Gloria Steinem and the modern Woman-forever Divided

   It seems there is no end to the modern woman's frustration! I remember when I had my youngest in the early seventies and how guilty I felt about being a mother. Gloria Steinem was speaking across the street and I went over and heard her. I felt so guilty that I never wanted to say I was a mother-no, I was a poet, a painter, a writer, but not a mother.  
   Now I look at my daughter and her friends and they are forever divided-there is not enough of them for everything-their work, their lovers, their homes, their bodies, and above all their children!
  Never enough, never enough of you anywhere.  WHat the women's movement did was enable us to enter the MEN'S DEFINITION OF WORK!  I am going to say that again, the men's definition of work and power.
   It is singular, and like the penis, thrust out and up.  It is the energy that will gain hundreds of millions of dollars for oneself on Wall St., that will battle to the death, that will go to the moon, that will blow up a town.  It is centered on a singular drive.  Many men cannot multi-task.  But women, they are a circle, their bodies produce babies and our future.  When you have children you cannot just think about yourself.  You are divided, there is you and there is your baby.  There is your family and the family comes first.  There is your family and your work.
    There is your work and your family.  Jordan is now discovering the multiple pulls.  You hire a nanny, she is in effect the mother to the children while you are gone.  Nannies are asking for a thousand a week in Cobble Hill, without college, etc.  It means you have to be earning a lot, and that nanny will in effect be representing you.  It means that at birthday parties, at school, with other parents, teachers, etc., you take the man's position and the nanny takes yours.  With parents with two high powered careers, the children don't really have a parent at home unless they bring in one's mother like Michele Obama to "nanny" the children.  
  But what about women's definition of power, is it more circular.  Is work supposed to be what men say it is, or can it be community based, group based, and shared.  Surely when we operate as a whole we do better than when we are singular.  
  A house on a street with lots of kids is better than a lonely house on the hill.  To have friends and community is better than being all alone.
   To have a balance between work and home is better than just doing work.  It's all about balance-the ying and the yang.

The money is pouring out!

      Sidney is up in Vermont giving a talk about her artistic work, I got a test today for my cognitive skills (after my amnesia), and tonight Jordan has another baby nurse to help the girls go to sleep!
     The money is flowing out madly.  The girls were fussy all day, alternately happy and crying.  But tonight, tonight, they are supposed to go into their own little beds!
     It was scary getting a test on my cognitive ability! I hate tests, particularly if there might be something wrong with me.  You had to remember shapes, sizes, words being added and subtracted really quickly, etc. It reminds me of when my eldest would play those video games when he was young.  He was really fast taping on the games, moving whatever it was back and forth.  My hand started to stiffen, I'd forgotten my glasses, (actually they were in my coat pocket), and it was hard to see the numbers on the keyboard but they told me that I was in the 100% percentile of normal for my age!
      So, I guess its not dementia!
      Meanwhile the girls saw their first television show-Barney on Itunes.  They both looked up at it.  They are almost 5 months and frustrated-they want to sit up, they want to turn over, they want to stand and stand and stand.  Their energy is endless.
      So now I'm going over to Sidneys while Jordan stays here with the baby nurse and they work at getting the girls to sleep in their cribs.
      Good night and swet dreams!    

PS 29, The Invisible Dog, and Ohhh a baby crying!-

  I was invited by Sidney to a function, a fund raising function for PS 29 at the Invisible Dog.  This is one of those local neighborhood schools that the children go to and the fund raiser was being held at a local art gallery.  I didn't get there until 9pm because we were putting down the babies. Almost everyone was dressed in NY black, the music was blaring, the room really hot, and the drinks were flowing.  It was hard to talk to one another without screaming.  I saw Nan, and her advertising husband Brian for a minute.  They are a very lively young couple, very bright, and Nan had on her Wizard of Oz red plastic shoes with an otherwise black outfit.  Most of the women were dressed in black and the drinks were flowing.  I think I was the only grandmother there!  I stayed for a few minutes, chatted a little, saw Sidney, who had her hair up and then came back.  I couldn't help but think about my ex and our days of these sorts of parties.  Pregnancy, childbirth, schools, houses, soccer games-trying to raise a family and conquer the world. I couldn't help but wonder what time might bring-who would have to go into rehab, who would sleep with someone else, who would split up, and yes, who might die.  At this stage no one thinks of death except maybe one's parents are not in the best of shape.  Since I had no obligation to stay, and wouldn't be missed, I was free to go.  I'd been out, had a nice walk, and went back to the house.  We went to bed around 11 pm but I couldn't sleep.

 Ohh my gosh. I think my head will explode. I didn't sleep well last night and then to top it off the babies were crying and crying, especially Tess, who just stopped after an hour. I hate it!

The No Cry Sleep Solution-gone!

Baby Nurse hired for crying twins who don't sleep!      
They cried for 13 minutes last night when we put them in their cribs.  Jordan couldn't stand it and went and got both of them and put them in bed with her for the night.
      The car seats are out as sleeping tools.  Tess fell out of hers on the floor yesterday.  She wasn't hurt, but the latest was having the car seats in the crib.  After last night fiasco of just putting them in their cribs, Jordan announced that she's hired a baby nurse who specializes in getting them to sleep.
      "Collin at work convinced me to hire a nurse-for 3 nights to get them to sleep" Jordan told me.
      Their cries were piercing last night, especially Gigi who is usually so happy and trusting. So the books, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Twins is in and the No Cry Sleep SOlution is out!
   C'est la vie, c'est la guere!

Bored babies, crying oma, and I hate lofts!

      It has been awhile since I blogged. I was in the hospital with amnesia. There are two days I completely blocked out! When I got to the hospital I was apparently "begging my daughter not to leave me, "don't leave me behind", I apparently kept saying to her.  None of this I remember. "I even said Bush was president, said it was January, and then I said 'oh that's terrible!"   
     
     Apparently by the next day I was begging my daughter not to take me home even though I was staying with 3 other people in a room and I had a catheter in me!  I remembered being there the next day, but had no memory at all of the hospital, the doctor I'd seen, or the day before! But I was smart enough to pass the test the doctors had given me, so they let me go and just told me not to take the Comtan for Parkinsons! 

     It had obviously become overwhelming to me and I was exhausted! We are essentially in one room, the loft, which I would never be in with more than 1 person, myself.  You have no privacy, the girls are fretting and crying half the day and night, I'm in one room with a baby nurse who doesn't want to do anything except take care of the babies!  It's freezing outside, I haven't lived on the East coast since the seventies.  In California we drive to the snow, we don't live in it.  I was missing the sun, the warm air, the crazy openness of California, I wanted the girls outside in the sunshine, the warm air, everything.  Okay so I'd forgotten about the vapidness and neurosis of LA!  It was ugly and depressing to me in NY and I didn't think people has such fabulous lives.  They seemed to me to be stuck in an old world system where you didn't expect much.  It felt like the 19th century!  People were grateful for just an apartment!

    Maybe I was trying to find a way back to California-Amnesia!  Also what was I going back to?  I'd broken up with my long term partner, I'd been staying with a friend at her loft downtown.  She's lovely and generous and gone a lot of the time, but I had a hard time.  You had to get on the 10 and get into a 5 lane freeway to go anywhere. There was nothing around the gaited community except other warehouses, homeless, and ugly buildings.  I missed the trees and quiet streets of Sherman Oaks.  I missed how easy it was to drive around there.  I realized and saw what a suburbanite I really was.

   The girls were in a four month crisis-tired of their little bouncy chairs, kicking like crazy,  fretting, smiling, laughing.  They were becoming human beings wanting to get up and get out.  I was lonely and exhausted, in strange surroundings, living out of suitcase for 4 1/2 months.  I was only comfortable in the same ugly pair of shoes every day. My back was hurting, I missed the doctors I had in LA, my yoga teacher, my friends.  I was restless too-realizing my diminishing energy as they were getting theirs. Now its 11:30 and I am going to my futon! Good night! God bless!

     

Babies, sleeping, crying and trust!!

   Oh dear, the twins have not been sleeping.  Oh the books on sleep Jordan has-quiet baby, peaceful sleep! Something like that-the debate is whether or not to let them cry. There are those that advocate the let them cry method and those who say letting them cry will break their trust and then they will not be as open.  I see the point.  Why should you break their trust?
   When people say you have to break bad habits it reminds me of a baby nurse who came when they were 3 weeks old and said you shouldn't hold them too much or they would get spoiled.  How ridiculous!  How totally stupid.
  Well, that was the end of that baby nurse.  But the problem with twins is that you are ganged up on.  One goes down and the other one starts up.  Jordan is getting no sleep, jumping up and running to work.  It's too much.  She can't keep this up or she will be completely depleted.  I think we're both depleted.  I know I am.  I was up last night and I was so out of it today, I could hardly think.
  Babies are relentless in their energy.  And parents have so many different duties, its hard not to give in here and there.
  ANd we are only human after all.
Dierdre went to Peru today with her friend Zia.  She made a Tumbler blog for a friend and did such a great job.  ANd she is so good with the twins.  I pray for her safety in Peru.  She is volunteering there for 4 months, she'll be back in July.  She seems so young and innocent but she is so smart!  That's a oma for you!

Family Inheritance and the Fight for Power!

  It seems to come with the territory, parents dyings, estates being left, one sibling suing another sibling, or dominating and unfairly treating others.  Jordan was telling about her latest family drama over the estate. The estate should be settled but her brothers are angling for a fight on the estate.  Of course they are investment brokers with plenty of money-its just ego with them.  But Jordan needs the money.  Years ago I would have said that's ridiculous, but it seems more the norm than anything else these days.  Our own family had a fight that wound up in a lawsuit and many hurt feelings. Another friend's sister sued her and her brother over a house in Seacliff, San Francisco on the beach.
   It's almost like the worst traits of the parents dive into one or two of the siblings and they re-inact the family drama. It's often done in a most vicious and controlling way, but the sibling doing it feels very self righteous in their behavior.
  And then the family ruptures, old wounds are brought up, and siblings stop speaking to one another for years.  Whatever issues the parents had around money, wealth, generosity are re-inacted by the children, often showing up after death.  The sibling often assumes one parents role, in my case our father was a tightwad and very controlling around money.  He wanted me to share my wedding dress, which I had made, with my sister who was supposed to get married a few months later.  My father would charge me to ride with him to the university where he taught, and he was also a slum landlord forcing us to "work" on the properties weekends, etc. without any warning.  Money was impossible for him to spend or enjoy.  He saved everything-he'd buy his clothes at Salvation Army and my mom at Saks. It was not pretty what happened in our family when he died, and grudges still float around.
   The cleaner and clearer the parents relationship to money, the better transition the children will have.
   After all, who wants these grudges?