Category: Parenting

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‘Parenthood’ and Cancer

I love parenthood.  And I love ‘Parenthood,’ the NBC slice of privileged Northern California life drama.  I never miss an episode.  Really.  And when I see a new episode pop up on Hulu, well, I know just what Imma curl up with as soon as the boy is asleep.  Every episode makes me cry.  Every damn episode.  I love it.  Capital “L” Love it.

I pine for the closeness of the four siblings.  Four kids each crazy different in qualities and temperment attached to four spouses/significant others also equally different in qualities and temperment, but impossibly, making all those relationships work.  And the parents?  Love those two, too.  I can’t quite get a read on the Mom Camille, but the Dad?  Zeek?  Bam.  Great character, great acting.

I have no idea how they make it work without familial bloodshed.  Really.

This season, its fourth, is like crack for me because so many of the story lines mirror my own life:  Adoption?  Check.  Stepping away from employment to focus on family?  Check.  Cancer?  Check and check.  Sadly.

It is commonly understood amongst the cancer circles I find myself in that it is hard to portray cancer and living in Cancerville accurately.  My Sister’s Keeper?  I hated it.  Really, really hated it.  50/50?  Better and so full of potential, but missed so many marks.  I am both hoping and dreading the inevitable sale of the film rights to “The Fault in Our Stars,” a newish and wildly popular YA book that is next on my list of books to read, but is getting tremendous press.

This season, Kristina Braverman (great and intentional surname, no doubt) is diagnosed with breast cancer that has metasticized in her lymph nodes.  Not great.  Especially not great for Kristina, who is a fairly high-strung, though incredibly loving, mom.  Ugh.  I feel for her.  I do.  And, yes, as a sometimes high-strung, though incredibly loving, mom myself, yeah, I relate.

Hats off to the writers, man.  They are nailing it.  Capital “N” Nailing it.  The nuances of Cancerville, though the Braverman family has just moved in, are spot on.  I see the fear in their eyes.  The complete lack of control you have within the medical system, as you become just a cog in the cancer wheel industry.  The almost unbearable beauty of life that you become aware of that at times feels oppressive as you have to recognize and appreciate all of it.

The sacred moment when you watch the poison that you hope/pray will heal you snakes its way through yards of plastic tubing.  The quiet in the room at that moment, despite whatever noise may be present.  The helplessness of the person you love most staring at you, close in inches, but miles apart in so many other ways.  The awkwardness of needing help and feeling immense gratitude when that help presents itself, but it is paired with equally immense annoyance that you can’t find the damn jar of peanut butter.

I watch every week and I am dumbfounded at the writers’ precision, the actors’ gifts in bringing Cancerville to life.  Seeing that reality so deftly portrayed on screen is bringing truth to life.  And there is comfort seeing your truth on a screen, whatever that screen may be.

Parenthood Cast

Cast of NBC drama ‘Parenthood’ — aren’t they all just impossibly beautiful?

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Mommy Wars: You Win, We All Lose

Yesterday I posted an e-card that another Facebook page had created.  I was surprised by the vitriol it generated, but wasn’t familiar with the page, and assumed it was the crowd that hung out over in that neck of the Facebook woods.  I shared it on my own page with the caption, “I’ve seen this on a few walls today. It generates a lot of whining about who has it worse — SAHMs or working moms. Sheesh. Can’t we all just get along?”  I am grateful for the community of readers that follows Mary Tyler Mom on Facebook.  The 90+ comments on my thread were, for the most part, positive or neutral.  That, my friends, is like an oasis on the Internet, the Holy Grail of social media.

Working Mom ecard

(Graphic courtesy of Mommy Needs a Beer)

The other pages were very different from the Fairy Forest that I work hard to cultivate over at Mary Tyler Mom (think about an internet version of Snow White with the forest animals trailing after her, “tweeting” birds flying above, blue skies and flowering trees.  Yeah, that is exactly what my Facebook page is like.).

There was hate and jealousy and meanness and ugly, ugly comments on many of those other pages.  Sigh.  The Mommy Wars are boring, yes, but they do exist and they are real.  Would that it were not so, but, alas, it is.

The thing that gets to me is that at the crux of the Mommy Wars are two factions of women trying their very best to win at the competition of having it the hardest.  Seriously?  I mean, who wants to have it the hardest?  I don’t.  No siree, Bob, not me.  I want to win the competition where I have it the easiest.  Wouldn’t that be sweet?

Ugh.  I find it so disheartening, discouraging.  I was raised in the 1970s.  My idols were all feminists — Gloria Steinem, Marlo Thomas, Jane Bryne.  My favorite Charlie’s Angel was Kate Jackson.  Jiminy Crickets, I named my blog after a 1970s feminist icon — Mary Tyler Moore.  She was my ideal woman — strong, smart, funny, sexy, single.  She was gonna make it after all, you know?  My point is that feminism is about choice.  Choice, people.

In this new millenium, some of us are lucky enough to have choice; it is a luxury these days.  When we exercise that choice, though, those of us who have it, we are excoriated no matter what we choose.  SAHMs are lazy and boring.  Working moms get off easy and don’t have to deal with the house or family.  Poor WAHMs just get lost in the shuffle.

Give me a freaking break.  Mothering is mothering.  It is a full time gig.  You don’t stop being a mother in the hours you work outside the home.  And you definitely are working inside the home if you are a SAHM.  Why the need to identify ourselves as having it worse than someone else?  You know who my favorite moms are?  The ones who are too busy to care what the other moms are doing; they are satisfied with their life and support the other moms around them.

Can you imagine if each of us mothers saw our kids engage in the animus that we engage in on a regular basis in social media?  The pelting with words is horrible.  We are so divisive.  I breast feed my three year old.  You freak!  I opt for disposable diapers.  Why do you hate Mother Earth?!  My car seat got left at the mechanics and I needed to get to the airport, so my son had to ride with only a seat belt for a few miles.  You are a terrible human being and I hope your son dies so you learn your lesson!

Honestly, as a mom, would any of us condone this behavior in our homes?  Not a chance.  Somehow, we have made the opposite of what we teach our children acceptable when it occurs on a keyboard.

Shame on us.

trophy

For those of us who require the demeaning of another to feel better about ourselves, this trophy is for you.  It is hereby decreed the YOU WIN trophy.  YOU WIN at having it the hardest.  YOU WIN at making others feel less than because of choices they make that have nothing to do with you.  YOU WIN at tearing down your sisters.  Hooray!

You lose at life, but who cares what I have to say?  I’m probably just jealous of you anyway.

Hey!  If you liked this, vote for me in the Circle of Moms 25 Best Family Blogs contest.  It takes two seconds and I will give you your very own trophy!  Voting open through 11.29.12.

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My Ungrateful Boy

‘Tis the season of gratitude, right?  You would think so, but not necessarily for three year old boys.  In this most abundant of seasons, we’ve been talking a lot about gratitude and being thankful at home and at school.  My boy is lucky.  He has a nice home, goes to a great school, has two parents who love and care for him, good health, and toys and books that appear to reproduce on their shelves.

When asked what he is grateful for, what makes him give thanks, the answer for days now has been a sullen, “Myself.”  Hrmph.  Pout, stomp, drop mic, and leave the room.  Boom.

Initially, this really bothered me.  “Are you kidding me?,” I would ask myself in my head.  Jiminy Crickets, this kid has it made and all he is thankful for is his own damn self?  Oh no he didn’t.  Ain’t no way this mama is gonna raise herself a narcissist.  I know narcissists and I don’t want to have any hand in raising one.

And then I remembered.  He’s three.  Not 13, not 30, not 47.  My boy is three.  He shows his gratitude in a hundred different ways — the neck nuzzle, calling me Spider Man 2 to his Spider Man 1, holding hands on the sidewalk when we’re not even near an intersection.  I know my boy is grateful because I feel it.  Every day.  Well, mostly every day.  Sometimes I just annoy him and he growls and makes his fingers into claws.  I love that boy, too.

On this high holy day of gratitude, my job is not to require a rote reply from my three year old to the question of “What are you grateful for?”  My job is to show my gratitude — model it every day, not just this day.  My boy will learn.  I will, too.

gratitude

And if you are reading these words, know just how grateful I am for you in my life.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!