The fine women over at The Mommybloggers went and featured me yesterday. I had to think about accepting the honor, for as you know I have been publicly not so hot on the whole mommyblogger label.
Perhaps a couple of web skimmers have noticed that I put up a page that lists the last nine books I've read. I finished this book last night and it unexpectedly gave me room to unpack some of my motherhood baggage.
In it, the main male character, Eric, is everso much in denial about his passive aggressive misogyny, and to explain the roots of this behavior the narrator dips back into Eric's childhood and describes how his mother silently submitted to his belittling father, and thus gradually Eric came to lose respect for her and, oh la la, women in general.
And since, Hey! That sounded like a partly cloudy day in my family, too, I got one of those literary flashes of self-recognition and I said to myself, Self, is this why you rejected motherhood for so long, and still feel somewhat conflicted about it? Because your main mothering role model was the sweet but passive and self-protecting wife of a controlling father? And which of these two ski instructors did you come to guiltily identify with more, Self, the one who watched from the bottom of the bunny hill or the one who pushed everyone out the helicopter door?
This fierce and closed-off independence of mine.
How come it feels like I haven't had a close female friend since 1982?
*defeated, cheek-puffing sigh*
Still with me? Your canteen must be dry by now.
So, I don't know. You spend your whole life telling yourself to shut up, and for what? It still has to come out somehow.
And somewhere, someone started the Internet's one-billionth blog.