EXCERPTS
Chapter 2 Breathe
"It's not that I want to dismiss tradition. It's just that Popular Opinion is apparently not popular with my baby. I peer into the great chasm between my intuition and the road of the crowd. It's hard to hear, let alone trust, my own voice. I pick up my son and the chorus chants "You'll spoil him." I go to him at night-"he'll never sleep on his own." I soothe him-"he'll be too dependent." I answer his call-"he'll think the world revolves around him." When he cries, he is called "difficult," while other infants are "good" babies. When I fulfill his needs, I'm "coddling him." He's the "overindulged" baby who is bound to become the toddler "who won't take no for an answer," the dreaded "brat." " pp. 12-13
"I have spent the first few weeks as a new mother trembling at the crossroads of fear and love, expectation and reality, resistance and surrender. My baby urges me to stand in his chaos. In my own. To find order in it…" p. 18
Chapter 6 Grandstanding at the Shallow End
"I yearn to talk with another mother. I want to swap stories, not stats. I want someone to stop seeing my child within the hard, unforgivable margins of a category and say something instead about the knowingness in his knit brow, the beauty in his intensity, the brilliance in his fussiness. I want someone to give me a small parcel of hope, some perspective, to remind me of the big picture. I want to tell someone how heavy my heavy my heart feels by midday, between his naps and laundry loads, when the phone isn't ringing, when I am feeling small and forgotten, while he sleeps so deeply in my arms, or as I'm finishing our fourth lap around the block. I really want somebody to ask me how I'm feeling but instead we talk about feeding and birth weight and whose baby is rolling over first and I feel more alone than before..." pp.46-7
"I want to stand on the lifeguard's chair and shout: ISN'T THIS HARD?! ISN'T THIS THE HARDEST DAMNED THING WE'VE EVER DONE! HAVE YOU EVER FELT SO MUCH LOVE AND TERROR IN YOUR LIFE? HOW DID OUR MOTHERS DO IT? HOW ARE WE EVER GOING TO GET THROUGH IT?! Nobody seems to talk about this in truthful terms. Grandstanders compare because they secretly wonder if they're doing it right..." p. 48
Chapter 7 Let the Baby Drive
“As a mother, I ought to have the conviction of my convictions. But I have yet to nail down either the courage or the convictions with relative certainty. This, I’m beginning to see, does not necessarily have to do with my unflagging maternal self-doubt. It’s that I see all the “convenient” babies around me, slumbering peacefully in their strollers, their mothers wearing clean clothes and chewing gum and making plans for the weekend. What’s more, strangers, friends, sometimes even relatives, feel inclined to warn me that I may spoil my baby. I look up “spoil” in the dictionary.
spoil, to take away the pleasure from, to fail to make as good as possible, to damage or ruin, to impair, detract from, to injure (esp. a child or domestic animal) with respect to character during the formative period by overindulgence or too much leniency, to pamper and make much of, to become less good, valuable, enjoyable or useful...
I think about indulgence and love. I wonder why we think there is such a thing as too much loving. I wonder why loving gets mixed up with spoiling in the first place. And why are children and domestic animals in the same sentence?” page 51
Chapter 10 The Pact
"I daydream through the back alleys of my marriage long before we ever conceived of conceiving. We once talked about big picture subjects-philosophy, art, the origin of religions, human psychology, traveling, literature. Now, and apparently unflinchingly, we can discuss our son's bowel movements while dining on a succulent beef stew. We get really excited about a good poopy diaper. I mean, really excited. Things have changed. And it's not just the conversation." p. 74
"Keep the romance alive by setting aside one night of the week for a date," prescribes the relationship expert on a morning talk show I succumb to watching in my bone-tired stupor while my boy naps. A date? I guess I missed the segment where they mention the bit about how a baby's needs and helplessness can dredge up every parent's own unresolved longings. Or the sidebar about how a baby holds a magnifying glass over a marriage, making otherwise invisible fissures and flaws plain as day to the naked eye. It's easier to talk about aromatic bath oils, candles, and lace than it is to publicly discuss the ways in which tiny unspoken disappointments between spouses can fester into gaping wounds with only our most indestructible defenses to cauterize them. And we'll be back in just a moment. Stay with us….Cue the music." p. 79
Does it really matter if he dilutes the baby's juice with two instead of three ounces of water? Does it truly make a difference whether he puts him in the snap-up pajamas or the zippered ones? It's hard to let go. Not just of maternal guilt, but blueprints of family histories, the need for control, and a morbid fear of losing everything. Lines blur. Lives blur. Unwittingly, I have begun to think and feel like a needed person. As if that's my new role and my new identity. It isn't a huge leap from here to the void, the black hole that sucks us in after we've lost our footing, our focus, ourselves. Not to mention our sense of humor. Somewhere between the hospital parking lot and home, we forget how to have fun." pg. 83
Chapter 15 Fear Not (Eventually)
"His fears stir mine. I wonder what his aversions say about him-and about me… Can't I just allow him to be afraid of the slide, the dog, the water without judging it as wrong? Unjustified? Weak? And who would I be to determine that? Me, the one who'd rather swim naked in an icy fjord than get into a cramped elevator." p. 124
"Humor me, Ma. Let me be irrationally fearful of deflating green balloons and lit candles and car alarms going off in distant parking lots. I'll get over it. And I'm telling you, I will have no recollection of Hoover terror or my allergy to strollers, cars, crowds, baths, restaurants and stethoscopes-only the way you made me feel about myself." p. 128
Chapter 19 Sandbox Politics
"Letting my two year-old struggle to define sharing has force to redefine it. I realize how difficult sharing is for small people because I see how difficult it is for adults. If an adult buys a new car, the last thing he would want to do is share it with anyone who wanted to drive it. He doesn't want to hand over the keys any more than a child wants to hand over the toy dump truck." p. 159
"We don't like our children to be possessive yet we reinforce possessions, regularly reminding them of what's yours, his or hers. We want our children to share their toys and when they grow up, we tell them to hold onto their stuff. We want our toddlers to be nice, but when they're grown we tell them that nice people get walked on. We think nice children are lovable and nice adults are doormats." p. 159
Chapter 25 Keeping the Light On
"This is the real world, I remind myself, the one where a mother can hand-pick play-dates but not teachers. Then a voice inside my head cross-examines the defense. Who is your boy's advocate? Who will speak for him now when he's too young to take the stand?" p. 227
"He will have to learn how to sit in the circle, yes. And he will also learn that all living things die, that when you grow up you live in a different house than your parents, that millions of children are hungry, that not all parents love their kids. He will eventually have to conform to the "system," but in that crucial first year, when a three year-old's effervescence bounds into the classroom before the rest of his body, a bad match between teacher and child can lay a faulty foundation for years to come." p. 235
"We ask Doctor G. about children and the expectations of teachers, about the dangers of labels, and the potential effects of shame in a little person who is prone to putting his shirt on backward.
At the door, he shakes my husband’s hand, then mine, and says something that seems to echo within the four walls of his tiny wood-paneled office.
“You have a long haul ahead of you,” he says, nodding at both of us. “The world will try again and again to turn out your son’s light. It will be your responsibility to keep his light on, and to teach him how to do the same."
"I am just beginning to understand that in order to truly trust in our children and ourselves, we have to keep our own light on. This isn’t simply about having the courage to stand up for what we believe in, but having the courage to doubt, to change and be changed.” pp. 229, 254
