I kiss my
sleeping daughters lightly, careful not to mark their cheeks
with lipstick, which I almost never wear, careful not to wake them.
I kiss my husband, who grunts, sort of, and slip down the stairs.
I wait until I am outside to put on my heels. I don’t want
the loud clack clack down hardwood floors to wake the girls. Too
many times I have been on my way out only to be called back in,
to nurse, to smooth a forehead wrinkled from a nightmare. Sometimes
I think my children don’t want me to have fun unless they’re
involved. They have a built-in radar system; “Mommy’s
having fun without us!” And they are fun, my children, and
most of the time I love our days together. But when I’m through,
I’m through. I give a lot, and unlike some moms from some
places or times, I believe I deserve a little something just for
me. So I sneak out, stand on my porch barefoot, feeling cool air
and warm moon on my skin. I smile, skip down the steps, wait until
I’m away from our block to turn my music up as loud as I like.
It’s Wednesday night; salsa night, my night… sometimes.
I went from being a true salsa junkie to being a mother… meaning
that I went from coming in at 3 am to nursing at 3, 4, 5, and/or
6 am. Meaning that I went weeks, months, without my salsa dancing
“fix.” Meaning that I went from high heels to practical
shoes, at least most of the time. Meaning that there are certain
outfits I will never wear again. Meaning that all my fun gets put
on hold if my children need me. But the girls are older now, and
usually sleep through the night, and so I go out when I can. What
stops me most often now is my own exhaustion, not their need.
People don’t like this; some people, and even though loving
to salsa dance is just a small part of my identity, it is an important
one. Mothers aren’t supposed to be having fun, especially
if some of that fun involves wearing sexy clothes, heels with spikes
that could kill, laughing and twirling with strange men. Mothers
are supposed to be self-sacrificing, plump, maternal. There are
men who I used to dance with pre-kid who won’t even talk to
me now, who judge me, think me a whore, or worse, a bad parent.
I should be home with my children, a paragon of virtue.
But I don’t care. I love salsa. It is something I do because
it makes me feel happy. It makes me feel free. The feeling of freedom
is an illusion, of course, because once you become a mother you
are never truly free, especially in your heart. But the yearning
for freedom is all the more precious because it is grounded in family;
obligation, love, commitment. I would be miserable if I had one
and not the other. And salsa gives me those moments of illusion.
It offers a way of being with other people in a friendly, social,
yes, at-times sensual way, without having to talk. Being with grown-ups
and not having to talk is a relief, especially when the conversation
for most of the day has been about Brother Bear and Madeline and
Pepito, all wonderful characters, for the most part, until the day
they moved in. In my daughter’s four-year-old head, Madeline
and Pepito are her cousins. Brother Bear is her punching bag, the
scapegoat for all her frustrations. She doesn’t have an imaginary
friend; she has an imaginary enemy. Instead of being mean to the
baby, she is mean to Brother Bear, which is infinitely better until
the millionth time you’ve had to be Brother Bear, screaming,
“No! Stop it! I don’t like you!” over and over
and over, so that in my head I am putting on my dancing shoes, doing
copas and triple turns effortlessly, even as I am nodding and smiling
and agreeing to play “Brother Bear jealousy about my ice cream
cone.”
Salsa is a part of my children’s lives, too, part of their
cultural heritage, really, as half-Latinas, and some of our best
times are when we put the music on and just dance. They are too
little to really learn how so we do our own thing, all holding hands
and running like in ring-around-the-rosy, the baby just wiggling
and shaking her butt. Many a day has salsa stopped the tears, totally
transformed whiny, bored energy. Many a day has it stopped my own
bitching, bored self. I always knew I would share my salsa love
with my daughters, somehow. Their Latina side is their father’s
side and there has always been a piece of me that has been sensitive
to the fact that I truly love something that is not a part of my
cultural heritage. I have some level of sensitivity, probably instilled
in me by my husband, to be aware of issues of appropriation, things
that are special and culturally unique being taken over, transformed,
exploited by the dominant culture. So what can I do? I would like
to say that I respect some other cultural norms and truths in the
“salsa world” but the reality is, it just isn’t
so. I hate the machismo bullshit and have no qualms about asking
a guy to dance if I feel like it. I do speak Spanish (poor but intelligible).
I donate money to an organization that supports Latino youth, I
buy salsa CDs whenever I can. I try to take salsa classes from Latino
instructors. I dream about dancing, having more time and energy.
I fantasize about being a professional dancer one day, even though
I know it’s too late (all the calls for auditions want people
younger than 28!) And I dance.
Pregnancy changed my dancing just as it changed everything else.
I swore I would dance no problem throughout my first pregnancy,
but threw up too much during the first trimester, was too tired
and sick of smoke thereafter. I went in for one last fling a couple
of weeks before my daughter was born. The club owner shook his head
at me, told me I’d better be careful. I couldn’t really
dance, of course, but it was enough at that time to just be there,
absorb the energy of everyone else, let people smile at me and pat
my belly, listen to the hundredth person say “your baby is
going to come out dancing if you keep this up!” I swore I
would be back out there in weeks, didn’t realize how exhausted
I would be from nursing and going back to work and just trying to
adjust… with my second daughter I harbored no such illusions.
I was out of the “scene” for almost four years. I didn’t
realize that by the time I got back to dancing I wouldn’t
hardly know anybody, would have to start over, make new salsa friends.
My salsa friends are totally different and separate from my real
friends, for the most part, and I like it that way. In my real life
I am an ardent feminist, an activist on all sorts of issues, loud
and sort of bitchy. In my real life I am a breastfeeding mom who
nurses anytime anywhere even though the baby is now 20 months, who
plays silly games and wears the same pair of jeans and a dirty t-shirt
and a raggedy-ass ponytail almost every day. In my real life I hold
crying children, clean up spilled milk and paint and scrape play-doh
off the dining room table that used to be my grandmom’s with
barely a complaint. I read books constantly. I play “Brother
Bear.” I am a master negotiator who only resorts to “Stop
it or you’re not getting chocolate” about forty-four
times a day. My arms are buff from pushing two girls in two swings
at the same time, sometimes for what feels like hours. I can walk
straight to the river otter exhibit in the zoo. I know the best
place to park for the Please Touch Museum. No one makes better pb
and honey sandwiches, although of course this is accomplished only
through daily feedback from my daughter: “too much honey today,
Mom. Not enough peanut butter.”
In my real life, in fact, I may be unrecognizable. A neighbor caught
me going out one night and didn’t recognize me. She called
me over a few days later. “Damn, girl, where we you going
the other night?” she says. “You were stepping out.
I said to myself, now damn, look at her. That’s how she got
herself such a fine man, looking like that. Gino looked at her and
then looked again.” We laugh. “Yeah, well,” I
say. “Most of my days are spent in sand or dirt or water.”
She smiles. “You’re a good mom, though,” she says.
Am I? I try hard to be. I take it very seriously. Being a mother
is definitely the most important thing in my life. It’s just
not the only thing in my life, and this is where I think I differ
from my own mother, at least. I don’t remember her doing things
that were selfish, just for her, like I do with my dancing. Maybe
she did, and I just never knew it, being self-absorbed as kids are.
But my girls know, even though I sneak out at night. They see my
heels thrown aside the next day and slip their little brown feet
into them. They try on my blue sequin halter top. “Are you
going dancing tonight, Mommy?” they ask, and if it’s
a Wednesday and things aren’t too crazy work-wise I smile
and say “Yes.” “We want to come!” they cry,
and the baby runs over to the stereo, points and says “dalsa.”
“Dalsa.” (She likes it better than kid’s music,
thank God).
I hear a lot of women who talk about the struggles of motherhood,
the ways in which they feel diminished by the constant daily grind,
the never-ending responsibility. Some say that they are less creative
after they become mothers. While I can totally relate on one level,
on another the opposite is true for me. Becoming a mother opened
up possibilities within me even as it closed things down logistically.
I always wanted to be a writer but never thought it was a true possibility.
After my daughter was born I began to take a writing class. It wasn’t
conscious at first, but as I began to have some small successes
I realized that I didn’t want to be a mother who had never
pursued her own dreams.
Somehow I understood that our children learn how to be from how
we are, not from how we act, and I wanted to be authentic. I wanted
my daughters to believe in their dreams because I believed in my
own, not because I told them to. I wanted my daughters to have first-hand
experience of a mother who loved herself. How could they love themselves
if I didn’t teach them how? This change was very profound
for me; I wasn’t willing to love myself for myself, but I
was willing to learn how to do it for my daughters. Of course we
all benefited. They have a mother who has things she loves outside
of them; those things refresh me, energize me, help me be more present
when I am with them. They have a momma who knows how to have a damn
good time. Hopefully, they see a model for how their lives can be.
Hopefully they will always allow themselves to have fun, do things
they love.
When
I ended up back in therapy after the birth of my second daughter
I began to work harder on some of these issues. My therapist gave
me an exercise in which I was to pick out a picture of myself in
which I felt I was my most essential self. I did try; it seemed
valuable; but I couldn’t do it. I don’t know if that
says something about my own state of mental health or if that says
something about the way we try to squeeze ourselves into categories
when truly we are wide wide wide. Infinite and wide. I looked at
pictures of myself pregnant; huge, taut belly, too much acne, too-long
hair that hangs over big breasts. I looked at pictures of myself
with my daughters, loved myself in this role even as I hated the
messy hair, sloppy sweatshirts. I don’t have any pictures
of my serious self, my writer self; maybe because it is so private,
so close to my heart. In some pictures you can catch a glimpse of
my wild self, the self much of society doesn’t want to know
about. Since I have become a mother I am much more cautious and
conservative than I used to be, but that wild daring girl is still
in there. I duly chastise my children when they defy me, but in
my head I am laughing, recognizing my own indomitable spirit and
hoping they will always be strong enough to stand up to authority.
I see my daughter flirting already and hope that she will be more
free to enjoy her sexual energy; less tortured, less ill-educated.
I plan the wild things we will do together once the girls are older,
the places we will travel to together, the long hikes, the books
we will share.
When I quit my part-time
job to stay home with my 9-month old daughter I was surprised at
how good I felt and how concerned certain friends were about the
state of my feminist values. I remember thinking, “huh?”
Maybe I was just too sleep-deprived to realize I was selling out
on feminism. The truth was with the benefit cuts we had just endured
at my job I was working to pay for day care; but I desperately wanted
to be home anyway. I stayed home for a little over a year, no paid
employment at all. Fortunately I was in a position (barely) to do
so. What the experience did to my identity was fabulous! Little
by little I felt layers of stress peel away; the stress of running
out the door every day by 7:15 with fresh pumped milk and plenty
of diapers, the stress of rushing in to pick up my baby only to
have her take a minute or two to recognize me, the stress of a job
that, while valuable, focused more on paper than people. Being able
to focus in completely on my new daughter allowed me to re-experience
the world in beautiful, powerful ways. I had a close friend who
was staying home with his son; we checked in each morning at 8:00
am, with plans for parks or coffee shops or train rides. The truth
is, I never could have been a stay-at-home mom if I’d actually
had to stay at home. But I was out in the world, not shut up in
a dingy office, and I loved almost every minute of it. I never questioned
my feminist values. Staying home was not only my choice but my desire,
and I was just grateful that we could afford it. It would have been
different if I had wanted to work and was forced to stay home; or
vice versa, like too many women now under fascist TANF laws. But
for the first time in my life, maybe, I was doing exactly what I
wanted. I didn’t have to meet someone else’s deadlines,
schedules, or agenda…except my daughters’, and we were
so intimately connected that it rarely felt like a sacrifice.
Much of what I experienced
in my initial transition to motherhood was a newfound sense of power.
Power, pure and simple. I had longed for a natural birth and worked
hard to have one. Yes, I hate needles and anybody wielding one,
but it was more than that. On an intuitive level I just felt that
birth was something that should be experienced. Birth is so intimate,
so personal; each woman will bring her own attitudes and philosophies
to her birth, make her own meaning out of it. For me, birth felt
like something spiritual; sacred. No one could have prepared me
for how joyful I felt giving birth. It was absolutely the most exhilarating
experience I could have had. Which doesn’t mean it wasn’t
painful; I certainly experienced pain in birth. But I also experienced
a new awareness of myself as a woman, a sense of gratitude and awe
for my body which had produced such an amazing, beautiful gift.
I carried that sense
of strength, power, and accomplishment with me into my everyday
life. In many ways the change within myself was not that conscious.
It happened deep in my core, without me even having to think about
it, without even being aware of it. Suddenly I believed, if I could
dream it, I could do it. Fear, insecurity, logistics, finances;
those were nothing more than minor hurdles to my dreams. That may
sound corny, but it is true for me. I would not be the person I
am today had I not experienced birth, had I not slipped and foundered
and found my own way into mothering. Both things taught me to trust
my inner voice, to heed my inner wisdom, to honor my own needs and
desires. I did put many of my own desires on hold to meet the demands
of my children and family, and I still do. But I seek a balance.
As the girls grow they can understand more about being part of a
family, of everybody working together to meet each others’
needs. As the mother in the family, I am responsible for meeting
my own needs as well as theirs.
Fortunately I came to
mothering in my 30’s and I felt as if I had deep reserves,
plenty to give without replenishing, for a while, at least. After
my children were born I felt as if I lived in a parallel universe,
a sort of underground sea; the real world kept happening without
me, floated by once in a while, bumped into me like a piece of driftwood.
I was in a sort of suspended place of paradise in which my children
and I discovered each other, learned how to get along. I could stay
in this underground world for a long time without needing to come
up for air, just floating along with my babies.
Still. I held the dancer
girl inside, kept her in check when I needed to, pulled her out
and brushed her off and took her out for a spin when I could. The
first time I went out after my first daughter was born was just
six weeks after her birth. It was February, and the moon was full,
the air icy. I went to a smoke-free club and danced three songs
before my milk started leaking and I left, mortified. I don’t
think I even tried to get back out again until the summer. Many
friends I had made in the salsa world had also moved on, moved away.
I had to make new friends and it felt harder this time around. For
one thing, not only was I a mother, I was older too. My body was
different. In many ways it was better, especially in terms of how
I felt about it, but you couldn’t see that from the outside
looking in. I had stretch marks, a little belly that wouldn’t
go away, more lines in my face, more grey in my hair. I went out
anyway. I held on to my salsa identity like a drowning woman hanging
on to life preserver.
My salsa haven is small,
dark, filled with beautiful women and men who look good and smell
even better. The music is too loud, the place is too crowded, but
I love it. I am not a great dancer. If the guy is a really good
lead I can follow along OK, but if he’s light and talented
I tend to get lost. I hang in there, keep taking classes, dancing
whenever I can, because salsa feeds my soul. There is just something
about the music, the form of the dance. With the right guy, I lose
myself completely, achieve an altered state of consciousness. It’s
like being drunk without a hangover. Some of it is physiological
I’m sure, an endorphin response, but some of it is magical,
too. Salsa music is the most beautiful music in the world. When
I hear it, I feel full of hope. Listening to it, deep down, I just
know that everything will be OK; we will find a way to end poverty,
violence, war, and hunger. There is a future of peace and abundance
for all beings on earth; we just need to dance and drum our way
into it. Dancing salsa allows me to just be. I’m not thinking
about anything else; usually I’m not thinking at all. In my
salsa world, there are people from all over. Young, old, black,
white, Asian, Latino of course. Doctors dance with the guys who
deliver pizza, secretaries spin with executive directors, attorneys
are holding hands with the guy that cuts lawns all day. Salsa is
our great equalizer. No one has to know or care how I spend my days,
so long as I can follow their lead and not step on their feet! I
am anonymous, sort of; all I have to do is dance. Oh yeah, and I
can be just sexy enough to stay out of trouble!
So this is what motherhood
did to me: allowed me to be, first and foremost, a woman who believes
in her dreams and her growth and her freedom. Many of my dreams
involve my family; my two beautiful daughters, my progressive husband
who tolerates my salsa addiction (sort of). Motherhood gave me the
courage to write, to say what I think and leave it at that, to open
my own small business. Motherhood made me even more aware of how
important it is to love and support each other as women. In spite
of the fact that I quit my job to stay home for a time and I love
a dance in which I follow the lead of a (gasp!) man, motherhood
has reinforced my feminist values, inspired me to stay active in
whatever way I can until things change for real. Motherhood has
forced me to find “mommy shoes.”(pink tattered sandals
in summer, scuffed hiking boots in winter.) I also have my work
shoes(typical, professional footwear; black or brown). I have my
bare feet, which connect me to the earth, which feel good on porch
cement. And I have my heels; silver, gold, black, red, and blue.
And as long as I can dance I will keep a pair around, just in case…
because if there is anyone who deserves to have a good time, it’s
those of us who are raising our kids, struggling to hold on to who
we are as we stretch and shift and lean into whoever it is we will
become.
mmo
: september 2005 |