Heaven Help Me!

I am wearing black today. Both of my Roombas died within a week of each other. Bad timing I say. School is about to start and there is NO way I want to even attempt to keep my house clean without these little buddies of mine.

They work to keep my house immaculate all day long, while I cook, clean up, read and teach the kids all day long. I have to say that this is a modern convenience I do not like to do without. Mud, grass, cereal spilled all over the floor…I can continue teaching and the kids can continue learning while the Roomba cleans them up.

However, when I have to go without them, I pause before ordering new ones. Here’s why:

1. While it is not outside of the realm of my vocation to own these devices, it may be outside the realm for my children. What I mean is that I know for sure that it is ok for me (as a homeschooling mother of six, and a wife, a sister, a daughter and a friend) to use any tool necessary to get done what I need to get done in my day. However, I know I need to instill good work habits in my children, and using a robot to clean may not do this. I especially became concerned about this when I asked my six year old to sweep the floor the other day, and, instead she pulled out the Roomba to do it, pushed the ‘on’ button, then ran off to play (until I called her back to do it the way I asked).  Well, I don’t blame her – it makes my life easier, too! How can I ask them to sweep the floor, when I prefer the Roomba over a broom myself?

2. They are expensive! The going rate right now for a Roomba is $199 for the base model.  This is a lot of money for us. Still, it is cheaper than weekly maid service, which costs $120 a week for our home. I can use the Roomba daily for a year and pay a total of $199. That seems to be the better deal.

3. They break.  The Roombas I have owned are susceptible to “technical difficulties”. They require some kind of fixing or cleaning (cleaning a vacuum cleaner? yes, that’s the annoying part!) after using them for a couple months. The batteries wear out quickly and they eventually just break down. IRobot customer service used to be wonderful and based in USA, but lately it has gone downhill.

4. The less fortunate do not own these. Through centuries women have cooked and cleaned like madwomen and somehow found a way to live without dishwashers, roombas and the like. In particular, the less fortunate throughout the world today do not have such things – it bothers my conscience to be so spoiled. At the same time, I know women with large families in the 40′s & 50′s who had nervous breakdowns from trying to “do it all”.  My dishwasher helps my children get read to more often, and keeps my kitchen from becoming grossly unsanitary. To me, a Roomba is another tool that helps me achieve this goal. I guess the solution is to use these tools mindful of how fortunate I am, but also mindful that I haven’t found a perfect solution yet.

VS.

Any opinions?

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I woke up to a morning of choas. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, being that I have six children, a dog, a cat, (and a rat or two about to join the family soon). But for whatever reason, today I did not feel up to dealing with it. Hubby and I stayed up late last night for “date night”, and needed much deserved sleeping in time. My kids have been intelligently arguing and *stinging* each other for the past couple weeks since school has been officially ”over” in our house. (It is frustrating to watch just how mean they can be to each other – even though they are brother & sisters! As my father-in-law put it to my husband and his brothers when they were growing up, “You have to fight the whole world – why fight each other!” ) My eight year old daughter unlocked my bedroom door with a key this morning proclaiming that my three-year old just had an “accident” and could I please come and clean it up. As I mobilized my troops kids to action in cleaning up the spill (and helping their sister get new clothes), I tripped over the dog who was spinning in circles around me wanting to be fed and let out. Then I returned to my bedroom, because our newborn woke up screaming and needing to be fed, and my husband expressing that he missed me and wanted more time with me.

So, waking up with demands from all sides prompted me to recall a familiar scene from a horror flick – one in which a woman is running away from ghostly arms coming at her from all sides. Once in a while, it comes at me, like a movie that is on continuous repeat. In this panic, I just felt like being a teenager running away from home (I did this once, but only made it to the end of my driveway); to escape my responsibilities, and fly to a deserted island where the only noise would be the lapping of the pristine blue ocean waves, and the only conversation would be a waiter who would bring me interesting, gourmet tapas and perfectly prepared pina coladas, as I dreamed of fitting into my former size 8 swimsuit, beached in the glowing sun on a comfy, white sand mattress.

Finally, with the assistance of my husband, I made myself an iced cafe mocha, went to my room, closed the door, pulled out my computer and typed in a google search the words “overwhelmed mother”. What this search yielded was a timely surprise:  an article on being an overwhelmed mom written by an overwhelmed mom.

I won’t say exactly what the article says, but I felt much better (and grateful for the choas I’ve been given) after reading it.

It was a good reminder that what I need is to make sure I take time out once in a while. My husband constantly offers such time to me, but something inside wants to stay home enmeshed in my responsibilities. What is it? Pride? That I can do it all?

A mother of a large family is called to a life of service. As I tell my kids sometimes, when I need to “recharge my batteries”, “Okay, guys, my tank is almost on empty. Time for me to take some time to fill it up and for you to watch a movie!”

Fifteen minutes later after ‘filling up my tank’, I am a happy woman again.

Which is a much cheaper, much more  accessible solution than a flight to Kauai!

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An appreciated experience at the local grocery store is responsible for this blog post. We live just around the corner from Angelo Caputo’s, the family owned Italian marketplace, that has become known for Italian specialties and “always good food – cheap”. One usually hears Italian spoken there, oftentimes it is from the older couple arguing over lemons and fresh basil in the produce section. Today, as my two sons and I were en route down one of the pasta aisles, there were two older gentlemen humming out that familiar language. Suddenly, they stopped, pointed at me and said,

“You – Sicilian!”

“Yes,” I replied, (I can explain the technicalities of that one in a moment), while trying to deflect the attention to my sons who really are Sicilian.

I am actually mostly German and Irish. However, some recent research says that since giving birth I am part Sicilian, too. The idea is that fetal cells, being made up of mom and dad’s DNA, tend to linger in mom’s blood for a long time after baby is born. Since I have given birth six times, I am Sicilan X 6.

One study, written about in Volume 13, No. 2, of the American Academy of Pediatrics News, says that these fetal cells have been discovered up to 27 years after a mother giving birth. This supports mothers having a physical tie to their children:

“Through fluorescence-activated cell sorting and polymerase chain reaction, male DNA was detected in 13 of the 19 women carrying a male fetus and in four of the 13 women carrying a female fetus.”

Another study by NPR (February 8, 2006) reports that these lingering baby cells stay with the mother and – like stem cells – may help repair damage when mom gets sick for the rest of her life.

A third study in the November 19, 2008 edition of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette puts a name on this “cell-trading” process, fetal microchimerism. The researchers at the Western Pennsylvania Cancer Institute at West Penn Hospital have found that fetal cells that mothers got from their sons may protect them against cancer.

So, when I answered affirmatively to the Italian speaking gentleman’s question, I was technically correct.

I am Sicilian, by marriage. It’s in my blood.

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Husband and I have always been interested in what makes a successful marriage “tick”. When we were newly engaged, we played out different scenarios in our minds about who would stay home and who would go to work. We mutually hyphenated our names when we got married. We knew the flexibility of modern marriage did not confine us to certain roles.

In practice, it turned out I was not destined for a career outside the home, as I immediately embraced staying home when our firstborn son was born. I was “into” cooking and cleaning and caring for children and found great fulfillment in it. I loved reading the children stories for hours on end, playing with blocks and making birthday cakes. Changing diapers wasn’t all that bad, as long as I got to do these other things, too.

Throughout the years, marriage and the idea of a “good wife” has been “reinvented” multiple times. This is the focus of an article written by Lisa Belkin in the March 22, 2010 edition of the New York Times, entitled, “The Marrying Kind”.

All this redefinition has become possible as women have been given more choices. While some of it has been helpful, as a fairly traditional woman who stays home with my children, and tries to make a home for my husband, I have found some of it a maze to navigate. My impression of what makes “a good wife” has been subject to society’s influence over time, particularly when I was young and forming these ideals. I believe I had the “perfect mother” – she tended to my two brothers and my needs with extraordinary devotion and care, in a way I’m quite afraid to admit that I am unable to do myself today. Dinner with all food groups represented every night at 6:30pm, Sunday brunch without fail, meticulous attention to detail when we were sick. Although I have twice as many children as her, and my life choices have dictated that I won’t be able to pull off motherhood with as much careful concern as she did, a part of me still wishes I could. At the same time, I am grateful that the standards aren’t so perfectionistically high that this type of care come solely from me (my husband is just as active in it).

However, the “osmosis” education that my peers and I received to become a H.I.T. (Homemaker in Training) was conflicting at best. It tooted the benefits & supposed freedom of being a ‘supermom’, who could “bring home the bacon AND fry it up in the pan”, just like the Enjoli perfume commercial said. In other words, we were told we could be a mom just like my mom and a career embracing feminist, as well. In high school, we had a home economics class (one of the most popular classes!) in which we all donned aprons and baked apple pies during school hours. When that class ended, we were whisked off to the next class, “Business Economics” which encouraged us to have skills for a successful career outside the home. Confusing? I’ll say. And most of us still don’t know how to make homemade gravy from scratch.

In the aforementioned article, Ms. Belkin highlights the latest “twist” in the redefinition of marriage and what it means to be a good wife: the fastest growing subset of cohabitating couples today are over the age of 50. These women, having been previously married and lived out the “ideal Mrs.” – having wanted nothing more from life than to don the apron and be married -now scoff at it. These women, who were enmeshed in that rejection of the “old ways”;  ”housewives” protesting they were not married to their houses, began calling themselves the more respectable title of  ”working moms” instead. Gradually, we have realized since then that “Supermom”, due to its unattainability, is more comic than reality. Seeing the old guideposts gone, what impetus is there to follow?

Women today are not what they were and as a result we are probably much more relaxed and reasonable. It is perfectly fine to enlist the help of a device to do housework, instead of scrubbing each square of bathroom tile with a toothbrush like grandma did. With the constant redefining of our roles, it will be interesting to see the scenario play out.

On that note, I am off to eat a wonderful meal, home-cooked by my husband, who is a five star *Mr. Mom*, doing all the cleaning and homekeeping while I recover from birth. In the “old days”, it might be unthinkable that Mom or Mom-in-law would not be at my side for two weeks, so hubby could get back to work since he was clueless when it came to running a home. However, this is not the case for us, nor for many women today. Due to this redefinition of roles for women, our mothers, *too*, have the freedom they earned themselves thirty years ago.

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As I sit here cradling my less than 72 hour newborn son, I am reminded of the previous births of my children – (and the one birth that I hoped would happen, but didn’t). Thomas is as perfect as it gets – he’s blessed with good health, a nice ruddy glowing Sicilian skin tone like his siblings, a peaceful disposition (he fusses, but he hasn’t cried loudly yet!), great baby noises and all the rest.

I couldn’t imagine myself in this position almost exactly one year ago. One of the most dismal days of my life was when my obstetrician told me my baby had died spontaneously in my womb sometime in the past week before seeing her. So many plaguing questions filled my mind: What did I do wrong? Had I done too much (fill in the blank), etc., etc.  If I had gotten there a day earlier, would she have been able to save him? As she broke the news to me that his heartbeat had stopped, I soaked the hospital gown and ultrasound table with my tears. I went through weeks, no months, of thinking I would never have the privilege of conceiving again. Seeing a happy pregnant woman was a harsh sting.

After I checked in at the hospital’s registration, someone took me up to labor & delivery. This person assumed I must be excited about being in labor that day, to which I responded, “Actually, I’m just plain relieved”.

Relieved that I could finally get my hopes up that this was happening! That my baby was past the point of viability! That now all we had to do was get him out safely and we’d be home free!

There is a reason and a time for everything. I am grateful to have had the privilege to bear another child. Perhaps I would not be as much so if I hadn’t experienced the fragility of life before. It is not easy to conceive a child, carry a pregnancy all nine months to term, and give birth to a healthy baby, as a simple Google search with the search terms “infertility crisis’” illustrates. We speak as if it is so easy to do so, but the truth is it just isn’t.

If you are one of those who it isn’t easy for, my thoughts & ardent prayers are with you. May all that is good be yours in His Majesty’s good time.

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The weirdest part  about being pregnant is the delirium that can accompany it. This is one of the few things I argue with God about – that is – I tell him this aspect of pregnancy is a very, very bad idea.

Moms don’t talk about this much, but I have experienced this with all my pregnancies. (If you know what I mean, please leave a comment!) I describe it as “Mother Bear Syndrome”, with hormones thrown in. My experience tells me it is worst in the third trimester, when the mother’s body is “nesting” and planning for life after birth. There is much to secure, or keep secure. Primarily, it’s basic needs, such as food, shelter, and the means to get & keep them. It can also encompass the need for support, companionship and help after baby is born. When these needs are threatened, it can cause a visceral reaction in the mother as she feels the need to fight for her own and her “cub’s” survival and ultimate well-being.

If you’ve ever seen a mother bear protecting her babies from attack, you’ll know it’s not pretty…Intruders are not welcome and food is treated as though there is some impending famine.

Humans can become very animalistic under certain circumstances. My typical “c’est la vie” attitude toward life disappears in T-10 weeks before birth.

So, my apologies to all who have been unfortunate enough to have crossed my path in the past couple weeks and witnessed first-hand that I have morphed into some oddity that I usually am not.

I’ll be much nicer after birth. I promise.

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