When Things Go Wrong (Updated)

Murphy's law postulates that if something can go wrong, it will. Or, more precisely, when things just can't go wrong because they will cause you great trouble, they do go wrong.

Today was such a day. I was going to go with my husbad to Washington D.C. where we'd drop him off at the airport and then spend the night at my BIL's house, but then, an hour before the time we were supposed to leave, our car suddently broke down. It just wouldn't start. We were already calling for a tow truck from our insurance's roadside assistance and I was at a pizza place getting the boys to eat an improvised lunch when my husband got the car to start again. By then we had already started looking for car rentals for him to drive down on his own and even though the car was now working, we followed through with this plan. My husband left two hours after the time we had planned to leave and got to the airport very late.

Now he's there, going to the gate, but he doesn't know whether he'll be able to fly or not, 'cause they didn't give him a seat. I'm just waiting to see what happens. The flight is scheduled to leave in 35 minutes.

Updated to add: He made it to the flight, but he had to wait until the last minute to find out. He checked in, but they didn't give him a seat, he went to the gate and there things were straightened out. I'm actually relieved that I didn't have to go to Maryland, because I'd be coming back tomorrow and returning on Sunday morning. Now I just need to go on Sunday, much better! I can't wait until Monday morning, though... I just miss him too much (and not just because he gets up with the boys in the morning and lets me sleep a little more :)

OK, so now that I shared today's story, let me tell you how he got to JFK airport (in NY) last Thursday. When he got to the Philly airport, they told him his flight was late and that he'd miss the flight to Brazil if he took it, so, they called a taxi (!!!) which drove him to New York just barely in time to catch the flight (50 minutes before the flight). The airline paid the fare, but he had to pay the 20% tip, 60 bucks. You do the math... It cost almost half the price of his airfare to Brazil!

Woman Kicked off Plane for Breastfeeding!

Breastfeeding in the news again! This might have happened because the child was older (22 monhts). I haven't been breastfeeding my 29 month old in public anymore, but in our recent plane trips to Nashville I just had to to settle him down, or he would start screaming. Nobody was in the seat with us, though, and I turned my back to the people on the other side of the aisle. I guess those things helped.

My secret for nursing on airplanes is wearing a nursing top (mine are all from Motherwear since I was able to buy them at their outlet store -- my sons were born 1 mile from the factory and store, actually). This October I wasn't wearing one, (I have started wearing regular clothes and bras now, I'm tired of four years (actually 5 1/2 years) of maternity and nursing fashions non-stop), but luckily I had a cardigan sweater with me and that helped. I guess covering up is important for the sake of others. I think I'd refuse a blanket too, like that woman did, I tend NOT to want to cover up if people just have me do it (it's in my rebellious nature :).

Thanks M, from Separation of Spheres for posting the link.

Two Years and Counting!

Two years ago today I posted on this blog for the first time.

It's been a very good "journey" so far, as I have recently written about. Reading other blogs has enabled me to connect to other mothers (and a few fathers too) like myself and also taught me so much about other people's experiences. I can confidently say that I am a much more open, empathetic, accepting, and conciliatory person after all that I have experienced online. I have now a greater respect for other people's (particularly mothers') experiences and have become much less judgemental as a result. Of course I still have strong feelings regarding the things that I believe in, but I think that each person's life circumstances are different and people make different choices based on those.

I'm not very motivated to write today (I've been trying to write this since morning), but I wanted to write a post to mark this day one more time. The post I wrote last year is so happy and light hearted, it seems like it was ages ago. Today is not a good day for me to reflect on this, but I think the past year has changed me quite a bit. I got sick, I've been having a hard time being a mom full time, I still have the dissertation looming over my head and a few jobs to apply to. I feel like life is finally catching up with me. But, more on that later... I promise.

Down Will Come Baby...

... Mother and all.

I know that's not how this song (which has pretty tragic lyrics) ends, but that's what happened to us this Saturday.

Literary Mama has a column with the same name written by Rebecca Kaminsky (which I went and re-read all over again today). In the first installment, she describes how she dropped her month old baby and then used this accident as a metaphor for the pos-partum depression that followed. I truly don't want to regard our fall as a metaphor for anything that is happening or may take place in our lives in the near future, I just wanted to share a scary moment.

Ever since I had babies and I've been climbing up and down the stairs while holding them (both our homes have two floors, plus basements) many times a day, I always think to myself, "What if I fall with the baby in my arms? What if I drop the baby?" Well, it had to happen sometime, I guess...

On Saturday afternoon I was in church with the boys when my oldest said he needed to go to the bathroom. We got out the front side door and started climbing down the steep stairs with my almost 2 1/2 year old in my arms, when he told me he had already wet his pants. I got a bit mad at him and told him to hurry and not to get it even more wet and I started walking faster too. That's when I lost my balance. I had only gone 2/3 of the way down and was some 5 steps from the bottom. I instinctively turned to shield Linton (who's pretty heavy, I should add, at almost 30 pounds/ 13.6 kg) and a friend who was walking by tried to catch me (he only hurt his arm), but I scraped my knee and elbow and fell almost on top of my son, who only had a red arm as a consequence. He started crying and I quickly checked him out for any injuries. Kelvin was quite upset, asking me repeatedly why that had happened and why I hadn't been more careful.

"All is well that ends well" so the saying goes, but it was pretty scary. And I had to drive with a sore knee as well. My right arm is sore from the fall too. I'm glad I was the one who got hurt, though, and not him. I'll be extra careful from now on!

Still There?

It feels like I haven't blogged for such a long time (hence the question in the title), but it has been less than a week. I'd made a kind of "resolution" to post more often, but life has been intervening. I guess I'm not participating of NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) for a reason :) although I'm enjoying imensely to read daily (or almost daily :)) posts by some of my favorite bloggers such as Sandra (Here in Korea), Jody (Raising WEG), Chigagomama, and Susan (ReadingWritingLiving). Did I forget anyone in my blogroll that is participating? And meanwhile, I miss the posts by those NaNoWriMo participants Jo and Kateri (I know Sandra is trying to do both!).

anyway, we've had some crazy days around here and I'm really exhausted. My husband went to Brazil for the weekend and thankfully is returning this morning. Trip preparations kept us busy last week, and then I had the kids full time for four nights and three days. Did I mention that I'm exhausted? Well, yes, and to make me even more exhausted just thinking about it, he's going again this weekend, can you believe it?

So I wouldn't have to be here all by myself all weekend, on Saturday evening, after a really looong day at church, I drove to Maryland to spend less than 24 hours with my brother- and sister-in-law and my two cute nephews. The boys had a great time, they didn't want to leave. Good for them that we're going back there on Thursday (hubby's leaving from Dulles) and then on Sunday.

Well, I do take responsibility for part of my exhaustion, since I do get involved in many things such as leading a singing group and cooking (for church) and last week I also helped out a Brazilian "neighbor" (she lives in the next town over, some 10 blocks away), taking her and her twin kids shopping in a Luso-Brazilian market in New Jersey on Friday while I should be cleaning, cooking, and preparing for the group practice (in my home every Friday night) + impromptu surprise birthday party for one of the members. But a lot of my tiredness is caused by having to care for the boys and get up at 5 am to give Linton breakfast. Well, more on that later. I have to go clean my kitchen which is a wreck from all the cooking I did on Friday and Saturday morning, and try to prepare something for my husband to have for lunch. And we're picking him up at the airport in less than 2 hours.

Restaurant Savy

These past few days weren't easy for Kelvin, since he wasn't allowed to eat almost every food that he asked to eat. He then began to talk constantly about food, making long lists of his favorite foods, poor thing. On Friday, though, he told me something that I found very amusing. Both boys (but particularly him) love to eat out, even though that's a very rare treat in our household, something that happens once a month, at the most.

"Mama," he said, "when can we go to a restaurant where we can sit down and ask for the food?"

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I don't like those restaurants in which we go and get the food. I only like the ones where they bring the food to us!"

Smart, huh? I started laughing, thinking that the last two times we ate out were at IKEA and Panera Bread, places where we go and pick up the food (he did tell me later, though that he did like Panera), and that it has been a while since we've eaten at a sit down and order place :) His favorite is Olive Garden, BTW... it's there that I first saw him eat lettuce, at the age of 2 1/2. Too bad the dressing costs 25 bucks a jar.

Ominous Start

I couldn't get to sleep very easily last night. I couldn't forgive myself for what happened. Thankfully, I do feel better now, so I'm glad I didn't get up to post on the blog as I felt like doing. I had even felt better earlier, when I originally found out the bad news yesterday afternoon.

Last year, after I applied to one lone job, I aptly described myself as an "accidental applicant." Well, who knew that a year later I'd be even worse off! First, I had (and I'm still having) a hard time to finally decide to go ahead and apply for the first job. The late decision meant a very short notice request or my committee member to write recommendation letters. The postmark deadline was yesterday. My former advisor was traveling and thought he wouldn't make it, but I practically begged him to try and mail a letter and he did. I got his email in the afternoon and I gave a sigh of relief.

I forgot one small detail though, checking with the third reference, the committee member who was so enthusiastic with my work last October that she seemed to be eager to write letters recommending me. My initial mistake was sending two emails in sequence. The first with the request for the said letter (including the job posting and an attached CV), the second, shortly after, with the deadline for the next applications -- since I wanted to get ahead with those and not give them such a short notice. She responded to the second, and I thought she'd meant that OK, she'd write the letter. I didn't find out until it was almost evening yesterday, and too late to mail a letter, that she in fact hadn't mailed the letter. The university in question won't even look at my application if all materials aren't postmarked by Nov. 6. How disappointing! We exchanged 13 emails (about other topics too) last night, and I took it in stride, I told her it was OK, and she agreed with me that it was a very long shot anyway...

But all that doesn't take away from the pain that I won't even have tried, and it's only partly my fault. It doesn't take away my shame because my former advisor had to go through so much trouble to mail a letter. I feel very discouraged to send the next handful of applications. This is not the only reason, though. I won't have time to get an "official" dossier together through the university's career center. I didn't even know about this until last week when my advisor told me I shouldn't be asking them for letters, but should put together a dossier. I haven't been on campus for the past two years and I haven't attended any workshops on the job search, etc, I'm blaming that for my situation. My only references are what I can find online, particularly in the Chronicle Careers site. I feel I'm even worse off than the "accidental applicant" I was last year, I'm actually a clueless and proably "undeserving" one. All this makes me hate academia with a vengeance. If I'm ill prepared to apply, what does that say to my preparedness to even be considered for a position?

Oh, who cares? I don't think I do, really. When it gets to a point like this I start to see all of this like a game, it's just a very artificial and set up game, only those who know the rules can have any part on it. I think of all the things Articulate Dad has written about his fruitless searches. I think of the negative thoughts I have at each academic conference (I need to post about that sometime), and I just feel very sad and even disgusted. I do not fit in, that's clear enough. I may be talented, but I'm not really a player, I haven't been properly trained, I did take the "dissertation seminar" from my dept, which does prepare us for the market in a way, twice (second time I just audited), but that wasn't enough, and not being there doesn't help me much. I mean, if I could meet with my committee members, it would be much easier.

Well, in retrospect, I felt very flattered that the lone application I sent last year yielded an email saying that they might do a phone interview (it never happened because I went to Brazil in December-January and they found a match at the MLA), so I was kind of confident in my ability to write good letters and stuff. Two of the postings do ask for dossiers, though, and it will be so time consuming to put something together. I don't know what I'll do at this point. I'll try, I guess, but my heart is not really on it. Particularly because of one key point: even if I had an offer, my husband's offers will probably come only a few weeks later, and I wouldn't even be able to make a decision. I want to check whether any of those "first person" essays in the Chronicle about dual career couples addressed this issue -- the one experienced by couples from different fields. Well, that said, I just wanted to get all that off my chest. It probably won't stay at the top for long. I'm going to write a parenting post, since those are more fun and uplifting anyway! :)

Slowly Getting Better

Things are very slowly getting better here at Casa in Translation. Linton, the youngest, is pretty much all better now -- except that he doesn't want to sleep in his own bed anymore (of course) and still wants to nurse in the middle of the night... sigh. I'm sure that my milk helped him cope better with the virus. He'd been down to pretty much two breastfeeding sessions a day, morning and night, with some night nursing while we were in Massachusetts and when he had a cold, so I had to drink lots of Mother's Milk tea and let him nurse often to get my supply up.

Kelvin is still feeling pretty sick. Like I thought, he didn't vomit again, but yesterday he had diarrhea the whole day and he was very tired, sleeping a lot. Now the challenge is having him restrict his food input to the "BRAT" diet (babnanas, rice, applesauce, toast), or potatoes (which he doesn't like) and pasta. Last night after Linton slept I spent a lot of time with him, just cuddling and talking, it felt great, after a whole weak with Linton constantly in my lap, whining and needy. The good thing with older kids is that you can actually have very nice conversations with them. Kelvin cracks me up sometimes, I have to post some things he's been saying lately.

There are tons of things I want to write about, but it's just a bit tough right now. I hope to be able to do so pretty soon, though, OK?

Here We Go!

My little one is slowly getting better, but he woke up countless times between 3-6 am in the past two nights. It makes for a very tired mama.

This evening, his older brother finally caught up with him... and vomited, even though he'd been saying all day, like a mantra, "I don't want to vomit, mama, I don't want to get sick." Poor thing. He was devastated. I had told him to try and wash his hands often so he wouldn't catch his brother's virus, but of course that was almost unavoidable (and I shouldn't have given him any hope that he might avoid it). After it happened he kept saying, "But I washed my hands and I tried to stay away from Linton!" Well, now he says he doesn't want to ever go close to his brother again... That would take care of the sibling rivalry all right! :)

And to think they may have caught the virus from their little cousin! How long do these horrible creatures live anyway? My nephew was sick three weekends ago, when we were in Nashville. His diarrhea (which happened after he was already eating and feeling OK) abated nine days before they came to visit on Saturday.

Now I'm really really afraid of getting it too. How am I ever eat again thinking that it might be my last meal for a while? Oh boy, this is tough.

Thanks everyone for your lovely comments in my previous post. It warms my heart to know that you too have found wonderful friends and felt happier because of blogging. And Jeannette, I should have included you on that list, of course! As soon as the boys get better, we HAVE to get together. Oh, and talking about play dates I'm feeling really guilty that my Brazilian friend who's almost a neighbor (they live in the next town over, walking distance from us) came to visit with her twins, boy and girl (almost 5 years old), yesterday. I hope they don't catch it too!!

Updated to add: And I have to send out a job application tomorrow. Fun, huh?

How Blogging Changed My Life

This post wasn't meant to see the light for a while. I also really dislike the title, but I wasn't able to come up with anything better, more original, fresh or smart-sounding -- sorry about that! :) I wanted to write the post slowly, create a "masterpiece" that conveyed all my feelings about this subject. But then late last night I read Corey's beautiful post about meeting Alice and her family last summer (here's Alice's response) and it moved me so much, that I just couldn't wait to write about this.

When I started blogging, almost two years ago, I felt unbearably lonely. It's true that I had just moved to a new city from a place where I had lived for eight years (MA) and I had just had my second baby while caring for a 2 year old. Loneliness was not a new feeling for me, though. For eight long years I had missed my country and my friends and tried to cope with being an expatriate, a graduate student in another country, trying to fit in and teach in a college system that was quite different from the one I had been exposed to in Brazil. After I had my sons, though, and all our friends in Brazil started having children around the same time (in 2003-4, before moving from MA to PA, I had visited Brazil and our first-born children had all played together), it became even harder to be here, separated not only from our best friends, but also from their children.

Of course these friendships were mostly based on past experiences, but those had been intense enough to keep us very close. During all those eight years (it's been over ten now), my husband would argue with me that my problem with not having friends or not being as close as I wanted to my friends was something that I'd experienced even back in Brazil, and he was right in this respect. I always struggled with the fact that I was never able to remain as close I used to be to my high-school friends after we all went to college, got boyfriends, got married. The problem with me was that I needed to share a lot of myself in order to feel close to them. I always kept journals and wrote poems (which I shared with my friends), and even wrote them letters, but all that was a "one way" communication. After we moved to the U.S. virtually none of my close friends from Brazil ever wrote regular emails to me and that really made me very lonely (there's one exception, Marco, but he "doesn't count" because he's a blogger and a writer and he'd always respond to my emails because he loves to write, like me).

All right, I'm crying, almost sobbing, as I write this. Let me backtrack a bit. After I met my husband in 1990, we formed several life-long friendships in the years that led to our move to this country in 1996. He became close friends with several of my high-school friends and together we met lots of new people in the university and while singing in a choir that traveled all over the country. So we made many incredible friends and had unforgettable and profound experiences together. Then we left them all behind and embarked on a new journey. For 10 years we have been trying to keep in touch, meet for all-night-long conversations (although things get much more complicated when we all have children) when we go to Brazil, like the one that we had the night before I wrote this post. But it's always hard to try to convey eight, nine years of experiences in a foreign country to your friends who remained in Brazil, not to mention the fact that we sometimes had to waste a lot of time trying to make them understand how politics works here (Brazilians are generally VERY critical of the U.S., to the point of obnoxiousness, to say the least). Anyway, what I wrote on that post last January kind of sums up my relationship with blogging -- it came to mean "living" for me -- interacting with other people, getting to know people, so I wouldn't feel lonely and would feel alive. So I wrote:

These days I’m not blogging because I’m finally “living” instead of just pretending I have a life, which I is the case most of the time when I’m not in Brazil, particularly because I when I’m in the US I feel the need to be online a lot, it’s the only semblance to “having a life” that I can find in our lives there, my only way to interact with like-minded people, to meet new friends, etc. Depressing, isn’t it?

and

I finally don’t feel jealous of Jo(e), who’s one of my favorite bloggers, particularly because of her wonderful, moving posts about her family and her rich, fulfilling life experiences. And I feel like I can finally identify with many moments described by one of my favorite mama writers, Catharine Newman (e.g. I can’t even begin to describe here Kelvin’s budding relationship to our best friends’ daughter Beatriz [photo below], I can finally appreciate fully when Catharine writes about Ben and Ava. Too bad we’re going away in just 2 weeks

I have spent ten years torn between living here and going back to Brazil. I would often complain to my husband that I felt lonely, that we needed to go back to Brazil because only there we could have a satisfying social life and real friends. After the children were born, the friends there actually started begging us to come back, showing us how good friends our children were (which is true, see the photo on the left), how lovely it would be to have them grow up together (I'm going to start crying again) since they were all the same age and could be friends like we were. We still don't know if going back the way for us, there are so many issues at stake like I wrote on the post cited above.

One thing has definitely changed, or "evolved" from January to now. I no longer think that my "online life" as opposed to a "real life" is depressing anymore, on the contrary. All right, first let me say that I am aware that I'm absolutely addicted to blogging. I talk about blog posts and my blogger friends all the time with my husband (it was very tough to refrain from talking to my parents about it, I guess this is one of the reasons why we didn't talk much in the 10 months they were here, and I do feel kind of bad about this). Moreover, I often feel guilty about how much time I spend reading other people's blogs, commenting, and writing on my blog.

However, I started to feel OK about it one day after a long conversation in the car with my husband, driving back from Maryland one Sunday night last Summer. I was very surprised by what he told me. He said that I had become a much easier person to live with in the past year. That I didn't complain as much and that I was generally happy all the time. I just sat there, in silence, mulling his words over. I then said tentativelly,

"Don't you think then that it's bad that I spend so much time blogging? Am I not wasting my time?" and he responded that no, it wasn't. I won't ever forget what he said next, though:

"Have you noticed that you have stopped saying that you want to go back to Brazil?"

I just sat there, dumbfounded. Even I didn't know that blogging had changed my life that much. We were silent for a while, letting this realization sink in. It was only after I started to make friends through blogging, to feel part of a community that shared many of my interests and had similar experiences, that I felt truly happy and stopped wishing for an "external change" (going back to Brazil and to our "old" friends) to make my life right. We then talked of how meaningful it was to me to have "met" these people, how fulfilling it was to be able to share my thoughts and feelings with like-minded friends, even if virtually. I had found what I had been longing for all those years, struggling to try to find time to share my thoughts, my journals, my life, with my now very busy friends. My husband wisely concluded:

"You're the kind of person who needs to share yourself with other people and when that need is met [through blogging], you're a much easier person to live with."

I realize that all these years the pressure on him was huge. I mean, it wasn't easy on him being an expatriate either, but I'm sure it was even harder having his wife complaining (and he hates whining) about how you don't have any friends, how you don't have time to read what she wrote in her journal (he does read the blog now :), or and how we should go back to Brazil because then we wouldn't feel so lonely... Regardless of that, I'm truly glad that he appreciates and values my experience with blogging.

The best part of all these "virtual friendships" is that they can become "in real life" friendships too!! Corey's post describes this really well. First, I really identify with what Corey wrote about emails or written communication such as blogging: "when I write about my thoughts via email or a blog, I feel a kind of expanse of space and time, a limitless freedom to be who I am."

Then, her description of meeting Alice was so wonderful:

We were meeting each other for the first time “backwards”: We met for the first time already knowing each other's difficulties, struggles, foibles and pet peeves rather than first putting up our best personas until our true selves slowly seeped through. But meeting that way means having already gotten to know each other and not needing to start from the beginning. We met already having gained the trust of the other.

I felt a similar connection with Cloudscome when we met over the Summer. I'm really looking forward to the day when I get to meet Alice, Corey, Kate, Juliet, Jo(e), Articulate Dad, Professing Mama, Professor Me, Aliki, and many others (I'm not including the links, sorry) in person as I have already met Kateri, Jo, Andi, Marta, and Cloudscome.

And now, Corey, you have to email me your phone number so I can call sometime so you can hear my voice, and I yours! :)

The Motherhood Manifesto Film

MomsRising is a great organization which "has a goal of championing core motherhood and family issues in political, social, and economic spheres" particularly here in the United States, which is a country which only values mothers and families nominally, but not in its policies and work environemnt.

They have published The Motherhood Manifesto (which is available at Amazon for only 2.99) and now they have produced a great documentary film version.

"Did you know [that] only four countries in the world—Lesotho, Swaziland, Papua New Guinea and the United States fail to provide paid maternity leave to all workers?" This and other facts are presented in this one hour film.

You can buy the film here. It costs only 6 dollars for shipping and DVD pressing.

You can also watch more clips of funny animation containted in the film here.

I'm glad I signed a petition to stop discrimination against mothers here in Pennsylvania (you can sign even if you don't live here) in the site and became a registered user, that's how I received an email announcing this film. You can register there too. It's a great way to participate in activistm on behalf or mothers and children in the U.S.

Spoke Too Soon

My son seemed to be better during the day, in spite of a total lack of appetite. I fed him only baby cereal with soy milk and some crackers. He didn't even want to drink water. He vomited again in the evening, after having one very loose bowel movement.

We're still in the woods.

I'm not feeling great either. Not much of an appetite and some abdominal pains. I hope things don't get worse tomorrow (today, I should say :)


On other news of an academic nature, I have finally started working on job applications. I'm happy to report that my husband and I have found positions for both of us to apply in three universities and there's a fourth geographical area with universities in commuting distance from each other that both can also apply. I know four is a very small number, but it's still better than zero!! At least now I'm getting a bit more motivated to apply. I'll keep you posted.

A Quickie (Updated)

I was quite busy this weekend, so I wasn't able to write. I had a friend's baby shower to attend and my brother- and sister-in-law's came to visit. It was the first time that my youngest nephew (4 months old) came here. The boys had lots of fun with their older cousin (who's 2 like my youngest).

One thing I haven't even mentioned in my previous posts and which I want to explore later is that for over two weeks in the middle of this month, my 2 year old got sick with a cold and also started waking up and crying every night, sometimes more than once. Before that, when I went to Massachusetts he also started nursing again in the middle of the night even though I night weaned him in June. Sleeping by my side just made it irresistible. It was hard to get him back on track and for a while we thought that the whole end of the family bed thing was just a delusion... but, things are slowly getting better. Last week he slept through the night on his crib and bedroom for two nights in a row -- I couldn't even believe it when I woke up. During the weekend the boys slept on mattresses the floor of our room, but they didn't wake up either.

Oh, yeah, and all of a sudden my ravenous eater, the 2 year old, is not interested in eating anymore, which is stressing me out. A few hours ago he vomited (all over his bed - thankfully, he had already vomited a small amount before falling asleep and I, fearing the worst, put him on a matress on our bedroom). I'm hoping it's not the stomach flu, like it happened with Aliki last weekend (and with my nephew two weekends ago). Wish us luck. I'll keep you posted.


Pending posts: I want to tell you, two months late, about our Florida vacation; I want to write more about the boys, and I also have a couple more parenting posts. I'm delighted that my previous post ressonated with so many people!

Updated to add: my son woke up feeling fine this morning, so I guess it was just an upset stomach because of something that he ate. What a relief!

Full-Time at Home Parenting: Delight or Torture?

After I expressed some negative thoughts about being home with the boys in this post, some of my blogging friends (Kate and Alice) directed me to another post on the subject written recently by Dinka. Alice even went on to write her own post on motherhood and loneliness. I was also reading Articulate Dad's September posts and came across a post in which, among other things, he touches on the same subjects -- this time from the point of view of a father, so this is definitely not something only mothers feel.

Articulate Dad wrote:

[F]ull-time parenting . . . is a great joy and a tiring burden. Those who have never served as stay-at-home parents may simply never understand. I wonder at those parents who choose this life, embrace it, revel in it, thrive even. I respect them and admire them, but I fail to fully understand them.

and

It is not that I don't delight in being a father. But it is that my hands at times feel tied, my life completely overwhelmed by duty, one which keeps me from other things I might wish to be doing.
. . . Parenting is exhausting: perhaps less so for those better equipped for its rigors, or better adjusted to its demands.

I fully agree with the "great joy and a tiring burden" of the first quote, I tried to convey a similar idea in my title with "delight or torture." As for the choosing part, some people just don't really choose it, AD, they just don't have any other options, or make a personal sacrifice for the sake of their children. As for the second quote, I feel the same about being a mother most of the time!! The language he uses describes full-time parenting so brilliantly! The tied hands, the life "life completely overwhelmed by duty," I have felt them too. This constant duty is tiresome beyond imagination, some may, as he claims, be better equipped to deal with it, but I am certainly not one of them. Some people even have enough energy, discipline, and patience to home school their kids!! I'd love to do that, but I don't think I ever could ("unschooling" like Dawn does might be possible, but I'm not disciplined enough even for that).

The problem of loneliness discussed by Dinka and Alice, may have more to do with gender and the way mothers interact (or not) with other mothers. Dinka wrote:

But all the lack of free time and sleep aside the hardest part of all this is the loneliness. I don't care what they say but motherhood lived this way is just not right. Are we really supposed to toil away by ourselves day after day (uh and night after night) with minimal contact to other people, performing the tasks over and over while we pull all the creativity and inspiration and good cheer that is necessary to raise a human out of thin air[?]

I agree. It doesn't seem right to me either -- this is one of the reasons why the work that mothers do should be more valued and, if possible, compensated accordingly, as I have already argued here before. I especially like the part about raising "a human out of thin air."

She finished with some of the same thoughts expressed by Articulate Dad, but with a twist aimed at the other mothers who apparently "have it all together" and don't seem to want to start friendships with her:

I like doing my thing as a mother. I like the kids and the house and my own schedule, but I hate being on my own all the time. It's not easy to make friends, I'm aware. More than anything one needs to be ready to open up and show some vulnerability and take a risk. It's hard to feel drawn to a person who seems to have it all and all together. We're so busy keeping up appearances but then we all go home, sit by ourselves and wonder what if.

My comment to Dinka's post included: "The only thing that has kept me sane is blogging and blog reading... I also got to meet some blogging mothers who live in the Philly area." And this is true. Blogging and reading the experience of other mothers has been more than therapeutic for me, it has been life changing and has sustained through these difficult years of having very young children at home.

Sometimes I feel literally caged at home, since it takes so much energy to go out the door with two boys under 4. It's not easy to do grocery shopping and nearly impossible to do clothes shopping, for example, with them. Even when we do get the chance to meet with friends, it's very tough to conduct a conversation, since we always have to be paying attention to what the boys are doing. I'm sure this gets better when they become older, but parenting young children is "one of the hardest thing one can ever do" as I also wrote for Dinka. And to make matters worse, mothers don't really seem to get along with other mothers. I just wish I could still link to Chez Miscarriage's post and hundreds of comments about "Mommy Drive Bys."

Is there a solution for these problems? Probably not, but at least it's good to hear from other parents and to know that we're not alone, even though we may be painfully lonely.

Central Park on a Saturday Afternoon

Cloudscome's post about her lovely day with her sons last Saturday motivated me to write about our day as well. We went to New York City for the day (we had a church meeting there) and since we were only three blocks from the Central Park, we decided to take a stroll there in the afternoon. The boys played in a playground for a little while and then I looked in the map and saw that we were close to the Conservatory Water (where people can rent remote controlled sail or motor boats to play in the water) and I remembered that it was there that they had the Alice in Wonderland and Hans Christian Andersen sculptures and I really wanted to see them again. Although we've been to New York many times since 1996, I had only seen these sculptures once, back in 96, I think, after we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art (oh, I have to go back there again, and to the newly renovated MoMa!). Kelvin knows quite a bit about Alice in Wonderland because I have been telling him some of the episodes of the book as bedtime stories for years now and I knew he was going to be delighted by the sculpture, and he was. I took many photos, as usual, and my favorite one was of him and the Cheshire Cat:
This sculpture is, for some reason, way more fun to kids than a playground. They climb all over it and there was even a little girl who didn't want to let anyone else sit in Alice's lap. Kelvin was very nice with her and let her stay there and her mother thanked me profusely and kept saying what a nice little boy he was. (I told her that this wasn't the case all the time, but she was still thankful that he was being kind to her daughter). Linton enjoyed it too, but since he couldn't really climb it, he soon tired of it and went to see the boats with dadddy while Kelvin stayed and climbed up, down, and around for over ten minutes. Here are only two of many photos I took of him while he played:















Before leaving, we went around the water to get to the Hans Christian Andersen sculpture. This one didn't have any children climbing all over it, so it was easier to photograph. On the way there I reminded my son about the story of the Ugly Duckling since it's portrayed in the sculpture too.
P.S. I have started to write a series of posts about parenting difficulties. I'm going to try to post them even if they're not as "deep" as I wish they could be, or else I'll never finish writing them.

A Tale of Two Meetings (& Finally a Dissertation Update - #8)

First, I want to thank everyone for your support after last post, it means a lot to me. Blogging has kept me afloat these past two years in a way that you can't really imagine (or maybe you can if you're also a blogger).

A few posts ago I gave away the results of my recent meetings, but I wanted to go back and compare how I felt this October to how I felt after the meeting in May so you can understand how much this new perspective means to me and my drive to finish the dissertation.

1st Scenario:
Although the meeting itself went fairly well, I felt quite negatively about it, as I have briefly stated before here. I had sent drafts of the first two chapters to my advisor, with whom I had already gone through 5 drafts of chapter one and 3 drafts of chapter two, and a committee member. The advisor didn't read the new drafts (I concede there weren't that many changes, but I think he should have read them) and the committee member had many negative comments to make about the material. She said that she was expecting these to be later, more polished drafts and that these were still very repetitive and needed lots of cuts and edits. She had issues with the introduction -- which, you know, was the first thing I wrote, very tentatively, since the research had not been done yet, I knew I'd have to rewrite it, but then at that meeting I felt sorry for ever attempting to write an introduction when the work was not finished yet. Her comments made me realize anew and very strongly that the feedback I'd been getting from my advisor was not "deep" enough, since for him, chapter one looked pretty good (I wrote about this on item 1 of my last dissertation update post, last July).

I never attempted to process what I felt them and try to express it until many months later. Last month (on September 17), I started thinking about it and jotted down some impressions. Even writing these down made me feel devastated all over again. I wrote this as a blog post, but I never finished editing/ polishing it, so it's pretty "raw:"

All right, prepare yourselves; I’m in “crisis mode” again.

I have been postponing for many months now dealing the feelings that enveloped me at the meeting I had with my advisor and one committee member on May 12, 2006. So, these are very delayed reactions [to the meeting.]

When a reader has lots of problems with the writing, [pointing out its] repetition, lack of objectivity and, most importantly, when a reader shows impatience with the work because it’s not well written or maybe "boring."

It’s a horrible feeling. No one is ever going to read this anyway. Perhaps a handful or two handfuls of people, maximum. If the people who are supposed to read it so they can help me write it are not interested in it, think it’s bad, the dissertation writer is left with an AWFUL feeling.

If these people, who are closest to me, who have been following this project since its inception many years ago think it’s a waste of their time to read all these 150+ pages -- what does that tell me about the value of this work? If they’re not interested on it, who else is going to be? How can I find strength to go on with these things in mind?

The advisor is extremely busy with 5 other students working on their MA thesis and Ph.D. dissertations right now, apart from a heavier than usual load of teaching.

The other committee member has been publishing exciting anthologies and is involved in her own work. She is also very bright and very opinionated…

I felt utterly defeated.

Writing a dissertation feels absolutely [I didn't finish the sentence]

I know half of my committee won’t really read the dissertation before the defense, they’re just too busy, they just do it because it’s their duty to be there, to show their support, but it’s all “pro forma” as we say it in Portuguese – just a formal requirement, it doesn’t mean they really care about this stuff. They have to sit on countless committees, read countless dissertations.

Academic work is not only thankless, it’s also useless!!!

2nd Scenario:

First of all, I met separately with my advisor and the committee member. Secondly, my advisor had read my latest drafts a few weeks earlier, I hadn't just sent new things to him. Third, the committee member hadn't seen any of my work since May and the purpose of our meeting was to show her the results of the research I did in July.

The advisor said he was greatly pleased with my work, that I just needed to write the conclusions to the last chapters, a final conclusion and go back and edit the introduction. He emphasized that for him I've already "passed" and that the research work I'm doing is far superior to many people in my field. Lots of them simply draw their conclusions based on generalizations, but I have done a detailed and extensive study, creating real data, real numbers, something almost no one in this field does. He finished saying that now all that was left was finding me a job. He knows that my husband is also in the market and he was able to fully understand my situation since he has followed his wife twice and everything worked out in the end (he only got tenure a few years ago, though).

When I showed the data and the graphs and charts to my committee member she was so excited that it sent a thrill down my spine. She was stunned by all the work I had done and said it was valuable work, not just as a contribution to the subject I'm dealing with, but which brought a brand new perspective that could enrich a literary analysis of the works in question. Then I started talking about a new idea that I had to contextualize my study, something I may be able to accomplish only because my mom is going to pay two college students in Brazil to collect data for me, and she was so enthusiastic about it, I almost couldn't believe it. I barely mentioned this to my advisor, since my dissertation already contains the work of two dissertations in it, and this third project could almost be a dissertation in and of itself, but she saw its value, she understood it fully (since she is, after all, the only committee member knowledgeable about Brazil). I felt absolutely energized, ready to go back to work on the research. (Feel free to email me if you want to know more details about my work, I just don't want to give out the details here in the blog).

I left with my self-confidence boosted to levels never before experienced, it was truly soaring as high as it could possibly go. I also felt/feel certain that I could/can go ahead and finish this, that it's completely worth it, that I am a good researcher. I called my mom that night and shared all this with her. She had had surgery only two days before and I knew that this would mean a lot to her since she was here and witnessed my despondency on the days following the May meeting.

I know it's not going to be easy to finish while caring for my boys full time, but I have all this confidence now, and I know all my blogging friends -- you -- are out there supporting me, so I know I can do it. The hard part will be trying to apply to a handful of jobs. My heart is not on it, but I know I must do it. The deadlines are coming up and I haven't yet finished revising my CV or started writing the letters... I don't feel motivated for that, although I should. My committe member said that it's going to be really hard to write the recommendation letters. She said that she's so enthusiastic about my work and my value as a scholar that it will be hard to make her readers believe her!

That's good to hear, isn't it?

Flowers

I have so many things to write about, but I'm kind of blocked right now. I guess the scare of almost losing the blog has actually affected me. It was very stressful, particularly because it happened on the day before a family trip. I was supposed to be revising the paper for my conference presentation and packing our bags and instead I just stayed online all day, frantically reading and posting on the blogger messageboards and trying to figure out what to do next.
So, I decided to post some flower photos, maybe they'll soothe me (or not -- you'll see why). I wanted to write a post about my morning glories (I planted them again this year),
but even that seemed too stressful, since I'd have to spend time choosing which photos to include, and explaining my frustration at the fact that I didn't anchor the vine right to my front porch, and half of it collapsed some weeks ago, so they didn't look so beautiful anymore.
Even these beautiful cosmos (first photo and photo above) that you see here have frustrated me, I didn't plan them right, I should have thinned them, but I didn't, and then they grew like maniacs or genetically modified plants on steroids, got really, really tall and I had to pull them all out from my front yard. I left the ones on the back, but they all "fell" horizontally on the grass, since I would have had to give them support so they'd grow vertical. They didn't care, and kept on blooming, though, which is good...

See, that's what I didn't want this post to be, a "complaining post." I wanted to follow Professor Me's example and post a list of things I'm not complaining about, but I feel so funky right now I just can't! I want to look at these beautiful photos an feel happy, but I just feel like crying. It's probably the hormones, combining with staying home all day with the boys. Day after day.

I took all of these photos last week. I love to photograph flowers. Some people don't think this is interesting at all. Our friend in Florida even joked, "Oh, yeah, my mom and my sister are like that. They take photos of flowers like there's no tomorrow!"

But that's the whole point about taking photos! Capturing the moment. There's no tomorrow, really. When am I going to see yesterday's morning glory flower (the pink one, when they're blue, they become pinkish while fading) sharing the stage with today's flower because the weather is just cool enough for it not to die?
One of the things I think I might be able to do if everything goes wrong, is becoming a photographer. I think I take good photos and, most importantly, I really enjoy taking photos. I have even photographed many friends' birthday parties, etc. to help them out and they were pretty happy with the results. Well, I feel better writing this. At least this post ended up having a point. I got to share my photos, talk about some of my frustrations, and share a possible dream for the future.

On Closing Doors and Opening up for Dreams

Two weeks ago Andi Buchanan (from Mother Shock) wrote a beautiful post in her blog, comemorating the anniversary of her last piano concert, 10 years ago.

I commented in her blog about this post:

Oh, Andi, you made me cry.

I love music dearly, even though I'm pretty bad at it. I took piano classes for 17 years, from 6 years old to 23.

Your essay struck a deep chord within me, though because I have no idea what'll happen in my future. I'm on the brink of finishing the Ph.D. after working on it for nearly 8 years. I just had a couple of meetings with my advisors and they think my research is brilliant. Both of them know, though, that I will have a hard time continuing this research if I can't find an academic job where I can apply for grants and "keep up my good work." The likelihood of getting such a job, though, are very slim, particularly because my husband is in the same position and the job that he gets maybe at a university/ college that has no room for me.

Well, sorry for making this such a long comment. I should go post in my blog instead and maybe I will... but your post gave me hope. I think I can do other things with my life if being an academic doesn't work out. You were very corageous to give up what you had worked so hard for, but you had a dream to follow. I don't know what my dream would be. I know I want to write too, but I don't know where to start. I feel hopeful, though. Closing one door is not the end, it may be just the beginning -- as cliched as that may sound...

This is really something I've been thinking about lately... I don't have much to add to what I wrote in my comment. I just want to reiterate that will probably be a very important year for us. In Brazil they have this strange habit of changing/making up movie titles, and St. Elmo's Fire is titled there "The First Year of the Rest of Our Lives." This is probably one of those years for us. 1996, the year we moved to the U.S., was another one too.

We both feel really strange about what the future may hold. We feel the need to settle down somewhere and, like my husband was telling me yesterday, we're getting "older" (35) and we don't want to go just anywhere, like a younger, more adventurous, childless couple, might want to go. And that makes applying for academic jobs that much more difficult. My husband has a list of 56 places he may apply to (he won't apply to all, of course) and my list is pretty small (I'm doing this just half-heartedly, so I don't even know by heart how many positions I can apply to), but we worry about getting offers from places that are not that attractive for us to live, and most are not. I feel terrible about this, since we should be just so thankful if we have offers to begin with, but it's such a tough decision!!

I'm sure many of you have gone through similar experiences and I'd appreciate any thoughts you share with me right now...

As for my dreams, academia, and the Ph.D. I'm not terribly worried, but I do wish I could continue being a scholar. I think I do have aptitude for it, in spite of the fact that I'm not the most dedicated person (remember I said here before that I'm lazy?). Unless I was able to really write (and I'm much less confident in myself as a writer than as an academic -- and if you've been reading the blog you already know that I'm not confident at all in this area), I think I'd be frustrated for the rest of my life if I had to leave academia. And I think my husband would feel the same way. I think one can only be happy if, like Andi, one leaves one dream in pursuit of another...

I hope I can look back in ten years and to know that I have found my way.

Upadated to add: I posted a comment below in response to Aliki's comment.

Lost & Found

Last Wednesday night I impulsively switched my blog to the Beta version of blogger and then, on Thursday morning, guess what? Yes, if you're reading this chances are you saw what happened -- the blog was gone!!

I truly thought it was lost forever and I was surprised at how cool I felt about it after the initial shock wore off. I was upset, of course, but I felt up to the task of rescuing whatever I could rescue and starting again. It was a learning experience from me and the biggest thing I learned surprised me. My blog isn't really that big of an obssession for me as I thought it was and I think that's pretty "healthy." If this had happened a while ago I might have just completely panicked and felt it was a HUGE loss. Well, for once, nothing's really "lost" in cyberspace and most of my posts were cached and I would have been able to recover my writing.

Well, if you're thinking about switching, maybe you should wait until all the problems are sorted out. I, for one, will, since my blog returned in the regular version (and this after I had already labeled dozens of posts)...

Don't forget to check out my previous post, because I posted it on the night the blog went down.

I'm still in Tennessee. We go back home tomorrow.

Short-Circuited

I have a dear friend who used to say that mothering little boys means having to prevent them from killing themselves on a daily basis. I thought I was lucky since my oldest was a very quiet and careful boy, who hardly ever fell or got hurt. The youngest is a bit more daring, but he's been pretty safe so far -- I think it helps that his brother looks after him too.

Well, today he got into something a bit more dangerous than causing plumbing troubles. I was here in the "office" (tiny bedroom on our second floor) and the boys were playing in the hall and the other rooms when all of a sudden I saw a spark and the computer went off. Kelvin had been playing with some coins (he likes to put them in several piggy banks that they have) and Linton had been begging for a coin. Absent-mindedly, I demanded that he share and give a coin to his younger brother. Well, Linton started playing with it and inserted it in the back of the hallway's night-light. I was so relieved that the night light was a ceramic castle and he didn't touch anything, just let the coin fall, or else something terrible might have happened. The outlet became completely black and the coin (a penny) and the plug melted a bit where they touched each other. Yikes!!!

I spoke very sharply to Linton and Kelvin got very shaken thinking of the possibility that his brother might have been seriously hurt or even dead from the power of electric shock. When I went downstairs to see if I could restore the power to the room (I wasn't able to and had to wait until hubby came home) Kelvin started screaming histerically for me to come because he thought his brother might go near the outlet again. He was hugging his brother, shielding him with his little body, so he couldn't move!

I know I need to be more careful and Kelvin (who's generally very careful) kept telling me over and over again that we needed to cover ALL outlets that didn't have plugs in them and watch Linton at every moment.

Well other than that, this was an uneventful day here. Except that I have a terrible cold. The "waterworks" started today and I can't stand a dripping nose (in spite of the fact that I had one for the better part of my first 18 years of life -- it only stopped when I quit eating dairy foods at 18). Linton, who already had a cough seems to have it too, his nose is starting to run. I don't think we'll have a good night. This reminds me of where I finished yesterday's post -- guess who came into my bed in the middle of the night? Both boys. And I ended up sleeping the last part of the night literally holding Linton so he wouldn't roll on top of Kelvin because when he was on my other side, he fell to the ground (and never woke up, I just picked him right up and them moved him to the other side). Husband is back from Brazil (which is GREAT!!) and I've already warned him that we'll probably have to spend the later part of the night with the boys... oh well, it's not like we're not used to it already!