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Love and Marriage: A First Anniversary


Rob and I were married a year ago today. I have written a lot about where and how we met, our long, long distance relationship, the whole emigrating thing and ad nauseum about our happiness.

One might think we were the perfect couple, and while we believe we are pretty darn close to that most of the time, neither of us would say that that this first year hasn’t been one of adjustment and learning. Love, good relationships and successful marriage isn’t magic or chemistry or kismet, and don’t get me started on the whole fallacy of the soul mate thing.

It’s about love, attraction, like-mindedness, commitment, shared values and ideals.

And it’s a leap of faith that is made over and over. A belief in the other person and in the future come what may.

The first year of a damn long time comes to a close today, commemorated with gifts from the Apple Store and sealed with many kisses.

I love you Rob and am yours forever (and I am very sorry for forgetting the Becks’ last evening but you know I can’t remember anything if it isn’t on the list).

I’ve Become My Mother


When we were children, warm weather meant our mother could safely banish us to the outdoors for hours on end. She would even lock the screen doors and find us our lunch on the picnic table. Getting back inside for any reason other than using the bathroom called for inventiveness and mom usually would just hand us whatever we asked for and closed the door with us on the other side.

Today, I became my mom.

BabyDaughter and NephewTwo have been told that the indoors is off limits because it is a beautiful day out and their grandparents are sleeping. I haven’t hooked the screen doors but I am beginning to understand why mom did all those decades ago. Just putting the indoors off limits have made them infinitely more attractive than anything they could be doing outside. And they have plenty to do outdoors.

After a morning spent at the local version of Home Depot shopping for supplies that Rob needs to make a few repairs and to get a new handrail up for Dad, a trip to hospice with mom for more information and the usual laundry and cleaning (wasn’t I supposed to be on holiday?), my inner muse was cranky and wondering when we were going to get a little writing time. This meant banishment for the wee ones.

I joke about how mom spent more time attending to the house and the chores associated with family than she did on actual quality time with me or my siblings, but an article at the Huffington Post today by Laura Vanderkam confirmed that women spent less time in 1965 with their children than do mothers today and this is in spite of the fact that 50% more moms are in the workforce now than then.

Vanderkam was writing about the growing outsourcing trend of parenthood which I wrote about not too long ago. Apparently this type of mothering has a name. Didn’t you just know that it would? Is it possible to be a parent today without being slotted into some demographic or other?

Core Competency Moms are, as nearly as I can tell, women who believe that “quality time” with their kids trumps cleaning, laundry and food prep. This applies primarily to working women as SAHM’s are still spending more time on being the house’s wife than entertaining their children.

The idea is essentially that things like washing clothes, doing dishes and feeding your family fresh food are time sucks. How can you be a good mom and work AND take care of what is basically maintenance that you either aren’t all that good at or just dislike? A core competent mom has a housekeeper come in and with the time saved, she takes her kids to the pool or the park or volunteers to buy cupcakes for the school bake sale (because baking sucks and someone at the local grocery does it better anyway).

Children need to be reassured about a myriad of social issues and how can this be done while folding laundry simultaneously?

My biggest issues with this core competency thing – aside from the fact that there is a difference between being a parent and a hand servant – is that the whole idea is terribly elitist. What does the working class mom do to outsource her housework? How does the single mom shift responsibilities when she is the only adult in the household? Where is the money for all this “convenience” coming from and at the end of the day are we trading the notion of teaching our children basic survival skills and healthy eating habits for a couple of extra hours a week of entertaining them?

How will our children learn to problem solve and occupy themselves if as they age we don’t begin to disengage from their every waking moment?

Can’t heart to heart talks be accomplished while preparing dinner or over the clean-up afterwards?

And if my teenager’s jeans need washing on a Saturday when I’d like to take her to a movie or on a hike, what’s preventing her from tossing them in the wash? Last I checked we weren’t taking the laundry to the nearest source of running water to beat them against rocks. Wash is an hours long process that doesn’t require much watching (unless you are that apartment dwelling working family from whom the laundromat doubles as an outing).

More and more society seems to expect that mothers in particular indenture themselves to the fruits of the womb. I think I am going to pass on this Competent Core Mommy thing. It sounds like more work than I am already doing.

 

Single Serving Acquaintances: Filling in for Hump Day Hmm*


In the movie Fight Club, Edward Norton’s character first meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) on an airplane in what he explains is a “single serving friend” relationship. Basically it likens the whole idea of striking up friendly banter and interaction with people you will never see again to a ketchup packet or the shampoo offerings in a hotel room. One shot and it’s over.

Single Servings are the essential building blocks of mommy groups which grow into the child’s version of a one night stand – the play date – with the potential to make companions out of women who wouldn’t have a thing to say to each other sans children.

A lesser version of this is the drive-by. Like the young man at the Holiday Inn Express Sunday morning who, after eavesdropping on a rather mundane conversation between Rob and myself on preparing Quaker Instant Oats, happily inserted himself into the discussion and gave us incorrect directions.

And there was the woman at the rest stop outside Moorhead, MN who began chatting with me in the washroom. Chattering away at my back really because I didn’t make eye contact or anything until I realized that she wasn’t talking to the hand dryer. She proceeded to talk mostly at me on and off for the next 15 minutes while Rob and I walked around the playground where Katy and her little girl were playing and as he and I chatted with each other in the picnic area.

“She might have been a widow, you know,” Rob pointed out later. “Traveling alone with a child and all.”

That thought had occurred to me back in the washroom but not because she was a woman who appeared to be on her own. It was the conversation she was having with her daughter as they walked in.

“…there are bad people in the world just waiting to hurt little boys and girls who wander away from their moms.”

I was just glad at that moment that Katy was dancing around the stall and didn’t hear her. I didn’t want to be in a position of refuting another parent’s right to go over the top with a stranger danger lecture within their earshot.

Not that all widowed/divorced/or simply single moms are paranoid. That could just have been me. Still is me. I am hardly unique.

When she and her daughter took their leave she said good-bye to Katy and called out the same to Rob and I as we canoodled in the picnic shelter. We can’t be in public without touching. It just wouldn’t be us.

“Are you going to mention that we were making out like crazy?” he asked as I began writing this.

“No, because we weren’t,” I replied. “Should I though?”

“Well, it would titillate your readers.”

Since some of my readers are also bloggers who write things that need disclaimers, I doubted that highly. Now if we’d been el fresco on the picnic table, it would have merited a description. Besides, this post was supposed to be about those people you meet on trips, interact with – willingly or not so, and never see again but make wonderful blog filler.

*I didn’t get a prompt from Julie Pippert this week, so if you have a single serving acquaintance tale to tell link it or use the comment box.