Motherhood Uncensored

Every single person with a mother should be angry

I still remember when I attended a girls in science day at the local community college as a teen and they handed me a button that said $.68. 

I'd like to think that the pure absurdity of such a fact was the reason why it never fully hit me until much later in my life, when I pulled the shield of internalized misogyny off and allowed myself to be penetrated with what it's like to be a woman today, in what is heralded as a forward-thinking society. 

We carry and bear the children who become the game changers, the law makers, the great thinkers who should be defending us, who should be rising up and shaking their fists right along with us and yet we are still treated like second class citizens. 

Every single person with a mother should be angry. 

I tell my kids about our history and to them it sounds like a fairy tale. "Can you believe that in our lifetime, women weren't able to vote?" 

"Isn't it silly that women doing the same job as men don't make as much money?"

It sounds as ridiculous to them as a flying unicorn. 

And that's exactly how I want it to stay in their minds. For my girls and my boy. 

Ridiculous.

If birthing four children did anything to me, it tore off my rose-colored glasses. It made me a truthteller. A caller of bullshit. 

I tell my children the truth about why I didn't change my name to match their father's.

"Because women were property. We were like things that people could own." 

Fuck tradition. Fuck the status quo. Where exactly has that gotten us?

Even though I want to yell, I want to scream and beat certain people with their own Bibles, I do my best to point out the inequalities and injustices with hope for the future. 

Because without hope it's just anger. 

If we all would just question it, if we would bravely ask our kids, our girls AND our boys, "Isn't it silly?," "Isn't it awful?," or "Isn't it wrong?," I believe there is power in those "yeses." 

Your sons should be just as angry as your daughters. 

If there is anything I can do my children, if there's anything you can do for yours, it's arming them with the power to ask questions, to ask "why?" 

And then give them the courage to do something about it. 

When life gives you nasty vampires, make them hula vampires.

As a stage performer, musician, dancer, and a public speaker, you can probably guess how many times I've heard the "just visualize the audience in their underwear" tidbit. Because imagining people in their boxers and granny panties is supposed to be so hilarious that you'll somehow forget that you're on stage and need to remember a whole shit ton of lines and musical notes. 

Yeah, never quite worked for me. 

But now that I have two anxious children, and a therapist on retainer (or so it seems), I've been learning all sorts of strategies to deal with anxiety that I'd never heard before, probably because I've never actually seen a therapist for anxiety.

Just crazy parents. 

I'm aware that humor works as a coping mechanism because as I say to myself on an almost regular basis, as I wipe marker off the walls and listen to yet another round of berating comments from my 2-year old for providing her with necessities to keep her alive, if I wasn't able to laugh about it, I'd cry. 

Truth be told, sometimes, er, a lot of times I do cry, but mostly, or especially when I talk to my dear friend who can make even my dad dying hilarious, well I laugh. And it's not so bad anymore. And yes, I realize sounds like a Julie Andrews song, but whatever it works. 

It's helped my son deal with his fear of tornadoes and bad dreams, in which I turned a killer bee into a silly goofball bee who got his butt stuck in one of our kitchen chairs and buzzed his way right out the door vowing never to return. 

{Shut-up, it was the best I could do at 2am} 

And it's a technique that my daughter is using too, for now to deal with the admittedly spooky Jane and Aro from Twilight by turning them into... Hula Dancers.

{Yes, I'm allowing her to read Twilight}

I'm not quite sure I can turn my own demons, who aren't as concrete as Jane, Aro, or that stupid-ass bee, into cartoon characters or straw-skirt wearing butt shakers, but I can certainly try.

Visualizing them as who rather than what:

My physical insecurity as an ugly bitch with frizzy hair and a flat ass who's just jealous;

My fear of failure as an old man with yellow teeth, knobbly knees, and long overgrown toenails who's projecting his own regret onto me; 

My belief that I'm not good enough as a grumpy old troll who's a reflection of every person who's made me feel that way;

All dressed in hula skirts shaking their ass on stage while a half-naked muscular Asian man plays the ukelele. 

It's a lot easier to see their utter ridiculousness. And to tell them to shut-the-fuck-up. 

Sex education thanks to Eric Carle

I was all excited when the kids chose Eric Carle's "Draw me a Star" for their bedtime story until I got to the part where the man and woman were drawn, naked of course, at which point all hell broke loose. 

"I can see her vagina!" Margot giggled. 

"That it so yucky!" my son said, pointing the the shape of the man's penis which really looked like a small, sharp triangle dangling between his legs.

Dangerous, perhaps. But not yucky. 

So, I took a deep breath, gave the warning look to my husband which generally says "pop the ear plugs in because I might say the word 'testicles' around the children" and began my longwinded discussion about body parts and how they're not yucky, just private and personal, which is why we might feel uncomfortable or embarrassed seeing them in a book. 

"YUCKY!" my son screamed.

All the kids giggled, except Quinlan, who reminded everyone from high atop her bunkbed that artists paint people naked all the time and it's not disgusting or weird. 

At least ONE child listens to me while I'm standing up on my soapbox. 

For as much as sexuality and nakedness freaked out my parents and therefore freaked me out, I'm trying to do the complete opposite with my own kids, not so that they'll become flashers or sex maniacs which does not happen when you talk openly and honestly with kids about sex HEAR THAT RIGHT WING CONSERVATIVES, but that they'll feel comfortable in their own skin.

From what I can tell, sex and nudity are not the root of all evil, or really any evil for that matter, and the more informed my kids can be the better prepared they will be to survive and function in a society that has some pretty fucked up views about sex. 

If only they held the same views about violence. 

The way I see it, I can leave their sex education up to society and its fucked up views or I can do it myself. Or at least, pawn the hard stuff off to my husband, who unsuccessfully tried to escape with some excuse about making school lunches. 

"What's that dwarf's name, mom?" Drew asked, after we had moved onto Snow White.

"Bashful" I said. "Which means embarrassed, like how you felt when you saw the naked people in the other book."

He smiled, then asked "Why did the mother send that man to kill her daughter?"  

I sighed. 

"So, anything else you want to ask me about those naked people..." 

We work.

I spent the last week in a house full of girls while my husband and son enjoyed a surprise birthday ski trip. It all ended well, thankfully, but I wasn't sure they would actually make it onto the plane given the series of "I don't want to go waaaaah sniffle" phone calls from the aiport and then a lost Nintendo DS game cover (and a couple of games) which caused more waaaaahs and sniffles. 

You'd think by now we'd learn not to give the anxious kid a series of surprises that while awesome in our minds are like smacking him in the face repeatedly with a board. 

I'm going to remind myself of that any time we get the brilliant idea to bombard him with our idea of fabulousness, which as we're getting is not everyone's idea of fabulousness, though to be fair, he had an amazing time and I'm proud that he was able to get over the initial shock of it all to settle down and enjoy some time as an only child. 

As much as I thought my week would be easier without Drew home, which isn't just because Drew makes life interesting (read: challenging and exhausting) but because when you go from four kids to three kids, it's like going from an obstacle course with a 40lb backpack in the mud to a 5k. 

You're still running, but you're faster! and lighter! and much cleaner and happier at the end. 

But oddly enough I was still late getting the kids to school every day. The girls did not go to bed earlier. And I actually felt more tired. 

You see, I've apparently got some sort of system down, a way of doing things that just works, and so when one piece is missing, I just don't function as well as when all the pieces are in place. 

It's still chaotic and a bit crazy, in fact, I'm quite certain there's nothing pretty about it, but it works. 

We work.

{Cue some overplayed but tremendously accurate team without a player analogy here}

And as much as I breathed a sigh of relief to not be answering his 400 questions about ladybugs, or remind him for the 12th time that the watermelon did not somehow magically ripen between the 15 minutes you asked me last, I missed my boy. 

Happy 6th Birthday, sweet Drew. You make life interesting. And that's a very good thing. 

If you're curious, more birthday posts for Drew:

1st Birthday (ack, sniffle)

2nd Birthday (more acks and sniffles)

3rd Birthday

5th Birthday (super acks and sniffles)

Payback's a bitch

I still remember the day I got my very first report card in the first grade and my teacher called them out last name first. 

"CHASE, KRISTEN" she yelled. 

"CHASE KRISTEN!!!" some idiot in the back of the room screamed, and thus began a new game at recess. 

I was devastated with my horrible last name for about a week until the kids figured out another game to play and the silly game played at my expense was yesterday's new. 

Turns out Quinlan is getting her own fair share of giggles at the expense of her unique name, as she shared with me the other day as I was opening a box of spoils to add to her pretzel tin collection. 

"LOOK AT THESE AMAZING MUGS!" I screeched, hold the pretzel handle and showcasing the beer can shaped ceramic mugs with her name printed in shiny gold letters, ala 1975. 

Quinlan barely smiled, which was completely uncharacteristic of her. 

"I told the kids in my class that I was named after a pretzel company and some of the boys laughed at me" she sighed, which actually made me laugh out loud.

Not the empathic response I was going for. But seriously, the stuff kids find funny. I mean, pretzels? At least save the giggles for kids named after vaginal creams or something, guys. 

Pretzels are awesome. And tasty! 

So I told her my own sordid tale, which seemed to lighten the mood, and then reminded her that people laugh when they're uncomfortable or can't seem to find the words or actual emotion they want to express. 

"One day, when you're selling those tins for thousands of dollars, you can laugh at how ridiculous they were," I said, rolling the ceramic mugs back up in bubble wrap. 

Then I asked her who it was, exactly, and after she told me, I did what every parent would probably do in the same situation: 

I showed her a photo I have of him wearing a very lovely pair of Tory Burch flats. 

Yeah, who's laughing now, bitches?