"Where do you learn all that stuff?"

At dinner, Ramona (just turned 4, btw) is having a hard time eating because her food is so hot. She takes a large bite from the center of her Quinoa and then makes a face a spits a little out. I tell her about how the edges of the food are usually cooler than the center. She takes a little bite from the edge and then says, "Where do you learn all this stuff?"

Me: What stuff, all the stuff in my life? From everywhere. From my life.

Ramona: I mean all this mom stuff.

Me: What do you mean "mom stuff"?

Ramona: You know, Kids can't play with matches, you got to go to sleep, why you got to stay warm and wear a jacket when its cold.

Me: OH! I just learn that stuff from life. I lived a long time and I know what is dangerous and common sense. Mom's are supposed to help their kids. Some things kids don't like to do but mom's help them learn that there are things you need to do and things that are dangerous. Like when you don't get enough sleep you go crazy and everyone feels crappy. So I help you get a good amount of sleep.

Ramona: But....I go to sleep, so why do I still go crazy?

disconnection

I am wondering about where to take this blog these days. I have started blogging at Hipmama.com, but really just reposting my posts from this blog. It seems like it wants to morph into some sort of processing blog. I guess when I am confused or changing, the things I have to say become so much less concrete and feel less important.

This blog is called revolutionaryma. I feel like it needs to be about being a mama. My head is caught up is so much stuff, I feel like one of those strange little clay people my daughter makes. Writing about being a mama is hard. But all my writing is mama writing. I can't write anything unaffected by mama. But right now I am thinking about change. Changing my location, changing myself. Ascension, living now (this one is so important right now), growing around obstacles, letting strength/power flow into my and others lives.

When things get hard, I find it harder to love me. This leaves me feeling unconnected, and when I feel unconnected I feel alone. When I don’t love myself I don’t like what I do or have. I become discontent. When I feel discontent, I have a harder time (actively) valuing my life, my family. Suddenly I see discontentment in my child, the way she “needs” new toys as of late...wants to be passively entertained and taught by videos.

I remember being a child, the frustration in having to ask for everything - not having the power to take care of myself, meet my own needs. So repetitive, boring, frustrating…ask nicely, say please and thank you, be grateful…I wonder if when I become content again, will it be easier for her to feel contentment? How does one feel contentment? How do I feel contentment? Living now, growing around obstacles, letting power flow into my and others lives. Creative self-expression. My daughter complains of being bored. She wants to watch Bill Nye. Tune out, be passive. Isn;t there a time for passive? I am bored. I need a project, I need to create. Creation is self-expression and we are creative beings. But I seem to be letting life stop me from this very vital act. As if I don't have time, while I spend hours a day escaping into the internet.

I am missing a closeness with Ramona these days. I makes me very sad and like myself less. I remember being so connected. Understanding her needs. She didn’t have to tell me what she wanted/needed, I knew. Right now we are caught up in being complicated people. I don’t want that. I want a situation where I have a little more control of life. Struggle can be a killer of creativity…but then, maybe its what gives creation meaning/backbone…where am I going with this? Do I just need to give into the cycles?

Soon I will being posting vignettes from my childhood here in the near future. Vignettes from the Underground

My Christmas Post - gratitude

This last month of my life has been a testament of my tenacity. Even though I have been kicked out of my home, audited by unemployment, my kitty companion of 12 years has been diagnosed with cancer tripling my credit card debt at a time when my income is at a, what? ten year low? Meanwhile my mother’s (who lives with me, who I was planning to finally move away from in Spring) income has been reduced to a mere $189 a week while she simultaneously has to find a place and get ready for knee surgery and look for a job and I am the only one who seems to want to help her. I pulled my shoulder last night, I have humongo zits on my face (I always get them when I stress out), I feel guilty for ignoring my daughter to pay attention to all the chatter in my head and I am still lonely.

But I find myself breathing through it. As yoga has strengthened my body, it has helped strengthen the rest of me as well. It not just yoga, but I tend to keep going back to the practice in my mind when I feel things coming to a critical point.

Though I have been afraid, stressed, I have not fallen into the downward spiral of despair. What I have done in the last month is decorated the Christmas tree (which I kept alive since last year!), thrown a party for my daughter (which means I cleaned the house), taken her to two other birthday parties, passed my audit with flying colors (and THEY might even owe me), searched for a home, completed and turned in all my end of the semester paperwork on my students, secured a part-time administrative position I can do from home, began tutoring a new client, embraced Christmas, come to terms with the fact that I will probably have to make a decision soon to help my kitty friend transition out of this world with as little pain as possible. And I have loved my daughter as best I can.

Stress has in the past lead to anxiety, depression, paralysis, giving up, running away, completely unraveling my life into the downward spiral to homelessness, joblessness, institutionalization, hopelessness. I think I am done doing that. I have always had grit, but now I use it in a much more positive way. And there is one other thing. I love my daughter to no end. She brings out the best in me; I have courage for two now. Sometimes it’s okay to change for someone else. I want to be worthy of that girls love. And I am.

And then there is my mother. I see her become less and less able to handle her on stuff; becoming more helpless with her age, health and in this economy. If I crash and burn I’m taking a few people with me.

Action is the remedy to despair…In my years of surviving my life in the dirty forgotten cracks of society I have learned to be a survivor, not a victim.

Thank you universe for showing me what I can do, and what kind of person I am.

Happy Holidays, Y’all.

Nothing like a fixture full of maggots...

Nothing like a light fixture full of maggots to tell me that it is time to move. Its time to move. Something is rotten in this house...wtf

Big Change...Lost in (my crowed head) space

Things have changed so much since I last wrote. I remember starting writing a few blog posts, but can’t remember what they were about. The word of the month here is change.

A couple weeks ago the landlord told us he was gonna stop by to have a chat with us…my mother had been having a hard time paying the rent due to being disabled and her disability check being $189 dollars a week. So I ran outside and started straightening up our seriously getting out of hand lawn, frantically chopping down all the mini-trees that had begun to grow out of all the roots of all the blastedly shady trees in our yard. Finally I heard my mom pounding on the window to get me to come in. The landlord was already there and he had seen me trying to pretend we take good care of the yard. But really he didn’t care. The truth is that the landlord had a new family and wants to live in his house. So that is it. We move. I never thought it would feel humiliating, but it does somehow. He is the lord of the land, I am a lowly single mom who owns nothing…but I won’t get into that. We have to move.

The truth is that I have been dying to move. Somehow this house represents to me a string on failures. We had tried to create an artistic/political space here, with art and a fair trade shop. A way to circumvent the fragmentation of life that we practice in this culture by working, mothering and living all at the same time. Not many people were interested in coming…or maybe we are just too weird. Fail. I had tried to build family outside of the traditional male-lead nuclear family, but my mother just isn’t built for family/community. I should have known that. Of her three kids, I was the oldest when I moved out of the house at the age of16. Fail.

But as I set out to search for a new place, I realize how odd of a person I am and wonder if I can find a comfortable place for myself. I don’t’ want to live with 20 year olds, I don’t want to live with druggies or alcoholics, but it seems that the majority of the rest of folks around here, especially other folks with kids, live in these incredibly oppressive homes. Where everything sparkles and everything is new. I live with 20-year-old pans and tattered towels, and they in fact comfort me. I live with art and crafts projects spread across my living room floor for days. They keep me feeling human. But they also make me tend to want to not invite folks over. Because when I visit other people, it doesn't seem like anyone is lke that. Is Petaluma just one big suburban hell, rather than the village I suspected? I feel nervous inviting people into my house. They might think I am poor. I am poor, but they might think that poor is bad. They might feel sorry for me.

This all brings to the forefront of my psyche my real fear of this world…the fear of domesticity and all of the consumerism that entails. The fear of the a-political, passionless, beingone of those people who just watch the word collapse and chastise you if you want to talk about it...after all how can you worry about politics and all the people dying over there so we can live over here when you have to not only work, but buy all this new crap from Target and scrub the house everyday? So I don’t know what to do or where to go. Sometimes I want to run away to the city, where more “freaks” reside, where there might be a little less domestification, more aggressiveness, political debates, rock and roll music, passion. But also less space, higher rent, more cars, less nature…sometimes I think I will just disappear into my art and writing.

Ramona loves Petaluma. I like it too, in some ways. We'll stay here for now. I have the childcare subsidy and the jobs, two things that are essential in an economy like this. And Ramona is sad enough as it is to move from her house and her Abuela…

I had been planning to move in the summer, away from my mom…who makes my life less happy. But not now! Not when I have slipped into debt. Not when my mother can’t take care of herself (I am not even sure she wants to take care of herself). But it is now. So the search has begun. And once I secure a place, I will start working on my plan to run away for the summer.

Who's Obsessed with Barbie?

Well, we ended up getting a Barbie just hours after I wrote my post “Barbie!” and what a long strange trip its been. I was tickled to see my daughter so excited and delighted with her new toy. For $2.59 of Ramona’s money and a Kohl’s Cash Coupon, we brought home a brand new perfectly beautiful, plastic, made in China, blonde haired, blued-eyed beach Barbie and a set of three outfits for her and Sandra (Ramona’s former Casual Black, bought at a roadside thrift store, Beach Barbie) to share, though they spend most of their time in the buff. Having bought such a loaded toy HAS been a learning experience for us (I was told by a little bird that Barbie has some lessons to teach). So yeah, I want to help my child make thoughtful choices, not ban her from making her own choices, even if I think they a bad. It is hard work to parent in this way…but more on that in my next post.

While many folks would think, “No big deal, its just a Barbie.” I'm just not that person no matter how hard I try. The first thing that happened is that Ramona, at not quite four years of age, has trouble getting on many of the Barbie clothes. So I had to do the dressing much of the time. One afternoon, as I was resting in the bed after a long day, Ramona dropped off Barbie, her clothes and a brush for me to help her get ready for “the party” and then went off to “set up the party.” I carefully dressed the doll and brushed her luxurious hair. As I was lying there tenderly smoothing Barbie’s clothes, admiring her, I came to my senses. Oh my, am I not even immune to the seduction of Barbie?!? I was dazzled by perfect little Barbie! And I was enjoying it! The nostalgia had gotten to me; perfect plastic smile beautiful Barbie. I still have a place for Barbie in my heart, it seems.

But after a couple days, and more conversations about Barbie, I began getting paranoid. When my sister asked me what Ramona might want for Christmas and I mentioned that she likes Barbies, my sister said, “I am not going to be that person that buys her barbies. I am not going to be that influence.” Then another friend really clobbered my with a statement that I had been trying to deny in my own inner Barbie babble. She said (or rather facebooked), “No intelligent, self respecting women would like Barbie.” Could it be true? Didn’t I secretly like Barbie? Was it a reflection on my own character? Soon, I found myself shuddering whenever Ramona would ask me if she could take her Barbies with her to public places, like the park. What would other mother’s think? That I was a bad mom? Shallow mom? A non self-respecting mom giving my daughter’s bad role models? And what if they knew that I like Barbie too!?! And what if only kids who played with Barbies started making friends with her…or what if Ramona was a bad influence on kids who couldn’t have Barbies? And what would their mothers think of me?…

Eventually, Barbie herself began to wear on me. Ramona continued talking about the Barbie world that she would have one day. Everything about Barbie is about being pretty and buying stuff. Glam Mansion, Pink Cars, poodles, TVs, YUCK! She also kept talking about playing with her old friend Jade. Jade who collects Barbies. Who has the Barbie Mansion. Whose dad sells real estate and drives a beamer; whose mom plays tennis and buys her daughter’s their hearts desire. Ramona also wanted to show her Barbies to her other friends. I realized that Barbie was becoming Ramona's early experience in either a) social status based on “having” or b) a way to connect via mutual playthings (perhaps a bit of both). One of the most important things I learned in grad school is that the important question is not “What is it?” but “What does it do?” (Thank you Targol) Buying a Barbie IS more than just buying a Barbie, and it was about to be even more if I didn’t figure something out quickly. The doll is loaded, I tell you. At least for us.

Now that Ramona and I were able to spend time with the dolls, determine what the doll was about in our lives, we began having constructive conversations about Barbies and things related to Barbie. We talked a bunch about plastic and consumerism again. And when Ramona told me that she wanted to collect Barbies like Jade, I realized that for her, it might not be about specifically Barbie as much as I thought and also that I must not be the only mother in this position. Ramona likes dolls that look like people, not baby people, but people. There must be an alternative. We ended up finding the Only Heart Club Girls. They look like preteen girls and since young girls like to do things in imaginative play that young girls do in real life, why would we give them adults? The Only Hearts Girls aren’t hyper-consumers, they care about friendship (though there aren't any boys...yet) and are “wholesome (so far).” They have way less plastic on their bodies, their rooms are made from cardboard and wood, their pets are plush with wire, there are books available with soft and squishy morals of friendship, sharing, sacrifice and compromise…but they are still made in China. However, It was such a relief to find a better doll for Ramona to collect and invite her friends over to play with.

Due to the Barbie ordeal, Ramona has learned a ton. I have been happy to watch her develop a real, grounded understanding of plastic and consumerism. The lessons of real life, life in context, are the perfect learning tools. She is now quite versed (for such a young girl) on the problems with consumerism and especially plastic. Lucky for us, as all of this was coming to a head, this music video about plastic bags was released:



… which really got our conversations flowing on that topic and actually got me reinvested in cutting our plastic again (I feel I have become a bit more lax than I used to be in the last year). Ramona watched the video six times. This later led us to some Youtube clips about the massive garbage (mostly plastic) island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and discussions about reducing, reusing, recycling (in that order) PCBs, PBAs and other toxins in our food and water supplies, etc.

The intense desire of the young child matched against the ideological allegiance of the mother could have led to a simple denial of Barbies, perhaps ending in feelings of powerlessness and disappointment and statements such as “you will understand when you get older,” but instead we were able to negotiate and work things through to an outcome we are both happy about. I was able to uncover my own love and hate for Barbies, which will still take some processing on my part and Ramona was able to understand something by her own learning process in the spontaneous environment a slightly unstructured life can provide. She was able to exercise control over her decision.

Ramona has two Barbie’s and will soon have a Barbie disguised as a princess that will arrive this Christmas…no problem. Ramona is no longer obsessed with the things and she is looking forward to her Only Hearts World.

I just feel like complaining.

Mothering alone is hard. It isn’t even that I want to go out and party, I just want to do all that activist stuff I used to do! I never realized how much activism had to do with my mental and emotional health, and sometimes, when you responsibilities are so many and your ability to concentrate is so limited one can just be overwhelmed. I feel stuck. I feel irritated. Yet at the same time, I am doing things. Just slowly. I am a worker bee. I make websites. I talk with people. I grow food. I care for my family. I get jealous about those who I know who seem to have the freedom to shake things up the way that I wish I could, have co-parents that actually do take responsibility for half of the child-minding. But also, there are just no groups of people doing any sort of activist activities that really excite me much around here. In fact there are no groups of people doing much of anything that excites me much around here. I can't even find a dance studio for Ramona and I to be a part of that isn't the same, run of the mill ballet school that performs the Nutcracker every year. Bah! (There is one in Berkeley, an hour away.)

I know that I was recently writing about how activism is in everyday life, promoting anarchist principals in the real world, blah, blah, blah…and how I have turned to this inner journey, but sometimes that gets boring. Inner work is really hard! At least with being active in your community and seeing the work you do having positive effects on the community and making connections are constant reminders that you are important, worthwhile...it is hard to do that for oneself. I miss activist community.

I can’t even write anything more complex than a Blog, due to the constant interruptions in life. Mothering gets no respect! I need to do some planning and scheming. But I feel stuck. Once, when I didn't have a kid, taking off was always an option. A change of pace to free the mind. I took a trip about every six months. Ahhhhhh! October was six months! I'm overdue! But right now, I am in debt which equals NO TRIP!

Journaling is always good for focusing and freeing the mind and soul. So off I go.

BARBIE!

I am trying to attribute Ramona’s teary-eyed emotional Barbie outbursts to the time change. She’s been having Barbie attacks. I don’t know how else to describe them. Sort of like a panic attack, but all around Barbie.

About a year ago, during a road trip, we picked up a beach Barbie at a thrift store in the desert…I never imagined what our Barbie future would hold.

Recently she was all into the princesses that Mattel makes, they look like Barbies, just enough that Ramona calls them Barbies. Since she was so persistent in knowing what she wanted for her birthday/Christmas, and I don’t want her to be one of those kids who never gets what they want as gifts, I went ahead and bought one off Ebay as a gift from Santa and hid it in the closet. But then she got seriously obsessed with Barbies. I am not really sure how it happened. We saw her friend Bella holding a Barbie in the car a couple weeks ago…after Ramona had spent the day trying to become her best friend. The there is her old friend Jade who has lots and lots of Barbies, but she hasn’t played with Jade since April. hmmmm.

Perhaps we walked by them one too many times and with every Barbie brush-off from me, her frustration and fascination intensified. The other day I made the mistake of letting her look online with me at Barbies. Amazon has some little commercial clips for Barbie things. We ended up having an altercation after she watched a certain commercial countless numbers of times. And this girl doesn’t just want a Barbie, but a whole “Barbie WORLD.”

i brought it up with some friends. My friend O pleaded that I don’t deny her so long that a friend of hers takes pity on her and lets her borrow a Barbie, as had happened to O as a child. The humiliation following her into adulthood. My advice from another is to talk to her about why I don’t like Barbie and why I won’t buy them. I have done this with certain things like SpongeBob, but Barbie is serious, and Ramona DOES feel that she is being deprived without them. Another friend said to buy some, but keep pointing out why she is not a great toy. Well, she is plastic…but so is almost every other doll. I do point out all the plastic. She knows about plastic. There is the problem with Barbie’s body and how unreal it is and how women could never achieve such plastic perfection, but Ramona isn’t even four and sees very little advertising and I honestly don’t think is even aware of what Barbie’s body means yet or that she wants to grow up to be Barbie (who would want to grow up to be a doll anyway?). Ramona actually brags about her big soft round belly. Another friend told me I should tell her I don’t like Barbie cause real women don’t look like that, but Ramona is sharp enough to know that her dolls that are made of natural materials look even less like people so that argument is bunk. Another friend said, “I actually like Barbies, and they’re not as bad as they used to be.” True...Barbies don’t have huge boobies like they used to. They come in all colors. And their feet are no longer made to fit those super high heels, just pumps. Barbie has mellowed in her age…at least the one we have has. What a hub-bub about a doll!

My biggest argument against Barbie is the plastic consumerism. This is what I talk about with my daughter. Trashing the earth with plastic and trying to coerce people to buy too much of what they don’t need. Making people feel inferior without, or like they would be happy if only they had some useless thing...I also talk with her about how the folks who make those big Barbie houses probably don’t even make enough money to buy one. They truth is that that argument falls true for almost any plastic toy you could buy at a run of the mill toy store. The truth is that, deep down inside, that I am worried about Ramona becoming trapped in her gender. She was such a tough kid, I am worried about peer pressure and her ever feeling like she needs to like certain things or have certain things to be feminine and popular. It really isn't about Barbie at all...

So I am about to do the typical American thing, and let Ramona earn money to buy a Barbie. Or is that typically American anymore? Maybe the stereotypical American just buys their little girl whatever they want. Anyway, she has earned a dollar and will probably do the same today. She already had 3, and we just got a $10 gift card in an ad from Kohls I guess I will give her. We plan to go and pick out a Barbie after school today (because waiting a month for an almost three year old is torture, I do remember that kind of excitement. I used to puke and get sick just before Christmas every year).

I know a lot of mothers who wouldn't go there, because Ramona will eventually get over not having a Barbie. I am not sure that "not having" because of my fears about consumer culture, when she "could have" is really the best way to help children develop values. And what am I really afraid of? Truth is, she isn’t really “like that” anyway...super girly-girl. She has never much been into baby dolls, or dolls at all, like girls are supposed to be. The more I resist, the more Ramona wants. That is one law of Ramona’s nature that I can attest too. I want Ramona to trust herself. I want her to develop her own values (as much as she can) and then decide for herself if she wants or doesn't want a Barbie.

One friend wrote me, “I was totally obsessed with Barbies. Mainly because I wasn't allowed even to play with other kids barbies. I did get over it by school age.”

I loved Barbie until I was about 13, I was mostly denied, since I grew up in poverty, except for when my dad got me one and a friend gave me one. Denial of things does not teach kids to not value them. Letting kids learn and experience things empowers them. Empowering children is worth working toward...trying to blame a doll for children's body insecurities isn't thinking things through. I remember Teen and Women's magazines making me feel bad about my body, not a plastic doll. What I hope is that one day Ramona will decide on her own that she doesn’t NEED a barbie, and that I can be a roll model, support, a listening ear for her and not an enforcer and denier. That I can help her feel empowered enough to make choices that value depth, diversity, love of earth, dignity etc. I don’t know if it is actually the Barbie that I don’t like. Maybe I kinda like Barbie still, deep down inside. It is really the essence of Barbie, what she symbolizes, that plastic, shallow, hyper consumption that is oh so evident in the commercials. The way they use her work children into a frenzy, driving their parents into hyperconsumerism. And then there is that annoying girl who has all the barbies and Barbie stuff, but no sense of identity...I remember her.

I would rather Ramona play with Barbies than watch Barbie commercials.

anarchist mama; thoughts on community, ideology.

The other night we went to the Day of the Dead Celebration. It was a hit. It seems to get better every year, luckily there was no rain to rain on our parade. I had this peculiar feeling of being home, in my community at its best. It was my fourth Day of the Dead in Petaluma, I have been here just over three years. Less and less do I feel like I need a group of "radicals and anarchists" to feel part of a community. Yes, I am an anarchist mom. I dedicate my time to dismantle power (from above, that is) while cultivating grassroots and personal power (or power from within). When I was more deeply involved in anarchist groups and collectives, the question persistently asked was, “How do we get people to join us?” My natural inclination was to respond with, “We don’t get folks to join us. We join them.” The truth is that the lifestyle of the average anarchist group is just not attractive to most people (and vice-versa). Anarchist principles are helpful when practiced in the general public than small bands of radicals. As change becomes more and more inevitable, as our old unsustainable and unjust ways of living and institutions crumble, anarchist principles and ways of organization have begun to be explored and integrated (but we usually don't have to call them anarchist, it makes people jumpy).

As people realize that we can’t depend on government or rich people and their corporations to make things function well for the rest of us, we look to more grassroots ways of organizing. Which is where anarchist theory is based. Power of the people. Direct Democracy, deep democracy, consensus building, self-government, mutual aid, crushing hierarchy, radical self-theory, taking our lives into our own hands, localizing power...localizing everything. Horizontal organization and co-operation without coercion. The time is right, as folks are fed up and joining horrible groups like the Tea Party in reaction to big government, there needs to be a better movement towards freedom from too much control.

But back to community. My money-centered, gender-normative community… I am often pleasantly surprised. As I come more and more into myself, as I learn to trust my instincts and my own strengths and convictions and not worry so much what the “community at large” will think, and as I root myself deeper into my community and value it, I realize I am not so different. Instead of quietly becoming jaded and critical, I open my mouth and say crazy things with faith (or hope?) that what I say will find fertile soil.

But what is community anyway? What is an "activist community" or progressive community? Perhaps an activist community is a place to feel connected. But at the same time, are communities today to be groups of people who think alike? In this country, in this day, community cannot mean what it once meant, because we have changed. We are not a homogeneous group or tribe. It is normal to want a groups of comrades, but we pride ourselves so much on individuality and diversity, so shouldn’t we celebrate that, even if our neighbor voted for Bush? Community building is as much an inner journey as an outer one. Learning to live with and connect with the Other, this is where the real work of building community comes from. Community can no longer be about feeling comfortable, if anything, it ought to be about coalition building. At least, perhaps we need to understand and differentiate between two kinds of community. An intentional community of folks working toward a common goal, and a community of neighbors, where we learn to live together, create dialog, breach “the aisle.”

An Activist Community is a bit incapacitated unless it engages with and becomes part of the community at large. Community building is acting from where you are, with those you live with. Change starts locally, things change when people change, because the government won't change until we do. My utopia isn’t so different from the majority of the other utopias in the minds of so many folks around here (land of the liberals). I am just crazy enough to deschool my mind and head for the Utopian horizon. Three steps forwards...two and half steps back...I do it for my daughter. If things don't change, if the dominant ideology stays intact, I may survive my life with relative ease, but it is Ramona's life her friends lives and her children's lives (if she chooses to have them) that will suffer at our inaction as a society.

To me, mothering is about caring, which goes beyond sleep training, schools, educational toys, etc. You don't even really have to be a mother to mother. It is about caring for the life and the world that our children are entering into. Mothering is political. Caring is an action, or it ought to be. Mothering is about building our utopia today, in all the ways that we can. The future is now.

The media that dominates and propaganda may confuse and manipulate the so-called “sheeple” but people are becoming more awake with a desire for a different better way of life, evolution, that stays intact in the ocean of misinformation and hidden agendas (while some others are fighting to stay in denial/asleep). I think that people can sense an era ending. The mechanistic mind, industrialization, capitalism vs communism…all so passé. The ideas that I once thought too radical to spout all over Petaluma just aren’t. Decentralize Everything. It’s more democratic, its more fulfilling, its more sustainable, its more productive. And it creates the one thing that I hear folks around here (especially mothers) pining for. Community. Communities are arising throughout the world as the major site of struggle against oppression, consumer culture and environmental destruction and for dignity. These remarkable communities are mostly located in what we call the Global South, but it could happen here. Maybe it already is.

Or am I getting too far ahead of myself?

rad·i·cal adj.
1. Arising from or going to a root or source; basic: proposed a radical solution to the problem.
2. Departing markedly from the usual or customary; extreme: radical opinions on education.
3. Favoring or effecting fundamental or revolutionary changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions: radical political views.
4. Linguistics Of or being a root: a radical form.
5. Botany Arising from the root or its crown: radical leaves.
6. Slang Excellent; wonderful.

gendered plays...Fairy Tales for today

After all that writing about gender in yesterday's blog, I just received a copy of Ramona's first play she will be part of, Babes in the Wood (the nice version)

Jack the brother has multiple lines equaling 56 words. Jane has 2 lines equaling 8 words. Tom climbs trees, Jane does not. Tom leads the way through the forest, Jane follows Tom. Jane is frightened, Tom speaks "bravely" taking his sisters hand. Tom decides when they stop for the night. Jane is more tired than Tom. The Fairy Queen takes Tom by the hand, but carries Jane. The reformed robber teaches Tom about "animals and birds." Jane is taught nothing.

There are two other women in the story. They are the wives of the repentant robber and Sir James the knight. Even though Sir James' wife does more in the story (longs for children, goes and finds them in the garden, very "feminine things to do) she is still just Sir James "pretty wife." No identity outside of that.

There are also ungendered fairies and birds, except one...one of the "a merry fairy fellows" contemplates tickling the children.

If it weren't from the Fairy Queen, I would definitely go and have a talk with the teacher about the utter lack of capable women in our play. I probably will shoot her an email anyway. But really, the fairy queen is magic. She is not a human woman. Only magic females are strong. (Perhaps this could have an interesting and potentially positive affect in encouraging girls to practice magic?). At least I might suggest that they make Jane a little sister. I wouldn't feel so bad about her being soooo passive and needy were she a tot.

Am I the only one bothered by the incredible passivity girls are taught? Lately I have been changing male characters in books with female ones, because book after book after book has male protagonists. I have been reading Shel Silverstien to Ramona switching the gender in every single poem. Yes there are books with strong female protagonists, but they are not the norm. Little girls read all about interesting boys but little boys read little about interesting girls.

As for Fairy Tales, traditionally every generation across different cultures have changed and adapted these stories for centuries. It is time this generation, in this culture updated the Fairy Tale traditions to ones more valuable to our society.

Gender Part 1

I named this Part 1, just because this story has so much to it to fit into one blog post...

My job as a parent is to support my child’s self-realization, to nurture her character and facilitate the flourishing of the soul. I decided from the get go to avoid, as much as possible, genderizing my daughter. Genderizing is my term for the act of socializing a child to gender norms. I will admit that, though I often dressed her in gender neutral clothing, I also often dressed her in girl clothes, while skipping the boy clothes. It never bothered me when people mistook her for a boy, as it does some people, who like to neurotically dress their babies in super pink ruffles and lace and strap bows to the head, since there isn’t actually any hair tie up with a bow. Well perhaps some babies like that stuff, but mine liked to play and crawl and climb, not be dressed like a little doll. I often received compliments on how present and alert Ramona was, sometimes the admirer would use the word “he.” I always found it curious that if I corrected the admirer (which I only did a few times then though “what for?”) rampant apologies would ensue. I found it troubling that people care so much. After complimenting my child for her presence of mind and spirit, they find it necessary to apologize for calling her a he, when there are little or no gender clues to pick up on? “It’s a baby,” I would say, “Yes, she is very present.” Babies have no use for gender.

All through the baby and toddler years, Ramona could put the majority of boys to shame when it came to being rambunctious, often covered in dirt and scabs, hanging from any object that jutted out from anywhere. But from the very beginning, in the playground, I would hear parents of boys telling their sons “Be careful of the little girl,” and then they would turn toward me and say something like, “Boys can get kind of rough.” Okay, so there they are telling me in front of our children that girls are fragile and boys are rough. These are the comments of everyday life! You can only shelter your child from genderization for so long…well not long at all. I mean…you can’t. It happens the instant you go out in public. People want to know if it is a boy or girl. Gender is so important in our society. The comments are relentless, and people just spout them out, oblivious to the fact that children take their cues from adults as to what is the proper way to function in society. I can not tell you how many times people have told me in front of Ramona that boys are just “like that,” that boys are uncontrollable or that girls are so nice.

What makes it worse, is that having a rambunctious toddler (remember more rambunctious than the average toddler) that is a girl, you get no sympathy. People just assume it is easy to raise girls. My parenting skills mean NOTHING! I have brought Ramona almost everywhere with me besides work (and she has even gone to work with me at times), even to graduate school. It is this experience of living and growing in public spaces that has taught my daughter to function in public spaces. We are mother and daughter and also good friends and she wants to go to the places that I go to and knows what is expected of her. At one volunteer meeting I took Ramona to, she was sitting on the couch doing coloring and art (because we had an agreement that that is what she would do while we talked) while a couple brought their son, who was sitting in a chair playing a video game. The mother turned to me and said, “Wow, your daughter is so good. You’re lucky, girls are so easy. I wish our boy would be happy just sitting on the couch with some crayons.” I couldn’t believe my ears! People say the darndest things! I am not going to go into every bit of my parenting philosophy, but I will say that children learn to be in society by being part of society, not being ushered off to children’s spaces most of the time. Children also learn about what is expected of them [about gender] by observing what we do and say. I have made plenty of sacrifices to parent the way that I think is right in my soul. To just have my child’s ability to be quiet and work on her art be degraded down to the fact that she is a girl (biologically) is offensive to me, especially since she is probably be more spirited than the kid sucked into the video game.

When I have spent time in indigenous areas in Mexico and a bit in parts of Central America (i.e. where western culture is not prevalent) both boys and girls know how to be in public spaces without running rampant and throwing tantrums. That isn’t to say those things never happen, but it is very obvious that 1) children exist in public and 2) they know how to behave and 3) boys and girls both do it. I am comfortable to say that our rambunctious rowdy misbehaving boys are a construct of our American style Western society and culture. I mean we start buying boys things and girls things from the moment they are born. Why!?! Is there no other reason than our societies preoccupation with gender and making sure babies with penises act like boys and babies with vaginas act like girls? I can’t think of one. Most babies I know like cars better than dolls. So why do little girls always get dolls?

I have expressed my frustrations to friends about peoples assumptions about how boys and girls behave, and usually, if they have boys, they will tell me that there really is a difference, and then give me some example of some boyish thing their boy does. Only once has it been something that doesn’t describe Ramona…in this instance I was told of boy’s natural desire to know the scores of football and baseball games. The other day as I was waiting with some other mother’s to pick up Ramona from preschool, two mothers were talking about how dirty their kids were. One mother caught my eye and said, “Don’t mind us, we have boys.” She turned to the other mother, “Boys are always dirty,” and laughed. The other mother shuddered, “Ahhh, boys,” she said uncomfortably (yay, I’m not the only one who thinks these gender comments are crazy), “yeah boys…their clothes...are expensive…at least the ones I like.” We changed the subject.

I acknowledge that male and female children do have tendencies, but also there is a great range within those tendencies. A girl can be more physical than a boy. And a boy can be more nurturing than a girl. And both can be both rambunctious and nurturing. Children can be both physical and intellectual (which is a false fragmenting binary that has also always annoyed me). The truth is that the majority of gender is a social construct. Those who aren’t properly molded to societies gender constructs are pegged as abnormal. Yes, they are abnormal…but let’s not confuse normal with natural, abnormal with unnatural.

Any thoughts?

To be continued…

Why a(nother) Mommy Blog?

I have been asking myself, why a mommy blog? Why motherhood, to launch me into this world of blogging. I am much more than a mother, aren’t I?

Motherhood has changed me. It is easy to be radical and to forge your own way when its just you, no strings, no responsibility. Deciding to be the primary steward and nurturer of a new human life, to actually choose to create that life and take all the responsibilities that go along with it is taking a nose dive into the meat of life. It has been about learning what it takes to be a part of a multi-generational community while holding my own; living in the real world, not just within my radical cohort. It requires soul searching, at least for me it does.

I am all about change. But no longer can I take off when I want change, crashing on couches, hopping on boats headed to Alaska, living on the road in Latin America, drinking myself silly. Now I take responsibility. Now I grow roots. Now the change changes course toward the inner. My hero’s journey has moved inward, into private life, no longer discovering myself out there, but in here. Now that is some hardcore work.

Then comes this sort of feeling of isolation, but the funny thing is that I am isolated with millions of other parents. Who said the private had to be so private, anyway? It is a whole new sobering perspective, an eye opener. It is a new site to from which to struggle. Even growing up in poverty with a single mother, I did not really know this life until I lived it. But then my life as a single parent is not the same as my mothers.

What are my intentions with this blog? It isn’t documentation of Ramona and my life, that would be too boring. It is not to rely on this forum as my sole writing practice or my primary source of dialogue and wisdom-sharing between friends and strangers. Hopefully these things will happen to some extent spontaneously, but my main reason for starting this blog is to empower myself as a cultural critic and activist. More and more, I feel the need to shore myself up against certain elements of society and social norms that say and do the darnedest things to those of us raising kids. I also write because I am a natural born philosopher. A brain can go crazy with too much philosophy and theory swimming around. I was going to try to spare this blog, but I just have to let it out!

I write because I wonder if there is anyone in the world like me. The discourse I hear in the world isn’t me. I don’t connect. So I write a different discourse in privacy, and fling it anonymously into the cyber world. Are there any other parents crazy parents like me? The funny thing is that when I open my mouth, with conviction about who I am and what I do, I am almost always surprised to find how uncrazy people find these thoughts and ideas. Maybe all the rhetoric is just rhetoric and maybe I can connect. Of course I live in Northern California.

Today is the first Petaluma Park Day for Unschoolers and Homeschoolers. Somehow I spearheaded it. I tried to plan it for months and never was able to pull it off. Then it happened organically, spontaneously. That is sort of how my writing is, I try to write and am not able to pull it off, then one morning I sit down and crank out a blog post in 40 minutes, like right now. I think it is about self-acceptance. Writing from the heart, not what I think I should be writing. Philosophy from the heart. Inner wisdom more than outer wisdom…

Life as Activism

A friend of mine asked on facebook what poverty had done to people. Her mother’s response was:

When we were broke, for many years, we grew our own vegetables, put up food, cooked from scratch, baked bread, went hiking, spent time outdoors, figured out ways to keep going without much money. It made us more resourceful and taught us to really appreciate being better off when that finally happened. But I look back on those days as probably being the happiest of our lives (of course that's partly because you came along then). What wasn't good was not being able to get the medical & dental care we needed and having to sell cherished books to keep the utilities from being turned off.

My friend responded that even though her mother is better off now, some of those things are things she still takes great joy in.  Many of the things the she wrote about doing are things that I do now and are also things that are often found to contribute to ones inner sense of happiness. These are also things that decentralize power.

I am “broke.” I know ways to be less “broke”, but this involves seeing my daughter less, putting my creative passions aside and being less involved in my community. I LIKE my life. I grew up in a cage of desperate poverty, but I could also see the cages that money and materialism create for both individuals and society. Growing up in poverty taught me to be resourceful and learn a sense of security that did not come from having money, but in having community; my sense of connection from my creative life; my sense of happiness from within.

The word “poverty” has such negative connotations; it imbues a sense of powerlessness. Sometimes I replace the word with “economically poor.” For those with no resources in community or family, it very well could be powerlessness and poverty. There is dignity in being poor in a community or just to choose to live a simple life. I don’t feel like I live in poverty because my lifestyle has afforded me the privilege to step away from our hegemonic and unjust system, even if only a little bit; taking just a little power from said system and putting it in my hands. I will not accept that as a single mother either have to spend most of my day away from my daughter, leaving others to fill most of her emotional needs or live on welfare, in poverty and powerless. 

Money is at the center of our culture; the word revolves around it, and that is what the dominant logic and the media tell us over and over. If you read the news, you would think that the only hope for our future is that “consumers” (what ever happened to citizens?) start spending more. When we didn’t buy enough last Christmas to make our economy grow as much as economists wanted, we were called stingy and scrooges in the media. When we were attacked by terrorists, the president told us we could support our country by shopping. “Shopping Therapy” is actually a real expression! Yes, consumerism is what keeps the system running smoothly, but our system is crumbling as it just isn’t a sustainable model (the rich have known this for decades folks).

Once, I spent a lot of time fighting the system, but I always wondered what would happen if the system I was fighting went away. Or if we were winning the fight. And what exactly were we fighting for? An authentic life? Real productive and fulfilling work? An end to our military terrorism on the world? A rich community life? Equality? Justice? Dignity? It didn’t feel okay to me, to my nature, to work for and perpetuate the capitalist machine by day and yell about it at night.

Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see.” The Zapatistas say, “We are not here to change the world, something that is very difficult, next to impossible. We are here to create a whole new world.” And now as the world economy crumbles, what we are doing (or should be doing) is building a new world in the shell of the old, right where we live. Things will not fundamentally change unless we, the people, change. My idea of revolution is not about changing faces in the great halls of power, but diverting that powering into the hands of regular folks; building from the bottom up, rather than the top down. I find small ways to live my utopia today, in the here and now. What better way to bring about change than to live it? What would the world look like if we took some of the power away from money and institutions and diverted it into creating a sense of community? What would it look like if most of our activities involved no money at all.  Our lives and our communities are the most powerful sites of dissent.

A new world is possible, but it won’t happen we don’t live in it. So, I grow vegetables, bake bread, cook from scratch so as to rely less on the industrialized capitalist polluting food system. I buy organic and local to cut out the “coyote” middle men, eat fresh food and saving the pollution involved in shipping. I find creative ways to reuse my trash before I recycle it or throw it away. I share a home because living together is how we build community and…learn to live together. I skip the rat race and instead of sending my daughter to a million enrichment classes a week I enrich our lives by learning kids songs on the guitar or spending a day at the beach with a picnic lunch and my daughter, living and learning together. We wish we knew more kids to share this money free fun with! Maybe these are all small things, but I think it is the small things, those small acts of resistance…added together that can make big changes.

Community service has opened up many opportunities to Ramona and I, such as free tickets to events, free theater classes for Ramona, not to mention the feeling of connectedness. I work a lot, I just choose to try to live a more integrated life and take as much control as possible as to where that energy goes. I work with my daughter, in the garden, distributing posters, cooking, or she plays while I make lesson plans. Sometimes she helps me clean her school which gives me a discount on her tuition. I also do house and pet sitting, and always ask my clients if their pets would appreciate playing with a little girl, thus “work” and life can happen simultaneously even in this culture, like it still does in so many cultures.

I do wish for more money sometimes for things like fixing the growing cavity in my tooth or visiting Ramona's paternal family in Costa Rica. I can’t get Ramona all the cool toys made of “natural materials” that many of her friends and schoolmates get, we settle for the plastic barn at the thrift store. But these are the choices I live with and I do not regret them because I will watch my child grow up, I will not let the capitalist machine drive that wedge between my daughter and I.  I can do this without a husband to bring home the bacon. 

In closing, I know there are many ways to parent. I know that sometimes mothers are earners and fathers are the nurturers and this causes me to rejoice! I know that the rat race does not affect all families the same. I know that everyone’s contribution to positive change can come from different places. Many children do great in full-time childcare. I wanted to share my activism and what my life means to me, largely because I feel us single parents  are pressured to live the victims life in powerlessness. There are other options for single parents. I want to support the idea that we can be a society where we really do help each other out.

Watching her grow by letting go...

I was trying to write a blog on the pressures and expectations of society on parents, making “good parenting” very difficult.  I love how my writing takes on a life of its own.  The ideas that want to come out are the ones that will come out when it is time, or I suffer as I write. 

I have heard that babies are the hardest to take care of, as they take up the most time and energy, need every demand met because they can do nothing for themselves. The first years were a piece of cake compared to the confusion of young childhood.  When Ramona was born, her physical separation from my body was only a small beginning of what has been a slow and gradual event.  I have heard that babies don’t comprehend that there exists the Different, Separate, Individual.  My own conception of self as separate became blurred when Ramona was born.  Since I care for myself by listening and following my own intuition and values, the same seemed natural to do for my child as well.  Easy Peasy.

I was a such a great mom, until sometime around the time Ramona turned three.  As Ramona began to explore her own needs, desires, likes and dislikes, I am finding that I have to spend more time contemplating Ramona in her individuality.  Sometimes she really puts me in my place!  While it has been difficult and confusing for me at times, I also have been delighting in watching her delight as she comes into her own.   

I remember the day clearly when she realized that it is okay to like something that I don’t like.  It had to do with cartoons.  I don’t like Scooby and I hate Sponge Bob.  But while I would never spend my hard earned money of these things for Ramona, but I don’t try to control (for the most part) what Ramona is exposed to outside of my home.  I feel the best way to learn about the world is to experience it, plus why would I want to create that “forbidden fruit” scenario that we as a culture seem so caught up on.  

First it was Scooby; she told me several times that she liked Scooby and I would always respond about how I don’t like Scooby.  One day I added that it was perfectly fine that she likes Scooby and I don’t and we began to discuss how it is normal that people like different things.  I pointed out how boring life would be if everybody liked the same thing all the time.  She was silent for a while as she pondered these new concepts and then I could almost see a wave of empowerment come over her.  She beamed at me and said, “Cause I really like some things that you don’t like!”  At the gym, a few days later, I mentioned when I picked her up from the “kids club” that I HATE Sponge Bob.  Ramona smiled at the childcare worker and happily announced, “Mama HATES Sponge Bob, but I LIKE SpongeBob!” Of course, this doesn’t mean Sponge Bob will ever emanate from our TV and I do try to explain why I don’t like certain things in a non-shaming way.  In my house, everything we watch  really needs to be acceptable to both of us.  Now in reflection, as I think about the times that I have worked with kids, I realize that many, if not most, kids don’t know that it is "okay" to like something that their parents don’t like.   In fact, I can reflect on my own life and actually remember hiding that I liked things that I didn’t think I was supposed to like.  Then I reached puberty and realized it on my own and thought my parents were lame. 

I have had one parent tell me that, “Well, children are peer-pressured and marketed into having certain desires anyway, at least I can point her in the right direction.”  I too believe that we can point the child in the right direction *by example.*  But I also think that when you dictate to a child what they should and shouldn’t like, you are reinforcing the logic of peer pressure and marketing, rather than helping them learn to think for themselves.  When you inspire and encourage children to explore their likes and wants outside of the expectations of others, you are reinforcing a more authentic life based on inner passions and self trust. There are so many experts, who have us worried about not fostering a sense of independence in our children.  When it comes to emotional attachment, we are encouraged to not let our children drink from the breast too long, or sleep in our beds or our rooms too long, send them out into childcare centers and preschools as soon as possible to be "socialized"…but when it comes to intellectual control the experts aren’t so vocal...deep thinkers might not be happy with the status quo.

If we can trust our children, we will often be presently surprised. While I also hate princesses, ESPECIALLY Disney princesses (just be really good and pretty and your handsome prince will come and save you), Ramona was completely taken by them at the beginning of the year.  She understood that I wasn’t into them (as I put it).  I do admit that I did try to deny the princess stuff at the beginning, but then questioned myself in that attempt to control her desire and inquiry and I changed.   I even let her attend “Fairy Princess Camp” at her ballet school, which was 85% princess and 15% fairy.  Eventually,  she realized that pink really isn’t that great (so old), that its hard to climb in dresses, and that you can’t have a whole lot of fun in sparkly princess shoes either.  She also realized that princessy girls aren’t that much fun to play with.  Now, while she likes a princess now and then, there are much more important things to do and think about.  That is a happy ending…one day I know that the ending might not be as happy for me, however, I will know that I have allowed my daughter to create herself through her own inclinations and that is more important to me than her having the same values as I do.  i sure as hell don't want her to have to wait until she is a teenager to start being able to experiment with her likes and desires!  i want her to enter her teen years with a good sense of self! 

Okay, so now the question is...do I get her that barbie looking Cinderella Doll that comes with her Magical Steed and sparkly hair clips that she really really really wants for her birthday (or Christmas)? YUCK! The jury is still out on this one. I just hope we can find something else that she really really wants!

I just can't say..."how did I come to unschooling"

 I would have written earlier if I weren’t trying to respond to a recent challenge at “Unschoolers Emporium” (www.theunschoolersemporium.com/) to write a blog entry and post it on their site about Unschooling. There are several topics to choose from, but I thought I would start at the beginning and chose, “What brought you to unschooling.” I have been wasting hours and days filing pages. All I have done is irritate myself by forcing something I have so much to say about without knowing where or when or if or how I should say it.

What I can do is post links. What I can say is that unschooling is definitely up for interpretation. One thing I notice is that some people seem to interpret child led learning, to mean that the child directs the adults lives. “ I personally don’t like guns, but I buy my kid toy guns because I am taking my child’s lead.” I guess if I were an unschooler in that train of thought, I should spend $150 a month so my kid can watch cable TV. Give me a break, let’s put ourselves through the perils of the rat race so we can spend our money on things we are morally against? Well, I guess we are all used to it, since we fund wars with our tax dollars all the time…So after day of writing why I came to unschooling, all I have to say is an insult?!

Unschooling to me is about change. Social Change doesn’t happen if people don’t change. The education system has been a site of struggle for years and it has only gotten worse; more standardized and more under the control of non-educators. Schooling is a form of coercion. The culture of school is about jumping through hoops, sorting children into haves and have-nots, manipulating people, working the system, and learning to conform and please others (non-conformists are skewered in high school). Otherwise we would only need knowledge and expertise to get jobs, not degrees. School says you learn in school, not the world.

Unschooling is a term that fit my philosophy on life. I hope that after this disjointed post I can go on with my blogging and leave this difficult time behind (sarcasm).

Or maybe I resent writing about unschooling because I am jealous of those who have the time and resources and connections that let them live their lives exactly how their ideals dictate...or maybe I'm just afraid I won't be able to pull it off.  

'When we all request education and institutions where our children and young people can stay and learn, we close our eyes to the tragic social desert in which we live. They have no access to real opportunities to learn in freedom. In many cases, they can no longer learn with parents, uncles, grandparents—just talking to them, listening to their stories or observing them in their daily trade. Everybody is busy, going from one place to another. No one seems to have the patience any more to share with the new generation the wisdom accumulated in a culture. Instead of education, what we really need is conditions for decent living, a community.


“True learning,” Ivan Illich once said, “can only be the leisurely practice of free people.” '

Reclaiming Our Freedom to Learn
by Gustavo Esteva

Child Development Boxes…

Ramona was born with a flattened head, rather like ET. My midwife said in her 20 years of delivering babies, she had never seen anything like it. From that moment on, Ramona has had a hard time conforming to expectations. She is “very advanced for her age.” At 3 and some months, she happily works on “kindergarten level” work at home. The What to Expect From Your Two Year Old (or Three Year Old or Four Year Old) never did anything but make us feel abnormal. She never even fit into the growth charts doctors like to use, completely transforming her point on the chart with every visit (if that point was even on the chart). People find it highly suspicious that Ramona doesn’t develop to the professional guidelines.

Ramona started preschool early because she had a high interest in going. Because California has an age cut-off for kindergarten at 4 years nine and months, the age cut-off for preschool is 2 years nine months. Ramona started at 2 years 8.5 months and will enjoy three years of preschool. This year, they recommended that she stay back in the younger class so that she could make friends and keep those friends through the next two years of preschool.

Ramona was very upset because she loves her friend Jade so much and her other friends from class last year. All Ramona’s good friends are a year or more older than she is. Though I felt sad about separating her from Jade, if she goes with the younger class this year she can have two years with the same (albeit younger) kids. This idea makes Ramona cry.

The other day, however, I realized something was really amiss. As a coop parent, I do help work around the school for a discount on tuition. I took her with me to get the school ready and I noticed that she acted like a typical three year old (if that) at school. She asked me to put her shoes on! She has been putting her own shoes on for a year now! She was asking people the names of things like “fork!” I was really weirded out by her charades. Was she trying to conform to expectations? Or acting so she could get extra praise for “learning” new things?

So now I feel at a loss. I absolutely do not want to push her, but I also don’t want her to not be herself. As we were getting ready to leave the school I asked her about it and she told me she only wanted to be smart at home, and sometimes at Maria’s. I told her that her not acting smart in school was the reason that she wasn’t going to the “Big Kids” class this year in a very cold and snotty manner. It just popped out… and as soon as I said it I was sorry. I could see in her body and face that my words really hurt her. She quickly changed the subject by opening the mailbox and asking me why there was a wood block with screws in it in the back of it. Wow, she already knows how to stuff feelings…I answered her, thinking a subject change was a great idea. As I loaded her onto the bike I could see her watering eyes and she told me, “I want to be with Jade.” And a tear fell. “I want to go to the big kid class.”

I couldn’t get rid of the lump in my throat for most of the rest of the day. I am trying to loose the guilt. But those escaped mean words have acted as a red flag that something isn’t working out. The questions abound! Does it really matter that she dumbs herself down? I am going against Ramona’s wishes to put her in the younger class, but with the conventional wisdom of “child development” says she needs to be with kids her same age. I don’t feel like going against Ramona’s wishes corresponds with my ideal of letting the child have control of her own education, but at the same time, her “pretending to not be smart” behavior is what probably got her in the situation in the first place. Very young children do not have the experience to understand the full implications of big decisions like this, and isn’t it the parents job to guide her to the right decision? What is the right decision? Why is she acting? A lot of questions…

The big problem I have with the child development conundrum is that I see well-trained adults actually trying to fit children into the child development chart when they don’t fit. It is the backbone to the idea that it's good to separate children by age. It creates this whole world of abnormalities (gifted, special ed, etc) and organizes, pigeon holes and puts children in a sort of competition with each other, not to mention causes a whole plethora of insecurities in parents. Parents with “gifted” children are first looked at with suspicion, then animosity. Parents with “special ed” kids are treated like there is something wrong with their child (while holding off for a year on certain concepts might prove the child "normal").

Nearly everyone we meet asks Ramona what her age is, then they almost always make a comment about the way Ramona acts or looks based on what they think children of her age should be like. I used to be proud every time I would here how smart or mature or “present” she is, but then I started to get annoyed. We have a friend with a child who has a “speech issue.” Her mother feels quite insecure about it. People look at her as if they feel sorry for her and her daughter when they hear her difficulty with speech. That little girl creates the most beautiful art, several years advanced on the “development” charts. Of course, no one notices and the mother of the little girl didn’t even notice until I said something to her about it…and she even played down the art by saying, “I think she copied her older sister.”

In the end, I have worked out a few things to make my life a little less stressful. First, I have discussed with Ramona that when someone asks her age, she doesn’t need to tell them, and that she can say, “I don’t want to say" (she used to do this anyway). And then I wont say either. Of course she probably will say, because this is what people expect, but how nice it would be to make people think for a minute. We also moved Ramona into an afternoon class in her preschool, the one class with the full spectrum of 2.9 year olds to almost 5 year olds. I personally love the mixed age classrooms. I have also come to accept that Ramona is an actress by nature. She likes to try on different personas and be different characters. Maybe I don't need to worry about it and let her reveal what she wants to whomever she wants.

And I hope that one day, we will stop being obsessed with science, basing every thought on it. I think science is a tool, a way to get an idea. Science is soaked in human bias. Science is a piece, a fragment...we will never see the whole picture when focusing on just one piece of the complex puzzle that makes up humanity. In any case, how could we ever evolve or change as a species if we are always trying to fit into the boxes of yesteryear?

Ironically and coincidentally, as I write, Ramona is watching "Ages and Stages - Your Three Year Old" on PBS.

Documentation Obsession

So, I have been applying for a subsidy to help pay for Ramona’s preschool and childcare. I just need to get the paperwork together and I have been accepted. I knew I was going to have to come up with a bunch of documents that would inevitably be MIA, and I did.

I couldn’t find the birth certificate, though I can find her certificate of birth from the hospital, her little footprints, pictures of me giving birth, her social security card and passport (all of which will probably go missing next time I try to find those for some bureaucratic reason). I couldn’t find the form the Dept. of Child Support sent me when they closed our case. The lease that I was holding in my hand a week ago has vanished and I have to get my doctor to fill out a well child form and give vaccination dates. If we don’t vaccinate, I have to have the doctor say that we don’t vaccinate on the form (they can’t just take my word for it even though I am the one who told my doctor when she had her vaccinations, as the doctor is somewhat new to us). AND, I have to take a form into my employer asking if they will fill out a form saying that I work for them and write in the hours that I work! What, a pay stub isn’t sufficient anymore? I feel like a teenager on probation! How incredibly patronizing! All for a little help with paying for childcare?

The common idea is that these programs are here to help those of us who are finding ourselves mired into financial poverty for whatever reason. From what I have noticed they are here to strip us of our dignity and to help us keep our heads just above the water while acclimating folks to a paternal relationship with the government. Welfare programs are used to keep the poor folks with just enough (or not quite enough if you live in California where everything costs more)… otherwise the rich would have a class war on their hands. We often forget how common working class rebellions have been in the past. The Elite (you know, that top 1% that controls over 70% of the wealth in the US), have learned that uprisings are a lot more expensive than welfare and taxes. The large middle-class acts as a buffer between the rich and the poor, and if you couple that with myths such as “the American Dream,” “It’s All the Immigrants Fault” and “Anyone Can Make it with Hard Work,” the poor seem to be confused just enough to not do too much of anything. The poor are either ashamed or angry…am I getting off track?

Anyhow, since I live in a society obsessed with documentation, my mind has flown off the handle. So I realized on Monday that I probably don’t have any of the things I need to get my subsidy and I will be spending some time searching and calling and ordering forms.

After searching the whole house over several times, I call the child support office to please send me a document saying my case is closed. They say I could probably come and pick it up on Friday (the day I was gonna meet with my government subsidy case-worker), IF they can generate it by then. I tell my caseworker that we should wait until I have all the documentation before we meet, so lets cancel our Friday appointment until I do. The Child Support “case-closed” letter comes in the mail on Thursday. Not what they said, but why complain when things work out for the better. So I call my worker and tell the answering machine that we should meet on Friday after-all. A few minutes later when I am looking for the lease that I know I just had the other day, I find the original child-custody form. Less than two hours after it comes in the mail, I find it on ACCIDENT! , After that I go to my employer for the employment verification, then my case-worker calls and says she’s too busy and our meeting ends up getting set back a full week because I wont be available next week when she is.

So I sit down to check out the paperwork packet she sent to get filled out. There is a doctor physical exam paper to fill out. I haven’t figured out why they need it. They only give subsidies to healthy children?…so now I have to ask the doctor to fill out two physical exam forms, one for preschool and one for subsidy. Then there is this paper to fill out that asks me when Ramona sleeps, how long she sleeps, what her personality is like, when and how often she poops, what my family calls urine and so forth. Am I the only one who finds it nerve-wracking that I am asked to write all this personal stuff down to give to someone I don’t know to do god-knows what with? Talk about paternal! Forget Big Brother, more like Big Daddy!
I guess the government is like our dad. Our tough love dad. Sometimes little revealing declarations by judges and the such make their way into the media which most people ignore because they want pretend we are independent and free. In the case of our children, one judge noted during a case with homeschoolers, that a main reason that children are required to go to school is so that somebody (a government worker) needs to keep an eye on the children to make sure that we aren’t harming them. Another judge admitted that it was to make sure children become patriotic, law-abiding citizens (meaning: not rock the boat). When I was in my credentialing program we learned that teachers (again government employees) are required to act “in loco parentis” or “instead of the parent.” “In loco parentis” refers to the legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on the functions and responsibilities of a parent as long as it is not considered a violation of their civil liberties. While you would want one caring for your child to care for them as their own (as long as they are good parents), we are talking about the government and its employees. The government has entered into every aspect of our lives only on it’s own terms and the saturation will reach a critical mass soon enough.

Once upon a time we counted on our communities. Those don’t really exist and as well hand over more and more responsibility to a centralized government, out communities become weaker and weaker. Now we pay the police and the pentagon (whether we want to or not) for some illusion of so-called security. Communities used to be the places we lived, worked, and educated ourselves and each other. We got to know each other and we kept our eyes out for each other. Now we work for “some other guy” and/or a bunch of shareholders in some other (post) community and send our kids to an institution for most of their waking lives to be educated and socialized.

Wow, it’s getting late. I could go on and on about the woes of dealing with government bureaucracy, but it really did feel alienating and I really did feel a little ashamed explaining the “work verification” to my employer. The organization treats me like an ungrateful wench for questioning all their excessive demands and I still can’t find my lease.

“Why stress about preschool?” Or “Preschool for Homeschoolers”

I don’t want to ever send my daughter to school. But it’s not that simple. For one, I lean towards the unschooling philosophy, where the child is in control of his or her own learning. If the child decides to go to school, my stopping her would not be letting her have control of her own learning. Ramona likes the idea of school, mostly because she likes people, lots and lots of people.

Preschool is different from regular school anyway. My mother convinced me to give preschool a try last year, and Ramona was always begging for more time with more kids. I gave it a try, but there were issues that bugged both Ramona and I, which I won’t go into in this blog other than much of it stemmed from age segregation and gender segregation issues. She does however want to go to preschool again. She has a daycare, which she loves to death, but there are only a handful of kids there half of which are infants or new walkers. She wants a larger group of kids closer to her age.

Because of our bad feeling around the issues we had at her school last year Preschool, we decided to look into the Parent Participation school. Ramona really liked it, and after talking about it for a day or so, flip flopping back and forth, we chose the new school. I thought I would be like “Great, I am glad she made her decision.” But instead I got nervous and scared. Her decision actually involves me very much. Parent participation meant I would be working in the school as well! My life isn’t only about Ramona. I have so many things going on. Am I ready to make this commitment for up to two years?

I assume this school would be a great opportunity to really be a part of Ramona’s education, and the children really do lead in this school. It would also be an opportunity for me to get some experience working in cooperative schooling situations with other parents. As a single parent with a super social daughter, the only way I could conceive of homeschooling is within a homeschooling cooperative.

On the other hand, my idea of a cooperative was not under the umbrella of the public school system. The new school is run through the Adult School and we are expected to attend parenting classes twice a month and to be on a committee. This school requires 3 days attendance, and then 4 days next year while the other school only requires 2 days and then three next year. What if I don’t like the school? What if I get a job that conflicts (not that I am looking for a 9-5 M-F job)? I don’t want to switch around schools. And if we decide we liked the old school better and went back, I would have lost my coop position (for reduced tuition) there. I need my own time, as I am taking new strides in my life, working to forge my own path…do I want to learn about child development? Isn’t my parenting style intuitive and empathic, rather then learned from the “experts.” Ahhhhhhhh! What to do.

Then I get a call from the 4Cs, the organization that offers childcare subsidies. They tell me I qualify, but that they couldn’t pay for childcare while I was working in the classroom because I would not be working for money. Well that settles it, back to the old School. But then I get a letter from the Parent Participation school talking about how much the parents add to the class, with songs, and scientific presentations…and I am confused and stressed AGAIN.

In all this I start to feel trivial and fanatical for thinking and stressing so much about preschools. It is just preschool, isn’t it? My amazing, active, successful friends don’t sit and obsess about preschools, they worry about more important things like the concentration camp called Palestine, or racist laws in Arizona, or assassinations and disappearances of Mayan resisters in Chiapas, or their art, or their jobs…

But preschools are important. The lives of our children are important. The experiences of the first years of their lives affect them for a lifetime. They dominate their unconscious minds and dictate how they relate to the world.  Social change comes from within people.  Schools are more important than the job I am looking into right now. Schools are important…Or the absence of them…they affect us our entire lives…Jeez I wish Ramona didn’t want to go.

Truth is Ramona will be going to good school that she likes.  It is walking distance. Kids love it. No worksheets or anything like that.  Lots of choice for the kids.  And she is in the afternoon class, where there is less age segregation.  But, I miss out on the cooperative experience. Maybe some day I will have another chance, a cooperative experience that is organic and evolves from community members that want something new and different for their kids, that isn’t part of this big centralized government with all its rules, regulations, bureaucracy, taxes and “proof.”

Women's equality means working fo The Man

...the man...you know...the guys who somehow squeeze more and more wealth from the poor and resources from the earth every year.

I have become appalled at the level of devaluation of mothering in this country, especially as I am a feminist, and I have seen how the types of feminism that have become mainstream have worked to exasperate this devaluation.  Women’s equality has been linked to women's ability to sidestep responsibilities of care of family and home.  Unfortunately men have not stepped in enough and home and family have suffered.   Our children have been institutionalized more and more.  Schools have stepped in to provide more after school care and activities (which is great considering the alternatives we have, i.e. nothing), and many “liberated” mothers have hired other mothers (cheap labor) to leave their own children behind to care for thier's in one of the lowest paying industries in our country (an eye opener as to our American Values).   Somehow, in our value system it is better to leave your children and care for another’s children, because you are making money, stimulating the economy and money is the signpost of success and equality not the sarcasm).  The dominant feminist mantra presents the solution always being “more childcare.”   Success is measured by how well women are able to fill the positions that men dominate, while what once was women’s work (now the “care industry”) have remained degraded, a place for the poor and the immigrants to work or the site of a woman’s “second shift.”  Not working and “just” staying home to care for your children is so un-feminist these days, you can never be successful or equal doing that!

You could be the best preschool teacher in the world, but the Wall Street tycoon will be the one considered successful.  He will be the one with his name in the papers.  I suppose it is easier to get women into “men’s jobs” than it is to try to make a society value “care” while the media screams at us that the only way we can survive is to make more profits for the rich capitalists. When future historians look back into our time, they will note that we value people for their ability to wield power, use scientific logic and their ability to make money (power).

During a recent debate with a friend about culture and whether other cultures do fine without us (of course my take was that they would do much better without the Western Ideology and economic systems imposed upon them) my friend made a comment about ancient cultures only valuing women for their ability to reproduce.   I did think that this was a bit erroneous, as women’s work in agriculture has been so indispensable to so many cultures and civilizations for the majority of human existence. Throughout history and prehistory, women have often been the primary agricultural workers.  Also, men have often been valued and respected in their strength, or in their material wealth.  People tend to need to be respected for something. 

The truth is that our own, western culture has been one of the most brutal to women.  Our culture has stripped women of their power and worth over the last 1000 years or so (I guess it depends where you come from), through things such as witch hunts, legalization of rape, propaganda, violence and outlawing natural medicine, midwifery, birth control, etc.  When it was decided that child birth and childrearing was just a natural function and that nature was vulgar and something to be feared and exploited for our benefit, woman, as the child rearing gender, had her fall from grace. She has only recently, over the last hundred or two years been climbing her way back.

Women bear children and their bodies supply nourishment, which lead to women being the ones with the children at their feet.  This created a sort of division of labor but NOT the devaluation of reproductive labor.  That is a contemporary idea that we often project into the past.  In fact, women were once actually worshipped for their child bearing and rearing abilities.

Once upon a time, God was a woman, she worked outside the home as her children played and worked all around her.

When we refer to other cultures or ancient cultures valuing women for their ability to bear children, we have to realize that we are looking through a decidedly Western lens that does not value reproductive work.  In the hierarchy of power and the discourse of equality, reproductive work and care (of elders or children) are squarely at the bottom.   I have done a lot of learning in Chiapas, Mexico and reading about the cultures from the area.  In Mayan culture, equality is (or was, this part of Mayan culture has been highly eroded) about respecting difference.  There is (or again, "was") a tradition of Complimentaridad; male and female work are different and complimentary.  One is not valued over the other.   The western hierarchy of values places money at the top, so one who is not making money is not considered as successful as one who does.   When the Americas were colonized, western culture began to seep in as the West destroyed and exploited indigenous peoples and became the dominant culture.  Even after independence, the Americas are controlled by the Globalized Western Capitalist Economy.   This has forced indigenous Maya out of the villages and into the money economy.  This lead to western ideas about gender and public and private spaces to be transported back into the villages.  "Women’s work" became, as it is here, considered inferior and less valuable.  This is one instance.  It has been well documented that the introduction of our culture into others, even if they did have some inequality to begin with, has changed women’s positions for the worse in almost every instance.  As equality in our culture improves, we point at other cultures and say, “Look at the guys, they are so far behind the times with women’s rights…oh the hypocrisy! 

And in the end, we still like to blame our mother's for all our problems.

I wonder, in what kind of world should be want to be equal in?

To be continued…

to read the paper I wrote on Indigenous Feminism in Chiapas, check out this link: http://www.mujereslibres.org/Articles/indigenousfeminism.htm

The March for Human Rights

Yesterday was the first time Ramona and I had gone protesting since she was an infant.  I am actually not much of a protester these days.  However, the protest yesterday was the first one I really felt compelled to join in quite a while.  It was a march for Human Rights, organized in response to the Arizona law SB 1070 that encourages and advances racial profiling and racism.

I am so proud of my little girl.  She was so present at the protest, she danced with the Aztec Dancers.  She has never walked so far.  She was so inspired by the energy and the people at the protest, she didn’t complain one time during the three hour ordeal.  She walked (and ran, as her little legs were no match for the rate of the march) at least a mile, and carried the sign the rest of the over three mile march as I carried her.  She was completely absorbed in what was going on and asking all sorts of questions which I answered as best I could in terms I hoped she could understand.  It was sort of easy to explain the reasons for people coming and the reasons for the protest, but difficult to explain to her why there are borders in the first place and how the people got so poor.

Later, when we got home, my friend Christina came over to stay the night and I beamed with pride as I heard Ramona explain to our friend what had transpired earlier in the evening.   She really personalized her retelling of the story, by talking about the woman  (she loves) who runs her daycare, who emigrated from Mexico.  “People like Maria come here and make their homes and then others say, you can’t be here go away, and they say, ‘No this is my home!’”  She continued to chant today  “Aqui Estamos, y no nos vamos.”  I think Ramona knows more about immigration than any three year old I know (who isn't an immigrant, of course).  It also helps that she has spent some many months in Mexico.

These are the kinds of experiences that shape children, these are the places that children learn.  In society, in the street, through rich interactions with life…not locked in an institution 6-7 hours a day, five days a week.  Learning about the world by experiencing it, not being told about it from inside four walls.  Learning how to act by experimentation, not by authority and the culture of the carrot and the stick.



Ramona is at 1:30 in this video