Hi friend,
Thank you for your patience as I’ve spent the past few months taking in others’ writing more than producing my own. Trusting my own creative process is coming more easily these days. Still, I’ve missed connecting with you and it feels good to be back.
I don’t always write about culture explicitly, yet it is always in the forefront of my mind when I’m writing. Similarly, I don’t always feel a need to use the word culture when consulting with families, although it is at the root of all of our conversations. Culture is like air. It is everywhere, difficult, if not impossible, to see except in contrast.
This piece relies on a set of memories from a distinct setting to explore where my ideas about how to parent come from and how those interact with my embodied experience of being parented and parenting. All of these ideas and experiences are shaped by culture. The respectful parenting approach I was first exposed to as a nanny is not a universal truth, though it is often presented that way. While those tools and understandings have served me well and speak to a longing within myself, the alchemy of these adopted ideals and my less consciously accessible knowledge of how to relate to a child results in an intensity of sensation. Sometimes the tension is something I can make sense of. Sometimes it overwhelms. There's nothing like a public tantrum to raise the heat on a situation.
If you’re curious to do a little exploration of these ideas yourself, there is a prompt at the end to guide you.
Thanks for being here with me,
Facing the Elephants
I walk quickly past the herd of elephants without glancing up. It is the eye contact that sets off the panic. Their glassy stares shrink me, make me feel powerless and accountable all at once. The thunder of school groups running around the mezzanine above echoes through the hall to provide the sounds of the stampede. The animals charge forward, frozen in their movement, their skins pulled carefully over metal, clay and plaster frames. That is what the sign says, but my sweaty palms and the back of my neck are not convinced. They know what it is to be trampled.
The Museum of Natural History attracts many kinds of visitors. I have been each of the following at one time or another. The tourist with a must-see list. The field-tripper giddy to spend a day out of school. The novice nanny trying to keep up with her charge. The experienced nanny with a mental map of every bathroom, elevator, and exit. The graduate student with after-hours access. The parent with the stroller that floweth over with coats, snacks, water bottles, and toys that were definitely not going to leave the house. It is a different museum to each of us.
I know this museum better than my own apartment building. I’ve walked every staircase, sat in every theater, seen the exhibits change, seen the Christmas tree go up and come down. In my twenties, on rainy days, I would shuttle the children I nannied here to spend the morning exploring the exhibits at their pace. Now I bring my own children and sit on the same benches, sneak the same snacks to them in the same quiet corners. I try to remember the slowness of being 25 with nowhere to go and no urgency about naps or meltdowns or work that isn’t being attended to.
The first time I panic under the elephants I have someone else’s toddler in tow. A guard helps us find a place to sit and sip water until the room stops spinning. Afterwards, my boyfriend comes to meet us. The reason for inviting him is, of course, the elephant issue and wanting someone to make sure we make it home safely. There is also the matter of inspiring in him a vision of what things could look like for us in the hopefully not-so-distant future.
Shortly after he arrives, the toddler has a tantrum on the fourth floor under some dinosaur bones. Where others might stumble, I move with confidence. I have my toddler-taming toolbox pulled together from a blog about respectful parenting and some books the kid’s parents left lying around that make decent nap-time reading (this was before Instagram). I gracefully guide us out of the museum, meeting the child’s rage with self-satisfied steadiness. Unruffled, as it were. “You’re going to be such a great mom,” my boyfriend says afterwards, confirming my instinct that he should witness the master at work.
Several floors down, on the uptown side of the museum, is the planetarium. A glass cube containing a giant white sphere that houses two theaters, with several other smaller spheres in its orbit, the planetarium is a scale model of the universe. If the giant sphere represents the sun, which is much larger than you think, then the other spheres are the relative sizes of the planets in the Milky Way. The spheres can also be used to scale galaxies, stars, and even atoms–which are smaller than you think. Even smaller than that.
The theater in the bowl of the giant sphere exits onto a 360 foot long spiral ramp that tells the history of the universe. Every stride you take moves you a million years through time. You begin at the Big Bang and pass through the formation of the planets, the emergence of life on Earth, the age of the dinosaurs, and so on. At the very end of the ramp, human history is captured in the width of a single human hair. I’ve chased an errant toddler down this ramp countless times before finally taking the time to examine it closely during my night class in graduate school.
If the sphere is the size of the ego of a graduate student being granted special access to the private inner hallways and offices of a storied cultural institution, then the human hair is the size of that ego upon realizing how insignificant she actually is. So insignificant that her entire life can’t even be lifted off a bathroom floor with an unlicked finger. Conversely, if the human hair is the size of her ego by the time she reaches the end of the ramp, the giant sphere represents the freedom that anonymity grants her, however slippery and difficult to hold onto.
It is evening and our children are asleep. “None of my students feel free,” my now-husband says in some disbelief. He brought the question to the undergraduates enrolled in his class on art and the unconscious. “What do you mean by free?” I ask, knowing it is too late to start the conversation and still get enough sleep. “Maybe you have different ideas of what it means.” A pause. “Do you feel free?” he asks. My seven hours of sleep, which are already not enough, evaporate.
He drives the kids to school the following day. I stay behind and ugly cry on our tech-enabled stationary bike. A ragey girl pop-rock song blasts on repeat from a speaker thrown onto our bed. Her voice drowns out the encouraging words of my virtual instructor. I wallow in the question until my answer transmutes from desperation to indignation. I match then surpass my best time, leaving myself in the dust. “Who is free now?” I laugh triumphantly as he walks back into the soggy scene unfolding in our bedroom.
The blue whale that swims through the lower level of the Natural History Museum has a six foot long bandaid on its arm. The Hall of Ocean Life is a Covid vaccination site. Usually the cavernous room feels impossibly deep. You are already underwater when you enter it, the sun glistening on the ripples overhead. With the lights turned all the way up the floor is too close, the whale too heavy.
Our eldest gets her first shot of the series here, in a maze of temporary cubicles that are too angular. We are ushered through quickly. I bounce her infant sister, too young for the vaccine, and my husband tries to talk our eldest through the process. At the last moment, fear creeps in. “¡No estoy lista!” I recognize the panic in her eyes. “She’s not ready,” I affirm, heart pounding, stepping in with my tools. The child in the neighboring cubicle shrieks and tries to escape too many arms reaching towards them. They writhe on the floor. Our baby fusses. A young nurse appears twirling a fidget spinner on her forehead, “Look at me!” Her smile is too big. None of us are convinced, but it is over and there are high fives and stickers and more fidget spinners.
We sit and sip water together in the great hall, catching our breath with neighbors, more four year olds celebrating their birthday with a jab and lollipop. Fifteen minutes later we are free.
The elevator is by the elephant seals. A mating pair, they rest on land, immobile, almost crushed under their own weight. In life this is where they spend the least of their time by far, the width of a hair at most, in comparison to the time they spend in water, where they travel enormous distances and reach great depths.
In the theater, my youngest sits heavy on my lap. Heat radiates from her toddler head and I bury my face in her hair for a moment to feel it more fully. Her sister sits next to me, straight backed with her hands folded in her lap, her fingers interwoven, ready for the Serengeti 3-D to begin. Lady hands we called them when she was a baby. “A scene from a million years ago,” the narrator’s deep voice echoes. An elephant enters stage right and walks towards the center. More heat from her head. Under my hand, her tiny heart speeds up, bringing mine with it. The elephant turns to face us. I pull my daughter into me and close my eyes.
We exit the theater through the gift shop, of course. I take photos of the toys that are too big to buy now but a great idea for your birthday! It is too early to cave. We are sure to pass through at least another three gift shops before I am out of tools and they are out of patience. They will plead their case loudly, counting on my embarrassment to pave the way towards the treasure reflected in their glassy stares. In a moment of hesitation they will detect weakness and rush forward with a request so reasonable it only makes sense to acquiesce. Just some rock candy! I’ve always wanted to try rock candy! “You are such a great mom,” I imagine they’ll say, the curves of my satisfaction inflating like a giant orb. For a brief moment I forget myself in the fantasy only to wake up under their feet. A hair on the bathroom floor. “I wanted papá to open it for me!”
Prompt for reflection.
Start by finding a comfortable seat with your feet on the ground, if possible. Pay attention to how your weight falls through your feet and legs as they make contact with your seat or the ground. Spend a moment getting comfortable here. You can return to this place as needed.
Think back to a time when your ideas of how you want to raise your child(ren) have come into tension with the knowledge of parenting you were raised with. A good place to start might be considering a behavior your child engages in that you find emotionally challenging to navigate. Drop into the memory and notice what sensations you feel. Where in your body do you feel them?
If you’d like, you can post your response to this prompt or today’s essay in the comments section, or email me personally at hello@parentpueblo.com. I’d love to hear from you!
Me elsewhere.
This past February my husband, children, and I spent some time in San Antonio as residents at Parts & Labor.
“Located in SouthTown San Antonio, Parts & Labor is a non-profit organization which offers mid-career artist residents focused time, space, and resources in their pursuit of creative work. Tailored to meet the unique needs of caregivers, the residency provides the necessary support and infrastructure to “free up” artists to work.”
It was dreamy.
You can read Mike and my takes on the experience (and catch some of the paintings he made) on their website.
Here is a sneak peek: