Have One Child or Many, Just Don’t Plan on Getting What You Expect
Questions around whether, why, and how we have children are more fraught than ever, as medicine and technologies—from contraception to pre-embryonic genetic screening—allow us unprecedented control over reproduction. Writer Lauren Sandler has recently been touting the benefits of having only one child (such as in a New York Times op ed and in a post on The Atlantic's "Sexes" blog) as she promotes her new book One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child and the Joy of Being One. Much … [Read More...]
A Book to Help Us Be Informed Listeners on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Until a few weeks ago, most of my knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict came from stories. My father owned a Time-Life book set on World War II that sat on our living room bookshelf. I would periodically pull the one about "The Final Solution" off the shelf and page through solemnly, taking in the photos of huddled people with ragged stars stitched on their coats, of cattle cars, of a pale-faced little boy holding up his hands to surrender in the Warsaw ghetto. I sat looking at those … [Read More...]
The Latest Mass Shooting Didn’t Even Make the Front Page
I was leafing through the New York Times last Saturday morning when, deep toward the back of the front section, I came upon this article about a gunman, armed with an assault weapon and nearly 2,000 rounds of ammunition, who shot and killed four people in Santa Monica. (The death toll has since risen to five.) I said to my husband, "Look at this. It didn't even make the front page." Six months after more than two dozen people, most of them 6- and 7-year-old children, were slaughtered by an … [Read More...]
Because He Cleans the Shower Drain: A Father’s Day Tribute
Adapted from a post originally published on my former blog on June 19, 2011. You know how we moms have that reputation for quietly, almost invisibly taking care of everyone? A reputation for taking care of all the little, mundane details that keep a household and family running? A reputation we like to regularly polish and sometimes shove in our partners' faces to ensure that they properly appreciate its gleam? I do that sort of caretaking in our family. But so does Daniel. No, he doesn't … [Read More...]
I Have a Kid Hangover (But Manage to Write Anyway)
Finally, I have a name for it—that exhausted but wired state of mind I am in most of the time, in which I am hyperaware of all that needs doing but struggle to get started on any of it, fuzzy headed and distracted and restless, craving time alone but once I have it, paralyzed by the prospect of choosing what to do with it. I have a "kid hangover." I have borrowed and adapted this term from a blog post by writer Donald Miller, who wrote that, after waking up "groggy and sluggish" one … [Read More...]
Instead of Judging Our Fellow Parents, How About Offering Empathy & Respect?
We live in an era of extremely high expectations for parents, accompanied by severe judgment for those who are deemed failures at meeting those expectations. Some of the unrealistically high standards for today's parents come from "experts." For example, in their notorious "Best-Odds Diet," the authors of What to Expect When You're Expecting implied that eating a buttered roll with dinner is an act of sabotage against your child-to-be. Parenting magazines continually offer up reasoned … [Read More...]
Gratitude in an Overscheduled Season
As the school year winds down, my calendar greets me each morning with its list of assemblies and ceremonies and recitals and final thises and thats. Reminders about teacher and coach gifts to be group funded and bought, of summer camp bills to be paid and paperwork to be completed. My brain greets me each morning with words clamoring for release, aching for time in which to sit down and allow my fingertips to create something—a post, an essay, an article—with those words. While the kids are … [Read More...]
How Poverty Affects Vaccination Rates
Last fall I pointed blog readers to my colleague Rachel Stone's post on vaccination as an expression of neighborly love. Today, Rachel has a follow-up post of sorts, commenting on a Mother Jones article indicating that poverty and other family issues (such as working parents who struggle to get their kids to the doctor's office during business hours) are significant factors in children going unvaccinated. I commend you to her post, as well as to an excellent new web site, Voices for Vaccines, … [Read More...]
The Kingdom Comes One Lonely Step at a Time—Until We Are Not Lonely Any More
I started bringing my own grocery bags to the store in the early 1990s. For many years, mine was a lonely habit. Although grocery stores in liberal Washington, D.C., stocked reusable bags for purchase, very few people used them. So when I got to the checkout line, the cashiers and baggers were often flummoxed, and sometimes obviously annoyed, by my bringing my own bags. They would ask, "What are these for?" If I had three bags' worth of groceries and only brought two bags, they would say, "But … [Read More...]
Factory Disasters in Bangladesh, Consumerism, and Original Sin
I approach buying clothes for my children with the same compulsive attention to my kids' individual needs and wants that I bring to Christmas gift buying. Focused attention to my kids' clothing needs is, for me, as much an embodiment of maternal love as cooking is for some moms. Finding a shirt that I just know one of the kids will love, zipping up a child's heavy fleece jacket on a cold morning, watching them tear out the front door on the first really warm spring day in new shorts and sandals, … [Read More...]
Does God Hate Clutter? I Used to Think So, But Now I’m Not So Sure
This piece was originally published at the Daily Episcopalian on October 4, 2010. I am posting again in honor of my mother-in-law Ruby, who died one year ago today. In my 20s, I attended a church that embraced material simplicity and detachment from stuff long before it became trendy. We engaged regularly in soul-searching conversations about our attachment to possessions. One friend’s long-ago purchase of a $900 wing chair continued to haunt him as a symbol of material excess. He talked … [Read More...]
At Home in a Place Where Imperfect Bodies Are the Norm
In honor of warmer weather and its attendant swimsuits and more revealing clothing, I am reposting this piece reflecting on how it feels to be in a place where bodily imperfections are the norm. One day several years ago, I was in the hot tub at our local indoor pool, stretching after swimming laps. A class for parents and infants was about to start, so moms and dads were gathering near the hot tub, their wide-eyed little ones wrapped in towels. A tall, tanned young mother strolled in wearing … [Read More...]
The Summer When I Didn’t Cherish Time with My Kids
Note: I wrote this in the summer of 2009. I am reposting it here as summer approaches, as a reminder (to myself, above all) of how radically life can change us in surprising ways. I used to despise the summertime, for reasons I explain in this post. Now, I have become like a cat, chasing the sun through the day, craving its light and warmth for the relief it brings to body and spirit. Most days over the past couple of weeks, since spring has finally sprung here in New England, you would find … [Read More...]
Articulating the Mystery of Faith: Christian Wiman’s “My Bright Abyss”
We Christians are sometimes taken to task for the way that we, when embroiled in difficult conversations about whether or not God exists, chalk things up to "mystery." Our atheist/agnostic conversation partners see this (rightly, in some cases) as a cop out, as a way of saying, "I don't really understand why I believe, but I do believe, so I'll just say it's a mystery, which will end the argument because what makes a mystery mysterious is that it remains unknown and unknowable, unexplained and … [Read More...]
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