Dear Bestie

      This is why I love my bestie. This morning, instead of doing my normal deliveries for work (I own a delivery service based business) I was home, moping and surfing the web (half productive- reading dishwasher reviews- ours broke, half destructive- some videos are better left un-watched), managing my foot pain and generally feeling badly about myself for not having participated in dominant culture's rituals of hygienic maintenance when my bestie texted. Cue the sad music as I immediately took this as my opportunity to tell someone just how badly I was feeling. It was dramatic, self-indulgent and in a word, wonderful. And, it was just the little boost I needed to get up and put pants on.
     
      As with most bestie-communication, a decoder ring is necessary to understand the conversation. The "scraping" refers to an  aspect of my wound care (I think it's a remnant medieval medical care techniques) whereby the podiatrist scrapes out any necrotic flesh from the wound, opening it up a little in the process, in order to ensure proper healing. It's not fun and it is discouraging to feel like you're moving backward instead of forward.
   
           'Nebuchadnezzars' are House Centipedes (the most hated and terrifying household bug I can think of.)  Nebuchadnezzar was a ruthless Babylonian king, most famous for throwing  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the furnace after they refused to bow down to a big statue he'd made of himself. Yeah, that gem. He was kind of a jerk and pretty imposing, so we call the terrible creepers by his name (unless you are my daughter with a 4-year old accent. Then you call them 'Never-Ka-Nevers!' As is, they should never, ever be anywhere near a 4-year old little girl's room, especially not her underwear drawer. Yes, this happened. Yes, it was traumatic. Yes, she still talks about it in hushed and devastated tones)  - because when they are in the room, you pretty much feel ruled by them.

     So, for moments like these, the times when you want to tell someone, "It's noon and I haven't brushed my teeth and I'm feeling so sorry for myself that I'm imagining being eaten alive by centipedes," for those moments, you need your best friend. Because sometimes, you're just out of your mind... and someone's gotta understand your particular breed of crazy.

Dear Women and Men, Readers and Publishers (i.e. everyone)

Dear Women and Men, Readers and Publishers (i.e. everyone),
  
     I regularly talk with my best friend (who happens to be unmarried) about how to keep (and develop) my identity in the midst of my roles as wife and mother. I have always prized reading as one of the sharpest tools in my do-not-lose-myself bucket. So, imagine my, ahem, surprise, when it dawned on me that some of the titles we are reading may actually be reinforcing the stereotypical identity-loss that comes with wifedom and motherhood.  As I was editing my Goodreads list and browsing my friends' lists, I noticed something interesting, er, disturbing. There are a shocking number of novels out there with titles like "The fill-in-the-blank's Wife." There's The Tiger's Wife, The Pilot's Wife, The Time Traveler's Wife, The Traitor's Wife, The Doctor's Wife, The Diplomat's Wife, The Sea Captain's Wife, The Shoemaker's Wife (seriously? Do shoemaker's still exist? If so, where? I have a pair of busted Nine West sandals that have been begging for repair. I wore them to my sweet 16. I will never throw them out. Nine West is high fashion for someone with as much student loan debt as I've got.) The Saddlemaker's Wife (now this could get good...) and the list goes on and on. In fact, after a cursory amazon search for literary fiction with the word "wife" in the title, nearly 1,200 titles appear, more than twice that if you expand the search to include all contemporary fiction and literary fiction categories. I joked with my own husband that I should write a book titled "The Headmaster's Wife" as it seems denying my own identity or at least simplifying it to be merely based on my marital status is a surefire way to get published. Another quick search delivered the hard news that someone had already beaten me to the punch. Doh! Maybe I'll read The Headmaster's Wife over spring break. The title is generic enough to be based on my life, after all.

 Image Borrowed from A Girl's Guide to Taking Over the World. 

      Now, I am not, in anyway, suggesting that these books aren't great reads or well-written. I actually haven't read most of them. But it is noteworthy that while there are somewhere between 1,200 and 3,000 books on the shelves whose titles define women according to their relationship to a man (I did filter out for lesbian literature, though a few may have gotten past) the very same search on amazon for fiction with "husband" in the title yielded only around 250 results. After a few minutes of glancing, many of these books didn't even refer to the role of husband but rather, were books about women in want of a husband such as The Husband Thief, The Husband Hunt and A Husband for Margaret. It's also noteworthy that most of these "husband" books were not popular or successful titles while many of the "wife" titles were (more than a couple of New York Times best sellers).

     So why is that? I am assuming that many of these titles were chosen by publishers and not by the authors. They must believe that titling a book "So and So's wife" is going to sell more copies. Why? It's subtle, I know, but it seems indicative of a general cultural tendency to have women's identities be cast in the shadows (or if she insists on taking center stage, be relegated to the so-called "Chick Lit" corner- don't even get me started on the degrading way the publishing industry treats books that fall into this category!)
   
      I love my husband, love who he is, what he does, yes, but I don't want to be simply defined by who he is. But guess what, he doesn't want that either (read: this is why we are married). He doesn't have a blog so you'll just have to take my word for it. Besides, I've asked him. Repeatedly. You know why?  Because reminding each other, and the world, that as awesome as we are together, we are also individuals, is something that takes work both inside the home and out. Because I'm better when I'm more than his wife and he's better when I'm better. Of course, it goes both ways, but somehow everyone gets how great it is when I put something aside to see him further his career (which I have done) but not when he forfeits a goal for a time while I pursue my own (which he has done). It starts with what we say and what we believe and what we choose. It starts with the books we read our children and the books we read ourselves. So, while I'm not suggesting that any of these books be banned from the reading list of feminists, or women-conscious readers (in fact book-banning is the surest way to get a book added to my reading list) I am suggesting that we point out, talk about and debunk myths like this one: the identity of a man (husband) is more important than the identity of a woman (wife), even in her own story.

     In my story, which is both my story and his story, (and our story) who I am is just as essential as who he is. I want my children to see that and know that, and one day, I want my daughter to read that- on the cover of a New York Times best seller.

Yours,

A woman, a writer, reader, a friend, a business-owner, a mother, a lover, a thinker and yes a wife of a husband (who doesn't feel the need to insert himself here.)

Dear Little Rock Star

Dear Little Rock Star,

My sweet, small girl. You are amazing. I love your chubby body, your deep clever eyes and your 4-year-old lisp. I love how you talk, how you move and how you sing. 

Today, you were so thrilled about having a "girls' day" with my besties (you are so cool you even get along with grown doggone women!) that you made up a song about it. The one hitch to "girls' day was that my friend's husband Dan was going to be hanging around too- you addressed that issue in your song and the resulting refrain was "Girls' day (pronounced 'gulls' day)...except for Dan!" You are so clever! 

One day, not too long from now, you will be able to pronounce all of your 'R's and I will cry, just like I did when you figured out how to say your brother's name correctly and stopped calling him 'beelah' which does not sound anything like his name.

But when that day comes- I will have this (luckily, Dan just happens to be an awesome musician who can create things like this) to remind me of my little rock star.

Dear Mothers of Daughters,

Dear Mothers of Daughters,

     Stop encouraging your little girl. OK, no, don't. But stop doing it in a way that is killing her and equipping her to kill.

     I hear it all the time. Subtle killers, disguised as encouragement, loving praise, confidence boosting little pep-talks. "You're so lucky to have such naturally straight teeth, other kids have to spend years in braces" "Do you know how many girls would kill for your long legs and thin waist?" "Don't complain about your flat hair, lots of girls are spending lots of money trying to straighten and flatten their hair to be like yours." Without even knowing, and indeed, while trying to do good, to tell our daughters that they are beautiful, we communicate that it's all a big competition, that our little girls' precious body exists to be an object of envy and is praiseworthy only in the context of someone else's lack. By constantly pairing praise and admonishment to be thankful with the highlighting of what other girls want or don't have we teach that there is a limited supply of beauty and loveliness going around. That if she has something, others must be in want of it.

     My little girl was born with beautiful fine, chestnut brown hair that highlights in the sun and curls into soft ringlets at the ends. We took a shower together today and she looked at me, her hair flattened by the weight of water, my tight curls barely weighed down and saturated, and said, "how come my hair doesn't curl up all over like yours. I want curls all over not just at the ends." I was tempted to say "are you kidding me?! you've got good hair, great hair, in fact. Do you have any idea how much I wanted hair like yours when I was growing up- hair that didn't frizz or grow to two times its size on a muggy day, hair that didn't require a half bottle of conditioner just to get the tangles out, hair that didn't hurt to be brushed?!" But I held my tongue and I reminded myself that I don't want to damage her wonderful sense of beauty with the self-injuring talk that I've been fighting against for all these years. So instead, I said, "I'm glad you like my hair, I really like it too. It's got curls all over, and that can be a lot of fun, but you know what, you were made beautiful too, with special little curls right at the bottom. They remind me of ribbon curls hanging from a Christmas gift" (she's all about ribbon curls).  And in that moment, I knew I had turned a corner and figured something out. We're talking holy spirit stuff, y'all, because I don't know where else the truth could have come from like that. I knew, right then, that it was my job to teach her to admire without coveting and despising. To accept praise without glorying in someone else's envy.

     The lie is that if we tell our daughters enough times that they are the best, that they will believe it. But it's not true, if we tell them that they are the best looking, have the best teeth, the best legs, hair, eyes, it will not give them a rock solid self-esteem. If we tell them that they are better than every other girl, it will not infuse in them a positive self image. If she has the best eyes, all the "pretty eyed" girls become a threat. If she has the thinnest waist, the new girl with a thinner waist is her competition. She will constantly be fearing the next contender who aims to dethrone her. She will always need to seek out the reigning champ to challenge and she will never be enough. Maybe not out loud, maybe not overtly, but in her heart, she will need others to be less so that she can be more. Because, she will have internalized a belief that there is not enough beauty, goodness, personality, charm, brains, whatever, to go around. And, if praise is always attached to another's pity, then it is costly and hard-won and scarce. And fickle. It can be taken away, lost. So she'll believe that she has to fight for it, to maintain her praiseworthy status and she will lose her god-given ability to enjoy others. This is the mean girl epidemic, the jealous girl trend. This is where bullying and belittling and biting come from. I am, because you are not. But this is a lie, and we don't have to the devil's dirty work for him.

     So my goal is to tell the truth. I hope you will join me in trying.

     Love and life y'all

Dear Little Girl of Mine

Dear Little Girl of Mine,

Thank you for blowing me kisses just before you walk into the public bathroom stall, it will make the looks I get, in response to your screaming, (at the top of your lungs "I did Caca! Wipe Meeee!") infinitely more bearable.

With love and unending thanks for the humility you've taught me,
Proud Mama