JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

Mothers, let’s unionize! If only we had benefits…like sick time. Last week I caught a bad cold and now my two year old and I have pink eye. Our insurance coverages are sufficient and I’m not hoping for a pension, retirement account or many other perks that can come with employment and union membership. However, I could use some sick time. Especially with Ted traveling, I wish for moments of rest, a break from bath supervision at night or dinner dish duty, ways my husband usually helps me. During weeks like this one, when I drag myself through the day, I imagine what mothering could be, if it were a paid position. Flipping through a copy of Fast Company and skimming an article on motivation – or rather, demotivation (not on-line yet) – encouraged me to consider what keeps me going. These weeks of sickness and isolation discourage me the most as a mom.

Where are the benefits of motherhood? I am finding them here and there, in bits and pieces as I try to relax, despite the difficulties. When we play guessing games at dinner and hide-and-seek in the house. When I go to wake my daughter from her nap and she smiles up at me, sleepy and happy, looking at me with her eyes, one healthy and one pink, like mine, I know I have something. I might not have sick or vacation time to relieve me from my responsibilities. But I have many benefits. More than I can count.

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Note:

Since I wrote this piece, I’ve started to feel better. I read Jenny’s post from her Tuesday and wondered why I was complaining! Little gifts from the kids and friends, acts of kindness and care, have helped me too.

I was able to find some time to polish and publish posts…more to come…

My apologies to Amanda Witt: I hope this post doesn’t cause her or anyone else too much pain. Literally…

Monday morning I was listening to NPR when I heard a story on synesthesia that fascinated me. For Pianist, Music Unleashes Rainbows of Color:

When pianist Laura Rosser performs, she hears more than sounds. She hears colors — each note has its own associated hue. Rosser has a rare neurological condition called synesthesia. Stimulation of one sense produces the sensation of another.

Synesthesia is rare. Perhaps one person in several thousand has it. Most of these people don’t have the form that allows them to perceive sounds as colors.

I don’t have synesthesia, but my first reaction was to want it. How cool it would be to hear colors in music!

Then as synchronicity would have it, I read Amanda Witt’s post What color is Saturday? in which she described her own synesthesia.

Only some of the letters have colors for me; but color infiltrates elsewhere. One example: When I’m in severe pain, I see the color orange; so when I was in labor, instead of telling Jonathan, “It hurts so much,” I said, “There’s so much orange.” Conversely, the color orange strikes me like a physical pain, and if I am visually assaulted by it for very long, I’ll develop a bad headache.

I realized that if I had synesthesia I might not like orange (or other colors) as much as I do. Orange was associated with pain for Amanda Witt and discordant music for Laura Rosser. Recently though I can’t stop staring at my tulips.

That afternoon at Home Depot (a store that is rather orange in itself), I couldn’t resist taking a couple poppies home with me. On the phone earlier that day I had mentioned to someone who is mentoring me in one aspect of my life that I was sick and Ted was traveling. Do something for yourself she said, suggesting a babysitter. Instead of a sitter, I got myself fiery flowers.

With their crinkly colorful petals, the Icelandic poppies reminded me of crepe paper bouquets we kids would make at school for Mother’s Day. So captivated was I, I stopped the cart in the store a few times to try to take a picture and I even snuck one on the way home at a stop light…

I can’t imagine the color orange giving me pain. Or seeing orange when I am in pain. Since learning about synesthesia, I can’t think of colors the same. Periwinkle sonatas and vibrant alphabets sound enticing, glimpses of a world I wish I could enter, additional dimensions I’ll never know. But I’ll be content admiring my poppies.

Sexuality Education teacher Kathie McCarthy in a piece posted at Bainbridge Buzz expressed her concerns over the definition of being sexual and the intimate activities kids as young as 13 pursue with each other in a casual, recreational way. While not surprised by the separation of sex and love (quoting lyrics from the musical Hair), she is disturbed by the idea that teens could believe physical intimacy does not affect them in other ways. Kathie McCarthy questioned: How did this happen?

While considering Kathie McCarthy’s questions, earlier this week I read Jay McCarthy’s link (no relation to Kathie, I’m assuming) to Dave Gordon’s interview with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. The rabbi, author of books such as Kosher Sex seemed to offer an apt explanation:

Something changed. It’s the inability to be vulnerable. No one can make love with their clothes on. How much moreso you can’t fall in love with your clothes on. We have this great fear of being dependent.

I’ve asked women in female audiences around the world, it’s so funny to see this – no matter where you are, be it a non-Jewish audience in the Netherlands two months ago, to Jewish audiences in New York, “who here needs a man?” You will see three or four hands go up. I don’t mean three or four percent, I mean three or four hands. And then I say to them, “Do you need a refrigerator?” All the hands go up. The inability to be vulnerable is the problem: it’s the depth personality not the surface personality that has to fall in love.

Now that we no longer see love as a need, but as a luxury, what’s the definition of a luxury? A luxury always has to be the best.

Vulnerability is not a value of our society. I know for myself that it was the way I felt crushed as a child that led me to vow I would never marry. I never wanted to be dependent on anyone. How I ended up where I am today is a long story of love.

Love requires vulnerability. Love is not a luxury. Love is a need. Love leads you to becoming dependent, not co-dependent, but needing someone in a way that feels uncomfortable according to our cultural standards. [note: even using the word dependent here seems strange – it;s a word that seems more appropriate for tax returns than marriage, but perhaps that is my own bias. What word best expresses that deep bond?]

I was frightened when I realized I loved Ted enough that it would hurt if our relationship ended. I had to let go in order to let love work in us. It is scary to be dependent, to see that I had released part of myself to someone else, to know that I had become fragile and vulnerable with another person. As a girl, all I wanted was to be a woman. I wanted to be an independent adult, someone no one would hurt again. I made detailed plans for a life that would make me successful and strong but also ensure I would stay single. It didn’t take many years of womanhood to show me that the life I thought I wanted was a lonely one, devoid of love.

When we give of ourselves in an intimate way with another person, whether physical, emotional or spiritual, a bond is formed. I believe we can separate the physical from the other aspects of ourselves. Or at least we think we can. Love and sex divorce. We can seem to separate our bodies from our souls. Yet no matter what we do with our outsides, invisible imprints are left inside us.

Like Kathie, I also am disturbed to see children experimenting in a casual public way with what is private, personal, intense and intimate. However, I wonder whether these adolescents who seem to separate their outsides from their insides and deny their own vulnerability have been forced to grow up fast. Perhaps if we treasured our children in their dependency rather than encouraging independence as soon as possible, they would understand more the intricate and intimate connections of relationships. Protection is crucial. In my own childhood I didn’t feel protected, and the pain led me to long for a life of impermeability. Perhaps if we protected our children better, they would protect themselves more.

Postscript: Insight from Dave Pollard on emotional disconnection:

I’ve known a number of very wealthy people, and in those environments emotional disconnection seems almost endemic. Parents are detached in showing affection (or any other emotion) to their children, they’re often physically absent, the kids go to private schools where they associate only with others of their ‘station’, they learn all the social graces but never seem very comfortable with other people, almost as if they’ve lived their lives in a bubble. They tend to either conform to a disturbing degree or all-out rebel at some point in their lives, and substance abuse and other addictions are common among them in adolescence and early adulthood (sound like any politicians you know?)

Saturday night [April 16] my daughter danced on stage in a sold-out show at the Bainbridge Playhouse. In her lavender leotard, Abigail was one of many participating in her ballet studio’s first recital.

This was the first time Ted and I sat in the audience and watched one of our children perform. We homeschool and try to keep our schedule simple, enrolling our kids in few activities. The recital was optional and Abigail decided she wanted to participate. So it was a strange experience to leave her backstage, adorned with costume and cosmetics, and take our seats in the theater, waiting for her performance.

I don’t know who was more nervous: my daughter or her mother. What would she do on stage? Would she remember her steps? Would she dance? What would the group do?

Her class of six and seven year olds was welcomed into the theater with gasps – not the audible nerves of parents like myself but the delighted coos of audience members commenting on the girls’ cuteness. They were the youngest ones in the recital and although I don’t think of my oldest daughter as little, it was easy to see in comparison to the accomplished students how young they were. And as an audience member, not as a mom critiquing my work with hair and makeup, I could see they were cute too. Their choreography was challenging but they all did well, turning with their partners together in time to the music. How fun to look and see my daughter smiling and spinning on the stage with her friends!

The community aspect of the recital was also fun. It was great to be greeted at the door by Philippe who is a Bainbridge blogger and father of dancers. I enjoyed spending part of an afternoon selling cookies for the performance. Although we parents often maintain our own orbits and distances, appearing in the studio only when it is time to drive our daughters again, I enjoyed spending time working together with other mothers to help benefit the studio.

Due to my mistakes – or my mothering -, I don’t have any pictures of Abigail dancing on stage. The opportunity to take photographs happened at the dress rehearsal. But I was so excited for Abigail that once she came on stage with her ensemble, even for the rehearsal, I forgot about the camera, enchanted, watching to see what would happen. I had to apologize to her later and I’m grateful she forgave me. Now I understand what happened to Ted in the delivery room. When Michaela and Elisabeth were born, he too forgot about taking pictures, so involved and excited was he.

But I do have a couple pictures I’d like to share from the rest of the recital, taken at the dress rehearsal. I was amazed to see what the other students are accomplishing. I only know what the six and seven year olds can do.

One of my favorite pieces was Almost Nirvana in which senior Lindy Piehl danced with a ribbon, forming elegant lines and movements to Coldplay’s song Clocks

The dancer spun the ribbon around her, creating a romantic and enchanting scene. As the song played, the ribbon turned into spinning circles, like clocks turning through time. I confess I was partial to the turquoise lights and dress as well as the music but I think the silvery rotating ribbon and Lindy mesmerized many. Almost Nirvana was an exercise in physics and an example of beauty and mastery, nearly nirvana indeed.

Another fun piece happened to Napoleon Dynamite’s “Whatever I feel like” soundbite, followed by the song “I Want Candy”. The Gears group, which encourages creative movement and fun, immersed themselves in bright costumes, becoming animated faceless figures bouncing a baseball, with the help of their teacher, Guy Sidora, like a scene from a cartoon come alive.

After this piece in the dress rehearsal, my four year old Michaela proclaimed “That was fabulous!”

Our two year old came home from the performance talking about being a tummy dancer. Yes, the studio has belly dancers.

Abigail, after the dress rehearsal said Now everyone knows who I am because I’ve been on stage

No, I wanted to correct her. Everyone knows who you are when you have a blog!

Our dancing daughter went to her bed that night (after her bath to remove the layers of hair gel!) bouncing about in excitement spelling b-a-l-l-e-t.

I don’t know if Abigail will become a ballerina. From statistics it’s clear that odds are against her. But I’m glad she likes to dance. I want her to dream. I’m happy to see her happy. I’m glad to see the ways she is learning and growing through the experiences. I see also that I am learning and growing through my own fears and feelings as she dances. As a ballet mommy, I am becoming more grateful for the gifts my daughters are.

Yes, she danced. My daughter danced on stage. And something inside me danced with her too.