Hair Care

My hair stylist, like any woman's, is really more like my therapist. And she's been kind enough over the last half decade to pretend as if my sessions with her have just been about my hair.

This is the cycle:

I'll grow my hair out very long. Not quite as long as it was in high school (which was Splash like), but long by modern standards. I marvel at the length. Love pulling it up at night to wash my face, love how it looks spiral-curled--like a woman on a procedural show. Love how it feels when it falls on my shoulders or when my husband runs his hands through it. Love it fully, for about three months.

Then one day, after I finish blow-drying it for 20 minutes, and am dripping with sweat, I storm out of the bathroom and yell at my husband, "That's it! I can't take it any more! I'm chopping it off!" (It has been my experience that women don't get "hair cuts." They "chop it off.")

So I get an emergency session with my stylist and she chops off my hair into a bob. These are my only two speeds: long straight hair, short angled bob. And when I see the bob I gasp with excitement and exclaim, "I love it! This is how my hair should always look."

I love the volume of the bob. How quickly it dries. The compliments I get, mostly because it's so drastically different. But then, one day, after spending 20 minutes with the flat iron trying to fight with my cowlick and get the back to "bob" just so, I storm out of the bathroom and yell at my husband, "That's it! I can't take it any more! I'm growing it out!"

And so it goes.

I refuse to use any products, but I want my hair to have volume, shine and to stay in place. I have naturally wavy hair, but only in the front. The back is straight as an arrow. I'm constantly contemplating bangs. 

My husband loves my hair up. Especially in a ponytail. He loves how it "shows off my face" and how "effortless it looks." But for me, I find that when I wear a ponytail, I have too much face. So I have to have a few wisps of hair and larger earrings to feel less exposed. And effortless? Yeah, right. Hint to the men: the more effortless a woman's hair looks, the longer she spent on it.

Color is a different, more maddening story all together.

As a child, until the age of two, I was bald. When the hair finally started to grow in, it was cotton white. Hate to brag here, but it was adorable. Especially when my mother pulled it into ever-so-slightly curling pigtails. My hair was a defining characteristic. My name was synonymous with "blonde."

My best friend, whom I met the first day of preschool, was a redhead. I loved her immediately. Together, we were the towhead and carrot top who wore macaroni necklaces and played at length with My Little Ponies. We were special. Our hair conveyed this.

After my car accident, at the age of eight, my hair was such a tangled mess of blood and rocks and sticks and glass that the doctors insisted on shaving it off completely. My mother refused. When they fought her, saying it was so matted and tangled that it would never unfurl, she said she wanted the chance to try. And so, for the three weeks I was bound to the hospital bed, 800 miles from home, my mother worked meticulously to unravel my blonde mane. This was our daily activity. She would pick gingerly at the ends, finding that if she could just get a one-inch-by-one-inch section of hair untangled, it would be a successful day. She sprayed it and combed at it until my head ached so tremendously she would have to stop for the day. And eventually, near the time I was to be discharged, she had picked out every piece of gravel and every shard of glass and successfully brushed out the entire three feet of my white, silky hair.

Then she called for a shampoo.

And it was a celebration. Nurses piled in the room to watch as the stylist rinsed the dried blood and then combed my hair out in a fan shape on my pillow to allow everyone to take pictures. It was the biggest of victories.

My mother had saved my hair.

And for the rest of my childhood, we had such fun with it. Crimping it for school pictures (yes, I was super cool), braiding it for gymnastic tournaments, having it professionally styled for my brother's wedding. Buying all kinds of scrunchies and banana clips and mastering the side ponytail.

But as I got older, my hair progressively got darker, just ever so slightly, until my senior year of high school, when I decided to take the plunge and get highlights before moving off to college. I think my stylist back then gave me less than five foils, but it made me feel more blonde. Feel more me.

My mother was thrilled.

It began simple enough. A few highlights every semester break from college. I was maintaining the color of my youth. It just took a few streaks of bleach chemicals every six months to keep the magic alive. But as every woman knows, a few innocent highlights are a gateway dye.

When I graduated college, I thought I needed a professional look, so I chopped off my hair. When my professional, angled bob landed me a job in a new city, I found a new fancy stylist in a new fancy salon. After a few months, I was pining for a fresh start with my hair to match the fresh start in my life.  I sat down in the hydraulic chair with a cape wrapped around me and said, "Chestnut me."

In I went as a (bubbly?) blonde, out I came as a (sultry?) brunette. The ladies in the shop loved it. They ooed and aahed, and I walked out of there with such confidence that when I got back to my apartment, the guys who lived in 12G flirted with me in the elevator. And I flirted back.

But I woke up the next morning with a massive hair hangover. I called my sister before sunrise, telling her I couldn't go into work. I was too embarrassed. People would hate it. And also, what colors of clothes go with my hair now? White? Pink seems to clash. Can I still pull off black? How the hell should I do my makeup?

At work, most everyone was in a state of shock. Though they had only known me about three months, they seemed betrayed. Disgusted, maybe. And in walked my boss, a powerful, scary woman not too far from Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. She herself was a blonde, and maintained her highlights every two weeks for an astronomical cost. She came up to me, touched my hair, sighed heavily, and said for all to hear: "Why the hell would you do this to yourself?"

But that was nothing compared to my mother's reaction. She had no words. She was tight lipped, which is the worst (and most unusual) thing my mother can be. She looked around at me, trying to find a place for her eyes to land. She commented on my shoes and then my necklace and excused herself to cry in the hall closet. It would have been better for me to have come home confessing I had gotten knocked up by some random drummer who was out on parole.

It's been seven years and she still brings it up.

So after the Chestnut Incident of 2005, I began to allow my stylist to do more creative tricks with color to find a balance between dark brown and platinum blonde. She used a bit more highlights and juxtaposed them with some oxymoronic lowlights. Every session I'd sit in her chair and say, "Ok, I'd like it to be a honey carmel color." The next session I'd say, "Ok, really more hazelnut maple." Once I had her try for "strawberry banana." She probably thought I was just hungry. But she patiently tried every food coloring I could throw at her.

I would get frustrated because when I try a dark auburn or a deep brown, which I ultimately loved, the color would fade quickly. When I questioned my stylist about this she would say, "Your hair is naturally very light. It's hard to keep it dark."And yet, when I try highlights, I quickly get dark roots. To which my stylist says, "Yes, because your hair is not light enough that it can maintain the highlights very well."

She avoids being openly annoyed as I plop down, exasperated, in her chair, demanding she chop it off after she spent a year holding my hand through a rough grow out. And she hides her skepticism when I bounce in excitedly showing her a picture of Keri Russell (early season one) and demand that she "Make me look like her!" Because I think she knows we can lighten it up to nearly fluorescent, or darken it to the point of my mother disowning me, but after a few washes, my true color always surfaces.

And my true color isn't really all that bad. It's just not what it once was. I sometimes take this out on my best friend, the Ginger, because she insists on putting in a few blonde foils to "tone down the red." And I just can't forgive her. Because when you look at the picture of the two of us in preschool, the iconic image of our childhood that is framed on a wall in my home, she and I don't resemble the towhead and carrot top very much anymore.

Perhaps this is what is upsetting my mother. Her white-haired child is gone. Youthfulness and lightness have been replaced. I often wonder how differently things would have gone if she had just let the doctors shave me bald. Perhaps my hair would have grown in just as blonde and silky as before. Or maybe it would have grown in thicker, darker, maybe even curly. And maybe I wouldn't feel the need to have my hair be a constant gift to my mother. But I respect and admire her decision in the hospital to try to keep what I had. Preserve what was precious. Protect what was perfect. And however burdensome, my hair will always be an extremely intense experience that she and I shared more than 20 years ago.

So yes, my mom and I have issues with my hair today.

But I'm hopeful they'll be gone tomorrow.

Book Club Pick

Most people generally respond in one of two ways when they hear I belong to a book club.
1) They repeat what I said in question form: "You're in a book club?"
2) They ask to join.

Books are a very big part of my life. And an even bigger part of my marriage. Growing up, my parents were avid readers. Books, newspapers, magazines. The house was cluttered with words. One summer, while I was in high school, I had to spend three months on the couch recovering from an invasive hip surgery. So my dad brought me Irving, Steinbeck, two Grishams and every Vonnegut we owned. In between, my brother forced me to watch the original Star Wars trilogy. That summer unknowingly secured my destiny as an English major. And my fate with Jim.

Jim learned to read from comic books. Batman, Spiderman and The Hulk, exclusively. He progressed quickly to The Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown. Then he turned five. He spent the proceeding years of his bespectacled life with his nose in a book.

He started the book club eight years ago. At that time it included himself and one other friend. It grew to include a coworker. From there, the club has expanded and contracted over the years to as many as twelve people, to as few as four. In its current state, there are seven consistent members. And each of them have been a part of the book club for a year or more. That means they are (at least) Twelve Books Committed. In book club terms, this is like buying a house together.

The book club meets once a month for dinner. We mostly patron locally owned restaurants. When we can, we try to go to places that match the theme of the book. For example, when we read Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, we met at India Palace. When we read Wuthering Heights, we met at the White Lion English Pub. Next month we are reading T.C. Boyle's The Torilla Curtain, so we are meeting at El Rio Verde. It doesn't always work out this way, of course. For our upcoming selection of Watership Down, we are pressed to find a place that serves rabbit. Though we could always go for coneys. (This joke kills among Tolkien fans.)

For the most part, we alternate each month between a classic work and a contemporary work. While we read novels almost exclusively, we do spice it up sometimes--as any committed relationship does--to keep it interesting. We've read a play one of our members was in, and then attended her performance together. We did Ian McEwan's Atonement in time to see the movie en masse. We did a year of only female authors (ten guesses who had that idea). We did one month in which everyone picked a short story and then we held a contest to decide who chose the best one. Winner got a Barnes and Noble gift card. And every October we read a scary, gothic novel (Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) and two of our (married) members host a lavish dinner party at their house with themed food and haunting decorations. We take this shit seriously.

A typical meeting doesn't just focus on the book. I mean, there's liquor, too. Typically we spend a good while catching up over drinks. We talk about our children's new milestones, or spouses' promotions, trouble at work, or our favorite new TV shows. We update each other on the issues we were facing the last time we met, we show each other pictures of our recent vacations, or we trade magazines and DVDs we know others would like.

Once we order our food, we dive deep into the book. Jim usually leads, but typically the member who picked the month's book does the most background research, has a few anecdotes to share and questions to pose. Sometimes we rib a member for an interesting pick. Like mine a few months back, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore (a genius book in which a chimp learns language and falls in love with his primatologist) because in the beginning of the book an ape does a horrendous act to a frog. I've not yet been forgiven.

We talk about themes, pacing, setting, characters and plot. All the trappings of a traditional high school English class, but without much structure. We also throw in other experiments, like what alternate titles would work, or casting actors for the movie version (if there isn't one yet). Sometimes we plan in advance for something unique, like bringing in a different first or last line for the book, or highlighting the single quote from the book that made the most impact.

The group is almost always divided on our feelings toward the book. The month we read The Catcher in the Rye (which I had never read), I couldn't wait to get to book club and discuss it because I thought it was our greatest book club pick to date. Only once I got there, the other members had all but set the restaurant on fire and thrown chairs through the windows in protest of this book.

The discussion of the book usually extends through the end of our meal, at which point the meeting goes one of two ways.

1. If the book was fairly well received by the group and didn't hit any nerves (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Swamplandia!; Henderson the Rain King) we wrap up the evening talking about what our next few weeks hold. We pick the next meeting date and restaurant and we are on our merry way.

2. If we've read a more nerve-pinching book (Rabbit, Run; Life of Pi, Freedom) then the meeting launches into a long and spirited conversation about relationships, religion and politics. These are the best meetings. Meetings where the wait staff is vacuuming up around us while we hash out our individual and opposing beliefs on God, our fears about an upcoming election, or our hopes for our children. And somewhere in there, a few years back, was the epic debate about the rise of e-readers (I was first on board, Jim was last) and if it truly was the end of books as we know it. But, every member now reads their books on an electronic device. Because the true conclusion of the paper versus digital debate is that books are not necessarily objects to possess, but rather experiences to have. When people say things like, "I just need to hold a real book!" I roll my eyes because I know they aren't listening to music on a phonograph.

It should be understood that members don't get every book completely read each month. Everyone is a working professional, and some have families and we all need to watch How I Met Your Mother. Some months it's a struggle for me to find time to take a shit, let alone read Wolf Hall. And trying to find a sitter on a weeknight is enough to make you want to support burning books. We all struggle from time to time to make it to meetings, or finish a book we find boring, or not be squeamish about amphibian rape scenes. But there is a commitment among the group that is remarkable. Perhaps because the group is flexible enough to accommodate those who haven't finished the book one month by not spoiling the ending (the sister killed him!). Or happily moving the day we meet to support people taking Dave Ramsey classes. Or allowing for kids playing under the table when someone has trouble finding a sitter.

It's obvious that the books aren't the only thing keeping people coming.
I think it's also the liquor.

And just because books are a large part of our relationship, doesn't mean Jim and I aren't avid lovers of television. Oh God, are we ever. Jim had a job writing soaps for ABC, and I could spend the rest of my life watching Will & Grace reruns. In fact, television is why we met.

I met Jim at a birthday party for my sister. That's the short version. 

The longer version is that--on top of the book club--Jim also started a different and separate group that got together every week to watch the TV show LOST. (And people think I'm the social one.) This group was made up of five friends, including my sister. When I moved closer, she kept inviting me each week and I kept refusing. Until once when the show was the same night as her birthday. I wanted to celebrate with her. And so I came to their party. And there was Jim. 

Cue the music.

And at that first meeting Jim told me about his book club. My first response was, "You're in a book club?" Followed immediately by, "I want to join." 

We may have met each other because of TV. But we fell in love over books.

I never belonged to a sports team, aside from Little League. I didn't pledge a sorority, though I love their t-shirts. And I do not subscribe to a religion, so I'll never be part of a church community. When I joined the book club I had just moved to the city. I was single. Jim and I were flirtatiously getting to know each other. But after about twelve books in, I was home. Jim and I shared our first kiss one night after a particularly engaging book club meeting. All the members of the book club were at our wedding and among some of the first people to meet our daughter. They were at her first birthday party, and they damn sure better be at her high school graduation.

One of the more memorable days of our life together was when I moved into his house and we merged our book collections. We sat atop mounds of scattered books in the empty living room, sorting and talking about which were our favorites, which ones did we each have a copy of, which author was represented the most, and how we should arrange them on the shelf. Jim looked at me amid the tall stacks and said, with sultry eyes, "Is this hot or what?!"

When we started talking about having children, Jim got misty at the idea of reading to his child. (And downright jittery about the idea of showing him or her Star Wars.) The first thing we bought when we discovered we were pregnant was a stack of Dr. Seuss. The first piece of furniture we set up in the nursery was the bookshelf. We felt it was important for her to appreciate the written word. Have the patience and determination to sit quietly and enjoy a book. To lose herself in another world created from words and ideas. We hoped our child would love reading. For books to be as big a part of her life as they have been in ours.

And so far, Lowery loves to read. She enjoys sitting on her father's lap while he reads our stack of Dr. Seuss over and over again. She sprawls on the floor flipping through pages, giggling and pointing and babbling as though she's reading. Perhaps this love of reading will be carried into adulthood. Maybe she'll be an English major or a journalist. Or marry someone as bookish as her father and maybe they will start a book club. And maybe she won't. Maybe she'll have other interests, like music or painting or auto repair. And Jim and I have come to terms with that.

Because we've realized that perhaps all we really want is for her to experience a few truly great stories.


And have good people with whom to share them.

Body Image

I try not to think about how easily things come for my husband. He's brilliant. Talented. Handsome. He can spell any word. And then use it in a sentence. He's skilled in calculus. He has a lovely singing voice. Judging by his physique alone, you would think the man only eats organic salmon. But he doesn't. He is constantly asked if he's a marathon runner. But he isn't. He inhales high-sugar drinks, he loves steak, he thinks a bag of Skittles passes as a fruit serving, and his only form of exercise is chasing after our child. His doctor thinks he's a medical marvel. And he's frequently stopped by runners who want to know what his pace is.

Things don't come as easily for me. For one, I'm a horrible speller and I'm bad at math. I have an atrocious singing voice. And despite the fact that I eat healthy, consume very little sugar, and exercise a fair amount, no one would ever mistake me for a runner.

And as we move on in age--my husband moving faster--I see that things get even easier for him and even harder for me. His once beautiful chestnut hair is rapidly turning salty, which only makes him garner more respect. His age makes him more susceptible to raises and promotions, and I swear to god he's getting more attractive. For me, I'm struggling with the fact that motherhood conflicts with my career, pregnancy made my body do weird things, and hormones and age have made my hair a darker color that is upsetting the image I have of myself as a blonde.

Also, I pee all the f**king time.

On top of that, I'm tasked with raising a daughter. Which is all fun and games when it's pink blankets and hair bows.

But shit's getting real.

As it is, every two months my daughter is put on a scale and told where she falls in line with the population at large. Yes, I know baby boys do this also, but I think the difference is clear. She's tall and strong and stunningly beautiful. That should be the only thing the doctor writes in the chart. And while the percentiles may not emotionally affect my daughter, they worry the piss out of me. I stress that because she's in the 95th percentile in height, she will be an extremely tall adult. Perhaps shorter men will be too insecure to date her. Or she'll feel too self-conscious to wear heels. Which I guess all works out in the end because there's nothing worse than Little Man Syndrome, and high heels are truly the shits.

She has very little hair, and the hair she does have is nearly translucent, so she is almost always mistaken for a boy. So, I either have to dress her head-to-toe in pink ruffles, or constantly correct strangers who think that hair is what makes a woman.

Being a mother makes you realize the inevitability of women's inequality. The unbeatable battle of  having it all. And because genetic bingo (and a little hoping) gave me a girl, I now worry for the both of us. After all, I'm raising her in the same world that unfairly burdens women with a slew of pressures. Especially those surrounding post-baby careers and bodies.

I know my husband, as a man, has his own societal pressures. Well, from what I can gather, roughly two: 1) don't cry at sappy movies and 2) be a good provider. He doesn't have to struggle with equal pay, the glass ceiling, respect at work, biological clocks, foot pain from too-high heels or monthly bloat. And he especially doesn't have to worry with the three most annoying female problems: weight, breasts and hair.

Weight
The most effective diet I've ever done was Post-Partum Depression. It literally zaps your appetite! And your will to live! But it leads to substantial weight loss. I lost all the baby weight and six additional pounds three weeks after giving birth. I was constantly told how amazing I looked. And yet I had never felt worse.

The spectrum swings from one side--where Stacy and Clinton tell you that the solution to all your problems is a good-fitting structured jacket--to the other side where you need to stop eating dairy, meat, sugar, wheat, fruit, alcohol and Twizzlers. And join a gym.

Each diet comes with a doctor's backing. And you trust him because he's wearing a lab coat in the picture on the back. He says his plan is simple. No need to overcomplicate things. Just cut out table sugar. That's it. And this makes sense when you read it. Maybe because the four patients who wrote testimonials make you a believer. Just cut out sugar. But at the very end of the book, somewhere in the appendix, he says--oh by the way--also cut out fruit, root vegetables, dairy, and Novocaine.

Another says sugar isn't the problem at all. Wheat is. Wheat raises blood sugar far faster and steeper  because wheat has been genetically modified to an unrecognizable state, and most modern humans can't digest it. So cut out wheat--that's all!--and you're on your way to health. And, oh by the way, don't eat fruit, root vegetables or multivitamins. And no sugar.

Some diets say processed food that comes in packages is causing obesity. But NutriSystem says, "Buy our processed food that comes in packages to help your weight loss." Most all diets recommend eating lots of almonds, but Weight Watchers counts a handful of nuts as half your daily points.

Some plans suggest that dairy is the devil. Others say whole-grain pasta is the answer. And Kirstie Alley dances around in there somewhere, confusing everyone.

If you listen to them all, this leaves your choices to kale, broccoli, flax seed, cheese and lots and lots and lots of meat. So long as it isn't red meat (steak, hambugers) or cooked in lard (bacon) or containing too many hormones (chicken) or processed with wheat (deli turkey).

Unless, of course, you are trying the vegan diet, then so help you God.


Take away: potatoes cause cancer. And ugliness. And Dr. Atkins hates humans as much as he hates animals.



Just buy a structured jacket.



Breasts
I would argue that most women hate their breasts. Or at least one of their breasts. Or they feel only lukewarm about both of them. They might love them when they are strapped into a good-fitting underwire, but they don't like them when, say, bending over in the shower to shave. Women have to have good breasts. They need them to attract a mate, get out of speeding tickets and to nourish their babies. In fact, we are talked into using our breasts to feed our babies by promising it will help us lose the baby weight.

We see a beautiful model and we assume and accept that she's had lipo, Botox, a tummy tuck and is sporting implants: butt and breasts. We assume it because that's how we can rationalize her beauty. And we accept it because we somehow know that the societal standard of beauty is simply unobtainable without synthetics. But we can't accept that Lance Armstrong injects himself with god-knows-what in order to be the kind of athlete we greedily want. Sure, sure, beauty is nearly impossible to achieve without a surgeon, but robot-like stamina and leg muscles (in a middle-aged man) are. We ask our bodies to be too goddamn much. Skinny, perky, powerful, athletic, strong, sexy, motherly and healthy. And yet we can't fathom why someone would dope on steroids to achieve fame, or why a new mother with sagging breasts would feel badly about herself. Cause I gotta tell you, if I could get my schedule to open up I'd be at a surgeon's office with black marker lines all over my body just waiting for the anesthesia. And I'll take some steroids while I'm at it, if it helps me perform motherly duties at a more victorious pace than all other mothers.

Hair 

It was extremely heartbreaking to my husband when he learned that most female celebrities wear fake hair. He still loves Alicia Keys to the moon and back, but he grieved when I told him that her 8 foot long ponytail of perfect, shiny ringlets was a hair piece. Now he is skeptical of every beautiful woman on TV. 

My work here is done.

So yes, I've got my days when I think that if I were just four inches taller or my breasts were 2 inches higher, life would be perfect. Or that a little weight loss, or clearer skin, or a smaller ass would fix everything. But most days I feel beautiful because I see myself reflected in my daughter's perfect, round, cheerful face.

I've got to make sure she knows this. That the slight sag in the boobs and pudge in the belly are nothing compared to the beauty she's brought into my life. And make sure she never sees me beat up on myself, or try crazy diets or project my insecurities onto her. Because perhaps the single best thing I can do for my daughter is to be proud of who I am and how I look. And constantly remind her to value smarts and wit above cup and jean size.

But that doesn't eliminate the external pressures on this tiny, future woman I'm raising. Though I rest assured that my daughter is already grasping the right concepts. At 16 months old she's got 9 month shirts that still fit and 2T pants that are already too tight. Which means at this young age she's learning an important lesson as a modern woman:

A number on a tag is never the way to measure a lady.

Photogenic

My dad tells the same joke whenever anyone says he is photogenic. He replies that he must not be very attractive in actuality, and that the person's surprise at him looking good in a photograph somewhat corroborates this.

I was thinking about my dad's joke a few weeks back when a friend was over at our house looking at a family photo I have framed on our wall. "Meg, you are so photogenic!" she declared. And my dad was right--she seemed surprised I looked good in the picture.

That I'm photogenic is the most common compliment I receive. I can only count on a few fingers the times anyone has told me, in person, that I was beautiful. And that's okay. I may not give good face, but I take a damn fine photo.

A good picture of you can really boost your self esteem. It almost undoes the damage done by catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror when stepping out of the shower. But these kind of elevating images come few and far between. They can't just be a picture other people declare is good-- a photo taken at a low angle in which you are wearing a tank top on a humid day, that your sister swears is the best picture you've ever taken. But one in which you finally see a captured image of how you always thought you looked.

Given our digital capabilities, smart phones and the world of social media, taking an abundance of pictures is standard. Manipulating them with filters that brighten the skin, or enhance the colors, is easy. And storing them in cheap, readily available memory is encouraging. In the modern world there is no excuse for not constantly documenting your life.

Which is why I've mostly forgiven my parents for the pathetic lack of pictures there are of me growing up. I've seen one Polaroid in which I look to be about three years old and another at my high school graduation. In the middle are a few with my siblings and at camp with my friends. But trying to convince me I was actually raised by my family is challenging for my parents. There's simply not enough evidence.

My child, however, will one day marvel at the vast collection of pictures I have of her. Thousands of pictures. All of her many expressions, outfits, milestones, trips, toys, parties, meals, doctor's visits and play dates. One day she can look back and see how much her parents loved her, how much we captured, witnessed and were excited by every f**king thing she ever did.

And if I took the time to divide the pictures into two categories--the ones her father took and the ones her mother took--she might even be able to discern the different ways in which we raised her. Because nothing shows the differences in parenting style like your time behind the camera.

My husband's approach to photography is far different than my own. I am creative. He is precise. I'm wired. He's patient. I'm performance. He's direction. I'm big-picture. He's detail.

And we both capture fantastic pictures of our daughter.

Jim crouches down beside her and waits. I stand near him biting my nails, tapping my foot, and sighing loudly to encourage him to just snap the picture. To snap a bunch of pictures. I want to be deafened by camera clicks. Instead, he waits. And waits. And though I think I should have heard at least twenty shutter sounds, I hear only one. When I later see that one shot, it's gold.

When I take pictures, I'm not interested in the details. I'm wanting the atmosphere. I roam around my child and snap and snap as she is doing whatever she's doing, mundane or fascinating. She may or may not look up and most often she flashes me a uterus-cramping smile. And later, when I look through all the many, many shots, I can always find one. And it's gold.

As he tells it, Jim's time at film school taught him explicitly how to use cameras of all kinds. But even further, film school taught him the concept of framing and lighting a shot. He's dabbled in freelance work and has a high-end camera. So, if I'm wanting perfect pictures of my child or my family, Jim's the guy. And he gets the shot the first time, every time.

Jim sees photography as a science, with right and wrong ways of doing it. My friends, who are truly talented at it, see it as an art in which passion and talent are key. Not surprisingly, I see it as a form of communication. I'm engaging a subject and capturing their response. And so, in the difficult times and the beautiful moments, photographing my child is another way I'm engaging her. Talking to her. Telling her story.

Sometimes we hire a professional so that we can both be in the frame with our child. We wear clothes I spent time fretting over and huddle together as an outsider captures us from a different perspective. And the opposing parenting styles are just as evident when we are on the other side of the lens. I am brilliant at getting my child to smile; Jim keeps her from getting hurt on the props.

Our obsession with pictures isn't just about our child. It's about documenting trips together, big and small. Snapping pictures of elaborate meals I've concocted, furniture we like, unusual bugs in our garden. Jim and I have an unspoken rule in our life together: live it fully and document it well.

And I can take these pictures of beaches and bugs and the baby, and I can print them large and frame them well and decorate our home with the beautiful moments of our life. Looking at these stops time. Lets me remember the good and the bad for eternity. Pictures capture our existence. Ensure our legacy. How else could you prove your child scored the winning goal? Or that Mariah Carey lost the baby weight?

Pictures. The proof of life.

When I want to feel strong and determined, I pull out pictures of me in a full body cast after my car accident. I look at pictures from our wedding when I want to feel beautiful. Pictures of my honeymoon make me giddy. Pictures of my college roommates make me homesick. Pictures of our newborn in the emergency room make me ache. Pictures of my pug make me laugh. Pictures of my dad make me smile. He's very photogenic.

I can look at the large black and white print of our child and remember how proud I was to capture her first enormous smile. And remember that it took me 37 pictures to get that single one. Immediately after I captured it, she threw up.

Or the picture Jim took of me on our honeymoon on the deserted beach we found that gray, drizzly day. He fussed at length with the settings on my inexpensive point-and-shoot, had me sit on a large piece of driftwood, faced me in the direction of the rain and wind and captured an image in which my joy is most pronounced.

Perhaps the most significant is the picture of the three of us that hangs in our bedroom. Lowery was just a month old and I was struggling through the darkest period of post partum depression. Like a robot, I went to get her out of her crib as she was crying, and I brought her to Jim. When I placed her beside him she was immediately soothed. I remember looking at them thinking that I should love this more. That I should feel my heart swell just looking at my loving husband and my beautiful daughter lying in bed cuddling on a lazy Sunday morning. And yet I felt that somehow that moment, that phase of life, would never pass. Would never improve. Would never be enjoyable.

But something made me go get the camera. Go through the motions of snapping a few pictures of the two of them lying there together. And I began to cheer up slightly as I watched her nestle, snuggle, and even smile slightly, in the crook of her daddy's arm. I became almost happy as I snapped and snapped and snapped the two people in my life that I felt I didn't deserve. As if I was finally stopping to look at them. And this feeling, this first flash of happiness in weeks, made me crawl in bed beside my husband and child. All three of us, in a quiet morning together in bed. Then I held the camera out and above our three heads because I had a brilliant thought:

Take a picture.


It will last longer.

Tantrum

You should have seen it. Fists clenched, back arched, cheeks puffed and crimson, and a scream so loud that people on the other side of the zoo probably assumed the elephants were trumpeting.

My sweet, happy, easy-going child was throwing her first full-on tantrum while my husband and I looked at her in shock. Once we realized everyone at the giraffe exhibit was watching, we tried to act like attentive parents who had the situation under control.

We did not.

We had been foolish enough to think we were at least a year away from this kind of behavior. We handled the situation reasonably well. I think we were patient. And by patient, I mean "parent patient," which is any time you don't murder your child.

Thirty seconds after the tantrum, our child was an absolute delight. Giggling, blowing kisses to rhinos, singing songs and telling us what sounds a monkey makes.

What the hell?

Another tantrum happened two days later. Lowery's tantrums were upsetting me. Overwhelming me. Embarrassing me. Trying to stop them was something I needed in order to make me feel better.

And once I thought about it, I understood that Lowery wasn't throwing a fit to upset, overwhelm or embarrass me. She was throwing a tantrum because she wasn't getting what she wanted. Which was to not be constrained by the car seat. She wasn't satisfied by the situation. She was being selfish. Super, super selfish.

And that is something I can understand.

I had no idea I was selfish until I had a child. But man, it's a trait I now fully recognize, am only somewhat ashamed of, and have no intention of correcting.

Selfishness gets a bad rap. Especially with motherhood. Pregnancy can be all about you, sure. Here, put your feet up. You shouldn't lift that. You should rest. How are you feeling? What are you craving?

But then the baby pops out and you are done.

I get it. I do. The child is helpless, needy, tiny. I know it needs to be about her. Feed her, nurture her, pamper her, love her. Yeah, yeah. But there seems to be an unspoken rule that mothers should be completely selfless. Self-sacrificing. Eat over the sink. Shower while the baby naps. Have a career when the kids are grown. Sleep when you're dead.

And when faced with this unspoken rule, I've thrown my own 15-month-long tantrum. And, like any tantrum, it's marvelously selfish.

In general my selfish tantrums come out in palatable ways. (Please do not try to verify this with my husband; he is unavailable for comment.) I'm not selfish in my marriage or in my friendships. I let people merge ahead of me on the expressway. I hold doors for strangers and I never interrupt. But when it comes to my career, my ambition, and my shopping habits, I'm selfish.

Jim contributes a lot so that I can do what I do professionally. And he never complains. In fact, he encourages me greatly. So if he's unhappy with the dynamic, he has only himself to blame. When he gets home at night, he takes Lowery while I go drink, I mean soak, in the bathtub. On the weekends, he packs her up and takes her for a few hours so I can work. 

My mother and my sister seem to pity Jim. As though supporting a strong woman is not what any man would ever do willingly. I could go on and on to my family about my latest research, or a troublesome student, and they will listen for a while, nodding politely. When I'm done they say things like, "Is Jim okay with you working that late at night?" Or, "Is Jim getting any attention or chance at happiness?" Or "Is Jim okay with you being a horrible, selfish wife?"

They sometimes forget what I, and my uterus, contribute to our marriage. Are they failing to remember that I watch Lowery while Jim goes to work? Would it help to remind them I still pee when I sneeze?

Seems like women can't be self-possessed or else they are a neglectful mother and an emasculating wife.

This is why most women are a little batshit. Because we are in the midst of our own tantrums. We feel the shackles, and they are as tight as Lowery's car seat buckles. Our fists are clenched, our backs are arched. We're trying to scream it out. Shake it off.

So by Lowery's third tantrum, I was ready. Because I had, of course, Googled myself silly, earning an online degree in child psychology. I asked others for advice, other mothers, my own mother, my coworkers, the teachers at day care, the sales clerk at the Gap.

I thought the solution would be more complicated. Perhaps including a child size straitjacket, shock therapy, journal writing and trust exercises. But everyone said mostly the same thing: validate her feelings, remove her from the situation, and ignore the behavior.

So I did that. And I couldn't believe the response. She settled immediately.

This shouldn't surprise me I suppose. How many tantrums have I thrown since Lowery was born? Jim comes home to find an upset wife who isn't getting her way. Not getting enough down time. Not getting enough sleep. Not getting enough reading done or making enough progress on the dissertation. And in thinking back at all my many tantrums I see now that he always validated my feelings. Told me I was normal to feel this way and was absolutely right for being upset. Then he would remove me from the situation. Which was to send me to the mall by myself, or to the tub for a good "soak." And finally, he would ignore my behavior. Which meant that once I calmed down, he pretended my embarrassing actions never even happened.

He had an additional tactic, that no other person suggested I try, which was to slightly adjust how he was handling the situation (like getting home from work earlier, getting up with her on the weekends, bringing home more wine) to reduce my chances of having another tantrum.

Jim has taught me by example.

Last week I took Lowery to one of my favorite stores because I had received an email coupon for 50% off my entire purchase. Yep, 50%. When we got there, it was apparent that many other women received the same coupon. The store was packed. And my child sat patiently in her stroller while I piled it high with clothes. She watched patiently as I tried on numerous sweaters and dresses and one self-esteem killing pair of jeans. She looked on patiently as I searched through the scarves and earrings and belts. And when I finally got in line, a line that was 11 people deep, she decided it was time to stop being so goddamn patient.

She started to clench her fists. Her cheeks started to redden. But before she could arch her back, I unbuckled her, stood her on the ground and held my breath. We were in the middle of a crowded store with a bunch of bargain-hungry women all standing unhappily in a slow-moving line. What would Lowery do? Would she run around the store knocking over mannequins? Would she break the jewelry display? Would she put all the medium tops on hangers marked large and shove them in the petite section? Or would she just bolt?

She did none of these things. She simply stood by me, playing with the buckles in her stroller seat. She looked up occasionally to talk with the other ladies in line and eat some Goldfish crackers. And she did this, happily, for twenty solid minutes until it was my time to pay for my merchandise. Then she began to melt down. The clerk rang up the clothes while I chased Lowery around the store. I threw money at the clerk as I ran back by the register to pull Lowery off a small table displaying sweaters. And then, as if escaping a fire, I tucked Lowery under one arm, grabbed my sack of clothes from the cashier and pushed the stroller with my hip at full speed as my daughter began to wail.

And once we got outside, she was happy again. Walked beside me pushing the stroller. Clapped happily at a pigeon. And pleasantly babbled during the drive home.

It occurred to me, for the first time, that just because I'm having to sacrifice a lot for my child doesn't mean I'm not getting all the things I want, too. It may be a crazy, stressful time in my life, but I'm still getting to be a good mother and have a good career. It may be hard to find time for my husband and me to get away, or watch a movie, or make out, but we are still happily married. And I may have to be super creative to entertain a child in a crowded store and fight a budding tantrum, but I still got this season's fitted sweater jacket at 50% off retail.

So I think I'm starting to understand how best to handle my daughter's tantrums and my own tantrums.
Which is to understand that tantrums are a wonderful thing.

Because they mean you are thinking about yourself.

IV

I found it weird at the time, but I failed to say anything. It might even be standard procedure. When the nurse came to put in the IV, I was just happy to be lying down and working on breathing through contractions. But in all my medical history I've never had an IV put on the side of my wrist. I've had one on the underside of my wrist, one in the top of my hand, inside of my elbow, and even my foot. But never on the wrist bone.

And so, 15 months after giving birth, I'm not surprised that the wound, in which the IV was once oddly placed, has still not healed. It's a sore that is raised and red. Sometimes it gets swollen and painful. Sometimes it dries up and flakes off. There are times I get frustrated enough to go buy expensive ointments and waterproof Band-Aids. Other times I pick at it mercilessly. But most of the time I just ignore it.

But in the past 15 months, the sore on my wrist is the least of my problems. Because there is, in fact, a long list of my problems and my wrist is second to the bottom. Stretch marks and belly flab are dead last.

Staying at home with my child, however, is right at the top.

When professional women ask if I'm a stay-at-home mom, I usually respond, "No, I work part-time." If a stay-at-home mom asks if I work outside the home, I usually respond, "Only twice a week. I'm with my child the rest of the time." And both sets of women respond the same way, "Oh, you have the best of both worlds!"

Nope, bitches. I've got the worst. 

Because I'm still a member of a professional world, I hold myself to a pretty high standard professionally. That is to say that I try to curb my vulgar mouth at work, and I almost always wear underwear. I also go so far as to pretend to others that I don't have a child. Not that I don't brag about her, wallpaper my office with her pictures and put my hand to my chest every time someone even mentions her name. But if someone schedules a meeting in which several people are invited, I pretend that I'm open and available at all times. What child?

And though I have full day, day care on Tuesdays and Thursdays, most every single meeting I've been to in the past 15 months has been on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday. So I scramble. I call my mother-in-law, whose help I cannot do without, despite the new dynamic it creates. I check with my own mother to see if she's able to drive an hour to help me. I call a neighbor. Jim takes a personal day. And though I haven't tried this yet, I still can't see a good reason why I can't leave her in the crib with a sleeve of crackers and a sippy cup.

Further, I have a variety of professional friends who like to meet up for lunches. And there is nothing more wonderful in the professional world than work-day lunches. But if I meet them on days that I actually get to go into work, then that takes up an hour of the very few precious hours I have to sit at a computer and work without a tantrum over green beans happening somewhere in the periphery. But if I schedule lunches on MWF, then I'm dragging along an active, loud toddler and chasing her around a crum-riddled restaurant, rather than enjoying any of the majesty of work-a-day noon.

My work and school are truly important and thrilling parts of who I am and yet it is reduced to two days a week. And even those days are usually consumed with squeezed-in dentist appointments and haircuts. I also teach some time in there, which involves an hour commute. So yes, my time in my chair in my office is pathetically small.

But that's my work life.

That's not the problem. Never once have I thought that giving up my career or dropping out of school would make it all better. Yes, school and work are stressful, but it's good stress. Anything that makes you a better, more knowledgable, more well-rounded person isn't really stress anyhow. It's just growing pains.

But this important part of my life is completely overshadowed by the way in which I spend most of my time: raising a child. These are the hard days. The exhausting days. Days that I'm okay with saying I like the least. In fact, if I am super honest, I actually hate staying home with my child.

Settle down. I'll redeem myself in a bit.

Staying home with my child is a choice. In fact, my husband and I planned to get pregnant when we did because of the flexibility of my working hours and classes. We knew it would be tough, but we agreed it was the right time for us. We knew we could spend just a little money to get a couple of days of day care so that I could work two long days to keep up with everything, while still getting oodles of time to care for and raise our child.

Oh, we mice and men.

I've had some insane pressures on myself with motherhood. Breastfeeding. Baby food making. Cloth diapering. Staying at home. And with most of them I've been able to recognize when things weren't working, or when to adjust certain expectations.

Breastfeeding: Worst experience of my life. Once I realized I was doing it more for me than for my daughter, I gave it up. And never looked back.

Baby food making: Enjoyed buying $5 organic pears, steaming them, pureeing them, dividing them into little portioned cups, freezing them, thawing them, warming them, spooning some up for Lowery only to have her spit them all down her shirt. Then when I realized stores sold little packs of organic baby food (with veggies and fruits I couldn't pick out of a line up), I said "F**k you, Magic Bullet," and bought enough pouches of mushy rutabaga to last through her adolescence.

Cloth diapering: I have friends who are pretty avid about this. I wanted to do it purely for environmental reasons, not for any concern of cost or fear of chemicals touching Lowery's precious ass. But there are all these web pages and posts on facebook that say things like "I love cloth diapering!" What the hell? No one loves diapering, whether you throw it in a trash can or throw it in a laundry basket. They are all full of shit. Now, I can say I like the cloth diapers. They are soft, and cute and I had my kid run around in those and not much else during the summer as they are also good in the pool. But by no means do we cloth diaper full time. We wash a load, use up that load and then use disposable until we get around to doing laundry again. Not unlike our own underwear.

Staying at home: There are numerous studies out there that show women with children who work are significantly happier than those who stay at home. Yeah, no shit. Other studies suggest that taking time off to raise children grossly affects women's earning potential in the job market. And even more studies try, but can't, point to any significant differences between children of stay-at-homers and day-care babies. Society, of course, also likes to weigh in. If you stay at home full time, you must not have any professional ambition. If you work full time, you must not love your children.

Ah, to have a penis. Even if only for a day.

Women who stay at home full time (all five days and weekends) have my universal support and respect. I would imagine they could also use a drink. I understand why people always say, "I don't know how they do it," about stay-at-home mothers. But I suppose my question is not how but why they do it.

For starters, when I take my child to day care (they prefer we call it "school"), she gets a lot of time with other children, other adults, lots of different toys, reading, outdoor activities, art, music, made-from-scratch kosher meals, a solid nap and a couple of good BMs. When I pick her up she's happy, her daily progress sheet gushes about her day and how sweet and independent and talkative she is, and when we get in the car, my child is a song bird of happiness. Babbling all the way home about her day.

When she's with me, I fight to get a shower. She gets bored easily. She whines a lot. She won't touch things I fix for lunch. And she throws herself on the floor in a tantrum over not being able to play with the Wii remote.

She does get to spend time with me, though. Wrestling on the floor. Swinging at the park. Reading the same three books over and over and over. Walking around the mall. Running to the bank. Watching me work at a computer. Watching me unload the dishwasher. Watching me poop. And looking for the Wii remote.

And at the end of the day, I'm so physically and emotionally exhausted that I just don't want to look at her any more. I want to hand her to Jim, go in the bedroom and be by myself for 20 minutes. And the next day, when she goes to daycare, I'm sad we aren't together.

This isn't to say I don't have some really great times with my child while I'm home with her. I get all the kisses and hugs and giggles I want. I truly enjoy taking her places because store clerks and strangers seem in awe of her and that makes me swell with pride. I've never missed a major milestone, and I've been able to trace most of her words, mannerisms or silly quirks back to something I've taught her.

It makes no logical sense to me that I can love a person as much as I love my child, and yet need some time away from her. But I suppose it makes emotional sense. I mean, it's no secret I adore wine but even I know the dangers of overindulgence.

I feel silly having such an overwhelming problem with such a simple solution. Jim has said, for the past 13 months, that if ever we need to increase Lowery's days at day care we can. And every time he says this (which has been every week since she was born) I snap at him for implying that I'm not loving my time at home with our daughter.

But I'm not.

And yet getting to the point of making the call, closing the door on all other options, has been debilitating. In the battle between Jim and me in which I argued to keep her days at day care as minimal as possible, I've realized how much I value my time with my daughter. How much I fought for it. Even if I do hate some of that time, I still value it. And I value her. I adore her. I respect her. I want us to be bonded and close and for her to see me as a positive, loving, supportive mother. But it's also important to me that she see my ambition, my work ethic, my drive and my life outside of her.

So if full time day care is the solution, so be it.

I know Lowery will thrive. And I will too. This might even allow me to concentrate on the other problems on my list. And if I can address those, I'd be cooking more meals, getting more sleep, exercising more, reading more books, crying less and enjoying life to a greater degree.

And as I look at the sore on my wrist right now, my eyes seem to be playing tricks on me.

Because it almost looks like it's starting to heal.

Portuguese Man Of War

The most stressful class I took in college was a journalism class with an older, bitter lady who once managed the crime beat for the LA Times. At the beginning of class each week she would hand us a slip of paper as we walked in the room. On that paper would be a prompt, typically just a few sentences. We would get exactly 10 minutes to write a news story based on the prompt. When the time was up, she would clap her hands sharply and randomly point at a student to read his work. Rarely would anyone get through a paragraph, let alone finish his entire article, before she would sharply clap again and say, "You buried the lead! Next!" Or, "You disgust me. Next!" And on and on slapping her papers on someone's keyboard or flicking her hand in dismissal.

One day the prompt said something like this: Mayor of Florida town warning citizens and tourists about an unprecedented number of Portuguese Men-of-War on the shoreline. They are prone to attack and their poison can cause serious harm. Alert authorities if you spot one, and step cautiously around them.

I set to work on my article thrilled by the day's prompt, as I felt this was going to be my most dramatic and impressive work yet. At the ten minute mark, she pointed to the student beside me as the first to read. I was surprised to hear his article and its passive attitude toward these vengeful men ready to attack any American who set foot on the beach. When he talked about the importance of being able to recognize a Portuguese Man-of-War, I chuckled to myself thinking that their poisonous spears and face paint would be a dead give-away. And when he explained how they "shimmy" out of the water, I stopped and thought maybe that was just how the Europeans train their men to fight. Shake the shoulders back and forth to the beat of government-issued steel drums while walking toward the enemy; it lures them into a false sense of security.

The next student called to read her article waxed poetic about their beauty. The closest I'd come to seeing one was the Spaniard in my advanced Calc class, but I would assume anyone from that region has the same lovely skin tone.When she talked about seeing some off the coast of Hawaii, I wondered why everyone was so concerned about the Middle East; seemed we had big problems in Portugal. And only when she mentioned getting to feed one at an aquarium in Cleveland did I start to get a tad suspicious that maybe I didn't have a f**king clue what was going on.

I spent my pregnancy convinced my child would be like my husband.  I wrapped my mind around her having a long, lean face with angular features. I embraced the idea she'd have dark hair. Was excited she would have green eyes. And I accepted the fact that she would be sensitive, quiet, studious and kind.

I was extremely prepared for how to handle a child like my husband. I knew the child would have a consistent temperament, would be quiet and sensitive, would have a high metabolism and long fingers and would be frighteningly smart, 

But much like the alternate universe I created in my head about the vengeful men on the Florida shoreline, how I envisioned my child's personality couldn't be further from reality.

She's not my husband at all. She's me. 

She's extremely vocal. Self possessed. Strong willed. Animated. Affectionate. Happy. Expressive. Emotional. Impatient. Silly. Exhaustingly sociable. And a wee bit demanding. On top of that, she looks  like me: round face, light hair, blue eyes and a turned up nose. And there's a strong chance she, too, is left handed.

And so I had to tear down my old reality of raising a child like my husband, and replace it with the real one in which I would be taking care of, raising and loving--basically--myself.  At first, this was thrilling. There are some advantages to my personality. Being friendly and outgoing has gotten me further in life than any of my other qualities or accomplishments. My trust in people makes me a great team player. My ability to read facial cues and body language helps me engage people in a worthwhile manner. And my sense of humor got me through the trials of adolescents. Yes, perhaps a child like me would be a fantastic thing.

Her similarities to me also means that she's naturally drawn to Jim for the same reasons I am: he's a calming, gentle presence. When he gets home at night, we both curl up on his lap with tears streaming down our faces as he tries to calm us. He's found we both respond well to bottles.

But as I see more and more of myself in my daughter, I've become less enthralled by the idea of her being a carbon copy. I think of my own existence and the way in which my personality has both rewarded me and punished me.

Mostly, I'm concerned Lowery won't get from people what she truly needs.

For starters, I can already tell that Lowery is a multi-tasker. She will have a dozen Cheerios in one hand, a book in the other, and will use her wrists to drink from a sippy cup. All while walking around the house looking for the dogs.

I suppose I like that I'm able to juggle so much at once. That I'm able to tackle motherhood, a dissertation, teaching a couple of classes, researching for the university and cooking roughly three bland meals a week for my forgiving husband. In 12 years of college I've never missed a deadline, never asked for an extension and never, ever skipped a class. In my 7 years in the work force I've never been late to work, never missed a meeting and never got a bad performance review.

Would my child enjoy the Cheerios more if she'd just sit her ass down and eat them? Would she consume more milk if she held it with her hands and not her wrists? Why does she try to cram it all in at once?

Secondly, Lowery's very outgoing. Extremely social. She's far happier around people, and she gets cranky if we are cooped up at home. So out we go, every day, to the mall, or grocery store, or the park or anywhere she can get to talk to people. And talk she does. She says "HI!" loudly to everyone she sees. And they always startle, giggle, put their hand to their chest, cock their head to the side and say, "Well hi! How old are you?" At which point Lowery proudly thrusts two fingers high, exclaims "I am two! Two!" and they giggle wildly before nodding approvingly at me and moving on.

I appreciate that Lowery is friendly to strangers. It may be inherent or it might be learned behavior, but from the safety of my arms or her stroller, I appreciate her ability to engage strangers and get their cold faces to warm.

But I catch myself worrying she's becoming a performer. I'm usually energetic, outgoing, friendly, talkative and happy. But if I'm not, I feel punished. There needs to be an explanation if I'm not on my game. People are put off if I'm quiet. My family is annoyed if I'm not the clown. My friends mistake it as a cue to leave me alone.

I don't want this for my daughter. I find myself apologizing to strangers and friends if she's not her typically happy, bubbly self. And why should I do this? If she's sick, or unhappy, or not up for being friendly, that should be okay. I never allowed that for myself so now I am working overtime to allow my daughter to embrace her emotion of the moment.

Also, Lowery's a bit of a people pleaser. Not in an intentional way, but because I know how she is, I know how to manipulate her into doing what I want. For example, she recently had an eye infection that required drops. And putting those in is like throwing a potato into a garbage can that's a mile away, during an earthquake. So after a few days of kicking and screaming I stopped to think about what would motivate me. Then it hit me. I laid her down on the bed and said, "Lowery, you are such a good girl. Thank you for being a good girl for me and letting me put drops in your eyes." And she laid still. I touched her eye and she winced only slightly. I kept saying over and over how good of a girl she is and how much I appreciate her and she let me lift her lid, drop in two drops and then she smiled at me brightly.

This ain't good.

I've been called a people pleaser repeatedly. Usually by the people I'm trying to please. They say it (while they accept my efforts) as though it's a bad thing. Which I don't understand. I want people to be happy, with me or otherwise, and I like a world in which the people around me are happy and maybe I helped them get there. I worry--to a damaging degree--about my friends, and if they are okay and happy, and if they are getting what they need from me or others. This makes me a fantastic collaborator, but a horrible competitor. It makes me an engaging, though emotionally exhausted, teacher. And I know it's the single thing that makes me a good friend. Because if you are my friend, you can damn sure guarantee I'm worried about you this very minute. You okay?

But people pleasing does not mean I'm a sheep. If people pleasing means that I go around doing whatever anyone asks me, then I would be a very different person. For one thing, I would have gone to the same college as everyone else in my family. Or, I wouldn't have gone to graduate school at the one university of which they truly disapprove. I wouldn't have dated certain guys. I would vote Republican to please my peers. I would like Oprah to please the masses. And I would be a Christian to win the affection of my mother in law.

No, I'm not a people pleaser that changes my principles to appease others; I'm a people pleaser that puts others' feelings above her own. 

And this ain't good.

I suppose I avoid truly talking about myself by putting myself out there. I try to get ahead of questions because, in my experience, questions are usually for the benefit of the asker. Either to satisfy their curiosity or to allow them to answer their own questions. And questions have always made me feel on the defense. Questions about my car accident: my injuries, my inabilities. Questions about my relationships. Questions about the choices I've made as a mother.

So I avoid questions. Would rather talk about someone else. Talk about you. Worry about you. Do for you. And then I spend a great deal of time feeling invisible. Hiding in plain sight.

I'm an absolute head case.

And I'm so in love with my daughter that I worry I've made her one too. Given her all my ticks, my foibles, my fears, my incompetencies. I've constructed a reality in which my kid will have my life. Struggle with my struggles. Worry about my worries. That she will be exactly like me in every way. But I recognize the realities I create are quite extreme. Realities in which a trained soldier, and a jellyfish, can be the same damn thing.

But I am reassured by one aspect of my child's personality: her ability to demand what she needs from others, and to accept nothing less. She will point to vague areas of the room saying "Dat, dat!" while we scramble to touch everything in sight only to have her shake her head disapprovingly. And she won't give up. Won't take less than she wants. Instead, she grunts harder, yells louder and points with more vigor until she is given what she needs.

So my daughter and I may be the same person, exist in the same realm, share the same reality. But we have one very important difference:

She's the Portuguese warrior I envisioned, brave and ready for battle.

And I am spineless.

Home School

Despite what many people think, I did not marry Chad Morgan. I don't mind the assumption, I just want to set the record straight. Because, since leaving my sleepy little hometown in rural Oklahoma more than 15 years ago, this is still an assumption people make when they hear me use my new last name.

Chad came from a family of athletes. He is the middle child of three smart, handsome, and talented boys, all well over 6 feet tall. John Carl is the eldest, Brett is the youngest. I met Chad in the first grade. He and I were the best students in Mrs. Williams' class. Sensing we were bored with the curriculum, she challenged us to a read-off. Whoever read the most books over the course of the year won a pizza party. Which, ironically, was to be shared with the rest of the class.

So for the entire first grade, Chad and I went to our corners furiously trying to read the most books. Sadly, he defeated me in what I think everyone agreed was a Cinderella story. I still vividly remember that I read 48 books to Chad's 52.

Later, in high school, Chad and I were both in advanced placement English and Calculus. English was my strongest subject (despite, or maybe because of, losing to him in the first grade); his was math. Over the summer we were assigned The Old Man and the Sea. While I read a dozen books that summer, Hemingway wasn't one of them. But Chad did read it. Maybe even twice. But on the essay test he got an 87% and I scored almost perfect having just read the book jacket. This angered him. He snapped at me, claiming this was so unfair. How did I do it?

Eh.

In Calculus, however, Chad didn't even have to try. Everyone in the class made A's, including two classmates whom I tutored, and I could still only eek out a low B. This upset my father greatly. Did he want me to be a mathematician? Did it embarrass him that I had the worst grade in the class? Even if that grade was only a f**king "B"? One evening after a horrendous test in Calculus, I proudly told my parents over dinner that I had made an 84%. My dad kept chewing his meat until it was finished, put down his fork, wiped his mouth and asked, "What did Chad make?"

I still have no idea if my dad was kidding in that moment. But joke or not, it's still an issue between us. When I graduated magna cum laude from college my dad leaned over and said, "Chad graduated summa." When I got accepted into my doctoral program my dad responded to the news by saying "Isn't Chad in optometry school? They make better money than professors." And in the hospital after the birth of my child, my father held my new daughter in his hands, tears streaming down his face and blubbered, "I bet Chad could do this."

When you grow up in such a small town, which appears to offer so little in the way of diversity, opportunity and experience, you can't help but be excited at the prospect of getting the hell outta there. To dream of challenges greater than Chad. I enjoyed growing up where I did. Was proud of my upbringing. Loved my childhood home and all the country air. I liked the people I grew up with and had class with, who I was in Girl Scouts with and whose birthday parties I attended for 17 years. I liked high school enough (though junior high can kiss my ass), and I thought we received a good education. But I just always felt there was so much more outside the tiny town. I think maybe we all felt this way.

In a town like this, friendships are formed in toddlerhood and carried through until adulthood. I've reconnected with many of my former classmates over parenthood. With several others I never lost touch. But growing up, it was a mission of mine to move away to a college where no one I knew was going. It was crucial that I studied abroad in a land far, far away. It was imperative that I started a career in a bigger city with lots of art and jobs and high rise apartment buildings. And it was not a question that I would marry someone who had never once been to my home town.

And during my time abroad I spent a weekend in Wales with my European friends. After horseback riding all day on a foggy beach, we all settled into the town bar for drinks. When the bartender asked where I was from, I rolled my eyes and said, "The states." More sheepishly I added, "Oklahoma." With my voice even lower, "A very tiny rural town with only two stoplights."  To which she replied, "My heavens, that sounds magical!"

And when I found a man to marry, a different Morgan, a man who himself was well traveled and educated and cultured, I was warmed by how truly important it was for him to meet my parents, to see where I grew up, to understand my childhood and to fall completely in love with it.

Where we live now does provide more opportunities than where I grew up. Maybe too many. Recently, a few of my friends have been struggling with where to send their children to school. The city's school district has 55 elementary schools, not to mention the 5 major suburbs, 3 private schools and a smattering of charter schools both within and out of the school district. Each school offers its own unique brand of teaching, from dual language immersion to how to knife someone during recess.

Urban sprawl has harmed the city's school district in a way that neighborhood schools are no longer prominent and lottery systems are set up in order to allow your kid ample advantage over all the other kids. Interviews with principals and school tours must be conducted to get at the root of the school's ability, and exceptions must be made to allow your child to jump neighborhood lines. It's not uncommon for people to rent apartments in desirable football districts just to have the right address. IEPs, Gifted and Talented programs, parental donations, sibling preference--it's a ridiculous game of who-you-know that lands your child in the best school. A school to give your child the upper hand, the biggest advantage, the priority. And ensure your child will be among many other children just like yours.

I myself worked tirelessly to get my daughter into a daycare that has literacy hour, foreign language lessons, music class, organic gardening, toddler yoga, expressive painting and daily water play. And I squeal when they send home progress reports and I marvel at the monthly curriculum, even though I know I'm still not making any headway befriending her classmates' parents.

Which makes me think of my own hometown. A town in which the parents have bonds that reach far beyond their children's participation in football. A town where the movie theatre only has three screens. A town with lots of mom and pop shops standing strong against Wal-Mart. A town where the sight of a person riding horseback down main street isn't unusual. A town in which you describe people not by the content of their character, but by their relationship to the postman. A town in which my father co-founded the Calf Fry Festival; the long-running, heavily-attended, event of the year in which local businesses vie for the best tasting fry battered testicles. I can't make this shit up. 

But the quaint, pastoral town, like any other town, isn't safe from poverty, or domestic violence, or racism, or ignorance or hatred or crime. So, thankfully, it only offered one option for school. Every kid--smart, dumb, rich, poor, black, white, sister-of-the-postman, never-heard-of-the-postman--were all collected in one building. And no amount of dual immersion, European-based, top-rated, nationally-certified, award-winning pedagogy can top what that provides its students.

In my class of nearly 100 people, there is ample evidence of success. A couple of doctors, a few lawyers, a college professor, a handful of teachers and nurses and dental hygienists, an abundance of people with advanced degrees, and lots and lots of people who stayed in the town and have started and maintained successful businesses. And most people have husbands or wives or loving partners, and lots have children of their own, some of whom are making their way through the same school district we all left a decade ago.

So now, when I go to the university to teach undergraduates in a town not far from my hometown, it shouldn't surprise me when I have students in my class with whom I went to high school. And it also shouldn't surprise me that their first question is: Did you marry Chad? Or, no, Brett? Oh wait, it was probably John Carl, right? It's not that people from my hometown truly believe that there is only one Morgan family in the world, or that they think Chad or Brett or John Carl were particularly well suited for me. It's more that they think of our town first, maybe only, and can't imagine why we would need to search for anything beyond it.

I always liked that everyone knew who I was because of my last name. They know my father, or my mother, or went to school with my siblings or maybe they even know of me personally. My last name was my connection to my home, my badge of honor, my stake in the land, proof that I existed once in a community that was as loving and inescapable as mine. I was worried I'd lose that a little when I took my husband's name. But, because of the identical nomenclature, Morgan ties me back to Chad, which in essence, ties me back home.

I know I should be wanting more for my daughter than I had for myself. For her to have a better childhood, a stronger education, more interesting friends, greater opportunities. But looking back at what I had, that just seems impossible.

Unless Chad one day has a child, with whom she falls madly in love and marries.


Or maybe just slaughters at the Science Fair.

Baggage

I think that I chose very well in a husband.

This is not to say that he necessarily chose well in a wife. But what's done is done and we all must live with our choices.

Jim is a sophisticated, beautiful, brilliant man who is pure in his heart and kind in his soul. And while he comes with little to no baggage, there is an age difference between us. Not a headline-making one, but one that sometimes catches the attention of people in restaurants. And one that I have to field questions for far more than I ever anticipated.

Like his father, Jim's hair started greying shortly after college, and, like my father, I have a baby-face. So, while checking into a Manhattan hotel on our very first trip together, the concierge looked at me and said, "So what are you, twelve?" To which I responded, "No, but this is the last time I'll wear this hat." His rudeness got us upgraded to the honeymoon suite, so fielding nosey questions isn't always in vain. But they are always directed at me. All Jim's ever gotten was a fist bump.  But I could see how age differences can be a problem in a marriage. Everything can be a problem in a marriage. Although I don't think a single person heard the news of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' divorce and said, "I bet it was the age difference."

Regardless of how little it affects our relationship (except when I get paranoid and send him to the doctor, who continually reports back that Jim is a case study on human health), it's certainly something we carry around. And people probably make assumptions about us when they see us in the mall shopping for purses. Now, in all fairness, it might be that they are questioning why a very patient man with ten purses hanging off either arm is standing next to a cursing woman, or they may be wondering how many years apart we are in age. It's always difficult to tell what people are thinking. Far easier to assume. Either way, we certainly got looks last weekend while trying to solve my bag crisis.

My husband believes I have an unhealthy obsession with handbags. And he is right, but not for the reason he thinks. Unlike his own obsession with comic books and Star Wars trinkets, I'm not actually trying to amass a collection of notoriety. I'm trying to end the madness.

Here is a little-known fact about women: we keep buying purses, not because we love buying them (we do, of course), but because we are always trying to find the perfect one. The purse to end all handbag buying for good. I buy a purse I think will work, only to carry it for a few months and discover the new thing I hate about purses--or the new thing I now know I need in a purse--so that when I buy the next one it will be the last one.

I currently carry four bags most all days of the week: 1) A purse. 2) A professional bag. 3) A backpack. 4) A diaper bag.

Let's unpack this, shall we?

1. Purse. The perfect purse for me would include the following characteristics. Characteristics, might I add, that I've come to learn over ample handbag experience.
    a) One strap. This is crucial, because if there are two straps, one is always falling off the shoulder, especially in winter when bulkier coats lead to inevitable strap-slip. I will, however, accept two smaller handles and a longer strap. I'm not a fascist.
    b) Structure. I love a good, floppy bohemian bag as much as the next granola-eating hippie, but try, just try to find your pen.
   c) Magnet closure. Zippers are the difference between getting the call and missing the call.
   d) Fun color. I'm not picky about leather or canvas. Skin an alligator for all I care. What I need is a color that isn't black or brown. I need yellow. Teal. Pink, if it's not annoyingly so. Print, if it doesn't look like grandma's curtains. Just anything that says, "I'm not trying to match my shoes. Aren't I spunky?"
  e) Big, but not huge. There's a fine line between a purse that holds all my stuff, and a bag that looks like I'm running away from home.
  f) Reasonably priced. I say this not to imply that I'm unwilling to shell out whatever it takes for a bag that meets my rigorous standards. But because I know in the back of my mind that the bag won't measure up, it just won't, I try to be slightly reasonable with bag purchases. Please keep in mind that my idea of reasonable and my husband's idea of reasonable are depressingly different.

So, mister know-it-all, does such a purse exist? No it does not. I can get most of those things, but not all. And I convince myself that giving in on d) and f) are ok because a), b) and e) are what really matter to me. But then three months in I discover that it's actually d) and f) that matter and the others are just perks. And it goes on like this, season after season.

Can I mention one other thing? It is truly frustrating to bend down to pick up your child and have your purse, that is securely on your shoulder, come swinging around from the back of you to the front of you, bashing into you and your child while your keys and phone go flying. And there is no strap length that this is not a problem for, so it's either get rid of your child or staple the bag to your armpit. I'm weighing my options.

2) Professional bag. Ok, so this is my most diverse bag, as I use it for teaching, work at the university and school. So depending on the day and what I'm headed to do, I have to change out a series of graded papers, folders of clients or text books. But, because this bag also has to fit my laptop and charger, I allow it some leeway on the things my purse can't have.

3) Backpack. Why, Meg? Why such insanity?! Shush. This one is crucial. It's for gym clothes. I'm fortunate enough to work at a place that has an incredible, and free-to-use, gym. It must be said that my recent need to work out (most) every day is something I am doing for mental health. Not that you should worry unduly about my emotional state, but raising a child while working on a dissertation is stressful enough, not to mention this current purse dilemma I'm having, so yes, I need to spend the last hour at work running, spinning, lifting or punching away frustrations. It's working wonders. But, this means I need another bag in which to put a pair of tennis shoes, socks, water bottle, workout clothes, ear buds, a towel and a sports bra. And this can't possibly fit in my non-enormous purse, and isn't professional enough for my professional bag, so I must carry a backpack. Satisfied?

4) Diaper bag. I think the diaper bag industry should jump up their own ass for perpetuating the myth that you can have a fashionable diaper bag, or a diaper bag that "doesn't look like a diaper bag." Because it doesn't matter if Versace makes the damn thing, it's going to have Cheerio crumbs and diaper cream all over it. You're packing an exact replica (to scale) of what you have in your house (food, toys, diapers, medicine, sunscreen, pacifier, wipes, camera, extra clothes, stuffed animal, blanket) even though at any given time, your child will only want or need one of the things in the bag and that, my friend, is down in the bottom. I've had four different diaper bags in the past year and have a list of needs as long as the one for my purse. And the most important item on that list is less pockets and dividers. Because trying to be organized while my toddler is crying, or running after a duck, is pressure I just don't need.

So, picture me. Let's pretend I've showered and look presentable. And let's assume it's a day that my daughter goes to day care and I have to work and teach and then go to class myself, after which I'll run off some steam at the gym. So out the door I walk with my purse on my right shoulder, a diaper bag on my left shoulder, my professional bag in one hand, a baby on one hip and a pack on my back. And from the looks of things, it's apparent I've misplaced my keys.

This leads me back to shopping last weekend with my salt-and-pepper husband. The man who accepts my neurotic behavior. Who acknowledges that I'm often both insecure and unapologetic about being in a more developmental stage of life. Who supports my numerous and attention-stealing endeavors. Who understands how hard I'm working to make it all work. And who is trying to make up for the one time he asked me to slip his wallet and Kindle into my purse.

So there we are in the handbag section with me spewing things like, "Jessica Simpson's name ruins the aesthetic," while he calmly points to other options deeper in the pit of leather. And, like every time, I come up empty-handed and grumpy. And as we leave the mall getting illegible looks from strangers, his wife defeated and his day misspent, my husband reaches out and grabs my current handbag and tucks it under his arm.



And we carry on.