Pansy: March 2005 Archives

I saw George Felos' press conference at 2.30 this afternoon talking about the importance of "Mrs. Schiavo's peaceful death process" and whine about Father Pavone's straight arrow comments-"he was using the pulpit as an idealogue and was very harsh..." Oh boo hoo! You starve an innocent woman to death and cry that someone disagrees with you. Do people actually believe this crap?

Next week George Felos is going to be before Judge Greer claiming our blue sky is purple and then we'll have a NYT gallop poll stating 70% of Americans agree the sky is in fact purple, and only crazy right wing Christians see the sky is blue.

With every major moral dilemma that comes up lately, the media always blasts the "conservative, religious right". Like many of us, I am tired of it. For a very long time, I have felt the need to distance myself from the image of some of the stranger Christian fanatics that I know. Kind of like "Hi, I'm Pansy. Yes, I'm a pro-life Catholic, but I am not weird. Yes I homeschool, but I am not weird. I am open to life and have 5 kids, but I am not weird." I think I felt so strongly because I know some really strange people through either homeschooling groups, the Latin Mass or the Internet who fit the bill of the fanatical, non-charitable, judgemental fundamentalist. I wanted so badly to distance myself from that image because there is such a stigma against being too far right. But you know, I spent much of life around many far left people, and from my experience the far left people I know mostly at some point in time personally contributed to the death of another whereas people I know who are too far right are just kind of anal and annoying.

Fact is I am starting not to care anymore. I think the Terri Schiavo case has drawn a line, and if this case has not, there will be more to come in the near future that will. Truth be told, I am not defining myself as anything, I am too busy to do so. But I believe that starving this poor woman to death is murder. I believe abortion is murder. I will continue to say Mel Gibson did a great thing by making The Passion both artistically and spiritually. I see a real moral drought promoted in many of the traditional school settings that is getting worse and as long as I see that I will homeschool. I think birth control is evil. These things make me I guess someone who doesn't think for themselves, or a fanatical, far right or whatever the buzz terms are so be it. I refuse to apologize anymore and am tired of feeling the need to explain why I feel the way I do.

This world just has done gone mad and like my boy Kanye says, "only Jesus can save us."

I linked to it before, but if you missed it, I would like to direct your attention to one of my father's recent articles in the Catholic Social Science Review.

Two years ago, I posted a recipe for Grass Pies-a traditional Italian Good Friday food. We had them tonight and they are as good as always. Enjoy.

I know her "husband" will have her cremated. But what will happen to us as a culture? Will there be a backlash?

I am having a hard time being online lately because the Internet is a hot bed for spreading the lies surrounding Terri.
Our culture is in a worse state than I thought.

This is the first chance I had to get to these. This is a fun bunch of questions.
1. So living in the great white north sounds brrrrrr, too cold, to us Southerners. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live, and why?
I would go back to the Fiji, or Jamaica. I am an island girl at heart. We condidered relocating to Puerto Rico this past summer as well. But if I move to the islands, I would miss the beauty of upstate NY and New England terribly. I feel very blessed because even though the cold is a struggle, we are living how I would like to live for now.

2. Are you really sleepy all the time? And just how DID you meet that Peony girl, anyway?
Yes, i am really sleepy all the time. I come from a long line of what my brother Alex would call "Sleepy Jamaican Women" because anemia and narcolepsy run int the family. Then I manage to have children who hate to sleep.

I met Peony on the Mothering With Grace 2 1/2 years ago. I remember because she referred to Hambet as "the Baby" all the time, and he was 18 months. There was a thread where someone requested we all give our AIM handles and like a days later she IMed out the blue. Then we made a point to IM the same time every day and found we some funny things in common. I remember thinking she was the coolest Catholic I met. She was smart, she liked Buffy and we talked about what to make for dinner everyday.

3. What was the last movie you watched, and would you recommend it to us? (Note: this needs to be a grown-up movie. Bambi doesn't count.)Oh, I never get to see grown-up movies. I saw the Pacifier and Are We There Yet and not only were they not grown up movies, they were penance. I watched Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure last night, but that is adolescent. Oh, I know, I think perhaps The Village. It is not my fav M.Night Shayalaman, but it has some great lines in it.
4. Go ahead and confess. Tell us one of your guilty pleasures. Buffalo Wings!!!!Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Oh, and um, season 1 of Wonder Woman.

5. You knew it was coming: What's your all-time favorite fiction book? At least for today.I have wayyy too many, I cannot narrow it down. I love science fiction and gothic horror. I also love mysteries, particulalry Sue Grafton. Reading is one of my favorite hobbies.

I have been wanting to blog on Judith Warner's article in Newsweek, Mommy Madness that Peony mentioned before, for some time now. But I have this baby that will not let me put him down, and kids and life and stuff. Not only that but Greg Popcak beat me to the punch when he said:

But as I read the article above, I realized that "Perfect Madness" is not about being a perfect mom. Its about trying to look like a perfect mom to everybody else. Books like this blame motherhood for a problem that has nothing to do with motherhood. Rather, the problem described by Perfect Madness has everything to do with the idea that "my identity is tied up in getting the approval of my peers for how much I can accomplish." That's not motherhood, boys and girls. That's secular feminism. Or, to be perfectly Catholic about it, its just the plain old sin of pride riding aroud in an SUV.

I know it's lame to say "I meant to say that", but I was thinking the same thing. Oh well, Greg words it better than I ever could.

Like Greg, it took me a bit to put my finger on exactly what bothered me about this article. I know I am somewhat of a zealot when it comes to my "I'm my kids' Mom" philosphy. I guess that's a symptom of being the daughter of a deacon developmental psychologist whose research focused on Daycare Syndrome and Absent Father Syndromeat one point.

So, when I put my militant SAHMism aside and tried to read the article with an open mind, there were some points I agreed with. For example:

Some of the mothers appeared to have lost nearly all sense of themselves as adult women. They dressed in kids' clothes—overall shorts and go-anywhere sandals. They ate kids' foods. They were so depleted by the affection and care they lavished upon their small children that they had no energy left, not just for sex, but for feeling like a sexual being. "That part of my life is completely dead," a working mother of two told me. "I don't even miss it. It feels like it belongs to another life. Like I was another person."

I am sure we can all relate to that. Also being a SAHM is very, very lonely. Many women attempt to thwart lonliness by attending Mom's playgroups and whatnot or simply going back to work. Ms. Warner thinks the problem is a lack in decent daycare or preschools:

We need incentives like tax subsidies to encourage corporations to adopt family-friendly policies.

We need government-mandated child care standards and quality controls that can remove the fear and dread many working mothers feel when they leave their children with others.

We need flexible, affordable, locally available, high-quality part-time day care so that stay-at-home moms can get a life of their own. This shouldn't, these days, be such a pipe dream. After all, in his State of the Union message, President Bush reaffirmed his support of (which, one assumes, includes support of funding for) "faith-based and community groups." I lived in France before moving to Washington, and there, my elder daughter attended two wonderful, affordable, top-quality part-time pre-schools, which were essentially meant to give stay-at-home moms a helping hand. One was run by a neighborhood co-op and the other by a Catholic organization. Government subsidies kept tuition rates low. A sliding scale of fees brought some diversity. Government standards meant that the staffers were all trained in the proper care of young children. My then 18-month-old daughter painted and heard stories and ate cookies for the sum total in fees of about $150 a month. (This solution may be French—but do we have to bash it?)

We need new initiatives to make it possible for mothers to work part-time (something most mothers say they want to do) by creating vouchers or bigger tax credits to make child care more affordable, by making health insurance available and affordable for part-time workers and by generally making life less expensive and stressful for middle-class families so that mothers (and fathers) could work less without risking their children's financial future. Or even, if they felt the need, could stay home with their children for a while.

In general, we need to alleviate the economic pressures that currently make so many families' lives so high-pressured, through progressive tax policies that would transfer our nation's wealth back to the middle class. So that mothers and fathers could stop running like lunatics, and start spending real quality—and quantity—time with their children. And so that motherhood could stop being the awful burden it is for so many women today and instead become something more like a joy.

I don't agree. Not that even I in my total philosophy that mothers should stay home and take care of their kids have a problem with toddlers being at preschool a couple of mornings a week. But part of the problem is being a SAHM is no longer the norm. For example, my mother lives in the suburbs. When I visit and decide to take a walk around the development, it is like a ghost town. Everyone is at work during the day. When you go to a Mom's group, you literally have to seek out bizarre like minded, extreme SAHM people as opposed to just seeing mothers and their children around. Families are no longer together to help. Even when some of us live closer to each other, for example, my mother-in-law was never a SAHM, so there is little back up and support there either. The average extended family is not the support system it used to be.

Not only is physical/emotional support for Moms whaning, motherhood is simply not respected.

Neither do we need to pat the backs of working mothers, or "reward" moms who stay at home, or "valorize" motherhood, generally, by acknowledging that it's "the toughest job in the world."

Actually we do need that. Not as a mission statement, but as a culture. we need an appreciation that motherhood is hard work and that if you support and appreciate healthy, happy mothers, you are supporting the next generation. Motherhood is seen as something that happens when you were too stupid to get better info on birth control devices. Kids are seen as some kind of disease and the end of a happy life. If that were not so, we would not kill them in the womb. Now I cannot change societies perspectives, but I think the perspectives have a lot to do with the problems many Moms have.

The other aspect I think that is missing from the article is the Christian one. motherhood is a work of service. It is the result of love and it is God's work. this is not to deny how hard it is, but the flip side is it brings much joy as well. There are very few things in this world if at all that are worth anything that do not have pain attached. Look at Jesus on the Cross. Labor and birth. Night and day. Again, this is not a solution always, but perspective helps. When you have a better sense of purpose about motherhood being a part of the bigger picture, rather than just simply something you decided to try out, these issues may seem like more of a struggle that you need to work through rather than a hopeless pit of bad choices and despair.

"If you give a Matthew a muffin, then he'll ask for a glass of milk. Then he'll ask for a straw...and um, just make your life horrible until he leaves."

Remaking Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. My children have stated: Tim Burton makes creepy movies, Johnny Depp looks really pale and they don't like Oompa Loompas and big, round blueberry girls.

The Good:Polo is doing just fine and is back at work. He was tired for like a couple of days, but after that was back to normal.

We bought a new mini-van. Gorbulas' Godmother's husband is a car salesman and gave us a good deal on a 2002 Venture with 30,000 miles on it. Deo Gratias.

The Bad:The insurance gave us a fair settlement, but it is $1300 short of what we owe on the bank note. We did not have gap insurance because we never heard of such a thing until, um, Saturday. So we have to figure out how to pull $1300 out of thin air. The insurance said they will call the company we have the car loan from and see what they can do. I am not feeling too bad because God took care of my husband and provided a new car so I do not think He brought us this far to break us. I am waiting to see what the insurance says.

I am very appreciative of your prayers. I think they have made all the difference in the world.