In Which I Get Didactic about Nature

I once read an essay by Stephen Jay Gould in which the author talked about how crucial it is for one to know his own local geography and place-- for many reasons, one of which being our civic-mindedness. Without being intimately acquainted with our own landscape and local flora and fauna, he said, we can't be educated voters. I'm a Northern California girl, born and bred. My own geography is red clay hills, a roiling ocean, blackberry brambles, oak trees and redwoods. What care do I have, beyond an academic sort of appreciation, for Great Lakes or Amber Waves of Grain? My consciousness, my voting, are rooted in my relationship to the place I live.

I fret about raising a kid in an era of technological over-saturation. So many kids are engulfed by TV, computers, hand-held electronics. Time outside is rare and it frequently means being shuttled to and from organized activities. I read about Nature Deficit Disorder and Free-range parenting and it all really resonates with me. Of course I want to avoid childhood obesity (the result of lots of screen time along with poor diet). I also want my child to grow into a passionate and engaged adult. I want him to have a connection to his place, his history, his culture.

Our reality is a fragmented, atomized suburban existence. My dream is an integrated "village" of extended family and a love of our place. So we throw dinner parties and we try to get to know our neighbors. We grow some vegetables and herbs and we hike on the weekends. Lately I am including "more nature" in my cultivation of a more intentional life.

This week we will be going camping down south in the redwoods, our first of such trips for longer than an overnight. Truthfully, I'm a bit worried we will get bored. But I hope to come back a bit tanner, a bit lighter, and a bit more grateful for my fluffy eiderdown and soft bed. Plus, I'm looking forward to the s'mores.

Bye for now!

Take That, McDo!

I stumbled on this brilliant piece (with admittedly annoying narration) that looks at French public school cuisine. Oh la la, regret la difference. I love the high school lunch room chef who says, "Just because they don't have the right to vote. . . we can't just throw anything in their face."

Feng Shui Friday

The things surrounding you in your home serve as subliminal reminders of who you are. They will continue to direct you towards old patterns of behavior. Subconscious beliefs are generally so deep-seated that one is not aware of them.

~ Denise Linn, Feng Shui for the Soul

Well, if there is one thing I need it is new patterns of behavior. And this de-cluttering is addictive. Yesterday I filled the dread voiture to its little metal rafters with boxes and bags to be dropped off this weekend. I also left some stuff on the curb that I was thrilled to see dematerialize as quickly as I left it. Kitchen counters are on their way to being sparkling and clutter-free. Crockpot, Cuisinart, toaster and extra roasting pans? Goodbye to all of that!  Bathroom cabinets are getting closer to minimal after my sister visited yesterday and liberated me of teeth whiteners, sunscreens, serums, scrubs and assorted never-worn makeup products. The kiddo's room is looking more and more like a Montessori classroom, easy to find things and easy to tidy up. And all that plastic garbage handed down from older cousins and well-intending grandparents is starting to slowly, subtly disappear.   




More as I go. For now I'll head to work on the train. I have notebook in hand to jot down thoughts about a culling strategy for the sentimental items. We're a knick-knack-saddled family. But are snowglobes from business trips really a demonstration of my husband's love? There has to be a better way.

But I'm an Earth Mother Type (a long post, mostly about parenting)

So I had the pleasure of spending a short bit of time with a charming femme d'un certain age at an art show this weekend. She was a jewelry maker originally from France and she had great style. We chatted a lot and I took mental notes on her to report here. She wore glasses and strong eye makeup with a definite bohemian vibe. She sported her own unique jewelry and flowing clothes in neutral, subdued colors. Her hair was a long blunt cut with bangs (and the women debating Ines de la Fressange's style guide on the Yahoo French Chic group will be interested to note that this was not a gal who appeared to wash her hair on anything even closely resembling a daily basis). Mostly I noticed the forthright way she spoke- confident, vivacious and also a keen listener.

We began talking because I had my three-year-old with me and talk tends to go to those who spill the most ice cream and giggle most loudly. Mine is a spirited kid and she told me hers were too. She said that when her son was young, the teachers at his (US) schools would chide her that he didn't "respond well to social pressure."" That a teacher of small children in our educational system would find fault with that quality doesn't surprise me; it was her delight in it that suprised me greatly.

I've had German, Greek and Italian acquaintances with young children but I haven't known any French parents that I can think of. But one thing I have read repeatedly is that French parenting is all about training children to respond to social pressure.



Charming petite Parisienne in her natural habitat, 2004


An essay I read recently (yes, I'm talking about this book again - there was a lot to chew on in its pages!) looks at French parenting and its differences with "Anglo-saxon" style childrearing. The writer is Janine di Giovanni. Like part of me, she is Italian-American. Unlike any of me, she appears to be a glamorous award-winning international journalist who is married to a frenchman.

Watching a crying child exhaust himself trailing behind his chic, slender (and unrelentingly quick-stepping) mother in Luxembourg Gardens, she writes,

'Well that kid will be in therapy for the rest of his life.'

I joke about these things but it's not altogether funny, One of the toughest things I have had to get used to in an otherwise idyllic Paris is the huge gap between Anglo-Saxon (or Italian American in my case) parenting and parenting French-style. The French are certainly stricter. They shout more. They slap more. And they enforce manners.

As a result, you find beautifully brought-up children, and many of my French friends who are parents will argue endlessly that instilling discipline and setting boundaries is the way to show the utmost love.

All true. Kids need boundaries and they need to be civilized for their own good. But Di Giovanni writes that, despite the fact that French children are better behaved than their American counterparts,

the hippie earth mother part of me still wonders about originality, creativity, and freethinking. (There is no such thing as an earth mother here; it is simply not chic.)

I'm an un-chic earth mother type. I wonder a lot about these things too. And this process of parenting a young child as he moves into a sprited third year on Planet Earth is a challenge: to transmit knowledge and instill manners and social savvy while respecting the dignity and liberty of this small person -- without slaps and without shaming -- is often difficult.



Free-range American kid in his natural habitat, Sea Ranch CA 2010

How to negotiate the goal of teaching boundaries with the reality of sharing space and a life with small children? How to "train" them well without treating them like lesser beings? After trial and error I have come to a philosophy of trying to approach mine as I would someone who is as worthy of respect as I am but who lacks the life experience to navigate life without help. I see myself as a combination translator, tutor and concierge, if you will. And he is, so far, a really great kid. But it's true you never know how well you've taught your children until they are grown.

Slow Toys

Today my family and I visited my dad and his wife at an arts show they were working. My dad is an artisan who hand-crafts beautiful wooden toys. It's a post for another day, but I'll say that I'm proud of his work and we are incredibly lucky that my son is kept in a ridiculous wealth of beautiful toys in a world that is otherwise full of the cheapest disposable garbage at the lowest price. It's hard to sit at craft shows and see kids fall in love with his toys and then watch their parents balk at the idea of spending a bit more than they would on something toxic and plastic, assembled by a child in a developing nation. I know we are living in a tough economy but so much of it is our unrealistic expectation of what it costs to make things. We expect things to be cheap and disposable, and anything else seems too dear.

This girl was too cute to not photograph.  My son has this same rocking horse,
only his is 35 years old. It used to be mine when I was his age!



It's an interesting time in the culture, though. There is a movement growing in which people are seeking quality over quantity, and not a minute too soon. (Think par example of the prevalence of cheap fast food and the growth of an appreciative culture around more delicious, healthful and fairly priced "slow" food.) I think we live in an exciting moment. I'm proud of my dad that he and his work are a part of that.

So it looks like the post for another day found its expression today. Anyway, in the booth next to my dad was a charming an attractive femme d'un certain age, and I took mental notes on her that I am eager to share. But let's let her be the subject of a different post and spare my two readers' eyes from weariness on too long an entry.

Balance in Everything

The husband is out of town for a bachelor party weekend that would depress me and annoy me if I thought too much about it. Yesterday I spent a lovely afternoon with two gorgeous girlfriends; one is a teacher on spring break and the other is a lucky lady of leisure. We had lunch and spent hours laughing and talking. There were cocktails and tarot cards, and if either of those things are to be believed the future looks excellent for all of us.

After school was out, my son and I came home to some relaxing and household tasks before heading out for a special evening together. I wrote last week about saying no to ice cream. Tonight was a break from my usual paleoh-la-la. I had a sweet dinner with my kid, followed by yes to ice cream, followed by a trip to the book store.

When we arrived there was a reading in progress by a journalist who has documented the history of Burning Man and its current transitioning from for-profit company to non-profit entity. The reading itself was fascinating enough but what struck me about the evening was the odd convergence of parts of my life: me in the children's section, reading Curious George on the one hand and, on the other, half listening to this journalist relay the story of the politics affecting this sometimes cooler-than-thou scene I've not been a part of in a long time. We ran into our neighbors there. They are also parents (as is everyone on this island, it seems) and also former burners. And while I won't likely go back to the Gerlach desert for large-scale art and dancing all night (at least not for a very long time), it was nice to be there and to feel a small part of the intersection between family and culture, just by virtue of participating in discussion at the reading.

As I was falling asleep I was thinking that I don't feel a conflict between being a woman and a mother. But I do believe that negotiating that balance takes work. Salad and ice cream, Curious George and Burning Man. Balance, balance in everything.

Conflict: The Woman and the Mother

This summer will come the English translation of Elisabeth Badlinter's Conflict: The Woman and the Mother, a bestseller in France since its publication last year. The book is described this way:


Elisabeth Badinter has for decades been in the vanguard of the European fight for women's equality. Now, in an explosive new book, she points her finger at a most unlikely force undermining the status of women: liberal motherhood, in thrall to all that is "natural." Attachment parenting, co-sleeping, baby-wearing, and especially breast-feeding—these hallmarks of contemporary motherhood have succeeded in tethering women to the home and family to an extent not seen since the 1950s. Badinter argues that the taboos now surrounding epidurals, formula, disposable diapers, cribs—and anything that distracts a mother's attention from her offspring—have turned childrearing into a singularly regressive force.

A bestseller in Europe, The Conflict is a scathing indictment of a stealthy zealotry that cheats women of their full potential. 

I will agree that having a baby tethered me to my family. That's kind of what having a baby does, no? It's true I can no longer comfortably work 11-hour days six days a week. Nor can I jet to New York, meet friends for frequent cocktails, or take all the night classes I want to take without hiring someone to see my kid more than I do. And that was my choice. I chose to give birth and restructure my life and my priorities to care for the offspring I chose to create. Is that regressive? I don't think so. Did it rob me of my full potential? No - I offered that willingly. Life is about choices and compromise. And while I'd be lying if I said I always like it, I can at least acknowledge that it happened of my own volition and that the benefits, for me, outweigh the frustrations. Should that change, I might change how I choose to parent. For now it works. For me.

I support any woman's right to choose whatever works for her and I'm not at all keen to jump into the fray. But as for "taboos" surrounding epidurals, Ms. Badinter ought to check out the excellent, evidence-based work of Michel Odent (on whom I admit I have a bit of a crush).

Incidentally, a NYT review of Badinter's book quoted one one mother who says much more succinctly what I tried to about feminism and capitalism in my last post:


Amandine Panhard, 29. . . thinks the Badinter thesis is a false one. “It’s not about disposable diapers or plastic baby bottles but each woman’s personal development, financial independence and the relations between husband and wife,” she said. “The real conflict is not between the woman and the mother, but between the woman and the company.”

Late to the Party: Erica Jong vs. Dr. Sears

This past November Erica Jong wrote an essay in the Wall Street Journal, criticizing the philosophies of Attachment Parenting and its advocates William and Martha Sears. She questioned whether attachment parenting is a prison for mothers. How I missed it when it first came out I do not know; the argument between attachment- and other styles of parents always means an amount of back-and-forth commentary on the Internet that is prolific to say the least.

In her essay, Jong writes, As long as women remain the gender most responsible for children, we are the ones who have the most to lose by accepting the "noble savage" view of parenting, with its ideals of attachment and naturalness. We need to be released from guilt about our children, not further bound by it.

First off, what is so "savage" about raising our own children in a style that children have evolved being raised? Yes of course we should lose the guilt, to which mothers are too often subject no matter what we do. But should we lose the ideal of strong attachment with our children?

Jong writes that our media display "an orgy of motherphilia" that romanticizes parenthood." Nannies are rarely photographed, giving the impression that motherhood is easy and cheap. What she fails to account for is that childcare is expensive. For me to go to work, I must pay someone to look after my child. For me to stay home, I forgo the paycheck to which I as one half of a dynamic DINK duo took wholly for granted. Either way, there is a high price to be paid. Considering that reality I would prefer to raise my own child. And I did, for many months, before I finally missed the work I love so much that I returned to a short week. We hired my brother to manny for us three short days a week and he made money (because childcare is expensive) but my son was in the care of family. It worked for us and I realize we were lucky that family was around and available. But for the amount of money I make doing the work I love, it would have been cheaper for me to stay home.

Jong writes,

Indeed, although attachment parenting comes with an exquisite progressive pedigree, it is a perfect tool for the political right. It certainly serves to keep mothers and fathers out of the political process. If you are busy raising children without societal help and trying to earn a living during a recession, you don't have much time to question and change the world that you and your children inhabit. What exhausted, overworked parent has time to protest under such conditions?

This is a faulty argument. It is true that most people are working too hard to look up and participate in politics. But that isn't the fault of choosing an attached style of parenting. It is because we set our lives up within a capitalist framework, all nuclear family, atomized, isolated, and most importantly, overly materialistic. 

Besides, working outside the home means paying for childcare so we can work outside the home. Most women have to work a lot to make that financially worth doing. Why Jong assumes the "working" mother has more energy and inclination to participate in politics after the outside workday than she would as a stay-at-home mom, I have no idea. Nor does she account for the great many women and men who become actively engaged in local politics after becoming parents.

Jong continues, Attachment parenting, especially when combined with environmental correctness, has encouraged female victimization. Women feel not only that they must be ever-present for their children but also that they must breast-feed, make their own baby food and eschew disposable diapers. It's a prison for mothers, and it represents as much of a backlash against women's freedom as the right-to-life movement. . .Our obsession with parenting is an avoidance strategy. It allows us to substitute our own small world for the world as a whole. But the entire planet is a child's home, and other adults are also mothers and fathers. We cannot separate our children from the ills that affect everyone, however hard we try. Aspiring to be perfect parents seems like a pathetic attempt to control what we can while ignoring problems that seem beyond our reach.

But the "environmental correctness"  Jong disparages is in itself an active a form of political  progressiveness. In our political climate, environmental concerns are of paramount importance. To enact practices at home that support environmental sustainability and social justice is far from an avoidance strategy: it is one way of actively engaging with the world as a responsible citizen. I have no desire to be a "perfect parent." I want to live as a responsible world citizen. My choices in what I buy, what I boycott, how I use natural resources in my parenting are only one manifestation of my personal politics.

At the end of the day, attachment parenting is only anti-feminist if you define feminism as a woman's ability to participate in the work force in exactly the same ways that men do. I would say I expect more from Erica Jong but that isn't true. As a second-wave feminist in the United States she is only saying what I would expect her to say. American feminism has forgotten that equality in the workplace isn't the only right worth having. American feminism has done wonderful work with regard to reproductive rights, but it has forgotten that mothers are women too.

We forget to work for decent maternity leave, perinatal health care, support for families - particularly for single mothers, but for all families. Instead, we denigrate those who choose to work, or who choose to stay home.  We forget that for many people there simply isn't a choice, and that for others the choice is made from a place of blind immersion in a capitalist construct. We don't acknowledge (or we fail to realize) that our problem isn't how we choose to balance home and work, but that by equating freedom and success with paid work we allow work to take precedence over nearly every other concern. Family, children, and planet included. We forget there may be other, more sustainable (and dare I say, more fun) ways to live.

This is why, as crunchy granola Lefty as I tend to be, I always hesitate to call myself a feminist. It seems to me that feminism aims too low; it seeks only to have equal access to everything that men have. I'm not satisfied with what men have, and I don't think men should be either. We need to stop infighting (men vs. women; "working" vs. stay-at-home-moms; attachment- vs. other parents) and turn our attention to places where we can affect change that benefits everyone. "Environmental correctness," far from an imprisonment for mothers, is good for everyone and seems as good a place as any to start.

'Life's too short to be living with regrets'

Last week my son was in his first school play. The three of us walked across our small town to the high school's "Little Theater" and watched a good half of the environmentalism-meets-Frankenstein-themed parade of cute. My son, part of the youngest class, was one of about 20 little ones (aged 2 to 3) who opened the play with a little dance number set to a song about "raining like magic." They wore their raincoats and boots on a sweltering early evening and set the scene for the older kids' story about a green misfit Frank N. Stein. Pastiche for days, the play follows Stein's journey to the Emerald City, an enviro Shangri-La, with his three little multicultural human friends. Flying monkeys and Tesla coils! Musical numbers were lifted from other, major musicals. You don't know surreal until you've seen a mess of 4-year-olds perform kid-washed selections from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Let's do the Earth Warp again!

Anyway, during intermission I wandered the high school's halls and took this:

The week before, we took the kiddo to the local science museum in San Francisco. Well worth visiting; I've been a few times for corporate holiday parties but I hadn't been there during open hours since I was a child. My favorite exhibit was a little room full of postcards written by museum visitors asked to answer,

This was by far my favorite:

I agree with these writings on the wall.

Quiet Tea

For me morning is most definitely made for coffee. I like mine large and strong, with raw heavy cream or (lately, since my transition to Paleoh-la-la) with coconut milk. just a splash: lightish but not sweet.

I'm nursing; my kid needs no coffee and neither do I, past noon. So in the afternoons I drink tea. I picked this one up today at the little family market in town.

I will admit it was the tin and not the flavor that caught my eye. In general, I try to drink tisanes or more nutritive herbal infusions. (I'm trained as an herbalist; I well know the value of a sludgy, thick herbal brew.)

But I bought this, because: wouldn't you? I was delighted to open the tin and find sweet little organza sachets of sweetly-scented goodness.

Lovely vanilla, bergamot, and. . .something else. I can't pinpoint it, but the result is delightful. 

Last spring I took a trip to Yosemite with my little family and my belle-famille. We stayed in cabins on the Ahwahnee Hotel grounds and had access to all those lovely trails and libraries and afternoon gimlets by the pool. One of the things I brought home with me was an afternoon tea habit that lasted well into that summer. I would make a nice snack (often crackers and sardines) and use an antique cup and saucer from my collection. I'd generally serve this tea as my husband was arriving home from work at 6 and this small meal would tide us over until the baby was sleeping and we ate our late dinner at 9:30 or 10.

Now we are in the suburbs and husband arrives later than 6. The baby is a toddler who requires a daily rhythm, so we aim for a respectable 7pm dinner time together. I still have a tea habit, but it's a slapdash mug at whenever happens to be convenient.

A more conscious moment of quiet (served in a lovely little china cup) will be a nice addition to this sweet life I am creating. It seems to me that rituals are key to an elegant life. What are some of yours?

Jardiniere

I am spending a quiet day with my son. Out in the garden, soaking up sun (through the filter of mineral sunblock and a straw hat). We have chard and spinach, broccoli and strawberries and arugula, all in varying states of readiness.

Our garden is so "California hippie," as I guess I am. Right down to the kitchy Mexican ceramic sun and moon, the stone Quan Yin, the duck decoy (not unlike the one my duck-hunting dad gave me for bathtime when I was a child).

It is lovely spending time with him, out there, out here in our suburban place. Transplants, we are. Like the calla lilies I shook from their pots and planted in their new place, in dirt that is likely a bit too silty. Just trying to bloom where we are planted, as fridge magnet wisdom says.

If we stay here we'll grow more. If not our little garden is a good size to take with us wherever we go.

And then there was Day Three

Today, a more normal day of hustling the kiddo to and fro. Trips to the park, the school, the health food store. I put a great deal of thought and labor into business promotion today. It was a bland day, but sweet, and the balance felt right. I continue on my eating plan, one that I'm beginning to call Paleoh-la-la, steeped as it is in evolutionary principles as translated by a fledgling bonne vivante.

Par example, a celebratory dinner for two, with just my kid and me: pork roast (sustainable from our meat CSA) with raw sauerkraut and braised spinach and chard from our little container garden. This was after we went out for his special post-play rehearsal treat of ice cream at our little town's main see-and-eat-cream place. Despite his bossy three-year-old mandate that "I eat MANGO and YOU eat CHOCOLATE, mommy!" I had no such thing.

Not today. Not forever, just not today.

What am I Doing Here?

Using this blog for goal-setting, it seems fitting to post now, the night before a "strict" month of evolutionary eating after this past week of St. Patrick's Day and Girl Scout cookie seasonal indulgences.

Right now this is feeling like the month will be something of an image makeover. I long for a simpler, more elegant, less child-and-couple-centered existence. I love my child and the couple I am in, but I've recently moved to a suburban community that is family-focused in the extreme. I miss my adult life, my single life, my grown-up hobbies and interests. My journey this month will include fun stuff like closet-culling, more visits to cultural events, looking less grubby as I schlep my little boy to and from preschool and the health food store.

The shorthand idea I always come back to for this project I am documenting here is represented in this idea of cultivating a more European lifestyle.

So what exactly does that mean? For me, an American of Irish, Italian and a small bit of Swedish descent, it's a fair bit of fantasy. I have a vision in mind of my ideal self and I am seeking here and now to act as she would act. It's a useful psychological tool-- not to "pretend to be French (or Italian or whomever is the chicest and least likely to get fat)" but to slow down and behave consciously, choosing only to bring into my life those things that make life beautiful and fun.

I've been pondering and trying cultivate a conscious and beautiful life for a long time. I've been a member of the Yahoo French Chic/Je Ne Sais Quois group for seven or eight years - since I was at university, since before I was married or had a child. My other interests are varied but they dovetail nicely. I'm a wellness and beauty professional, a life coach, an avid writer and voracious reader. I'm an "attached parent" trying within a suburban nuclear family framework to  build community a la the Continuum Concept. I'm a real food advocate - slow, organic, local, sustainable: all the good stuff that is the food zeitgeist right now.

Evolutionary eating makes me feel better, after years of dietary experimentation that ran the gamut from strict vegan to typical SAD, than anything else ever has. As I get back to it I notice I have more energy for doing the physical things I like to do.

I am only now learning to drive; I walk a lot. I love dance and I take a weekly belly dance class and a weekly floor barre class. Time permitting, I take a short jog a couple of nights a week. And I love, when I have time, to do Bar Method workouts at home.

My major priorities beyond my health are my family and figuring out my marriage. I have a good handle on the parenting most of the time, and I will likely not go into detail about the marriage, though the anonymity of having no readership at all makes it tempting to explore these issues here. For now the likelihood is that I will use this blog mostly to cultivate the rich inner life and fabulous outer appearance of my "Inner French Girl," expanded outward to include bits from any culture, any time period as they please me.

More detailed goals are forthcoming. Tonight I'll stick with a renewed enthusiasm for healthy food and more exercise.  One foot in front of the other, one step at a time.