April Book Report: All You Can Ever Know

One side effect of the staying-at-home lifestyle we all have going on is the amount of time I now have to read. Books are my joy, my relaxation, my comfort, and my near-constant thought.  A good amount of my daydreaming time is spent thinking about what I’ve just read, what I am reading now, and what I will read next.

Among the books that keep coming back to my mind is Nicole Chung’s memoir of adoption, All You Can Ever Know which I read earlier this month.  Chung grew up in rural Oregon, the Korean-American daughter of a white couple.  Much loved as a child, she knew one story of her adoption, a standard story of biological parents unable to look after a child and adoptive parents with much love to share.  The story was a comfort when Chung was a little girl, but as she grew up, she longed for more information.  The longing was as much about her Korean identity as anything else.  It became more central to her sense of self when she was pregnant with her first child.

As she details her search for information about her biological family, she reflects on her on sense of identity as a child and now an adult woman.  She is thinking and writing about herself as a daughter, both adopted and biological, as a mother and, as she will find out, a sister.  As she makes sense of her adoption, it is a story that is personal to her.  But for the reader, the story is also universal, a reflection on love and family, on the stories we know about our identity and the stories we imagine about ourselves.  

The writing is beautiful and Chung’s unfolding of identity and its shifting meaning in a woman’s world is emotional.  I found her story powerful and thoughts about it have echoed in my mind since I finished the book.  To me, that is the very essence of the power of reading.  

Two Decades

Twenty years ago this day, I became a mama just after midnight when a certain young man with shiny dark eyes agreed to make his  appearance.

Two decades.  

It’s rather hard to believe how quickly 20 years have passed.  As I think about my 20 year old college boy, I’m struck not by how much things have changed but rather by how much of JT at 20 could be seen when he was just a little boy.

When JT was 7 and discovered that high school kids didn’t get daily recess and PE class, he recoiled at such a notion.  In his mind, there were three reasons to attend school: PE, recess, and Field Day.  The rest of school was sometimes interesting but mostly time spent waiting for the good parts.  That same year, he asked why people walked places when they could run.  The signs were all there.

By the time he was in high school, he’d made his peace with the lack of recess and daily PE class.  Consolation came in the form of athletic teams and after school practice.  When it came time for him to select a college, I wasn’t surprised that he chose Springfield College.

If PE had a college, it would be Springfield.  He’s happy there, taking classes that interest and inspire him, running mile after mile with his teammates, and growing into an opinionated and kind-hearted young man.  Today, he’s in classes at college and I won’t get to give him a birthday hug.  But I sent him a package and a handmade card with my annual birthday note.  He knows that he is a well-loved and lucky young man.  

Twenty years blew past me in the blink of an eye but I will never forget his first day in this world; the day that I became a lucky mama. Happy Birthday, sweet boy.  Your mama loves you.

September Book Report: Nella Last’s War

The British Mass Observation Archive was set up in 1937 as a project to encourage everyday English men and women to write down their thoughts and observations.   Nella Last, a 49 year old housewife with two grown sons in their 20s, joined the project in 1939, as World War II began.   The Mass Observation archive collected diaries from 500 ordinary English observers and by all accounts Nella Last’s were among the most compelling.

Nella Last lived with her husband in Barrow-in-Furness, an English ship-building town that was bombed repeatedly by the Germans during the war.   Over the course of the war, Nella worked as a volunteer in the local service member canteen, helped at the local hospital, and eventually she helped to manage a second-hand shop whose proceeds benefitted Red Cross packages for POWs.  In terms of war service, Nella’s talents seem to lie in her ability to keep up her spirits and the spirits of those around her.  She was a good manager of people and a good cook, using her talents to cleverly make-do with the food rations available and she was crafty, seeming to always be knitting sweaters and socks and making stuffed toys for children that sold well in the second-hand shop.

As she records her observations, it’s clear that Nella Last found that she very much enjoyed writing.  She participated in Mass Observation longer than most, writing from  1939 to 1965.  Her journals of the war years were eventually published in 1981.  During the war, Nella had all the concerns of a mother her age: anxiety about her sons, fear of the blitz, and the sadness of watching her friends and her community cope with the losses of the war.  She was also working outside her home for the first time in her life, as a volunteer, but increasingly aware of the power of her labor.  

The personal purpose Nella felt in her work seemed to re-inform her whole sense of the world and her place in it.  These reflections were powerful to me from an historical point of view.  I know that participation in war work in the 1940s fueled the feminist movement of the 1960s and in Nella’s writing was a practical example of how that work outside the home changed women.  In particular, Nella’s ability to use her cooking skills and clever ways in the face of scant resources is much-appreciated in the soldiers’ canteen.  Nella has cooked for her husband for all her married life and reflects that he rarely offered any appreciation of her ability and talents.  During the war, she finds that she likes to be appreciated.  She lets her husband know this.  

Nella’s thoughts on motherhood and her sons’ making their way in the world were also informative to me.  More than seventy years later than Nella, I too am living life without my child at home.  As I read of Nella’s worries about her sons as they fought in WWII, I experienced my first weeks with a child away at college.  Like Nella, I want my son to make his way in the world.  Like Nella, I am proud of how he has grown up.  Unlike Nella, who worried about her boys in a war, I had the comfort of a much-loved child being away but in the relative safety of college.  The perspective was a powerful reminder of my blessings and of the centuries of mothers before me who have had to endure the horror of sending their sons to war.

There was so much in this book to both enjoy and reflect upon.  Nella Last participated in the Mass Observation Project because she was an ordinary woman.  But in both her thoughtful writings about the world of war and her observations about the role of women and mothers within it, she is extraordinary and a reminder that there is so much to be found in the stories and history of  regular folks.

Reflections on Motherhood

The backstory:

I’ve been thinking about motherhood of late.  What follows is the last in a few entries on that topic.  I caution that these opinions are mine alone and reflect my experience as a mother.  My goal isn’t to offend but is to share my point of view and lay down on (digital) paper some things about motherhood that I have come to believe.  

Looking After Solitary Moms

None of the thoughts of in these posts on solitary moms are meant to suggest that no one can help mom-on-their-own.  In fact, she needs help and even if she isn’t quite ready to welcome it, the offer will be appreciated.  So offer to help.  Keep offering.  One day she’ll say yes.

Affirm what is right and good in her world.  When you see her happy children, tell her.  She thinks they are happy; she prays that they are happy.  But in the darkness of her nights, she fears that they aren’t.  So tell her when you see it.  She and her family need that affirmation.

Solitary mom can and does appreciate your family but it wouldn’t hurt to be gentle when you speak to her about your own challenges.  Sure, your life is sometimes a struggle.  But if in the midst of your struggle, if you have the help and support of a life partner, that difference matters .  Appreciate what that means for you and be aware of what it means for her that she doesn’t have help in that same sure way.

Above all, let’s take care to value everyone’s families, even those that are not in the traditional mode of our privileged world.  We are stronger for one another and it doesn’t hurt to remember that.

Reflections on Motherhood

The backstory:

I’ve been thinking about motherhood of late.  What follows is the next a series of entries on that topic.  I caution that these opinions are mine alone and reflect my experience as a mother.  My goal isn’t to offend but is to share my point of view and lay down on (digital) paper some things about motherhood that I have come to believe.

Life for the Solitary Mama

At its heart, my reflections on the life of solitary moms are my recognition that being a parent on your own is a challenge of a whole different order, one only truly knowable to the mothers who experience it.  Even the most independently-minded woman will find that when she is a solitary mama, she needs help.  It may be something as simple as opening the door for her laden stroller.  But that’s really just a symbol of the difficulties a working solitary mom faces.  In every element of her world, a mom-on-her-own is aware of the many ways in which the day’s outcome falls solely and squarely on her shoulders.  

From morning until night, no part of  her day is immune from that underlying sense of responsibility for her child’s life.  It can be small matters of no serious consequence —— good golly, that is an inadequate breakfast I just fed my child.  It can be huge matters of great consequence —— how will I ensure that this child can read? can learn to love with abandon? can master long division? Here the list of anxieties is virtually endless and a mama on her own can be crushed under the burden of them.

Survival dictates that the solitary mom pack up her free-flowing anxieties for unboxing later.  Instead, each day she marches forward Getting Things Done.  Feed the child, feed the pets, get a shower, get to work, stock the fridge, make the supper, love and laugh with my child, find some joy to cling to, and then fall into bed for much-needed rest before it all starts again the next morning.  For the solitary mom, the demands of daily life can be a useful tonic, keeping the mind focused on the here and now.  

But even in the comfort of the here and now, the mama on her own realizes the huge ways that it all rests of her shoulders.  When you are the only parent present, the here and now is mighty demanding enough.  Uncertainty and the future are downright terrifying.  The common cold is unpleasant for all of us but for the solitary mom it’s a forced march.  There is no help on the horizon and she can’t falter.  A bigger health crisis could quite literally mean disaster.  So that fear must be shut away as much as possible.

Support from friends and family is the only way to make it through.  Even that support may be a double-edged sword, as it sometimes carries with it the reminder of what is absent in solitary mom’s world.   The only way forward is to share her joys with those who will listen and to hope others still  believe in the adage that it takes a village to raise a child.  Solitary mom knows she needs that village.  I wish that the village always understood the value solitary mom’s strength brings the community in return.

Reflections on Motherhood

The backstory:

I’ve been thinking about motherhood of late.  What follows is the second entry on that topic.  The first can be found here.  I caution that these opinions are mine alone and reflect my experience as a mother.  My goal isn’t to offend but is to share my point of view and lay down on (digital) paper some things about motherhood that I have come to believe.  

Public Motherhood 

In my world, a world primarily made up of privileged upper middle class families, there is no greater distinction in our families than the way that people treat single working mothers who are on their own, women I call solitary mothers.  In this landscape, mothers on their own became a kind of public property because of their relative rarity in the world of the upper middle class.  

Well-meaning people will comment on her status, whether kindly or not, in a way that suggests that mom-on-her-own is public property; that her life is fair game for the commentary of others.  The whereabouts of her former partner; her choice to be a one-parent household; her daily life as a mom-on-her-own; her dating status….all are subjects for discussion.  In my own life, I diffused these comments by being forthcoming.  That’s not a path every solitary mom can or wants to take.  Quite frankly, it’s not a choice she should have to make.  

Even the most innocuous or seemingly well-meaning aside can be uncomfortable when you feel the full responsibility for the young life in your care.  This is complicated when your status as mom-on-your own wasn’t the life plan you had in mind.  It’s not always easy to hold the pieces of your world together if your heart is hurting or you fear you’ve somehow let your beloved child down.  You are experiencing motherhood in a way that isn’t reflected in the rest of your world, from your own family experience to your friends and co-workers.  And now people, even well-meaning people, comment: Where is dad? Aren’t holidays on their own lonely?  Do you miss the help of someone else?

I have heard these comments and many more; solitary mamas reading here are nodding their heads because they have experienced the same.  When my middle schoolers are unkind to one another, I gently remind them that everyone has a hard journey and that we should hold our tongues unless our observations will help.   I wish I’d had the guts to repeat that to busy-bodies when someone else’s solitary mom status was the topic of unwanted discussion.  Women raising children on their own need our support and confidence, not our commentary.

Reflections on Motherhood

The backstory:

I’ve been thinking about motherhood of late.  What follows is the first of a few entries on that topic.  I caution that these opinions are mine alone and reflect my experience as a mother.  My goal isn’t to offend but is to share my point of view and lay down on (digital) paper some things about motherhood that I have come to believe.  

Solitary Motherhood

In my life and work, I know a number of what society calls single moms, women who are unmarried and raising children.  They aren’t all single, per se, so that designation feels inexact to me.  The phrase single mother isn’t really the whole of what I mean, because motherhood of this variety isn’t just about not being  partnered with the the father (or other parent) of your child.  The women I am talking about are involved in raising a child (or children) primarily on their own while also working outside the home.  To me they are therefore a category on their own.  I call them solitary moms.  

I’m not a father, so I don’t know for a fact that what I’m about to write about solitary motherhood isn’t true for solitary fatherhood, but all that I know about our social and cultural world tells me that there is a huge difference in how society treats mothers and fathers, especially those who are on their own.  Over the years, these distinctions have frustrated me because I think that society often makes life for solitary moms more difficult than it needs to be.  More on that in my next post on motherhood.