Water into Wine

In the last week or two I have been the target of two different cases of severe projection: an extended family member saw fit to say that I am making everything "about me" at the expense of my son in reference to Michael's and my recent decision to move our little family to Washington state, and one of the board members who hired me decided to all but call me a self-centered betrayer of the cooperative I currently work for in front of several others because I am choosing to put down this near-impossible task and move on.

Two things I have noticed about this -

First, people really feel entitled to judge women and their performance as mothers. Fathers, well, if they change diapers or show actual interest in their kids they are good parents but, really, we live in a culture that tears down mothers unless they are the sacrificing virgin mary herself. It really doesn't matter how much folks actually know about you, your child or the circumstances, either.

If you are a mother who is successful at your job, your child is being neglected. If you go home after 40 hours and don't work over so you can be with your kid, you actually secretly yearn to be home with the baby and aren't committed to your job anymore. If you are seen giving your child a bottle, the other mothers will actually judge you based on the assumption you are therefore not breastfeeding and therefore not properly committed to the wellbeing of your child. If you are a stay at home mom who doesn't run back to work after the first year or two of the child's life, you are probably just leaching off your poor husband or wife. It goes on and on. When John Lennon said that "woman is the nigger of the world" he almost had it right, but I think mothers in particular are the ones most spit upon. Nothing brings riled up emotions to the surface faster than the word "mother" and then we project those emotions in a unihibited free-for-all way on every mother we see around us. I've been guilty of it. I'd be willing to say we all have.

What gives us this sense of entitlement to judge a woman so blithely once she has given birth to a child? The excuse I have heard most often is that the person doing the judging is just worried about the child's well being, they can't stand to see fill-in-the-blank, poor kid. I am beginning to see this as an extension of the right-to-life argument seeing the fetus as the only life that matters in the equation when a pregnant woman desires to terminate that pregnancy. You, pregnant woman, are negated. You do not matter anymore. If you didn't want a child, if you weren't ready to sacrafice yourself for the rest of your life to the "holy" task of sustaining and nuturing a child for the rest of its life then you shouldn't have had sex at all. Where is the judgement of the men in this? Well, of course he should have been responsible but boys will be boys - you, woman, should have known better. And I don't just mean having the child, I mean sacraficing your wants, your goals, working two jobs, going to school at night, forgoing a love life, doing everything and anything that the society at large deems "for the well being of the child" and even if you do all those things, then we'll dis you as a soccer mom or as too clingy a parent or something. Don't worry, they will think of something.

So, a distant relation of my partner's decided to inform me my son needed an "advocate" in Michael's and my decision to move to Washington, someone to represent my son's needs to us, clearly implying that we, his parents, are not adequate advocates for his needs. This person has never met my son, has never been within 1000 miles of my son, literally. This person has never had any kind of active relationship with my partner at any point in his life, the only reason they have ever spoken to one another is that they share some DNA and what speaking that has occurred between them has been rare. This relation initiated an e-mail relationship with me a while back and its been perfectly pleasant up to now. Haven't agreed with everything this very opinionated person has sent to my mailbox, but I've just deleted those and gone on under the idea its good to have people in your life with a different viewpoint but I don't feel like debating so I'll just politely and quietly file such letters in my waste basket.

Based on second-hand knowledge from in-laws, this relation decided he knew enough about my son, Michael and I, our decision, the factors going into it, my son's health, and our fitness as parents to e-mail me that he'd like to serve as an advocate for my son's wellbeing in this decision of ours to move. As bold and strong as some people like to think of me as, I am rarely firm with people but I let this relation know in no uncertain terms that he had overstepped his place and that I found his suggestion inapropriate. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but when I opened up my e-mail this past Sunday there was a vitriolic reply waiting for me in which I am told I am self-centered and that its not "all about you anymore", that I do not treat my in-laws with courtesy, that I should be all grovelling and thankful for his unasked for advice about a situation he knows nothing about simply because he has raised children (wow, if that's all the credential s you need I could take parenting advice from Dick Cheney!) and, just in case he forgot to mention it, I am selfish and need to learn to put my son's needs first.

Ah, the maturity of a supposedly-grown man to being firmly put in his place by a woman, and a woman half his age to boot!

I've tried to let it go at that, but I am weary of being judged. I am weary of hearing wisps of gossip about how I should have tried harder to teach Eli to breast feed; of hearing from doctors that I am irresponsible because I don't chose to give my infant son a vaccine for Hepatitis B, a disease of sexual active adults, not babies; of hearing the implication that Eli's grandparent's wants should outweigh what Michael and I think is best for our family and that its my responsibility to be understanding of all their moping and "grieving" about their grandson being "ripped" from them instead of expecting any support or congratulations from them; of hearing it suggested that I am leaving a rediculous work situation because I've changed and lost my career drive since having a baby, not because the job is beyond what I signed up for or feel is reasonable. I am, in short, tired of being told that I am so much manure responsible for sacrificing anything and everything anyone else sees fit to ask of me in pursuit of coddling their emotions, to giving them what they want, meeting their impossible expectations or rising to every dreamed-up need other's think my son has - I am simply to be a source of sustanence, physical, spiritual, fiscal and emotional - for others. You know, fertilizer, soil. Manure.

And so, even though I know it does no worldly good, I will take this space to say, "how dare they." How dare you, mister distant relative, judge me. How dare you call into question my devotion to the well being of my son after I labored for over 36 hours to give birth to him; after I got up to pump breast milk for my sick son every two hours, never sleeping more than 2 hours at a time while I had a raging and dangerous infection from my c-section and could barely walk; after I went to the hospital every day for as many hours as I could while so sick I couldn't walk myself to my son's bed but instead had to be taken in a wheelchair in my nightgown because I was in too much pain to dress myself; after I went back to work with my son still in the hospital because there were no options left and I had to provide for my family despite still feeling ripped apart inside because I could not be where I needed to be, at my child's bedside; after I went directly from work every day to Eli's sick bed and spent every moment I could with him, grilled doctors and nurses, while still constantly pumping and going home only to sleep in short two hour stretches before I returned to work the next day to start it all over again; after I drove to doctor's appointment after doctor's appointment, spent endless hours researching on the internet how I could help my possibly developmentally challenged infant, and then spent as many hours as possible interacting with my son to give him every emotional and developmental advantage I could; after I limped around in pain for months because I couldn't spare the time or money to have my back pain looked to, I wouldn't sacrifice the precious little time I had with my son to go to a doctor anyway; after I had to deal with a cancer scare right after I finally got my son home and was unable to take more than a week off to be with him before I had to go back to work full time now that he was finally home after all the hell our family had been through -

How. Dare. You.

How dare anyone.

The second thing -
People are never going to stop judging what they know nothing about and judging is never productive. Compassion is, but judgement is not. I use to excuse my judging, thinking it harmless as long as I didn't do it outside certain social contexts or because I didn't "really" mean it or I believed it wouldn't get back to the person so no real harm was being done. I know now that is not true. I still use judging language, I am still part of friendships that use gossip-fests where we go on about the lives of others as social lubricant. I need to hold this up to the Spirit, I need to learn how to transform this impulse to judge into compassion. I see now how ugly it really is. I want it out of me, this ugliness.

I recently read a short bit by Thich Nhat Han where he talks about feeling intense rage and how he walks and meditates all night, being present with the rage, because he knows that until he owns it, can accept it in himself and have compassion for himself and his rage, he cannot be truly compassionate with another soul and, therefore, can not really be present with anybody at all. I, too, am walking with this rage, I am being present with it and I have faith that I will find the rage can be transformed and released. But right now I am mad as hell and sick of all the judgements being lobbed my way. I am feeling desperate for a drink of compassion.