Puppy love.

In all of my rooting around for attachment information regarding human development, I have come to a conclusion about my dogs.

I would like to think that our two four-legged sons reflect our parenting but I know tat nurture doesn't always hold up to an argument against nature.

Our first dog, Teddy, was a year old when we found him at a local shelter. Quiet and withdrawn, he spent most of his time curled up on a dog cot watching the other mid-sized dogs bumbling around into each other. He seemed calm and cute enough to take home so he moved into our apartment with us the day after we signed the lease. We have never known life in Atlanta as adults without Teddy. Teddy, however, knew life before us. We're not sure if we can blame abusive or neglectful parents for Teddy's neurotic, antisocial, malephobic, dog aggressive behavior but we like to. We might also blame it on Teddy's specific brain chemistry or his breed. Neither Whippets nor Basenjis are terribly social or team players and both are dog aggressive.

Donnie, our flower child, came into our lives almost two years later at the age of three months. His mother had been picked up by a rescue agency before birth and he and his litter mates were born into a foster family's warm house and cared for by children and adults. He came home to live with us, bullied slightly by his older brother but raised, for all intents and purposes, as the worlds largest lap dog. He is hyperactive but easy going and has rarely met a person or dog that he hasn't cared for. Again, while pitbulls lean on the side of being slightly dog aggressive, they are often social with the ones they grew up with. As far as people are concerned, unless specifically trained otherwise, most bully breeds would literally walk through fire for their people and generally make terrible watch dogs unless the intent is to lick the stranger to death.

As I sat reading Jonathan Haidt's discourse on different attachment types, I thought, my goodness, Teddy is terribly maladjusted! He has terrible separation anxiety but will run to the far ends of the earth as soon as we get to a dog park, ignoring other dogs and people, preferring to spend his time alone. He will, though, push his way into any situation in which Donnie appears to be receiving love. In many ways, he fits into the stereotype of children (and then adults with RAD (reactive attachment disorder) and because of that, Kellen and I have been inclined to associate his bizarreness with his prior life.

In our version of attachment, more love is better, as in the case of Donnie whose only discomfort in the past two years has been revoked bed privileges after his fourth destroyed puppy bed. He has, now, though, earned back a bed which has remained (knock on wood) intact for three weeks, now.

Our Life Is The Creation Of Our Mind

I try not to make theism a habit, just as a general rule, but every now and then, the moment moves me to contemplate the possibility of "something more". As I sat in the dark, yesterday morning, lights off of my own accord, water turned off via the county of Dekalb, I listened to the rain gently hitting the roof and walk outside.
Due to a mix up in the mail, our water had been turned off, the day before and The Bureaucracy had informed us that "someone" would come out between now and the end of the week. It was Tuesday. I panicked, at first, dropped my phone (which I then had to run out and fix in the middle of the water fiasco), yelled and screamed. After ten deep breaths and a few additional words and phrases muttered on the Bureaucracy's behalf, Kellen and I brainstormed and we bought several gallons of water at the store for flushing the toilet with.
I'm not sure how I thought toilets worked but after hearing, time and time again, the old "if it's yellow let it mellow; if it's brown flush it down" advice, I ought to have seen this coming. I was, though, completely shocked to learn that our toilet takes 1.7 GALLONS of water for every flush! We immediately instated the Mellow Yellow rule and tried to use what we had sparingly.
So it was, with great pleasure, that I awoke to the sound of rain the next morning. It didn't take me very long to evaluate the points of greatest collection. Our fabulous porch canopy provided six drop spots which I quickly harnessed with buckets.
Two hours later, I was cold, wet, sore and elated. I had gathered almost ten gallons! The dogs and baby watched, most likely confused but slightly amused, as I gathered my buckets and contained them in the gallon jugs we had already emptied from the day before. Around eleven, I ran out of jugs to contain the water so I settled in to simply fill up buckets because w would probably need that water, whatever the containment method. Suddenly, the skies cleared. Then, the water came on.
At first I was crushed because, what would I do with all of that water? Then, Kellen showed me how to work a toilet (I suppose, that is his redemption for the bit about Gloria Steinem) which I had only a basic understanding of prior to this event. It turns out, the water can be used even when we're getting water from the county. We'll show them! Our water bill ought to be about $30 less, next month.
Back to god. Do I really think that I needed a lesson in conservation? Perhaps. Do i think that God lost my water check in the mail, bribed county to wait exactly 24 hours, and made it rain, putting the idea of water collection into my head, only to turn off the rain and turn off the water just to push me in the direction of Bill Nye and Al Gore? No. Would I just naturally accept that the former sequence of events was, indeed, god's plan, if theism were a daily practice? Perhaps.
In my newest journey into positive and calm psychology, I will take a more Buddhist approach and agree that nothing is good; nothing is bad. We make our own happiness and sadness with whatever is presented to us. in the words of Marcus Aurelius: the whole universe is change and life itself is what you deem it.

wordless wednesday: water collection

Approaching Diversity Differently ~ or ~ Why Stellaluna Would Win In A Boxing Match Against Sesame Street

At some point during my trip to Boston, for Thanksgiving, my sister and I came to the conclusion that the Sesame Street song “One of These Things Is Not Like the Other” could have approached the subject of inclusiveness much more delicately. An attempt to teach categorical skills to preschoolers, the jingle is borderline cruel to those that don’t fit in, we decided. We set about rewriting the words to fit a more enlightened frame of mind but we couldn’t think of a better way to express difference without alienation.

It was, in fact, my sister I had in mind, a week later, when I picked up a board book* version of Stellaluna. The story is, from what I could tell as a kid, a fairly rare commodity even in its original hardcover/soft pages format, never mind the board book edition.

The tale is a children’s one but not without an adult lesson, too, per usual. A small bat, Stellaluna (which aptly means starmoon) is separated from her mother midair, one night, and falls into a nest of baby birds. She is adopted by this new family and despite initial difficulty learns to sleep rightside up, eat nasty bugs, and sleep at night. This continues with a few hiccups (Stella can not land gracefully on a branch like her adoptive borthers and sisters) until the day when she is reunited with her nocturnal family. They reaffirm her affinity towards eating yummy fruit, flying at night and hanging, in their mind, the right way from a branch. Overjoyed, Stellaluna seeks out her avian peers and attempts to teach them her renewed skills. They fair about as well as Stellaluna had at bird antics. In the end, the birds and Stellaluna remain friends, each staying true to his or her own true calling while accepting that his or her buddies’ skills are different.

I find this to be a much more appropriate telling of “us and them” or rather a retelling of “us versus them”. Instead of pointing out the item that is different, embracing differences and expressing their uses and strengths. I had gone into that particular bookstore, known for its eclectic collection, looking for a book on feelings for little boys. I was rather pleased with my revised purchase.




*For those without children, let me explain. The importance of the board book is its durability. To be perfectly honest, I’d prefer my novels and philosophy tomes in tough cardboard form, too. Coffee stains would add character instead of disintegrating four chapters. Alas, only Stella Luna and Curious George have been so lucky thus far. Dorian Gray is still waiting his turn.

Life is a ven diagram

"I've never been text messaged during a sermon, before." - my mom

Before I launch into what will likely be murky theological ramblings for most, I thought I'd offer a little bit of background information. Last year, my mother, the minister, held pulpit at the church my current minister, in Atlanta, left in Texas. Right, then, what you really need to take away from that lesson in the creepily small world of Unitarian Universalist ministry is that my mom and my current minster are in communication. This past Sunday, Reverend Anthony began his topic directly referencing a book that my mom had sent to both my sister and me shortly after Kai was born.

To be fair, the book in question, Johnathan Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis", discusses how the key ideals we strive for, or should strive for, are not, by any means, new but have been mulled over for centuries, globally. I thought it was imperative that I text my mother who was, at the time, getting ready to lead her own Sunday service a state away, and let her know that her beloved book was being discussed. Something to the effect of "Are you two in some sort of book club?"

My hilarity, I know, is only outmatched by my incredible knack for manically diving headlong into a project too big for me to even get a bite out of. The masterpiece of the moment is Atlanta's first new wave, free standing birthing center. These resources have existed in the past but as of now, due to Georgia's strict laws on midwifery and rabidly territorial OB's, they are an extinct breed. Lawyers, doctors, politicians, business owners, drug companies and mass media are the only things standing in my way.

After a bit of research, last night, I found out that there is, in fact, a group working on policy changes. I signed up and reported for duty. In my research, I found out that the women working toward the same goal as I, are in fact the people who put on Orgasmic Birth (a documentary that has all of the "cool" names in birthing) screening a few months ago and the same people who delivered Kai's little Quiet Room friend at church (remember church?) six days after Kai's own entry into the world. I also took a spin on the website for my own OB's office to check how they listed their midwives. They are all credentialed as nurse midwives which are all that GA will allow. Upon closer examination, it appears that MY very own attending CNM did extensive fellowship work in a rural birthing center in TX which is often used as a birthing center model. What?

It looks like people are not only working on this but people I know and have access to are working hard and fast.

As my not so linear progression is turning out a little bit like a midwife's rendition of Alice's Restaurant (remember Alice?) I'll get to my point: everything is connected and nothing is new.

The idea of healthy, spiritual birthing is not new. Neither is the idea of a community of dedicated people working toward a common goal until the job is done. Birthing topic aside, the idea of renewing old spiritual practices in search new enlightenment is a topic that Jonathan Haidt, Reverend Anthony and my mother seem to find riveting. Connections have made most successes in my life possible and, I am learning, are that they are the only way to get anything done.

I therefore, will defend my choice of texting my mother on a very busy Sunday, as it is all part of the greater web that ties us all together. I will try to remember this in teaching my Pilate's class, tonight, to a group of women who think that Douala's are the people who tell the anesthesiologist when to place the epidural. Perhaps, in the sea of over medicalized wishes of my uptown clientele, I will find a connection to something I'm searching for.

My hero's son: re(dundantly) defining feminism

In my mind, "woman" and "strong", for better or worse, mean the same thing.
My mothers, grandmothers, sisters have all been through the typical grocery list of suffrage, academia, occupational, social, medical. Breast cancer, Ivy League schools, Title IX, boys' sports, girls' sports, chemistry labs, veterinary offices, pulpits. One might say that I was able to live the life any boy could have hoped for a century ago. I was raised with ample and unfettered opportunity.

Something was nagging me, though, as I sat in my maternal grandmother's living room over Thanksgiving weekend. I had not carried on the family tradition. The powers that be or perhaps my our timing or positioning (apologies, mom) willed that my first child be a boy. A patriarchal family model doesn't fit into my lifestyle. Not on my mother's side. Not on my stepfather's side. Not on my husband's side. That is not to say that the men are not strong, caring, hard working, family oriented. It is only to say that if there is a shot being called, an event to be held, news to be shared, it is, most likely backed by ovaries. The nagging resurfaced several times over the course of my stay with my family but I tried not to focus on it. I could teach a male to be a leader, right?

A week later, I was knee deep in websites, books and pamphlets all pertaining to midwifery, reproductive rights and birthing legislation, Wikipedia opened to Gloria Steinem's page, and Amy Carol Webb's "I Come From Women" blasting from youtube. There was nary a Y chromosome in sight, save my neutered dogs and the 17lb person asleep in my lap. Again with the nagging.

What legacy would this be? I couldn't pass on my heritage to a boy; he wouldn't know what to do with it. My husband, bless his heart, didn't know who Gloria Steinem was until an hour ago. There are the occasional men who stand in huddled lines, arms linked, outside of planned parenthood clinics and male midwives and of course the loved and revered Marsden Wagner but even their exuberance is not felt first hand but only an expression of love for the women they know.

I started thinking, though. What would Gloria's son have been like? What would she have taught him? Isn't it true that our society's men are becoming more enlightened? In no small part, I'm sure, to extensive work done by women and men alike to change the course of outdated patterns. Fred Small's Every Man discusses the male struggle as only a man can and it sheds light on the work we need to do with our boys in order to ensure they are not only able to fight their own battles but help us with ours. Perhaps my idea of what a strong woman is need of expansion. Egalitarian should mean exactly that and thus boys need to be nurtured and healed as well.

I think that, instead of my son, the first male to be born to my maternal family in nearly half a century, interrupting the flow of feminine mystique, he is just what the midwife ordered.

Locution affinity

I promised Laura that I would discuss baby signing, today. I also promised my mom that I would shoot for a shorter entry. Overall goal: use less words to promote more words.

I had this great entry planned out in which I sectioned off my four pros to signing and four cons. When I say “planned”, I mean, all typed up and ready to go. I had decided that the effort would be futile and Baby signs were going to fall by the way side.

For those who don’t think that attention deficit disorder is a blessing, I assure you that it is. In the time it took my to write up my list, I managed to check my email, facebook, and three other blogs…all thrice. In doing so, I found the answer to my “should I or shouldn’t I” query regarding signing.

Last night, my mom had emailed me a youtube clip of a “new UU hymn” by one of the women in her congregation. Being a sucker for a new musician, I decided that it was a welcome distraction. After all I had been working for a whole three minutes.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Perhaps organ music or a bit piece similar to the lovely but overused “Come, Come, Whoever You Are”. Of course this wasn’t the case. Amy Carol Webb’s (www.amycarolwebb.com) “Stand” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pizMXBBwUT4) recalls Martin Luther King Jr. with a guitar or Joni Mitchell more politically motivated. It is too early in the morning to admit to tears but ask me later and you may get a more honest assessment of my emotional response to the video.

Fabulous. A welcome distraction for sure but what does it have to do with baby signs, Pam? Well, I will tell you: words.

I love words. Spoken. Written. Sung. Signed.

My earliest memories are of my mother sitting on my bed, singing me to sleep and of my father sitting in the chair beside my bed, reading with the same intent. It dawned on me as I listened to Webb’s words and watched the youtube montage of signs and banners crying for peace and justice, that words are my life.

We rely on a great deal on visual arts to pass on history but interpretation only reaches so far. Words in speech, in song, in document make the very fiber of our traditions. Even if my child is not the next great orator (my dad thought that John Kennedy Stennett would fill out our request for John “K-name” Stennett template) it is, I have decided, quite fitting that my child should be exposed to, if not proficient in as many forms of, communication as possible.

Baby Signing: 1
Pam: 0

Boobie Trap

During the summer between my junior and senior years of college, I found myself seated next to a woman who had the unmistakable look of a Talker. No book. No lap top. Cellphone already off. Arms and face wide open for her seatmate. The equivalent of walking into your freshman dorm room and finding Elle Woods as your roommate. As I was bound for Los Angeles from Boston, I froze in my tracks, taking stock of the plane in hopes of an empty seat I could slide into to avoid engaging in the banal exchange of minutia that usually ensues with people who were never taught that cramped quarters were not the place for over exuberant small talk.
Unfortunately, at my moment of possible escape, the captain informed the plane that we were flying a packed ship, today. I sighed and leaned back in my seat, taking on a look of what I thought said "do not engage".
Not only did this approach not head off conversation but The Talker but she launched into a full disclosure of her line of work: A lactation consultant. Sure, I knew all about why a woman should breastfeed and the horrors of Nestle and the like with their formula wielding techniques but I didn't need to discuss the politics and racial dynamics of it when my breathing space was limited.
About twenty minutes into the conversation, I began to pay attention. It was actually pretty interesting from a social activism point of view but all I retained from the conversation was that she and her organization were hoping to get trendy breastfeeding musicians and or their trendy breastfeeding partners to speak out in favor of it to ramp up the popularity. I had, at that point, no intention of having children, never mind getting involved with other people's breasts.

Four and a half years after that conversation, I found myself back on a lengthy air journey, this time from Boston to Atlanta. My personal scenery had changed dramatically. Being the first passenger to board, I had time to get settled. I put down my whistle-blowing, birthing expose by famed OBGYN and former WHO member, Marsden Wagner, unclipped my son from his cushy baby carrier around my torso and tucked myself into the window seat to feed him before the rest of my flightmates boarded.

Perhaps it was the conversation from half a decade before that made me a little bit self consious about breastfeeding in closed quarters. I knew that it was the best thing for my baby and I fed him, hooter hider in use of course, at the mall, the park, the bookstore, restaurants, and the like but I had never been quite this close to someone else at the time. I had managed to feed him quickly on the flight up after much deliberation. The man next to me stared out the window the entire time glancing over occasionally peeked over to see if I was done. After all was finished, I quickly put my coverup away and ignoring my cardinal rule of rowmate silence, I decided to chat with him to perhaps make his look of agony disappear. asked him he was a BC, man, given his jacket. Well yes he was. Well what did he think of that young Matt Ryan? The color slowly evened out in his face and he began to breathe normally again, no longer in the excruciating discomfort as he seemed to be in a moment before. We discussed football for an hour and a half, easing tension on both sides.

I had decided that I would probably try to avoid such awkwardness on the return flight and so there I was nursing my son to sleep when a woman and her male partner sidled into my row. I looked up, a little crushed that the flight would again be full enough to eliminate this bizarre new need for personal space. What I saw nearly knocked me of the seat. The woman had her nine month old infant in an Ergo (see: cushy baby carrier). What luck! We could sit together and wear our little cover ups and feed our little boys together with no need for apologies!

No sooner had we greeted one another and settled in than I noticed something amiss. My fellow mile high mom did not intend to use a cover up. Alright then, change of plans. Maybe this would be my chance to breastfeed in public without the silly contraption that looked like an oversized bib covering my son's head while he ate without completely exposing myself to a plane full of people who didn't want to see The Ladies. I could finally be comfortable and maybe I could just use my sweatshirt wing to make the transition a little bit easier.

I was well on my way to being one happy mama when the flight attendant came by and told us that there had been a mistake and I would need to switch to the other side of the aisle as there are four oxygen masks in each row and they could not have five people in a row. Now, instead of breastfeeding heaven, I was in hell. My displacement had caused a man who looked suspiciously similar to the BC fan (read: old, male and uptight) between us. I had noticed his discerning looks as the other mom had simply lifted up her shirt sans any cover. On my other side was a girl who had told me as we were waiting to board, was going into her senior year of college.

Great. I was at risk for making two people uncomfortable. Compounded with the trickiness of making my non-breastfeeding neighbors uncomfortable , I now had the added pressure of my other mother who I wouldn't want to offend by covering up if SHE wasn't covering up.

I was trapped.

Fortunately, there is nothing quite like a screaming baby to make one act fast. Kai looked like he was going to explode and I knew that this was the time to sink or swim. With one deep breath, I smiled at all parties, donned my nursing cover, and fed my son. No one was uncomfortable. No one even seemed to notice what I was doing and the mom across the aisle was busy feeding her son.

Looking back on my three airborne breastfeeding experiences, one of which failed to actually include feeding at all, I would like to say that I feel somewhat evolved. From blushing audience to uncomfortable experimenter and finally a potentially shunned feminist for not showing everything off, I had made progress. Some may say it's a compromise between the two extremes: breastfeeding sans cover and breastfeeding in a closet but I think that this is just my style. It affords those who would rather discuss up and coming quarter backs the luxury of not having to look away and also allows my to be true to myself and my son.

Hopefully the college student next to me wasn't too horrified. Any who knows, even if she was, she may be writing similar story in four and a half years.

And the teacher becomes the student

I will admit that, before I became a mom, I bought into the idea of parents as teachers. After all, with the amount of learning paraphenellia targeted at babies and new parents one might be under the false impression that it was, in fact, the babies who were doing the learning. Baby sign language CD's, trilingual picture books, genetic swabbing kits to determine your pintsize child's athletic leanings at the age of one day to better assure he or she is taught the correct sport. All of these things simply facilitated my image of the ongoing tradition of an older, wiser, authoritative figure. I would teach my child to read, build rockets, to meditate, to value other people and their differing faiths while holding strong his own convictions.
Imagine my surprise, then, when nearly nine months following my son's entrance into the world, I realized the tables had not turned but had been upside down from day one. I was not the teacher but rather a very attentive, albeit unknowingly so, student.
My concessions thus far include but are not limited to the following:
My myriad implements of mass instruction are of little use aside from cutting teeth via The Baby Signs book. High pitched whining ensues when anything related to the baby composer or artist of your choice are introduced. Lights and buttons which in some universe are intended to inspire counting and architectural skills hold attention for limited seconds.
To compound the frustration in learning that my hightech academic toys are all for not, it appears that the very same items translated into adult toys have unending allure and fascination. The baby remote control, given its whiring lights and baby songs, seems to me a potential attention holder. It is not. However, daddy's highly coveted HD 3,300 channel remote that should never be drooled on is the end goal of many a baby trek across the livingroom, over couch pillows and laps. The draw seems to be that daddy often holds it and baby can never have it as the same fascination is not applied to a similar, albeit, old remote with batteries extracted. This same theory applies to keys. Baby keys, with their gummy, teething friendly surfaces and bulky features are old news to a pre toddler who has found his mother's grimy, sharp, worn key chain. In an attempt to compromise, I found a few unused drugstore and book shop discount cards, the ones with the little holes for a keychain, and made the baby his own set of mother approved, sanitary items. This was a valiant but futile effort. The same follows with books. I understand that some amount of chewing will happen at this stage but if board books are made for such things why do my novels seem to make it to Kai's mouth more than Good Night Moon? A valuable lesson, I'm sure, this idea of intended playthings falling by the wayside and wayside items used as teething and playthings. A similar lecture might be given on intended food substances used as playthings but forever greeted with a closed mouth screwed into a grimace. Hand the child a carrot stick and it it returned to you with a less than pleased expression. Hand the kid an orange crayon and down the hatch it goes.
I could sit down to tea and list millions of tiny, minute instances where the above patterns come in to play but what does it all mean? Perhaps more than simple observations of a pattern repeating is the overall lesson of flexibility. Intentions are honorable until a certain point. In my case that point came at delivery. Parenthood arrived and as flexible as I thought I was, I had another flex coming.

High Expectations

Overnight, Faye had slipped effortlessly over the Florida coast and was pounding heavily against Atlanta in all of her tropical glory. Five-month-old Kai and I had done all we could within the confines of our house and finally surrendered to the call of something more daring, even if it meant braving the elements. We packed our belongings for the day and began our journey to The Lourve by way of Atlanta's High Museum of Fine Art. I was unsure about what our outcome would be regarding interest level but mommy, baby and sling were about to find out.

Externally, Meir's stark, white washed, cubicle compilation differs greatly from the more organically ornate Louvre but the difference melts upon entrance to the first installment of the museums' inter-collection loan exhibit. We were greeted, in the lobby, by Tiber, an enormous tribute to the birth of Rome's Romulus and Remus and beckoned up the hall's staircase by pieces from the Fertile Crescent dating back to nearly 3000 BCE. Several pieces into the exhibit, the question of interest, regardless of subjective understanding, was answered. I peaked down at my partner, snuggled closely to my body, to delightfully discover that my eyes were not the only pair taking in the sights. Kai, incidentally, a globally diverse name, was spellbound.

As we traveled through the exhibit, from modern day urban, Atlanta to Paris' age of excavation, resting in the very cradle of civilization and ultimately landing in Houdon's collection of Enlightenment inspired busts, my partner in crime readily welcomed my explanations of each offering. Not yet able to understand the subtleties in hieroglyphic relief, nor yet learned enough to truly comprehend the difference between the writings of Ben Franklin and Voltaire, my cohort seemed to enjoy his first glance into one of the world's most vast and renowned collections.

Five hours after our entrance, we emerged a happy and intellectually fulfilled pair to surprisingly clear skies. Over all, it was quite an auspicious, albeit domestic, beginning to a global citizenship.