Musings of a Midlife Mama and Other Stories

What if I was wrong?  What if the world is a less scary place than I’ve made it out to be?  What if I believed all the time, and not just sometimes, rarely, that the world is made up of 99.9 percent good people?  What if I believed there were a few bad and evil people who would get theirs in the end?  What if I thought the Middle East will be a better place in my lifetime, in my children’s lifetimes?  What if I thought Israelites and Palestinians could live in peace and harmony? What about South Korea and North Korea? Democrats and Republicans?

What if I always believed what I told my children that everything is going to be okay?  What if my kids grow up in a better world because I not only wished it but every mother and father wished it, too and did something to make it so?  What if I continued to turn off the news, recycle, and love my children fiercely?  What if I stopped obsessing over nuclear wars, the Big One, terrorists, the economy, meth, wildfires and what ifs, and instead focused on what is?

What if…

Two days ago I went to Jack’s school to have lunch with him.  In my purse were six invitations to his birthday party.  He’d wanted to bring them to school that morning but I’d told him I didn’t want anyone getting in trouble for opening the invitations in their classrooms.  “And plus you don’t want to hurt other kids’ feelings who aren’t invited,” I’d said. I’ll bring the invites at lunch.”

When I arrived at the elementary school, I squeezed between Jack and Gabe at the lunch benches.

“There’s King,” Jack said pointing to the grinning boy, King always smiled, walking up the aisle.  “Can I give him his invitation?”

“Yes, but let’s be like secret spies and not make a big deal about it.”

Jack seemed to like this.  But when he approached King, he said in a voice that rose above the din of the hundred kids eating lunch, “Hey, King.  Here’s my invitation.”

“Yes,” King gave Jack a huge smile and a high five.

“You want to hear something funny?” Jack asked.  “My mom didn’t want to invite you because she says you have too much energy.”

I cringed at the truth.  My first impulse was to lie and say, “Oh, Jack that’s not what I said.”  But I didn’t. What would that have said to Jack?  Don’t tell the truth?  I just smiled at King as if I hadn’t heard the comment and couldn’t wait until his mania visited our house.

Jack went to the playground to make plans for the boys versus girls battle that had ensued two weeks before when he’d started second grade.  Gone were the days of me running after Jack and ten other kids in a game of tag where I was always “it.”   Now I settled myself in the shade of a tree to finish reading the memoir, PERFECTION.

“Hi, Jack’s mom.”

I looked up from the book to see a classmate of Jack’s from kindergarten.  “Hey, Louie, what’s up?”

“Um, nothing.”

“What’s your mom up to?”

“Hmmm,” he said.  “Right now she’s probably either in the pool, taking a nap or watching something on TV.”

I wondered what Louie’s mom would think of Louie’s honesty.

“Is she still working at Target?”

“No, she got fired.  She doesn’t have a job now,” he said before running down the ramp to play.

I looked down at the cover of the memoir, and thought about honesty.  PERFECTION is a story about Julie Metz’ husband who one January morning collapses and dies in Metz’ arms. After seven months of mourning, the truth comes out about what secrets Henry had kept from her.  It is these secrets Metz speculates may have killed her husband.

But what would Henry’s truth done for Metz?  Sure, it would have assuaged his guilt, maybe prevented his sad heart from giving up on him, but what would being honest have done for Metz and their 10-year-old daughter?  William Shakespeare said,  “Honesty is the best policy. If I lose mine honor, I lose myself.” Is honesty the best policy when the truth only benefits the person telling it to save his honor, to save himself?

There are other instances when honesty is never the best policy.  When a wive asks, “Do these pants make me look fat?”  Lie, I say, lie.  Nothing good has ever come from telling that truth. Then I think of Jack telling King about his energy and Louie saying his mom was fired, and I’m awed by their innate honesty.  If I’d asked these boys, “Does my ass look big in these pants?,” if the truth was yes, they would have said so.  And honestly there is something refreshing about their untainted opinions, their truth.

Is honesty the best policy?  Honestly, only sometimes. What do you think?

I interviewed Margaret Dilloway, a friend and the author of the critically acclaimed debut novel, HOW TO BE AN AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE. The novel is about the strong pull of tradition, and the lure and cost of breaking free of tradition. Set in California and Japan, it tells the story of Shoko, a Japanese woman who married an American GI as a way of improving her and her family’s fortunes, moved with him to the States, and tried to learn how to be a proper American housewife; and her grown daughter Sue, who finds her own life as an American housewife is not at all what her mother would have wanted for her, or even what Sue had hoped for herself. When Shoko’s illness prevents her from making a long-awaited trip to Japan to be reunited with her brother, she asks Sue to go in her place, and the trip changes both women’s lives in unexpected ways. With beautifully delineated characters and unique entertaining glimpses into Japanese and American family life and aspirations, this is also a moving mother and daughter story. Interspersed with quotations from Shoko’s guide to being an American housewife, this is a warm and engaging novel full of surprising insight.

The memoir I’m working on, HOLDING ON AND LETTING GO: A MOTHER’S STORY, is about how wrecked I was when my oldest daughter went off to college.  It’s the exploration of my relationship with my daughter and why I continued to hold on to the past and discover why it was so difficult to let her go.  My interview with Dilloway allowed me to ask about her relationship with her mother, and how this novel enlightened that relationship.  As Dilloway says, “ this novel is a conversation with my mother I never got to have.”  Dilloway’s mother passed away when Margaret was twenty.  Dilloway, a stay-at-home mother of three who lives with her family in Hawaii, says this book “gave me a chance to rewrite her [her mother's] life with the happy ending she wished for and wanted so badly for me.”

Margaret Dilloway, Author

You said your novel is a continuation of a conversation you wished you could have had with your mom.  What would the gist of the conversation?

Just a conversation that says, “Hey, this is where I’m coming from, I understand where you’re coming from, and I love you unconditionally.  I’m sorry I was hard on you.”  Something like that.

After writing the novel, do you see your mother differently?  If so, in what ways?  If not, why not?

I had been thinking of her and her background for some time, recording her stories and so forth.  But the book allowed me the luxury to really think deeply about our differences and commonalities. I really FELT how she had felt, coming here [to the United States from Japan].  It’s like the difference between hearing a news story filled with facts, and a novel filled with emotional truth.

What’s something you wish you would have held on to?

The thought that my mother really just wanted me to be happy, whatever that meant to me.

What’s something you would have wished you let go of a long time ago?

I wish I would have let go the visceral recollection of every harsh word and action.

What’s the best and worst parenting advice you’d ever gotten?

My paternal grandmother told me, “I did everything wrong. Don’t do ANYTHING like me.”  That was probably the most interesting piece of advice I got.

The best: “Let your kids be who they are, and enjoy them.”

The worst: “Don’t let your baby eat with his hands, because it’s too messy.”

Do you believe in the labels of good mom and bad mom?  What makes a good mom?  Bad mom? (The Bloggess has a blog about good mom, bad mom and how her and her writing partner don’t believe in these labels.)

Sure, you can be a bad mom.  A bad mom is neglectful of her child’s emotional or physical needs. A good mom provides food, shelter, and teaches character traits such as empathy and responsibility.

I sure don’t think women should be hung up on labels.  I wouldn’t call someone a “bad mother” because she works or doesn’t work, or brings store-bought cupcakes or doesn’t push their kid to excel in every single area.  The primary goal of parenting is to raise independent good citizens.  I think everyone should do the best they can, and as long as they’re providing these very basic necessities, the kid ought to be fine.

What’s the difference between raising boys and girls?

I don’t think there’s much of a difference.  You teach them the same moral values, and you are respectful of their individual temperaments.

This is your first novel.  What’s the best part of having a novel published? What’s the most surprising part?  What single piece of advice would you give to a writer hoping to get published?

The best part is having your work acknowledged and getting some “street cred” for being a writer.

Most surprising: How long the process took.  The novel didn’t get published for two years after I signed the contract, and there was a lot of editing work, too. Rest assured, it’s not the same for every single novel.

Advice: Read and write a lot, and keep trying.

You’re writing a new novel, what’s it about?

It’s called “The Cupcake Queen” and is about a cupcake baker whose dead husband is haunting her.  It takes place in Hawaii and Julian, California, both of which are really haunted places.  There are tons of ghost stories in Hawaii, and I wanted to take advantage of my new location.  Also, I like cupcakes.

What conversation would you like to have with your mother?

Yesterday the Rolling Stones came on the radio singing, “Brown Sugar”. And I thought of Mick Jagger and the rest of the Rolling Stones who are still touring and making music and they’re in their sixties.  Name a woman rocker who is doing the same.

“I think it’s because we don’t accept women growing old, getting fat, or getting lines on our faces,” I told David.

“What are you talking about? ” David asked.  “It’s because the Rolling Stones were more famous than any other woman singer or band. There up there with Beatles and The Who.  And there are more men in rock ‘n roll than women.”

Okay, maybe.  But then what about a band like Heart who rocked in the seventies and eighties.  Ann Wilson, who struggled with weight all her life, starved herself in the seventies because of the pressure to be thin.  When she started to gain weight, this became the focus instead of her powerful voice. Nancy Wilson, Ann’s sister, became the cute one.  Are we making these comparisons between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards?  I mean both of them look like caricatures of their former selves with their deep, grooved lines in their faces, but they’re still selling out stadiums and people talk to them about their music and not the way they look.

In the “Huffington Post” last week there was an article about the controversy  regarding the writer Jonathan Franzen, who has been receiving star treatment from the literary community for his latest family saga, Freedom. Franzen was on the cover of “Time” and the “NY Times” did a book review praising him for his work. Why aren’t best selling authors like  Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner, who both write about families, get the same kind of accolades?  As women writers we are categorized into “chick lit,” “mommy lit”, “hen lit”, etc.  Where are these categories when it comes to male authors?  Weiner points out the only time the playing field is leveled is when women authors are writing in genres, like mystery and horror, that men will read.  Why is that?

Am I outraged about all this?  Yes.  But I’m sad, too.  I’m sad that Heidi Montag from “The Hills” had ten plastic surgeries, including G cup breasts and a nose job at the age of twenty-two, a mere year older than my oldest daughter.  I’m sad pop music is full of examples of young women who are looked at for the weight on the scale (Remember the flack Jessica Simpson got from gaining weight?) or how seductive and sexy they can be (Think Lady Gaga’s, “Alejandro.”).

We are more than this.

We are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies like PepsiCo, WellPoint, and Xerox.

We are  world leaders of such countries as India, Germany and Australia.

We are Nobel Prize winners in chemistry, physiology and literature.

We are more than bodies.

What do you think?

On 2005’s Australian MTV Awards, Anna Nicole Smith  sashayed across the stage dressed in a haltered flamenco dress of red and black.  As she made her way to the podium she waved her hands above her head and then ran them up and down her body.  The crowd roared.  The more the audience clapped and hooted, the more Smith preened at the podium.  Finally, she leaned into the microphone and drunkenly asked, “Like my body?”

Yesterday while getting ready for work, I watched a segment about websites showing young women how to starve themselves.  As one of the recovering anorexics who was being interviewed said, “These websites are assisted suicide for people like me.”  Anorexia has one of the highest suicide rates of any mental illness.  Eating disorders, like anorexia, affect mostly young women who are usually the oldest in their families, are smart and high achievers and who are trying to achieve perfectionism by controlling their bodies.

Last night at the gym, I listened to two gorgeous “middle of their lives” women talk about how they wouldn’t be caught dead in  bathing suits while doing anything besides lying on their backs.  Then they proceeded to point out all their flaws, including their butts, thighs, and stomachs.

This morning I went and got weighed. I was up causing me to be depressed.  I’ve been working out, tracking points.  Then I started thinking about Anna Nicole Smith (God rest her soul. What pain she must have been in.), all those young women who have been lured by those sites giving tips on how to starve themselves, and my friends lamenting about their thighs.  I have been every one of these women.  Okay, I haven’t sashayed across a stage while asking millions of people, “Like my body?”  But I have been desperate for people to notice me and it seemed important to be thin in order for this to happen.  I haven’t subscribed to any of those websites promoting eating disorders but I have starved myself for many years in order to be perfect.  And I’m embarrassed to say how much time I’ve wasted on “if only I had a six pack” and “if only my breasts were perky.”

Yeah, I gained weight today, my breasts aren’t what they used to be and I don’t have a six pack, but I’m blessed with the body I have.  I’ve given birth to three healthy and beautiful children, and breastfed every one of them.  This ol’ body can deadlift two hundred pounds, do chest-to-bar pull ups and clapping push ups.  I’ve come a long way from the girl who thought if she was thin, then everything was right with the world.  But I continue to work on being grateful for all the things I have. I’m a work in progress.

One thing is clear. Like my body?  Yes.  Yes, I do.

Have you had body image problems?