I want something. Something good. And important. For Children.

It costs $200 million dollars.

Impossible, right?

The Buddha said, "Love each person as if they were your own child.”

What if each mom reading this believed that the amount of juicy, unwavering love they feel for their child could in fact translate into a focused laser of goodwill that facilitated a miracle.

What would you want to see happen?

I want to see a children's hospital come into being.

There are three amazing pediatric hospitals in the Bay Area that have saved countless children's lives -- kids just like yours. Many kids have been transported here or their families brought them here from all over the world for help with conditions and diseases untold.

One of these hospitals is a training center for some of the most promising young surgeons and pediatric specialists in the world.

And that hospital is housed in an ancient, exhausted building in San Francisco. Parts of it look like a third-world structure.

There will be no improvements made. The rates of infection and cross-contamination are highly affected by crowding and sluggish ventilation.

A new hospital has been decided on, so no funding will improve what is already there.

Here's the hitch: No hospital will be built until at least $200 million dollars in private funding is accumulated. One young administrator told me, "I will be retired before they break ground on that hospital.”

Here is my wish, my hope that good conquers avarice and love for children creates miracles. San Francisco built a baseball stadium downtown against a few odds. Little big deal. Moveon.org got people to boot the administration's congressional minions. Bigger deal.

Maybe I can help. I don't know anyone very wealthy. But I am good at phone trees and writing and have lost a good deal of social inhibition. I am going to find out where the money could come from and what I can do to help. I am going to believe that what the Buddha asks of the world is possible, to varying degress, for all of us.

I'd like to hear what other moms wish for, against the odds or not.

Just imagining the combined love for our dear children makes me think we're unstoppable.

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar, Buddha, children's hospital, miracles, raising money, San Francisco

Stumble This Post

“Guys, Mom is going to the movies.”

“With scary parts, like monsters?”

“No, a chick movie.”

“What’s a chick movie?”

“It’s where ladies talk a lot about their feelings and everybody else does, and nobody hits anybody, and they kiss boys a lot and sometimes cry.”

“Ew. . . why would anybody watch that?”

“I like movies where there are scary parts and chases, but then sometimes, like tonight, I like to see ladies having lots of big feelings and kissing cute boys and probably crying, too.”

Heavy, serious sigh. “OK. But I want to see the movies where there are scary parts and I won’t even be scared because I’m brave.”

“You know, being brave sometimes is having big feelings and kissing boys. Getting married and having babies is really brave.”

“But now you have no scary parts because I’m here and I will kiss you and you don’t need to be scared.”

God bless the child.

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar, babies, brave, chick movies, cry, cute boys, getting married, kiss boys, monsters, movies, scared, scary movies, scary parts

Stumble This Post

It's raining. Oh shit, it’s raining.

The kids painted croquet set is outside. I should go get it, but it’s dark and I'm tired and don't want to get out of bed. I don't want to do what I should. I feel the panic of one moment at Emily's birthday party today when we sang “Happy Birthday.”

I was fine during the party until we sang and blew out candles. Just for a moment, my voice cracked and I looked at her. She was smiling, unsure of what we were doing looking at the little bits of fire. My body felt like it was melting into the floor, that pit of terror peeking open, remembering how close we were to not having this happen.

And a rush of wanting to hide filled me like stepping on glass. I didn't want to turn and see all those kind people who love us and held us together when she was fighting for her life. I wanted to get away from the permanence of her heart condition. I wanted to be alone and scream. This wanting to hide from a painful truth is a silent part of most days. We moms are good at getting support, letting friends hold us, dealing by bonding.

But I have a darker side in it, too. A childish, rageful side of deep loneliness where I stand on a different side of the river from my friends with healthy kids.

It’s a room without a door in and very little light, no perspective or even compassion. Some of me is unhealed, tied to old places of mute aloneness and uncertain of the value of really agreeing to love another person.

In the black chill of this rainy night, after a raucous, bright party full of delightful people, I choose not to go rescue kids toys from the storm, not to seek comfort for myself, not to talk to my sweet, sweet husband.

I am not the grown up who needs to be here to raise my child in the uncertainty in which we'll reside. I'm not that kind of mother. Is this one of the secret truths of motherhood? Even what we can't do, we do anyway. My heart lives outside of me, tied to little beings who can't promise they will live to adulthood. And I have to stay, dragging the ugly parts of myself along.

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar, birthday party, compassion, Happy Birthday, raining, storm, supportive mother

Stumble This Post

As my father was packing up his car when he left the family, his parting wisdom was this;

“Never become financially dependent on a man. Jus look what it did to your mother."

My mother was residing at the time in a locked ward on seventy-two-hour hold for suicidal threats.

His words still haunt me today, forty years old and financially dependent, with two kids under five.

Today, my husband winced at the pile of Costco party supplies I just came home with.

"We already had plastic cups."

"They’re giant and red,” I say. “They’re too big for punch.”

He looks at me, I look at the floor. We both sigh, all contained hostility.

"We're not making enough to match what we spend... atf all now," he tells me.

I am ashamed and angry. I turned down a job working in the county jail because I realized I just couldn't work there once I felt the despair pour into me while walking among the locked units. Somewhere, after having kids, my past armor has disappeared. But we are both angry at me for not taking that job, despite our verbal assurances to each other that it was the right decision.

We need money, and my private practice is not bringing in enough yet. Financial dependence and wanting my kids to have their mom and a great preschool is right, in my mind. My gut differs. We're going broke and I am panicked and embarrassed. I want to see it differently, that I should be supported for being available to my baby while she is small, but I harbor backlash beliefs that I should be bringing in the money that will take the stone partly off my husband's back and give me the self-esteem that seems to have escaped along with my six-pack abs and taut skin.

I remember my father's words and how I lived by them, aggressively independent and hard-working.

Terrified, really.

There is something to grow up here with, another perfect lesson in losing my position of invulnerability thanks to choosing children. This tight-fisted nausea itself is where I need to stay for today, and hope for a little faith to open.

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar, Costco, daddy, financially independent, hard-working, party supplies, self-esteem, six-pack abs, suicidal threats

Stumble This Post

“Its going to be so funny when everyone notices how long my hair has gotten!” chuckled my four-year-old daughter, looking at herself in her mirror, basking in self-love.

Preparing for another birthday party, negotiating wardrobe, how much of my make-up I’ll let her wear, we arrived at my daughter’s certainty about what the true focus of the party would be.

“Dominic’s mom, Karson’s mom,” she went on “they will ALL be so amazed by my hair!”

I stared at her, my little center of the universe. I almost reminded her that people will be thinking other things also, but stopped myself. We have hopped off the developmental ski lift and reached the highest summit of narcissism at just the right time. It changes on its own if all goes well. Leave her alone, I tell myself, the world will be knocking her off it soon and often.

What is the good mother response? Join her in it? Say nothing? Move to another topic? “They'll be happy to see you. We haven’t seen them since last year,” I say, attempting to go with it. She is fluffing her hair and gazing in the mirror. “Um, hm. . .” she says.

I wonder about myself at her age and my anxiety over her confident self-celebration. My mother was in the trenches of her long depression, spreading despair throughout the house when I was small. I can remember feeling exuberant and confident. I tried to share it with her.

“It will be OK, Mom,” I remember saying to her on one occasion when I was about my daughter’s age.

Her eyes looked huge and black. “No, it will never be OK,” she said and I felt myself fall into those black pools and believed her fully.

Today, looking at my daughter now touching up her Cinderella lip gloss, I feel my grateful moment for the day.

This is that paycheck that I get as a mother, knowing I’ve cut the cord to that particular maternal inheritance of short-circuited confidence and negativism that I know my mother and her mother received. My daughter’s sun will not be clouded over to the best of my ability.

We go to the birthday party and several moms who haven’t seen us in a while all say the same thing to my child: “Maya, I can’t believe how long your hair has gotten!”

I’m going to put a bonus in their next paycheck.

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar, birthday party, long-haired daughter, make-up, narcissism

Stumble This Post

Lately I am noticing a sharp decline in the quality of my evening house clean-up. I’m slipping.

My mental and emotional state is intimately linked to my environment. The amount of mess, number of items stacked in little piles, the general stickiness rating of most toddler-height surfaces, increases my agitation as they increase throughout the day or week.

A bottle of 409, a paring knife and a Magic Eraser duly applied after the family is asleep has often returned me to homeostasis and feelings of peace before I move onto writing, reading, consuming celebrity gossip, or e-mailing my friends.

I accepted somewhere in my third year of marriage that my lovable, dependable husband’s tragic flaw, being a premier level slob, was probably never going to change. The house would be as clean as I care to keep it. I was free to choose whether to work with that or make myself miserable. I chose shalom in the home for all our sakes.

And I was successful. . . as long as we only had one child.

Then came my second daughter. As the workload increased, my motivation has slowed. Increasingly, over the past months, I fall onto the couch with a novel, or e-mail my friends and discuss adult and big questions. Often, the dishwasher isn’t running, clothes and food is strewn about, and I go to bed without cleaning any of it.

Frankly, my house is sometimes pretty grubby when I wake up.

I am starting to hear from my own imperfect voice in this matter. I want that “room of one’s own” after the family circus of the day, where I can be alone with my yet unthought ideas and scrambled feelings.

I need more interior room and have started to buy it with the price of organization and cleanliness. My voice is lurching out, messy and unfocused, but worth it. My imaginary weaving together of a tidy, inviting home and a growing space in my own mind is slipping away. My resolve to beat back the forces of entropy is failing, but feels shameful rather than freeing.

Messy, this sorting out a mother’s priorities, hoping to be able to do more than is possible.

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar, bottle of 409, cleaning, Magic Eraser, messy house, one child, room of one's own, slob, two children

Stumble This Post

Tonight we had the funky California Seder. We gathered two other families for a very abridged reading of the story of Passover: one mean Pharaoh, some plagues, and then a walk through the desert. We played “Let My People Go,” the board game.

It had small plastic accessories that captured the mood. My favorite: a man cut out of bubble wrap represented boils. We lit one aromatherapy candle. My daughter enjoyed the little party and dutifully took a bite of horseradish in remembrance of people who have been enslaved. But 

Labels: Avvy Mar, Bat Mitzvah, California, Chanel No. 5, East Coast Jewish girl, Flatbush Avenue, Jewey, Jewish Mother, Judaism, Passover, Yiddish

Stumble This Post

There is a belief in the world of psychoanalysis that a pregnant woman cannot be psychoanalyzed.

The fact of being physically merged with a baby, some have said, empties the maternal mind of its ability to examine and effect change in its contents.

I used to get feministically ragey on that prejudice.

But today I am wondering about how much access do I have to writing, to creating characters, remembering details, and painting a visual picture.

How much can a mother do that while her kid is napping?

Wait, is that her? Do I not get to finish even this?

How much of our mama brain is ours and internally free to wander while we try to sing our song and voice our particular story?

How much of me is taken up in crouching, waiting for the interruption or the remembered phone call I HAVE to make while she's out?

We need so much to have a place where we are subjective, messy, passionate creatures, beholden to no one, freely longing and growing.

Today's answer: Well, at least I can try to write a blog. . .

Oy, she's up!

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar, feminist, log, mama brain, napping babies, pregnancy, psychoanalysis, psychoanalyzed, rage

Stumble This Post

1. Order carrot cake -- no nuts!
2. Potluck or make food?
3. Stop playing back the scene where I first see Emily, in the Intensive Care Nursery, just three days old, gray, and chemically paralyzed, every orifice filled with wires -- nurses and doctors rushing in. The floor was dingy, the room crowded and loud.
4. Figure out where to stash the dog during the party.
5. Add, “Sorry, kids or adults with colds, please stay home” to the invitations.
6. Cry for two minutes. Wish I could smoke.
7. Breathe in grief. Breathe out gratitude.
8. Decide about food. Making food occupies thoughts.
9. Jumpy house for kid guests?
10. Send first annual love letter to pediatric cardiologist.
11. Maybe Martha Stewart appetizers -- those freaky tiny ones like stuffed grapes?
12. Decide how much furniture to take out to make room for the party.
13. Soften not knowing when she will need the next operation or the next or the one after that.
14. Remember how much of a miracle it is to be able to celebrate this day.
15. Update Emily’s baby book. (Buy one first.)
16. Ask Caroline to play games with the older kids.
17. Assign unflaky friend to write down who gave which gifts.
18. Buy thank you notes -- 75-100.
19. Call hospital for where to donate gifts.
20. Have camera memories cleared -- video and still.
21. Emily: Cardiology appointment on Thursday at 1 p.m.
22. Remember the moms who don’t get to have their babies' birthdays.
23. Borrow extra tables.
24. Send cigars and single malt scotch to Emily’s surgeon; mark Post-Op only!!!
25. Breathe in. Speak kindly. Breathe out. Love generously.

by Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar, birthdays, cake?, gratitude, thanks, To-Do-List, video camera

Stumble This Post

As my father was packing up his car when he left the family, his parting wisdom was this: “Never become financially dependent on a man. Just look what it did to your mother."

My mother was residing at the time in a locked ward on seventy-hour hold for suicidal threats.

His words still haunt me today, 40 years old and financially dependent with two kids under five.

Today, my husband winced at the pile of Costco party supplies I just came home with.

"We already had plastic cups."

"They’re giant and red,” I say. “They’re too big for punch.”

He looks at me, I look at the floor. We both sigh, all contained hostility.

"We're not making enough to match what we spend. . . at all now,” he tells me.

I am ashamed and angry. I turned down a job working in the county jail because I realized I just couldn't work there once I felt the despair pour into me while walking among the locked units.

Somewhere, after having kids, my past armor has disappeared. But we are both angry at me for not taking that job, despite our verbal assurances to each other that it was the right decision.

We need money, and my private practice is not bringing in enough yet. Financial dependence and wanting my kids to have their mom and a great preschool is right, in my mind.

My guts differ.

We're going broke and I am panicked and embarrassed. I want to see it differently, that I should be supported for being available to my baby while she is small, but I harbor backlash beliefs that I should be bringing in the money that will take the stone partly off my husband's back and give me the self-esteem that seems to have escaped along with my six-pack abs and taut skin.

I remember my father's words and how I lived by them, aggressively independent and hard-working.

Terrified, really.

There is something to grow up here with, another perfect lesson in losing my position of invulnerability thanks to choosing children.

This tight-fisted nausea itself is where I need to stay for today, and hope for a little faith to open.

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar, Costco, financial dependence, financial independence, money, parents, preschool, saving money

Stumble This Post

I learn a lot about my inner landscape by mapping my endearingly out of proportion overreactions to other people’s behavior. I have the practiced calm exterior, but I boil and pitch with abandon in my head. This week, the object of undeserved wrath is the family across the street. They have two wonderful daughters my kids adore, just older than my girls in a way that will keep their status as cool forever.

Well, they have been spring cleaning way too much. They are sprucing up the front yard, power washing the exterior, making trips to Goodwill. From my vantage point across the cul-de-sac, it’s clear that they are doing these things with singular purpose and great efficiency.

Saturday, their older daughter spilled the beans, validating my dark fears. Rather than build the addition they had planned, they are probably opting to sell their house. We are being left by THE same-age kids on the street that fuse with my kids into a giggling feminine mob, roaming between houses, playing dress up, eating pizza, making a boring Sunday hilarious as they trade secrets and songs about butt cracks and poop.

I feel personally betrayed. How dare they make their own decisions and take away one cornerstone of my hometown, brotherly feeling that makes me love our block. How could they turn their backs on how I want things to be! So what if I absolutely agree it’s a better decision. They didn’t consult with us! My older daughter is going to be crushed. The younger one will, too. Okay, so she just started walking and mostly points at their house and drools, but I know she’ll feel abandoned, too. I graciously feel the pain for them. Now, my hello wave is tainted with bitterness. I become a petulant, sulking middle-schooler when I see them arrive home.

Hah! They’re probably meeting with another realtor, I say to myself. They’re going to find new neighbors. People with nicer houses, who effortlessly cook gourmet feasts with better backyard setups than ours and probably work with the blind after a long day at the brokerage firm.

Here I sit. . . the scorned neighbor.

When my daughter shrieked at me tonight about bedtime, “No, you need to do it MY way!!!” I act mature and consistent, but inside my head, she’d be amazed at how the same sentiment is thumping in my head too.

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar, daughters, neighbors, realtor

Stumble This Post

My wish for the blessed mothers:

Two days in a hotel.

Velvety sheets, gourmet room service.

A stack of books to inspire or distract. Ratio as desired: two trashy, 1 poetry, 1 heartbreaking.

Time to read.

Time to write.

No need for clothes with zippers.

Endless warm drinks.

Quiet.

Revelatory, vexing dreams.

Quiet.

The sound of an idea popping tenderly.

Tea.

Quiet.

Naps.

Relaxed, but swiftly flowing momentum rushing joyfully to your unique North Star.

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar, Dreams, naps, quiet, relax, wishes

Stumble This Post

I finished reading a memoir of a painful childhood by a favorite writer who tenderly depicts suicide, secret affairs, abject neglect, and intellectual genius in her family.

It touches my heart, partly because when I was in my early twenties, I was engaged to the little brother in the story.

In being reminded of what he had gone without, and lost, in his vulnerable early years, which ultimately played out in the demise of my first true love story, I cried for both of us.

Looking back, way back, at him from my current midlife mom position, I feel maternally protective and soft-hearted toward him. I start feeling how I failed him as he was falling into self-destruction.

I walked away.

Having children is the difference in my reading his story and changing his depiction in my life story.

I understand the child in the story more deeply, having lived the vulnerabilities of my own trusting and permeable babies. Kids gave me a bigger heart and eased my sharp judgment.

One memory from long ago with the man in this book, so long wrapped in anger at his seeming betrayal of poor me, is allowed some breathing room. My little autobiography can expand, allowing the true dimensionality of people I loved and counted on to unfold.

My maternal self has given me the gift of being able to forgive, remembering that we’re all someone’s child and none of us was born wanting anything more than to be loved.

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar

Stumble This Post

I used to think ambivalence referred to my childish, rapidly shifting positive and negative feelings toward a parent or my most recent boyfriend.

In one day, my closest and most delicate relationships could revolve in a merry-go-round of opposing moods: remorse, hurt, hope, and guilt came up and down, waving hello.

Now it’s midlife as a parent and I am coming into a new understanding of ambivalence. I can adore my children and live on the joy of seeing their delight. And I can resent the crap out of them simultaneously when they will their exhausted, flailing bodies to fight off sleep and I haven't had one moment of solitary quiet all day.

I just want to run away!!

But if I do hand them off and go out for a bit, I miss those little girls so much.

Mamas sit in a big warm tub of amusement, fierce attachment, irritation, fatigue, affection, and questioning, -- swirling around for us to move through.

I guess the challenge is to move toward comfortable cohabitation with all kinds of bubbles in the bath.

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar

Stumble This Post

It's raining. Oh shit, its raining.

The kids painted croquet set is outside. I should go get it, but it’s dark and I'm tired and don't want to get out of bed. I don't want to do what I should.I feel the panic of one moment at Emily's birthday party today when we sang Happy Birthday.

I was fine during the party until we sang and blew out the candles. Just for a moment, my voice cracked and I looked at her. She was smiling, unsure of what we were doing, looking at the little bits of fire.

My body felt like it was melting into the floor, that pit of terror peeking open, remembering how close we were to not having this happen. And a rush of wanting to hide filled me like stepping on glass. I didn't want to turn and see all those kind people who love us and held us together when she was fighting for her life. I wanted to get away from the permanence of her heart condition.

I wanted to be alone and scream. This wanting to hide from a painful truth, is a silent part of most days. We moms are good at getting support, letting friends hold us, dealing by bonding. But I have a darker side in it, too, a childish rage full of deep loneliness where I stand on a different part of the river from my friends with healthy kids.

It’s a room without a door and very little light, no perspective or even compassion. Some of me is unhealed, tied to old places of mute aloneness and uncertain of the value of really agreeing to love another person.

In the black chill of this rainy night, after a raucous, bright party full of delightful people, I choose not to go rescue kids’ toys from the storm, not to seek comfort for myself, not to talk to my sweet, sweet husband. I am not the grownup who needs to be here to raise my child in the uncertainty in which we'll reside. I'm not that kind of mother. Is this one of the secret truths of motherhood? Even what we can't do, we do anyway?

My heart lives outside of me, tied to little beings who can't promise they will live to adulthood. And I have to stay, dragging the ugly parts of myself along.

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar

Stumble This Post

I finished reading a memoir of a painful childhood by a favorite writer who tenderly depicts suicide, secret affairs, abject neglect, and intellectual genius in her family.

It touches my heart, partly because when I was in my early 20s, I was engaged to the little brother in the story. In being reminded of what he had gone without, and lost, in his vulnerable early years, which ultimately played out in the demise of my first true love story, I cried for both of us.

Looking back, way back, at him from my current midlife mom position, I feel maternally protective and soft-hearted toward him. I start feeling how I failed him as he was falling into self-destruction. I walked away. Having children is the difference in my reading his story and changing his depiction in my life story. I understand the child in the story more deeply, having lived the vulnerabilities of my own trusting and permeable babies.

Kids gave me a bigger heart and eased my sharp judgment. One memory from long ago with the man in this book, so long wrapped in anger at his seeming betrayal of poor me, is allowed some breathing room. My little

My maternal self has given me the gift of being able to forgive, remembering that we’re all someone’s child and none of us was born wanting anything more than to be loved.

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar

Stumble This Post

I want something. Something good. And important. For children.

It costs $200 million dollars. Impossible, right? The Buddha said, "Love each person as if they were your own child.” What if each mom reading this believed that the amount of juicy, unwavering love they feel for their child could in fact translate into a focused laser of goodwill that facilitated a miracle?

What would you want to see happen? I want to see a children's hospital come into being. There are three amazing pediatric hospitals in the Bay Area that have saved countless children's lives -- kids just like yours.

Many kids have been transported here or their families brought them here from all over the world for help with conditions and diseases untold. One of these hospitals is a training center for some of the most promising young surgeons and pediatric specialists in the world.

That hospital is housed in an ancient, exhausted building in San Francisco. Parts of it look like a third-world structure. There will be no improvements made. The rates of infection and cross-contamination are highly affected by crowding and sluggish ventilation.

A new hospital has been decided on, so no funding will improve what is already there. Here's the hitch: no hospital will be built until at least $200 million dollars in private funding is accumulated.

One young administrator told me, "I will be retired before they break ground on that hospital.”

Here it is, my holiday wish, my Hanukah candle lighting up a small part of the night, my hope that good conquers avarice and love for children creates miracles. San Francisco built a baseball stadium downtown against a few odds.

Little big deal. Moveon.org got people to boot the administration's congressional minions. Bigger deal. Maybe I can help. I don't know anyone very wealthy. But I am good at phone trees and writing and have lost a good deal of social inhibition.

I am going to find out where the money could come from and what I can do to help. I am going to believe that what the Buddha asks of the world is possible, to varying degress, for all of us.

As the holidays approach, I'd like to hear what other moms wish for, against the odds or not. Just imagining the combined love for our dear children makes me think we're unstoppable.

Bless you this holiday.

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar

Stumble This Post

My mother came for a weekend visit and toted along a giant box of slides from my childhood. We stayed up late last night here and flashed across the early history of our family. We’re a group long since splintered by divorce and four children’s mostly disastrous efforts to separate for 25 years from their downtrodden and bitter parents.

I expected to be sad to see pictures of my older brother, who drifted so far away on drugs and a marginal existence. Seeing him holding me when I was a baby, feeding me -- stabbed at me where I’ve given up on him.

On 1970 Kodachrome, I was madly in worship of him. He was my golden-haired hero when I was two years old. In most pictures, I’m leaning toward him, pleading for him to look at me while he was mugging for the camera. I can’t not love someone I loved that purely. I can only deny it when they become someone not to let near my children.

But a welcome heartbreak came with the pictures of my mother holding me as a beefy baby. She looked so hopeful and innocent, and so in love with me. I spent so much money in therapy recovering from my depressed mother. But to look at her at 30, black haired and laughing at the beach, opened my eyes. She was 10 years younger than I am now, with four small children. She was happy. That melted another unspoken layer of ice in my heart.

We forget the angels in the nursery, and only remember the demons, I was told recently. The power of seeing my young mother in a beehive and movie star sunglasses (I could go on for days about the gorgeous 1960s Pucci fabric alone!) somehow returned her to me, as a mother I could relate to: overwhelmed and stylishly hip.

Maybe it’s all like backdating. We call something only a bit valuable so that we can retroactively make it a treasure. We need to be humbled by life just enough to let us look over a shoulder at the people we judged so savagely, the folks we came from. Now we can see the angels they always were, waiting to be cherished with a wiser eye.

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar

Stumble This Post

There is a belief in the world of psychoanalysis that a pregnant woman cannot be psychoanalyzed.


The fact of being physically merged with a baby, some have said, empties the maternal mind of its ability to examine and effect change in its contents.


I used to get feministically ragey on that prejudice.


But today I am wondering about how much access do I have to writing, to creating characters, remembering details, and painting a visual picture.


How much can a mother do that while her kid is napping?


Wait, is that her? Do I not get to finish even this?


How much of our mama brain is ours and internally free to wander while we try to sing our song and voice our particular story?


How much of me is taken up in crouching, waiting for the interruption or the remembered phone call I HAVE to make while she's out?

We need so much to have a place where we are subjective, messy, passionate creatures, beholden to no one, freely longing and growing.

Today's answer: Well, at least I can try to write a blog. . .

Oy, she's up!


By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar

Stumble This Post

My daughter is nearing five, and we’ve had many conversations about causes of death and its inevitability. Until now, we haven’t dipped into the topic of death without logic and the cause and effect chain involving brutality and hatred rather than illness.

Yesterday was the first time I had to explain that a friend of the family had been killed in Iraq. Trying to choose my words put me square into my politics, which I try to keep to a minimum when explaining life to my child. I try to speak with more faith in a good world than I actually hold. This one was set to fail from the get-go.

“How did he die, Mama?”

“Someone in an army shot him with a gun, someone who was afraid and trying to protect himself from another country’s army in his country. The different armies that are trying to stay safe.”

Deaf ears.

“A gun? That is so mean.” She shook her head, scowling.

“Sometimes a whole country and the people in charge of keeping it safe feel that what the other country is doing is dangerous,” I try to explain. “So our country sent an army to Iraq.” I was making myself sick with this line of talk.

She interrupted me, “Even if you want to keep me safe Mama, don’t kill anybody.” She started to cry.

Dicey.

I feel fierce in my belief that I could take down, with bare hands or any available heavy object, anyone who came after my kid. Here she was asking me to promise I wouldn’t. Preschool Mahatma, wiser yet again than her bumbling mom.

She threw me a pure example of what I believe my politics to be, and what I find, yet again, is that motherhood has trashed my certainty about what I would do.

I do still feel morally superior to the president, but that bar is set at curb height. My daughter’s a tougher one to live up to.

By Avvy Mar

Labels: Avvy Mar

Stumble This Post