Motherhood is Not for Wimps

“Momma, can you tell me the story of the Dark Knight?”

Mare has asked me this four times in the past couple of hours. I have ascertained that she does not mean Batman — (hmm… Heath Ledger. Boy I’d like to see that again) — So I keep putting her off because I’m not entirely following what she’s asking and I’m not feeling patient enough to make up a story right now.

Finally, she has me. We’re in the car, and she explains that she wants me to tell a story she heard on Noggin. (”It’s like preschool in your home!!” their announcers chirp, and I nod and agree and feel all, like, better about myself and stuff.)

“They told the story of the Dark Knight. Will you tell it to me?”

Sure, I say. I may have plot problems, but this I can handle.

There was a wise Queen, in a land far away. She ruled her kingdom with careful authority. She relied on the judgement and counsel of her advisors, a panel of women and men who helped her.

The Bright Knight found work in a neighboring kingdom. His reputation remained impressive throughout the years, but mystery surrounded him. He never made mistakes, but people around him did — and no one ever seemed to know who. And the kingdom he served did not seem to change much in all those years, despite his efforts. Systems of injustice and cruelty remained in place throughout the generations, although no one ever quite knew why.

Here I just kind of stopped, all proud of myself. My suprior parenting. My application of plot. THIS, my friend, is what happens when you hire a Master’s candidate to be your mother.

“Noggin’s version had a horse,” Mare said. “And I don’t think there was a Bright Knight.”

“Ah,” I said, knowing right then and there what a mistake it is ever to turn off the television.

I love autumn: the crisp-cool air, the first feel of jeans and clogs, the colors, the way the days are cool at the beginning and end but warm in the middle.

I love autumn food — pot roasts and cheesey things with garlic. Seared meats in pan sauces with buttered startches to soak them up. (I do have a tendency to gain weight in autumn, so I try to do my share of leaf-raking.)

Tonight I made pork chops. It isn’t really autumn, yet, and I paid the price for turning the stove on — the kitchen was unbearably hot — but we ate it in front of a Samuel Jackson movie in the family room with the fan blowing in the cool late-summer evening air.

And the pork chops were so worth it.

DaMomma’s Balsamic Pork Chops

3 pork chops
1 medium onion, chopped in chunks
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 apples, peeled and chunked
1 cup (give or take) balsamic vinegar plus vermouth (optional — friends of Bill W. can double the vinegar or use chicken broth)
A solid sprinkling of thyme or rosemary, or both, whatever’s on hand, plus salt and pepper

1) Season the chops with salt and pepper while you heat the pan to medium-high heat. Add vegetable oil to coat the bottom of the pan, and then sear chops 3-5 minutes without moving (until caramelized) then turn over and do the same on the other side. Remove chops to a 350-degree oven, turn down heat on pan, add olive oil as needed;

2) Add chopped onions to the pan, cook over medium heat until just starting to be translucent;

3) Add garlic, being careful not to burn;

4) Add apples. Toss to coat and brown evenly;

5) Deglaze the pan with vinegar. Scrape bottom and sides. Let boil until reduced to syrup. Taste for doneness. You can add vermouth, broth, or another round of vinegar and reduce again until the apples are tender and coated in balsamic syrup. Add salt, pepper, thyme or rosemary. Add a chunk of butter, toss until smooth, and then add back the chops, plus their pan juices, and toss to coat.

I served this over mashed Yukon golds, with lemon garlic green beans. I think it would be amazing over mashed sweet potatoes.

“Congratulations,” I said to Ellie, on the first anniversary of her sobriety. “I think you’re awesome.”

“Thanks. It’s really a strange thing to celebrate. But I’m milking it. ‘Hey, I can stand upright and I’m aware of what’s going on, give me presents!‘”

“I feel morally obligated to blog that.”

“I totally understand.”

Ren spent much of Mare’s first horse show glaring.

Ren — and this may be quite a shock — can be a jealous little thing.

“When it gonna be my turn to be in a show? When can I get a ribbon? MOMMA WHY SISSY GET TO DO DIS AND I DON’T???”

“When you’re older,” I soothed. “When you’re bigger. WHEN YOU CAN FREAKING POST A TROT, MY FRIEND.”

“Huh?”

“You have to trot. And you have to post. — That means go up and down in the saddle. You have to do that before you can be in a show.”

So there we were at the very next horse lesson. Ren got her obligatory pony ride, where everyone patronized her and told her it was a “lesson” — and she glared some more and shouted, “TROT!” -Forward the horse went and before anyone knew what was happening …

“Liz … she’s posting,” her wide-eyed instructor said.

“For God’s sake, don’t let go of her,” I answered.

“Momma!” Ren shouted from the saddle. “Now I do da show?”

“Don’t be silly,” I said.

“I don’t know how to tell you this,” the instructor said. “But she qualifies.”

“Yeah, but, if I buy show gear and pay entry fee for a two-year old that would make me –”

A chump.

Aw, so sweet …

… and then this is how you know it is our family:

We went on a walk through the woods. We found a tall purple flower, blooming in a patch of sunlight. The sun coming through the leaves, lighting the bark of the trees, the shimering purple, were breathtaking. I took an endless series of pictures and couldn’t capture it.

I have about fifteen versions of that shot.

I wanted the detail of the flower, the light, the crinkly brown of the trees behind it. Then I realized it was too much. I had to choose. So I focused on the flower, bathed in the natural light, and somehow the rest of the story lingered in the background.

“I didn’t mean to be an activist, I was just very angry.”

Blue light from the projector cuts over Chaz Maviyane-Davies’ face as he moves, gesturing toward the screen that displays one of his graphic art images from the Zimbabwean elections. His hair is in short dreadlocks and he sports black glasses and a trim graying gotee.

There is nothing about him to indicate that he is the man who unwittingly fueled a revolution on his home computer, that he openly defied the dictator who murdered 20,000 of his innocent countrymen, that he is the creator of this image:

It is provocative, but benign enough here in an auditorium in America where pictures of celebrity babies sell for $14 million. But in Zimbabwe — where Maviyane-Davies created this image during the 2000 Zimbabwean presidential elections — it could mean death.

“The original symbol and current nickname for the ruling party is ‘Jongwe’, which means cockerel,” Maviyane-Davies writes on his website. This image—like the others Maiyane-Davies has made– mocks and defies the authority of the Jongwe party and its murderous leader, Robert Mugabe.

“I wanted to live a comfortable life, to do my work and come home to my family,” Maviyane-Davies says from the lectern. “But I realized that I had a voice and I had to use it, and where it went after that I couldn’t control.”

Where it went was all over the world.

During the elections — in which Mugabe’s party brutalized members of the opposition, tortured and killed citizens, and attempted to silence the press — Maviyane-Davies would generate graphic art. He e-mail it to a list of 300 people, who would forward them to the people on their own lists, who forwarded them until there were copies on every continent.

For the outside world, they became a means of knowing what was really going on in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

“The Bulawayo Offices of The Daily News — Zimbabwe’s independent and leading daily paper — were petrol-bombed today (11 February 2002) around 3 in the morning. The printing press of Daily Press … [that] printed campaign materials for the opposition Movement For Democratic Change, were also bombed.”

Robert Mugabe defied the European Union two days ago, announcing that its observers would not be allowed to monitor Zimbabwe’s presidential election.

For Zimbabweans, these images became a flashpoint of defiance. They would use them as screen-savers in their offices, print them, post them, drive to rural areas and throw them out the windows of moving cars, in terror of getting caught.

From his home computer, Chaz Maviyane-Davies had accidentally launched a movement. His daily image updates had become an act of devotion and courage … and a safety measure.

“I told the people on the list, ‘If you don’t get an image one day, that means something happened to me.’”

“The conical tower at Great Zimbabwe is the symbol of our beloved country. The plane is emblazoned with the name and insignia of the ruling party.”

Maviyane-Davies has been forced to leave his beloved homeland. He lives in America, where he lectures and teaches graphic art.

Mugabe continues to torment the Zimbabwean people. But he does not have the ability to silence them as dictators once did.

No dictator will ever have that power in the same way again.

Pundits and old school newsmen lament that the Internet has brought about the death of newspapers, and may soon kill the traditional news room.

But this is not the death of journalism. It is the beginning of the Renaissance.

These images are reproduced with permission from Chaz Maviyane-Davies’ website: www.maviyane.com. I strongly recommend visiting to see his art, and to gain insight into what is happening in this beautiful African land.

At Mare’s High School Musical Performance …

Kids on stage: No no no!!! Stick to the stuff you know! If you want to be cool, follow one simple rule, don’t mess with the rest, no no! Stick to the status quo!!

Renny: Momma. When day gonna stop singing?

Momma: Soon, Lamby, soon. Look! There’s Sissy!

Renny: Yeah. I see her.

Later …

Kids on stage bow, lights come up.

Renny (clapping sarcastically): Yay!! Dat de best show EVAH! (Hopping down from her seat) — Now it’s time to go.

Later, at horseback riding …

Renny gets her standard pony ride after sister’s lesson. She hops on the horse and levels the instructor with a long stare.

Renny: Why you take so long with Sissy? It boring.

Instructor: Um. Well. It’s your turn now.

Renny: I wanna trot.

Instructor: Okay, well, your feet aren’t really long enough to kick the horse, so –

Renny: TROT!!!!!!!!

The horse jerks forward. Renny laughs maniacally.

Team Mary …

Sunbeam and Moonbeam and me.

Oh, and Daddy and the Doodle.

Can you show me eeeeeevil??

The part where I stopped taking pictures. Stopped breathing.

That. In case you are wondering. Is a blue ribbon.

Because in this case, seventh place was a perfect crystalline blue.

Seventh out of how many? — Twelve. Oh, and six kids tied for seventh, so you do the math.

Or don’t. We didn’t. All Mare knows is that she went for blue … and got it.

We celebrated with blue ice creams and rainbow sprinkles, and I marveled at the way life can have of working out, if you go for it.

“It’s a lot of people to fall in front of,” Mare says thoughtfully.

“It is,” I agree.

“Is it a winning-kind-of-show?” she asks.

Oh here we go, I think.

“It will be just like a regular lesson. Your instructor will be with you. You’ll be in the ring, and you’ll do the things you normally do. Only it will be in front of a lot of other people, and a bunch of other kids will do it, too. At the end, they’ll hand out ribbons. Some of you will get one. Some of you won’t.”

“The blue one is the winner.”

“Yes,” I say. And I know it’s here.

I’ve heard the stories: rabid soccer coaches, lunatic dance moms, anxious, sleepless children in tears.

Of course, competition is really there all along. It is, in fact, the third branch of parenting governance, after Us and Television.

“Is she cute in this sonogram?”

“Is she an early talker, tell me, she’s an early talker, right?”

“Will the other kids laugh at this lunchbox?”

“Does she look normal? Is it maybe time to start brushing her hair regularly?”

But now it’s really here. Mare has been invited to show a horse.

She’s been riding since she was about five and a half years old. Which is to say, April. She posted on her first lesson, fell in love, and we signed her up for the summer.

And then all of a sudden the damndest thing happened. That baby? The cute bald one I gave birth to last week?

“She made that horse trot!” her instructor breathed. “I had nothing to do with it! She just dug in there and told him to do as he was told!”

I grinned proudly (with one half of my face) while I fought the urge to drag her off the horse and run her home to her bassinette where she belongs. The ticker of Parental Insanity was going full-tilt. “What-if-she-fails-what-if-she-falls-CHRISTOPHER-REEVE-dear-God-what-was-I-thinking?”

“So,” I am saying, after breaking the news in the car on the way home, “it’s a lot to consider.”

“I could fall.”

“Yep,” I say. “You haven’t been thrown yet, but you will someday, it’s a guarantee. And it could happen at the show.”

“I would be very embarrassed.”

“You wouldn’t have to be,” I say. “Everybody falls, and everybody has bad luck and you could choose not to be embarrassed. But that’s a very hard thing to do.”

“I would be embarrassed.”

“Okay, that’s a good thing to know. It’s a risk you’d take if you decided to do the show.”

“Do you think I could win?”

Yes.

“I don’t think the ribbon is a good reason to do it. I think you do it because it’s hard. Because you want to challenge yourself. Because it is fun. I think if you do it for the ribbon, that’s a bad reason.” She is silent. “Do you remember how Daddy ran the marathon?”

“Yes.”

“Did he win?”

“No.”

“Do you remember how crazy-happy he was, and how proud we were of him?”

“What do I wear?” she asks. I’m really excited about this part.

“Jodhpurs, boots, a show shirt and coat. And your hair braided in pigtails with ribbons, you can pick the color.” (I can already see her, hat and coat, glorious pink ribbons in her yellow hair.)

“I think I would want blue,” she says. “To match the ribbon if I won.”

And then, just like that, I get it. She might fall. She might fail. Bad things happen. But her mother didn’t build a life by thinking it might be nice to win if nobody else minded, and Mare’s not going to either.

“If you want to go for blue, I’m right there with you,” I say. “I’ll make sure you have what you need, I’ll help you eat right and be rested, and get lots of practice, and I’ll scream my heart out for you in the stands. We’ll put blue ribbons in your hair for luck. But hear me now — if you fall off that horse, pee yourself, pick your nose and cry in front of the judges, I will still be so freaking proud of you for getting in there.”

She’s laughing. “It would be pretty funny if I peed,” she says. She frowns. “Do you think I would?”

“We will run you to the bathroom before,” I say. “You won’t pee.” (You’ll just feel like you might. And you might throw up. And good God, you really could fall. Or be humiliated. Or lose and stop loving it.)

But you’ll never be any good if you only amble along, never aiming for best just so you don’t have to settle for good enough.

Or so your mother never has to watch you be disappointed in yourself.

As Mare’s baby-cuteness is relegated to the photo albums, I have clung to her sister’s toddlerhood. But I am utterly surprised at how challenging, frightening, exciting this time is as my firstborn literally enters the arena.

She dresses herself, can make herself a sandwich or a bowl of cereal, put herself in the car, and even to bed. But she has never needed me more.

Her relationship with me will become her relationship with herself, and I constantly find myself asking, “What do I want her to be telling herself as she rides?”

You can do it. You can go for blue. It’s okay to fail, but it is so freaking okay to try.

Before she went to bed, Mare made a list of the pros and cons of doing the show. I have told her it is entirely her choice to make, but she must decide by Wednesday when we have to file the paperwork. I hope she does it.

But I can’t help thinking, how much harder is this going to get?

“MaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaMAAAAA!!” Renny shoots into the room, sobbing, dives under the covers.

“Renny!” Mare says, trailing in behind. “I know you’re scared, but you did great, Momma is so proud of you!!”

“What did you do, Lamby?” I ask. She is plastered to me, trembling.

“She did it Momma!! She jumped! From my bed to hers! JUST LIKE SHE PROMISED!”

A perfectly timed wimper from the huddle under the blanket.

“Renny … did it scare you?” I ask. She nods. “Then don’t do it,” I say. “We’ve talked about that. You have to know when to stop. This feeling you have is how you know you should have stopped. You’re too little to do that.” I turn to my eldest. “And YOU. I told you — Renny was right to stop. She’s too little to do that. You are not to encourage her.”

“I didn’t! That was the best part! She did it herself, because she promised, isn’t that great?”

“Mary I told you it was a dumb promise and she can’t do it — it’s dangerous, she’s too little, and she can get hurt.”

“I know. I was so impressed!”