Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott

My wife and baby have been away for a month now in Utah. I did go visit them for one week, but that was nearly three weeks ago. I missed some big moments – being with them on my first Father’s Day, BabyG's six-month birthday, BabyG winning the cutest baby prize at a festival, MaG and BabyG riding on a float in a parade, and BabyG's first tooth poking out to name a few.

I tried to compensate by pulling out all our baby manuals and reading about six-month-old babies. We have William and Martha Sears’s big book and the American Academy of Pediatrics Caring for Your Baby and Young Child. But the book I read cover to cover is called Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year by Anne Lamott. I guess Lamott’s book does not really go with the first two I mentioned. It really is a journal not a manual. The chapter titles are dates and most everything she tells you about just happened on the particular day of the entry.

I read the book hungrily in three or four sittings although I’m not sure what I was looking for. Lamott is a dread-lock wearing, black-church attending, single-mothering white woman in her thirties living near San Francisco. She was also a recovering alcohol and coke addict. There’s this picture of her on the back with an open, white umbrella propped on her shoulder. It’s the right picture. She’s that hopeful. White umbrella hopeful. And yet, as every review has noted, she is "brutally honest," which tethers the book, keeps it out of the clouds.

For example, she wrote on October 6 at 3:45 am, “My vagina ached terribly. I kept trying to push his pacifier in, but his jaw was sort of gritted, the way you are when you’re coming down off cocaine. I just couldn’t get the pacifier in. I kept feeling like I was trying to push a bit into the mouth of a wild horse.” But then the next entry is about his first smile. Later she admits to having thoughts of violence. She even makes reference to saying out loud to her baby that she’d fetch a stick with nails poking out when he wouldn’t stop crying. I told MaG about that part over the telephone and she said, “Honey, I want you to know I never have those kinds of thoughts.” I never think about getting a stick either, but when BabyG won’t be consoled I do occasionally have disturbing flashes of anger. And it’s helpful to read a book that bears witness to those kinds of thoughts. You’re less alone if you know someone else has felt the same way and, probably, more able to cope with those kinds of thoughts.

One big thing that I realized when reading Operating Instructions is that the 1980s are definitely over. The entries were written between 1989 and 1990. The language, the mentality, and the liberal politics are characteristic of the 80s. For example, she makes reference to Leona Helmsley. I haven’t heard that name for years. And I don’t think a writer today could get away with the rather innocent way she writes about attending a Black church. She rants about George Bush, meaning the father, who, in retrospect, was a moderate in comparison to his son. No mention of the big alternative parenting methods that have since become more or less mainstream, like attachment parenting. And no internet. There were no parenting blogs, discussion boards, and listservs back then. Why buy a journal of someone’s son’s first year in this day and age? Granted Lamott is a brilliant writer. But if she were writing the same book today, she would have to try much harder to differentiate her diary from the thousands of parenting blogs available on the web, many of which are insightful and provocative.

But then why did I read the book cover to cover? Why did my computer remain shut all that time? I think I was drawn to her struggle as a single parent. MaG’s in Utah taking care of our baby without my help. I’m here alone. Lamott’s story of creating surrogate family helped me think about trying to do the same. Two-parent families may not be forced to use that strategy like a single-parent has to, but I think we should anyway. MaG went to Utah because her step-mother is very sick. She went to tend to her family, but I think the month she spent there gave her family and friends a chance to tend to her and our baby too. I didn’t quite identify with Lamott's perspective. (Her relationship with the Black church really bothered me, the way she'd let older, much poorer women slip money into her pocket. It was like she was preying on a support network when she had access to other wealth as a famous writer.) But her deliberate way of parenting with family and friends – I’m into that.

It Ain't Easy Being Queen

Every year my hometown, Myton, Utah, has a celebration that used to be called Myton Homecoming, in order to entice people who couldn't afford to live in a place with no jobs to come home and visit. Now it's called Myton Daze, I suppose because most of the people who attend live in Myton and most people who have moved away don't happen to be home on the weekend of the year the town (officially) parties. Except this year, BabyG and I did just happen to be in Utah for Myton Daze...fortutious, especially, since my mother Kathleen is the mayor and had a big hand in organizing the event. We got to go be proud of her.

As a little girl I dreamed of winning the annual Little Miss Myton contest, mostly because I believed a world without the sparkling crown adorning my own head would be a terribly cruel one. My Aunt Sallie won one year, and her own jeweled tiarra sat on top of the piano in my grandparents' family room, torturing me. I wasn't allowed to play with it and the top of my head pounded viciously with the desire to put it on.

I never got it together enough to actually participate. My dad owned the bar next door to the park where the celebration was held, and Myton Daze/Homecoming always just crept up without my having prepared some talent or other to wow the world with. The one year I got to almost participate in Myton Daze at all, in a square dance performed by the entire third grade class of Myton elementary, I showed up at the dress rehersal but by the time the actual dance began I had run across town and was busily watching my Aunt Fern's cat having kittens with my cousin Darren. Poor old Rowdy didn't have a partner and had to dance with Mrs. Jones.

Just today, however, my father lied to me and told me that I did win the Miss Myton contest. He said it was the same year he won the ugliest shirt contest and our dog, Sidney, won the best looking dog event. Neither event actually ever existed, but my dad has a wonderfully fictive memory that is almost always becoming to me.

All this is coming up becuase this year I was unable to resist putting BG in the baby contest...even though I feel like I'm supposed to hate baby contests. My own mom told me she never entered me in one because she would have ripped the eyes out of all the judges if I didn't win. Not to mention Myton Daze/Homecoming didn't start until I was seven...I don't think they ever had a retro baby contest.

Baby contests are not in the realm of green parenting, they are more like orange parenting, or neon parenting, or Fire Engine Red Parenting. People say the contests are all about the parents' needs, not the childrens'. I think people are right, because I pretty much NEEDED BG to become Queen Baby of Myton. Every six months old drop of her knew this as she sat on my lap on the stage in the little elementary school and giggled winningly at the judges, one of whom was my former Kindergarten teacher. She fluffed back her incredible head of hair and pretended to be a mix between Miss Breck and the Gerber baby. Of course, BG won out against the one other baby in her age division (six to nine months), who was her first attendant. So BG's cousins Cole & Haydon won several races; her cousin Alexia won a watermelon eating contest, and BG won Queen Baby.

She won a fabulous crown that I sat on just about right afterwards. I had to bend it and glue it back together so that she could wear it during the big parade the Queen and her mother rode in on a float. The parade's path follows the mile of strip that is Myton's main street. I looked forward to the event the entire day before it began, and bathed BG and made sure she had the right amount of sleep to really enjoy her first ride on a float.

But the Karmic gods got me for entering her into the contest in the first place, in the end: it was HOT, first of all. Notice her tongue sticking out in the picture to the left. I almost dehydrated my baby who was too mad to eat because the fire department was riding behind us. That meant we were followed by honking, siren rearing folks. Giant Red Monsters, so far as BG was concerned, and Queen BG was NOT impressed. In fact, Queen Baby howled at the top of her lungs for about the entire fifteen minute duration of the parade. I wanted to jump off the float and save my baby and my own concience, but it was too tall for me to jump off of without dropping the queen.

And so it begins, BabyG paying for the sins of her mother.

More Britney Smears – Pretty in Stink

In my last post, I defended Britney Spears. Maybe I didn’t defend her so much as express my ambivalent feelings about her. My argument was that the whole Britney is a bad mother thing has more to do with America’s schizophrenia about gender than her actual ability to parent. But today, I’m more in a smear Britney mood.

Take a look at these pictures of Britney:



These pictures haven’t garnered nearly as much controversy as the picture of Britney nearly dropping her baby or the one where she’s driving with the baby in her lap. But I think these pictures are more upsetting. Why? It’s not because they're tacky like a 1985 glamour shot. My problem is that she clearly has make-up on. I’m guessing she’s wearing perfume as well. Those cosmetics and fragrances contain unregulated petrochemicals that mimic estrogen and testosterone, hormones that affect the development of the body in a myriad of ways we don’t fully understand yet. Here is a diagram of dibutyl phthalate, a chemical commonly found in cosmetics, and a diagram of estrogen.



Are you having trouble figuring out which is one is which? Your body has a hard time too. Sadly, women of child-bearing age are expected to wear cosmetics and fragrances. Those products are marketed aggressively to the one demographic that has the most reason to avoid them. Endocrine disruption could harm our children’s mental, sexual, and general development. Decreased penis size, hypospadia, breast cancer…scientists who do not have a vested interest in the commercial success of the cosmetic and fragrance industry are gathering more and more evidence on very disturbing effects of endocrine disruptors.

Here’s another picture that ought to be as controversial as the one where Britney is driving with her baby in her lap. In this one Britney is marketing her own brand of petro-stink right around the time of her first pregnancy.



An excellent resource on this issue is the Not Too Pretty website. You can download their report at this link.

The Mother We Love to Hate

I’ve been thinking a lot about Britney Spears. I have loved to hate her since she became famous. People often say that the Madonna of the 80s was far more impressive than Britney. Madonna always controlled her media image and challenged norms. She shaped, refined, and constantly reinvented her persona. She still does. There’s always another religious culture for Madonna to appropriate. Britney, on the other hand, is thoroughly made by others. Madonna turned the music industry into her vehicle, but it’s clear that the industry made a vehicle out of Britney. That’s why I don’t exactly hate Britney. Yes she is vapid, but she’s more a victim than an agent. Victim isn’t the right word. She is a reflection of the dominant, American notion of femininity. The wholesome girl in an impossibly short skirt. The paradoxically virginal temptress. Safely ensconced behind the television screen, she asks to be “hit one more time.” I remember a period of about three years when her songs were as unavoidable as air. Gross anatomy lab, restaurants, a Peruvian village in the Andes mountains – I couldn’t go anywhere without hearing her. She was more ubiquitous than McDonald’s.



Then she got pregnant. A national crisis. An international crisis.

What do we do when our virginal temptress becomes a mother? We heap scorn on her. We gorge on photographs of her looking…different. As in tired and overwhelmed, not in schoolgirl-stripper condition. How dare she? She doesn’t put her baby in the car seat when the paparazzi chase her. Her baby falls out of a highchair. For a few days, it seems possible the government could take her baby away. Then maybe she could go back to creating perfectly borderline pornographic consumables and we could happy again. But she kept her baby through it all and got pregnant again. It seems she didn’t quite plan this second baby and she denied being pregnant. Then she was proud about the pregnancy on Letterman and still planning to return as diva.



Britney is not my hero by any means. As an individual human being, she’s stumbling through conflicting gender roles. Like my daughter will have to. But she is also a national allegory and this allegorical hasn’t reached its denouement. I’m sympathetic, curious, and horrified.

non sequitoria, utah, blather

for the record, i have always been a big fan of the lesser germs, even before the article greendaddy mentioned was published. my old friend julie c. and i used to go so far as to say we didn't believe in them. since that time a number of germs have made themselves terribly apparent to me and i have decided not to be so much in their favor as to disbelieve their existence entirely.

i should clarify that by germs i mean anything smaller than a pore and endowed with the ability to make me throw up, sneeze, get hives, cancer, die, what have you. um. sorry, doctors and lexographers.

anyway, more recently than the article about the healthy sewer lab rats, i think i read somewhere about kids growing up on farms having less alergies or something than city kids?

on another note, every day i am growing more annoyed by bottled water. why do people buy it? i acknowledge that in youth getting water in cone shaped cups, from the culligan man was neat. but what's neat about a plastic bottle? that isn't rhetorical. answer: NOTHING! people! go get filters! they're cheaper and you're more likely to get clean water if you get one! gosh, water is FREE. ish. take it free!

utah is a desert state. lotta water bottles.

(strained transition:)

also lots of alcoholics i know live in utah. and i am more annoyed by cihrossis and alcoholic induced hepatitis, or really, hepatitis in general (my other mom has hep c), than i am at bottled water and its drinkers.

but i'm not really annoyed by germs in general. even when i got the stomach flu last week, i didn't mind. gave me an excuse to rest (that's how fabulous utah has been.) babyg didn't get sick, which seems miraculous. her immune system fired up in response to my flu germs and her white cells kicked my flu cells' asses.

i think this post ended awhile back and i ignored it, which is why i can't think of how to end.

Your Baby and the Sewer

The Associated Press published a great story about sewer rats today. It seems a recent study has shown that rats living in sewers have better immune systems than rats raised in clean laboratories. The findings are in line with what has been called the Hygiene Hypothesis. My sister-in-law, who is an allergist at Duke University, told MaGreen and me about this hypothesis a few months back and we keep thinking about it. The basic observation is that children who live in the countryside generally have less allergy problems than kids who live in the city. It’s thought that country kids’ immune systems are challenged by living close to animals -- think hair, poop, germs. City kids’ immune systems don’t have anything to do but overreact to regular things. So the country kids build strong immune systems that attack harmful viruses and bacteria whereas spoiled, squeaky-clean city kids have bored, alienated immune systems that listen to punk rock and freak out over hair balls, wheat, and peanuts.

Dr. William Parker, a Duke doctor who co-authored the study, is quoted as saying, “Your immune system is like the person who lives in the perfect house and has all the food they want, you're going to start worrying about the little things like someone stepping on your flowers.”

When I read that, I started thinking about kids who live in filthy houses with peeling lead paint worrying about where the next meal will come from. Or kids who actually live with rats in sewers. Before I quit the medical track, I went to Ayacucho, Peru and studied an intestinal parasite that children often get from pigs. I remember this mother who brought her little boy who suffered frequent seizures to us. The mother knew that the parasite we were studying could have caused her son’s illness. But as a student researcher I didn’t have the means to get her son treatment, which was one of the experiences that opened my eyes to disease as a primarily political problem not a purely medical one.

I’m straying from my topic, but I guess my point is that we have to find someway to maintain hygiene without alienating our bodies from the world. Eat cheese with mold on it. Don’t wash the pacifier every single time it touches the ground. Camp. Hang out at farms. Take the cellophane off your baby.

[I stole the above picture from http://buy-garbage-pail-kids.com where Garbage Pail Kids merchandise can be bought.]

A Poem for the Alcoholic Grandmother

Thunder can ricochet off the mountains
irrigation ditches may run over the banks
dogs will bark back at the heavens
and she will still be sick.
Rehabilitation is on our lips
but are we not meaning to say accommodation
or reconciliation
or even retribution?
Oxygen tubes, catheters, PIC lines –
we secretly think of all this as penance.
This is nothing to how you torment us.

But there, under the hospital's halogen lights
casting off a soft glow
is a baby girl,
a babbling granddaughter.
Her name is the refrain of our better thoughts.
What is an alcoholic grandmother's life good for?
To love L.
To teach L. to demand leftovers at midnight
To pass Christmas ornaments on to L.
To help L. seek an end in objects and sensations:
porcelain turtles, furniture, a dog's breadth.

Remember that there were two Krishna's.
That war-mongering, duty-peddling
awe-striking, Karma-pushing Krishna,
he who drove Arjun's chariot chanting,
Karmanye vaadikarashye mafaleshu kadachana.
This is the Krishna of our studies, not our songs.
Who is our partner when we dance the Raas-Lila?
It is a shepherd cavorting with village girls
the flautist of Vrindavan gardens
a teenage boy drunk on butter.

The Green Virgin and the Toxic Whore

I have spent the last week driving around Salt Lake City. The streets are wide. Every other yard boasts a half dozen rose bushes in full bloom. Even the most mundane of strip malls is set off against the backdrop of the snow-capped Rockies. Little streams – clear and frigid water just melted off the peaks – course through the gridded streets. I look. I admire. But I'm not here as a tourist. I'm here to support my wife and help her take care of our baby during a crisis. As I wrote in my last post, M's stepmother is in the hospital for a failing liver. This morning she had a TIPS shunt placed in her liver to lower the pressure in her veins and seems to be stabilizing, but she is still very sick.

Most of the day goes by in the ICU waiting rooms. We spread out a little blanket on the floor and L. plays there as if she were at home. She kicks and wiggles. She takes naps and wets her diapers. (Sometimes we practice elimination communication, but usually don't.) L. smiles at strangers who gratefully smile back even though their son is hanging onto his life after a motorcycle accident or their mother is struggling for every breadth. The man in the room next to M's stepmother (at the last hospital) had collapsed during a marathon and survived because a bystander performed CPR. His wife had been crying for a day and a half, but when she found out her husband fully recovered she took a liking to L. "Look at all that hair," she said.

Between the hospital visits, I look out at this beautiful city and I think about the Mormons who built it, and the Mormons who live here now. Frankly, I look down on the rigidity of their puritanical beliefs and I'm repulsed by their evangelism. I especially dislike their patriarchal hierarchies and their notions of gender roles. And there is so much silliness to Mormonism, just as there is with other religions, but with Mormons it is fresh and new, not shrouded with centuries of apologetics, so it is easier to laugh at them. For example, a healthy person who drinks an occasional glass of wine with an organic, vegetarian dinner would be violating Mormon standards by drinking alcohol, but a dangerously overweight person eating two pounds of prime rib and washing it down sugar-laden, syrupy sodas is not. They're a bunch of dupes!

Still, there was a principal behind the ban on alcohol, which is that people should not desecrate the body temple by consuming drinks that stimulate and intoxicate. With M's stepmother in the hospital for alcoholism-induced hepatitis, I've been wondering if we're not the dupes and the Mormons have it right. My own family hasn't had any alcoholism issues (as far as I know), which I attribute to the prohibition on alcohol sales in Gujarat and the general taboo on alcohol consumption among Bunyas, Brahmins, and Muslims. So who should be looking down on who? Something is terribly wrong with secular, American culture or else M, L, and I wouldn't be spending all this time in the ICU waiting room.

I have also noticed the strong presence of punks, slackers, hippies, hipsters, and other social groups who, like M's family, have defined themselves in opposition to Mormons. People who are not Mormon really aren't Mormon and they wear that difference boldly. They dye their hair strange colors with a vengeance. They bare their tattoos with great flare. And they drink with gusto. I would not be surprised if the rate of alcoholism among non-Mormons is much higher here than rates in other regions. In other words, is it possible that one group's valorization of purity can, in part, drive the rest of the population to excess?

I suppose I'm just restating the old feminist critique of the virgin/whore binary, but this time I'm doing so with tired-of-the-ICU-waiting-room feeling. At times, I've caught myself mentally composing a big list of everything that is toxic (alcohol, Windex, plastic water bottles, aromatic petrochemicals) and another list of everything that is anti-toxic (composting, gardening, cleaning with vinegar). I just want to look at these lists and know that I've figured the world out, that everything can be divided up, made sense of, and managed so as to maximize my family's and the world's happiness. But I stop myself.

TIPS

Today MaGreen and I found ourselves intently studying this diagram of the liver, the kidney, spleen, stomach, and esophagus. The diagram highlights how the veins filter the blood flow through the liver. If a person's liver becomes severely scarred – say, after a lifetime of alcoholism – pressure builds and blood backs up through to the little ones lining the organs. The veins around the esophagus, stomach, and other organs expand, leak, and even explode, causing terminal or nearly terminal bleeds. Look closely at the liver in the diagram and you will see a white tube that represents an artificial "shunt." This tube bypasses the liver and the blood in the veins shoots directly to the heart. Radiologists can place this by going through the jugular. So it's a relatively simple, non-invasive procedure. The name for the procedure, TIPS, has an optimistic hint to it, as if the doctors are letting you in on a wonderful secret. But it in no way saves the liver. Just buys time. Unfortunately, our interest in all this isn't academic. MaGreen's stepmother, the woman who helped raise her from the age of four on, was just transferred by ambulance from one hospital to a bigger one so this procedure can be done to her.

I'll let MaGreen write about her family. But I have been wanting to post a new entry to our blog and since our blog started off as a chronicle detoxifying our lives for our baby girl, how can we not write about what has happened? How can we leave out that our baby's grandmother voluntarily poisoned her own liver, slowly, over the course of three and a half decades? If you are the praying kind, pray for MaGreen's family. If you are the agnostic kind, hope.

We Don't Have a TV

That’s right. We’re one of those people. Because we are pure. No, that’s not why we don’t have a tube. It’s because we can’t help but watch for hours when we do have one. It sucks us away. And the content is mostly terrible. Actually, we do have a tube. I’m looking at it right now and it’s hooked up to my computer. For all our TV chastity, we are enthralled to the computer. I think it would be easier for me to count how many hours I’m not looking at a computer screen than the other way around. Between work, using the web for plane reservations and such, DVD watching on the computer, etc. – it’s an all day thing for my wife and me. In terms of parenting, though, our daughter is only five months old so we really haven't had to deal with this issue head on yet, but I've been thinking about it. The Kaiser Foundation released a report on media and parenting that’s finally got me to the point where I have to express my thoughts on the subject.

But first, enjoy this picture of our cat watching TV (which predates our renunciation of the medium):



The Kaiser report documents in great detail just how much time children are watching TV, listening to music, or sitting at the computer. Here’s a pretty illustrative quote, “Kids who watch television and those who watch videos or DVDs spend an average of about one and a quarter hours on each (1:19 for TV and 1:18 for videos/DVDs), while those who play video games and use computers spend an average of just under an hour on each (0:55 for video games and 0:50 for computers). On the whole, the 83% of children who use screen media in a typical day spend an average of just under 2 hours (1:57) doing so.” The basic thrust of the document is that parents use media to help distract their kids so they can get chores done, cook, and have "me" time.

Yes, I am disturbed. Two hours of screen time per day…on average. When I was a kid, I played basketball, rode my bike, and did my homework. Well, I guess I did play video games too. But not that much. I am righteously appalled by today’s kids and their lazy parents who “can’t imagine how they’d get through the day without television, video, and DVDs” because they’re too busy to just sit with their kids. Actually, I’m just not surprised enough to be that upset. My main reaction to the study is that it didn’t ask the right the kind of questions for me to form a solid conclusion.

I'd like to suggest a distinction between different types of media. There's advertisement-saturated media that you passively receive. And there's media that you engage with or even create. For example, if I help my daughter (when she is older) to write a news report for the Houston Independent Media Center website, I hardly think that's equivalent to watching American Idol even though both activities would be counted as screen time. Even watching American Idol is different than just watching MTV. People talk about American Idol at work and school. It's a major, public event. It becomes social. It creates an imagined national community. I'd like my daughter to participate in that kind of thing occasionally.

I think it would be more interesting to ask questions like, “How much time do you spend creating media verses time spent consuming it?” “How much time do you spend discussing the meaning, rhetoric, and agenda of media?” “Do you spend so much time creating media like pictures and video that you can only experience your family through the hyper-reality of those images?” Basically, the Kaiser Foundation should hire me to set up their next study.

A Recent Interview with My Five-Month-Old Daughter

Me: Your mom and I have been having a hard time balancing childcare, work, and taking care of ourselves. I feel like I’m failing.

My Baby: Daddy, you’re not alone. The problem is structural, not one of your own personal failure. Capitalism has turned time into a series of opportunity cost calculations. You and Mommy have to “spend” time on me by not making money through market labor. Mainstream economic models assume that any time “spent” outside the market is leisure. Although I know that you enjoy my cuddly goodness, much of the childcare you and mommy do is not leisure. It is unpaid and unvalued work.

Me: This is exactly what your mommy and I were afraid of. That you will think we always want to be doing something else besides taking care of you and that you have to compete for attention.

My Baby: Don’t worry so much, it’s probably good for me to have the need to compete for attention hardwired into my brain. Odds are that the world I have to navigate on my own will be at least as competitive as the world is right now. Our society and economic system take unpaid, caring labor for granted. We’re supposed to believe the market will magically solve every social problem, but what’s really going on is that women are expected to do childcare, breastfeeding, eldercare, housework, and civic work. Since you’re committed to sharing responsibilities with Mommy and you want Mommy to contribute to the family income, you’re getting a taste of what working women have experienced for decades. The double shift. Watching you and Mommy struggle is a good education for me.

Me: Where are you getting this from?

My Baby: You know how you like to use me as a book holder? Do you think I’m just looking at my chin or something?



Me: Oh baby, my moochie foochie poo, you can’t take what those books say as statements of immutable facts. If I knew you were reading them, I would have talked to you about why I read depressing things. Writers try to document problems so that we can work for change. You’ll see when you get older, all the knowledge you develop will help you effect change. Government policies can change. Social norms can change. The structure of the family and whole communities can change.

My Baby: You’re such an idealist Daddy. I love you.

Natural, Homemade Diaper Wipes

One day a couple months before BabyG was born I was driving down the road with a couple bunches of Chinese prefold diapers (which aren't really prefolded) that I'd picked up at our favorite used baby/kid store, Young and Restless. At a random red light I was thinking about how no matter what everybody else was saying, it was impossible for a baby to pop out of my body, and even more impossible for that baby to have a bottom that pooed and peed. Which is when it hit me that I had no idea what people who use cloth diapers do to wipe their babies' poo and pee from their sweet patooties. The ladies in the store hadn't mentioned anything. Nobody I knew who used cloth diapers had mentioned anything.

Fearing it was another case of an obvious answer that would make me look stupid if I asked friends, I jumped on the net and surfed around. People who use cloth diapers: 1) use disposable, expensive, toxic smelling diaper wipes that you get in the store; 2) use expensive, disposable natural baby store diaper wipes; 3)use homemade disposable, inexpensive wipes; 4) use homemade, super inexpensive nondisposable wipes; or 5) use leaves and flowers that they then throw in the compost pile since breastfed baby poop is organic.

Okay, not really on number five, but that IS what the camp counsellors told us to do in Girl Scouts, when we forgot tp, and it seems to me somebody has probably tried it on their baby. If they have, nobody has written about it online.

Since we're not into toxins, and are already washing our own diapers, I figured we may as well wash the diaper wipes. (People who don't, but make their own wipes get those blue towels from the mechanics, and soak them in their homemade baby wipe sauce.)

Thine Own Baby Wipes

Liquid Ingredients
1/2 c Aloe Vera Juice (soother)
15 drops of Grapefruit Seed Extract (which kills bacteria)**
5 drops of Grapefruit Essential Oil (or any flavor you like)
Enough boiling water to fill a thermos

Other Materials
2 or 3 receiving blankets you hate the most (or old t shirts, whatever)
1 Thermos
1 Rectangular casserole dish
1 Bowl


1. I cut all the receiving blankets into a pile of wipes that are bigger than a matchbook, but smaller than a piece of toast.
2. I pour all the liquids into my thermos
3.I place the thermos inside the casserole dish, with the little bowl under the spout. The bowl catches any spills, and the the casserole dish aids in this endeavor by keeping bowl and thermos close enough together.
4. I wait for BabyG to go potty in her potty (or, if we miss, her diaper).
5. I grab a cloth wipe, squirt water on it, and then clean whatever needs cleaning.
6. I throw the wipe into the little bin we use to hold the diapers
7. Voila!

Grasshoppers: do not confuse the Grapefruit Seed Extract with Grapefruit Seed Essential Oils, as I once did. It won't protect your babies' bottoms from shit. Literally. In fact, the original recipe I read didn't mention adding any essential oils. I never would have known my mistake, but I shared the recipe with my friend Kay, who came to my house and kept saying, "Wow! Your wipes smell so good! How come my wipes don't smell so good?" Turns out Grapefruit Seed Extract doesn't smell.

When I finally figured out what I was doing wrong, I began using the Grapefruit Seed Extract, but I kept the essential oil in the recipe. BabyG and Kay's son C. have the sweetest smelling, bacteria-free, green stamped derriers in Texas.

motherhood, d'oh

last week was tough for me, which came as a huge shock.

people say having a baby is hard, and i hear that, and in the back of my head i say yes, having a baby is hard IF the mother has to have a c-section or IF the baby has colic or IF the baby is not healthy or IF the mom has problems breastfeeding or IF the spouse gets jealous of the baby or IF the mom can't stay home with the baby at least a few months or IF neither parent can stay home or IF the mother is doing it on her own or IF one of the parents is very young or IF there are two moms or two dads (so it's frowned upon by society) or IF the mom gets depressed and can't get out of it or IF one of the parents didn't want the baby at all or IF it's the second or tenth baby or IF there isn't medical help available or IF there isn't water to drink nearby or IF bombs are always dropping or IF ...IF you're not me, basically, who has it really easy because my baby is so sweet spirited and lovely and healthy and I am middle-class and in school and so get to stay home and try to raise the baby the way I always imagined I would.

whenever people ask me how its going i say: perfectly. i love it. because babyg is perfect and i love her. because greendady is a terrific, loving, supportive father. i deny being tired, i deny feeling overwhelemed, because i feel like i oughtn't feel any of these things.

so last week, when i was so sad and i felt so isolated, i couldn't figure out what was going on. because i love being babyg's mom and i love her smile and i feel so lucky, i couldn't figure out why i was so sad. and it turns out, i think, that it's simple. it really is hard being a mother. and really, being a mother is half being a mother and then half still being the you that was always a pain in the ass to be to begin with.

i feel a little like a person in aa: my name is magreen, and it is hard to be a mother. even though it could be harder doesn't mean it isn't hard. maybe just admitting it is important? maybe admitting it makes it easier because it takes so much energy denying that it's hard?

Miscegenation Smiscegenation – Are There Gods for Mix-breeds?

Before Miah and I married, a number of people in my family had said to me, “Look, when you are young and you fall in love, your differences do not seem to matter. But when you get older and life’s troubles come your way, when death is nearer, people go back to the religion they were raised with. So you should think twice about marrying a Christian.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Miah wasn’t raised as a church-going Christian. I care more about the Bible than she does. If someone takes our kid to church, it’s going to be me.”

But I decided to act on my family's concerns and I asked Miah to sit down with me to talk about religion. I dug up an old pamphlet someone gave me in college that explained basic Hindu beliefs and we read it together. It was written by Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, who I imagined, by virtue of the number of letters in his name, to be as authentic a guru as is possible. The pamphlet claimed that all Hindus – every single one of the billion Hindus – believe in these principles paraphrased below:

1) One Supreme Being, both immanent and transcendent, Creator and Unmanifest Reality, pervades the universe and can take innumerable forms. By worshipping these forms, we can have communion with the Supreme Being.

2) The soul reincarnates, progressing, and developing toward union with the divine universe.

3) Karma is the law of cause and effect by which individual navigates his/her own destiny by his/her thoughts, words, and deeds. Dharma is the set of duties that guide us along the moral path.

4) Spiritually awakened gurus help devotees with personal discipline, good conduct, purification, self-inquiry, and meditation.

5) All life is sacred and should be loved and revered, leading to ahinsa or the practice of non-violence.

6) The universe undergoes endless cycles of creation, preservation, and dissolution.

7) No religion teaches the only way to salvation above all others.

When Miah and I finished reading the list, we talked about whether we agreed with each principle or not. It turned out I was skeptical of almost all of them. I was taught all these principles as a child and they shaped who I am, and they continue to shape me, as do the sacraments, songs, mantras, and books that I was exposed to. But now, as an adult, I question these principles. Since there is a four-thousand-year-old history of atheism and agnosticism within the Hindu tradition, I do not see myself as an ex-Hindu, a jack-Hindu, or a lapsed Hindu.

The weird thing was that Miah agreed with almost all of the principles. According to the pamphlet, she’s more of a Hindu than I am. So there! If our baby believes in reincarnation, it’s going to be because of Miah not me. To top things off, while writing this entry I found out that Sivaya Subramuniyaswami was a white, American man born in Oakland, California! There is no pure, stable Hinduism (or Christianity) that we can fail to raise our daughter in.



I'm not saying my family members are flat wrong. Marriages across religions often don't work. I've seen it happen – closet Christians, Moslems, and Hindus suddenly demanding that their partner and their children adopt a particular set of religious views. All I am saying is that I think Miah, I, and our baby will be fine regarding gods, goddesses, and the monistic all-pervasive manifest and unmanifest that each of us may or may not believe in.

technoratti tags: religion, miscegenation, green, christianity, hinduism

No Shit Toxicity

In late January my paternal parents came to visit the baby for the first time, and we all had a marvelous romp together. On their way out of town they bequeathed our little family with a number of the sort of odd little items I have come to expect from a couple of aging, well-meaning alcoholics: a six pack of ginger ale, half a bottle of wine, Thai food left over from the restaurant next to their hotel, a dress my stepmother never liked and so gave to me, several pairs of black nylons, and a bottle of "odor neutralizing" spray. This post is the chronicle of the life of this last item, which was specifically Renuzit Odor Neutralizer.

For a little historical background, I'll note that I grew up loving the smell of these deoderizers. The cinammon fall blends, the summery citrus, the spring time BabyGc. I associate them with vacations because my parents have reverently saturated every hotel room they've ever stayed in with products akin to the Renuzit, since I can remember. Of course, I can't tell you who they think they're fooling when they try to conceal the Jim Beam/boxed wine/generic cigarette smells (me? the maid? themselves?)...but the consistent insistence that they CAN cover said smells with scented petrochemicals is nonetheless remarkable.

Before today I've written about how a) no matter how foolish I know it is I believe things ought to "smell" clean (foolish because if something were really clean it wouldn't be saturated in a smell); and b) that I dumped out all the family's toxic products last fall JUST IN CASE it might protect BabyG, not because I really believed the chemicals were harmful. Which is to say, I want to be a good mom by creating a safe environment for my child, even as its very difficult for me to believe products I've used all my life are really all that bad.

When my parents came to town and left the Renuzit Odor Neutralizer, then, it wasn't hard to convince myself to ignore all I've learned about toxic chemicals and to decide that using the rest of the bottle of Renuzit wouldn't be such a big deal. It looks environmentally friendly enough...it's not even an aerosol can. It's a spray. Ozone friendly is a good thing, right? I decided that I had been acting irrationally when pregnant, and surely odor neutralizer was harmless.

Well after dying my couch with beet juice, it smelled for a few days. I decided to neutralize the odor by spraying it with the Renuzit. No sooner was it sprayed than: 1)I got a tiny, annoying headache; 2) cat started meowing insistently about needing to immediately vacate the premises; 3) baby started crying; 4) most interestingly to me, I could detect the petro-y part of the fumes. And I guess, also, just I noticed for the first time in my life that it was a sweet fume. It didn't smell like I neutralized anything.

This is interesting to me because as I've noted, my family used this crap all my life and I really used to believe it masked smells. Maybe I was so used to chemical smells that I didn't notice them as being noxious? Took them as par for the course?

I went for a walk with BabyG, and was still blown away by the slight scent of orange scented gasoline when I came back in the house after the walk. Of course, after discovering the no-shit toxicity of the Renuzit, I of course threw the stuff away.

NOT.

I hid the bottle on a shelf is what I did. Because in my head still was this idea: I should save it to use for POWERFUL odors. Despite the cat and my head's insistence about the poisonous nature of my "neutralizer," a much older part of me said: "Stupid girl. The cat wanted outside because he always wants outside. And you got a headache because you went to yoga and pulled something. It smells bad because you've brainwashed yourself into thinking it SHOULD. But one day you will have an odor so bad that you will NEED this deodorizer. It smells powerful because it is."

So last week we had a party. Somebody threw something in the trash can and a few days later it smelled like a colony of rats had died in it.

I did not run for my all-powerful peppermint or eucalyptus essential oils. And I did settle for one or two cautious squirts of Renuzit. I let out six or seven cautious squirts of Renushit into the can.

And my head nearly blew up with pain, my throat ached, my cat's meows to escape the house were immediate and nearly convulsive. I left the door open and left for an hour. Still, this week, if I open the top of the can I am greeted with the slightest, yet most persistent tinge of petrochemicheadache.

Oops.

Morals? Getting rid of all the chemicals in your house makes you more susceptible to noticing and feeling ill because of said chemicals. So on one hand, since this is a world filled with these sorts of smells and cleaners, maybe we’d be better off getting used to the smell, like I used to be. On the other hand, do I want the little red flag in my head that detects poisonous sludge fooled with? Can’t help remembering about how American housewives, who spend their days inside their own not-very-well-ventilated houses, have much higher cancer rates than American women working outside the home.

For me, the second, unfooled hand wins mostly because even as I write this I find the degree of ickiness in that spray shocking. I know for a fact I used it not even a year ago, at my parents’ house, and thought it did its job very nicely. It’s spooky that just eight months into a less toxic filled home environment, my senses have changed so much.

technoratti tags: chemical, cancer, toxic, natural, green, cleaning

Natural Cleaning Products Update/Product Review

Perhaps it is too far back to remember, but last September I wrote about dumping and/or giving away all our commercial cleaning and deodorizing products. It was really, really hard for me to get rid of the products I'd grown up using. I felt ridiculous and wasteful: I'm fine and I grew up soaking myself with Ajax and Windex. Still. Just in case...I wanted to save BabyG from inhaling indoor petrochemically-based, toxic fumes throughout her youth and from accidentally ingesting some toxic substance, like dishwasher soap, which, as I've mentioned in past posts, is a leading cause of toddler deaths in the United States.

Since that time, I have had to buy Clorox bleach when we had a mold problem, and every couple of months or so I use a tablespoon's worth of the leftover bleach on BG's diapers. Other than that, I've stuck to my guns about keeping the house free of toxins.

For some things we've bought pricey, non-toxic products. For example, my dishwasher isn't powerful enough to use a borax/baking soda cleaner without leaving residue, so I use the Seventh Generation dishwashing stuff. I also decided against making shampoos or toothpastes, which seems way too time consuming, so I buy lauryl sulfate free brands from the Whole Foods nearby...I like Jason's toothpastes and haven't found an ideal shampoo, really.

We use the nontoxic Bon Ami and Barkeeper's Friend scouring powders, as well. I've recently started using Charlie's Soap for laundry, and I love it. It actually does make my clothes feel soft.

For most all other cleaning supplies...Windex equivalents, All Purpose Cleaners, floor cleaners etc...I really did convert to mixes of vinegar, cheap olive oils, baking soda, and borax...and I haven't been disappointed...though I did mix them with lots of essential oils in order to make sure the house SMELLED as clean as it looked. In fact, my friends come over and can tell I've deep cleaned because the house smells like pine needles, eucalyptis, or pepperment.

It is true that you have to scrub more with these products than with toxic equivalents. But I don't have to scrub very much more. Also, as a new mom who can't excercize as frequently as she'd like with baby in tow, I gotta say that any increased physical activity I get, I can use.

Sunday Afternoon Conversation With My Husband

Dear Blogging Community,

I need your advice. It's true I'm into inheriting friends' and strangers' discarded items and thereby:

1. saving a buck
2. adding to our home's retrofabulous "design plan"
3. preserving the planet's rapidly dwindling resources
   
4. freeing up space in the landfills (which, I know, my Hummer-driving, consumer-crazy neighbors in the burbs will thank me for)

However. I am not a zealot. But I'm not sure GreenDaddy realizes it. Because about fifty seconds ago, he called me up from our friends' Rube and Angel's.

And this is what he said: Hi MaGreen. We're done. We've loaded all of our friends' stuff into the moving van.

I said, Good!

He said: Do you want a rug?

Me (thinking, how thoughtful it is that GreenDaddy remembers I was just saying how it would be easier on my knees if I could play with BabyG on a rug instead of the hardwood floors): Ooooh, a rug?!

GreenDaddy: Yeah. It has a sort of oriental pattern.

Me: Oooooh...

GreenDaddy: But it has diarrhea on it. (Being funny) Not Rube or Angel's. It's the puppy's.

Me: (Confused) Do YOU want the rug?

GreenDaddy: It's fresh diarrhea from last night.

Me: But you want it?

GreenDaddy: (Pauses) Well, it has dog hair all over it. It's covered in it.

Me (thinking that we're lucky he didn't become a salesman, but that he surely wouldn't call about a rug unless it was easily transformable and/or he really wanted it...): Ummm...Well, I guess I could rent a RugDoctor. We could clean it.

GreenDaddy: But it's wool. And it's not a really nice rug.

Me: But do you want it?

GreenDaddy: Well, it really stinks.

Me: Okay. Well, then. No, *I* don't want the rug.

GreenDaddy: Yeah. It's not a very nice rug. And it's got sort of an ugly pattern.

So my questions are: Just who does your partner think you are when he calls you up to ask if you want an ugly, stinky, puppy-diarrhea-stained wool rug? Is he the one who is addled? Is it a sign he needs a vacation? Or could it be that he thinks you'd be angry if you discovered a perfectly wretched rug had passed from out of your mutal grasp, on his watch? Or is there some other explanation I'm not thinking of?

Signed, MaGreen
Doubled over in laughter,
yet bemused

A Recent Interview with My Four-Month-Old Daughter

Me: Do you like having green parents?

My Baby: Green parenting is not a static, achievable state of being. I question the stability of the very term "green parents." What I appreciate about this blog is that you conceive of raising me as a process. Green parenting is always coming into being, always undermining and rebuilding itself. You and mommy are constantly striving for and playing with a notion of greenness. You are not yet, and never will be, green parents.

Me: Well, do you like green parenting as process? You like it don't you?

My Baby: I inhabit a state of theory, perception, joy, discomfort, and discovery. I need. I learn. I enjoy or don't enjoy. I formulate worldviews. However, I cannot pick among possibilities. I have figured out how to put my foot in my mouth, but other than that you and mommy interpret my expressions and define my experiences. In short, I'm not yet accustomed to thinking in terms of choice, of like or not like.

Me: Choochee moochee poo! A choochee moochee poo…see I knew I could make you smile.

My Baby: You're funny daddy. I'll always smile for you.

Me: I'm really anxious about being your daddy. Sometimes I smile at you to cover up how worried I am about failing you.

My Baby: Daddy, I can see your smile, I can see the anxiety behind it, and I can see the oceans of dreams in which your fears are specks of sand. You should always remember that my well-being does not depend solely on you and mommy. There is also the world. The winds. Social norms. The laws of the nation. Parenting is the convergence of basic human concerns like love, resentment, food, and sleep; pre-capitalist constructs like religion; and modern developments like nation-states, global warming, and time becoming a series of opportunity cost calculations. This context is beyoond your control and you should not assume responsibility for what you cannot control.

Me: But isn't it my responsibility to understand as much as possible so that I can help us as a family to negotiate the world? Like you said, besides putting your foot in your mouth, you're not used to thinking like an agent, somebody who has to make choices that have long-term consequences.

My Baby: Get mommy. I'm hungry. Now.

A Blackspot Birth

My wife gave me new shoes on the day our baby girl was born. It was also my twenty-eighth birthday.

"Open your presents," she said between contractions. She's a show off, my wife.

In short, my daughter was born the same day I was, the same day I opened my Blackspot shoes.



Adbusters, the organization that makes the shoes, claims that they are "one of the world's most environmentally friendly shoes." The organic hemp fabric fits the contour of my foot snugly. The recycled tire soles are firm. They don't bounce and cushion like the gel-filled shoes I wear to run or walk long distances. I wear the Blackspots to work. I pedal in them down Dunlavy. Last week, another bicyclist called to me.

"Are those Blackspots?" he said. He had some on too. "You're the only other person I've seen wear them," he said. Now we greet each other whenever we pass. Maybe we'll have lunch. Become friends.

It's fitting that my wife gave me the shoes on the day our girl was born. Like our baby, the Blackspots were made by a union. That is, a unionized factory in Portugal that operates with decent labor conditions. Neither the shoes, nor our baby, were made by a corporation that maximizes profit at the expense of human well-being. Also like our baby, the Blackspots are vegetarian. No leather. My Blackspots seem to be growing too. The loose ends of the thread running down the center seam are fraying, getting longer by the day, like our baby's astonishing hair.

As a final comparison, note that in my family's culture we put a black spot on a baby's face to keep away bad luck. The black spot, or najar as we call it, is meant as a mark of imperfection so that evil spirits do not linger around those we love.

Don't Look, She's Breastfeeding

Our blog has recently experienced a surge in its readership. In February we had about 600 "unique viewers" and this month we've already had 1200. So I've been looking very carefully at the reports our server host produces and I noticed we've gotten several hits from Google searches on lactation. Here are the exact search phrases: "lactating breasts pictures," "free lactating stories," "pictures of male breasts lactating," and "dad daughter lactating stories." I'm not saying that Miah's recent posts about breastfeeding are the sole reason for the growth in readership. It does seem, however, that a not insignificant portion of visitors to Green Parenting really want to see and read about lactating breasts. Are you breastfeeding women (and apparently men) looking for information and validation? Are you people seeking lactation as pornography? Are you just curious?

About a month ago, my wife, my baby, and I had the chance to eat a Sunday jazz brunch at Brennan's, a high-class restaurant in Houston. Just to give you an idea, there's no street parking and the valet service costs $5 without tip. Feminist Economics, the journal where I work, was hosting and the bill was covered by a generous donor. We'd never have gone otherwise. What I love about Houston is that it doesn't really have old money at its center with all the brown, black, and working class white folks at the periphery. Houston doesn't have a center (except maybe profit and speculation). When we walked into Brennan's though, I saw the closest thing Houston has to old, white Southern genteel society. This was the culture I knew intimately as child in Mobile, Alabama. Sons and daughters of the Confederacy.

But there we were enjoying ourselves with feminist scholars from China, Canada, France, and all over the US. They were a quirky bunch. Miah and I were at ease. A jazz quartet played us some standards. Our baby dug it. The trumpet player made funny faces at her during his solo. During the meal, she started to whine and fuss so Miah discreetly breastfed her at the table. After eating, she fussed again and I could tell she needed to urinate. So I stood up, picked up my baby, and put her over my shoulder. Right at the next table, I caught an elderly woman galking at us. She had magnificently big, permed hair. She was wearing fine Sunday attire. I imagine she had just taken her grand kids to a stuffy Episcopalian service.

Why was she staring at my wife, my baby, and me? I wondered. Was it that Miah and I are an ethnically-mixed couple? That our baby is a mongrel? Was it that Miah breastfed at the table in a fine restaurant? Was it that we even dared to bring a three-month-old baby at all? Did the woman stare because it was I, the man, who picked up our baby, assumed the role of caregiver, and headed to the bathroom? Or could it be that our baby is so tremendously beautiful, she could not help but stare out of love or jealousy or astonishment? I took our baby into the Men's room, took off her diaper, held her over the toilet, and made a psssss sound. I wish the grandmother could have seen my baby then. Does breastfeeding in public surprise you? Behold elimination communication!

Miah and I have never set out to use our baby as a political stunt. We're not really lactivists in the militant sense. We haven't staged milk-ins at Starbucks. Breastfeeding and elimination communication are part of our daily lives. And yet, that morning at Brennan's, and later in the reports from the server host, I was reminded how feeding a baby triggers strong reactions and has huge consequences. Politically, socially, economically, ecologically, spiritually, aesthetically, emotionally, erotically. Like the whole world is at play in that simple act of the body, two bodies. Whether you are an radical lactivist or not, whether you were raised by a pack of wolves or with the manners of Queen Elizabeth, you can't resist looking.