Mother’s Day: still complicated

Mother’s Day is simple and straightforward for some, and complicated for others. While I know that happiness largely abounds on Mother’s Day–it’s also a day that brings up loss and grief for others.

Thought I’d share a post from my archives that shares how I feel about Mother’s Day.

In the last year, I have made changes so that my life is more fulfilling and busy and joyful, so my grief is a bit lessened. (Also, it doesn’t hurt that I now live in a place where strollers are hard to spot). But it doesn’t make the grief go away.

Articulating Pain: Expectations on Expecting

There’s an iPhone4 advert series that shows various people talking to each other thru FaceTime, an iPhone app that allows videoconferencing between phones. In one of the adverts (youtube link here), a woman calls a man, with a facial expression that I can only describe as Infinite Glee and Joy and Smugness; she begins by saying, “Hey do you got a minute? Are you alone?”

The glee on her face betrayed the understatement. F*ck you, I thought. I saw it coming right then.

“Well, you know that THING we’ve been working on for awhile now?” she continued. Ohgawd. Here it comes.

The man replies, “No way.” Yah, me too. I flipped off the television screen.

The bird didn’t stop the inevitable. She continued (because she’s an advertisement on television, not a real person), “Mmmhrmmm–You’re gonna be a dad!” I knew it. Argh.

I.hate.that.iPhone4 advertisement. It smacks of all that frustrates me about societal expectations of women and couples without children. That conversation, that situation (of being “with child”) is supposed to be the symbol of The Greatest Joy.

This advertisement bothered me. I went ahead and tweeted, “I just flipped off the iPhone 4 commercial where the woman tells her husband via phone video, ‘You’re gonna be a dad.'” And found that I was not alone in my frustration. Really not alone.

And then this morning I read Eve’s amaaaazing post on the Empty Womb and Self Actualization (there’s an actual psychological pyramid of needs by Kenrick that puts parenting at the top, thereby equating parenting with self actualizationg! zomg). In her post, she details the psychological aspects of the issue and offers a few suggestions, one being that parents share the downs as well as the ups of parenthood to the world and do the justice of offering a balanced portrait (instead of smugness). Her post explained my frustration and anger with the iPhone 4 advertisement. And it helped me articulate some of my personal thoughts on societal messages about Parenthood as Ultimate Joy and Self Actualization.

When I was studying with an Orthodox rabbi for conversion to Judaism, I learned many things. For example, I learned the laws of kashrut, the debates within kashrut, I read the Kuzari and learned history and learned to ask questions (being Asian, one of the greatest hurdles to my learning process was that I initially found it very very difficult to question an authority figure or an overriding law, which is precisely the method of learning a rabbi embraces). I studied for five years. I learned things with which I had conflict, like the Orthodox Jewish stance with homosexuality (which officially is not in support of homosexuality in case you needed that stated).

And I read a line in a book by a female author describing Jewish life that sticks with me to this day: “A childless couple in the community is pitied.” I had never seen it spelled out like that before. It stung even then, before I knew I would spend over 10 years trying to conceive without success.

It stung because it is true. A childless couple, or childless person, is pitied.

Pitied. Not accepted. Not extolled. Not empathized. Not sympathized. Pitied. To see as lesser, to feel sorry for.

As in, missing out on The Greatest Joy.

And I am reminded of this constantly. From a guest at a wedding sitting to my right, who inevitably asks, “Do you have children?” To which I answer No. To which he replies “Why not? You really should have children. They are great. You should have children.” To which I decide to reply Because I can’t have children. Thank you. (I have many responses; this is one I save for the truly obnoxious because it is a conversation killer). To which he continues, “You should try IVF, have you heard of IVF?” To which I *want* to reply What is IVF? I have never heard of IVF! But instead I reply It doesn’t always work. To which he responds “Yes it does! C’mon, you can’t tell me it fails! Everyone I know who’s had it done, conceived!” To which I want to reply are you really that f*cking stupid but instead say No, it only works a percentage of the time. You should look into your facts…and on and on and on. I can only summarize the conversation as a painful exchange, one that begins with the man extolling The Greatest Joy, urging membership, and then insisting on ways to join, all the while showing utter ignorance.

Someone who is a part of my daily life came up to me not too long ago and said with utter sincerity (and joy), “You don’t really finish growing up until you have a child.” He knows I have been trying to have a child for years and years. I was silent. I wasn’t sure that was true. But I didn’t have a rebuttal until months and months later when a friend of mine told me, “You should have told him you don’t really finish growing up until you’ve had a stroke at the age of 33!” That’s an awesome line from an awesome friend. A little too late. But it gave me a good laugh and helped me imagine a different end to that exchange.

I have had to hide the status updates of so many of my friends on Facebook, because of what I call “smug Mommy updates.” It makes me feel I am lesser, even if they don’t feel they’re consciously doing so. There are mommy friends I haven’t hid, and those are the friends whose updates are more balanced: not only are their kids cherubic at times, their kids also slip out of their diapers in the middle of the night, roll around in their doody and smear doody on the walls. Their kids are beautiful and they have videos of kids singing…and their kids also have rockin’ tantrums. This is real, this is beautiful, this does not make me feel lesser, and does not fill me with heartbreak.

Even an article in nymag entitled “All Joy No Fun; Why Parents Hate Parenting”, one that portrays parenthood as being absent of fun and enjoyment…ultimately defends parenthood as a bastion of Joy.

At times I am bitter, but most of the time, I am not bitter. I am happy. I am a joyful person who happens to not have a child, and who wants a child (one! I just want one!). My infertility brings me pain; as far as I know, pain can coincide with happiness and joy. I am happy for my friends with children or who are pregnant, even if sometimes I can’t stop crying while saying I am happy for them. Sometimes I wonder if my grief stems from societal expectations and pressure as much as it comes from within me. My grief probably is complicated by these societal messages and this feeling of exclusion as much as it stems from a real desire for a child.

An addendum: After I wrote this post, I kept thinking about all the myths out there and how they are furthered by the stupidity of people like…screenwriters. There is nothing that has infuriated me further than the Sex and the City movie (the first one) where Charlotte is suddenly pregnant after having adopted her first child, Lily. The screenwriters even had the gall to have her character squeal, “I’m pregnant. I guess if you relax and adopt like they say, you will finally get pregnant on your own!” That they turned her character and her infertility from something meaningful (her conversion to Judaism in the TV series, although a bit speedy/easy, was something that rang a little true…and her struggles with infertility even truer) to something that was an insulting cliché disappointed me. That people turn to me and say stuff like, “If you stop trying, you’ll get pregnant/Why don’t you adopt?/I know someone (probably Charlotte) who adopted and then got pregnant,” is just so sad. And after a little bit of googling, I’ve found I’m not the only person who thinks/feels this way.

Happy Bittersweet Complicated Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is bittersweet in our household, because motherhood is complicated, and motherhood is different people and histories and situations now.

I love my mother, who has had my back my entire life. I know she will always take my call and all I have to say is “I need you” for her to drop whatever she’s doing to come to my side. She is the model of unconditional love.

She provides me lots of amusement, too. Her phone calls to me resemble that of Margaret Cho’s mother. When I imitate Margaret Cho’s comedic routines about her mother’s voicemails (*booooop!* Mahgalet! Theeej eeej your Mommy. I jus wanna call yooo to tell yoooo dat Grlampa and Grlamma, they gonnna die! Uh–not today, but someday! So don’t be suhprlised! (pause) Also. Don’t tell dem! That’s not niiice, that’s not nice! Ok. Bye! *boop!*), my mom rolls over laughing. Because that is the kind of shit she tells me.

I miss my mother-in-law, who was killed suddenly only a few years ago. I don’t think any of us have gotten over her death; we all miss her. That’s all I will say in a public forum, but know that my grief goes miles.

I am happy for all my mama-friends who have lovely children. My mama-friends work hard and have deep compassion for their children, and I am glad there is a day of recognition for them. (May your children cook you a better meal today than I did for my mother on Mother’s Day while growing up; once, I cooked her split pea soup, a very very crunchy split pea soup, because I didn’t know you had to cook the split peas down until they were soft (the good cook in me now cringes at how I merely boiled the water, merely blanched the vegetables and split peas and said with great pride, “eat my soup, I made it for YOU, Mom!”)…Guess what? She ate it ALL, as I asked her, “Don’t you LIKE it? Why aren’t you smiling while you eat it?”)

And–I am sad because there are women who cannot enter this sometimes smug bastion of motherhood. And it’s my mom who I turn to for comfort when the pain feels especially daunting (think of that scene in “Julie & Julia” when Meryl Streep’s Julia Childs reads a letter from her sister announcing a pregnancy and says “I’m so happy for them! I’m so happy!” and breaks down in tears, clearly in grief for her own childless state). I’ve been trying to have a child longer (eleven years and counting) than I’ve been writing this novel of mine. Both bringing me agony this week.

When I call my mom and communicate this pain, she says without irony, “Unh–don’t worry, Christine. Being mommy is hard! Take up all your time! When you have baby, your life ends! You don’t need to have baby, so hard and waste of time. Notice I don’t push you to have baby? Because I want you to live your life.” Bwahahahaaa.

Once I asked her, “Do you regret having me?” To which she responded, “No of course not! You and R****** are best things to me!” with the same exact sincerity she used to reassure me to not have a child.

There are other hilarious phone calls, too–I once called her from Hangzhou, China, abandoned by my paid-by-the-hour driver who insisted a certain sight took an hour to see (it took 15 minutes) and who drove off promising to return in an hour. Bored, and unable to call my husband who was in a business meeting in a hotel room in Hangzhou that day, I called her while sitting on a bench by a lily pond, and the phone call went like this:

Me: Mom! It’s me! I’m in China!
Mom: Oh! Where are you?!
Me: I’m.in.Chi.na! I bought some tea today!
Mom: Unh! You bought tea? Christine–don’t drink it!
Me: What? It’s the best tea!
Mom: No, don’t drink it! Pesticides! Give it to your friends as presents instead!

Then there was the time she came home from work and offered me one of her kazillion pieces of advice, always packaged in some random out of the blue but very practical manner–and in hindsight, I now realize it must have been an extra brutal day as an intensive care unit nurse. Before dinner she leaned over and said to me, “Christine, never get tattoo on face. You know, when you die, if you have eyebrow and eyeliner and lipliner tattoo, it doesn’t look good at all. My patient today was so pale and blue. And then tattoo makes worse!” Got it.

Another phone call went like this (we were caravaning to Yosemite, and lost each other–but when she got to the Valley, she called my cell):
Mom: We are by Yosemite Lodge!
Me: Mom! Where did you guys go? We looked back and you weren’t there anymore!
Mom: We are by Yosemite Lodge!
Me: We’re by the general store, come meet us here, Mom
Mom: We are by Yosemite Lodge!
Me: We’re by the general store, come over here.
Mom: We are by Yosemite Lodge!
Me: You want us to meet you by the Lodge?
Mom: Okay! See you!

Happy Mother’s Day. To those of you missing your mothers, I give you a big hug. To those of you who have lost children, I give you a big hug. To those of you struggling to have children, I give you a big hug. And to those of you whose mothers are still living and in your life, I hope you give your mother a big hug today.

Update: Here’s a writer after my own heart! Anne Lamott writes, Why I Hate Mother’s Day.