parenting Archives | Page 2 of 5 | The Manifest-Station

Pinned

March 16, 2018

By Elizabeth Newdom

“Would you act like that if you were having dinner with the queen?” my dad asked me from across the kitchen table, his eyes framed in black rectangles, his brows two arched wings.

Behind him, I could see my reflection in the display case housing my grandmother’s gold-rimmed china plates. A rush of blood filled my cheeks. For three impossible seconds, I resembled a captured animal, stuck in the blinding light of someone’s headlamps.

My eyes fell heavily upon my place mat as I continued chewing a piece of steak, trying to work through the meat’s toughness. Had I spoken out of turn?

“Don’t touch those,” he continued, pointing at the centerpiece – a glass bowl filled with ceramic vegetables.

Had I touched them? I might have nudged the fake asparagus a little closer to the pea pod and artichoke. But I said nothing. Instead, my eyes returned to the mat, my cheek color deepening into a crimson sunset.

And were we in fact royalty? I was only seven, so naturally I was confused. Perhaps, when I turned eight, the queen was going to show up with my prince. Maybe all of the table manners and social etiquette were preparation for life in someone’s faraway castle: every linen napkin, crystal water glass, and salad fork, part of an elaborate grooming process. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, parenting, Yoga

This Surrender

February 26, 2018

photo courtesy of Suzi Baum

By Suzi Baum

I go to a yoga class with babies.

A college student tends a cluster of children in a room behind the yoga studio while mothers, fathers, people who I don’t know well enough to know if they have kids or not and it does not matter at all, here we are with students, elders, people of all shapes and abilities-all of us stop on our mats for an hour, stop all the else we are about, and center, together.

We are marbles off track.

We run the edge of the singing bowl that is this class, spinning around the rim until the centering pull of breath and asana brings us to the center, of the bowl, of our selves, of this moment.

There is often a shout or a cry at just the perfect moment. We chuckle. We breathe. We go on.

I did not always attend yoga classes with babies. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, No Bullshit Motherhood, parenting

There’s No Such Thing as a Perfect Parent

February 2, 2018

By Sally Lehman

My Mom taught me how to fold sheets and iron pillow cases and measure flour with the dipping method, and how to pinch the edges of a pie crust to make it bake pretty, and how to hammer a nail and hang a picture and paint a wall, how to swaddle a baby and change a diaper and repress bad memories because we don’t talk about those kinds of things, and how to not cry or I’ll give you something to cry about young lady, and how to bite the webby part of my hand instead of screaming because when things are just too much and I can’t stand to live with it all anymore, no one else should find out. She taught me to be ashamed for thinking sad thoughts and how to avoid people I dislike and how to hold a grudge for years, and how to sew and crochet and work if I have pneumonia because the phone company doesn’t give a shit that I have pneumonia. Mom taught me how to drink a gin and tonic and how to make a decent cup of coffee, the kind that will rip a stomach apart after three cups, and how to order a glass of wine at a restaurant when I was only sixteen. And how to pretend I was asleep when a crazy drunk person woke me up at 3 in the morning to say they are sorry for every single little thing they might have ever done ever.

My Dad taught me to shut the fuck up already.

My Mom also taught me to hold my head up, chin out, no matter how out of place and lonely I am, and how to look a person right smack in the eye when I talk to them. She taught me to look just the right way to the make children do what I tell them to do, and that I should be ashamed for taking antidepressants every day because it made her a failure as a parent. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, No Bullshit Motherhood, parenting

Mommy Wars

December 18, 2017

By Callie Boller

I’ve only been a mom for 6 years, so I am definitely still a rookie, but one thing that I’ve learned during my short time with this parenting gig is that everyone is an expert. Whether it’s the woman in line behind you at the checkout stand, or your co-worker down the hall, EVERYONE has an opinion on the right way to do motherhood – and they are willing to go to WAR over it.

I can go on social media right now and find countless mom-shamers with thousands of followers, you know…the ones who only let their children play with wooden toys, wouldn’t even speak the words “formula fed,” and have a PhD in being a perfect fucking parent. Something about the combination of a keyboard and those damn Instagram squares makes people delusionally entitled. The judgmental comments, the better than attitudes – I’m so over it.

So here it is. This is MY WAR on Mommy Wars – and here are my rules of engagement: Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, No Bullshit Motherhood, parenting

Hey Parents, Chill Out

October 16, 2017

By Jackie Boeheim

I was at the park the other day with a group of moms and we were discussing various topics on preschools, pacifiers and bedtime routines. I was becoming very stressed out, second guessing myself as a parent and breaking out into cold sweats. In fact, as I looked around the group, all I saw were panicked faces of worry filled moms.

The conversation prompted me to call my own mother and relay the chatter that happened at the park. “I just don’t know if I have my son in the right preschool,” I said. “The one I attend has a smaller class size, the one I toured yesterday has more complex activities…” my mother started laughing. Wait, let me correct that statement, my mother interrupted me with a bout of laughter. Does she not understand how serious this is? My mom finally told me to just chill out, have a glass of wine, paint my toenails and stop worrying so much. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, No Bullshit Motherhood, parenting

The Shoemaker

September 29, 2017

By Nina Uziel-Miller

Not too long ago, I was sitting in Katherine’s chair as she told me all about cutting her son’s hair for the first time. She said her little boy, while very cute, had been going through life practically blind, and so she knew it was finally time to do the deed. She explained that she had the “great idea” to do it in the bathtub because then he’d have nowhere to run. Only he squirmed and splashed and shrieked like crazy. I will never understand what makes first haircuts so scary to kids, but according to Katherine, her son was in a state of abject terror. Rather than abort the mission, she forged ahead and speedily hacked away at him with her newly sharpened scissors until all that remained was a jagged, uneven fringe of barely bangs just below his hairline. That and a soaking wet bathroom.

As Katherine, who happens to be my excellent hairdresser, shared her story, she pulled strands of my own hair across my face, measuring and trimming until she was completely satisfied (no crooked cut for me) and then she pulled out the blow dryer. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, No Bullshit Motherhood, parenting

A Temporary Amnesty

September 18, 2017

By Lisa Werhan

I wear the mottled flesh of a person too long submerged in the agitated waters of tribulation, fingertips colorless and puckered, my lips the unmistakable blue-gray of a corpse. No, no, I exaggerate. My lips are naturally pale except for my blanched-white scar, lower lip, y-shaped, the one spot that I keep biting, compulsively; this feels like the slap and sting of the surf that erodes and eats away the ash-gray sand. I can’t not nibble at it, gently, gingerly, the faint tang of blood washed away by salty saliva.

I linger over the dinner dishes a bit too long, scrubbing the tiniest bits of detritus from the supper skillet, scratching away metallic flakes with my too-short nails. Yes, yes, I obsess. I am too long at the sink, all that water having gone to my head; my brain swirls with foamy thoughts, my-child-is-suffering, that slosh haphazardly, forming angry eddies which drain away into the abyss of my broken heart. All things lead to my broken heart these days. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, No Bullshit Motherhood, parenting

Airplanes

August 20, 2017

By Billie Hinton

1961

I’m being held in the arms of someone while my mother and father board a plane. We’re on the tarmac and they walk away and up the steep steel stairway into what appears to be a black hole. I push away from the chest I’m held up against, straining to follow the two people I know best in this world. The stairs roll away and the black hole closes and the plane moves away, slow and then fast. The black hole opens up inside of me; everything I know slips into the distance with that plane. I stop pushing and cave in to the chest, allow myself to be held, hot tears soaking into fabric that does not smell like anything familiar.

1985

In his small office my therapist sits too close for comfort, my knees and his a few inches apart. I find solace in the large window that looks out to trees and flowering shrubs. The wash of light through blinds is an escape hatch. He asks for my earliest memory. I tell about watching my parents leave in an airplane. He asks if I felt comfort with the person I was left with and I tell him I don’t know who that person was. It seems unfathomable that my parents left me with a stranger. How did you calm yourself? he asks and I tell him, I didn’t. I still don’t.

1988

In the office of my therapist, I write the final check for the final therapy session. His office feels larger now. The check number is 2001 and he comments that it has been an odyssey. I am moving to Texas to attend graduate school in clinical social work, inconsolable at saying goodbye to a man who has sat across from me several times each week for several years, knees inches away, wearing Birkenstocks which at one point I mocked, but have come now to love. After I leave I meet friends for lunch, still bereft at the loss of my thrice-weekly sessions, tears sliding down my cheeks at random between bites of food. One gives me his wristwatch to wear while we sit in the sun with take-out containers and iced tea in plastic cups. Comfort. Continue Reading…

Fatherhood, Guest Posts, parenting

My Age of Fatherhood

June 28, 2017

By Vincent J. Fitzgerald

Parenthood was the furthest thing on my mind when you were thrust upon me, but I undertook the charge, and its grown-up responsibilities, because part of me desired to be a grown up. You were fragile, vulnerable, and needed me close. Fatherhood was the first time in my life someone needed me to survive, and although often confounded by its tasks, I adapted, and was saved from reckless games my peers played. I never looked back, fixed my eyes on you, and hoped your future bright.

Divorce darkened that future for a while, but I remained a steady presence during the death of our family. Infidelity and deception devastated you, and although you had grown some, you still needed my shoulder to provide your tears a place to land. The whole affair rocked you at peak suggestibility, and although my wounds were also deep, I ignored them to ensure I tended to yours.

You had been hospitalized for a million days during which I prayed for your return. The moment you felt the victory of verdure, we imploded, and I feared you would return to where people never smiled, and medicine was measured by voltage. It was more worry than could fit in me, but mine was a malleable mind, and it expanded to the point of burst synapse. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, No Bullshit Motherhood, parenting

When Mommy Hurts

June 23, 2017

By Carrie Kempisty

I sit draped in a thin, blue sheet. Waiting. Chill bumps cover my bare legs and feet dangling from the crinkle-papered exam table. The tests have been run; I’ve been poked and prodded. My brain spins in circles of anticipation, like an airplane without clearance to land. The sudden, mysterious, physical pain that has been slowly crippling my body may, after today, have a name. Up to now, I’d mentally escaped inside a self-protecting, impenetrable bubble that’s been relentlessly bombarded on all sides. Fears, potential disaster, over reaction, denial, and sadness have all threatened to burst through the protective barrier.

My two young children used to ask me if I could play. Now they ask if I hurt, which I vehemently deny. This seemingly overnight change in my physical well-being has been frightening for all of us. I am an active, fit, energetic stay-at-home mom. I don’t often skip days of going to the gym to lift weights, run, or swim laps. In recent years, I’ve enjoyed a healthy dose of competition in running, biking, and swimming events. I was a personal fitness trainer for over ten years before I became a mother. It was hard enough to admit my pain to my athletic husband. How can I admit to my children that their mother has suddenly become less than the energized, non-stop, cheer and activity leader they’ve always known? Where’s the line between protecting them from witnessing my pain and outright lying to them? Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, parenting

Purple Ball Day

June 16, 2017

By Maureen Langloss

One April several years ago, the grocery store near my daughter’s school displayed a bouquet of plastic balls in all shapes and sizes. Spring in round, inflatable form. A particular purple ball caught my eye as I passed to pick Ainsley up from kindergarten. Purple was Ainsley’s favorite color, her only color. The ball registered that first day. Enormous and impractical and unstore-able. I desired it the second. By the third, I was imagining it in my daughter’s tiny, growing hands. On the fourth, I couldn’t sleep with worry that this ball would be gone before I got to it, purchased by someone who wanted it more. But there it was still in the store window the next afternoon, practically glowing. Screaming “AAAHHHHHHHHH.”

I zipped the ball into a giant canvas bag, much like a magician hides the egg in his mouth. Ainsley filled to the brim with curiosity when she saw me carrying it. I opened the bag slowly, with great ceremony, as she peered inside.

“It’s Purple Ball Day!” I announced.

“Purple Ball Day!” she shrieked, like she already knew what that meant. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, parenting, Tough Conversations

Bedtime

June 7, 2017

By Kristin Wagner

When I say goodnight to Christopher, I curl up next to him in his tiny bed. We listen to the first half of the nursery rhyme CD we’ve played every night for the last six years. I stay cuddled with him until the end of “The Three Little Kittens”; I use my hand as a puppet version of the disappointed mother cat mouthing the words, “And you shall have no pie” then I use my hand to kiss his cheeks as I tell him I love him and sneak over to Nicholas’s bed.

I rub Nicholas’s back and talk with him about his day until “The Wheels on the Bus” finishes up. We have a ritual of conversation that is identical every night, and is repeated on days when he feels most anxious or sad. I ruffle his hair and say, “I love you. Sweet dreams and good night. I’ll see you in the morning,” which he then repeats verbatim, “I love you. Sweet dreams and good night. He asks me, “Are you staying up?” “Yep.” I then wander back over to Christopher for one last hug before I turn on the seven minute CD. As a final reassurance Christopher often throws an arm around my neck tightly then releases me with a sweet but sassy, “You can go now.” Sometimes he has already fallen asleep and I sneak a kiss on his forehead then tiptoe away.

One night, when Nicholas was nine and Christopher was seven, I went to give Christopher his last hug. He perched a little stuffed owl named Syrup on my nose and said in Syrup’s high voice, “Hi, how are you today?”

That moment fell over me in a sort of crushing happiness that felt a little unfamiliar and scary. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, parenting

What Makes A Good Mother?

May 1, 2017

By Robin Rivera

Some of us are naturally drawn to children and mothering leaving the rest of us wondering where this domestic gene came from, and why didn’t I get it. It’s not fun to me to stay home and cook and clean and change diapers. Well at first it was because it felt like playing house folding all the tiny laundry… until shit got real!

Nights awake crying, college deadlines, welfare deadlines, dating nightmares, lack of sleep, and of the most challenging… Facing childhood trauma when I look into the face of my hysterical child feeling ever ounce of terror I used to feel as a child. I have worked so hard to learn a healthier way to nurture my child especially through difficult times. But when the rubber hits the road I gotta tell you, I tend to fall apart Inside.

I sometimes lose my temper and fear I am the monster I’ve been dedicated to shielding my daughter from. I shame myself for being ill equipped to be a mother. I tell myself I’m damaged, and I can’t do it. In those moments I feel devastated like I’ve failed my life’s mission by breaking down when she needs me.

But this is the dance. The dance through trauma, the dance of life. I pick myself up off the ground, usually after calling a trusted friend, and I do my very best to nurture the aftermath of a storm. I hold my daughter and validate her feelings, I admit my wrong within minutes, we make a plan of how to support each other better the next time, and we express love. That’s the best I can do with this healing heart of mine. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, parenting, Sexual Assault/Rape

The Conversation We’re Not Having With Our Sons

March 26, 2017

By Amy Hatvany

I don’t remember my parents talking to me about sex, other than making it clear that opening my legs to a boy before I got married was a sin. What I do remember is thinking that I was a lesbian because I masturbated—I knew girls who touch other girls were gay, so if I touched myself, didn’t that mean the same thing? I was confused, ill-informed, and scared, so I shoplifted a Penthouse Letters magazine when I was in middle school, desperate to understand my own body and if the raging, hormonal urges that sometimes took me over were normal. But instead of validation, what I found were graphic stories of women who submitted to men’s forceful, probing mouths, fingers, and dicks. These women protested at first—some of them even said no—but soon found themselves swooning, powerless to resist the “pleasure” of violation.

Years later, I would wonder if what I learned about consent from these descriptions—that it was a man’s job to make a woman realize what she really wanted; that her “no” was simply waiting to be turned into a yes—was part of what kept me from telling anyone about the boy who unzipped his jeans and jammed his erection into the back of my throat when we were sitting together in the front seat of his car. I was on the edge of fifteen, and he was older, someone I knew, someone I’d had a crush on, and so I didn’t fight, I didn’t try to stop him. I only endured, waiting for the pain and paralyzing terror of what he was doing to loosen its vice-like grip on my chest. Continue Reading…

Older Posts

Newer Posts