The community of good mothers

A mom-friend on Facebook recently wrote a status update asking parents for advice about how to deal with a picky eater. One of her friends linked a blog entry on the topic of picky eating written by a mom-blogger ("One Fierce Mama") who describes herself as "unapologetic, uncensored, opinionated." I read One Fierce Mama's picky eater entry, although I wasn't looking for advice on the matter since, so far, Graham has eagerly eaten everything we've fed him (and has even tried, with some success, to eat dust and dog hair). One Fierce Mama doubts that children are ever actually picky eaters—she thinks "picky eater" is a persona we project onto a child as soon as a new food makes her face crinkle.

I wasn't home the first time Graham ate plums. Aron introduced the two and reported to me that the plum feeding didn't go well. "Graham made such a sour face," Aron informed, concluding that Graham must not like plums. The next day there was still half a jar of plums in the refrigerator, so I decided to try again. Graham didn't make a sour face, and he ate the remainder of the first jar and more than half of a second. I concluded that Graham likes plums. What One Fierce Mama wrote about picky eating corresponded pretty well with my experiences, so I kept reading her blog, starting with her (then) most recent blog entry, "How not to raise a little racist." 

One Fierce Mama is thoughtful and engaging and, like she says, opinionated. She's a fucking cool mom who uses the f-word. She's militantly opposed to circumcision. Graham isn't circumcised, because the procedure is (generally) medically unnecessary and (invariably) painful, which are two of many more reasons supporting One Fierce Mama's circumcision opposition. I liked reading One Fierce Mama's blog, and then, in an entry that discussed breastfeeding, she alienated me.

She alienated me from the community of good mothers. She wrote about breastfeeding the way many write and think about breastfeeding—it's the right way to feed your baby, and it may require work, but the vast majority of mothers make milk. (She also wrote that if a mother has "honest to God" production problems, she should look into procuring milk from human milk banks, which aren't exactly on every corner. And, incidentally, human milk is insanely expensive. I want repeat the Brecht adage:  morality is for those who can afford it. But whether to formula feed or breastfeed is simply not the moral issue that some mothers make it out to be. Formula feeding, even if by choice, is not immoral.)

I'm pretty sensitive about breastfeeding. But I suspect that most mothers feel pretty sensitive about something. And when motherhood—in the blogging world, in magazines, in mommy-baby groups—is elevated to the level of competition, I figure every mother at some point feels like a loser. I feel like a loser all the time. You'd think it's a hobby. But it's not. It's the worst feeling. Nothing is as important to me as Graham, so if I'm made to feel like I'm failing him in any way, I'm failing in the worst way possible. On October 13th, my birthday, three years ago, the professor of my 19th century philosophy class passed out essays she had just finished grading, and I got an F, along with some helpful and some unduly nasty criticism. It makes me laugh now to think how anguished I was about a failing grade on an essay. But I think I'll be unendingly unhappy about failing to produce breastmilk, and the more militant faction of the "breast is best" army doesn't make recovering from the emotional disappointment any easier.

Do I make another mother feel alienated from the community of good mothers when I write about Graham being uncircumcised? I hope I don't. I often write like there's an award for Most Anxious Mommy and like I want to win it. For the first month of his life I dragged Graham's bassinet into the bathroom every time I peed. I practically brag that I'm afraid of blankets. And now maybe I'm writing like I want an award for Least Competitive. I want an award for something, for sure.

I am competitive. Last time Graham and I visited my mom I wanted to show off to her that Graham can patty-cake, but when I started to sing the song, Graham's cousin, who is four months older than he, started to patty-cake waaay better than Graham, and he didn't stop and look perplexed when it came time to "roll it" the way Graham does—and I was pissed about Graham getting shown up! (Never play air hockey with me:  I'm not threatening that I'm good—it's just that I am a true jerk about it, and I don't want anyone to see me in that state. Really. This is not a joke. Air hockey makes me a mean person. Aron was once beating my badly in a game of it, and I threatened to divorce him.)

Motherhood makes me an insecure person, because it means so much to me. It doesn't mean everything to me. I do have other interests. There are things I would rather do than be a militant mother, strictly barricading the community of good mothers and relishing as I deny entry to formula-feeding, circumcising, and epidural-having mothers. I am in love with Graham, and I want to do everything I can to help him be emotionally and physically healthy. 

I also dream of one day making a brief return to my old life, where I would make an F on a paper and then go directly from class to a bar, order a drink, sit outside with it and read for fun. Maybe I'd read this: 

I wouldn't understand it, but I'd enjoy it, because it's easy to enjoy something that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if I don't understand philosophy. People whose job it is to understand philosophy understand it. But I'm the one whose job it is to raise Graham, and it's a job I take very seriously. I think most mothers take the job of mothering pretty seriously—it's why they write blogs about it and why they can't enjoy going to a party and why they are offended when someone takes issue with the way they do their mothering. I'm in love with Graham. I will do the same inane thing repeatedly and for as long as his laughter about it lasts. Last night when Graham was having his bath, I dunked my head under water and then pulled it back out dramatically, my wet and heavy hair splashing everything around me. It made Graham laugh. So I did it again. And again. And again. So many times that I had to take Tylenol this morning because my neck was sore. Motherhood is ridiculous. I know it's important, but I don't like feeling bad about it. Graham is just going to grow into an adolescent who resents me and then an adult human who doesn't really care about me. Graham will never love me as much as I love him.

What's the point of this long blog? I don't know. I'd rather read and drink than criticize or be criticized for mom stuff.