Dr. Mama Esq.

These Are My Confessions

January 9, 2010April 27, 2010 Dr. Mama Esq.20 Comments

(Alternatively, this post could be called “Doing it, and doing it, and doing it well (?)”)

I am not a good mother. At least not by the standards that have been set up for the current generation of a certain ilk of mothers. A generation who is expected to place their children at the center of their universe, and make all decisions about their adult life revolve around what is supposedly best for the child. A generation that is expected to sacrifice their own happiness to make sure their children are happy. A generation that has been fed the idea that having children is a choice, therefore if you choose to do it, you must accept all the self-sacrificing consequences that go along with it.

The other day, I attended a meeting where the topic to be discussed was having children while in grad school. I was supposed to be a co-facilitator in this hour-long discussion, but I ended up being about 20 minutes late. My lateness was due to the fact that I had to take Ahmir to school, and I underestimated how long it would take to ride our bikes there, because he rode really slow. Then I got the room where the meeting was to have taken place, only to find it had been moved somewhere else. Campus buildings are not numbered in any rational way, so I had to find a map to find the building. So I was really late.

When I walked in the room, one of the first things I heard a new-ish mother saying was that she judges whether to go to certain meetings or conferences by whether they are “worth it” to leave her child, like the thing that doesn’t involve her child has to be really really great in order to justify not being with her daughter. And I immediately had to comment that that was not my experience at all; I went to meetings or conferences or had lunch or coffee with people just because I wanted to. I don’t justify things based on how important they are in relation to my kids – that bar would be really too high.

My world does not center around my children. I do not make all decisions about what I do depending on whether they are “more important” than spending time with my family. Having down time to do whatever I truly feel like doing, which many times is NOT being with my kids, is really important too.

And so my confession is this: while many people find the balance between work and family/children to be that they are giving too much to family (because they want to) and not enough to work, I find myself in the opposite position – according to the mainstream standard, I give too much to work and leisure and not enough to family. My children are not the center of my world. But I bristle at the thought that this means I love my children any less than the next mother. I do breathe a certain sigh of relief when I leave my house in the morning, going to do what I really love to do, which is to read and research and write. But I also know they are in very loving hands, doing arts and dancing, singing and playing, getting undivided attention that they simply wouldn’t get from me.

Part of my lack of mainstream mothering is my upbringing – I’ve watched women give their all to their children, against what I think they really wanted to do, and I think they were not happy doing so. I don’t ever want to resent my children for stealing my dreams. On the other hand though, my parents had lives that did not involve me – my dad was a musician and played gigs away from home, and my mom also went to school. So I saw them doing it, living lives separate and apart from us kids. Another part is my personality – the need to always be learning some esoteric academic discipline runs deep, and always being with my kids, even if I could be, would simply not work. I’m on the computer, they’re under my feet, climbing all over me. I can give an hour or two, but the pull of books or the computer is really strong. I am really independent and an extroverted introvert too – I need alone time until I don’t need it anymore. And alone means without my kids. Another part has been mental illness – I have bipolar disorder, and when I’m manic, I cannot sit still, least of all in my house, with my kids. And when I’m depressed, I’m no good to anyone. Those things I’m getting under control, but the first two I’m learning to accept instead of trying to change.

Why could I also call this post “Doing it, and doing it, and doing it well (?)” ? Because I’ve become sort of a “face” of graduate student motherhood around here, a person who so far is successfully juggling motherhood and grad school. I’m a really excellent student. On the outside, I seem like I really have it all together. But am I really doing it well? 2009 saw me get 2 major diagnoses – one of fibromyalgia and another of bipolar disorder, and a week-long stay in the hospital when it all came crashing down on me. Not quite the success story everyone expected. But as a result, I’m learning a great lesson, and I don’t think I have the same perspective as many folks. While I want to get my degrees, more than anything I want to be a type of mother that shows the world that neither your children nor your research has to be the absolute center of your life to be a “good” academic mommy. If you meet my children, you will meet happy kids, well-mannered kids, kids that know they are loved by their mama, kids who know their mama needs to do her work, locks them out of her bedroom when she’s busy, a mama who goes to the doctor and yoga several times a week. A mother who isn’t just their mommy, but also has a life of her own. If you meet my professors, you will meet people who know I have children, ’cause I do bring them to events, I talk about them in class, I explain that the impetus of much of my research is the fact that I’m a parent. A grad student who also has a life outside of grad school.

Neither things are the picture of perfection judged on their own. But my ultimate confession and what I am trying to really do well is to place myself, and really my God, at the center of my universe. Placing my health and well-being at the center of my universe and knowing in doing that everything will be okay. Happy and healthy mamas lead to healthy and happy children. If it makes you happy to make your children the center of your universe, then go ahead and do so. But I want to let some of you know that you don’t have to, and that’s okay too. That’s my confession.

sugar and spice

January 5, 2010April 27, 2010 Dr. Mama Esq.7 Comments

While I now have a great relationship with my mother, it wasn’t always the case. While I know I could always do as Martha is now doing in the case of an emergency, growing up I felt like I had to keep most of who I really was bottled inside. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I feel like I had the common black girl-black mama relationship with my mother, where children should be seen and not heard, where mothers don’t talk much about sex except to say keep your legs shut, where tears are not tolerated and often met with threats of “shut up that noise or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

At the time, I admit that I felt unloved. It’s strange because on one hand in my head I knew my mother loved me, but in my heart I didn’t always feel it because I had to hold so much of who I was inside. To me, being able to be all that I am, allowed to have that space, is the truest expression of love. And I didn’t have that. I played the good girl all of my childhood. I wasn’t allowed to express anger or any negative emotion, so it all got bottled up as sadness, and eventually, depression. I never got into trouble, except to play in my mother’s makeup, which was a very bad idea, or to lose things, which was even worse because we didn’t have much to lose. At school I eventually learned to rebel in a good girl kind of way, using my intelligence as a weapon against my teachers, constantly challenging them in a way I was never allowed to at home. I would watch the television dramas of white girls yelling and screaming at their mothers, truly believing that if the thought ever crossed my mind, I should probably die because once my mother found out, I would.

But now, I have my own little girl. And let me tell you, she is nothing like me. Or maybe she is everything like me, but not yet “changed” like I was, having had the rebel forcibly removed. She’s two, and terrible. She throws ten minute tantrums when she doesn’t get her way, and she is very particular and specific about what her way is. She does not want her food cut, and insists on eating her food hot out the oven with no time to cool off. If cookies are in her line of sight around dinnertime, the tantrum must just run its course before she will even entertain the idea of eating dinner before dessert. Bedtime is sometimes smooth, other times consists of high pitched yells of nonsense for upwards of 30 minutes. She prefers her curly afro and resists the comb, but she likes to look “pretty” with ponytails and oftentimes demands it. She will kick and hit her brother if he bothers her or takes her toys, and if that doesn’t work, a high pitched scream will do the job. Once she’s done being spicy, then its all sugar again, and the baby in her comes back, all hugs and kisses.

When I see this in her, I’m amazed. My mother laughingly says that I was never like her, and I almost believe it. I say almost because on the inside, I’m a lot like my daughter. I get indignant at the smallest slight, believing that people should treat others nicely and getting angry when they don’t. I like things a particular way; I spend a good amount of time getting things in order the way I like them before I can start doing any other productive work. People tend to like me, I can be sweet and am a good girl, but I am also spicy and people tend to be intimidated by me because I am sharp and opinionated and rarely back down. I will argue about anything and everything.

But as a child, I was nothing like my daughter. But I hope my daughter will be nothing like me. As much as sometimes I have to tell my husband to remove her from my presence (like last night when she threw a cup of water off the table because she wanted juice – yeah, not a good look for her), I want her to maintain her feisty-ness, even as a child. She will have to tone it down, but of course she’s only terribly two. I like that she feels comfortable challenging me – I was never allowed to have a separate opinion, or to be angry, or to truly express being sad. I want her to know that it’s okay to have a full range of emotions, even as a child. I don’t want her to bottle up anything. She’ll need to learn appropriate ways of behaving – throwing water ain’t one of them – but that all emotions are okay, not just the good ones.

I want her to know that she really is sugar and spice and both things are nice.

Bearing Fruit

January 2, 2010April 27, 2010 Dr. Mama Esq.3 Comments

Did you know that only 5% of cocoa flowers will produce fruit? We chose this name, “CocoaMommas,” perhaps quite obviously because it represents the beautiful colors of our various skins. Unlike most in the mainstream mommy blogosphere, we are black and brown mothers. And we’re proud of it. But just like the small numbers of cocoa flowers that will eventually produce fruit, we know that the world doesn’t always see the beauty in our color, or that of our children. In a country where little black boys are more likely to end up in prison than in college, or where missing brown children are largely ignored by the mainstream press while blond ones get round the clock coverage, our jobs to produce fruit are even more crucial. This blog recognizes these inequities; something the rest of the mommy blogs are privileged to be able to ignore.

Interesting fact #2: did you know that unlike most trees in the northern hemisphere, cocoa fruit can ripen at different times each year? This blog is for us, as mommies and women too, to rely our challenges, our fears, our heartbreaks and our victories. The women writing this blog are just like the cocoa fruit – we are all growing and ripening at different stages, yet all of us, have not only born the fruit of beautiful children but have also had successes in our careers. This blog is our stories of how we are attempting to both ripen them and ourselves.

One last thing that I didn’t know about cocoa beans – during fermentation, an essential part of the process to change the beans from raw beans into the chocolate we all know and love, the beans develop their flavor, bitterness subsides, and it is then that the beans turn into a deep rich shade of brown. This blog is written by a group of women that I know, from knowing them all, that are going through their own fermentation process. We are developing our flavor as mothers, partners, co-parents, as career women, writers, academics, and as spiritual beings. Raw bitterness is falling away and being replaced by deep roasted chocolatey hmm-hmmm goodness.

So, dear readers, I hope you’ll join us as we embark on this new venture. We’ll vent, we’ll debate, we empathize, we’ll give advice. Visit often and comments are always welcome!

Peace,

LaToya