the good old days

I totally want to throw a groaning party if I ever have another child. (It’s a million times more cool than eating a placenta, which is, um, really disgusting and weird. Not even the new-ageiest of my birth class buddies was able to go through with that.)

…the visitors and attendants might also be offered groaning cake, groaning pie, groaning bread or groaning cheese, depending on local tradition. In some areas a groaning cake would be offered to the groaning woman (as if she would be interested!)…. Another variation of tradition was that when the woman was going to be ‘churched’ after the birth (to be ceremonially ‘cleansed’ and welcomed back to the flock) she carried a piece of the groaning cake to give to the first person that she met along the way.

I’m not actually going to throw this party while I’m in labor, of course. Not only is that probably a breach of etiquette, but really, the last thing on my mind would be “has everybody had enough cake”? But it’d be great fun to be thrown one, perhaps a few days after the kid arrives. Better than a baby shower in which you’re given goofy, cute, useless chachkes — instead you get cake/pie/cheese and all the women can complain about childbirth!

And writing that, I realize that female bonding can be incredibly weird…

Thanks to The Old Foodie for the inspiration

I always found Friday the 13th to be so seriously underwhelming. “OOOOOOH, you don’t want to do THAT!” my friends would squeal about anything totally random. “It’s FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH! It’ll go wrong!”

Today, June 13th, is my son’s birthday, and it is going to go beautifully. Babies are great: everything is so totally extreme to them. He will smear cake all over himself and think that is the Best Thing Ever. His older sister will open presents for him and he will think that is the Best Thing Ever. He will be bounced and cuddled and cooed over and he will think that is the Best Thing Ever. He will probably fall and bonk his head and that is the Worst Thing Ever, but then he gets picked up and comforted which is the Best Thing Ever. And that stacking shape toy thing that’s his present… you guessed it, Best Thing Ever.

I am immune to friggatriskaidekaphobia because I have a frigging awesome baby party to attend. Booyah. I don’t even care about the forecast of rain, because even if it comes true, Baby Boy has taught me that rain can be the Best Thing Ever.

So thanks, Frigg, if you’re actually responsible for fertility, because the kids are loads of fun and very educational.

It started out rather innocently. One day there was a huge rumble of thunder, the normal ramp-up of a thunderstorm echoing around the hills of southern Indiana. My two-year-old comes running in, crying, “There’s a bear outside!” I laugh, and tell her, “No, sweetie, that’s thunder.”

“Ohhhhh,” she says, eyes growing wide. “Thunder Bear!”

And the myth grew from there. Whenever Thunder Bear growled, my daughter shrieked in half-real fear. Eventually, she decided he must ride a motorcycle around the sky — a Midwest thunderstorm can be quite loud and persistent, exhausting the vocalizing power of even the most persistent of angry ursines. If it started raining while we were in the car, she declared Thunder Bear was riding along with us on the roof. At times, she would feed him, tossing pretend food through a pretend roof hole.

Now, two years later, she has decided that Thunder Bear is a god and told us so at a recent Shabbat meal. While we’re hardly the most observant of Jews, it did seem a little inappropriate. To abide by the first commandment, though, we made sure she understood that G-d is number one and there are no others before him — they’re welcome to hang out after him. But I fear it’s only a matter of time before we’re starting to leave out sacrificial bowls of honey to propitiate Thunder Bear (or attract him, since the Midlands of South Carolina seem to be drought-prone).

I can’t wait to introduce her to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Warning: this is probably irrelevant to anybody but me, my spouse, my brother-in-law, and their parents. Sorry. Ignore unless you’re bored.

When your son graduates from college, the least you can do is go out to dinner with him. Otherwise you are BAD PARENTS. BAD!!! I don’t care how much you stuffed yourself on free cookies at the post-graduation reception, you can sit through one damn meal and have a day that is about HIS success, not YOUR neurotic self-indulgent fear of aging.

Also, when you’re visiting us, and planning on getting into town “sometime today”, could you please give us a phone call to let us know you’ve arrived? Especially considering one of the highways you were supposed to travel on has a few gaping holes in it since Indiana is experiencing extensive flooding. We realize you don’t care much about your sons (ref. previous paragraph) but for some ridiculous reason WE would like to know that YOU are not dead.

Then you ice the cake by calling up the next morning and complaining that we already made plans (in other words, went to work) and dropped our kids off in daycare? True, we could have just left them at home in the hopes that Nana and Grampa hadn’t drowned last night, but I guess I’m just a crazy overprotective bitch secretly devising ways to prevent you from seeing them until four in the afternoon.

Thank you. Please feel free to return to your normal life now, I’m done. At least, I hope I am, because they’re in town for another week.

My mother always chided us to practice our manners, even at home, because “Some day you might be invited to the White House, and you wouldn’t want to have bad table manners there!” While this may depend somewhat on whether you’re a particular fan of the President who invites you, it’s a valid enough point — we practice good table manners so we don’t look like uncivilized, disgusting pigs when we’re dining with other people. So far, the most I have been able to apply this to is business dinners, as it is a bad career move to eat like a slob (especially if you’re a working woman, your manners must be impeccable). I expect that the White House is rather far off in the future.

For today’s Etiquette Instruction, we return to the classroom film format which I love so well. Emily Post herself narrated this 1947 mental hygiene film called Table Manners.

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Manners for the most formal dinner party are exactly the same as they are at home!

Translation: Emily Post is very formal at home.

This is a surprisingly high-level discussion of table manners, showing adults instead of children as its subject. I suspect the target audience was not in a classroom, even a high school one, but rather the film was made for showing at the Emily Post Institute itself. (Maybe they had etiquette classes or something. I can’t find much information on its history, and their website publishes various points of etiquette rather than a history of the Institute and its mission.)

But back to the film! I found it hilarious that there is advice on how to eat spaghetti. That’s probably the one meal that I would never imagine being served at a dinner party — maybe it was considered fancy in the 40’s! Finally, I learned that I don’t eat soup correctly (I tip the spoon towards me, not away) and have never done quite the right thing with soup spoons. Damn, ma, why didn’t you teach me that — now I’ll be the laughing stock of that White House dinner!

Christians (and, really, anybody who tries to shop during the month of December) always complain that Christmas is becoming too commercialized. But Mother’s Day is what is driving me nuts this year. Even grocery stores have huge posters up reminding you to buy something for your mother. Gift Cards! Clothing! Jewelry! Flowers! Cake, cookies, pastries, chocolate! It’s annoying to watch the harassment since I’m supposed to be the target of this generosity. It’s even more annoying that the stores I actually need stuff from at the moment (Lowe’s and Home Depot, since I’m doing a fair amount of home repair) don’t mention a thing about Mother’s Day… wonder why…

A friend told me about the gift she got from her thirteen-year-old last Mother’s Day: a diamond ring. He’d listened to the advertising, and found the jewelry store’s advice to be particularly compelling — and spent what was for him a fairly large chunk of change. She was a little weirded out (diamonds are usually from the boyfriend or spouse, not children), but mostly upset at having to figure out how to phrase a response: she loved the sentiment, but couldn’t possibly keep it. “He tried so hard,” she said, “and I was just thinking, Damn, this is wrong, we have to take this back, but how do I tell him?”

Anna Jarvis initially strove to recognize the contributions of her own mother, who was active in her community in addition to being, well, a mother. Shortly after it was written into law as a national holiday in May of 1914, however, Anna rapidly regretted the commercialization.

Jarvis, says her New York Times obituary, became embittered because too many people sent their mothers a printed greeting card. As she said, “A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment!”

For kids that are grown and away from home: what most mothers want most is to know that their children are happy and thriving. If you’re not nearby, write a letter about your great accomplishments and hopes (inside the printed card is acceptable nowadays). If you’re reasonably close, visit and tell her about your accomplishments and hopes. Bitching about your problems is a big no-no.

If the kids are still fairly young, Mom wants nothing more than to get away from the kids. Babysitting is an ideal Mother’s Day gift.

Oh yeah, and to the guy at work who was complaining about his newborn daughter arriving right before Mother’s Day last year, so he “had” to buy flowers for his wife for another holiday: fuck you, you selfish little shit — she just gave birth, the least you can do is buy her a plant.

We watched The Shelter last night. One of the classic Twilight Zone episodes, it’s a revealing glimpse over the thin line between perfection and panic that was the Cold War.

No moral, no message, no prophetic tract: Just a simple statement of fact. For civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized. Tonight’s very small exercise in logic, from the Twilight Zone.

Thank G-d that my area of the world is civilized on the surface. I don’t relish the idea of dealing with gut-wrenching fear for the lives of one’s children. And maybe someday nobody will have to.

Enough philosophizing, I need to get some sleep!

Parental respect is something that I really struggle with as a “mental hygiene” topic. On one hand, it’s the most ancient forms of respecting authority (codified in the fifth commandment), and they do things in your best interest (as well as they understand it). On the other, the notion that parents are infallible is hardly correct, and part of growing up is realizing that you’re an individual and don’t have to be exactly like them.

If push comes to shove, I’m raising my kids to obey me. Question all you want, but do as I say until you’re not living in my house any more. I expect some rebellion, especially once they arrive in adolescence, but hopefully they listen enough to stay out of overly serious trouble.

Anyhow, here’s the 1950 Coronet Instruction Film, “Appreciating Our Parents.” Tommy is basically spoiled rotten until he sees his parents washing the dishes together and realizes his life would be horrible without their hard work.

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(I love the scene where Mother gets her allowance at the same time as Tommy.)

What is most interesting is that Tommy decides to go from useless load to ultra-helpful, all on his own initiative. Sadly, it’s school that had to guilt children into this attitude by showing them this film, instead of parents guilting children into doing their share around the house.

Advertising is a gold-mine what people thought could help them achieve social normality. Which, in this case, included wearing high heels at home and ensuring your children read “a rich treasury of stories [which] forms his opinions of right and wrong” so that “during his most pliable years, he is molded to respect his community.” From what I can see of used copies for sale on Amazon, it might have simply been a sort of encyclopedia; it’s not clear if it evolved into that from its original “development plan.” This appears to have been the same company that put out World Book.

Hopefully I’ll stumble across some copies of this in an antique store someday — I want to read some of those ways to “recognize behavior situations before they become ‘problems’”…