Wordless Wednesday

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Dirty Little Secret #84

I'm not voting for Hillary Clinton on Super Tuesday.

I don't want to support a candidate for President just because she is a woman. I consider myself a feminist, and I am joyous beyond all reason that there is a viable female candidate for President in my lifetime. I did not think that there would be. If she is the Democratic nominee, then I will support her with everything that I have.

But I agree with Caroline Kennedy. There is something to Barack Obama that I just don't feel when I hear Hillary Clinton speak. My husband has said time and again that he is turned off by Hillary; I insist that his feelings are prompted by a deep-seated and sub-conscious chauvinist bias. I insist that if she were attractive and young and spoke in dulcet tones that he would feel differently.

But I don't feel it either. That inspires within me a deep-seated feeling of unease. There is something in me that wants to support a female candidate solely because she is female. (Somehow this didn't apply to Libby Dole.)

This, however, got to me this morning: the New York State chapter of the National Organization of Women attacked Senator Ted Kennedy for his endorsement of Barack Obama. Their insistence that his endorsement of a male candidate is a betrayal of women demeans Hillary Clinton more than anything else I have read or heard. We should not a select a nominee on the basis of gender or race.

So I'm not going to.

Dirty Little Secret #83

It makes me crazy that Lizzy can't read yet.

It's difficult to keep typing after committing that sentence to paper...or, um, my computer screen. That sentence is loaded with equal parts guilt, frustration, and bewilderment.

I have mostly avoided the process of teaching her outright. If you know Lizzy and you know me, then you know that THAT would be a mistake. Lizzy generally refuses to partake in an activity that she can't do perfectly. This is, after all, the child who didn't walk until she was 18 months old. Can you guess that she got up one day and ran across the room? This is also the child who didn't speak until she was two and a half. But, you guessed it, she launched into telling stories, reciting nursery rhymes by heart, and singing the alphabet.

She hasn't stopped talking since.

I know that she will read. I know that, like me, she will learn to read sometime in the year that she is six and that two months later she will have finished reading all seven volumes of The Chronicles of Narnia by herself. The she will steal her big sister's Illustrated Junior Library edition of Little Women and read it with a flashlight under the covers. This will make her big sister very angry.

Oh. Wait. She doesn't have a big sister.

Anyway, she came home today wanting to play Go Fish with the sight word cards sent home by her kindergarten teacher. SHE wanted to play. This was not my idea. But asking her to remember that T-H-E spells the and that M-Y spells my seemed to send her off the deep end. She tearfully placed her cards on the table and told me that she didn't want to play anymore.

Which made me crazy.

Which is the part that makes me crazy. I know what she feels and why she feels it - I know that she cried out of frustration with herself. I know that even though I hold back from saying much of all about reading that she feels a subtle pressure from me to make that magic happen: to make those letters and sounds that she knows so well magically blend into words.

I didn't know what to do with her when she started to cry. Picking up and telling her that we could stop playing seemed as if I was telling her that it's okay to quit whenever something is hard. Agreeing to read the words her cards held without having to try to remember them seemed the equivalent.

But any other course of action seemed like punishing her for not remembering.

I told her that it was okay that it was hard. I told her that I was having fun playing and that I would love to play some more. Then I gently sent her to room to have some quiet time. I told her that her tears were showing me that maybe she felt very tired and needed to rest.

So I gave her an out and punished her at the same time.

I am frustrated that she puts forth little effort and gives up easily. I am frustrated that it matters so much to me. I am bewildered by her behavior and by my own.

I feel guilty.

Dirty Little Secret #82 - for Wordless Wednesday

I am longing for summer.



Indian Neck Beach, Wellfleet, MA.
August 2005.

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Dirty Little Secret #81

I just sat down on my bed, and turned on Oprah.

Seven years ago, when I went slightly crazy and quit my teaching job mid-year, I spent a fair amount of my first few unemployed weeks sitting on the couch and watching TV. But not, Oprah. Usually Behind the Music.

Newly married, I wasn't yet pregnant with Lizzy and I was a little gun-shy to go out and get myself a new job. You know, because of my slight case of crazy.

After a few weeks, a trip to Paris with my parents, and a little Paxil, I pulled myself up by my bootstraps, opened the windows to the smell of Manhattan's early spring, and found a job in a large and venerable fabric store in the fashion district. It didn't last long, although I credit part of my success to the experience. But I got pregnant.

It was terrifying: married one year, not gainfully employed, still paying for the master's degree I was no longer using. But a dear friend assured me that I could do this. It was serendipity, she said. I would rise to the occasion.

And I did. I stayed home and found a new person in parenthood. But the experience of that long winter of 2001 made me vow that I would stay off the couch. I would not be the stay-at-home-mom who watched her shows while vacuuming.

And I'm not.

But sometimes it's nice to sit. And do nothing. My dad used to come home from work, pop a handful of loose M&Ms from the jar, and sit down to watch Peter Jennings on the ABC nightly news. It was a quiet time, with his arm thrown over the back of the couch. Next, we would sit together and watch Jeopardy!

Now Lizzy is playing quietly in her room, Teddy is still napping, and my sewing for the day is done. It feels nice, to take this break instead of sewing to get ahead for tomorrow or going downstairs to unload the dishwasher. Zippy and I are snuggled up on the pillows.

I wonder, sometimes, how I will fill my days next year when the kids move towards full-time school days. I plan to volunteer at the local children's crisis center. And maybe I'll join the gym.

Maybe sometimes, I'll just sit for a few minutes.

Dirty Little Secret #80

I get my hair cut only once or twice a year.

My last haircut was in November 2006. It was a perfect blend of bob and choppy ends, designed to grow out well. I do my stylists - whom I choose by availability - the favor of letting them know that I won't be back for at least six months. It lasted until about mid-April, when my fine, stringy, straight strands began to get in my face.

I've been wearing pigtails ever since.

Which I have to say, I like. It's easy: pull it up when wet. It's a little different: how many 32-year-olds wander around the grocery store wearing the same hairstyle as their six-year-old daughter? (And yes, I understand that that's probably not a good thing.)

Let's face it. It's supremely lazy.

So on Thursday, I had my hair cut in the same basic shape I have worn since January 1992. I am not often seen in front of the camera; more likely I'm to be found behind it. In fact, in the eight months that I wore my piggies, there isn't a single photo taken that accurately captures them in their full glory. But here I am Friday, captured by my three-year-old's new digital camera.



I'm glad that's out of the way. Now I don't have to head back to the salon until sometime in 2009.

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