Michael and Barbie

Michelle:
I think it's funny that you once so objected to your daughters being interested in playing with Barbie dolls but now that you have a grandson, Barbies represent being liberated. What a double standard! I can't believe you are perpetuating unrealistic images of women from such an early age!

Mary Joan, being absurdly defensive:
Of course, I was joking about giving him a barbie doll for his birthday. Now that I have a record of his behavior, I will make sure he doesn't get his hands on another one! He would probably prefer a Sasha doll; they have much better hair. I would welcome a substitute hair-pulling object. Someone had put the Barbie with the dinosaurs. I wouldn't buy my daughters Barbie dolls. But I didn't snatch them out of their eager hands at someone else's house.For hguys not in the know-- Anne used the first real money she got--her first communion money--to buy about six of them. Very shortly they were beheaded, scalped, or drowned.

Mary Joan, still protesting too much, lists the nonsexist toys she has given Michael:
First Mother Goose
a wooden squish toy with movable beads
a world beach ball
Peter Seeger CD
Woody Guthrie CD
Rhythm set
xylophone
various books

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Feminist Obama?

My generation of feminists won some significant battles, and so brilliant younger women need not make feminism their absolute priority. I was 18 when the Feminine Mystique was published, 23 when the second feminist movement began. Belatedly, I have realized this week that feminism is my make- or -break issue. But my absolute commitment to feminist issues would not necessarily make me a Clinton supporter.

Please struggle to understand this. Men and women can be feminists. Clinton, although the target of hundreds of thousands of vituperative misogynist attacks, has not committed herself to a feminist platform. If Obama campaigned as a feminist, spoke out against the sexistattacks against Clinton, and made family issues an essential part of his platform, I would work for him in a heartbeat. I am sure Michelle Obama could write eloquent speeches for him. That he doesn't seem to be considering a potentially winning strategy indicates how thoroughly feminist and family issues have fallen beneath the political radar. I can't figure out why.

I might even prefer to vote for feminist Obama than a beleaguered Clinton. Voters would find it much more possible to understand feminist issues if a younger candidate was explicating them. Even as I type, I am struggling whether I should add "a younger male" candidate.

I was flabbergasted when Obama's aide Jesse Jackson jr. seemed to be competing with Chris Matthews for woman hater of the day. Obama's failure to repudiate or fire Jackson offers me no security he even understands feminism, never mind supports it. Perhaps his daughters need to educate him.

Wisdom of Tears

I wonder if all the people, men and women, ranting about Hillary's "fake" tears. react the same way to loved ones crying. Do you accuse your mom, your sister, your wife or your kid of using tears to yank your chain? (I admit my 5 younger brothers did.) Do you tell your son or grandson that big boys don't cry? Do you fight tears at sickbeds and funerals? I have watched people cry for 62 years, and it's bullshit that her reaction was staged. If it was, she should get the Oscar for best actress. . SHE DIDN'T CRY. Her eyes might have been wet, but there were no tears cascading down her cheeks. Good crying is usually noisy as well.

And if she had cried, what the hell is wrong with that? The human experiment with the patriarchy has not proven that bottling up your tears in a gun, a knife, a car, a terrorist attack, or a war, rather than letting them gentle your cheek advances the human condition. I feel very sorry for people who has not enjoyed the therapeutic relief of crying. I have been a shrink and have been shrunk. The most essential equipment in a shrink's office is the box of tissues. You could always sit on the floor. Some shrinks feel you are just wasting time until you are able to cry.

Even Feminist Cats Lack a Sense of Humor

From Feministing.

Confessions of Misogyny

 My four daughters would reassure you that I am one of the worst misogynists they know. Until I became a mother at age 28, I would always join the circle of men, never the circle of women. I was positive the conversation would be more stimulating. I despise women's fashion magazines and all the talk of diets and hair and makeup..

Spending a year in a Catholic girls college in Rochester was the most alienating experience of my life. I was sarcastic, and no one seemed to realize I didn't necessarily mean it. One night my friends and I stayed up all night, discussing politics,sex, religion, what have you. The rumor rapidly spread that we were gossiping about everyone on the floor. Learning that "there was something in the nature of a woman that unsuits her for intellectual debate with men" elicited my jail beak to being the only girl in the political science classes at Fordham.

Working in the female-dominated fields of public librarianship and social work was a disaster for me. I never can accept that is the way it is and you can't do anything about it. I am a trouble maker pure and simple. When I am upset, I defend myself by getting more ascerbic and intellectual. I perceive that men enjoy gutsy women who giggle and smile and tease and insult and debate with them lots more than women do. I have always gone to male shrinks.

My most successful social work job was working with a great group of seriously mentally ill guys who were absolutely trapped in the system. Some had been in jail; most had substance abuse problems. I never was so appreciated by a group of people in my whole life. They were so wonderful to hang out with. I excel at eliciting the sanity in crazy people and the craziness in apparently sane people. There are lots of the latter in social work and public librarianship.

I also did extremely well with male gay clients. One told me I must have been a gay male in a previous lifetime I understand him so well. I Another paid me the greatest compliment I got as a shrink: he said I was his only experience of unconditional love. We had a strange therapeutic relationship. Until I treated him, an Irishmen from an utterly abusive family, I never realized how Irish I was.

I have never been hassled on the street by a guy in my entire life. I do smile a lot. I am perfectly comfortable being the only women in a subway car full of men. African American men and immigrants tend to find older, curvier women attractive, which is lovely fun. In the early days of women's lib, women whined incessantly about street hassles. I wondered if I was the ugliest woman in the entire women's liberation movement. I often have long conversations with homeless men. One street person teased me that I looked very friendly ,approachable, happy to talk, sometimes generous depending upon whether I had exceeded my day's handout limit, but I subtly conveyed that I could turn him to stone if he messed with me.

--
Posted By Mary Jo Koch to Matriarch at 1/11/2008 02:20:00 PM

Equality Feminism and Difference Feminism

This was written in response to a perceptive critique of my feminist rants. I entirely agree with you "that being a feminist means rejecting some of what feminism had to say over the past 40 years." What has accompanied the success of feminism is less appreciation and support for the vitally important work of caregiving. Years of child care and elder care are not seen as the excellent job qualification they so often are. Christian fundamentalists have valid points about the neglect of children and elders in today's post-feminist society. We cannot abandon this issue to them.

Thank you for bringing up the illuminating distinction between equality feminism (women treated the same as men) and difference feminism (specific role differences require specific protection for women to allow them to participate equally).What is biology and what is learned gender role in the perceived differences between men and women? Because I have 5 very different brothers and 4 very different daughters, I question overemphasis on innate differences. The spread of differences among people of the same sex seem as great or greater as the differences between the sexes. At 8 months, my grandson clearly resembles his adventurous, world-traveling mother; he is as different from two of his aunts as his mother is. We would need several generations of both men and women equally involved in raising young children to make any significant judgment about innate sex differences.

Childbearing shifts the equation. Doctors advocate nursing for a year as the ultimate preventive health measure. So for about two years per child, women do need special accommodations. As you say, Europe in general has much better support for new mothers. They recognize that everyone benefits if new parents can afford to bond with their newborns and children receive as much parental care as possible in the early years. Fathers and mothers are equally capable of parenting young children; exclusive breastfeeding only last six months. Many heroic women now manage to work full time and give their infants only their own milk.

Day care of infants and toddlers, if done right, is usually prohibitively expensive financially. Babies usually get sick far more often in day care, and their parents have to scramble for alternatives just as their babies are needier and fussier. Premature group care is frequently emotionally expensive for infants and toddlers. My oldest brilliantly explained her daily meltdown after full-day kindergarten: "Mommy I used all my goodness up at school." Society needs to make changes so that both parents could work a part-time and/or home-based schedule in their children's earliest years without losing their benefits or harming their possibilities for career advancement. Onsite day care could be an alternative offered by all large enough companies and organizations.

Silence on Family Issues

Neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama had my enthusiastic support on the family issues vitally important to me. Universal health care, while absolutely essential, will not address most family problems. We desperately need policies that will make it possible for both men and women to have careers and take care of their children and their elders. Maternity, paternity, and aging parent leave is obviously a priority. The medical and family leave act has to be extended to all businesses and organizations, large and small, and the government will need to be involved in funding that.

Excellent day care for babies and toddlers is too expensive for parents to pay for because it requires an extremely high teacher/child ratio. Only the affluent can afford a nanny even at the less than living rates most nannies are paid. The government is eventually going to have to support child care for children under 5 just as they support education for children over 5. Child care workers ideally would have college degrees in early child education and be paid the same salary and benefits as school teachers. Dedicated present child care workers should be eligible for governments grants paying their college tuitions. Public policy should not be biased toward out-of-home care.

Health care proposals don't come to grips with long-term care. Virtually all private health insurance is no good whatsoever for what is dismissed as custodial care, which is care for people who are not going to get better, because they are old and are eventually going to die of their chronic diseases, even if they live 15 years with it. They don't need skilled nursing and they are not going to improve, so Medicare will not help.. Instead they need help with dressing, bathing, toileting, medication, transportation, shopping, eating, laundry, transferring from one place to another. If they have dementia, they need constant supervision so they don't wander off and get hit by a car, fall down the stairs, leave the stove on and start a fire, leave the water running and flood the house.

Medicare covers only very short-term care for people recently discharged from hospitals and capable of recovery and progress. For example, Medicare only pays for physical therapy if your therapist can document that you are making steady progress. They don't care about help that would keep you out of a wheelchair and out of a nursing home. My mother suffered from Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, a more than Parkinkson's neurological disorder that destroys balance. Medicare would not pay for her physical therapy to avoid loss of mobility.

Many people could stay out of nursing homes if there were government programs that paid for the necessary home modifications necessary to them in age in place. Financing ramps, guardrails , and stair lifts is lots cheaper than paying for broken hips and nursing homes.

Nursing homes in New York City and Long Island cost more than $100,000 a year. Home health agencies charge $18 to $20 per hour for home health aides. Medicaid is more likely to cover nursing home care than home care. Desperate, people spend down all their resources and are then eligible for medicaid. Well spouses don't fare that well, but at least they are now able to keep their houses. Affluent families hire lawyers to hide or transfer their assets, so they can go on Medicaid, make the government pay what they could afford themselves, and save their children's inheritance.

Don't think long-term health insurance is the solution. The amount that man long-term health insurance pays is laughable; my mom had a supposedly good policy that only paid for 6 hours a day. Lots of policies seem like a scam; they have so many disqualifying conditions that your only chance of collecting anything is hiring an expensive case manager. Home health aides are shamelessly exploited by home health agencies supposedly under government supervision. The aide typicallygets less than half of the 18-20 an hour charged by the agency. Yet many long-term health care policies require you to go through a home health agency, instead of hiring the aide privately and paying her a living wage.

Childbirth--Feminist Choice Issue

If you are thinking of getting pregnant, trying to get pregnant, or already pregnant, buy or borrow two excellent new books--Pushed by Jennifer Block and Born in the USA by Mardsen Wagner. Read them before your next OB appointment; they might substantially reduce your likelihood of having a C-section. As a long-time childbirth activist, I am appalled that so many American women face returning to work six weeks after major surgery.

Marsen Wagner is formerly the director of Women’s and Children’s Health at the World Health Organization (WHO). A whistleblower, he offers a scathing attack on obstetrical standards of care, suggesting they are abusive at worst, and based on nonscience that mainly serves doctors’ interests at best. Jennifer Block was an editor at Ms. magazine and a writer and editor of Our Bodies, Ourselves. Her book, extremely readable, covers much of the same ground Wagner’s does. Read the excellent, lengthy review in the Women's Review of Books:

Here are two central facts about American birth: first, the US spends more per capita than any other developed nation on maternity care. Second, the World Health Organization ranks the US thirtieth out of 33 developed countries in preventing maternal mortality, and 32nd in preventing neonatal mortality. Our country is not doing well by mothers and babies.

Both these books describe, in splendid detail, the myriad interventions of “active management”—the practices perpetrated upon even a healthy woman planning the most unremarkable of births. Although these practices may help in critical situations, they are more likely to cause harm than good in a normal birth. For example, active management includes the induction of labor in as many as forty percent of all American births, even though this leads to longer and more painful labors and “ups a woman’s chance of a [cesarean] section by two to three times,” according to Block. ...Active management also includes speeding up a woman’s labor with the use of Pitocin in perhaps a majority of American hospital births today. According to Block, “a recent American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG )survey found that in 43 percent of malpractice suits involving neurologically impaired babies, Pitocin was to blame.” And it includes routine electronic fetal monitoring, used in 93 percent of hospital births even though studies show that its only effect is to increase the c-section rate.

The quintessential intervention is the cesarean section, which is how nearly thirty percent of American women delivered their babies last year. WHO says that when a population has a c-section rate of higher than fifteen percent, the risks to the mother and baby outweigh the benefits—and a WHO study found that “the main cause of maternal deaths in industrialized countries is complications from anesthesia and cesarean section,” Block reports. She cites another study published last year, of 100,000 births, which found that “the rate of ‘severe maternal morbidity and mortality’—infection requiring rehospitalization, hemorrhage, blood transfusion, hysterectomy, admission to intensive care, and death—rose in proportion to the rate of cesarean section.” As for the baby, other research has found that “preterm birth and infant death rose significantly when cesarean rates exceeded between 10 and 20 percent,” and that “low-risk babies born by cesarean were nearly three times more likely to die within the first month of life than those born vaginally.” Nonetheless, ACOG not only rejects the fifteen percent target, but even continues to support the idea of elective c-section.

What are your alternatives to an interventionist and/or C section birth?

As evidence is increasingly showing, the people who best enable normal births are midwives. Obstetricians, after all, are surgeons, and many never witness a natural, normal birth in their training. Midwives, in contrast, are women who know that one of the best answers to pain is sitting in a warm tub, who know how to manually palpate a woman’s belly to find the baby’s weight and position, and who know how to help a woman handle labor in ways that facilitate birth.But midwifery in the US is up against some powerful forces—mainly, again, obstetricians and American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Doctors throughout American history have worked to discredit midwives—labeling them dirty, uneducated, and unskilled—and to drive them out of business. Today certified nurse-midwives who practice in hospitals report having their hands tied by doctors and hospital protocol.

Is it possible for change to come from women themselves?

Block ends with a challenge to today’s organized feminists to bring birthing under the umbrella of “choice,” quoting childbirth educator Erica Lyon, who says, “I think this is the last leap for the feminist movement. This is the last issue for women in terms of actual ownership of our bodies. It will take a revolution."

These books deal only peripherally with one of the most problematic issues: what do you do when women freely choose, or think they freely choose, medical procedures that increase their risk and that of their children? If women believe their obstetricians are their best advocates, how do you convince them to think skeptically? Until women take birth into their own hands, until they realize that doctors are not necessarily women’s advocates, until they seek out the evidence, which is in these books but not in doctor’s offices, about the normalcy of birth and the dangers of interventions, they are going to continue to believe that birth is a crisis about which only one person – the obstetrician – knows best.

We fought this battle in the 1970s and early 1980s and thought we were winning. I had four children between 1973 to 1982; two were hospital births, two were home births. I employed one obstetrician, one family practioner, and two nurse-midwives. I was given pitocin against my will for my only OB-assisted birth; I received no other medications.

Has Feminism Won Its Battles?

Unlike most feminists with my intellect and education, I decided to stay home with my four children full-time for 15 years and part-time until the youngest went to college. I involved myself in nonsexist childrearing, childbirth education, breastfeeding counseling, parent education, toddler playgroups, babysitting cooperatives, cooperative nursery schools, school libraries, a campaign to save the local public library, the nuclear freeze movement, mental illness support and advocacy, parent advocacy for playground upkeep and a preschool playroom, a high school group for interracial understanding--the list is endless.

When I made the mistake of attending library school and social work school, I naively assumed my qualifications would be obvious and no one would dare to treat me like a beginner. I was given the responsibility of an experienced worker and the salary, benefits, and respect of a beginner.

I recall one infuriating incident during my first social work placement; my childless supervisor earnestly instructed me how to interview a client with her two year old present. I had frequently run La Leche Meetings with 20 moms and 30 babies and toddlers. Women social workers who had taken very short maternity leaves and worked full-time during their children's childhood too often acted like all my knowledge had been attained by cheating. I got more respect from male professors. The situation has worsened; women are terrified of taking only a few years off from work. And yet the men who fought World War II left their jobs for several years and did not suffer economic consequences. The government even paid for their college and grad school education.

When my mom went back to college in 1963 and work in 1968, after having raised 6 children, she was accorded more respect and her experience was more honored than mine was 20 years later Full-time childrearing is frequently belittled as beneath the time and attention of intelligent, well-educated parents, who presumably should have exploited immigrant women of color to love and understand their children while they pursued their more important jobs. Remember, things have not changed for the valiant, loving women of color who raise our children and care for our parents. I am often appalled how little highly successful two-career couples pay their nanny; many fail to provide the caregiver with any benefits, least of all health care.

I agree that most women with college degrees, graduate, or professional degrees have made enormous strides in most major professions and in the workplace generally. Even nurses and teachers have made significant progress because they unionized. Public librarians and social workers usually make less than any other professionals with graduate degrees because they are mostly women and they are not unionized.

It is only when women have children or have to care for aging parents that they fully realize that women have mostly gained the right to follow the traditional male life style, emphasizing work over relationships, caregiving, community activism.. As women chose to have children at an older and older age, the realization is late in coming. At that point their lives tend too become too frenzied and exhausting to leave any time for feminism and political reform.

Women's Issues Are Family Issues

The recurring reference to women's issues in the media needs to be clarified. Most of these are better described as family and caregiver issues. However, vitally important women's issues exist. These include the availability of abortions and the morning after pill, the scandalous C-section rate, and the obscene harassment of nursing mothers. Too many companies expect breastfeeding mothers to pump in filthy toilets for 20 minutes and refuse to provide a comfortable room for them to pump and adequate short-time storage for breastmilk.This is a health issue as well since the American Academy of Pediatris recommends breastfeeding for at least a year. Working mothers of infants are heroic, incredibly dedicated to making sure their babies only get breastmilk and not formula. Encouraging, supporting, and facilitating breastfeeding is an integral part of wellness and prevention.

The best way to reduce the C-section rate is to to use nurse- midwives for normal births, but obstetricians fiercely resist giving nurse-midwives hospital privileges. At this point in New York City, the first question after how big is the baby is did you have a C-Section? It appalls me that the most educated professional women in history are allowing that to happen to them. When I was pregnant with my first child 35 years ago, baby books advised not considering a doctor with a C-section rate higher than 5 percent. Obviously the human race would have died out long ago if a 30 to 40 percent C-secton ate was the norm. I crusaded for natural childbirth and had my two youngest daughters at home with a nurse midwife.

Virtually all nannies and human health aides are women. In New York and Long Island they are almost always women of color. They can't afford to own cars. They have to struggle to work on public transportation that doesn't necessarily get them where they need to be; some take three different subways and buses. Agencies fail to even provide a mapquest to the client's home. Some caregivers have left their own children in the Islands with relatives, so the moms can make enough money to rescue her own kids from abject poverty. How shamelessly they are exploited is certainly a vitally important women's issue. Caregivers who are illegal immigrants can be virtually slaves, too afraid to complain or quit because they will be deported. Home health agencies charge the clients more than twice the amount they pay the women who actually doing the caring. They have absolutely no job security. Most have no health benefits, no disability benefits, are not eligible for unemployment. How we treat these loving, warm, compassionate, kind women is a national disgrace.

But almost all other "women's issues" are parent issues, caregiver issues. We seem to have made no progress on parents' sharing equally in child care and elder care responsibilities. The oldest daughter (if there is one) is usually her parents' caregiver, no matter how many siblings are in the family. Caring for aging parents disrupts women's work schedules even more than caring for young children.

The mommy wars drive me round the twist. In the 70s the feminist agenda was that society and the economy would change fundamentally so that moms and dads could share equally in child care. Now everyone seems to work longer than a 35- or 40- hour week; grandparents are either employed or too far away; day care centers are not staffed by professional teachers with a career path, so the turnover is constant. How dedicated can anyone afford to be at $8 to $10 an hour, often with no benefits? Excellent day care, where teachers are educated, accredited, and paid like grade school teachers, is very expensive, and the state would have to offer considerable support.

Men almost never work in day care or nursery schools; the sexual abuse day care hysteria ended that. People don't want to hire boys as babysitters or men as nannies. That is revoltingly sexist. Misogyny is hatred of women; sexism applies to both sexes. Women seem to have made more progress than men in bursting through gender stereotypes. So guys, you might be entitled to call your mate a "female chauvinist pig," though you might spend the night on the couch. Men rarely seem to complain about the sexism inflicted on them since such criticism would be seen as girly.

When I was struggling to practice nonsexist childrearing in the 1970s and early 1980s, I noticed that parents of boys have a much more difficult time. Strangers abuse mothers on the street if the boy's hair is too long, his colors are considered girly, he is carrying a baby doll, he is crying. They are frequently accused of making their sons gay. I have five brothers and four daughters; my mother raised my brothers to share the housekeeping and the childcare. I love to take care of my 8-month-old grandson three days a week. He greatly resembles his adventurous, world-traveling mother, who has lived in places like Niger, Kosovo, and Rwanda. I eagerly await defending this enchanting bundle of rambunctiousness from sexist constrictions of his creativity and determination. Together we could run a childproofing business. When I put him down on any floor, he immediately crawls toward the most dangerous object in the room. even though there might be dozens of more suitable things for him to play with.

When I lamented the lack of male participation in the blog, Unfogged, I got this discouraging reply:
"It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem; as long as childcare (and kindred professions) is seen as feminized, it will be a pretty small minority of men who will consider this kind of work, and therefore the proportion of perverts in that sample is going to be way above average. Anecdotally I would say that the same is true, for slightly different reasons, of scout masters, camp counselors, and wrestling coaches. In a sense, it's not irrational when people look askance at a man interested in taking care of children; there is an inclination to ask oneself whether there is some nefarious ulterior motive at work. A result of sexism? Of course. But the motives of the individual are not necessarily sexist".

My answer: My brother has been an elementary teacher in Portland Maine for about 20 years. He laments that male teachers would be terrified to touch or hug a 5 year old who had hurt himself or herself, although a female teacher would be glad to do so. It is outrageous to say the perverts are more likely to care for young children. I doubt that perverts are more likely to choose to work for peanuts. What possible proof can you give? How can men tolerate such assertions? What message does it convey to young children if they have no male teachers. Boys learn that only girls are caregivers. People speculate the boys have more trouble adjusting to the feminized environment of school.

Things were different in the 1970s, at least in New York City. Nursery schools and kindergartens tried very hard to recruit male teachers. When my daughter went to a Montessori nursery school down by the world trade center, she had a wonderful male teacher. Fathers spent lots of time taking care of young children and to the best of my knowledge their willies don't fall off. Whoops, I am married to an Englishman. Taking care of young children is incredibly exciting and fascinating. They are the best learners and the most creative free spirits you will ever encounter.

Every industrial Western nation has more family centered government policies than we do. American families no longer believe that government could make it more possible to be good parents, good caregivers of the elderly, and good workers. I hope the first woman president can implement significant change.

Isn't Fighting Sexism a Progressive Value?

Melissa McEwan has an excellent article on Shakesville, pointing out that Edwards and Obama should be commenting on the sexism directed at Hillary Clinton.

Read the whole article. Here is part of it:

Isn't it? One wouldn't think so, given the way Hillary Clinton's peers are allowing her to be subjected to all manner of indignity on the basis of her sex, with nary a peep in her defense. John Edwards' response to reports of Hillary's emotional moment—which, once the national press was done with it, had turned into a full-blown emotional meltdown—was disgraceful. Obama merely declined to comment in this case, but he hasn't gotten to New Hampshire with clean hands, having recently reduced Hillary Clinton's experience as first lady to attending tea parties; then, responding to being called out by the Clinton campaign on the obvious sexism of that jab, he denied he was referring to her gender (really?—he'd describe a man's experience as having "tea" with people?) and resorted to a thinly-veiled update on the old "hysteria" chestnut: "Those folks must really be on edge."

Yes, that must be it. Or, perhaps, they were rightfully angry about the oblique use of sexism as a political weapon from their own side of the aisle.

Further down:

Obama and Edwards ostensibly believe that men and women are equal; the people who share that belief should expect them to endeavor to defend that principle at every turn, not just when it is politically expedient. See, the thing is, it's been politically expedient to throw women's rights under the bus before, and some of us would like the assurance that we're casting a vote for someone who regards women's equality as an unyielding and constant principle—not a bargaining chip nor just another plank in a platform that can be discarded as necessary. If these blokes refuse to mount a vociferous opposition against sexism on the campaign trail, just because it helps them, that doesn’t bode well for the women they seek to represent as their president.

Divergent Thinkers

Some parents have asked me why I feel so passionately about preschool psychiatric diagnoses when my own daughters didn't have such serious problems. I will let you in on a secret. Bright, creative children can have a terrible time adjusting to traditional American grade schools. Bright bored children don't finish worksheets, don't pay attention, daydream, forget assignments, leave books and homework home, ignore the teacher, read ahead of the class and miss their place if called upon, miss many days of school. My local school insisted on testing a kindergarten boy for development disability; his IQ was genius level. When my writer, pictured above, was in first grade, her teacher refused to assign her to the advanced reading group until she was more "cooperative and compliant."

Rose never became compliant. In kindergarten she refused to do assignments because "writers use their own words." In high school she refused to do art projects because "artists paint what they need to, not what the teacher assigns." Now I would be told to have her tested because her "emotional maturity" lagged behind her intelligence. My two high school valedictorians were not given any awards from grade school. They only truly liked school when they got to Yale.

Your bright preschooler might face as many challenges as your friend's autistic or ADHD son. More schools have special ed services than have gifted services. Again and again, I questioned whether home schooling might be easier than my daily struggle with their school. Younger parents might not anticipate the extent to which they need to be advocates for their kids in American's test-obsessed schools. Getting high test scores is more important than being a gifted musician or artist. Kids who don't adjust to the norm are stimatized. The most creative, divergent thinkers our society desperately needs can be slapped with a psychiatric label and have their giftedness drugged out of them.

Golden Compass and Children's Reading

I have followed with great interest the ongoing discussion of the Golden Compass, the movie based on the first novel in Phillip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials. These young adult novels could fairly be termed anti-organized religion. The movie is getting lukewarm and poor reviews and low attendance. Its opponents probably should stop giving it free publicity by calling for boycotts. I urge parents to read these three excellent books and struggle with how they would answer their teen's questions about them. They are not children's books; almost all public libraries classify them as young adult novels suitable for high schoolers.

The Archbishop of Canterbury had a more enlightened approach. He has had public discussions with Pullman and urged that religious educators use the novel in classes with teenagers. At a certain point, all believers have to struggle with the history of their faith and its failure to live up to its beliefs. It seems far better to do that as a teenager with adult guidance from fellow believers.

My parents never censored my reading. They supported me in my 11-year-old effort to convince the local librarian to allow me to check out adult books. The Catholic Church's index of forbidden books was a factor in my eventual estrangement from Catholicism. I never censored my four daughters' reading. But I always paid careful attention to what they were reading. If the book was questionable, I read it too and discussed it with them. His Dark Materials was published after they were grown, but I have analyzed it with the two daughters who have read the trilogy.

I took a very different approach to TV and movies. I believe children can protect themselves from upsetting reading, skipping over the violent parts, choosing not to continue with the book. Scary, violent movies and TV shows are far more likely to cause nightmares and persistent fears. For five years we didn't have a TV; their watching was always restricted. At one point we had a lock on our TV. I have always objected to violence far more than sexuality or bad language.

As a librarian, I would be opposed to removing His Dark Materials from any high school or public library. The books are considered among the best young adult novels of the last ten years, far better written and more demanding than Harry Potter. A boycott of a novel written 12 years ago indicates that the boycotters don't read enough. The bright side of the controversy is that more people will read the books. When I recommended the books to mature teens, they claimed they were too long and too hard. Banned books always increase library circulation.

Homework: A Rant

For the first six years of grade school, my oldest daughter went to schools in Manhattan and Maine that did not give homework except for some long-term reading expectations. At the time I didn't sufficiently appreciate how lovely and stress free after-school time was.

Sharing a Room

Emily at Wheels on the Bus had an excellent post today on children's sharing rooms. Since I had a 2-bedroom apartment, a 3-bedroom apartment, and then a 3-bedroom house, my 4 daughters always shared rooms until the older ones went to college and shared rooms with absolute strangers.

Growing up, I was the only girl with 5 younger brothers; from the time I was 7, I had my own room. Before that, I shared a bedroom with my 2 younger brothers. I always wanted a sister, and I would have been happy to share a room with her. I always had roommates in college and in my first Manhattan apartments before I got married. My husband came from a family of 5 kids, and he always shared a room with his brother.

We took it for granted that our kids would share bedrooms. Originally we planned to stay in a New York City apartment, and only millionaires have a big enough apartment to give each of 4 children their own room. In no way did we ever feel we were depriving our kids because they didn't have their own rooms. In our 3-bedroom Manhattan apartment, 3 of them decided to sleep in the same bedroom, so they could use the extra bedroom as a playroom.

Getting the baby out of our bedroom was much easier because she looked forward to sharing a room with her sisters. Sharing bedrooms made bedtime easier all through early childhood.
I suspect my girls are closer because of their enforced togetherness. Sure there were conflicts, especially over cleaning rooms. I do recall my second child putting a strip of duct tape down the center of the room to establish cleaning responsibilities. Possibly they played more outside their bedrooms since they had less room.

Sharing rooms is excellent preparation for college. My kids always had roommates in college in dorm rooms much smaller than the usual bedroom. At Yale, one year, they had to share bunkbeds. In major US cities, most people share apartments for economic reasons.

I am 62. I only had my own room for 16 years--11 years of my childhood and 5 years between marriages. I have never felt deprived:)

Discipline--Grandmothers and Mothers

Reading other mothers’ blogs, I am feeling all of my 63 years and every strand of my silver hair. Although I might feel more comfortable with these eloquent younger women, I belong to their mothers’ generation and might symbolize for them their mothers’ mistakes. I was born a month before the end of World War II. I am six months too old to be a baby boomer. Most of my contemporaries didn’t stay home with their kids, didn’t have 4 children, and pitied me for my domestic imprisonment.

I was often surprised by how much stricter some of the blogging mothers seem to be. My oldest daughter, 35, speculated that her generation believed more in discipline than their parents did, because so many of their parents worked long hours and used permissiveness to assuage their guilt about their unavailability to their kids. Do you think she has a point? Or does the economic necessity of entrusting children to group or nanny care at younger ages demand better behavior than parents who stay at home would expect or tolerate?

My four daughters were not model children. I was better at stimulation and creativity than boundaries and discipline. They were excellent students when they showed up in school. In retrospect, I permitted an overly permissive ad hoc homeschooling option for the easily bored who could cough convincingly. They did not speak to their grandparents, teachers, any other adults the way they were allowed to speak to their parents. I often heard about my charming, delightful daughters.

I wonder if today’s moms would let their kids play with my kids. My kids were allowed to express their feelings endlessly. They rarely picked up their toys and their rooms were unspeakable. Chronically late, they often needed to be driven to a that was close enough to walk to. Household chores were not their strong points. No doubt I was rebelling against the strict, guilt-inducing discipline of my Catholic childhood. I transferred my first daughter to another public school because her teacher said "for shame" to her on the second day of kindergarten.

I was not permissive about violence. I always stopped my oldest daughter from hitting her younger sister. She was only 2; I didn't punish her. But I made a big deal of encouraging her to express her anger in words. "Use words not hitting to tell Michelle how you feel." Anne dictated stories and drew pictures to express how she felt about her sister. The books were simple affairs. I folded construction paper, used a hole puncher on the fold, and tied the sheets together with string. I kept them, and everyone still loves to read them. I always took away the toy used as a weapon. By the time Anne was 4 and Michelle was 2, they usually could play happily with blocks without mayhem.

Punishment would not have taught Anne a lifelong way of handling her anger; it would have just made her more rebellious. I hurt my back when she was 3 and could not play with her as usual. "Draw me a picture of the dummy mommy with the bad back," she instructed. She then took a pencil and stabbed that picture countless times. I was appalled, but it helped her. Anne had almost perfect recall of her dreams from the time she was 2. Their violence was a revelation. "Daddy went under the train last night because I didn't like his noise. Then I went to live with Ellen." "But Ellen sometimes yells at her children," I pointed out. "Then she will have to go under the train too," Anne said matter of factly. Now Ann works for a world peace organization.

My two younger daughters were relatively peaceful creatures who were born using words not weapons. Carolyn, the baby, was babbling once her head was born. Their older sisters adored them. I attributed such harmony to the sibling bonding that occurred when Rose and Carolyn were born at home. Three and one half years apart rather than 2 years apart make a tremendous difference. Rose, my third daughter, would remind me that toddler Carolyn sometimes bit her without provocation, and Rose, a wonderful big sister, never responded in kind.

Disciplining them for verbal aggression would have been a full-time job. Their father and I were not perfect role models. When I was 7 years old and made my first confession, my sins were: disobedience, talking back to my parents, and hitting my brothers. In succeeding years, despite frequent repentance, I managed to stop hitting my brothers, but made little progress on the other two sins. We tolerated our daughters talking back to us if they were not abusive. "I hate you mommy" was acceptable if they could articulate their anger more specifically. I admit “respect” was not a word they heard frequently.

My younger daughter’s daughter's college application essay gives an evaluation of my discipline style I don’t deserve: "We were never spanked or severely punished when we did something Mom disapproved of. Instead, she simply told us how she felt about it. I'm sure some parents would say that my sisters and I weren't disciplined enough. However, I've noticed that when friends of mine are grounded, they often complain about their unfair parents, but I take it very seriously when Mom tells me she's disappointed in me. “ She charitably left out all the times I let them behave in a way I found intolerable and then I screamed at them. Obviously it would have been better to respect my limits and save them from my harsh words.

We were strict about academics, safety, and seatbelts. Dropping out of honors classes or not taking advancement placement courses because they required too much work was never acceptable. Possibly we pressured them too much to succeed academically, but we expected them to honor their considerable intellectual gifts. We threw out our television set when our oldest was four and didn’t get another for five years. We were extremely strict about TV; we had a lock on it. They could not watch TV on school nights. We rejoiced that we had the only teenagers who felt they were being bad by watching TV. There were no problems with boys, booze, or drugs. We were relatively poor, so we didn't buy them lots of clothes or toys. We encouraged their interest in world affairs, occasionally took them to peace demonstrations.

I made countless mistakes, but they all are well-educated, compassionate, dedicated women, able to own and use all their particular gifts. They have met and married wonderful men. They assure me they are going to be much stricter with their kids and make them clean up their room, vacuum, mop, clean bathrooms and go to school every single day they are not running a 103 fever. We all try not to repeat our parents' mistakes, possibly then making our grandparents' mistakes. We might only learn the truth about our parenting by watching our children parent our grandchildren. My oldest daughter is a far better mother than I was with her, but my first grandson is only 15 months old. Anne and Michael are an excellent match. When people tell me he is all boy, I always demur, saying he is all his mother. Anne was much more like my mother than she was like me. Sometimes I felt squashed between two very powerful, dominant personalities.

Gardening

Gardening is in my blood. My grandparents had World War II victory gardens. My parents had a big backyard, about a third of an acre. My dad was a vegetable gardener, my mom grew flowers. Neither of them were great cooks, so I don't remember specific family recipes. What I remember are delicious fresh vegetables--tomatoes, string beans, corn, zucchini, broccoli, lettuce. No tomatoes or corn have ever tasted as good. They had wonderful blueberries bushes, which supplied enough berries to freeze for winter cereal. Before my mom went back to college, she canned tomatoes.

Gardening was the perfect way for my dad to unwind from his actuarial job and his long railroad commute into Manhattan. I remember his encouraging us to start our own little gardens. I remember helping him plant strawberries. I remember picking off Japanese beetles from the rose bushes and putting them in a jar of something that killed them. The garden was the best place for long talks with dad, away from the noise of too many brothers in a too small house.

After we moved to Long Island in 1983, I slowly became a gardener. I am erratic. I like to garden in the spring and fall before the summer heat drains my energy and motivation. I plant more than I weed. I usually grow herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, and eggplant. We have lots of perennials in the front yard; zinnias seem the ideal summer annual. Pruning and cutting the grass was an ideal way to deal with my anger in the years when my first marriage was dying. Visiting the garden first thing in the morning energizes me. Weeding is good for depression.

Since I became a grandmother, nurturing my grandson has replaced gardening. I look forward to introducing Michael to gardening when he is two and telling him stories about the great-grandparents he never met.

NYTimes--Bad Behavior Does Not Doom Pupils, Studies Say

The New York Times has an important article today that is must reading for all parents concerned about their young children's behavioral problems.

Bad Behavior Does Not Doom Pupils, Studies Say --by Benedict Carey
"Educators and psychologists have long feared that children entering school with behavior problems were doomed to fall behind in the upper grades. But two new studies suggest that those fears are exaggerated.

One concluded that kindergartners who are identified as troubled do as well academically as their peers in elementary school. The other found that children with attention deficit disorders suffer primarily from a delay in brain development, not from a deficit or flaw.

Experts say the findings of the two studies, being published today in separate journals, could change the way scientists, teachers and parents understand and manage children who are disruptive or emotionally withdrawn in the early years of school. The studies might even prompt a reassessment of the possible causes of disruptive behavior in some children.
“I think these may become landmark findings, forcing us to ask whether these acting-out kinds of problems are secondary to the inappropriate maturity expectations that some educators place on young children as soon as they enter classrooms,” said Sharon Landesman Ramey, director of the Georgetown University Center on Health and Education, who was not connected with either study. "

My comments: Parts of the article annoyed me. The experts seemed perfectly comfortable with kids' taking stimulants for ADHD until their development catches up with prevailing educational norms. They do concede that most kids grow out of ADHD. Why is American society so comfortable with drugging kids rather than changing schools so they can accommodate kids with different learning styles and different rates of cognitive development?

My two older children went to an excellent public school near the World Trade Center, run by a very gifted principal, Blossom Gelertner. Blossom felt that teachers and parents should not be concerned about boys who were slow to read until the boys were 8. My daughter teaches first grade in Boston; teachers now worry about kids who can't read when they enter first grade. I have always been an excellent reader, but I only learned my letters in first grade. By the end of the year, I was reading at a sixth grade level. Experienced parents have learned that readiness is all when it comes to crawling, walking, talking, toilet training, weaning, the move to a regular bed, etc. What have so many educators forgotten that lesson?

Duck and Cover, Assassinations, Civil Rights, and Vietnam

This is a picture of Robert Kennedy speaking at my graduation from Fordham University in 1967. RFK was running for president in 1968 when he was assassinated June 5, ten days before my wedding. I had a final wedding dress fitting the day of the assassination, and I was in tears the whole time.

My first specific political memory centered around the duck-and -cover, hide-under-our-desks, exercises that were a regular feature of my early school life from age 5 on. I knew enough about nuclear war to be terrified. We lived one mile away from an air force base, and I used to go out to the backyard, look up at the planes, and try to determine if they were American or Russian. I remember getting a book out of the library on aircraft identification. When I heard Joseph Stalin died, I remember asking if that meant no one would drop atom bombs on us.

In 1954 I had a severe case of the measles and Grandma Nolan came to help nurse me. She was listening to the Joseph McCarthy army hearings. Hatred of McCarthy's voice might have shaped my entire political development. In 1956, just turning eleven, I fell madly in love with Jack Kennedy as he made an unsuccessful bid for the vice presidential nomination. A good catholic school girl, I was initially attracted by his Catholicism; ten minutes later I was smitten by his intelligence, wit, and charm. I was luckier than his other women. Loving Jack Kennedy was good for me. I read about politics and history. From 1956 to 1963, I read everything I could about Kennedy, politics, American History.. When I was 15 I did volunteer work for his presidential campaign.

In high school we had political debates to imitate the famous Kennedy/Nixon debates and I represented Kennedy. What he believed in, I believed in. Gradually I moved to the left of his pragmatic liberalism. Certainly Kennedy was responsible for my decision to major in political science in college. Kennedy's assassination, occurring in the fall of my freshman year in college, devastated me. I felt like there had been a death in my immediate family. I quickly transferred my political allegiance to Bobby Kennedy.

I cannot precisely date my interest in and commitment to civil rights. When I was a freshman, I joined my college's Interracial Understanding Group. I was envious of those college students who could afford to spend the summer down south registering voters and didn't have to worry about money to pay their tuition.

Gradually during college I became a pacifist. Opposition to the Vietnam War right from the beginning was the catalyst. My husband to be, John, applied for conscientious objector status and was willing to face jail rather than be inducted. We became very active in the Catholic Peace Fellowship, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the War Resister's League, all pacifist organizations. We went on several anti-war demonstrations both in New York and Washington. I briefly attended Stanford University where resistance to the war was at its height. Almost every afternoon, David Harris, Joan Baez's future husband, spoke out eloquently against the war.

My first job after Stanford was as an assistant to Victor Riesel, a labor columnist, who had been blinded by acid thrown in his face by the mob who controlled the waterfront he was exposing. My assignments included reading the AP ticker to him every day, clipping and reading articles in about 20 newspaper and labor papers. This was in 1968, when King and Kennedy were assassinated, when anti-war protect was at its height, so thinking about politics were my job. My decision to go to law school, where I lasted two weeks, was motivated by my political convictions.

Mary Virginia Nolan was born August 11, 1921 in Brooklyn, NY. She is the second oldest of 8 children; she has five brothers and two sisters. One sister, Veronica, died at 2 years old. She grew up in Queens Village, NY. Her dad, a lawyer, died when she was 17 after being seriously ill most of her teenage years. Mary was always the super-responsible oldest daughter, trying to help her mom anyway she could. She attended Our Lady of Wisdom Academy in Ozone Park. She has kept up with her high school friends all her life. She was an excellent student and planned to attend college; she wanted to be a journalist. Her father's death changed everything, and she instead went to secretarial school and worked as a secretary. In her early 20's she attended Queens College at night, but stopped taking classes after she contacted pneumonia.

My Dad's Yearbook Profile

No problem, riddle, or formula seems to be beyond his ken. He is the outstanding scientist of St. Francis College; he is the winner of the coveted Smith Memorial Medal for excellence in Science. Yet even his own brilliance could not fathom the enigma of Joe Koch. In many ways Joe is a walking paradox. He seldom laughs outright; in fact his picture would lead one to believe that he is a sombre pessimist. Yet it is his nimble wit that makes him a distinctive personality. His humor is never loud; rather it is whimsical and epigrammatic.

To be the leading scholar of the college it is necessary to do more work than the average. A student who is desirous of attaining official recognition must sit at home and do extra assignments. That is the normal procedure. But is that the form fol owed by our human riddle? Certainly not! He is actually scrupulous about not doing more than the assignment requires. He does exactly what he is demanded to do and not one jot more. What he does, however, is of such undeniable excellence that he was one of the first men picked for the Duns Scotus Honor Society.

With regards to one trait, however, Joe appears to contain no contradictions. That is his quality of intense loyalty to his friends.

Joe's Yearbook Profile

No problem, riddle, or formula seems to be beyond his ken. He is the outstanding scientist of St. Francis College; he is the winner of the coveted Smith Memorial Medal for excellence in Science. Yet even his own brilliance could not fathom the enigma of Joe Koch. In many ways Joe is a walking paradox. He seldom laughs outright; in fact his picture would lead one to believe that he is a sombre pessimist. Yet it is his nimble wit that makes him a distinctive personality. His humor is never loud; rather it is whimsical and epigrammatic.

To be the leading scholar of the college it is necessary to do more work than the average. A student who is desirous of attaining official recognition must sit at home and do extra assignments. That is the normal procedure. But is that the form fol owed by our human riddle? Certainly not! He is actually scrupulous about not doing more than the assignment requires. He does exactly what he is demanded to do and not one jot more. What he does, however, is of such undeniable excellence that he was one of the first men picked for the Duns Scotus Honor Society.

With regards to one trait, however, Joe appears to contain no contradictions. That is his quality of intense loyalty to his friends.

Little Brother

I have always loved this picture of me and my brother Joe, 18 months younger, taken in the fall of 1948. This might have been the last time I had the advantage over Joe. I seem smugly satisfied by his captivity. In my baby book my mom claims that "Mary Jo and Joe were always ahead of mother. Often though she forgot he was so small and played rough." I am dubious; he does not look intimidated. Joe always pulled the wool over mom's eyes. She never knew that Joe's babysitting consisted of taking his brothers out on the roof and daring them to jump into the swimming pool.

All our lives, I have never been sure when Joe is pulling my leg. For 50 years he made me feel guilty for pushing him down the cellar stairs in his walker. He blames all his academic inadequacies on the resulting head injury. I believed him since Andrew (3 years younger) and I were so much better students. Before her death my mom revealed that Lorraine, our next door neighbor, was the real culprit. Significantly, I thought I might have wanted to eliminate him.
From age 7, I regularly asked forgiveness in confession for hitting my brothers. The priest should have been more skeptical about my resolution of never doing it again.

My mom and dad must have been dedicated to nurturing their children's unique gifts at whatever cost, so Santa was allowed to bring Joe a drum and me a baton. We lived in a tiny two bedroom, one bathroom, one-story house. Was Joe allowed to play the drum inside? This picture proves the falsity of Joe's accusation that I regularly beat him up. If I been a brother slayer, surely my mom and dad would not have trusted me with such an effective weapon. Richard obviously had not a fear in the world that my baton would come in contact with his head or his drum.

Joe is an amazing brother. I have always been in awe of him. Like my mom he much so much braver, bolder, eager to try new things, capable of stunningly creative mischief. I admired his becoming an altar boy when I knew Latin so much better. I admired his serving God and making a profit with wedding and funeral tips. I admired his persistence in track and cross country in high school when he never won and no one came to his meets. I admired his taking the driving test five separate times.

Joe came home from college with a trunk full of new shirts. He had been too busy gambling away his scholarship to do the laundry. Joe decided to try skiing for the first time the day before his wedding. He badly injured his knee and needed a shot of cortisone to limp his way up to the altar. The Epistle described how "my love comes leaping to me like a gazelle." I admired his courageous decision to resist induction into the army and go to jail if he didn't get conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War. I was impressed by his success at keeping his plan to refuse induction in 6 weeks a secret from his bride's family at the wedding.

Joe has fathered 6 children, been a prison librarian, ran a gas station, taught in a ghetto school, built a playground, sold coffee and ice cream, ran a chain of newspapers, been CFO of the largest US used truck company, owned an oil company, sold escalator efficiency equipment, and finally found fulfillment as CFO of his older daughter's company. He has always been a rock, supporting me and my daughters in all our trials and craziness. Sometimes his support is endless, infuriating advice. But I always know he persists in being wrong because he truly loves me.

Does Fear of Automatic Flushing Toilets Qualify as a Psychiatric Diagnosis?

The New York Times today has an interesting story on young children's fear of automatic flushing toilets. I certainly understand their fears. My daughter Rose was terrified of baths until her dad taught her the word "vortex" to explain the water draining out of the tub.

Buried in the article in this absurd statement:

Jerilyn Ross, president of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, said that a fear of automatic toilets did not, in itself, meet the criteria for a psychiatric diagnosis. “Anxiety in and of itself is normal and healthy,” she said, “but when anxiety is excessive, irrational, and if it interferes with one’s daily life, then it may be an anxiety disorder, which is something that may need to be treated.”

Surely, some psychiatrists must question the tendency to make more and more human eccentricities and idiosyncracies grounds for psychiatric diagnosis.

Wartime Love Letters

Mary and Joe, March 6, 1944; honeymoon

For Remembrance Day, Mad Hatter published a fascinating post about boxes of wartime letters she found when remodeling her old house. Her post has special resonance for me because I have 20 plastic boxes full of letters my parents wrote from November 1942, when my dad was drafted, until February 1946, when he came home from France and saw me for the first time. I keep postponing doing something with themt. I started a blog of the letters, Mary and Joe: World War II Love Story, but I haven't kept it up. My father particularly was a wonderful writer, who never wrote anything but these letters. Mad Hatter inspired me to go back to that project.

My daughter Rose wrote this about the wartime letters several years ago. She included excerpts from the letters that I am not including here.
In my grandmother's house, past a stone Mexican statue named Harry, up the front stairs and to the right there is a bedroom. In this bedroom there are a pea green carpet, a bed with yellow and orange flowered sheets, and a cracked blue dresser. This dresser, unlike every other bureau and closet in this house, does not contain any seventies-style ties, old scarves, or early feminist t-shirts. Instead every drawer is filled with letters.

Joe lived in Jamaica, Queens, with his parents and six younger sisters and brothers. His college yearbook said of him, "Even his own brilliance could not fathom the enigma that is Joe." Mary lived in Queens Village. She was the second child, and the oldest girl, in a family of seven. Her high school yearbook described her as, "Sincerity coupled with bubbling vivacity, scholastic excellence with literary talents, athletic prowess, sparkling wit." She would not have a college yearbook until many years later, because her father had died without much life insurance when she was seventeen years old. Her father's brother squeezed together the money for her older brother to continue school at St. John's, but Mary was just a girl.

Mary and Joe had met the summer of 1942, on a raft at Loon Lake in the Adirondacks. He was 28, she was 21. A week later, back in Queens, he took her to see Bambi. They saw each other often in the three months after Bambi became Prince of the forest, and before Joe was drafted. He kissed her for the first time on the day he left for the army.

They will get engaged the night before her 22nd birthday in August 1943 and will marry the next March. The wedding will not be fancy, since it was planned in about four days and no one had much money anyway. The reception will be in Mary's backyard. Joe will go off to war in Europe, though his bad vision will ensure that he never faces combat. They will have their first child while he is away. There will be short letters to Baby Mary Jo, my mother, enclosed with the longer ones to Mary. Then in 1946, when Mary Jo is eight months old, Joe will finally come home and the letters will end.

They will have five more children, and the children will have fourteen kids of their own. Joe will die of Alzheimer's disease in May of 1987. Mary will become a lobbyist and counselor for victims of the disease and their families. She will become even more involved with her church, and even more of a rock for her distressingly heathen children and grandchildren. Mary will die in April 2004 of Progressive Supranuclear Palsy.

My grandparents' generation has been called "The Greatest Generation." They survived the depression, they fought Hitler. Yes, they did, but many of them also contributed to horrible racial injustice, and a few of them dropped the bomb. I suppose that talking about our parents' and grandparents' moral superiority is an improvement over not trusting them because they're over forty, but it's not much of an improvement. It would be far more honest to say that they did some very good things, and some very bad things. They had fewer toys, and certainly they wrote better love letters, but they were more or less just like us.

To put it another way, generation schmeneration. I'm not going to even try to judge. Instead I will sit here and read these letters. I will learn that my mother's mother is more than the grandma who babysat for us almost every week for ten years, and who is always inappropriately freezing things. I will learn that my mother's father was far more than the sick, confused old man I remember.

What We Wanted for Christmas

How did we know what we wanted for Christmas in the days before television, glossy newspaper and magazine advertisements? The Sears Christmas Wish Book was our bible. After it came in early November, my mom used to hide it for a few weeks, so we didn't have months to want things she couldn't afford to give us. I don't recall regular visits to department stores, though we probably did visit Santa Claus occasionally.

We had more generic requests--bikes, trains, truck, dolls, chemistry sets, tinker toys--than kids do today. I recall being thrilled with a cake baking set. We didn't long for specific brands, colors, sizes. Our presents did not require batteries. We were aware that mom and dad were not rich.

But my memory could be playing tricks on me. Perhaps I spent hours gazing over the Sears catalog and coming up with a 25-item list. In my old age, I have learned to mistrust memories that compare me favorably to younger generations. When my daughter Rose was 5, she said, "anything Santa wants to bring me for Christmas is fine with me." I doubt my brothers and I would have been so unmaterialistic.

Lady in Red

1947, 1948, 1957, 1971

Both Andrea and Bub and Pie have excellent posts about color. As the above pictures show, red has always been my favorite color since I was a little girl. My first tricycle was red. My blogs have a red banner, and the sidebar text is red. I have always wanted a red living room, but only managed to have one after my first marriage ended and my three older girls had left home. My red living room makes me happy as does my yellow kitchen, my blue bathroom, and my green bedroom. I struggle with depression, and red is the only reliable anti-depressant for me. "Better red than dead" has more than a political meaning.

When I met my first and second husbands I was wearing a red dress. I wore red for my second marriage. I love wearing red hats. I love red shoes, but find them hard to find for my wide feet. My favorite shoes ever were a pair of red suede boots. It is very easy to go shopping if you are looking for red, either in a thrift shop or a department store.

At job interviews with a man, I have worn red; with a woman, anything but red. Once, when I was manic, I had a red sweat shirt made up that proclaimed, "Never love a man who doesn't love Jane Austen, Doris Lessing, and Margaret Drabble." The owner of the shop told me no shirt had evoked more comment. Her favorite was a man who reacted, "That poor woman; she lives in the wrong country." Obviously he was right since I married an Englishman.

My favorite coat is a bright red fleece jacket I inherited from my mom when she died 3 years ago. When I wear it, I sometimes feel like she is giving me a hug. When I meet someone in Manhattan, I am easy to find--straight silver hair wearing red. It's sad how few New Yorkers wear red. PerhapstNew Yorkers should commemorate 9/11 by wearing red.

Reading Bub's Post, I wondered how I reconcile my lifelong introversion with red. Red is how I cope with my shyness. If I wasn't wearing red to a party or a meeting, I might disappear. When I am manic, I cope best by going to NYC , wearing red, and talking to strangers.Now at 62, I suspect my silver hair absolutely cancels out my redness.

Along the Austic Spectrum?

This post is not facetious; I am struggling to understand. I am beginning to wonder if I might fall somewhere along the autistic spectrum as it is now conceived. I have a few close friends, but am very involved with my big family. Most of my abundant email is from my family. I am only truly myself with people I love. I am much more comfortable interacting with people on blogs than in real life. I would always chose reading a good book or watching TV and movies with my husband over attending a party.

I only had lots of friends when I lived in Manhattan; then I always bumped into them walking on the street and did not have to take the initiative. I am perfectly happy spending days alone, reading, writing, internet researching, visiting the library, gardening until my husband comes home. I don't know my neighbors except for a casual hello when we get out of our respective cars. Libraries are my version of paradise. I so appreciate that no one asks you if you need help.

My teachers only noticed me when I wrote my first composition; until then I was the quiet girl you might not realize was there. I recall one day that my kindergarten teacher called the roll and I said here, but she didn't hear me and marked me absent. I was much too shy to correct her, and had great difficulty the next day accounting for my absence because I had no note from my mom. Often my mother spoke for me when I was asked a question; I was too hesitant and took a long time to respond. My dad, who was like me, called her on that.

In the Catholic schools of my youth, with 60 students in a class, smart students who never talked in class, only answered questions but never asked them, wrote fine compositions and did well in tests, were praised. No one ever worried about them. I recall on rainy days we had to eat lunch in our classroom. We were permitted to talk, but I had taken to heart the rule about talking in class, and never said a word. How very weird I was!

My dad had a similar personality. His true nature only fully emerged in the three and one half years of love letters he wrote to my mom during the war. Reading the letters has been a revelation; I realize I never truly knew my dad. My mom was a vivacious extrovert; she never would have fallen in love with the shy, quiet man except that he wrote the best love letters I have ever read. Until my husband Peter came to America to marry me in 2001, we wrote and instant messaged to each other infinitely more than we were able to spend time together. So ours was a letter-writing romance as much as my parents had been.


All my 62 years I always recognized I was shy and introverted. I understood and felt far more comfortable with characters in books than with the people in my class or at my job. The seduction of mania is that my shyness and self-consciousness suddenly disappears. During my first manic episode, my brother Joe said: "My God, MJ, what happened. You sound just like mom." My father unhelpfully said, "Talk, talk, talk. What ever happened to Mary Jo, who was such a nice quiet girl." In real life I am a Mary, who pondered things in her heart. In my writing and when I am manic, my Joan persona emerges.

An essential part of taming my illness has been embracing and cherishing who I am. Manic Mary Joan is not my ideal self, is not the real me. Being a librarian was good for me because I had to talk to strangers, which I could do because they needed my help. A librarian is a anonymous handmaiden; people don't know her name. On the street, people would realize look familiar, but not be able to place me even if I had helped them numerous times. As a social worker, I worked well with clients one-on-one, but was terrified of conducting groups. As a La Leche league, I loved counseling mothers on the phone, but dreaded monthly meetings.

And yet I am secure that I have made a difference and am very happy I never was afflicted with another diagnosis. I am eager to read a new book: Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness by Christopher Lane.

Social Anxiety Disorder?

This post is not facetious; I am struggling to understand. I am beginning to wonder if I might fall somewhere along the autistic spectrum as it is now conceived or merely suffer from "social anxiety disorder." I have a few close friends, but am very involved with my big family. I tend to make friends with people who leave all the reaching out to me, and often I can't bring myself to do it. Most of my abundant email is from my family. I am only truly myself with people I love. I am much more comfortable interacting with people on blogs than in real life. I would always chose reading a good book or watching TV and movies with my husband over attending a party.

I only had lots of friends when I lived in Manhattan; then I always bumped into them walking on the street and did not have to take the initiative. I am perfectly happy spending days alone, reading, writing, internet researching, visiting the library, gardening until my husband comes home. I don't know my neighbors except for a casual hello when we get out of our respective cars. Libraries are my version of paradise. I so appreciate that no one asks you if you need help.

My teachers only noticed me when I wrote my first composition; until then I was the quiet girl you might not realize was there. I recall one day that my kindergarten teacher called the roll and I said here, but she didn't hear me and marked me absent. I was much too shy to correct her, and had great difficulty the next day accounting for my absence because I had no note from my mom. Often my mother spoke for me when I was asked a question; I was too hesitant and took a long time to respond. My dad, who was like me, called her on that.

In the Catholic schools of my youth, with 60 students in a class, smart students who never talked in class, only answered questions but never asked them, wrote fine compositions and did well in tests, were praised. No one ever worried about them. I recall on rainy days we had to eat lunch in our classroom. We were permitted to talk, but I had taken to heart the rule about talking in class, and never said a word. How very weird I was!

My dad had a similar personality. His true nature only fully emerged in the three and one half years of love letters he wrote to my mom during the war. Reading the letters has been a revelation; I realize I never truly knew my dad. My mom was a vivacious extrovert; she never would have fallen in love with the shy, quiet man except that he wrote the best love letters I have ever read. Until my husband Peter came to America to marry me in 2001, we wrote and instant messaged to each other infinitely more than we were able to spend time together. So ours was a letter-writing romance as much as my parents had been. Neither of us would have been able to say what we were able to write.