2013-09-27
Parenthood: "She's So White!"
While I was party planning this afternoon, I started watching last night's episode of 'Parenthood'. Barely five minutes in, I fell over laughing when Crosby held up his newly-born daughter and exclaimed with shock, "She's so white!" And 10 minutes in, I nearly died again when Grandpa Braverman said, "She's even lighter than she was in the hospital!" and then expressed his confusion at the term light-skinned. Ah... All of this is so familiar to parents of biracial children.
Pop Culture Dad and I had the same reaction when Little Diva was born. I mean, we knew she would likely be born much more pale than she would eventually end up. Many black children (particularly with lighter-skinned parents) and most biracial kids are. My doula with Little Diva has biracial grandchildren, and she tried to prep us for the possibility before we went into the delivery room. This wasn't an earth shattering revelation. I was a pale child, and I've been around plenty of black and biracial newborns. I don't know any black person who would be particularly shocked by the revelation that some black and biracial babies will be darn-near white at birth.
What Pop Culture Dad and I were not prepared for, however, was that our then-blue eyed (now green), pale child, would pretty much stay pale—very pale—for years. My multi-ethnic mother comes from a long line of "high yella" women. My dad's mother was also very beige. But I'm brown. And my mother-in-law is a pretty deep tan. My husband isn't even that pale himself. Somehow, though, for the first three-and-a-half years of her life, our baby girl was lighter than her father.
This was a real problem for me when Little Diva was a baby. Despite the fact that she looks just like my toddler pictures, when it was just the two of us, people often asked me if she was my child or just assumed I was the nanny. I was so glad when she learned to talk and started calling me "Mommy" in public, so the people who were staring and trying to figure things out would look away. I also bought her several shirts that said things like "She's my mommy, not the nanny!" or which hadn't picture of a vanilla/chocolate ice cream cone baring the slogan "Swirled!" Even now that Little Diva has (finally) got a little bit of a tan, her skin color is often a topic of conversation among people. Annoying...
All of this "nanny" and "OMG, she looks white" [she does not] stuff is perhaps why immediately after giving birth to Super Girl, I exclaimed, "Oh, thank goodness! She has some color!" No one wants to be called the nanny.
I'll be interested to see as the season plays out, if Jasmine will experience any of the "Uh... Is that... um... your baby,... or, uh... are you the, um....?" nonsense that so many black mothers of biracial (or just light-skinned) babies deal with. If there are any black writers (or white writers with biracial families) on staff, I imagine it's coming.
2013-09-25
Why Green Eggs and Ham, Mr. Cruz?
Last night, Ted Cruz, the junior senator from my state (and general stain on humanity), decided to filibuster into the wee hours of the night on his crusade against ensuring proper healthcare coverage for million Americans. During his all-night-long rage against quality of life, he read Green Eggs and Ham. Why that book instead of any other Dr. Seuss tale? Well, ignoring the irony of reading a book about someone who stubbornly insists he hates something he's never tried only to find out in the end he likes it to protest something Sen. Cruz has declared he hates, even though it is yet untested, I have some theories about why the other Seuss books were a no-go:
1. Mr. Brown Can Moo, but that mooing was the result of a pre-existing medical condition. Formerly, Mr. Brown could not qualify for insurance based on that condition; but now, thanks to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), he can no longer be turned down by insurance companies because of any pre-existing conditions, even mooing.
2. The Cat and the Hat's friends, Dick and Sally, are now college students in their 20s. Their mothers did not mind at all if the did opt to stay on their families' plans as dependent children. Thanks to the ACA, Dick and Sally can stay on that plan as long as they are dependents, up to age 26.
3. Oh The Places You'll Go, like to the doctor when you're mildly sick, instead of the minor emergency room; because now that you have insurance, you'll have real co-pays instead of attempting to duck hospital bills that come later.
4. Horton Hears a Who, but now that the ACA requires strengthened standards for community mental health centers, there's a good chance he can find a qualified doctor to help him work through the schizophrenic episodes.
5. You're Only Old Once!, and under the ACA, there will now be a temporary reinsurance program for employers (reimbursing them for 80% of claims between $15,000 and $90,000) providing health insurance coverage to retirees over the age of 55 who are not yet eligible for Medicare.
6. If I Ran the Circus, it would have to provide me healthcare insurance or pay a nominal penalty so long as I remained full-time and it had 50 or more employees.
7. I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today!, but I'm pretty sure I would need immediate medical attention afterward. Now I can afford it!
8. I am not Going to Get up Today! Well, I wasn't. But then my employer, a small business, received a grant under the ACA for establishing a wellness program, and now I realize the benefits of getting up and moving.
9. The Butter Battle (Book) was resolved when I read the nutritional content on my menu at Cracker Barrel. The ACA requires chain restaurants and food sold from vending machines to disclose the nutritional content of each item. Whelp! I dodged a bullet there!
10. The Lorax developed a powerful cancer-fighting drug from those glorious trees, and he received a 12-year patent on exclusive use before the FDA will be able to make a generic version of the biologic drug (which hopefully will not further deplete the tree resources!).
2013-09-06
I Judge Parenting Styles Like I Judge Comma Syntax
Today one of the pages I follow posted an article from the Huffington Post entitled "10 Uncomfortable Confessions From an Imperfect Mom." One of the confessions, which the page featured, was, "I know that every time I feel defensive or judgmental about someone else's parenting choices, it's because I am less than confident about my own." Commenters were asked to agree or disagree. While there were other confessions that resonated with me almost to an eerie level of discomfort, this one did not.
Let me be clear: I know I'm not a perfect mom. I'm far from it, in fact. If parenting could be judged by a report card, I'm sure my children would give me varying marks ranging from A++ to F, and those grades in each category would change in any given day. My mother would probably give me different scores, as would a Pop Culture Dad and the rest of society. Heck, I would give myself a broad range of scores. But (and as I responded to the post) I went into this gig knowing that perfection was a ridiculous standard, and I would never fall into those traps setup by the Mommy Wars where I would be forced to feel defensive about being less than perfect or even just different. So I accept my imperfections, but also know that I truly am doing the best I can do—whatever "best" looks like in that moment—within my comfort level. If someone thinks I'm doing it wrong, s/he is certainly entitled to that opinion, just as I am entitled not to give a flying f*ck what someone else thinks.
That's not to say I don't judge other parents. I do (boy, do I!). We all do. Judging others is natural. Anyone who says they've never judged another person is a liar. Even if you don't mean to, often you do. And, while I've certainly seen some harsh judgments come from obvious places of insecurity, that isn't always the case. Judgment can also come from a place of feeling in your bones that your way is better. No, just because you have that feeling doesn't make you right. Unfortunately, your opinion can never be right. Even when your opinion is fact-based, the facts upon which you base your opinion can be right, but that doesn't mean the ultimate conclusion you derive from those facts is correct. Yes, there are some universal truths out there about which we all may have opinions; but most of us are dealing with shades of gray, penumbras of life in which no universal truths are challenged.
More to the point, though, just because you judge someone doesn't mean you have to vocalize it. That's what I think we all really mean when we say people shouldn't be so judgmental. Yeah, sure, we are all going to be a little judgy; but there's a huge difference between (i) keeping that judgment to yourself or a conversation among like-minded individuals and (ii) bombarding the person or group you are judging with your "facts" (opinions) about how crappy their parenting is. Generally, unless someone asks you for your opinion; they're in "your house," so to speak... (blog, Facebook page, Twitter feed, journal, etc.—anywhere you should be reasonably expected to voice your opinion about your feelings); you are in the midst of an open debate/dialogue/discussion; a person is operating on truly wrong intel; or someone is doing something that any reasonable [the standard for "reasonable" here not being "totally agrees with me"] person would agree constitutes a "universal bad," no one really gives a rat's patootie that you think they're the Worst Parent in the World for [fill in the blank with polar-opposite-of-yours parenting style about which you're really judgmental]. And that's fine that you're confident about you parent. I'm confident about the way I parent, too. But we're both wrong... and right... and neither of the above.
It's the same way I feel at work when someone gives me a draft that doesn't use Oxford commas. At the end of the day, neither one of us is right; we just have different preferences. My judging a writer for giving me a memo devoid of serial commas doesn't mean I'm insecure about my use of them. And even though I have many grammar and legal writing books that say [paraphrasing], "In America, unless you are a periodical, we use the Oxford comma, dammit!!!" doesn't make me right. It's okay to silently roll your eyes and mutter "man, they've got this all WRONG." When I'm controlling the document (just like when I'm running my household), it's perfectly okay for me to change every single one of the comma clauses to suit my preference. It is not okay, however, to throw the document at the other person and tell him/her how stupid s/he is for not doing it your way [and, yes, that has happened to me too... I was a big firm lawyer for 12 years, after all].