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A friend of mine sent me a link to an ABC feature piece. It starts with this 40 year old riddle: A father and son are in a horrible car accident. The father dies at the scene. The son is transported via ambulance to the closest hospital. In the emergency room, the head surgeon says, “I cannot operate on this boy; he is my son.” Who is the head surgeon?
This is easy, right?
Except, for some people, it isn’t.
The thought behind the ABC piece was to survey different generations; ostensibly to demonstrate that kids raised in the 21st century view the world more broadly than kids raised in the 70s. And largely, I think this is true. We’ve come a long way, baby.
I couldn’t wait to pose the riddle to my own brood. After dinner, while my husband was clearing the table, I put the question to Small, Medium and Large.
They were stumped.
First, I was shocked. Then I was mad at myself. I had incorrectly assumed they would consider the answer obvious: the head surgeon is the boy’s mother. (I think another correct answer is that the boy has two fathers and, interestingly, Liam did suggest that as a possible answer. It just wasn’t the one I was looking for.)
While they eventually came to the right conclusion (after some large hints from me), I was saddened by the whole thing. Why hadn’t they guessed it was the boy’s mother? And then it hit me: It’s my fault. I haven’t done enough to teach them about gender equality. I quickly traversed my well-worn path of self-doubt. Am I doing more harm than good by staying home with them? Am I just perpetuating a stereotype? It’s not as if I’ve ever been a model for feminism but I never talked with them about my career or explained how difficult it was for me to leave my job. How difficult it is for me some days, even now. In all likelihood, they just see me as their mom. The woman who nags them to do their homework and wash behind their ears and pick up after themselves. The woman who makes dinner and folds laundry and carts them to their after school activities. That’s probably how they view most moms.
That has to change.
And that’s my job.
Today was one of those gorgeous Spring days in Vermont – the sun shone brightly, puffy cotton balls floated in the blue sky, fields were awash in shades of green and dotted with yellow.
And there I was, in my minivan, totally oblivious to the beauty around me wrapped as I was in angst. I was considering the meaning of my life and was wrestling with the question: If someone offers you the moon, shouldn’t you take it?
For someone recently did just that…and I turned it down.
It’s a flaw of mine to skew glass half-empty. Instead of marveling over the magnificence of the moon, I worried about how it would fit into my life, what toxic substances it might introduce into my atmosphere, whether I was ready to shoulder the burden of its care and maintenance.
Yes, I am purposefully being cagey and no, I won’t go into the specifics. While it’s true, in creating this blog, I voluntarily put details of my life in a public domain; it’s untrue that I eschew privacy entirely. Maybe the best part of having a blog is that as its creator, one gets to pick and choose which anecdotes to include and which to stuff in the deeper recesses of the family’s toy box. But I digress. Back to the minivan.
At the stop light, I continued the fruitless pursuit of deciding whether to regret a decision I had already made. I was in a sightless, soundless, self-absorbed zone. Although the passenger side window was open to let a certain red dog stick his nose out, I was barely aware of it until another car pulled alongside me. Their music, without any sound barriers, was at blasting volume. Paco and I looked over.
This is what we saw: Two big guys (imagine Jake and Elwood without the hats and jackets), in an electric blue Dodge Charger, staring straight ahead, singing and punching their fists in time to the beat.
This is what we heard: Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance.
This is what we did: Laugh until I snorted.
At some point during the ten seconds before the light turned green, my mood shifted. I remembered. Life is meant to be enjoyed.
Once upon a time, there was a boy. The boy owned a red dog with a curly tail. The dog was one of a kind—a mixed-breed stray found riding the “T” in Boston. This boy loved this dog more than anything in the world. Until the day the boy met the girl.
At first, the dog resented the girl for usurping his place in the car (among other places) but after many months, he grew to tolerate her. The trio moved to the suburbs. The dog was unhappy. He was no suburbanite; he was a city dweller. The boy and the girl tried to cheer him up. They got a puppy to keep him company. The dog thought this was a tremendously stupid idea but learned to tolerate the puppy at least as well as he did the girl. Life was good.
Time passed. Before they knew it, the boy and the girl grew up.
Babies were born, mortgages obtained, promotions earned. Bills were paid, child enrichment programs found, someone started preschool. And the red dog became sick and died. Diapers were changed, family vacations planned, the chimney was replaced. The twelve-year-old puppy passed away in her sleep. Home improvement projects were started, business trips taken, play dates scheduled. Season after season whirled by. Someone started fourth grade.
The girl was surprised when she turned the page of her hometown newspaper and found a dog with a curly tail staring out at her. He was advertised as the “pet of the week,” right next to the police blotter and an article about a car colliding with a moose. So surprised was she that she didn’t pause to consider the consequences before sharing the dog’s picture with the boy.
The boy and the girl debated the pros and cons of dog ownership for weeks. While they argued, the shelter accidentally burned to the ground. The boy called all the shelters in the surrounding area in hopes of locating the dog. He found him. He had heartworm and lyme disease, but he was alive.
The boy and the girl and their three children drove to the middle of nowhere to meet the dog. The girl griped about muddy paw prints, expensive diseases and additional responsibilities for most of the two hour drive.
When the shelter’s manager went to retrieve the dog from his kennel, the boy held his breath. The girl steeled herself to dislike him. The kids chased each other around the room like puppies. The dog trotted into the melee with his head held high and his cinnamon bun tail waving from side to side.
He was red. An unbelievably familiar red.
The girl felt the tears gathering, didn’t trust herself to speak. She looked at the boy and knew it was a done deal. He was in love with a red dog. Again.
Meet Paco.
This post is in memory of Rocko. (The irony? Paco came to us pre-named.)
Our smallest child loves to go sledding. 
A mere dusting of snow sends him running for the closest, unoccupied sled. He bombs—head-first—down our driveway, the snowbanks created by our plow guys, the steep incline near our house which I worry is rife with sapling stumps. But his all-time favorite place to go sledding is the hill behind his pre-school.
Growing up in the frozen tundra of the northeast corner of Vermont, I am no stranger to sledding. My childhood home was perched at the top of a hill just off a narrow dirt path the town considered a road. Since our road was a low priority for the town plow, my sister and I were sometimes able to pretend it was a bobsled or luge run, depending on its’ condition. It took about a minute for us, perched upon thin sheets of molded plastic, to zip down to our next-door neighbor’s house, a quarter of a mile away.
On the rare occasion that our road was sanded, we’d opt to traverse the hill directly—via the well-groomed VAST snowmobile trail. The fact that no one ran over us is a testament to the driving skills of the many snowmobilers who were startled to discover the small hazards of our well-bundled persons in the middle of their trail. For our part, we trained ourselves to listen for the distant whine of engines. “Incoming!” we’d scream. “Ditch! Ditch!”
Henry’s hill is tame compared to these frighteningly unsafe memories of mine, but he is just as thrilled as I was by the bitingly cold air, the way the treeline blurs, by that rush of adrenaline that comes when the sled reaches maximum speed.
We had promised to take the kids sledding at Henry’s pre-school over the weekend. It was my understanding that this was one of the “perks” of our private school. However, when we pulled into the parking lot, we found what looked to be a used car dealership. Automobiles were parked bumper to bumper. A quick scan of the hill revealed masses of children and adults. My husband and I looked at each other. He threw the van into reverse and we backed up almost into the main road.
“Wait! Wait! Where’re you goin’?” Henry was frantic. “Stop!”
Then the crying started.
We pulled forward into the lot and wedged our vehicle between the dumpster and a well-loved Volvo.
Henry stopped crying. Nora started whimpering.
I’ve mentioned that our middle child does not like surprises. She also has an aversion to crowds. “I’m staying right here,” she announced.
Brendan raised his eyebrows in my direction, saying, “C’mon Henry. Nora and Mommy will meet us up there.”
It took me ten minutes to convince Nora to release the death-grip she had on her car seat. My last attempt to ameliorate her anxiety was to assure her that we would avoid the crowd if we walked to the hill via the side of the school without a trail. The side of the school that has signs posted, “Danger! Falling ice.” I have to pick my battles with her and the standing seam roof was mostly ice-and-snow-free.
By the time we reached the line of would-be sledders, she was fine. “Hi, Emma!” she called to a girl she knows and off they went. Emma’s dad walked over and introduced himself. “Are you here for the birthday party, too?”
Say what?
“This is a birthday party? Oh, God, I didn’t realize. We came up the back way…” I scanned the hill for the rest of my family, thankful that 1) Liam was at a friend’s house and 2) The family we had invited to join us for an afternoon of sledding hadn’t been able to make it.
We needed to go. I signaled to Brendan who had just launched Henry over a jump. “It’s a birthday party,” I muttered to him. “I think it’s the class above Henry’s. We’ve got to round-up our kids.”
“Oh, I think it’s alright,” my amiable husband said. “Not all these people can be here for the party and the kids are having fun. Let them take a few runs and then we’ll go.” I reluctantly agreed.
A few runs turned into a few more runs, which turned into ‘just ten more minutes.’ By the end, Henry had made a new friend and was sharing his snow-tube. His wide grin told me he was having a blast. I started to relax. It’ll be alright, I told myself. As long as I don’t have to go down there and mingle with the party parents.
It was then that I saw her: Nora was in the queue for hot chocolate and cake.
Grabbing one of our sleds, I sped down the hill to prevent her from making our social faux pas worse. We left shortly thereafter. As we were leaving, a number of friendly parents and kids waved goodbye.
This is probably how the White House crashers got their start.
My husband went to see Avatar with a friend while I stayed home to watch The Proposal by myself. Hands down, he got the better deal, and not just because he escaped from the house for the evening.
While I wasn’t expecting The Proposal to be a tour de force, I was hoping it would be moderately entertaining. By the time the credits rolled, my jaw hurt. Not from laughing, but rather, because there were too many moments that made me grind my teeth.
At first, I dismissed my reaction to a bad mood. But here it is, more than 48 hours later, and the sexist undertones are still bugging me.
I find it so aggravating that Hollywood continues to portray successful women as ice-cold bitches. Somebody seems to think that
women do not (or cannot?) rise to the executive level if they demonstrate their feelings. God forbid they have a family. I don’t want to say that these on-screen women are “masculinized” because that would imply that successful men are similarly unfeeling, but who am I kidding? Isn’t that what our society trains us to believe?
It’s not personal; it’s business.
And then there are the tired stereotypes of woman-who-secretly-wants-a-man-to-take-charge and man-who-will-make-everything-alright. It’s the 21st century, people. Don’t we all know that in reality this formula is unstable? I about gagged at the end of the movie when Ryan Reynolds’ hero chases down Sandra Bullock’s witchy victim to rescue her from certain death (deportation, really, but a year outside of the U.S. clearly meant death to her career and by extension, to her life). Worse was when the stars seal their happily ever after with the predictable supposed-to-be hot-but-was-not close-mouthed kiss, and one of the lackeys in the peanut gallery yells, “Yeah, show her who’s boss, Andrew.”
Disgusting.
I understand that this is a light-hearted rom-com made for the masses, a showcase for Sandra Bullock’s skills at falling down, acting goofy and being naked. And although this largely forgettable film works on those levels, it’s the subtexts—purposeful or not—that resonate.
I watch Mad Men. Or at least, I’ve watched the first two seasons and am waiting for the third to come out on DVD. I watch because the show is so well done – the acting, the writing, the set design. Because it’s a period piece, I can be both horrified and fascinated by the blatant sexism and discrimination. That’s what it was like back then, I tell myself. It’s different now.
Isn’t it?
You might say, “Look who’s posing these questions. The woman who gave up a career in government to stay home with her kids. Now, there’s a big step forward for feminism.”
I get that.
But the way I look at it, I am a feminist. I made a considered choice. And like lots of big choices, it was not made without some regret. That said, I know that I am lucky to be home with my kids. I’d like to think it’s what feminists want and have wanted: equal options for women. If there are people in our society who do not consider raising children to be as challenging or as important as climbing the corporate ladder, then feminists like me have more work to do.
Real life is complicated. Pass the popcorn.
OINKtales 
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