On Becoming A Woman or Why JC Penny Makes Me Shudder a Bit

So my daughter asked me the other night when she would become a woman.  Given her previous disgust at being a girl, I was actually excited by this question, thinking that we may have turned a corner. 

Then came the flashback--Summer of 1977, JC Penny dressing room, Medford, OR.  I explain to my mother that 'something happened'...she gets all flustered, runs out (leaving me in the dressing room I might add with no explanation for 20 minutes) to a store to buy "something", comes back, we do 'something' and we all leave.  It's over.  Thank God.  Then we get into the street and my Dad gives me a hug and says, "I'm so proud of you, you are a woman now".

At the time I was just to embarrased to say anything--much less think this whole thing through.  As the years went by my thoughts were mainly centered around "JC Penny?"  I mean seriously,  JC Penny?  We had to have the whole giant pad discussion in a JC Penny?  Not to mention the fact that I learned that I couldn't use tampons until after I was married...for "obvious reasons".  Actually, at the time they weren't that obvious to me I am embarrased to say. I can laugh now, in a crazy high-pitched way, but at the time...

Now, faced with this question from my daughter (who had just turned seven) I realized on some level I had been thinking it through over the years and the fact was I didn't want  to give that answer--because I think that answer is complete and utter shite actually. Pure bunk  I wasn't a woman just because my body had begun to complete certain biological changes.  I also didn't become a woman when I had sex for the first time (sorry Regency Romances).  Or had my first orgasm.  Or fell in love.  Or had my heart broken.  Or broke someone's heart. Or really fell in love. Or really, really fell in love. Or got married.  Or had a child.  Or another child. Or sent someone I love away.  Or when I welcomed him home. Or in the million other moments in between these. 

I don't understand the"tah dah-I am now a woman" moment. I do understand one of my favorite characters, Margaret Simon in Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (on the Banned Book list, btw) wanting to feel more womanly by getting her period. I get that idea, a moment/experience/event that is of feeling something more in terms of what you already are.  I'd be interested in hearing from other women on this though, but for me, I don't believe in the  "exact moment" theory of womanhood. 

But of course it did happen somewhere in the midst of or in the culmination of time between 1977 JC Penny and This Minute.  Somewhere in there or along the way, woman became more than a modifier...just like mother, wife, daughter or employee.  And like each of those titles, I know there were moments where I felt more of or less of a woman. I also know there were/are/will be moments when I feel I am the woman I was meant to be--however I define it.  And that's the thing I want to teach my daughter--that's it not about when you become a woman, but what type of woman you become.  And, for once I'm not turning to books (only because I did once and I found the group of books telling me  how to be the woman he wants, the woman God wants, a woman with a voice, a boss, not a bitch, happy, Mrs Potato Head, Barbie, sexy, fabulous, rich, thin, good, bad to be a tad overwhelming and angst-creating to say the least). 

So, instead of telling my daughter when, I asked her what kind of woman she wanted to be.  She said she wanted to be the kind with boobs--and a motorcycle.  "Awesome", I said.    

My Brain has a Brain of its Own OR Viggo, Jon and Chocolate

Last night around 10:30 I informed my daughter for the umpteenth time that it was time for her to sleep. She said her brain wasn't tired. I told her to tell her brain to go to sleep—that she was the boss. She came back with, 'Mom, you know I can't do that, my brain has a brain of its own."

It's hard to argue when she thinks she is making perfect sense and according to neuroscientists at UCLA, she's kinda-sorta right. According to a recent WSJ article, these neuroscientists found that we have specific neurons in our brains that are each dedicated exclusively to one specific idea, person or thing. The examples they gave (they are from L.A. ya know), were people with neurons dedicated to people such as Halle Berry, Oprah Winfrey, Madonna and even Homer Simpson. (Doh!)

My daughter obviously has a nerve cell exclusively dedicated to NOT sleeping. It makes sense, she is never tired, doesn't nap, is extremely active and only needs about 7 hours of sleep per night as opposed to the 11 that the experts says she needs at this age.

'Mom, since you are up now, let's have a conversation." So I told her about these doctors and how they found these things in our brains that only 'thought' about one thing. And I asked her what were the things her brain were focused on. Here is her list of thing-specific neurons:

Chocolate, eating lunch, Daisy (our dog), playdates (or lack thereof), Esme/Jada/Emma, Grandpa John, Turkeys, Questions, Not Sleeping, Chocolate (yes, she has two things that think about Chocolate), swimming and finally, Commander Gree (who is a Star Wars persona that she 'is' a couple times a day…fun).

Given that the article stated that the researchers believe that the neurons were responding "to the distillation of an experience" -- and not pictures, per se – this list makes perfect sense for my daughter. This list is the distillation of her experience at this exact point in her life. It is inevitable that this list will shift and change as she grows and as her experience in total grows—but there are certain neurons that will stay only about certain things—in her case, probably chocolate and turkeys…which is a whole other thing.

Anyway, she then asked me what my brain thingies thought about. I found my list mostly not-surprising…here it is:

Daughter/Son/Husband, Chocolate, family, travel, work, friends, weight, books, creativity, Husband, cheese, 'what ifs' and then to be honest, Viggo Mortensen and Jon Stewart.

Besides the fact that she thought that it was gross that I thought they were "cute", I'm totally going with my daughters reasoning here—my brain has a brain of its own. And, there are days when my brain spends what is probably an inordinate amount of time on one or the other, or both of these men.

The thing is, if these neurons are about the 'distillation of an experience", then Viggo and Jon make complete sense in that they are simply the "face" to a distilled experience in total for me….in this case, the experiences of my husband that rev my engine the most, so to speak…the combination of the brooding artist and the politically-focused funnyman. Viggo, for me anyway, brings the brooding artist to life—the craggy face, heavy lidded eyes, the perception of being a 'loner', painting, poetry, music, a great ass (essential!). Jon Stewart—the smart satire, ability to laugh at self, the laugh itself.

That I've personified these experiences with people who are attractive to me is not out of the ordinary—Lloyd Saxton speaks to the personified ideal in his book, The Individual, Marriage, and the Family. And, you could say that our whole obsession with celebrity culture is about finding and associating with the ideal as defined by your specific needs.

So, back to the list—it's obvious, from a scientific point of view, that having Viggo and Jon on my list is just like my daughter having Daisy and Commander Gree on her list. Completely innocent with no reason to worry.

Until, of course, I have a neuron that is all about the one idea of "What if Viggo, Jon and Husband were covered in chocolate?"

Writing with My Son, Or Not.

It is a rainy Sunday and Son and I are writing together while Dad and Daughter are out getting invitiations for her coming birthday party.  Son needs to write in his journal more for school, something he doesn't like to do oddly enough, and so I told him we'd write together. 

After discussions on various topics he decided on writing a poem about weather.  Me?  I decided on writing about how we both hate it when the person on the screen doesn't look anything like how the book described him or her.  So while he went upstairs to get his almanac to help him with weather words, I started writing and now I fear I'm on to a different topic.  Why?  Because he came down and showed me the Kids Almanac and how on page 73 there is a list of books that are in trouble of not being read these days and the reaons why.  He was using it to make the case that the reason he didn't want to read The Diary of Anne Frank is the same reason it is one of the most "attacked" books in recent years:  Too Depressing.

Well, yeah.  That's kinda the point--in an uplifing, let's never let this happen again sorta way.

It also says that Blubber, by Judy Blume is attacked because "the characters curse and the leader of the taunting is never punished for her cruelty."

Again...well, yeah.  Because that's real life.  Sometimes the mean people never get what's coming to them--or what you think should be coming to them.

Oh, I love this one. The reason that is given by people for why Shel Silversteins' A Light in the Attic is bad is that it has "suggestive illustrations that might encourage kids to break dishes so they don't have to dry them."

Really?  I mean, seriously, Really?  I read every Nancy Drew there is at least five times each growing up and I'm pretty sure my parents were never worried I was going to pair up with two of my friends and start solving crimes around town so I could become popular and date Mr. Wonderful.  Although it is possible looking back that they wished I had instead of well, the other stuff.   

The bottom line is that I will never understand thinking like this and I'm not sure I know how to explain it to others, i.e., my kids, except for the old fall back, 'they are idiots'.  Logically I could probably spin a paragraph or two, but I'd look at it like I look at some of the writing I do and just want to slap myself silly because it would be crap.

So, I do what I do, trying to find a way to make sense of this for myself and so I could help my kids make sense of it.  I was amazed to find that I had just missed "Banned Books Week" (9/26-10/3/09)!  Go figure.  I also learned that book banning is quite the little industry--no matter what side you come down on. Did you know that you can even shop Amazon.com by 'banned books'...yes, they have lists--which are both cool to look at, and scary as hell.

The whole thing kinda turned my stomach and so I stopped trying to make sense of it from a bigger picture point of view.  I'm just going to do what I normally do (whether it's National Geographic or a book or a television show), reach/watch with them and then talk about it with them.  Novel idea that doesn't cost me a thing.

My daughter is reading "If you Give A Mouse a Cookie", which we should finish fast before it gets banned for having words and pictures that could encourage children to be nice to rodents by giving them what they ASK for.

And, the weather poem turned into a battle of the wills, which I'm pretty sure we lost.  So much for the entire plan.

So, in order to feel like I might have accomplished something, here is a list of the 10 most banned books according to the ALA.  The wierd thing is, when I first saw it, I thought it was a list of the 10 books your child should absolutely have to read.  Again, go figure.  Happy reading everyone!


1.  1984 by George Orwell
2.  Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
3.  Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
4.  Harry Potter Series, J.K. Rowling
5.  To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
6.  Ulysses, James Joyce
7.  The Chocolate War, Robert Cormier
8.  Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
9.  Forever, Judy Blume
10.  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
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Bras! and Jocks! and Cups!, oy vey

My daughter is fascinated by my bras.  Me, not so much.  I could go as far as to say that I despise them.  From the training bras from JC Penny's to the lace demi of today, I've never found one that doesn't show under a t-shirt, fits perfectly or doesn't make me want to rip it off in the middle of an airplane after a day long up and back trip for work. 

So it was with little to no sympathy that I faced my son who was experiencing his first jock strap and cup for his stint as catcher on his Little League team.  First it was too big, then too small, then it made him itch and sweat.  Ten minutes later he was still going on about walking funny and sounding funny.  After telling him he wouldn't have to worry about sounding funny if he'd stop "knocking" on his cup, I tried to tell him that he'd get used to it, that he'd be experiencing a lot of new things in the coming years...blah, blah, blah.  I mean it sounded trite to me and by the look on his face, it sounded more nonsensical than the parents in the Charlie Brown specials to him.

And then I found myself saying, jeez, it's a just cup for goodness sake--wear it!  And then something to the effect of , "And look, the pain of not wearing it is far more than the pain of wearing it."

Not my worst moment as a mother, but not my best. The reality is that sometimes it's hard being a mom to a boy.  I founder when trying to talk to him about 'boy things'...I fear I'm too soft, then I overcompensate by being too hard.  It's a bit of whiplash for the both of us, rarely satisfying.

Luckily at these times I have my fall backs, two books that help me regain my equilibrium as a mother of a boy.  The first, Raising Cain by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson, has both depth and clarity on the issue of 'indoctrination' into the male culture, something I know/knew nothing about.  The second, Boys Should Be Boys by Meg Meeker is a common-sense look at how all the 'snails and puppy dog tail-ness' of boys is fine and how to encourage it with purpose in mind.  I've never been big on the self-help book train, but these are a life saver not only because they teach me new things, but they also remind me that I'm not marring him for life when I hover or share or whatever a bit too much or too little.

So, after practice and dinner, when he thrust his cup into the air and shouted, "let the glow of the cup light our way home", I was happy to yell back, "And the bra shall guide our way".   I think at that moment both of us hated our respective garments a little less than before.  And I'll take that as a check in the win column.

Smell and Memory/Joy and Trouble

Last night our son was telling us about this book he is reading Alvin Ho:  Allergic to Girls, School and Other Scary Things, by Lenore Look.  Alvin, our son explained, is trying to figure out how to do a lot of new things without being scared--and without talking.  He is, as he tells us in the book, as 'silent as a side of beef'. (great line!) Somewhere along the way we get to the part where Alvin takes his dad's ultra favorite childhood toy--a Johnny Astro figure--to school and things go horribly, horribly wrong.   At this point our son asked if I remember getting into trouble when I was little.  I swear, as soon as he asked, both he and his sister sat up straighter in their chairs, their eyes bright with hope, their little ears wanting all of the gory, painful details.  (Face it, your children love hearing stories about you getting into trouble--morbid curiosity at it's most innnocent.)

So laughter ensued when I told the story of when I was around 5 and I was playing Superman with a towel for a cape. I told how I ran into my parents room and up onto their huge bed--jumping and swooping, generally being the best Superman ever.  I remember feeling perfectly joyful, light and bright and the next moment knowing that I was in so much trouble that nausea roiled and knees knocked.  I had, in the midst of a perfect twirl of my cape, swept all of the beautiful bottles of perfume off of my mother's dresser. 

I know I got into trouble, who wouldn't?  But I don't remember the details of my punishment...my memories are of everything that came before. 

The sound of glass breaking and the smell of the different perfumes blending together in a closed room are perfectly preserved in my memory. I can't smell White Shoulders to this day without being transported back to that room.  To me White Shoulders is the color of the bedspread, the carpet, the drapes.  It is the feel of the room, of being in that room alone, the indescribable perfection of jumping on a big, bouncy bed and watching myself float and fly in the mirror, my towel/cape fluttering behind me like the tail of a kite.  It brings to mind a child feeling safe, surrounded by the sights and smells of her parents and yet also feeling the fear of a curious adventurer, being someplace you knew you weren't supposed to be, but being there, and wanting to be there, anyway.

Of course, I had lost the interest of my children by then.  They had no desire to hear about smell and memory, they just wanted to know what Grandma had done to me.  So, we went on talk about Daddy's exploits, Uncle Johnny's exploits, more of mine...needless to say, they were amused and satisfied by the end of dinner.

But I was stuck on the issue of smell and memory, and how smell is such a big part of my most vivid memories, both bad and good.  The heavy, sharp smell of pine trees and cut hay on hot, still summer days remind me of Nancy Drew, Pippi Longstocking and Anne of Green Gables.  The smoke from a wood fire of puzzles and Monopoly.  Wet rabbit fur (don't ask...so embarrasing) of my first date with someone who would turn out to by my first boyfriend.  I walked into a neighbor's garage the other day and was struck hard by the smell of my grandparents garage in Princeton, Illinois circa 1974-75....the place where they kept the olives....joy, joy and double-joy.

Diesel makes me think of a broken generator, the smell of feathers a chicken coop, rock salt reminds of haying time and my skin prickles.  We all have these experiences where one simple, or complex, aroma can bring to life a moment in time, a memory to cherish or shudder away.  Avery Gilbert in his book, What the Nose Knows, does a really wonderful job bringing this whole phenomenon to life in a fun way--the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) didn't call him the "Mark Twain of nasal passages for nothing". It is science as story, much like Guns, Germs and Steel and my all-time favorite, Cod:  Fish that Changed the World. (I also just like saying the title, it's fun.)

Two other artists/authors come to mind when I think of the smell/memory combination.  One is Memories that Smell like Gasoline by David Wojnarowicz. His book of autobiographical drawings and writings about the AIDS epidemic is stunning and difficult.  I read it one day in a coffee shop so oddly enough I associate it with the innocent cinnamon of coffe cake--the one I left untouched as I was so not in the mood for it after this book.

The second one is really a book about design, but also about aroma  and a person's experience of a city, Kyoto, and they combine beautifully in KyotEau:  Bottled Memories by Della Chuang.  There is a small sample of the actual perfume Kyoto KyotEau in the back, which makes the story complete for the reader.

For me, the smell of KyotEau will always remind me of sitting in my office reading something so wonderful, daydreaming about being someone else, overlaid by the angst of getting 'caught' because I should have doing something else. 

Smell and memory, joy and trouble...I'm right back where I started.  Lovely.