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.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
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…
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…
Friday, October 15, 2010
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…
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…
Sunday, October 03, 2010
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.
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.
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