Love is a Half-Eaten Bologna Sandwich

One of the most fascinating, terrifying, confounding things about becoming a wife and soon-to-be-becoming a mother has been discovering all of the very strong beliefs I have apparently been carting around with me about how I "should" be behaving in both of those roles. The strange thing about these beliefs is that they don't seem to fit very well with my politics or any of the variety of other things I tend to think or value or espouse.

For example, in my late teens and early twenties, I went to a women's college at a time when the campus was in the throes of a community-wide discussion about if transgendered people born into women's bodies, but who now identified as men, could be admitted. That's a pretty high-level analysis of the politics of gender, and I followed up with classes in graduate school about the social construction of gender, considered Betty Freidan's "The Feminine Mystique" kind of cute and outdated, and just generally assumed that I was a very evolved feminist thinker.

Then I got married, to a man. Turns out I also believe that I am A VERY BAD PERSON if our house is messy, if someone else's wife cooks a more complicated dinner, or if I am not attractive enough to "make my husband proud" when we go out socially. Turns out it makes complete sense to me that I should do as many of the errands, as much of the laundry and as many of the chores as my husband will let me get away with.

And that's the funny thing. He's not the one slamming me with these rather outdated, Cleaver-esque expectations. In fact, he's a little confused about why I would want to take on these domestic responsibilities all willy-nilly because my behavior is in such contrast to the rather egalitarian, feminist ways we share finances, decision making, door-opening etc. It's hard for the poor guy to grasp why I go from lecturing him on the ways language is used to enforce the oppression of women when he says that something was "a b@#ch" to actually crying because a casserole doesn't come out right, or why I'm wearing an apron while I make it, barefoot and pregnant.

It appears that all of these ideas about what kind of wife (and by extension, mother) I "should" be have been transmitted to me across the generations, across the Nick at Night channel, in spite of my politics and in spite of my graduate education in post-modern constructionist ideas about gender. It's humbling, and it has actually softened me, and opened me up to conversations with other women about their own dualities.

I've become much more aware of all the judgments I've thrown at other women (mostly in my head) from both sides of this crazy divide. What I'm realizing now is that what kind of wife, mother, woman I become is not as much of an academic, esoteric choice as I've believed it could be, and that the forces of culture and memory, sideways glances and things overheard in cafes are far stronger than I could have known until I was up against them.

It's 2011, and I've discovered that I believe that I will be A VERY BAD PERSON if I don't breast feed, if I go back to work before my child is in elementary school, if I don't lose my baby weight within 8 weeks of giving birth and if all of the kitchen gadgets I put on our wedding registry because I "should" need them lie dormant. The only thing that can make me feel better is rushing to the grocery store to buy ingredients to make muffins with, but then if I mess up the muffins, say by leaving them in the pan too long after taking them out of the oven, my self-esteem (Master's degree and all) is back down the drain.

I worked all day yesterday providing therapy to women suffering from eating disorders (talk about your gendered disease), but the most fulfilling thing that happened to me was a photo text message from my husband with a picture of his half-eaten bologna sandwich, thanking me for picking up his vegan bologna at the store the other day. Which is not to say that caretaking is wrong or bad or that finding domesticity fulfilling is any more of a sin than sometimes leaving the house looking less than pretty. I don't want to follow the pendulum to a place of devaluing work traditionally considered "women's work", it's just that the balance seems to have gotten out of wack for me.

In my clinical social work practice, I currently am seeing a patient who is struggling with binge eating in response to feelings of boredom and a lack of fulfillment in her role as a stay at home mom, but more importantly, she binges in response to the feelings of guilt she feels for having those feelings of boredom and lack of fulfillment in the first place. And you know what's scary? The first element of my gut emotional response to her was to judge her as less than other women, just like she was. Luckily, I'm a social worker and I got to interpret that judgement as transference, and use it to inform my understanding of her predicament. I also get to use it in my own growth process and bring it back to my circle of advisors, the women I trust with my darkest secrets, and admit that in spite of it all, I still believe that I would be A VERY BAD PERSON if I didn't find chores, and making babies, and baking pies totally, orgasmically fulfilling every second of every day.

And then I recommended that my patient read "The Feminine Mystique".

So much to think about

There have been many changes in my life over the last year. I got married, I got pregnant (actually, in a slightly different order, but we didn't realize it at the time...), my new husband and I moved back to the area where we grew up so that we can share the joy (and trials, and childcare) of raising our son with our friends and family around us, and I became an independently licensed clinical social worker after three years of graduate school, two years of hard work, administrative fees, jumping through hoops and taking exams. The world of the professional testing center is a strange one, by the way. If you've never been initiated, it involves multiple scans of one's handprint and thumbprint, the kind of heavy duty sound cancelling ear muffs my husband wears to the shooting range, and full audio and video surveillance of the test taker in question.

I've always been someone who organizes my thoughts best in conversations, and I often don't know quite how I feel about something or how I want to proceed until I've "tried on" a few scenarios either by talking them out with a friend over coffee or by living my way into the decision to see if it fits me. I've been wondering, as all of these changes swirl around me, if a blog might be a useful and or enjoyable place to do some of that test-driving of ideas, or just to talk to myself in a socially acceptable way to clear my head, share an excitement or experiment with just exactly what kind of girl I want to be as I near 30.

There's a song that's been going through my head as I type all of this, and I think I'll end with the lyrics. It comes from the soundtrack of the Secret Garden musical, which my mother took me to see on Broadway for my 11th birthday. It seems to me it pretty much sums up why I started writing here today in the first place:

"I need a place where I can go,
Where I can whisper what I know,
Where I can whisper who I like
And where I go to see them.

I need a place where I can hide,
Where no one sees my life inside,
Where I can make my plans, and write them down
So I can read them.

A place where I can bid my heart be still
And it will mind me.
A place where I can go when I am lost,
And there I'll find me.

I need a place to spend the day,
Where no one says to go or stay,
Where I can take my pen and draw
The girl I mean to be."

So there you have it. I'm not sure where this blog will go, or how often I'll post, but now it's mine, to do with as I like while I sort out "the girl I mean to be".