feel some real loosening of defensiveness in myself, why on earth would I want to create it in others?

How's that for a nice cheery Monday talk? Hey, just trying to bring a little darkness to us all. While I have been writing this it's turned rainy. So maybe I won't be going outside to fill my little garden graves with AMENDMENT. Maybe I'll just do laundry and read old issues of Kitchen Gardening. And make soup.

Tomorrow the only thing I'm going to talk about is butterflies, rainbows, and Donald Trump. (Because I love to talk about persistent comb-overs and the men who adore them.)



*Runs in our family, so even if he doesn't turn out to have it, it stands as a possible pit fall.

**Doesn't matter how much a woman thrives on being a mom, she still has needs separate from her kids. Her ability to meet those needs has a direct affect on her ability to meet the needs of her children.