Monthly Archives: June 2010

Posted inEmotional Growth • marriage

Actions Speak Louder than Words

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I learned something new about men this week. I’d like to share it with them. Guys, listen up: Women take your behavior personally. You know how, in every chick flick, women will take the tiniest thing, say the WAY a guy said something, not WHAT he said, and discuss, dissect and deconstruct it for the next 30 minutes? We really do this. Women spend hours on the phone, at brunch and in salons, discussing small details of masculine behavior because a) We are analytical by nature – we need to understand stuff and b) You don’t tell us what we want to know, so we have to guess.

So, over the millennia, women have developed interpretive skills. We’ve done this by discussing, dissecting and deconstructing your every move while we crouched in menstrual huts, ground wheat at the mill, drove rivets into B-51 bombers, and enjoyed a half-caf nonfat latte while texting at Starbuck’s. Are we obsessed? Pretty much. Is this adaptive? Probably not, but neither is throwing up when you’re pregnant, and we do that too. Is it important? Yes. I am offering you crucial information, so please pay attention.

Now, most of the men discussed in chick flicks are single. You don’t see a lot of married women interpreting spousal behavior on screen, mostly because the 18-35 set thinks singles make better entertainment. But that doesn’t mean that behavioral interpretation stops at the altar. I bet you thought so. Nope, we do it forever. Everything hubby does means something to us.

And that’s where you guys make your mistakes. In every marriage, each partner will do things that make the other crazy. That’s just marriage. But some of the things we do hurt you. And some of the things you do hurt us. And if you keep in mind that we continuously interpret your behavior and that actions speak louder than words, you can avoid the angry, tearful confrontations that result.

Here’s an example. Thursday morning, I had to do laundry. I am forbidden from carrying heavy loads while I’m great with child, so I dragged my laundry basket down the hall, bumped it down both flights of stairs, to the washer. I lifted the washer’s top and in it, there was a wet wash that my husband, Matt, had initiated the night before. I opened the dryer and in that, there was a dry wash that he’d completed the night before. So in order to start my wash, I had to first unload the dryer into his laundry basket, then switch his wet clothes to the dryer and start the dryer. Then and only then was I able to load my clothes into the washer. I grumbled as I did so, then tromped up the stairs, exhausted and out of breath. (I can work out for an hour and not break a sweat, but laundry and stairs completely wipe me out. Doesn’t make sense, but there it is.)

Exasperated, I emailed my husband and told him that if he wants to stay up until 3 a.m. (because he does) that’s his decision, but when he does it and I find routine household chores undone the next day, it frustrates me. Because somehow, factoring in two jobs, a two-hour nap in the afternoon and a 9:30 bedtime, I manage to shop, cook, change diapers, entertain our daughter, run errands and keep the kid and myself in clean, matching clothes.

So while I know that he spends less time at home than I do, he is here and awake from 6:30 p.m. until 3 a.m., amounting to 8 ½ hours in which he could complete those chores. And when he doesn’t complete them, it makes me feel like he doesn’t care about me because he expects me to pick up the slack or, if I refuse, I’m still angry all day. Ultimately, the message his neglect sends is that he just doesn’t care. I added in the email, that I wasn’t angry right then. I just wanted to explain how I felt because I want him to understand how his behavior affects me.

Well, he was pretty upset about that email. We talked about it that night and never reached a meeting of the minds. He said he forgot about the laundry and apologized and couldn’t understand why I kept pushing. Besides, he said, he’d gotten much more responsive with daily chores such as the dishes. I could not understand why he was upset when I was never, in fact, angry. My objective was to explain how his behavior affects my feelings and all I wanted was to make him understand. I also explained that when I brought up the dishes, I referred to an ongoing pattern that had revealed itself over years’ time. He took that to mean that I didn’t give him any credit for recent improvement.

Last night, as I brushed my teeth, I heard the garage door open. What’s he doing? I wondered. Rose was already in bed and the garage is below her room. We avoid using it when she’s asleep. Should I go down there? He could be fighting an axe murderer right now. Then, as I popped a zit, I heard him come down the hall. He opened the bedroom door, winded, and said, “Make sure you close the garage door when you come up. I found it and the door to the house wide open.”

“It was?” I said, “Oh, yeah. I left it open because there were groceries in the car and you like the garage door open when you unload. I’m sorry. I thought you’d be right down.” He’d forgotten to unload the groceries.

“Whatever, just make sure you close the door,” he said, as he left the room.

Well, looks like the shoe was on the other foot now. To me, leaving the doors open was an oversight, meant to be helpful, forgotten. To him, it was a grievous security breach. Truth be told, I’m glad he spotted it because I completely forgot and I don’t feel comfortable unless all the doors are locked either. But to Matt, my behavior demonstrated a lack of concern for his values and my family’s safety.

So it’s clear that both men and women react to spousal behavior as a personal affront. So where’s the chasm? Why can’t we think about each other when we leave the laundry undone or forget about the garage door?

The problem is that there is a chasm, but it’s not that obvious. It’s all about nuance. Nuance in the way we think and nuance in the way the world looks to each gender. “What the hell is nuance?” you guys are asking. Nuance refers to subtle differences that can completely change the message received. It is what women discuss when we dissect the WAY you said something instead of WHAT you said. “Oh, chick stuff,” you’re saying. Believe it or not, guys are intimately familiar with nuance, and you discuss it all the time.

Let’s say Ronnie Brown receives a long pass at the four-yard line. He bobbles it, recovers, then gets knocked out of bounds and the ball comes loose, landing in bounds. New England recovers it but the ref blows the ball dead. Was it a catch? The refs have to decide in seconds. Let’s say they call it a catch and Miami dinks it into the end zone. Imagine you are for Miami, and your bud, though you love him like a brother, loves the Patriots. You argue that Brown did, indeed, have possession because he recovered just before the tackle and your bud says no, he fumbled it and it should have been New England’s ball. You and your bud discuss this through the end of this game (Miami 21-14) and the next. You are discussing nuance. The subtle difference in this play, between a fair catch and a fumble – did he have possession or didn’t he? – is nuance.

With all of these subtle differences in the way we see things, how do we come to agreement? Based upon my conversation with Matt the other night, we probably don’t. What we can do is try to see our own behavior as an if_then statement. “If I leave dishes on the counter, then Maria will think I’m slacking and get all pissed off. Therefore I won’t get any tonight.” That is an if_then statement, followed by a logical (and accurate) conclusion. Ladies: “If I don’t close the garage door, then Matt will freak out. Therefore, it’s better for him to open it himself than for me to forget it again.” That’s also if_then statement followed by a logical conclusion.

It will take practice to think this way, but take heart. The “Actions Speak Louder than Words” doctrine works in a positive direction as well. I lost my job a few weeks ago. One of my first thoughts was, Oh, no, now we won’t have money for the fence. I’ve wanted a backyard fence since we moved in, so I can contain my daughter and keep her safe when we play outside. Without it, she hurtles toward the cliff, or runs out toward the road, stressing me out as I run after her. Being great with child makes this activity even more difficult. So to my great joy and relief, we’d planned to put up a fence this summer, before I lost my job.

I’d never shared the fence lament with Matt. Two days after I’d heard the bad news, Matt said, “I’ve been thinking about the fence. We can just buy it in pieces, whatever we can afford, and it should be done in a month or two.” I cried. For a long time. Matt knew how much that fence meant to me, and despite our financial concerns, he found a way to make it happen, job or no job. At that moment, and as the fence goes up, I am overwhelmed at how much he loves me, and I love him, section by section, more and more.

Communication between the sexes takes a lot of work and there’s a steep learning curve, but we maintain enough understanding to keep us together. And if that isn’t enough, we must remember that we love each other. Love fortifies our relationships enough to make us keep trying. And that’s the secret. That’s all we have to do. We may never get it right, but it’s enough for our partner to see that we just keep trying.

Posted inEmotional Growth • Parenting

The Hallmarks of Fatherhood

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Rose can pick a Father’s Day card in seconds. She can’t read yet, so a picture of Elmo or a Disney princess is a sure sell. My shopping experience is not so simple. Now that I’ve got to pick out two Father’s Day cards – one for my father and one for my husband – we spend a good 45 minutes in the card aisle. Rose clutches her card, but I have to find just the right message – for both of them.

My dad’s card is tricky. I pore over available sentiments, looking for one that’s not too sweet, not too personal — just a nice thought — because that’s where our relationship stands right now. When I was a little girl, our relationship was playful and harmonious. During my pubescent years, it turned uncomfortable. From teenhood through my twenties, it grew mutually hostile. In my thirties, our interactions evolved to guarded but necessary; and now we’re a friendly kind of civil.

So the cards I pick out don’t say “You’re My Hero” or “World’s Greatest Dad.” They say “Happy Father’s Day” and I write in “Thank you,” because despite our relationship’s complicated path, there are things my father’s done for which I am very grateful. Most of his contributions were monetary, and for my father, writing a check is like cutting off a limb with a plastic spoon. It’s not that he doesn’t have money. He just doesn’t like to give it up. Money’s always been his main love. Nothing takes precedence. So the fact that my father financed my education and supplemented my income each time I struggled with money really means a lot. I know how difficult it was for him to give that money up, and I know that he wished he’d given it to someone who hadn’t disappointed him so early and often.

The card I pick for my husband is different, though gratitude is still the prevailing sentiment. Matt loves Rose so much, and he’s a great daddy. He works a lot, so I tease him by humming “Cat’s in the Cradle” from time to time, but when he’s with Rose, he’s her hero, and that’s exactly what a little girl’s daddy should be. He crawls on the floor and plays blocks and horsie with her. He reads to her. He’s charged himself with nightly diaper and jammies duty. And he took her to visit Grandma for four whole days.

He helps me too. He takes Rose to the gym so I have writing time. He agreed to take over swim lesson duty when I told him how much it stresses me. And if I need to lie down, he tries to keep her out of the bedroom until I get up. And sometimes he succeeds.

Matt is the reason we had Rose in the first place. He wanted me to bear children. I never wanted to get pregnant or give birth. My plan was to adopt a potty-trained two-year-old. But about two years into our relationship, I changed my mind. I remember the moment. We were sitting on the couch in our Shady Side, Md. house, and I realized that I wanted a child with this man. And if I had to get pregnant to do it, I could. With this man, I would always be ok.

So my heart, and the card that serves as its ambassador, is full of gratitude. Sure, he’s my husband, so he still does things to annoy me, but when I’m in the card aisle, I put that aside and focus on how much I love him and how lucky I am to have him in my life. And I try to find a card that reflects that.

I just hope that Rose keeps buying the same “Best Dad Ever” cards. Elmo and Ariel can go, but I hope the sentiment remains the same. At Rose’s age, my dad was my hero. I said I would marry him (How textbook Oedipal is that?) and in some ways, I have.

Matt’s personality is nothing like my father’s. My dad was a mechanical engineer, and he’s got the typical engineer persona. He’s comfortable with problems and constructs, but he never looks anyone in the eye, and isn’t interested in people enough to understand social mores and customs. We traveled six hours to see him once, and he left us sitting on his living room couch while he retired without a word to the dining room to read the paper.

Matt’s a social savant. I envy his ability to talk to anyone, anywhere, for any length of time, for any reason. He’s entertaining and funny, smart and perceptive, speaks his mind, and everyone likes him.

But my father and Matt have two things in common: worry and anger. Neither one of them knows how curb worry. My father worries about money. Matt worries about everything. Since money is everything to my father, their worry quotient is about equal. With Matt, worry leads to stress, which leads to anger. It may work the same for my father. I just remember he was angry all the time.

Last night, Rose wanted to jump off the easy chair in the living room. It’s about 18 inches off the ground, the floor is carpeted – no great danger for a two-year-old. She said, “Can I jump?” I was fine with the jump, but before I said so, Matt yelled “NO! I don’t want to go to the hospital when you break your leg! Bad enough Daddy broke his arm when he was five. And that hurt!” Clearly, she was not in danger of fracturing a femur, but Matt’s knee-jerk worry pumped up his volume. I know he really believed that she could break her leg, but I also know that worry is so powerful that it distorts reality.

At other times, Rose’s defiance stresses him out, as only a two-year-old’s can. He loses patience and he yells at her. If it were up to me, he wouldn’t yell at her at all, but I understand that he hasn’t logged the hours with her that I have, and has not yet learned all of the alternate methods of disciplining a trying toddler. I also understand that he did not spend half of his life in therapy, as I did, and he doesn’t realize how damaging yelling at a child can be. And I know that sometimes, kids can make you so crazy you just can’t help but lose it. But yelling sends the message that yelling is ok, and Rose has already started to yell at him. Additionally, since everything he does will shape her relationships with men, if he keeps yelling at her, she’ll think this behavior is perfectly ok if her boyfriend does it years from now.

We’ve discussed the yelling and I’m happy to say Matt’s improved. His outbursts are much fewer and farther between. And I’ve noticed Rose has laid off the yelling as well. She’s replaced it with other undesirable behaviors, but none so clearly attributable to our mistakes.

My father would never have been as amenable to improvement. I can attest because I used to write long, heartfelt messages in the cards I would give him, detailing how I would like our relationship to improve and he’d say something like, “Ohhh. I didn’t know you felt this way.” He’d look serious for a few minutes, leading me to believe he’d work on our relationship, but nothing ever happened. As far as I could tell, he never made an effort. Ultimately, our relationship evolved according to circumstance, not because of any effort on either part.

I think Matt and Rose’s relationship will be different. He’s always wanted to be a dad, and it’s obvious that he adores his little girl. He’s committed to dadhood, because his own father failed him so miserably – even before he left. And Matt knows that relationships must be built from the ground up. So far, I think he’s laid a good foundation. The rest of the relationship depends on time and materials. Hmm, Matt the Builder. Can he build it? As Rose would say, “Yes, he can!”*

*Adapted from “Bob the Builder”

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Victory Garden

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This year will be different, I thought. This year she’s old enough to really enjoy the garden.

We started in February with the peas. “You love peas, Rose, and you know what? We can grow them in the garden. Would you like to help Mommy plant them?”

“Yeah! Yeah!” exclaimed my excited two-and-a-half-year-old.

“Ok, well here’s the seeds,” I said, handing her the envelope. “I’ll get my gloves and we’ll go back to the garden.”

“Ok!” she said, fiddling with the envelope. Halfway back we had to stop.

“No, Baby, we don’t open them yet. No, don’t shake! We don’t want to lose them! Ok, I’ll take them,” I demanded, holding out my hand.

“NOOO!”

I grabbed them. “Yes! I told you, if don’t have the seeds, we won’t grow any peas.”

“I want them!”

“We will play with them in the garden.”

“I WANT THEM!”

“Ok, sit here, Sweetie. No, no, don’t walk in the garden. Sit on the grass! Sit!”

“I want to go here!”

“But how are we going to plant the peas? We have to plant the peas over here!” I said, grabbing her arm. “Sit!”

“Ok, so here’s what we do: take the little rake like this and run it across the dirt like this.” I showed her.

“I want to do it!” Finally.

“Here you go.” She ran the hand rake over the soil, dug it into the ground, and catapulted a divot onto the grass. “No, Baby, now we have to dig holes for the little seeds. A divot flew past my face. “Honey, give me the rake. Give it to me.” I reached out for it.

“NOOO! I want it!” she said as I yanked it out of her hand. “I want it!”

“Don’t you want to plant the peas?”

“I WANT IT!”

“Ok, Sweetie, why don’t you take the rake and go over there.” Happily, she settled down on the site of the future tomato bed. A divot shot past my face. Breathe in, breathe out. “And Mommy will plant the peas.”

Strawberries

“Today we’re going to plant the strawberries, Sweetie. Oh boy, looks like we’ve got a lot of weeds. Guess I’ll start pulling them.” Rose climbed up on the rock wall with my trowel. Fountains of dirt flew, peppering the driveway. I grabbed a weed and pulled. Rose looked up.

“What are you doing Mommy?”

“Pulling weeds,” I said.

“Can I pull weeds?” she asked.

“Uh…sure, Sweetie. Come over here and I’ll show you.” I pointed, “This is a weed. Grab it at the bottom and pull it out.” She grasped her little hand around it and pulled. It came up, roots and all.

“Can I do it again?” she asked.

“YES!” Hallelujah. “Pull this one right here.” And she did. “No, not that one! We want that plant!” I pointed out some more weeds, and she kept pulling. Fantastic, I thought, It’s just destructive enough to hold her attention. And she’s really helping.

Lettuce

“Today we’re ready to plant the lettuce,” I said. “Help me pull out the weeds first.” I wielded my hand rake. “Pull that one, right there.”

Rose grabbed the hand rake. “I want to dig!” She raked the ground. Divots of tilled, fertilized, composted soil flew into the grass.

“Do you want to dig up the weeds over here? That’s where we’ll plant the tomatoes.”

“I want to dig!” she said as the ruts got bigger and the grass got buried.

I sighed.

The books said that kids are supposed to like gardening. It’s playing in the dirt, after all. Rose loves eating vegetables off the plants, so I know she’s got gardening potential. There are so many great lessons for me to teach her in the garden too. Science, work, sustainablility. She’d benefit so much from this. If only I could get her to like the process and not just the result.

We were working on the herb garden and Rose tromped across my seedlings. “NOOOO!” I cried. She kept tromping. “No, don’t walk there!” I nudged her backwards, out of the garden.

“MWWAAAAAAA! You pushed me!” I’d made her cry. How could she like the garden if Mommy made her cry?

“Ohh, Sweetie. I’m sorry I pushed you. I’m sorry. Can you listen for a second?”

Sniff, “Yeah.”

“Ok, those little plants? They’re babies. Little babies, so we’ve got to be gentle with them. If we walk on them they break and then they can never grow up.”

“Ohhhh.” She kneeled down and stroked the babies. “Hi babies.”

Wow, I thought, it worked.

Tomatoes

May came along and I set out to buy tomato plants. I had an idea. “Rose, would you like to grow your own tomato plant?” I asked.

“YES! I want one!” she yelled.

“Ok. Mommy’s going to the farmer’s market and I’ll bring you back a tomato plant and it’ll be all yours. You can take care of it and eat all the tomatoes it grows. Ok?”

“YES MOMMY!”

Ok, maybe we’re getting somewhere. I’ll believe it when I see it, though. I came home with some plants.

“Is that mine?” she asked, holding up a yellow pear.

“Uh, no, Sweetie. I got this one for you,” I said, pointing to a Sweet 1,000 plant. They’re supposed to be hardy and prolific, so I thought it would be perfect for her.

“Can we plant it?” she said.

“Now? Well, sure, ok.” We set out to the garden. I pulled out a big pot.

“Fill this with dirt, Sweetie. Take the shovel and get the dirt from the bag, and put it in the pot.”

“Ok,” she said, as I tried to guide her hand. “I DO IT!”

“Ok.” And she did. She scooped dirt out of the bag, and dumped it in the pot. She had almost filled the pot when I stopped her.

“Honey let’s plant the tomato. We need to take a little bit of this dirt out because we need to make room for it,” I said as I scooped some soil out. “You go get your plant.”

She brought it over. “Ok, we’re going to take it out of that pot and plant it in this big pot,” I said. She turned the pot upside down and began to shake.

“NO, BABY, GENTLE!” I gasped as I grabbed the plant and turned it upright. I pulled it out of the pot and clipped the lower leaves. Deep breath. “Ok, now we make a hole in the pot. Can you do that?”

“I DO IT!” she yelled.

“That’s what I said.” Soil started to fly. “Ok, Honey, that’s deep enough. Let’s plant your tomato.” I put it in the hole. “Now you get to bury it. Bury it with dirt up to about here.”

“Ok,” she said, as she pushed dirt onto the plant.

“That’s enough, Sweetie. Good job,” I said, smoothing soil. “Now we just have to water it and we’re done.”

“I WANT TO WATER!”

“And you will. Let me get the hose.” I brought it back and held it for her.

“I DO IT!” she yelled.

“Ok, Honey, let Mommy hold the hose because we have to be gentle and Mommy knows how. You can point it at your plant.”

“Ok.” Whew! We watered her tomato, and then I let her water the rest of the garden.

“That’s it, Sweetie, we’re done. We just have to check it now to see if it grows. And you’re going to take care of it from now on.” Satisfied, I took her inside.

The next day, Rose ran out on the deck, peered down at the garden and cried, “Yaaay! It’s GROWING!” She couldn’t even see her tomato plant from there. She was happy about my garden. Victory.

Care and Feeding

A week later, we shopped at Lowe’s and I bought her some Dora the Explorer garden mats. They were cheap and I needed a mat anyway. She saw the Dora gardening gloves and wanted those. Sure, anything to encourage her in the garden. I threw them in the cart. We went to another department and my brilliant husband said, “Did you see the ‘Sesame Street’ garden tools?”

“No!” I said, surprised. “Do you think she’d like them?”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “I think she’d love to have her own tools.”

I took her to the display. “Hey, there’s Elmo and Cookie Monster and Abby!” she said, picking up the little bags of tools.

“Which one do you want, Sweetie?” I said.

“ABBY!”

So we bought the Abby Cadabby bag. It held a plastic hand rake, two shovels, five tiny pots and a pack of pumpkin seeds. Rose insisted on carrying it around the store. She napped after the store, but the minute she woke up, she picked up her bag of tools and said, “Mommy, can we go to the garden now?” Victory. Matt is a genius, I thought, thank God I married him.

Now whenever she sees the Abby bag, she wants to go to the garden. This morning I told her to wait until I’d had a shower and she walked into the bathroom, asking, “Are you done yet, Mommy? Can we go to the garden now?”

Today we planted her pumpkin seeds. Victory.

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Weighing the Options

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As I waddled out of the locker room, I thought, How can I look less fat and more pregnant? Maybe if I lean back when I walk. Yeah, that’s it. At the gym, impressions can go either way. People can wonder how far along I am or just think I’m there to work off this enormous belly and butt. I want everyone to see that I’m pregnant, not just fat, but this time around the belly looks pretty proportionate. I never lost weight after having Rose. My plan was to use Rose as my personal liposucker, but breast feeding didn’t work out and then neither did I, for two years. I started working out again right before I got knocked up, and then, thanks to exercise and morning sickness, I lost 10 pounds. But now it’s back. And since pregnancy is the only socially acceptable state of obesity, and this is my last chance for body acceptance, I want people to know I’m pregnant, not just fat.

But why is it so important to me? How is it that 63 percent of the country is overweight or obese, but society still scorns fat people? If most of us are overweight, why do we strive to be the thin minority? How do we let the diet industry rake in $40 billion a year? Why does despising extra pounds account for such degradation of our personal happiness?

“But extra pounds are unhealthy,” you’re saying. “Obesity is bad for your health.” Sure it is. But how many of us really diet for our health? Face it. We diet for a number of reasons, but if we’re honest with ourselves, the sight of our butt in jeans ranks much higher than any words the doctor uttered. These days, girls are starting to worry about body image in preschool (that’s right, preschool). If your four-year-old says, “Do I look fat?” do you applaud her for being so health conscious?

Our obsession with body image is crazy and it has to stop. We talk about accepting and celebrating diversity, but that only covers ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. Insulting fat people is still socially acceptable. And that’s because we learn from the very beginning that fat people are worthy of blame, and jokes about weight are funny.

I have never been the same size as everyone else. In grade school I was chubby – not very chubby – just enough to attract peer torture. Fortunately, I found some chubby friends, and some “normal” kids who didn’t care about my weight accepted me as well. But that was school. At home my mom would offer me a big piece of cake after school, then call me fat by dinnertime. During one big fight at age nine, I said I was leaving to play with the neighbor girl. She said, “Good, go play with the other pahia [fattie]!”

Although my mother was one of those people who could never gain an ounce (bless her heart), her bias had much deeper roots. Appearances took priority over everything in her world. She told me that every time she and her sisters left the apartment, her father insisted on inspecting his girls’ dresses, hair and makeup. They couldn’t go out until they met his approval. Later on, my mother spent most of her money and time buying clothes, for herself and for me. On high school mornings, I’d come down the stairs with a new outfit and if she liked it, my mother would say, “Jim! Jim! Get the camera!” My mother was so impressed with my appearance that we had to make it a lasting memory.

Appearances were rooted so deeply in my mother’s psyche that, once during a manic episode when I tried to check myself into the hospital, my mother came to talk me out of it. My Uncle Gus’ family’s imminent arrival (see “Some Things You Can’t Forgive”), the event that triggered the episode in the first place, took priority. “What am I gonna SAY to them about where you are? What am I gonna SAY?” she kept asking. The pull was so strong that I did check myself out that day, and stayed at the neighbor’s house for the duration of the visit.

And then there’s my father. Last pregnancy, I paid him one last visit before moving cross country. I was six months along, and I’d gained only 16 pounds. (Just for reference, that’s pretty freakin’ impressive.) I was a size 16 at the time. A week later, my father called me at my office to ask if I had a doctor. Unfazed by the odd question, I said, yes, I saw my doctor once a month. He said, “Well next time you see her, ask her about your back. I read that obese people can have back problems when they’re pregnant.”

“You think I’m obese?” I said.

“Just ask her about it,” he said.

Our conversation tumbled downhill from there. That was one of the worst arguments we ever had, and it ended when I hung up on him. The next time he called, I told him I’d decided not to talk to him until the baby was born, because he upset me every time we spoke.

And it all started with weight. I’ve since told my father that my body is neither his problem nor his business, but that doesn’t stop him. Last time we spoke he asked how the pregnancy was going and I made the mistake of mentioning some back pain. “Well, you’re carrying all that extra weight around!” he said. I pretended he was talking about the baby weight and let it go, but I know that’s not what he meant.

So it’s no wonder I’m self-conscious, even in the sixth month of pregnancy. And I haven’t even touched upon the effects of emaciated supermodels or the media’s weight obsession on my self-image. Let’s just take those as a given. I enjoyed the legitimacy of my size during my last pregnancy. It was about the only thing I enjoyed at the time, so I tried to focus on it. I know that I’ll never be thin. I’ve achieved thinness twice in my life and both times, the weight came barreling back. I hadn’t stopped watching my weight, it just got easier and easier to see.

We all have a natural, comfortable weight and mine doesn’t approach skinny. I don’t think that my current weight is my body’s ideal, either, but once I have the baby, I’ll be able to find a happy medium, and if that medium turns out to be an extra large or a plus size, that will be ok with me. I don’t anticipate becoming a fashion model or a jockey, so my weight will rank low on the priority scale.

What will matter is how I see myself. And more important, how my self-perception affects the people around me. If Rose can accept her body as she grows, no matter its shape, I’ll consider Operation Body Image a success. If my son can appreciate that people come in every shape and size, another success. And if I can accept my body, enjoy food without shame and ignore society’s unrealistic ideals for women, my happiness will far outweigh any dissatisfaction with my butt’s appearance in jeans.

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Only So Much

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“What can I do for energy?” I asked my obstetrician at my last visit. She belted out a good, long belly laugh.

“There’s really nothing you can do when you’re pregnant,” she said, and went on to explain that women usually have less energy during a second pregnancy because by that time, they’re already running after a little kid.

Normally I wouldn’t ask such a ridiculous question, but after losing so much time to morning sickness, I held out hope that I’d be able to catch up with everything I wanted to do in my first trimester, but couldn’t. Right now, there aren’t enough hours in the day for me. There are plenty for everyone else, but I need to nap in the afternoon most days, it takes 2 hours to get 20 minutes sleep and I have go to bed by 9:30 at night. And I don’t get just a little tired – I suddenly lose the ability to function and I’m lucky if I can muster the energy to brush my teeth.

But I have so much stuff I need to do. Every afternoon, my Outlook sends me a reminder of what I’m supposed to be doing during nap time. “Freelance: Monday 1:30-3:30,” comes up as I sign off of work. Or “Tuesday: Book 1:30-3:30.” Or “Blog: Friday 1:30-3:30.” I read the reminders, dismiss all, sigh, and go to bed.

Sometimes I awaken from my nap while Rose is still asleep. On those days I fire up the computer and try to crank out a few tiny tasks before the inevitable “Mommy! I’m all done sleeping!” And I feel good about those days, but I still have this overwhelming sense that I’m behind, all the time.

And that’s just stuff I want to do. I don’t have energy for anything else, either. The other day, I finished work; dropped the car off for brake work; took Rose to the dentist in a cab; stopped for a few groceries; walked us home on the bike trail; got the call that the car was ready; played the pregnancy card so they’d pick us up; got the car; watched a chick flick to de-stress for an hour; considered cooking onion soup and dessert; decided against it; went to drop off food for a new mom; picked up my husband at class; stopped for food and bathroom and to switch drivers because I was an exhausted menace on the road; and finally made it home and straight to bed at 8:40 p.m. I was just grateful I got through that whole day.

The next day we had a friend visiting for the weekend. I had to work and then pick her up at the airport. As I made breakfast, I surveyed the kitchen. One counter was covered with dishes. I knew the dishwasher was full and clean and considered unloading and reloading, but I typically don’t, because dishes are Matt’s job or Eric’s, not mine. Eric was out of town so the dishes fell to Matt, who’d rushed out and left them that morning. While I didn’t want my guest to see the kitchen like that, I still had to pick up Rose’s mess in the living room, straighten the office, finish work, get Rose at the babysitter’s, then go to the airport. I gave up. It was a messy kitchen, not the end of the world. And five minutes of Rose would destroy the living room. We don’t spend any time in the office, either. You know what? I thought. There’s only so much I can do. I finished my work and headed out. By that time I was late, but I felt better.

That’s when “There’s only so much I can do” became my mantra. I just have to accept it. There’s so much more I want to do, but right now I just don’t have the energy for everything. And it’s ok, because things change. When I have the baby, I’ll have less time to fit everything in, but I can manage time. I can’t manage exhaustion.

I can’t remember a time when I’ve been satisfied with what I’ve accomplished. When I moved out of my parents’ house, I’d talk to them once a week. Once we hung up, I’d experience a “parental hangover” – the aftereffects of our conversation. I’d ruminate over something they’d said or I’d feel bad about myself in general and I’d try to fix that feeling by launching myself into projects or cleaning or other chores – anything to regain a sense of self-worth.

Although I got over the “hangovers,” that feeling of inadequacy never left me. I’ve got a wonderful home and family, great friends, a steady paycheck, a freelance writing business, a growing blog readership, and lots of experiences to draw upon, but I consistently berate myself because I should have accomplished more sooner. I expected to publish my first book in my twenties; get married and have children in my thirties; and sit back and collect royalties from my third book, at least, in my forties. Instead I married, divorced and began to pursue a writing career in my twenties, married again in my thirties and had my first child at 38 (came close there but I really meant mid-thirties), and am still writing that first book and gestating the second kid at 41.

Did I fail to live up to my expectations? Yes. Did my expectations fail me? Yes. But I’m beginning to look at the whole process differently. I once read that no one should use lack of time as an excuse because Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison had the same 24 hours in a day that we do. It’s a nice sentiment, but Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison were men back when men didn’t care for their homes or their children. I am a modern-day woman and my responsibilities are a little bit different. I may have a cushy government job like Einstein but in my “off” time, I care for a 2 ½-year-old, write a blog, magazine articles and a book, and run a household. And let’s not forget that I’m gestating a baby boy every day and night. As for Edison, he had two wives. I can only begin to imagine what I could accomplish if I had two wives. So maybe it’s ok to blame a lack of time for my lack of accomplishments. At the very least, I can blame my current lack of energy. And I can allow myself some amnesty, because my ambition always exceeds my time and/or energy.

Things change. Maybe someday I’ll have the time and energy to do everything I want to do. I bet if that happened, though, I’d just set my sights higher and want more. But right now I’ve got to accept that there’s only so much I can do. Maybe I can learn to forgive myself for my “shortcomings.” Maybe I can accept that sometimes good enough is good enough. And now is a good enough time to do that.