Motherscope LLC | San Diego, CA motherscope.com Cover Illustration by Alexandra Harvey | Mothershaped The Mom Salon logo by Samantha Acker | Gemini Designs Copyright © 2021 by Motherscope LLC and the individual contributors. All rights reserved. Leonard, Jackie (editor) The Mom Salon | September 2021 The Mom Salon features the writings of Motherscope’s 2021 Contributors, appearing in rotation from Mar. 2021 through Feb. 2022: Kate Bailey, Eunice Brownlee, Kelsey Cichoski, Heather Cleaves, Laci Hoyt, Micah Klassen, Shanthy Milne, Alyssa Nutile, Holly Ruskin, Kaitlin Solimine, Colleen Tirtirian, Megan Vos, Melaina Williams
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In This Month’s Mom Salon: Alyssa Nutile | A Summer Full of Guilt and Glory
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Megan Vos | I Miss the Disney Princess Phase
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Holly Ruskin | moles //.
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Melaina Williams | Just One More Day and Other Poems
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A Summer Full of Guilt and Glory By Alyssa Nutile On a warm and breezy Saturday morning, we sit in the grass, me with a coffee mug in one hand and the other holding my little boy loosely. “What do you see?” I ask my five-year-old son, gazing out from the top of our backyard hill. I’m trying to foster his skills of stillness and observation. “Nothing,” he says, sounding bored. I am also trying to foster those same skills in myself, punching down feelings of hypocritical irritation that he is not yet interested in a process I haven’t even mastered for myself. “I’ll go first. I see the big lake. And I think I see some little boats out there today too.” He sits up a little bit and cranes his neck. “OH! I see them, Mom! Little white specks! I don’t know if they are that little. It’s a big lake. They might be big boats, Mom.” Now he’s hooked. Vehicles of any kind are pretty much guaranteed to pique his interest. We spend the next ten minutes just looking and noticing. A big fly on a yellow flower. His sister’s feet as she wiggles in her sling chair. The mushrooms growing under our pine tree. For a few minutes, we are just observing. Just being. It’s completely lovely. I assume this is the relaxing feeling people are referring to when they talk about meditation. That’s never a thing that I’ve been good at, so I wouldn’t know. My daughter starts to fuss in her chair down on her porch. “Let’s go, bud. I have to get G.”
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“No! I love talking. Just five more minutes.” Then he’ll ask for another five minutes. And then five more after that. He would sit here all day with me if I let him. I want to let him, but while he is one of the most important people in my life, he is not the only one. His sister is high on the list too, and right now, she is hungry. Only two, she is not capable of waiting for her snacks or capable of getting them for herself. “No, H. I can’t. I have to feed your sister.” She needs me more in this moment, and I have to go. On these weekends, I will say “No, H” or “Not now, kiddo” or “I can’t. I have to do this first” because I have to load the dishwasher and play with his sister and walk the dog (and write this essay). I’ll also acquiesce as much as possible. I’ll sword fight, even though I’m worried about getting hit with a stick. I’ll put on music I don’t like, because it’s his favorite. I’ll race cars and I’ll build towers and I’ll watch him jump off the couch 300 times, feeling grateful that he wants to jump on the floor and not me. But I feel a pang of guilt anyway, as I get up and walk down the hill without him. All our time together never feels like it makes up for all the “no”s. Wait. Hold on. Cue record scratch. Reader, this is supposed to be an essay about our joyous summer together before my sweet son starts kindergarten in the fall. And yet it only took fifteen minutes of free-writing for my ever-simmering guilt complex to surface. “Why?!” you ask. “How could you possibly feel guilty?” you may say as your knee-jerk reaction. If you’re a Millennial mom though (or dad, as I acknowledge that this is not a problem felt solely by one gender), I assume you’re intimately familiar with the concept. It’s almost inescapable. On another day, I might have tried to pretend that this guilt thing is not a regular problem for me. But today, not even a third of the way through this essay, it has already devolved into a reflection on why I felt guilty having to cut short a fun summer moment with my son. So, I might as well accept the reality of my situation. “Parenting experts” love to talk about this dilemma. They even have a
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name for it: Mom Guilt. And they have many solutions to this problem. So many trite, contradicting solutions. “Have a ‘yes!’ hour!” “Try to include your children in your work!” “Validate their feelings of disappointment, but hold your boundaries.” “You REALLY need to have boundaries.” “Say ‘no’ and stick to it!” “You’ll never get these years back! Spend as much time as you can with them now, and don’t worry about anything else!” “But don’t spend too much time structuring their play. They need to learn independence.” (Side note: if unhelpful advice is a thing you can’t handle, I’d suggest you reconsider your aspirations of parenthood.) Fascinatingly, few of these experts seem to recognize their own complicity in the perpetuation of the Mom Guilt™ problem. And despite recognizing the absurdity of it all, these pearls of wisdom eat at me. Am I doing enough? Am I doing this right? Will my children resent all the time I didn’t spend focused solely on them? And these thoughts compound with my more specific guilt that eats at me too. Have I chosen the right modes of treatment for my medically complex daughter? Am I a good wife to my husband even though I always leave the grossest dishes for him to wash? Am I a good friend even though I forget to send text messages back for days at a time? My decades in organized sports and my fascination with small business podcasts have ingrained in me the need for constant improvement. I am hounded by the concept of a growth mindset, an idea I don’t fully subscribe to but haven’t seemed to escape either. As of the moment, it only serves to constantly remind me of the thousands of things I could be doing better, parenting most of all. Well, reader. Here’s the truth. This is all bullshit. You know it, and I know it. I don’t know who invented Mom Guilt, and I’m really tired of perpetuating it in my house. I could spend the next few weeks leaning into the bullshit, focusing on every “no”, every redirection, and every moment that was procrastinated when either I could have finished work or spent more time with my children or done something slightly more productive than whatever I did instead. Or I can bask in how glorious this summer has actually been. I can cherish all the “I Spy” games and short walks and little conversations about the size of boats and the pool trips and the errands that turned into lunch
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dates. I can relish in the lazy snuggles on the couch with his sister when we were too tired for anything else. I can revel in the loving way my kids play on the floor together when they don’t know anyone else is watching. We’ve had a really nice summer together. And we’ll keep having a nice summer together, even though I tell my son “no” a lot, and I let my daughter’s nurses do all her daytime care instead of caring for her myself, and I make their dad wash all the really sticky PB&J dishes at the end of the day. Screw you, Mom Guilt. We’re having a glorious summer anyway.
ALYSSA NUTILE is an artist, writer, mother of two, and advocate living on the shores of Lake Erie in Erie, Pennsylvania. Her daughter Gemma has a debilitating genetic disease, and Alyssa’s work focuses on the emotional, mental, and physical realities of loving, parenting, and advocating for a medically complex child. She’s currently writing a graphic memoir about her pregnancy and first year of life with Gemma. You can see more of her writing and artwork at AlyssaNutile.com and follow our daily life on Instagram @alyssanewt.
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Engage with Alyssa’s Story: Recap your summer experience. What was it “full of”?
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I Miss the Disney Princess Phase By Megan Vos Although the me of five years ago would never have imagined it possible, I have a confession. I miss the Disney Princess phase. There. I said it. By the time you read this, my older daughter will be ten, and as we approach double digits, I’m veering into some uncharacteristic nostalgia. I leave no memory unexamined as I marvel at the fact that motherhood, the most monumental experience of my life, has been my reality for ten years. I vacillate between the thoughts, It’s only been ten years and it’s already been ten years. And while I would have predicted melancholy about some aspects of the end of my first decade of motherhood, I never imagined I would pine for a spontaneous “Let It Go” sing along. For my older daughter, the princess phase was not about the aspects of Disney that I, a self-avowed feminist, dislike. She didn’t care about being beautiful or obedient. She never espoused Snow White’s naïveté, nor Ariel’s submission. Rather, she took on the entire humanity of whichever princess was her current favorite. Cinderella was her first and deepest love. She would play for hours in her blue ball gown, which, by the end of the phase, was as tattered as Cinderella’s “before the fairy godmother stepped in” dress. Her preschool self-portrait includes her with Jack and Gus, the mice from the movie. She referred to them as her “devoted friends,” using the language of our well-loved “Cinderella” Little Golden Book, and they were a daily part of her play. In this world, I was the wicked stepmother, and when we were out in public she would yell “Stepmother!” and scowl at me in a weird plot twist, where Cinderella was in charge and the sleep-deprived stepmother followed after with a new baby in tow.
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“Frozen” hit both of my girls hard. Before my youngest could talk, she would fill in the clock sound when we listened to “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” in the car (Mamas in the “Frozen” phase, you know just what I’m talking about). I confess to not really remembering her first word (probably because I was so busy in my role of evil stepmother), but it’s entirely possible that it was “Elsa.” For the better part of a year, one child or the other was falling down, blasted by the other’s powers. Fortunately, an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart, and the reunions were swift. My youngest was a willing Anna to her sister’s Elsa, and the kingdom of Arendelle was our constant home. Two years ago, we took our girls to Disney World. They took this very seriously, packing their vast wardrobe of costumes. My husband and I carted the costumes around in a backpack, and they did multiple changes each day. They liked meeting the characters as much as riding the rides. It was 95 degrees and humid during our Memorial Day trip, but the girls were delighted, throwing on one stained, torn dress after another as magic mingled with sunscreen and sweat. Sometime during the pandemic, my oldest decided she was too old for Disney. It bears mentioning that she still brings her baby dolls everywhere, and still plays vivid games of pretend. But as she discovered the allure of Barbie movies on Netflix and the pull of middle grade graphic novels, she declared that Disney was done. I thought she’d return — surely, even if she was tired of some of the movies geared towards younger kids, she’d still agree to “Moana”. She humored us and sat through the new Disney+ release, “Raya and the Lost Dragon”, but the magic seems to have faded. And, because she worships her older sister, my younger daughter has mostly followed suit. During our Disney World vacation, I saw just how much some adults love Disney. Spoiler: they love it A LOT. Comparatively speaking, I fall somewhere on the “mild” end of the “Disney Love” spectrum (I do not own any Disney clothing or jewelry, for instance), but I have always enjoyed the movies, and I confess to doing the Disney-themed Peloton rides. I remember seeing “The Little Mermaid”, “Beauty and the Beast” and “Aladdin” in theaters when they were released, and can recall hammering out some bad renditions of “Under the Sea” on the piano as a nine-year-old. As a teenager, I happily spent weekend evenings watching Disney movies while I babysat. Perhaps because Disney wasn’t such an
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all-consuming empire when I was younger, I never saw it as something I had to grow out of. Watching Disney movies provided downtime for me once my girls stopped napping before I was ready for them to. Flopping down in front of “Mulan” was a great way for us all to recharge during those long afternoons, especially because more often than not, a movie inspired dramatic play that would carry us until dinner. Whereas my oldest didn’t want to watch movies until age four, my youngest was propped up on a nursing pillow on the couch during infancy, taking in some screen time as I snuck in a nap. The movies were a mix of nostalgia and actual entertainment as I appreciated the jokes the writers included for adults. I have tried approximately one time to watch a Barbie movie with my daughters, and I could not make it past about the third minute. Give me Moana’s power ballads over the cheery, over-synthesized Barbie soundtrack any day. Of course, I romanticize the Disney phase now that I’m out of it. There was a time when one more request for Disney Pandora was enough to make me want to pull an Elsa and escape the kingdom altogether. But my oldest made a birthday wish list yesterday, and aside from doll clothes, she hasn’t asked for a single toy. As I write this, I’m putting off packing for a two-week trip, and it’s the first time we are traveling without princess costumes. A cursive name necklace has replaced Moana’s “Heart of Te Fiti” necklace, and Pharell Williams’s “Happy” has become my older daughter’s anthem. Today, when I heard the word “amulet” on a podcast, the theme song to “Sofia the First” popped into my head. Like Proust’s madeleine, it took me to another era — conjured a three-year-old girl, twirling in her purple gown, telling me about her “ambulent” (oh, the adorable mispronunciation!) and its magical powers. I look at her now and can see all of the versions she has been, all of the characters she has tried on. I feel grateful that my memory has held onto these joyful images, even though those early years were also full of conflict and exhaustion. It makes me hopeful that when I look back on this phase, I’ll think about sitting next to my daughter while we read quietly, her joy when she plays with her sister, her newfound social competence. I wonder what stories are next for both of us, and what magic they will bring.
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During non-pandemic times, MEGAN VOS produces Listen to Your Mother, a live show featuring local writers’ stories about motherhood. Now, she has shamelessly embraced Peloton spin classes and bread baking, and finds solace hiking in the mountains above her Boulder, CO home. Megan loves to ski with her family and try new recipes with her partner. Her writing has been published in the Birth Stories and Radical Mama editions of Motherscope and in The Kindred Voice. You can read more of Megan’s writing on her (now rarely updated because: pandemic) blog, www.familygrowsup.com.
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Engage with Megan’s Story: Reflect on a phase your child/children went through that you now miss. What was it like when you were in the middle of it? How might this perspective impact the way you look at present phases and the ones you will experience in the future?
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moles //. By Holly Ruskin There’s a popular game traditionally played at carnivals that involves whacking a mole with a mallet, forcing it to retreat back into its hole. The only problem is that once you’ve whacked one mole, another pops up from an entirely different hole. This is the game. This is whack-a-mole. Defined by a quick Google search as the colloquial way of describing a “series of repetitious and futile tasks, where the successful completion of one just yields another popping up elsewhere”. When I’m asked by people who don’t have children what it’s like to be a parent, this is not the way I characterise it. Unless . . . they ask for 100% honesty. The truth of my experience. What I really think and feel about parenting. If they ask for that, then this is what I say. Parenting is exactly like a game of whack-a-mole. And though this may sound humorous, diminishing or as though I have a complete lack of respect for the job at hand, I have the goods to back it up. Because my daughter has just started her two-year sleep regression. Since the day she arrived, there has not been a nap or bedtime that she hasn’t railed against relentlessly and literally without fatiguing. Yet in the early days, a swaddle and white noise would eventually yield success. Just as we’d nailed that routine though, she started teething and so we were back where we started. Once through this (pretty awful) phase, we once again found our rhythm and it was a gentle rocking that helped her fall asleep. But then came learning to crawl, after that it was cutting her molars which was swiftly followed by walking. Moles popping up everywhere. Finally, around six weeks ago, we found ourselves in a sweet spot. Our daughter had cut all her teeth, was walking, talking in a way that we mostly understood, and she had dropped down to one daytime nap. The bedtime routine we had been honing for some time was working and so we had some much needed quality time together in the evenings.
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It felt like being on the cusp of a storm; heatwave receding, blistering sun slowly moving behind a wisp of cloud. Faces turned to a gentle, cooling breeze. The moles, we felt, were finally all whacked. But of course, we couldn’t have seen a virulent summer cold coming. Our little girl woke one morning, nose streaming and with an awful cough that would keep her awake for many nights to come. Our hearts broke for this little being whose brain and body had been so busy learning since the moment it left the womb. As though we had all forgotten that next on the list was the construction of a hardy immune system. Needless to say, bedtimes crumbled under the weight of this fresh challenge. We nursed her, held the weight of her in our arms as we once again faced the intense heat of parenting. And so here we are. Our daughter has a newly minted immunity and is fighting sleep like a champ. Oh, it’s not just sleep that throws up endless moles (though most of us know that a good amount of consolidated hours is the cornerstone to being a healthy, happy parent). Growing, raising and guiding a little person is one long game of whack-a-mole and possibly the only thing in this life that can provide us with absolute certainty. We mothers know — for sure — that our work is never done. And I am trying to find a comfort in this. Waking up each day with the knowledge that this is a job that will never be finished. I can’t tidy it or put all the parts of it away. There will always be another repetitive and futile task to complete. One more mole to send packing. Yet it’s the moles that give me grit, stronger arms and a surer heart. I am tougher and more resilient, able to withstand and face down adversity. So yes, there are moles but I am becoming so much better at reframing their role in my life. With the help of good friends, a regular journaling habit and the steadfast support of my husband, I am able to see each one as the next challenge that will help redefine my edges. The shaping of my mother self, like a pot on the wheel, formed from a clay that can be curved or smoothed depending on the force of movement. Yes, there are moles. No, you can’t whack them all.
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But the game is won when you recognise that it’s what you learn from the mallet’s swing which is the real reward. So keep going, play another round, and another and another. Close your eyes and feel what it’s like to grow, expand, toughen. Close your eyes, and swing.
HOLLY RUSKIN has been a writer all her life but started exploring the poetic form after the birth of her daughter in 2019. She graduated with a BA in English Literature & Film going on to complete an MA in Film, specialising in feminism and the representation of women. As a lecturer and freelance writer, she has edited screenplays, written short stories and academic essays. But it is writing poems about motherhood that has brought her the most creative joy. She co-founded ‘blood moon POETRY’, an inclusive and welcoming place for female poets to submit their work for publication. A selection of her work is published in a bestselling anthology of stories about postnatal depression titled ‘Not the Only One’ and her poems have been published in various zines, anthologies and journals. She writes for Harness Magazine, is a Motherscope contributor and columnist for Sunday Mornings at the River. Holly lives in Bristol, UK. She can be found on Medium @hollyruskin and Instagram @hollyisawriter.
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Engage with Holly’s Story: What are some of the “moles” that have popped up during your time as a parent? What helped you “whack” them?
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Just One More Day and Other Poems By Melaina Williams
Just One More Day Right when I’ve decided I want my nipples back, a lightning bolt charges us together. I draw her close as she soothes her ever-changing gums. She gets only a hint of the milk and honey once flowing from her promised land, her blessed assurance mama is hers. No matter how long her legs grow, how many phonetic letters she learns and fingers she counts, this is where she belongs. My little brother, early adolescent boy, always would find the space to curl up at our mother’s breasts.
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My mother’s arms wrapped around him like a time portal, swaying his full body just enough to bring her back to when she could pick him up like a beloved doll. Me, in my middle child pubescent fury, had to protest Get off of her! Wrestling him. Tugging, pulling, pushing. They both laughing. A ritual of sorts. I had convinced myself we were too old. That he as I, should grow up. But just a few tugs past my protest was the longing to be there too wrapped in her arms, resting my head at the breast I once knew. So as my baby’s legs dangle and she pops on and off my nipples to make some morning conversation maybe about a dream, plans for the park Or a bone to pick I decide to give it another day. Just one more day. Always just one more day . . .
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A Pandemic Story I am
raising a child, loving deeply a husband, washing myself with gentleness, mourning cousins, an aunt and a leader, ordering food and cooking food with swells of garlic as love, praying loudly, keeping journal after journal after journal, checking on friends and allowing them to check on me, making mistakes, dancing with my daughter, working in the world, visiting the world in masks, feeding the little soul in my womb, watching my mother and father face time with morning walks, taking my own walks to remind myself what outside smells like, sitting at the grace table (six women taught me this act), teaching the ABC’s and relearning the joy they bring through the eyes of a 20 month old who squills as B wiggles on the screen, posting pics and deleting apps, getting weary, fighting with everything I’ve got and resting with the same everything, choosing my laugh my quiet, my courage, my visions, my creative, my tears, my screams, my song, my faith, my woman in a pandemic. Writing my story, to the end.
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Gentle Warriors There’s never been a good time to have a child; to nurse her under tear gas or rest under the tree whose branches are strong enough to bear strange fruit. There’s never been a good time to have a child; denied a classroom or dispersed in one by bullets. There’s never been a good time to have a child; to feverishly wait at the mailbox for relief or the weekly food line amidst the noonday heat. But yet they are here, born and christened under gunfire, barb wire swords and guns, in famine and refuge. Born in sorrow or joy but always the hope, whether of parent or of the Sky. The hope, the soft hand audacious cry, clay skull and marble eyes, the little things that scare the king who decrees they all die but those gentle warriors continue to multiply, multiply, multiply, multiply, multiply, multiply . . .
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MELAINA WILLIAMS is a poet, playwright, singer/songwriter from Inglewood California. She finds great joy in connecting with people of all backgrounds through creative arts, especially creative writing. Melaina studied Creative Writing and Theatre at USC. Her book of poetry, “Bless Your Sweet Bones” was published by the historical World Stage Press in Leimert Park. She also penned, “The Humble Commode” a chapbook. She currently lives in Los Angeles and spends her days writing and bingewatching Cocomelon with her daughter.
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Engage with Melaina’s Story: Tell your pandemic story. Begin with “I am” . . . .
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Continued Thoughts:
Every mother has a compelling story. What’s yours?
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