Sassy and Nora cut their hair again Thursday night while Nora’s mom and I were in the other room. At least this time they each cut their own hair instead of each other’s. And Sassy didn’t do too badly on hers. It can be fixed. Nora’s, on the other hand...yikes! Nora apparently prefers random chunks rather than gentle layers. Poor mama.
While we were at Nana’s, Sassy was telling me about some of her teeth that hurt. I then, of course, played dentist while I stuck my fingers & a toothbrush around her tilted head, examining each tooth. Then she told me the bottom front one was a little wiggly. Four days later:
I swear, this child willed her tooth to come out before Jude’s. 4 days from wiggle to out? She is so excited for the tooth fairy to take her tooth & put something in her tooth fairy box.
My friend Caroline told me in passing that the Waldorf philosophy connects the loss of the first tooth with reading readiness. I was fascinated by this possible connection since it seemed so random. Why teeth and reading, I wondered? This sort of puzzle needed an answer. I went a-googling this morning.
Well, true to form, the message board chatter on this made me roll my eyes. Imagine a big, dramatic, long and drawn-out eye roll with an irritated sigh puncuating the end for good measure.
Although Steiner’s theory behind it wasn't very convincing or scientific to me (I tend to go more with a genetic predisposition on this one), it was interesting & intelligently presented. But it was the message boards, populated by the Monty Moms (“More Outrageously Natural Than You!” Moms) where I learned that the Good Parent Awards are given to the parents whose children lose their teeth last. There’s that eye roll again.
It’s all about the media baby. The media and the adult concepts! The intellectualization of our children! Kids can’t be kids! Kids who watch TV have teeth that fall out by the handful! Stupid kid! Bad mom! Slap, slap!
My natural parenting tendencies are well-known by my friends & family. I’ve certainly never tried to hide them. Sassy is still snuggled with us at night instead of across the hall & all those cloth dipes look lovely hanging on the line. You can’t hand me a box of any type of food without me turning it over to scrutinize the ingredients, even if I completely trust your judgement. My plans to use elimination communication typically get a blank look then eyebrows that are furrowed with a mix of utter confusion & disgust. There's our aversion to all household chemicals, my refusal to use wireless internet in the house, my refusal to use a stroller. For Heaven's sake, we're building an off-the-grid house. That's pretty natural.
And it’s not that I don’t usually agree with the reasoning behind the Monty Moms’ strong opinions. It’s that their opinions always seem to come served with a side of “It’s all your fault.” In their own heads, I suspect this plays out as “It’s all my fault.” They never seem to enjoy parenting. It would be hard to if you’re consumed with worry about making a wrong step, or not doing enough research on a topic that will surely result in dire consequences due to your negligence. How can you cope with the thousands of little worries riding your shoulders 24/7, to all of which you've ascribed top status? Do the Monty Moms all eventually have to choose to either get some perspective or end up on little yellow pills?
Although I wholeheartedly agree with having passion for your children and showing a take-charge attitude of your own life, I feel like I’m on a different plane than those folks so much of the time. This is why it’s hard to find just the right AP group in any given place. I worry, trust me. I worry a lot. I worry about how to best control my anger, I worry about whether or not homeschooling will ultimately bore me, I worry that I’m not attentive enough to Sassy most days.
I worry about the superfluous amount of chemicals and pharmaceuticals already in our soil & water while new drugs and new chemicals are released daily. There is obviously going to be a threshold and I worry that my children and grandchildren will have to deal with much suffering because of it. I worry that Big Brother has a plan and that it doesn’t matter in the end whether he has a fear of the underdog or not. The underdog will be beaten, starved & kicked into submission.
I worry quite a bit about the future of our food and the bizarre implications of the patenting of genetically-modified seeds. On the one hand, it makes me want to encapsulate our family in a giant greenhouse bubble that only grows heirloom seeds. Since that’s not quite practical, my long-term vision lately involves me teaching classes, showing videos, and generally educating the rural farmers in our area about the real dangers of subsidy farming and the positive impact of diversified, sustainable agriculture.
And finally, the secret worries that plague me, the ones that I try to force out when they want to sneak their way in have absolutely nothing to do with TV or organic food or Big Brother. Those worries lurk in houses filled with animal feces, in internet chat rooms where images and tips are passed from one rotted soul to another, beady eyes, basements, bedrooms, belts, misery and fear and cries for a mommy that is where? Dead? High? Busy soothing her own childhood wounds through men, drugs, rage?
Ugh. I hate those.
I also hate the more benign death worries, because I know they carry just as much sadness with them. My death, Sassy’s death, Jeff’s death...those worries I try to push away too. But they’re always there because I know that it’s possible. In my little corner of the world, it even seems probable. Damn those “formative years.”
I wonder what the mom on the 7th floor of Children’s Hospital – the cancer ward – would say about the Monty Mom who is worried that her child has been overexposed to the media since he lost his first tooth at 4. I wonder if she would laugh or cry when Monty Mom told her that she’d been up all night doing research on how to keep his other teeth in longer and what she might have done wrong to cause this early loss.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe the Monty Moms have that one big thing on me that will always make them able to display infinite patience despite the lack of a TV, that will let them be solely concerned with organic clothes and vegan shoes and teeth and reading and the lead content of their child's backpack, et al. Maybe they don’t carry around this darkness with them everywhere where secret worries hide & are pushed, pushed away. Maybe they are fortunate to have not encountered enough actual suffering in their lives to distinguish the trifling from the knock-you-down.
While the dark fears may give me perspective, they are, nevertheless, a constant cross to bear. I only hope that I maintain enough strength to use that cross for something really good.
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