Column: Rough Drafts

My favorite
column photo
(I still look like
this--Honest!)


This is the first column I ever wrote, beginning a 15-year career of publishing Home Front in California newspapers. It speaks of the identity shift that happens after becoming a wife and mother. At the time it was written, I had a one-year-old boy, a two-year-old girl, and a husband of just four years. There didn't seem to be much relationship between my old life and my new one, but I tried to make the connection here.

I was a girl like any other. I had dreams. I had ambitions. Can I help it if they were a little far-fetched? If I haven't achieved them, does that make me a failure?

My particular dream was to be an artist: to write great poems and present them to the world; to run in rarified circles; to travel to Europe, often; to live each moment like there was no tomorrow.

I remember that dream now, from the distant plateau of reality, of years worn away like rock and worn upon like clothing, because I recently got a letter from a firend, and old friend, whom I haven't seen in six years.

In those six years I have metamorphosed from poignant, struggling, would-be artist to plain old househag: married woman, mother of two.

Explaining this transition to my friend was a problem. Would he still respect me when he knew what I'd become?

The kids were easy. I've always wanted children. I didn't expect to have two in two years, but they're cute, they're healthy, and they're not old enough to be juvenile delinquents. I told him about the kids.

Describing how I spend my day was a little more difficult. I haven't written a poem in years. I rarely go to the movies, the theater, or a concert. I can't seem to finish a book. My current idea of excitement is letting my two-year-old run around without diapers during infrequent attempts at potty training. For adventure, we go to the drive-thru car wash.

Still, there are justifications. Everyone knows toddlers take up a lot of time. I decided not to dwell on it. One or two sentences would suffice.

But when it came to describing my husband, I was at a loss. I love him, sure, but perhaps that's because I never sat down and listed the personality traits that make up the man.

For instance, my husband loves monster movies. Our living room wall is adorned with posters of the Wolfman, Frankenstein and Ymir, a really angry looking giant lizard that came from somewhere, out there, 20 Million Miles to Earth.

Our video library is stocked with classic titles like The Hideous Sun Demon (man gets mean and hairy in the daytime); Fiend Without a Face (disembodied brains with spinal columns that can fly and suck your brains out); I Married a Monster from Outer Space (sound familiar?); and Monolith Monsters (really scary rocks that terrorize the planet by growing big and falling over on people.)

You might think that because my husband is a movie buff he would occasionally take me to one. Not so. New movies just don't do it for him. He likes his entertainment, like his philosophy, in black and white.

He also loves animals, but not the cute and furry kind. With the exception of his attack cat, Rover, he saves all his loves for amphibians, reptiles, and fish. The problem with these animals is that they die a lot.

He hates to travel, but on what basis, I'm not sure. He's only been out of the state once, on a trip to Boston when he was 10 years old. He doesn't even much like to leave the yard. His idea of a fun weekend is waxing the Studebaker or building a deck. Or, more accurately, ripping out an old deck and leaving debris all over the yard.

He doens't fancy himself a deep thinker and we almost never stay up late discussing the meaning of life.

After a couple of unsuccessful rough drafts, I finally told my husband of my dilemma. Given this list of attributes, how could I describe him as a mate suitable for a poignant, romantic, struggling would-be artist? When I met him on the college newspaper, he wanted to be a writer. Where had all his creativity gone?

"That's easy," he said. "Tell him at first I put my creativity into fixing up the house, and now I'm putting it into the kids." When he said it, I knew it was true, or at least true enough to play in Poughkeepsie.

I mean, his most endearing quality is the way he chases the laughing toddlers around the living room. Instead of a poem, or a short story, or a novel, we were creating a childhood, a family, a life. There will be time for all the rest of it, I hope.

So that's what I told my friend, and no more. I just didn't see the point of bringing The Beast With Five Fingers into it.

This column was first published in The San Francisco Progress on April 1, 1988.

Column: Childbirth by the Book

My favorite
column photo
(I still look like
this--Honest!)


You practically have to have a credential to have a baby these days. I went to childbirth classes when I was pregnant with both my children. I read books, attended seminars, even joined a "group."

I learned about the Lamaze and Bradley methods and the LeBoyer bath. I could recognize Braxton-Hicks contractions and do a Kegal on command.

I looked forward to engorgement and hoped my "let down reflex" was up to par. I worried about "transition" and dreaded the "ring of fire." I hoped my kid would give a good anterior presentation and pass his Apgar test.

I decided against circumcision, requested no episiotomy and insisted my husband hold my hand. I knew when to huff, when to puff, and when to hunker down.

I even learned about a part of my body I didn't know existed. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that no woman out there who's never had a baby can put her finger on just where her perimeum is.

But no book, class or seminar could answer the two questions that loomed largest in my mind: "How much will it hurt?" and "Will I be able to take it?"

I remember when I was about seven months pregnant with my first child, my best friend Jane asked me, in all sincerity, "Don't you worry about all the blood and guts and terrible wracking pain?"

You have to understand Jane. She wasn't trying to be mean. She really wanted to know.

I told her I tried not to think about it. If it good too bad, there was always the miracle of drugs.

But the truth was, I thought about it a lot. Would I make a fool of myself? Would my husband see me make a fool of myself? Would they have to tie me down? Would it last two hours or 20? Would I be able to do it without drugs?

When I told my friend Wanda, who lives in New Orleans, that drugs during labor were discouraged in my class she said, "Wow! You Californians must be into pain!"

I considered leaving the state.

I tried to console myself by eyeing haggard mothers in the supermarket. "If she can do it, so can I."

But the thought that brought me the most solace came from Sheila Kitzinger's Complete Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth. Kitzinger said some women had told her that having a baby was like having sex.

"You will probably have an overpowering urge to bear down and press the baby through the birth canal," Kitzinger said. "This is passionate, intense, thrilling and often completely irresistible, and for some women, it is the nearest thing to overwhelming sexual excitement."

I told my friend Joe, whose wife had labored 17 hours with a breech baby before having a Cesarean, what I had read. He just looked at me sadly and sadly shook his head, whispering a barely audible "no."

Still, it was a concept, and I was willing to run with it. After all, so many things depend on your state of mind. I just had to get psyched up. I must have read that passage 50 times.

The funny thing is that when it came down to the wire, all that preparation didn't do me much good. My mind went blank. Well, almost blank, except for one burning question: "Is is over yet?"

For the record, I did make it through without drugs, but not by choice. I was begging for a shot of something, anything, when the doctor came in to announce, "It's too late. the baby was born an hour ago."

I really think the best thing about the modern methods of childbirth is they make your husband go. That's good--not so he can share in the joyous moment of birth, but so he can appreciate the hell you've been through. I figured it was worth at least a couple of breakfasts in bed. I was right.

And now that I've actually experienced childbirth, I'd like to reassure all you uninitiated women out there. It wasn't that bad. I'd even go so far as to say Kitzinger was right: Having a baby is a lot like having sex--with a moose.

This column was first published in the San Francisco Progress on April 8, 1988.

Column: So Much for Super Mom

My favorite
column photo
(I still look like
this--Honest!)


There are basically two kinds of stay-at-home mothers: ones who spend the early morning hours bundling up their babies and driving them to exercise classes, the supermarket, the bank and the playground; and ones who spend them in their bathrobe.

In case you hadn't guessed, I'm one of the latter. Oh, I started out with good intentions, all right. I remember when I was pregnant with my first child. I had decided to quit my job and drew up a list of household projects to take care of in my "free time." I knew babies slept a lot, so I'd really be able to whip my house, my life, and my husband's life into shape.

It's now nearly two-and-a-half years later and nothing's been crossed off that list. Unless you count number one: Make list.

When I was pregnant with my second child, a mere six months after our first was born (we call him our little pumpkin surprise), I grew tired of looking like a bullfrog when I sat down and vowed to get to work getting slim as soon as the baby was born. One year later, I'm still lugging around 15 extra pounds.

Not only am I fat and disorganized, my house looks like the aftermath of the '06 quake; my laundry lives in two piles: clean and dirty; and my freezer never held so many little orange boxes.

All of this would be understandable and acceptable to me if it weren't for those "other" mothers who are constantly flaunting their superiority in my face.

Take Mindy, one of the mothers I met in Lamaze class. Mindy's the kind of mother whose house is always neat, hair always coiffed, children always clean and smartly dressed. To make matters worse, she works part time. There ought to be a law.

Mindy had her last child the same day I had mine and is trim as a privet hedge. She has a perfect body and a full wardrobe of matching leotards and Spandex tights to prove it. My only consolation is she has lost so much weight since the pregnancy that it makes her nose look big.

I dropped my kids off at her house at lunch time once. She was feeding her baby at the time and there wasn't a speck of food on the table, the floor, or even his shiny Gucci bib.

Since I know she's a nurse, I suspect she feeds all four of her offspring through plastic tubing. She must have stashed the equipment when she heard me at the door. (Personally, I prefer the feeding pen technique: Line the walls and floor with newspaper, put the bowl in front of the kid, and stand back.)

I ran into Mindy once at an exercise class. It was one of my rare, misguided attempts at supermomdom. I had gotten up early in order to feed and dress the kids, pick up my friend Sally and get to class by 9 a.m.

Sally and I, novices both, stood close together in the back to monitor each other's breathing in case of spontaneous heart attack.

Mindy, in the front row, hopped up and down like a piston. When the instructor said, "If you want to make it a little harder, put your foot on your head," we knew Mindy would. While we lay in lifeless bundles during the last 20 leg lifts, Mindy kept pumping thigh even after the music stopped.

After class, we gathered in the back to socialize. Mindy scrutinized her finger with chagrin. "I cut it this morning on a baking powder tin," she said.

Sally and I looked at each other, aghast. "You were baking this morning?" we asked in disbelief.

"Oh yes. Biscuits. It's the only time I can find when the kids don't pester me. I love to get up and get something done while the kids are still asleep."

Sally and I commiserated over coffee after class. We both admitted being concerned about Mindy. All that energy could signify a metabolic disorder. Could she be anorexic? For all her perfection, we wouldn't want to be in her size 5 tights.

We decided to order sweet rolls, just to make sure.

This column was first published in the San Francisco Progress on April 16, 1988.