A long time ago (let’s call it 1984 for sake of argument, because that’s when it was), when high school students received college acceptances or rejections in the mail (you know, with envelopes and stuff) exclusively, I got an acceptance to the school I really, really wanted to attend. When I’d first applied, I hadn’t been all that convinced, but by the time the envelope was in my hands, I was sure. I opened it and was ecstatic. Then I read the part about the financial aid package, which was a big fat zero, and my elation deflated.

It made no sense — my parents had crunched the numbers, and it seemed clear that without some aid, they’d have to mortgage the house, or sell my brother (an idea I semi-floated), to afford it. How could this be?  This was where I felt I was supposed to go, where I’d already imagined myself. It wasn’t just the course offerings; the faculty-student ratio; the quirky history; the long tradition of liberal arts education; the prestige. It was the day the previous fall that I’d been on campus, walking on a path near one of the older academic buildings, with its stone archway, through which streams of the most interesting-looking and fascinating students were walking, that had  grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go. I remember feeling, right at that moment, that I needed to join that stream of students, leave my high-school self behind and find out who I was on that path, under those falling leaves, amid those old, old buildings.

This is the spot, Vassar's Blodgett Hall

In the midst of the crushing realization that I wouldn’t be able to go after all, my father put his hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eyes — he looked sad, too — and said, “I don’t think we can do it, honey. I’m so, so sorry.”

My story has a happy ending; it turns out that my father had made an error when filling out (with pencil! On paper!) the financial aid forms; a self-employed businessman, the way he’d interpreted the forms meant he gave the erroneous impression that he had a salaried job and his business, effectively doubling his on-paper income. Once that was discovered and straightened out, a generous aid package came my way and I sent in (by mail! with a stamp!) my deposit to become a member of Vassar College’s class of 1988.

Now my alma mater is all over the news for a grievous error that was made in the recent batch of early-decision acceptances. What happened was not that they rejected hopeful students who should have been admitted; instead, a placeholder letter of acceptance for  applicants was posted on a site they could access, and left there for just long enough to give a number of students the false news that they’d been accepted to their first-choice school. When they checked back (after making phone calls, popping champagne, and, I’m sure, as I had, imagining themselves in their chosen school), they found out the truth, that they were rejected.

It’s important to note, in case you missed the story: It’s not that Vassar revoked any acceptances. The disappointed students were rejected on their merits. The error was in giving them the false impression that they had been accepted, the cyber equivalent of slipping the wrong letter into the envelope. (It should also be noted that Vassar has a financial-needs-blind admissions policy.)

Those students likely had the same crushing feeling that I did when I thought what was mine had been snatched away. Thing is, it never was theirs. I’m not in any way dismissing the seriousness of the mistake. Catharine Hill, Vassar’s president, issued an apology; families were called by admissions staff for more personal mea culpas; application fees were refunded. All of which feels fair from the outside, though it does nothing to take the pain, shame and rage away. However, once a mistake is made, even a really, really horrible one, what else can be done besides sincere apologies, a promise to fix glitchy systems, a public accounting of the mistakes? From the inside, of course, it can feel as though more should be done.

Some of the students and their families, it seems, do want more to be done — specifically, that they should be admitted anyway. If it was theirs once — albeit very briefly, and even if in fact it wasn’t really theirs — it should be theirs again,or it’s equivalent (I’ve seen comments — not from these students, to be clear — on blog posts that suggest the students get their first year at their second-choice college paid for by Vassar). That’s like, as a classmate of mine wrote in a comment on one of the many an opinion pieces about the debacle, the rare times a bank screws up and deposits $10,000 in your account, when you only slid a $1,000 check into the ATM. Even if that little receipt in your hand says you’ve got five figures, you don’t, and it’s no sense arguing with the bank that they “owe” you $9K for their mistake.

I do not dismiss those prospective students’ pain, or their parents’ justified anger over the treatment their kids received. I’d feel it too. I’d be furious, I’d feel like marching into Ms. Hill’s office and demanding she fix it, somehow, in some way that would remove my child’s pain and make it all okay again. But I wouldn’t do it.

I wouldn’t turn my anger and pain on behalf of my child outward and try to retroactively fix a problem in an attempt to make it go away. I contend, in fact, that there’s not a lot of difference between that impulse (“I’ll make that school take my kid! They have to! He deserves it!”) and the parents of much younger kids who argue their children into a better grade on the first-grade spelling test (“His ‘n’ looks like an ‘h’! That’s what he meant! He deserves the perfect grade!”).

The fact is, if you write n’s that look like h’s, you’re going to miss that point on the test, and it’s your mistake to own. Vassar owned its mistake, however clumsily (and you can, and folks have, argued how they could have handled it better, or differently). And now the kids have to bear up under the weight of being briefly granted what they wanted, and then being disappointed to find out that they didn’t make the grade after all.

It is a bitter disappointment to discover that someone else’s mistake can have such an impact on your life. But it’s going to be a long life, and it’s going to be filled with disappointments big and small. It’s going to be filled with problems their parents can’t fix the way they used to mollify a poor showing at the spelling bee with an ice cream sundae, the way everyone got a trophy just for showing up. All the parental impulse to fix, smooth out, or argue away does is to give kids the damaging notion that they deserve what they haven’t earned.

The best thing those kids’ parents can do is to take their kids’ shoulders in their hands, look them in the eye, and say, “I’m so, so sorry honey.”

James, at daycare "graduation," circa 2008

I was just talking over the weekend to an acquaintance, a childhood friend of one of my cousin’s, who’s started her own in-home childcare business. After years as a pediatric nurse, she shifted gears, and good for her! As we talked, I fell into a host of sweet memories of Kozy Korner and Harbor Kids, the (related) daycares my sons attended.

I’ve written about childcare before here (in fact I just re-read that old post and realized I used a photo from the same day as the pic at left!). Most recently I wrote a blog post for DailyWorth.com, this time on the specific subject of of childcare for work-at-home moms, and the value of it as an investment in one’s business. Now, I know plenty of moms who managed at-home work with babies in arms or toddlers underfoot. I get it, and I’ve done it that way, too, on temporary bases here and there. It never suited me.

For me, as for nearly all the freelance/work-at-home/sole proprietors I know, work and life blend and swirl and overlap, and while I can tolerate a large amount of that (I can juggle work so I can get to the holiday concert at school, say; or I can take a break between assignments to defrost some chicken breasts and fold some laundry) it can’t be my main M.O. I needs me some boundaries.

So for this Daily Worth piece, my editor came up with the brilliant idea of having me sit down and calculate how much I’d actually spent on childcare over the years. It’s one thing to write that I feel the cash was worth it (and it was!), it’s another to actually look at the number. (And when you read that number bear in mind: for most of the time I had the boys in childcare, it wasn’t five days a week, apart from the last year James was in preschool — but it also doesn’t take into account the ongoing childcare expense of summer camp).

Here you go — and tell me what you think!

 

In the seven years that my sons were in childcare—a period that began when my oldest was three months old and ended when my youngest hit kindergarten—I shelled out upwards of $80,000.It was worth every penny.

Handing over that last check, I felt as if there should be champagne, or at least balloons falling from the ceiling. Because child care will remain one of the best investments I ever made.

Moms who work from home and use child care often get judged: Can’t she work around the baby’s schedule? Isn’t she throwing her money away? Is it a teeny bit selfish?!

For me, child care was never an indulgence but an investment in my business, no different from a decent computer and reliable broadband.

And it also made me a more relaxed mother. For his first five months, my youngest son was home with me as I launched my freelance career. I had to work—that wasn’t an option. But did I have to work with my baby in a swing, ticking like a metronome behind me?

That $80,000 sounds steep, but I wonder: How much less money might I have earned if I hadn’t invested it? It’s worth pondering…over a glass of champagne.

 

I thought Black Friday (a day during which I resolutely remain home with wallet firmly shut; crowds scare me and the dangling of so-called bargains in front of my face does the opposite of enticing me) might be an opportune time to share this little piece I wrote for DailyWorth.com, an excellent website about finances for women:

When I answered my seven-year-old’s Christmas request for an iPod Touch recently with a “no” (and a side of “are you kidding me?”), he shot back: “But you don’t even have to pay for it! It’ll be from Santa.”

I was temporarily stumped, but I reminded him that not only is Santa on a budget just like we are, he also knows (being magic) what certain parents’ rules are.

But my son brings up a vexing point for frugal-minded parents: You want to make your kids happy this time of year—but playing Santa in a grand style can kill your budget.

Is it possible to recast Santa as a cost-conscious gift-giver? Or should the holidays be conveyed to kids as a money-free zone, with no acknowledgement of bills coming in January—or of family values in general?

All the holiday hoopla, plus the intensity of kids’ desires, makes Santa a tough suit to fill. I’ve seen moms run around like maniacs, trying to get the exact X-box or iProduct or whatever.

The pressure blunts your ability to parse the difference between real wants and temporary ones. Kids’ll ask for anything shiny and new; that’s their job. It’s ours to see the difference between what they truly want, and what they perhaps want to want.

Also, when we shower our kids with presents, we may confuse them, particularly if they see us fretting over bills or clipping coupons the rest of the year.

You don’t have to turn into a Grinch, but I’ve stopped worrying that a dose of reality will kill the buzz of Christmas fantasy. My kids aren’t getting an iPod, but they are getting affordable items they’ve shown they truly want. That’s a Santa strategy I can get behind.

Tell me what you think — here, of course, but also use this link to chime into the conversation on the Daily Worth site.

Ironic, ain’t it, that the very thing that spurred me to think about writing a book — this blog — has been languishing with fewer updates lately thanks to… the book. But the home stretch is stretching out. The book has been written, and edited, and re-edited, and designed, and has a publication date — April 1, 2012! — and a cover:

I've got the power! (Or anyway, my doppleganger on the cover does -- dig the remote!)

I’d love to know what you think. Spread the word, and look here for more regular posts as well as more updates and sneak peaks at what’s inside.

Did I mention it’s available for pre-order on Amazon?

A couple of weeks ago, I took my boys to a local park in our town — it’s a big park, with a handsome art museum on the grounds, a couple of nice playgrounds, tennis courts, duck ponds (populated by geese mostly — which means much of our time spent there is punctuated by me shouting: “Watch out for the goose poop!”) and so on. They’d taken their scooters and I was ambling along while they scooted on the paths, until we reached the museum, in front of which is a memorial to those from our town who died on 9/11. It’s a pretty fair number — we’re only a hour from New York City, so the list is populated with firefighters and police, as well as folks who had worked in the World Trade Center. The memorial consists of a series of metal sculptures — rusty-looking geometric forms, about as tall as a grown man — set in two lines that create a path. At the end of the path is a small rock garden, with two narrow Lucite towers meant to represent the actual towers, and between them a waterfall. It’s pretty, peaceful and not at all morbid:

The 9/11 Memorial plaque

The path of metal sculptures

The rock garden, fountain, and Lucite towers

The boys scooted over and while James was more interested in finding out if he could walk on the rocks (no), Daniel got stuck at the sign explaining the memorial and listing the names (he likes lists, of pretty much anything). He asked me who the people were, so I told him. I said that on September 11, nearly 10 years ago, before he was born, some bad people flew planes and crashed them into these two very tall office towers in New York City.

In an almost-nine-year-old’s ears, a few details resonated, and prompted a few further questions:

How tall were those buildings? Had you ever been there?

Did the guys on the planes die, too?

How many people died? Did you know any of them?

All, it struck me, relatively easy to answer. He didn’t ask — at least not until about a week later — the hard question: why? On that score, I relied on the advice usually given when young kids ask about procreation: Only answer, as simply and clearly and honestly as you can, exactly what you perceive they’re asking, and no more. So I said that there are some people in the world whose ideas about how the world should work and look make them hate our country, and want to hurt us and others like us. I mentioned that these people are rare in the world, and that Americans are not their only targets (I mentioned bombings in places like London, and Madrid, and the embassies in Africa).

And of course I told him that he had nothing to worry about. Which is, of course, a lie.

My eldest is not a 9/11 baby, as children born right before and after the attacks are called. He was in the planning stages, actually, when the planes hit. I am not 100 percent sure of this, but I think the oddest, most random details of that day that live in my memory do so because I was, at the same I was mourning it all, trying to make him. That very day, in fact, was the first one I’d said, out loud to anyone other than my husband, that I was going to try to have a baby.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I got up as usual in my (well, our — I’d been married just shy of one year) apartment, and got ready for my day. It was to be a slightly unusual day, as I wasn’t heading directly to my office, where I was executive editor of Bridal Guide magazine, but was instead going to Bryant Park, to a runway fashion show in the tents there. It was Fashion Week in Manhattan, a yearly Very Big Deal if you’re in the fashion industry, or tangentially attached to the fashion industry, as many magazines are. Even though the show I’d be going to wasn’t in any way related to bridal fashion, our fashion editor had gotten tickets, and because she couldn’t attend herself, she offered them to me, to our art director, and to her assistant. I was going to meet my two other colleagues inside the tents for a 9:00 a.m. show. It was Liz Lange, the maternity fashionista, and it was her first-ever Fashion Week show.

Funnily enough, she was debuting a new line, in partnership with Nike, of maternity exercise wear. I say funnily enough, because it was exactly one week before this show that I’d taken my last birth control pill. It was also going to be the day I shared this otherwise private information with my friend Robin, who was our magazine’s art directior, the mother of one, and the one person I knew who was most interested in when I’d join her ranks and just get pregnant already. I told her while we sat in our seats waiting for the show to start.

Other odd details that run as clear as a DVD in my head:

Earlier, on the train into the city, I saw the smoke downtown. I traveled in from Queens, just across the East River from Manhattan, and I took the Flushing #7, not my usual line, to get to Bryant Park. The 7, before it ducks under the river, curves around and gives riders lucky enough to be looking a gorgeous midtown-to-downtown skyline view. And I saw the smoke and wondered, but only briefly, what that was about. Then we rumbled underground.

On line at the Bryant Park tents, a woman standing behind me took a cellphone call (imagine; cells were not ubiquitous yet, and there were no Smartphones. People actually walked around with their heads up, not down!). She hung up and said to her companion, “My friend said there was some kind of explosion at the World Trade Center.” I wondered, but again, only briefly. Then the doors opened and we filed in.

After the show — already nearly 10 a.m.! — my colleagues and I went down into the subway station to catch an E train up, two stops, to our office. A bike messenger approached me: “Have you been waiting long for a train? I heard there were some problems because of the explosion downtown.” Hmmm. “No,” I told him, “we just got down here so I don’t know if it’s been a while.” I wondered briefly. Then the train, miraculously, arrived –and took us up to 53rd St. without incident.

Then you know how the whole world shifts and you can feel it before you know it? We emerged from the station, where there was often a guy selling knockoff handbags on a folding table. He had a radio, and a bunch of people were gathered around it. I didn’t hear anything, but I knew, and suddenly, that the world I stepped into at the tents at Bryant Park had changed into something else entirely. Then a bystander gave my stunned colleagues and me the shorthand: a plane hit one tower. A second plane hit the other one. One fell down. The other fell down. I looked south down Madison Avenue and I saw it: the smoke. I ran to my office, not even thinking yet, “where is my husband? How will we get home?”, and when I saw him, my husband, in my office, looking for me, it all hit.

Much later that night, after we’d walked back home over the 59th St bridge and through Long Island City to our apartment in Astoria, after we turned on the TV and sat like zombies watching over and over and over the improbable images that still don’t feel real, after I’d finally managed to talk to my parents and find out that my brother, who lived in Washington, D.C., was safe, my cousin called me. She had just given birth, exactly a month earlier, to her second daughter, Ava. Her voice was cracked and hoarse, as she’d been on the phone for hours after we got phone service back, trying to reassure herself that everyone was accounted for.

“It’s the baby’s one-month birthday,” I said.

“Why am I bringing life into a world like this?” she said, hoarsely and dramatically.

And here I was, trying to do the same thing.

But it still felt like the right thing to do.

And now I realize, 10 years on, that I’ve been waiting all this time to explain to the child I eventually conceived that the world before is different than the world after, but that he’s no less precious, and may in fact be moreso.  I’m glad I explained the memorial to him in the park that day earlier this summer. I want him to ask more questions, to read and re-read the names and look at the waterfall, and think.

People are starting to talk, now, about media overload in this tenth-anniversary year. Can’t we move on? I’d argue that my sons are, just by their very nature as children born after 9/11, two living, breathing symbols of my having moved on (and that cousin with the one month old second child? She went on to have two more in the years since). But I don’t want to move on, not just because I don’t want to forget (which I can’t) or that I believe none of us should forget, ever (which we will and we won’t), but because we have to keep talking about it, because there will always be new kids to show the memorials to, and because there will always be stories we’ve not yet heard, or considered.

What’s your story?

Since the Casey Anthony “not guilty” verdict came in from Central Florida yesterday afternoon, my Facebook wall and Twitter feed have been clogged with “no way!” and “disgraceful!” and “No justice for Caylee!”, to the point where I want to go back in time to an era when social media didn’t dominate.

I also avoided news about the Anthony case. For a bunch of reasons: I don’t watch cable TV news ever (the only time I see snippets of CNN, FOX News, or MSNBC, it’s because Jon Stewart’s called them out on The Daily Show. I also don’t watch network TV news, because the anchors smile too maniacally (and has anyone noticed how the local female anchors all seem to dress as though they’re going clubbing after the broadcast?), and the sets make my brain hurt. I listen to NPR pretty much all day, and on that news outlet, you get national and international news and analysis — which does not include tawdry family stories that collide with “news” coverage. (Though of course the verdict was news yesterday no matter where you consumed your news.)

So I didn’t know anything, in all honesty, about Casey or Caylee Anthony, apart from what was impossible for me not to consume, such as what was given play on the homepage of Yahoo, or on Facebook, or via headlines I’d see in the supermarket. I don’t live under a rock, after all. But that was only enough to provide me with a very broad-strokes outline of the case: a missing, then dead toddler; an accused mother; murky details; a sensational trial.

Why do I bring this up on a blog about raising children?

Because when I did find out more details, when I read a few news analysis stories and absorbed a bunch of Facebook posts from friends, I discovered details that bothered me, and that so far I’ve not seen discussed much.

Casey Anthony is, currently, 25 years old. The little girl died three years ago, so when her mother was 22, and she was two years old. Anthony certainly seems … let’s call her immature. Far, far too immature to have been a mother at all at that age (or maybe at any age, but I’ll leave that discussion to another time). I’m not even remotely dissing young motherhood; my own mother had her first child at 20, same as Casey Anthony, with the difference being that she immediately changed her attitude and tune to fit with her new circumstances. Plenty of young mothers survive, even thrive, and their kids are none the worse for having been born to them. And also, on the flip side, plenty of older mothers are not exactly role models for ideal parenthood.

But I think it can safely be said that accidental youthful/teen pregnancies don’t automatically make for ideal circumstances to have and attempt to raise a child.

I wasn’t going to write this post at all, or even make any comment publicly about Casey Anthony, until I saw a promo (on Facebook? Or Yahoo? I forget) for the MTV “reality” show Teen Mom. Which you may not be surprised to learn that I’ve never watched. Ditto “16 and Pregnant.” Or anything to do with Bristol Palin. And suddenly the connection between the two leapt out at me, and I had to say something.

I know (or maybe it’s just that I hope) that these shows don’t overtly glorify teen pregnancy, but in a way, in a twisted, 24/7 cable/reality TV sort of way, they do. Our society generally both frowns upon sexually active teens and young people who, it would appear to the finger-waggers, wantonly disregard propriety and make babies they probably shouldn’t make; and then turns them into stars of sorts. And on another note, our society as a whole talks a very good game about family values, but then abandons (again, as a whole, not in individual cases) girls and young women who do bring babies into the world.

It can sometimes seem as though, collectively, we are watching in anticipation not of these clueless young mothers doing well with their unbelievable responsibility, but in anticipation of them screwing up, whether that takes the form of bad behavior on an MTV show, or of murder.

I have no earthly idea if Casey Anthony is guilty of murder. She does appear to be guilty of being a bad mother, though. But what did anyone expect? She does appear to be guilty of making awful, awful choices. No facts, if they are facts, add up. Who doesn’t report a beloved child missing for weeks on end? Who, if their child dies in a tragic accident, would seek to cover it up?

But what’s the real question everyone’s asking: Who has a baby and then doesn’t turn into a wonderful, caring mother?

Those are the people we excoriate and condemn. And all the time, as we’re watching the coverage and reading the stories and tsk-tsking, we forget to ask: Who didn’t tell Casey about birth control? Or the value of a good education? Or nurtured in her the kind of self-esteem that would have led her to make smarter choices? Or told her that being a mom isn’t all about cute babies? Who helped her?

I’m not saying you or I should have, but I am saying that sitting here, now, and raining blame isn’t helpful. And it for sure doesn’t provide “justice” for little Caylee, or any of her fellow unwanted sisters and brothers, the ones who don’t get 24/7 TV coverage.

Is there anyone telling today’s potential Casey Anthonys that those girls on “Teen Mom”? They are not cool. You will not get a TV reality show and have your picture in US Weekly if you have a baby in high school. Who’s helping them parse the mixed messages they receive about teen motherhood: of mess on the one hand, and glamour on the other?

Getting that message across? That would be justice.

A Thanksgiving table from a couple of years ago

For some reason I’m feeling more squishy-sentimental than usual (I have this crazy dual-personality thing, which I claim to have inherited from my mom — hard-shell mean-mom exterior surrounding a gooey, nougat-y, cries-at-sappy-ads center.) So I figured it was time, it being just days shy of Thanksgiving, to make a little list. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, second only to Christmas, which I’m a total baby about because I love it with the same purity and intensity that I did as a kid. Well, a kid with big Visa bills in January, but anyway, I love it, so there.

Without further ado, and in no particular order, I’m thankful for:

• My big boy. Specifically, since I’m feeling not just extra squishy lately, but weirdly specific, too, his big head. No, seriously. I love his head. I love it from the outside because it’s so, well, big, and so loaded with crazy hair — dark, thick, and completely uncontrollable. I am thankful for his open, expressive face. He has his father’s high forehead and triangular eyebrows, and watching the emotions scudding across that face is like lying on your back and watching clouds do their thing across the sky. I am also grateful for what’s inside that giant head — which works in mysterious ways. Sometimes stunning, sometimes heartbreaking. He once said his brain is made up of 30,000 other brains. I do not doubt him. I don’t envy him his exquisite vulnerability to hurt, but when I see his emotions leap to the surface and turn to red the parchment-pale skin around his round, greeny-brown eyes (which he got from me, though the rest of his face is pure Daddy), I hope those quicksilver reactions serve him well as he grows up, even though they’re destined to wound him, too. He is not always the child I thought I wanted, but I’m grateful for the he-ness of him nonetheless, or maybe moreso because of that.

• I’m grateful for my sweet-and-sour little boy. The second son of a second son. It may sound smug or narcissistic to say so, but you know what I am grateful for, in my gorgeous, tough as nails youngest? That he’s my Mini-Me. I didn’t get the daughter I wanted, but my younger son child no sloppy second. When I delve into my dusty old dreams about my not-to-be daughter, I realize I imagined her to be a version of me to send out into the world. So yes, it’s selfish, but I hope in a good way, that I am grateful that I can see a genetic thread of me-ness, in looks, personality, in soul — and even short temper — still spooling out from a genetic past into a genetic future. I’m grateful that he’s a swift reader and a good friend. I’m grateful for his goofy nature that’s in such contrast to his intense shyness. (Though, seriously, would it kill him to accept kisses from me? I am not allowed to smooch this one, though of course I indulge when he’s sleeping. The crumb.)

Boys, big and little, sleeping. Easy to feel grateful at this sight...

• And yes, of course of course of course I’m grateful for my husband. I’m not even going into that one. Just read this post, if you feel like it. Or this one. And know this: My relationship with my husband has always been about the grateful. I’m grateful I found him. Grateful he was still around when I was looking. Grateful he stepped up at a time in his life he was not necessarily ready for the same things I was. I once wrote in a card to him that I thought I had enough grateful to last our whole lives. I’ve not run out yet.

My mom's pilgrim-couple salt-and-pepper shakers

• I’m grateful that I have the kind of family that makes holidays fun. Even the crazy parts are fun. Even the parts that others grumble mightily about as this time of year bears down on us — the shopping, the cooking, the buying, the planning. The holidays themselves: eating too much, drinking too much, saying the wrong things, hearing the wrong things, watching kids tear through one house or another and pass out on couches as their party dresses and handsome-boy corduroys get mangled and ripped and covered in powdered sugar.

• I’m grateful for my parents, of course, who are wonderful. My sister with her sweet, sweet soul and her children who are turning into adults before our eyes, and amazingly. My baby brother who turned out pretty dang well (I, perhaps imperiously but also seriously, as his doting older sister, take at least some credit) and also turned out, with his crazy-smart wife, a gorgeous baby boy to add to the mix. I’m grateful for my aunts and uncles, my cousins who are bundled-together extra sisters and best friends, for their generosity and kindness and it-takes-a-village parenting.

• I’m grateful for my friends, my oldest friends (who share my oldest, sweetest and saddest memories), my newest ones (who help make daily life more bearable), my writer friends (who get it).

• I’m grateful for community, in all its forms.

• I’m grateful that I can still feel gratitude, that I can still, on the worst days, still see my bucket as at least a little bit full, even if so much of its contents keep sloshing out. There have been times in the last several years when I’ve felt my gratitude twist into something sour, to turn to envy and smallness. I’m grateful to have examples around me that prove the sourness, the jealousy, the dark, small habits of mind, are not worth it, not in the long haul.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sue and Mike Heck, on "The Middle" (photo: ABC TV)

So, I was going to write about homework this week, but that will have to wait, because an extraordinary thing happened last night, sometime between 8:00pm and 8:30pm, while I was watching the ABC-TV sitcom, “The Middle.” I say extraordinary because this involved a TV dad, who was not Bill Cosby or Bill Bixby (is anyone old enough to remember “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father”? No? Yes? God, I loved him. He reminded me of my dad). This involved a TV dad who … wait for it … did the right thing. He stood up. He not only did a sweet thing for his geeky teen daughter, but he went the extra step and said the right thing to a mean girl’s dad.

Sitcom dads don’t do this, as we all know. They’re usually kind of useless. Unless they’re Bill Cosby. And Bill Bixby doesn’t even count because “Courtship” was not a sitcom.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

“The Middle,” for those of you who don’t watch it, stars Patricia Heaton (formerly Debra Romano on “Everybody Loves Raymond”) and Neil Flynn (formerly The Janitor on “Scrubs”) as Frankie and Mike Heck, working class, always-behind-the-eight-ball, fast-food eating parents of three kids. There’s a lot to like about “The Middle.” If you watch the ABC promo videos you’ll hear stuff about it being “real.” It’s about a “real Midwestern family,” which to my sensitive East Coast urban-ish ears sounds like that sort of “Real America” jargon the right wingers bat around at election time (I’m talking to you, Sarah Palin!). Because the “real” part of the Heck family has nothing to do with the fact that they live in Indiana, and everything to do with the fact that they actually say real things about raising kids, and do real things that raising kids drives you to do (like throwing bags of frozen brownies at them as they race for the bus, because your effort to get organized on school mornings lasted all of one week).

There was the time, last season, when Frankie locked herself in a dingy bathroom at the car dealership where she works, to escape for 15 minutes the constant call of her boss, her colleagues, and her family via cellphone (The police, when they came to inform her of some mayhem she missed: “You shut your phone? You’re the mom! You can’t shut your phone.”). There was the time, just a few weeks ago, when Mike said about his oldest, Axl, a hormone-ravaged highschooler who wears boxer shorts around the house and drinks OJ out of the container (I’m paraphrasing): “I think he might be an idiot.” It was funny, and cringe-y, but mostly funny. I mean, come on, let’s be honest: who hasn’t thought that their kids just might be a little… not so terrific? You know, kind of idiotic?

Anyway, last night. Part of the plot involved Sue, the Heck’s middle-school-age daughter (played by Eden Sher), an character you can’t help but love for how clueless (yet smart) and hopeless (yet hopeful) she is. She’s every middle-school mess you ever felt like, braces and stringy hair and all. I love her. In this episode, Sue is befriended by a cool/mean girl, Shannon. Mike drives Sue, Shannon and Sue’s other geeky friend to the movies, and ends up staying with them, a few rows back, because he doesn’t trust them to be alone with boys. At one point, when Sue goes to the restroom to get Twizzlers out of her braces (love her), Shannon confides to the other geeky friend that she’ll be invited to a Saturday sleepover. But not Sue.

Mike, outraged and upset, rails about the unfairness to his wife, who tells him (I’m paraphrasing), “you didn’t know girls were this mean? Why do you think we eat so much chocolate?” There’s nothing, she tells him, that he can do.

But there is something he can do. He can make up for the party Sue doesn’t even know she’s not invited to by offering to watch one of the Twilight movies with her on a Saturday night. That would be sitcom-perfect — you can hear the “awwww…”, right? Except it doesn’t end there. Shannon calls — the audacity of meanness! — to ask Sue if she can borrow a sleeping bag, supposedly for a last-minute family camping trip.

This is where it gets good. Mike offers to drive the sleeping bag over to Shannon’s, and confronts her dad at the door. This is what would happen in most sitcoms, and most of us would be fine with it: Mike would say, “gee, that was mean. My daughter’s home thinking this is her friend, and Shannon’s not her friend at all.” And the other dad would be all, “yeah, girls, what can you do, right?” Maybe the two would have a beer or something. And the nice part, the Bill Cosby part, would be Mike going home and watching Twilight and never telling Sue that she’s been dissed by her so-called friend.

Here’s what did happen. When the two dads get into it, the other father does indeed say (I’m paraphrasing!), “Listen, I can’t tell my daughter what to do! That’s not my job.” But Mike says, after a pause and with a twist of his lips, “You know, yes, it is. It is our job.”

Ya see? It is our job. The girl was being a snob and mean, and even if Mike went back and never said a thing to Sue (he didn’t, they just talked about Twilight — “so… he’s the one with the abs?”), he said what he needed to say to Mr. Shannon’s Dad: When are kids are headed down a path that’s going to make them mean, and a bully, and a braggart — and they sure as hell might; sometimes they’re idiots, right? — you say something. Because that’s our job.

Two things this week: One, I’m starting a new occasional series, this one called “The Experts Aren’t Always Right.” And two, I’m going to treat you to a guest post as Part One of the series, by my colleague and fellow blogger, Debbie Koenig, who writes the (seriously) delicious blog, Words to Eat By.

The experts are, I believe, trying to get it right, trying to give us life-saving advice. Use car seats, for example. Don’t smoke two packs a day while pregnant. But when the attitude veers from helpful to paternalistic and big-brother-ish, and when following it means erasing your own instincts, I get prickly. And so does Debbie, who has written a hilarious and spot-on piece about how she — a food expert! — has, unbeknownst to her, been bucking received wisdom the whole of her son Harry’s life by feeding him the dreaded choking hazards.

Here’s her piece. Let me know what you think:

Debbie Koenig's son, Harry, aka "Mr. Hot Dog"

Apparently, I’m trying to kill my son.

Or so it would seem, now that the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a policy statement pointing out the choking hazards lurking in my kitchen—even going so far as to suggest that manufacturers redesign the hot dog (a notion which strikes me as being just short of insanity). When the statement appeared, it included a helpful list of the 10 biggest choking hazards for children under five. This list zoomed all over the momosphere; thanks to parenting blogs, message boards, and social media, I heard about it from at least a dozen sources. Like all my friends with preschoolers, I read the list, felt a chill run down my spine, and promptly began to beat myself up for the countless times we narrowly escaped tragedy.

Let’s see, which of the foods on that list have I given my four-year-old recently?

• Hot dogs: Frankfurters are, without a doubt, Harry’s favorite food. It’s no surprise—my husband and I are raising him to appreciate the finer points of a well-made dog. We actually take road trips just to sample renowned weenies. The AAP recommends cutting them lengthwise until age five, but we stopped doing that months ago.
• Nuts: He doesn’t eat them often, and so far it’s only been as part of a trail mix that features chocolate. (In fact, we’ll only let him have this mix if he eats the nuts—no picking out the chocolate, junior. Further proof I’m trying to kill him.)
• Seeds: That trail mix I mentioned? Sunflower seeds.
• Whole grapes: For the first two years of Harry’s grape-eating career, I meticulously cut them up. Heck, at first I skinned them entirely. But once he became a kid more than a toddler (to my mind, at least), quartered grapes seemed like overkill.
• Raw carrots: Seriously? Baby carrots are among the few vegetables Harry eats willingly. Thanks to his disdain for squishy food, I gave up steaming them when he turned three.
• Popcorn: Harry had his first taste about six months ago. To be honest, I knew this was a choking risk and was pretty terrified—but so many of my friends had been giving it to their tots, I had begun to feel like a wuss. So I sat with him on the sofa and insisted he eat one piece at a time, chewing thoroughly before swallowing. No surprise, that level of vigilance has eased. I don’t leave the room when he’s eating popcorn, but I don’t watch him like a hawk, either.
• Apples: Again, seriously? Harry must wait another year to experience the perfect pleasure of biting into an apple while we cruise the farmer’s market?
• Marshmallows: Yeah. These, we actually used as potty-training incentive. For pee, he’d get one mini-marshmallow. For poop, two. I shudder to think how I risked my son’s life, just so I could say goodbye to changing diapers.
• Hard candy: Only a single transgression here, a few months ago. There was a sucking candy in the goody bag from a schoolmate’s birthday party, and Harry got to it before I did. I blame that kid’s mom.
• Gobs of peanut butter: Harry only gets thin shmears. Phew! At least there’s one item on the list I haven’t used for attempted filicide.

You probably assume I changed my dangerous ways once I read that list. Eh, not so much. According to an analysis performed by Stats.org, a nonprofit research center that interprets statistical mumbo-jumbo, the AAP’s policy statement may be a wee bit inflammatory: “To put the risk into perspective, approximately five children died each year in the U.S. from choking on a hot dog—along with, approximately, 3.3 from candy, 3 from peanuts or other nuts, 2.7 from grapes, 2.3 from other meat, 2 from carrots, 1.7 from popcorn, 1.5 from apples…” And all of these deaths were children younger than three. As creepy as it is to discuss in such terms—and believe me, I know every single one of those children left behind a devastated family—more children Harry’s age die each year in car crashes (or by gunshot) than from choking on the top 10 hazards combined.

Which is not to say I haven’t made adjustments. Reflexively, I check that Harry’s peanuts are halved before he eats them. He’s fully potty-trained, thank heavens, so we’d already cut out the marshmallows. Popcorn remains an occasional treat. And lately we’ve been serving him what we call “dogburgers”: a hot dog cut in half lengthwise, then again across the middle, served on a hamburger bun—a practice instituted when we were out of hot dog buns, not in response to the AAP’s statement. Harry seems to prefer it that way, and if it makes me feel less like a would-be murderer, so much the better.

Okay, here we go again, with another flurry of conversation swirling around the topic of parents, children, and happiness. Specifically: Does becoming a parent increase or decrease happiness? Do kids make you happy? Are parents happier than non-parents? And my personal favorite: Why do we all work so hard at this parenting stuff without it making us happy? AREN’T WE SUPPOSED TO BE HAPPY, FER CHRISSAKES?

This has been circulating in old- and new-media circles this muggy month in part thanks to an article in New York magazine, by Jennifer Senior, that has, as they say, gone viral. It’s been Tweeted and Facebooked, blogged about, and discussed on the radio (one good interview with Senior took place on my local NPR station, WNYC, on Brian Lehrer’s show the other day. You can listen to it here, if you’re so inclined).

Um, what do I have to say on the topic? What makes you think I have something to add to the discussion? Hahaha, as the social-media types like to type. Of course I have something to say.

And it’s this: Really? Really? We’re still talking about this? Have we still not come to terms with the fact that becoming a parent doesn’t magically bestow happiness on your head, any more than getting married does? Apparently not. Apparently we’re still, as the article suggests, “surprised” (and of course bemused and not a little bit annoyed, if I may editorialize) that bringing our children into the world didn’t up our happiness factor.

Senior takes as her premise the statement that “most parents” expect having children will make them happy.

They do? I didn’t.

Oh, I get that many people use that word, “happy,” as shorthand for other things, like fulfillment and an increased sense of purpose, but it all boils down to the same idea. We’re all always looking for the magic, make-me-happy bullet, and guess what folks? You are the only person who can engineer your own fulfillment, nurture your own sense of purpose, and create your own contentment, all of which are hard to find, and all of which are unfair to ask a baby or child to give you. Unfair, and impossible.

Yeah, I know–I’m taking what’s essentially a pop-culture article to the extreme; after all, it is a well-written, thought provoking piece, that’s mostly for, you know, passing interest and diversion. Plus, it’s getting people talking, especially about thorny issues like why American parents may be, according to research on such things, unhappier than those in, say, Sweden or France, where support for working families mitigates some of the modern-life issues that make parenting such a tough row to hoe for many of us. Things I pine for, like paid maternity leave, subsidized quality daycare, healthcare coverage, and free or very low cost higher education. Just think — as Senior’s piece points out — how may of the woes of modern American parenthood those things erase!

She writes, as well, of the difference between our generation, armed with our educations and our choices (and the attendant, for some of us, sense of entitlement), and that of our parents, who (speaking broadly here) went from their own parents’ homes to their married homes and leaped right into parenthood. The idea being, no choices to ponder, plus no time to think, equals no crazy-making false assumption that becoming a parent will Make You Happy. (This, incidentally, has always been my mother’s take on our blah blah blah navel-gazing generation: “You people have too much time on your hands. Less talking, more doing, okay?”)

And yeah, there is a big gulf there, leaving to one side all the jawing about choices or lack thereof and what that has to do with how happy (or not) we are. But where does that leave me? I’m smack-dab-bang-on in the cohort that should be wrestling most mightily (and, if you agree with some of the online commenters to Senior’s article, whining the most with the belief that if I’m feeling something, everyone must be) with this problem of unhappiness in parenthood.

Just check it out: I’m well-educated. I had a solid, successful career before I even got married, much less decided to have a child. I was 36 when I had my son, for heaven’s sake. Not to mention I am (or was, at the time) urban. East Coast urban, no less.

And I had that baby. And while I expected that I would feel pride in his being, joy in the sight of his face and a renewed sense of being needed and wanted, purely physically at first, but psychically, too, as I raised this human being; while I anticipated that I would fall madly in love with my son and any other children who followed him out of my body, it honestly never, ever occurred to me that he would make me happy. Or that parenthood would be all joyful, or even, I don’t know, as much as 25% joyful. I knew it would be a lot of shit (literally, at first), a lot of snot, a lot of laundry, a lot of money, not a lot of sleep, not enough sex (in the early months and years), and other scary and amorphous non-happy-making things later. Can I just say “teenager” and leave it at that?

Later in Senior’s piece, she makes the not unfamiliar point that in the “olden” days, children were essentially economic commodities. Adults had children in part because they had little to no effective way of controlling whether they had them or not, but also because their offspring provided vital help on the farm or whatever, as well as childcare help with the subsequent new siblings. Those who survived, that is. Fast forward to now, and after a bunch of generations during which we got increasingly better at choosing the timing of parenthood and the number of kids, and we’ve reached a point where kids are not home and farm helpers (or, as they were in the heyday of the Industrial Revolution, potential money earners in factories and mines). We’ve reached the point where they’ve turned instead into projects. Says Senior: “kids went from being our staffs, to being our bosses.”

Oh. Ick.

I’m not my son’s serf. I met his needs as a newborn, an infant, a toddler, and continue to do the things for him and his brother that they can’t do themselves. I feed, I clothe, I see to their education, I organize their things and their social lives and read to them and get their hair cut and wash their bodies and wipe their butts (still, with the five year old. Sigh. He promises that by his sixth birthday he’ll take the toilet paper into his own hands). When they get older, I’ll still do a lot of those things, and more (hey, I still expect a meal prepared for me when I go to my mom’s house, which is as it should be), but I’ll also expect that they will pick up quite a lot of the slack.

All this is not to say that I want my sons to, when they are able-bodied enough, become my staff (first of all, I don’t have a farm, so there’s that). What I am aiming for? We’ll all serve each other, the needs of the family and of the home. Funny, just yesterday I was talking to Daniel about the things he can do (put the waffles in the toaster, stack his dish in the dishwasher) and the things he can’t yet (grill the hot dogs on the barbecue), and said that as he got older, he could — and would — do lots around the house. I started ticking them off: Change your sheets. Do your laundry. Help mommy cook. Dust and vacuum. Rake the leaves. Mow the lawn. Shovel the snow. Wash the car.

“And if your friends say, ‘hey, Daniel, why did you have to do all that stuff?’ you can say, ‘because we all do things for each other in our house.’ ”

Because, I want him to understand, while we all have the human responsibility (and ability) to effect our own happiness (he can’t “make” me happy any more than I can “make” him happy), we have the familial responsibility to lighten each other’s loads, and each other’s lives.

No whining necessary.