I am not a mom who cares about, or pretends to care about, Barbies.
I came late, relatively, to motherhood, so i guess it’s fitting that this Mothers’ Day blog is late, too.
See, Mothers’ Day, and this past couple of weeks, i’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning and responsibility of this honourable task, raising my daughter. Part of that task is shepherding her into the social realm.
Negotiating the bounds of friendship, making relationships with others, i often bump up against cultural norms. It took me years to recognise that these are what i was bumping against. Yeah, it’s personal, but it’s the cultural moment, too. And now, bringing my daughter out into this society in which we live, the challenge, for better and worse, is differences in parenting styles.
Close to Mothers’ Day, i was sitting at dim sum with two of my very dearest friends; 30-plus years of caring we’ve shared, and we’re talking now about our kids. Turns out they are disciplined geeks, really, just like we were.
“Well, yeah, couldn’t turn out otherwise, we had Chinese parents,” they laugh. I laugh harder.
“Uh, guys…” my parents were Ojibwe and Polish.
They wave that off – “Same thing; they might as well have been!”
And it is a badge of honour for us all, and we are finally not just okay with it, but proud of the discipline, the parental involvement, the expectation that we have the standards of our house, regardless of our peers. In childhood, it set us apart culturally, just as our skin colour, dark eyes and identified racial origins did in that little community, in that pre-diversity cultural moment in which we were kids.
In our middle years we see how surviving that challenging time has helped us, how our parents’ strength was a key, and how it gives us confidence about guiding our own kids through this very challenging world, in their own cultural moment.
I see that my parents wanted for me that i find this world extraordinary. I remember my dad sneering and scoffing at material goods and the appearance of status, as things that only shallow people held to be important. The things he and my mom taught me to pay attention to were not valued by many of my peers. So i was also taught to hold my own council.
And it is still rare to me to discover a kindred mind, and i still hold my own council, though i’ve learned to work with, respect, and count among my dear friends people who i don’t expect will ever fully grasp my values.
Maybe hokey values. Maybe values that some people would mock; maybe some people don’t like who i am, cannot bear my way. But it is my way, and the only way i can walk. However imperfectly. And i am so thankful that i am my mother’s daughter.
I remember Mom taking me to the new farm, before we’d moved into the house; our cow was there, so she took me along at milking time, for company, so my older sis and i wouldn’t fight, and also to show me some things about quiet and diligence. She knew me, and counted on me not to shriek and carry on when i saw the bathtub, full of dead mice – the house had been used as a granary, and the 30 years our family lived there, never stopped leaking rapeseed from odd crannies… she just quietly got on with cleaning the horrible mess, and i don’t remember what i did, but i know i didn’t shriek or carry on, and i hope i helped her.
And she called the cow to the laundry stand in the yard, subsumed in a swath of free-range sweet clover, and put down some grain, and milked her. My mother only ever used a rope on a cow when first training her. And that never took long. It was expected that a proper milk cow was one you could milk anywhere, and she would stand quietly for you. And the cows met that expectation with dignity and good humour. This one, like every one of my mother’s, came when mom called, accepted the gift of grain, and stood unfettered and serene while giving the gift of milk to feed mom’s children.
Maybe that was the day my mom decided, i’d be the first kid she’d teach to milk, because the cows liked me, and i liked the humming silence, the peaceful rhythm of milking time. She saw i was ready to learn.
Just the other day, i walked in the woods with my daughter and a horde of friends. She had fun gambolling with them, but intermittently, came back to me, fell into an accompanying quiet. So, i began to show her things, like i remember my parents showing me. We have our own culture about woods. It cannot be learned except in quietude. She listened for a bit, and then capered off again with her friends.
And i walked on with the moms, listening to their chat about having to buy the kids this or that desired thing. Musing about how i don’t know all the popular toys, the current fads; and i don’t want to.
And thinking about breakfast cereal.
My mom never bought the stuff. In my childhood, while of course we heard about the popular brands, cereal from a box was one of those strange tastes you only got at sleep-overs. My mom, parenting in the sixties, seventies and eighties, raised six kids without contributing much to the profits of Kellogs or Nabisco or the rest. She made raisin bran muffins, eggs from our chickens, toast from the bread she’d made by hand, bacon, and porridge.
Oh, the porridge.
I hated porridge.
The smell of oatmeal made me nauseous. But, not to embarass her – for she rose very early in the winter to stoke the big wood furnace and light the woodstove in the kitchen – not to embarass her or belittle her work, i struggled to swallow that vile, slimy mass. And once i was grown, breathed a huge sigh for never having to endure it again.
But oatmeal sticks with you. As did her observation about the relative costs, and relative nutritional benefits, of porridge vs. boxed cereal. And, having never developed a palate for boxed cereal as a kid, when i did indulge as a free adult, i discovered i’d really not been missing much.
I have an easier time of things than did my mom, in many ways; but i’m thinking mainly about the fact that my kid loves oatmeal porridge. And if, one day, she does question why i never buy boxed cereals, i’ll be ready with good, sticks-with-you answers, that are still true.
And i’ll keep relationships with the many good friends and neighbours who’ll maybe never know what the distance is between us. And encourage her to make friends with kids with different boundaries, different viewpoints, different ways. They have much to offer her, and they’ll teach her things beyond my knowing. And i’ll do my best not to chase after them, but to confidently walk by my own light, and trust that this example is the most important one of all.
Thanks, Mom, for making oatmeal. And thanks for never buying me brand-name stuff, and for leading by example: walking in the woods; listening to cows; quietly and with dignity making the best of the humble means available, exhuming the clawfoot tub from the carnage of unfortunate mice. And prioritising the basics, and demonstrating the values by which you were raised. And, when you could see i might hear you, speaking of those values, too.
It’s not Mothers’ Day. But that’s okay. The true things, and the real work, goes on every day. And yes, my kid has Barbies; but we buy them second hand, and she sees them for what they are – just a small part of the play world she makes from imagination. And not part of the many things she and i do together. She knows already, i am not a mom who cares about Barbies.
All My Relations
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