Our Babies, Ourselves

Eighteen years ago this month, my first child arrived six weeks ahead of schedule. While he was hooked up to tubes and toasting away in the ICU’s isolette, I spent those first days as a mother praying for him and reading Annie Lamott’s memoir, Operating Instructions. Between the laughter and the tears, I was hoping to find that elusive “how-to” manual for mothering.

Well, my first born is heading off to college this fall and I am still looking for my very own set of operating instructions. Not the ones that will tell me all the things they think I need to do; I want the ones that help me navigate the uncharted territory of my own heart.

Back then, before the Internet and mommy blogs, we only had two sources for information: books (written by experts) and our mothers (who were clearly not). I read everything I could get my hands on. I learned a lot about what various experts believed I needed to do to be the best mother I could be. But, I rarely read anything about how it would feel to be a mother.

No one told me about the deep, surprising leonine protectiveness, the love so different from any felt before, the frustration and the constant sense of fear, the worry, the anger, the disappointment, the jealousy, the joy so profound it brings tears, the calm, the confusion, the guilt. I needed guidance for all of these unfamiliar feelings and the one person who could have helped me navigate this moonscape, my mother, was strangely silent.

My Norwegian mother married my American father at the age of nineteen. She gave birth to me at the age of twenty. She had my brother two years later, and my sister just before she turned thirty. To my mother, biology was destiny and she fulfilled it accordingly.

She worked hard to be a good mother. She made us lunches that included surprises and sang songs and painted our rooms. She was affectionate and funny and optimistic. To my mother, the glass was always half full.

But it wasn’t easy. She had no family nearby to offer support or relief or guidance. My mother is not a complainer by nature. She believed it was up to her to find her way, and she did.

As I grew up, my mother made it clear she expected me to go to college (unlike her) and have a career (unlike her). “Make your own way,” she encouraged. “Earn your own money.” Our discussions always focused on work and careers, and later marriages. Motherhood? Not so much.

When I gave birth to my son, and then later my two other children, my mother kindly shared all of her tricks. How to prevent diaper rash, how to calm a crying baby, how to deal with teething, how to deal with sibling rivalry. However, when I consider all the things my mother taught me, the one thing I wish she had been more open about was her own experience as a mother.

What did she love? What did she hate? What moved her to tears and bent her over with laughter? Did she wake in the middle of the night, tip-toe to our rooms, and stare at us as we slept in the moonlight, her heart beating with wonder? Did she bury her face in our pillows hoping to catch our lingering scent as we went off to camp and then, later, college. Did she cry at the thought that one day the one thing that brought her more joy and fulfillment would end, or rather change and evolve, leaving a nest so wide and empty a lifetime of tears couldn’t fill it?

My mother explains herself by saying, “Things are different now. Back then it wasn’t talked about because motherhood was just taken for granted.” The limited access to birth control and the lack of abortion as a real option meant that biology was destiny. Pondering the emotions of motherhood were, frankly, an effort in futility. “It was what it was,” she tells me.

But I know there is more to it than that. I am guessing, my immigrant mother struggled to reconcile her love of mothering and housewifery with the feminist expectations that pervaded our culture during my childhood years.

How could she admit that her greatest satisfaction came from cooking a gourmet meal, sewing her children’s Halloween costumes, or decorating our home when the world around her said these things were simply examples of oppression she had internalized under patriarchy? To fit in, my mother dutifully read The Feminist Mystique and was committed to ensuring her daughter would not be “trapped” as she was. In her heart, I don’t think she valued her role as a mother and so to her, what advice was there to give?

It seems she was not alone. I asked friends, acquaintances, and even a few strangers, “How did your mother prepare you for motherhood?” They all spoke of the myriad of ways they were prepared for their careers and marriages. From advice on being fiscally responsible, to how to move up the corporate ladder, to what makes a happy marriage. But not a single daughter I spoke to felt their mother had truly prepared them for the emotional weight of motherhood.

For my generation, thanks to those early feminists who helped usher in reproductive freedom, mothering is a choice and the very nature of that choice means we must make peace with it. In some ways this is the ultimate empowerment and in others it is scary as hell. If I have a choice, then I have to be responsible for that choice. Unlike the long line of mothers before me, I can no longer blame nature or men or God. The storm of emotions that accompanies the role of motherhood are mine, fully.

My mother didn’t prepare me because she was taught motherhood was destiny, motherhood was natural, and (sadly) motherhood was not all that important. She’s right, things are different now. We still debate whether motherhood is a biological imperative, but we know it isn’t predetermined.

The good news is things will be different for our daughters (and our sons). If for no other reason than our generation deeply values motherhood (some would argue at the expense of themselves. The pendulum swings…). And, unlike our mothers, we are not alone. Thanks to the rise of mothering blogs, we have someone who can help put words to how we feel.

These strangers I turn to for advice and succor offer me wisdom and guidance, and confirm that this mothering job is just not that easy. Through them, I may not have found that elusive set of operating instructions, but at least I have place to turn to when how I feel about mothering overwhelms me.

Or, as my mother has gently suggested, perhaps we can’t be fully prepared for the emotions of motherhood because, just like all good advice, you only hear it when you are ready. Maybe my mother didn’t talk about mothering because she saw that I had absorbed the lessons of my youth and didn’t value motherhood as deeply as I did having a career. Now, as my first born prepares to move into his own future, I can look back and see motherhood as the deeply rewarding and fulfilling and frustrating job that it is. Perhaps, all this time, I didn’t need to look elsewhere for those elusive operating instructions, I just needed to listen to my mother.

Did you know we take between 18,000 and 28,000 breaths a day? That’s a lot of in/out/in/out. And yet it’s something we rarely think about. It’s so natural, so essential, it doesn’t require us to think — until we have to.

I’ve been thinking about breathing lately. It may have been the yoga class I took the other day. “Focus on breath,” said the instructor. And so I did.

Focus on...

Or perhaps it was because of a recent phone call with my mother. She spent the entire time coughing, struggling to catch her breath as a result of a terrible bout with bronchitis. “Breathing is so hard,” she said.

Or perhaps it was because my teenage daughter was diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma. No one in my family or my husband’s family has this disease, but our daughter does. She plays year-round club soccer and runs track; she’s outdoors, breathing hard, almost every day. Now, not only are her muscles straining, so are her lungs.

I shared this story with my friend, the artist Faisal Abdu’Allah. He said, “Breathing’s been on my mind, too.” He lives in London and his hometown is busy preparing for the 2012 Olympics. Thinking of the athletes struggling to breath in the polluted air, motivated him to create a film called Double Pendulum.

I was reminded of his film during a recent luncheon I attended on behalf of the Environmental Defense Fund. They’ve launched a new initiative called the Moms Clean Air Force. They want to fight to reduce the health risks to our children brought on by air pollutants. You know, the kind that leaves your daughter fighting for breath as she’s racing to the finish line.

Here’s what I learned:

• American coal plants produce 386,000 tons of hazardous air pollutants every year.
• These pollutants infect our children through the air and the food supply (That mercury in tuna? Well, now you know where it comes from).
• The pollutants emitted by coal plants have been linked to birth defects, immune disorders, cancer, and … asthma.

Coal plant emissions were restricted by the Clean Air Act, signed into law in 1970 by President Richard Nixon. In 1990, President George Bush signed an amendment providing for tighter regulations. However, it wasn’t until 2000 that coal-fired plants were included in the Clean Air Act.

Now the act is being dismantled one tarnished piece of coal at a time. According to MCAF, this past spring, the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] introduced a series of rulings which would set new standards for mercury and ozone depletion. These rulings would require coal-fired plants to install emission filters on their smoke stacks providing for a significant reduction in pollution. Unfortunately, these efforts to protect our inalienable right to clean air, have become a hot potato in the game of politics.

Last week, President Obama rejected the EPA’s efforts to tighten standards for pollution. His rationale? There is too much pressure from republicans and industry to make this change. He said he would consider supporting it in 2013. Assuming, of course, he is reelected.

Industry lobbyists and certain Republicans applauded his decision. They argue that any limit on business results in lost jobs, something no one wants in a troubled economy such as the one we are all navigating right now.

It is unclear to me how requiring coal-fired plants to place filters on their smokestacks would reduce jobs. Seems to me more jobs are created as people are hired to design, create, and install the filters. In fact, many responsible coal-fired plant owners have already installed these filters at no loss of jobs or downturn in their businesses.

According to an article in The New York Times, environmentalists were deeply dismayed, calling the President’s actions a “bald surrender to business pressure, an act of political pandering and, most galling, a cold-blooded betrayal of a loyal constituency.” Yep.

Let’s be clear: Clean air is not a left or right issue. It’s an issue that effects all of our children tens of thousands of times each day.

My daughter made me a CD of her favorite songs recently. In it was “Breathe Me” by Sia. As I drove to a meeting, I blithely sang along until I stumbled over these lyrics:

I am small

I’m needy

Warm me up

And breathe me

I want my daughter, and my sons, to breathe fully and deeply. I want them to have the freedom to not even think about this essential human act. As a mother, is that too much to ask?

Earthquake Un-Preparedness

My husband and I moved from Boston to California in August of 1989. I was returning to the place of my birth. He was dutifully following me, with one condition: no earthquakes.

“Don’t worry,” I said as I loaded our few belongings into the small hatchback which would carry us across the country and into our new lives. “I grew up there. You might get the occasional 4.0 rattler, but The Big One is a myth meant to keep people away. Sort of like rain in Seattle.” Uh huh.

Two months later, Loma Prieta cracked open and shook us to the core. The destruction in and around our Oakland rental was devastating. That afternoon, I was home studying for graduate school mid-terms. As glass and furniture flew around, I cowered under my desk. Meanwhile my husband, who worked far south — just miles from the epicenter — stood watching the undulating street outside the wavering windows while the ceiling fell in pieces around him. He didn’t know about duck and cover. Thank god, he was unharmed. But, because he relied on public transportation to get to his job, it took him well into the night to get back to me. When he did, we clung together, our innocence — and arrogance — lost. So much for earthquake preparedness.

We learned our lesson. Now, we do our best to be ready in the event of an emergency. Our garage is stocked with supplies to last a week, or longer. We have water, medicine, food, cooking equipment, flashlights, sun-powered radios, blankets, stuff for the pets, even a deck of cards. We’ve practiced with our children what to do, whom to call, where to meet, when The Big One hits. Perhaps it’s because the threat of earthquakes somehow feels more real these days than it did back then, we don’t treat it as a joke any more.

In the past two years, we’ve seen earthquakes ravage Chile, New Zealand, and Japan. These countries make up three of the four quarters of the Pacific Plate. The San Andreas Fault makes up the fourth. If the geological theorists are correct, we’re next.

Simon Winchester, author of A Crack in the Edge of the World, about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, recently wrote that as a result of these “triggering” events, “a lot of thoughtful people in the American West..are very nervous indeed—wondering, as they often must do, whether the consent that permits them to inhabit so pleasant a place might be about to be withdrawn, sooner than they have supposed.”

He is right. This paradise has a slithering, writhing snake that threatens to strike at any moment. Take last Thursday for example. Just as my children were practicing their duck and cover routines for The Great California Shake Out the earth, in all her irony, decided to throw in a little jolt to test their fortitude. Not once, but twice.

My children were rattled. So was I. The news reports detailed the mass of people who ran out of their buildings when the earthquake hit, exactly the opposite of what we are all taught to do. Worried they wouldn’t do the right thing in an earthquake, my children wanted me to assure them, everything would be fine. But will it?

I think of my dear friend, M. Recently a childhood friend, the maid-of honor at her wedding, was getting her hair done in Seal Beach. A disgruntled ex-husband walked into the hair salon and gunned her, and everyone else, down. As I tried to console M., I pondered the lesson for us all: try as we might, there is so much for which we can’t ever prepare.

And yet, while I know The Big One is inevitable and I know that all the preparation in the world may not prepare us for the likely devastation, that doesn’t stop me from trying. At the very least, it gives me solace to know I have done what I can. That is what I told my children as we practiced drop and cover, yet again.

My Dad, the Breast Cancer Survivor

In 1978, a few weeks after Christmas, my father had a radical mastectomy. The last words he said to me before the surgery were,  “they can take my nipple but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them take my ovaries.” So like my father to lighten the mood with a joke but, of course, cancer is no laughing matter.

A month before, my father had found a small pea size lump just below his left nipple. He was lucky to have doctors who immediately recognized the lump for what it was: breast cancer. Then, as now, breast cancer was rare in men. Only 2% of newly diagnosed cases each year are men. However, because so few people recognize that men can be afflicted with this disease, diagnosis often comes at a very late stage when treatment is difficult and, sadly, often too late.

I don’t remember much from that Christmas. I was sixteen and busy with my own teenage dramas. My parents decided to wait until after the holiday to tell us so we had no idea our family was at risk. I wonder of the silent pain they must have suffered. What fears were coursing through their veins as we ripped open our gifts and ate the holiday meal? In many ways, I am grateful to them for their discretion. Besides worrying, what could I really do?

I called my father the morning of his surgery. My parents insisted we children go to school and treat this day like any other day.  But, I had snuck out of my biology class to wish him luck and to tell him I loved him.  When I spoke to him, he, the center of our universe — the rock under which we all found shade — was nearly incoherent. They had given him Vicodin to calm his nerves, but the drug made him so loopy he wasn’t making any sense.   It was then that I became truly afraid. I returned to my biology class and tried to make sense of the DNA sequence our teacher was trying to drill into our heads. It was hard to see the patterns of Ds, As, Ts, Ps and Gs though my tears. Years later, this genetic template would be at the root of concerns about my own risk for breast cancer, and the source of an ongoing debate about whether I should get tested for the BRAC 1 and BRAC 2 genes.

My father’s surgery was successful. The cancer was entirely contained within the lump and had not spread to his lymph nodes or other parts of his body. He did not require chemotherapy or even radiation. His recovery, he has told me, was uneventful. The only reminder of his dance with breast cancer is a long and thick scar that runs across the left side of his chest as though one eye is winking, making a last joke for us all.

My father is shy about his breast cancer. “It is embarrassing,” he says. He is not alone. Most men don’t want to discuss their diagnosis or their recovery. The machinery in place to advocate and support breast cancer survivors is, understandably, geared towards women. When I go for my annual mammogram, I think about my father in this room filled with women. The walls are Pepto Bismal pink. The women, naked from the waist up and covered with a thin garment that does not hide or support the pendulum of their breasts, do not acknowledge each other. No one wants to be here, least of all, I imagine, him.

It is unclear whether I am at greater risk for breast cancer. There are so few men who have had it, and fewer still who have survived, that studies of male breast cancer are difficult to conduct. The vast majority of breast cancers occur in women and this, I believe, is where our focus should be.

However, as October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I thought it important to share my family’s experience. When I read the stories of Nancy Nick, Ashley WennersHerron and Tony Via whose fathers all died of breast cancer due to poor diagnosis and lack of awareness, I know I was lucky. My father has lived long enough to see me marry, to meet his three grandchildren, and to prove that a good joke is still the best medicine. For this, I am deeply grateful.

Troy Davis

My son and I watched The Green Mile the other night. You may know the story: An African-American man is falsely accused of murder, and, despite their conviction that he is innocent, his jailers are required to execute him. You see, he was given the death penalty for a crime he didn’t commit.

After the movie ended, my son shook his head (was that a tear I saw?) and said, “That just isn’t right.”

No. It’s not. But that is just what may have happened this week in Atlanta when Troy Davis was put to death after being convicted of murdering a police officer in 1989. When my son asks me about it, and he will, how do I tell him injustice doesn’t only happen in the movies, that truth often resembles fiction, and sometimes it is?

According to the Innocence Project, the case against Troy Davis consisted entirely of witness testimony that contained inconsistencies, even at the time of the trial. Many of the original witnesses have since stated they were pressured or coerced by police into testifying or signing statements against Davis. I wonder what his executioners were thinking in the last moments of Troy Davis life. Perhaps they didn’t doubt his guilt, but I do.

For me, the tragedy and turmoil of his state-sanctioned killing is a reflection of the deep flaws in our capital punishment system. And it’s not only in Georgia, but here in Our Fair State, too.

There are 694 men and 19 women sitting on death row in California. We have executed 13 people since 1978. As of February 2006, however, all death penalty cases were stopped when lethal injection was legally challenged. As challenges to the death penalty work their way through the courts, the average time between death sentences and executions is 25 years and, in some cases, more than 30 years. Meanwhile, the tab is adding up.

According to a Los Angeles Times study, California spends $250 million per execution. Further, it costs approximately $90,000 more a year to house an inmate on death row than in the general prison population, or $57.5 million annually. Finally, Death Penalty Focus claims California could save $1 billion over five years by replacing the death penalty with permanent imprisonment.

Don Heller, a Republican, former prosecutor and the author of the 1978 ballot initiative that reinstated California’s death penalty, says, “It makes no sense to prop up such a failed system.” Now after 33 years, Heller is advocating for the repeal of death penalty, in favor of life without parole.

“I am convinced that at least one innocent person may have been executed under the current death penalty law,” Heller wrote in a recent op-ed piece. Sounds like a Troy Davis situation to me.

Heller urges California voters to support a new ballot initiative (SB490) called SAFE California that would abolish the state’s death penalty.

But, you say, violent criminals are still out there, and they need to be punished. Perhaps, if we could be sure of the criminal’s guilt, one could argue there are certain instances in which the death penalty is merited. But can we ever be fully sure?

Unlike the case against Troy Davis, we don’t rely on the questionable testimony of coerced witness these days. We have DNA. Sadly, as we look to DNA to match a violent criminal with a violent crime, we must remember that even this latest of solutions is riddled with problems. Turns out crime labs fail (except, of course, the ones on CSI).

Consider the crime lab scandal that has rocked San Francisco. A report detailing shoddy testing and analytic reporting was buried by the SF Police Department, and now case upon case is being challenged in the San Francisco courts. The fallout from the scandal means guilty criminals are being released, and the innocent may be convicted.

The report claims Cherisse Boland, an analyst in the DNA unit of the San Francisco Police Department Crime Laboratory, did not do her full job in a 2007 murder case. Apparently, she didn’t pursue the extensive DNA material left by others. She “stopped short once she had partial genetic matches to the two men police believed had committed the crime.” In other words, she gave the police what they wanted to hear (sounds a little like the witnesses in the Troy Davis case, but I digress).

Frankly, it is so completely understandable. We have someone we think is guilty and we ignore the evidence that might reveal another narrative, one not so neatly solved. And, as any lover of The Wire knows, solving cases is critical for police departments and for the careers of police officials. The crime lab scandal in San Francisco shows us that just as eye-witness testimony can be flawed, so can DNA testing. In other words, we simply can’t be sure.

As I kiss my children in bed at night, I try to ignore the horrors that swirl outside our front door: kidnapping, rape, murder. I know they exist; the headlines remind me every day. I choose not to imagine how I might feel if someone, anyone, hurt my beloveds. Perhaps an eye for an eye would be a welcome relief to something so necessarily unimaginable. I don’t know what is right, but I do know what is wrong.

Killing a man who just might be innocent is wrong.

If there was a fool-proof solution, an iron-clad answer, a truth so crystalline nothing murky could mar its clarity, then and maybe only then, an eye for an eye could be justified. But this issue is as gray as the fog that hangs over Our Fair City these recent mornings. I don’t have an answer for my children. Do you?

Old Glory

When I was five, we traveled back to my mother’s home country of Norway to visit family. While there, we joined the nation in celebrating its National Day, an annual tradition marked by parades and speeches. I remember ticker tape falling like snow as I watched from the window of my grandfather’s office building. But it was the sea of red, white, and blue flags dancing in the breeze on that cool May day, hundreds of them held high by parade participants and viewers alike, that I remember most of all.

Flags are a symbol of pride for Norwegians. Nearly every home has a flag pole and on that pole you will see the country’s flag waving, not just on special occasions, but each and every day.

In California of the1960s, flag burning was more common than flag waving, particularly where we lived. When I was growing up, pledging allegiance to the flag was considered reprobate, the antithesis of morally correct behavior; at the very least, it was totally uncool. We ripped up old flags and used the pieces to make shirts, purses, and even patch our threadbare Levi 501s (button-up, of course). We certainly didn’t display flags on poles for all the town to see.

Well, actually we did.

My mother insisted on having a flag pole in our backyard. On it, she flew a Norwegian and an American flag. She wanted her dual-identity to be known and honored. She wanted the world to know that when you choose your country, you have a different relationship to the symbols that speak to patriotism. She didn’t care if it was “uncool.” My mother chose to be here and she was proud of her choice.

As I grew older, displaying the American flag became closely aligned with right-wing politics. This left me and my left-of center outlook feeling disconnected. The flag, and what it symbolized, seemed unsophisticated, narrow-minded (yes, I see the irony), and too, well, patriotic.

Until September 11, 2001.

Suddenly, I found myself looking for a symbol that would communicate solidarity with my fellow countrymen no matter of their race, religion, politics, or heritage. I was not alone. In the weeks and months that followed I saw flags on cars, flags in windows, and flags  on newly installed poles. Even some of my most progressive friends were proudly waving the flag.

As I consider the myriad of changes our country has journeyed through since that day a decade ago when our innocence was finally and fully lost, I think our relationship to the American flag, and what it means to proudly display it, has changed. Not much good seems to have come from that tragedy, but at the very least we have let down our cynicism just enough to reclaim our flag.

No longer is it a symbol of one political party’s rigid idea of America. Now, as long ago, it is a symbol of common ground, a symbol of the place we choose to call our home, a symbol for all Americans to honor.

This week, I am waving my flag. It may not be cool, but finally, I am old enough to not care.

Endnote: My prayers go out to those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001 and to those who have been moved to fight on our behalf in the decade since.