Mommy!!!

"Primal Scream! :)" by Dplanet:: is licensed under CC BY 2.0In the apartment next door there is a toddler who is unceasingly protesting life itself. The screams rise up, swallow the universe, and persist, persist, persist. I am thinking of his mother, a professional, now alone at home with this seeming agony. Where is her mind? 

I saw her at the elevator and said, "It must be hard being quarantined with a toddler." She responded that I was the first to notice such a thing, admitted the truth of it but then prevaricated, saying it is easier now that he can talk. Maybe so. One of the axioms of my former profession is that we might feel what our clients cannot. Maybe this toddler is expressing what she cannot. 

Mothers are really not allowed to complain. Back when I did, the internet and my local community declared me as selfish as I feared myself to be. Young women are allowed to be selfish for a while. I thrilled to this celebrity feminist testimony that tumbled into my youtube algorithm. Only later did I realize that every proponent of sassy wisecracks was young and startlingly beautiful. I thrilled to the series by the New York Times on how mothers have fared during the pandemic. Fittingly, I thought, the title page was a Primal Scream, complete with audio, voices of mothers screaming. But if you have a listen you might notice that the screams are strangled, the complaints qualified. What really comes across to me is the helplessness.

When a male partner makes so much more, of course women will work less and take responsibility for the kids. And then when teachers can't work because of Covid, of course women will school them at home because we love the kids and there is no other good option. So the complaints must be censored; to do otherwise would threaten the whole balance of things and provoke deep questions about our not-so-deep state. 

When women lack power they extend the rein to their reign. Mothers are the ones who teach manners, civilized behavior. And then they become symbols of restraint who are resented by their husbands and sons and daughters. Then one runs for president and no one likes them, because they remind us of our mothers. Then we get older and Joe Biden says something like 'if grandma can hear it, it's ok.' I don't remember exactly what he said but I object to the idea that grandma still has to set the rules. 

Can't we just be the whole thing? Old and sexy and profane, or not. Young and ugly, or just normal, or just not beauty-obsessed. Write some character parts for younger women! Or at least let them wake up in the middle of the night without full-face cosmetics. Yes, we've made progress but it still feels to me like a finger trap. The more we pull the tighter it gets. Mothers have to be able to object, to scream if necessary without being medicated or patronized or dismissed. 

What has happened to mothers and to people of color during the pandemic is a crime. AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! 

March 5, 2021