Love and care

Reading Oprah magazine can be a dangerous thing, especially when one is prone to adopting all self-help spiels within a ten yard radius. I have to gently remind myself that these articles are not direct personal missives that I must immediately employ.

I have a great idea for a memoir! I'll follow all the advice ever given by Oprah and her minions for a year and .... oh wait.

Martha Beck's work, though, often speaks to me. I loved her memoir about the birth of her child, "Expecting Adam", and her monthly Oprah columns always seem to highlight something I struggle with.

This latest one- about the difference between loving someone and caring for them- is no exception. In it, Ms. Beck recounts telling a client of hers: "I love you. I don't care what happens to you."

Now I think Ms. Beck is clearly going for shock value here. To the overly sincere among us, the thought of saying "I don't care what you do" to someone we love is incomprehensible. Of course we care what they do. We care about everything.

Caring, Ms. Beck says, "with it's shades of sadness, fear and insistence on specific outcomes- is not love. In fact, when care appears, unconditional love often vanishes."

She is not talking about parenting here, clearly. As parents we need to care, do we not? I care whether my kids brush their teeth, act safely, treat others respectfully. I believe it is my job to do so. How else will they become healthy, loving, productive members of society? Aren't we supposed to keep our eyes, at least partially, on "specific outcomes", if only of the "don't wind up an axe-murderer" variety?

Or maybe this reveals an inherently cynical, Calvinist, pessimistic view of humanity on my part. On some level, I assume that if parents loosen their grip on their child's every behavior, the next generation will fall into a pit of depravity.

I know this is an essential part of my work as a mother: to detach just enough, to give my kids the space to be their own imperfectly perfect snowflake selves. As Ms. Beck tells us: "Real healing, real love comes from people who are both totally committed to helping- and able to emotionally detach."

This has long been my problem. This is why I didn't go into social work when I graduated from college: I had no ability to emotionally detach from the people I met when working in my social work internships. I cried into my pillow every night about the kids I worked with in the special ed classroom. I overextended myself when working as an advocate for battered women, taking their calls late at night in my dorm room, never saying no. I have always been committed to helping- and completely unable to emotionally detach.

Is emotional detachment, on some level, a healthy thing for a mother to have? And if so, how the heck can I get some?

I get invested in the people I love. So invested that I begin to think that I know best how they should be living. So invested that I think if they would just do xyz....

I've been noticing this since I read the article: when I have an internal reaction to the behavior of someone I love, am I trying to control their behavior? Can I let go of what I think they should be doing and how I think they should be doing it and just let them be? Can I do all that and still love them, unconditionally? This has been so helpful in dealing with the adults in my life. I believe this bit of Ms. Beck's advice is deeply useful.

But, of course, as a mother of young children, I immediately come back to my relationship with my girls. I am struck by how much time and effort and CARE I put into mothering them. So much so that I care deeply about what they do and how they do it. That investment is part of mothering, in these younger years, isn't it? They are still learning so much and it is my job as a parent to teach them what is expected of them.

So how and when do I move to loving them unconditionally, emotionally detaching from what exactly they are doing? How and when do I know to relax the reigns of correcting and structuring and teaching and just let them be who they are?


It seems obvious that we as parents will get this balance wrong at some point. We will not care enough about what our kids are doing, not give them enough structure or high enough expectations and they will never learn manners or self protection or the satisfaction of achievement.

And if we care too much for too long? We will surely foster dependence and resentment, stunting their self-awareness and our own lives in the process.

I do not want to be a mother who lives for her kids. I do not want to be so invested in their lives that I fall apart at their eventual departure from this nest. I do not want to care so much what they do and how they do it that I forget to just love them.

Media + pregnancy = INSANITY

Perhaps I should not be allowed to watch television these days (though with my delicate [read: NAUSEATED] condition, I can't seem to do much else). I cannot be trusted to watch or read ANYTHING right now without becoming weepy, enraged, terrified or all three at once.

The Let California Ring commercial? Big sloppy wet tears. May we all know true love and commitment.

Oprah- If she isn't covering child predators (F you very much for the new insomnia fodder, Oprah), she's covering "dry drowning". Zoe will never swim or play in or near a pool EVER AGAIN.

I'm a crazy person lately about political coverage and have to stop reading it all. Smallest deal but the one that's sticking in my hormonal craw: mention of Gov. Palin as"anti-abortion". WE ARE ALL ANTI-ABORTION, PEOPLE. Do you really think pro-choice people sit around like "yay for abortion!"?!?! Abortion is a choice that women feel compelled to make for many reasons and we all should work together to make them safe, legal and rare. The difference between those of us who are for and against the RIGHT to an abortion is just how safe and legal it should be. Can we all just agree that rare is every one's goal? And that maybe reasonably appropriate sex education can help us meet that goal?? (Oy. Don't get me started. Please excuse me while I wipe the foam from my mouth.)

And then Catherine Newman has to go and make me sob, like only she can. Apparently it's not even safe for me to read blogs at the moment.

Deceptive? hardly. Delicious? hmmmmm.....

I can safely say that Z is officially a picky eater. She basically eats milk in all its forms, fruit and some bread-type products. Anything else is a crap shoot.

I know where this comes from. Though I am currently well known among my friends as a healthy eater (chocolate obsession aside), my mother swears I didn't eat a single vegetable until I was 15. She used to boil pasta in some green vegetable's cooking water so that I would at least get some trace amounts of greenery into my system. As I watch Z vehemently fend off even the remotest proximity of broccoli, I know exactly who to blame.

So I was primed and ready for the hard sell from Oprah when Jessica Seinfeld was on to talk about her new book Deceptively Delicious.

First of all, do you really expect me to believe that Jessica Seinfeld, who's married to Mr. Moneybags Seinfeld, actually cooks all her family's meals?!?! That's certainly the picture she paints in this book. I don't know about you, but hiring a beck-and-call cook to make healthy, tasty meals for me is always a part of my strike-it-rich fantasy.

Also, I have to rant just a bit about the crazy infomercial that Oprah gave this book. She was cackling and hollering after every bite during the taste test. She was slapping her thighs and wiping her mouth like this was the most amazing food she's ever eaten.

Well, I'm here to tell you that after my exhaustive (read: one recipe only) experimentation, Deceptively Delicious is a load of hooey that .... uh.... maybe works?

On Monday night (First mistake: never, ever take on complicated dinner recipes on a Monday night.) I made the "rice balls". The name alone should have warned me away. I chose it because it had pureed chicken (eeewwww) in it and I hoped to get Z to ingest some chicken sometime this millennium.

First, I had to make the purees (Second mistake: you're supposed to be all organized and spend your Sunday nights with your veggies and your Jerry Seinfeld and your Cuisinart making ziploc baggies full of pureed spinach for your week's worth of fine dining. I, uh, didn't do that.). I roasted butternut squash and sweet potatoes during Z's nap and pureed them. Then, after CG got home so I could pass the Z baton one hour before dinner time, I set out to make the hugest mess my kitchen has ever seen. I dirtied every pan and bowl and spatula in the house and spattered grease on every horizontal and most vertical surfaces in the kitchen.

Behold the results of several hours of cooking!:



Yeah, they look about as good as they tasted.

By the time I dragged my tired and oil-splattered self to the table, I was grumbling full force about my hours and energy wasted only to be greeted by the sweet face of my daughter eating RICE BALLS with pureed chicken, sweet potatoes and butternut squash in them. She happily ate about 4 of them while CG and I stupidly grinned at each other and sucked a few down ourselves before taking turns eating some chips in the kitchen.

I think it will be awhile before I attempt another recipe from this book. I like that the veggies are supposed to be hidden but I just don't see how that's possible. These rice balls had a distinct orange hue from the butternut squash and sweet potatoes. I can only imagine how they would have looked and tasted if I had actually used spinach or broccoli puree.

I have some culinary ambitions and I have the desire to get Z to eat vegetables at some point in her life but I'm not sure I have the time and energy necessary to devote to this insanity right now. Spinach brownies? Not any time soon!