I’m a better mother when I’ve had a drink in the afternoon. Today I had this business meeting that involved a few beers. I’m in the restaurant industry. Most meetings involve some kind of drink. I’m just trying to fit in, okay?
So, I’m a better mother because I’m looser, a little more fun, a little more apt to giggle. Even when the topic is music and cussing. Because in the teenager world those two topics are hopelessly intertwined. When I got home my 13 year old daughter was listening to music and her headphones were not screening out the content for my beer-induced super-sonic hearing.
“What are you listening to?” Me, genuinely curious.
“Yes mom, it is in fact angry black man music. And there’s nothing you can say about it because I know what’s in your download folder, ok!” Her, being really smiley and belligerent at the same time, like she knows she has me dead to rights.
“Oh yeah, like what?” Me, who owns literally over 5000 songs and can’t really remember how they group. I know I don’t have an Angry Black Man, aka hardcore rap, playlist.
“Um, how about both Kayne West and Roots? And what about that 50 Cent folder?” Her, being really supercilious now.
“Okay, you’re right. But I also have The Black Keys. And Dar Williams! Oh, and Edith Piaf!” Me, suddenly feeling the need to be a multi-genre music listener.
“Mom, The Black Keys are angry white men, what the hell is the difference!” Her, trying to slide one over on me.
“What did you just say? You can’t say hell!” Me, indignant. Kinda.
“Why not? I don’t get why cuss words are bad, what kind of words are they anyway?” Her, with a fake but intriguing diversion.
“They are the part of speech represented as exclamatory. Well, except hell, that can actually be a noun.” Me, confusing myself by diagramming sentences in my head. I giggle, which is totally not a cool move.
“When can I use hell? Like, when won’t you freak out on me?” Her, seeing an opening and seizing it ruthlessly.
(have I mentioned she’s on her way to church youth group? Which she attends, religiously, every week)
“When you are 16. You can use hell at the same time as you begin dating. The construct will be much more meaningful to you then.” Me, trying to hold a stern face and totally failing.
“And shit? When is that acceptable?” Her, really seizing the day now.
“Never. It’s crass and unladylike.” Me, hating the word. I much prefer to exclaim by saying Jesus Fucking Christ, because that’s ever so much more ladylike. I try to avoid this in her hearing, but I know from the sly look she has that she has heard me at some point in 13 years.
“Asshole?” Her, reeling off her favorites.
“You could use that correctly when you were three, so that one is fair game now.” Me, recollecting a playmate she had that really was the poster child for the word.
“Glad we straightened this out mom, can you hand me my bible?” Her, really bringing it home.
“Here you go honey. Please don’t let the pastor hear your angry music. And there will be hell to pay if you tell her your mother listens to 50 Cent. Got it!”
“Whatever mom. “
I live amongst odd people. Oddities. The un-normal. The avant. (and the savant, let’s be real about that). It’s not just my bohemian neighborhood either. It’s the people I choose to associate with, those I exchange thoughts, considerations, confidences. They are all odd and eccentric. I like nothing more than the dizzyingly abnormal. There’s my husband, who looks remarkably like a midwestern Republican, but who is very much a spiritual free-spirit with a fascination with mystics. There’s my sister, who foreswears shoes and lives a very loose interpretation of a hippy life, who also happens to be the most analytical person I know. My dearest friend is a stay at home mom who bakes cookies and fights her impulse to push over people who walk with canes.
Even my neighborhood, which is filled with re-purposed old buildings, graffiti, Victorian houses, meandering crack-heads, Civil War monuments, and junky little shops is actually a vibrant community with all the amenities of the suburbs with the heart and soul still intact. We have bike rallies, cookouts, scout troops, our own basketball and baseball leagues, garden tours, etc. Only, with a twist of punchy and irreverent. That’s how I like it: sunny with a chance of raining sarcasm.
Why the Scots have been fighting on the front line for the British for 300 years. I found Albannach and Scythian while hunting for Celtic drums – I have a new story idea bouncing around in my head and it’s got a lambeg in it. Here’s a live gig with a rousing song for your listening pleasure today.
Early in my teaching career I was arm-twisted into being a cheerleading coach. I spent 3 years with 55 girls and 7 boys shepherding them to games and competitions. They were awesome and the pace was grueling. I learned to catch a falling body in mid-air and finally understood physics. This poem is structured with 8 beats per line – because that’s the count in cheerleading. And in case you’re wondering – the picture is a layout and you should be pretty impressed at how far below the hands are waiting to catch her. </em></p>
Disorderly kitchen? I can deal. Shitty service? Makes my head spin around like Linda Blair. Share your bad waitress experiences in the comments. (and for the record, I still tip 20% on shitty service- so if you’d like to pillory me on that account your ire is better served elsewhere).
Because sometimes Valentine’s Day is just not all that. But a nice set of bangs is ALWAYS all that.
Mumsy is such a lovely word. It sounds squishy and happy and warm and comfy. All the things being a mother are, or should be. But it’s also a word of death.
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” Colin Powell
I’m also not my Maggie score. I’m not my current weight on the scale (Oh Christmas and Snowmageddon why did you both involve cookies!). I’m not measurable in such narrow dimensions.
I’m going to break some kind of land-speed record for how many times I use the word penis in this post. Just so you are prepared. Those too virginal or squeamish should turn away now.
My daughter recently went on a trip to the Midwest with my mother and encountered some pretty narrow thinking. She came home and said, “Mommy, I’m glad you’re raising us in a place where I know all kinds of people and how good they are.” She has friends who are of every racial group. She has friends who have two mommies and friends who have two daddies. One of her best buddies is Jewish, another is Presbyterian. We attend a Methodist church and I sometimes read her tarot cards for her. She reads voraciously, yet I do manage a little what she reads by allowing her to read controversial stuff and then talking with her about what she’s read. If a book is questionable, we read it together and then discuss it. I’m against censorship. I don’t understand how someone’s moral core can cause them to think that they have the right to say what can or can’t be put into the world. Censorship hurts artists and it kills the artistic process. Is everything ever composed, written, painted, or photographed appropriate for every audience? No, of course not. But no one has the right to say that something should not exist or not be allowed to come to fruition because it rubs the wrong way against a morality belonging to a select group.
Neil Gaiman has a great letter from a librarian on his blog and it’s worth reading.
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2007/02/last-last-word.html
Some books you may not have realized were censored:
Aesop. Fables.
Anonymous. Go Ask Alice.
Boccacio. The Decameron
Boston Women’s Health Collective. Our Bodies, Ourselves.
Brothers Grimm. The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking-Glass
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Canterbury Tales
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness
Cervantes. Don Quixote.
Cinderella
Dante. The Divine Comedy.
Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders.
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe.
Eliot, George. Silas Marner.
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Eliot, George. Adam Bede.
Eliot, George. Silas Marner.
Fielding, Henry. Tom Jones.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby.
Frank, Anne. Diary of Anne Frank.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Love in the Time of Cholera.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Sorrows of Young Werther.
Hanford, Martin. Where’s Waldo?
Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter
Homer. The Odyssey.
Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World.
Keyes, Daniel. Flowers for Algernon.
King, Stephen. Carrie.
L’Engle, Madeleine. A Wrinkle in Time.
Lawrence, Margaret. A Jest of God.
Lawrence, Margaret. The Diviners.
Lawrence, Margaret. The Stone Angel.
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird.
Lewis, C.S. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
Little Red Riding Hood.
Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte D’Arthur.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman.
Miller, Jim, ed. The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll.
Molière. Tartuffe.
Munro, Alice. Lives of Girls and Women.
Orwell, George. 1984.
Orwell, George. Animal Farm.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Rumpelstiltskin.
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye.
Sanders, Lawrence. The Seduction of Peter S.
Sewell, Anna. Black Beauty.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet.
Shakespeare, William. King Lear.
Shakespeare, William. Othello.
Shakespeare, William. Richard II.
Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night.
Speare, Elizabeth George. The Witch of Blackbird Pond.
Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men.
Suzuki, D. T. Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels.
Thoreau, Henry James. Civil Disobedience.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit.
Tolkien, J. R. R. Lord of the Rings.
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Voltaire. Candide.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House In the Big Woods.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House On The Prairie.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. On The Banks of Plum Creek.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie.
As an English major I’ve actually read every single book on this list. And I’m proud of that.
If you care about censorship and want to take a stand, please visit:
http://www.internationalpen.org.uk/
Why am I writing about censorship today? Because until today I was part of a blog group of romance writers. I’ve just tendered my resignation because a post I wrote was read in draft form and found to conflict with the moral sensibilities of some of the other writers. The blog group had everyone from writers of erotica to inspirational writers. For those unfamiliar with what “inspirational” means – that refers to books that are in the romance genre, but that are sweeter, more innocent, and of a bent to be more acceptable to those of a religious nature. I support the rights of those writers to speak about religious topics, but apparently the support of divergent view points is not a two-way street.
My post – the one that was questioned by the group and suggested had the possibility to do one or all of the following:
A) Ruin careers
B) Keep people from being published
C) Be used as ammunition should one of the other blog members ever be sued for sexual harassment
D) Cause us to be labeled as man-haters
E) Lose the religious audience
F) Shame other members in front of their families
Well, it will appear in this space next Monday. I would welcome you to see for yourself if my post had the power to do any of the above.
