A rarefied life, right now

Reading The Women's Room, fiction from 1977 that paints a really ugly picture of women's lives in the 50s and 60s, I am struck with what a very easy and pleasant life I have. My mom suggested we read the book; one of her friends is reading it as part of a reading group. So far, so good, if not a little much. Nobody's happy. I suppose there are moments of happiness, or at least of relief, but overall, the women seem so unfulfilled, oppressed, and, well, sad. In addition to this novel feeding my obsession for mid-century American socio-realist entertainment, I have become a big fan of the popular Mad Men series, watching every new episode and catching up on the old ones on DVD. The women of Mad Men do a litttle better than those in The Women's Room, but there's still much to bristle at.

I want to know, was it really like this? My mom was a hippie artist type in the 70s, married to my dad, a long-haired pot-smoking guitar god who worshipped her as his "primordial woman," and this stuff was actually before her time. She told me she didn't think it was quite like this for all women, reminiscing about her own mother, who would've been living this life during the period covered in the book, and thinking of her own mother-in-law. Both worked outside the home (one in a canning factory, sad, the other as a milliner and in retail, something she liked) neither were sexually repressed, and both had nice husbands—my grandpas. My mom said she thought maybe it was a New England upper middle class thing, these tortured women. She said our Eastern European people in the working classes in the city were different. I don't know, but, boy is life different for me now than what's described in The Women's Room and what I see on Mad Men.

I live like a queen.

I don't have to keep a particularly sparkling clean home. Although I keep it orderly, basically clean, and bug-free, my husband doesn't really have any expectations of me in this area. Or, maybe I just haven't tested him, but why would I want to? I have a certain standard for my own surroundings, of course. I get to go to the gym, go shopping (I'm not a big shopper, so by this, I mainly mean grocery or house supply shopping or toys), hang out with my adorable one girl child. It's a dream! I also get to work a little bit, earn some money, stimulate my brain and interact with serious adults just enough to keep myself "sharp" with a foot into the door of the "real world." We're not wealthy, but I don't worry about money when I go on my daily stops to Whole Foods for a snack, Starbucks for a smoothie for A and a coffee for me, Walgreens for some fresh playdough or new markers, or Macys for an occasional Clinique treat for myself, or books, books, books from Amazon. Oh, and my husband is not selfish or brutish in the bedroom, either! We have so much and we are so very happy.

Women back then were expected to keep a spotless home (or so it seems) and had fewer modern technologies to help them do so. The "exotic" foods that light up my days (sushi, kombucha tea, chips and salsa, dark chocolates, microbrews...) weren't readily available. I mean, in Mad Men, even cosmopolitan Don Draper admits he's never had Mexican food! Most women had more than one child, increasing the work load and decreasing the magic significantly, in my opinion (but that's fodder for a whole other post, and purely a matter of individual choice). Women didn't get to choose whether to get pregnant, at least not as easily as we do today, with so many birth control options available to us on one hand, and fertility help on the other. Women didn't get to choose whether they were going to work or not, what they would do for work, or when, either.

I realize that even today many women don't have that choice about work. Some need to and don't want to. Others want to and can't get it. And then there are the very lucky, very blessed women like me, who have the rarefied experience of doing just enough satisfying work, on their own terms, and I get to do this while enjoying the cool experience of raising a "perfect" daughter in her early pre-school years from the comfort of home.

I gush about my girl because she is so gorgeous, so smart and so good. She is a genuine pleasure to be around. I actually enjoy hanging out with her, going to the coffee shop, doing art at home, going on outings to farms, playgrounds, museums and such. Sometimes I think a mom who really likes her child is rare, too, and I don't know whether that's just them or their lousy circumstances that detract from the pleasures of parenting.

Anyway, so often I find myself thinking how good I have it and that maybe its not so common to have it so good. Other times, I get into slumps, feeling a little bit of that spoiled, suburban ennui that seems so shameful. I get testy with my husband, thinking he doesn't help enough around here, etc. etc. etc. But, when I look at the whole picture of the world around me, and history falling off behind me, I am struck by what a glorious time in my life these years are, spent basically just chilling out and enjoying life with my small child at home.

Someday, I will have to either go back to work for someone else or build my business. My girl will get older and will want friends other than me. Maybe the fact that these golden years of my daughter's babyhood are but a short stage of my whole life adds to their fun and beauty, and tolerability—knowing I don't have to stay home, forever, with a gaggle of children and do housework, the lifestyle that seemed to ruin so many women back in the day. (But, maybe I would even have liked that, who knows?)

Everything changes. And, I do worry, just for a minute here and there, about what if this all got taken away from me. What if I lost my contract or my husband lost his job? Things would be harder. We'd be OK, but the ease of it all would vanish and I'd have to readjust a few things, for sure. I don't even venture into the territory of worrying about if something happened to my child. That's too scary.

I'm sure I will find plenty of happiness in my future, but damn, are things great for me now, and I just want to look back and remember it in this post.

You don't have to have an opinion about everything

Preamble: I took a long break from this blog because it was making me tired. I was caught in a weird cycle of looking for things that pissed me off online, mostly surrounding children, parenting and "womens" issues, and coming up with some kind of retort. It may not have been reflected in my posts, which, at the end, sort of moved away from that, on purpose, as I tried to have a more gentle outlook.

While I stopped blogging, for a little while, my opinion-spewing continued in the form of comments on other sites, and, in some ways, that was even more exhausting. But, I'm happy to say, I've wound that down alot, too, and have been reaping the benefits of not being so caught up in all this—more time for more productive pursuits and a calmer mind. There were plenty of opportunities to get worked up, on a couple of my favorite online places—Babble and The New Yorks Times' Motherlode had posts on disciplining children, breastfeeding, and the ever-popular "to work or stay-at-home" question, with its many hooks...but I remained on the sidelines for the most part, just taking in all the comments and sighing a breath of relief that I was not compelled to enter the fray. In reading all the comments, it really hit me that most of this stuff is really just a matter of opinion—to which everyone is entitled.

Premise: I've never liked the old saying "Opinions are like assholes—everybody's got one." It's kind of disgusting in what it brings to mind, first of all. Second of all, it's kind of obvious. Yes, we all have opinions. And that is fine. Good, even. It keeps us thinking, it keeps us from being stupid, boring people. But, do we all have to have an opinion about everything?

Case in point: Bill Maher. Much has been made lately about his comments concerning the swine flu vaccine. He basically poo-pooed the need for the vaccine and said that people who get it are idiots, blurting out a bunch on unscientific nonsense along the way. In following the trail of Mr. Maher's latest opining about something he seems to know little about, I came across his previous comments on public breastfeeding.

OK, so why would a guy with no wife or kids who apparently loves titties and thinks America is too puritanical (he's dated a string of models and hangs out at the Playboy mansion, bully for him, I've got no problem with that, it's none of my business) even have an opinion on public breastfeeding, much less take the time on his show to rail against it? Maybe it offends his sensibilities that breasts are for showy sexual pleasure...only? My only other guess is he thinks that "lactivists" somehow downgrade activism overall (for more....important things). In the segment, he says that the lactivist cause shows how "activism has become narcissism" and is "why Al Gore can't get people to focus on global warming unless there's a rock concert." He goes on to say "its why there'll be no end to this dumb war until there's a draft, because at the end of the day Iraq is someone else's problem." So, women who want to be able to feed their infants when the babies are hungry are responsible for the war not ending. Mmmmkay, Bill. He shouldn't even have treaded in this territory. I mean, really, why?

Digression: I'm not big on "lactivism," personally. I mean, I definitely think that women should breastfeed wherever and whenever they want. For me, it was never a problem, except one time in Nice a security guard at the Chagall museum told me to take it outside. Another guard later defended me and said the other fellow was "a very sick man." Go figure. Anyway, I never needed to be a "lactivist", it was just something I did. Breastfeed my baby. Now that she's nearly two-and-a-half, and we are still at it a few times a day, I won't do it in public because she is so big and it is a little strange for people to see this, and because I'm gradually weaning her anway. But, I think its cool if other women want to be "lactivists." What's wrong with tooting about something you believe in that's important to you? Why not? Why should I care if they do this?

Back to the point: I was never a big fan Mr. Maher, nothing is ever progressive enough for him, right? And he's ugly, too. He makes this big deal about "reason" in his movie, "Religiosity." But, his stance on swine flu and breastfeeding pretty much display an utter lack of reason, in my opinion. Sometimes you need to just shut up and focus on your own area of interest or expertise, or you risk looking like a big, inconsistent fool. So, I may be back on the blog, but I am going to try and be mindful of this whole "opinion on everything" trend that blogging seems to beget, and stick to what I know, or what I can offer a truly valuable perspective on.