Deborah Lipp

Yesterday morning I heard a commercial on the radio for a “news” show on “Women in the Military.” I actually meant to blog it yesterday, but sometimes ideas leak out of my brain and get all over the floormats in the car.

The gist of it was: Is it really okay for women to be in combat? Cuz, y’know, weak and girly and they get their stinky perfumes all over their guns. Or something. The thing is they used all these clips of soldiers saying how women are great, and professional, and in every way as good as men, and then the Ominous Voiceover comes on and asks Ominous Questions: Are women really tough enough? Should they be there at all? Do they menstruate all over their military equipment? Do they have cooties?

(I made some of that up.)

All I could think was, “Why aren’t we done with this yet?” I mean, This is a done deal, it should be old news. Fuck, women in the military is old news, and questions about their fitness doesn’t exactly “support the troops,” does it? I mean, how far back do we want to question? I half expect the Ominous Voiceover to come on and say “Women and the Vote: Is Suffrage Really a Good Idea?”

I am reminded of one of Isaac‘s favorite sayings; that dinosaurs make a lot of noise and tear down a lot of trees as they die. Because they know they’re dying out.

So then last night I see this post on Pandagon, talking about how scientific studies that bash women’s freedoms get media attention (like the so-called “dangers” of daycare) but studies demonstrating the opposite are never reported on. (She’s riffing on a piece Echidne wrote.)

It’s all of a piece. The “culture wars” are dying dinosaurs thrashing about trying to stop the changes that will make them extinct. Unfortunately, dinosaurs still have a lot of power to hurt us; to reduce reproductive freedom, to diminish opportunities, to lay some mighty fucking guilt trips. But it does help, from time to time, to remember that they’re dinosaurs.

Happy Mother’s Day. Woot. I have some thoughts on the topic.

I think I spend about twenty percent of the time thinking or fearing that I’m a bad or inadequate mother. Our culture gives us a picture of motherhood that is both sub-human and super-human. “Moms” are a thing, whether a glowing, lovely thing, or a harried, wearing mom-pants thing. What has continually thrown me about motherhood is that it’s not a thing; it’s me being a mom, other women, both ordinary and extraordinary, being themselves; we happen to be mothers, and motherhod happens to be consuming, but it isn’t an identity. It has no personality traits. It’s simply a part of the lives we have. And that utterly violates our expectations.

It started in pregnancy. Here are two things about pregnancy no one will tell you: It makes you gassy, and stretch marks itch. So here I was, thinking I was the frickin Madonna, all round and soft-focus, and instead I was belching and scratching my belly.

And then I had a baby. I’m a very distractable person, I need lots of things to focus on or I get bored. Yet somehow I thought I’d enjoy focusing on a baby. Which can’t talk or do a little dance or really do anything interesting except glow and pee. I used to prop books on his little head when I breastfed. Because breastfeeding? Wonderful but not really occupying.

What I ended up bringing to motherhood was me. All my good and bad qualities; not “mother” good and bad qualities. So I’m impatient, easily bored, I say inappropriate things, I’m short-tempered, and a shoddy manager. (Mothers need management skills. There’s like, paperwork.) I’m also smart and funny and blunt and I get people. I get Arthur. I have the knack for seeing inside someone and knowing a lot of what’s in there, and Arthur’s a person who needed that, even more than most kids. So that worked out for us. That’s maybe the best part of us as a family.

Sure, motherhood changes you. Like, utterly. Reaches in and rips you open with a love bigger and more demanding than anything you’ve ever known. The thing to me that motherhood is, at its heart, is that love. The other stuff, that yes I’m more short-tempered than I was before, and have more gray hair, and am a much better cook, well no matter who and what you are, you adapt and change in response to your own lifestyle and the people in it. In my case, one of those people happens to be my son. Motherhood didn’t give me cooking skills, a life in which they were useful and needed did.

What motherhood is for me is simply this: How much I love him. Not that he loves me. Not what I do right or what I do wrong. Not any social accoutrements of parenthood. Just love. And the longing to be and do more to fulfill that love.