Mendolonium

At a recent doctor’s appointment for Thomas his physician referred to me as “Mommy”.  As in “Mommy, how many ear infections has Thomas had this year?” and “Don’t worry, your Mommy will be right here”.  Apparently the doctor didn’t notice me shooting him my trademark look of scorn.  The look that I often use successfully to make grown men recoil and stammer, “What’s wrong?”  The doctor couldn’t have known that I despise being called “Mommy” – so much so that I don’t even allow my own children to call me by that name.  But the doctor certainly did know that my name wasn’t “Mommy”.  I had introduced myself to him as “Gina” as soon has he had walked into the room.  The doctor used Thomas’ name easily, but somehow he never used my name once.  Later that night I wondered aloud whether or not he would have called Jeff, “Daddy” had Jeff been the one to take Thomas to the appointment rather than me.  Jeff thought I was overreacting.  I was left with the feeling that I had underreacted.  Although the replacement of my name with the more anonymous and diminutive “Mommy” bothered me deeply I had said nothing; not wanting to offend the man that would be performing surgery on my son.

Before they were born, I never gave any thought to what my kids would call me.  I suppose that like most other American children of the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s I had begun by calling my mother “Mama”.  I now simply call her “Mom”.  Although I am almost certain there must have been an age that I called her “Mommy” I simply can’t remember every using that term with her.  I was delighted when both of my children started off with the universal call of “Mama” as one of their first words.  Somewhere around Thomas’ second birthday I noticed that some of the kids began to call their mothers “Mommy”.  It was then that I realized how the very word “Mommy” sounded to me like nails being hammered into a coffin containing my identity as a strong, smart woman. I honestly couldn’t care less what other kids called their mothers:  “Mama”, “Mommy”, “Mom”, or by their first names.  But I care deeply about what my children and others call me.  To my boys, I am “Mama”.  Jeff jokes with me that sometimes “Mama” makes me sound like a large black woman.  The thought makes me smile, as I think of a strong black woman keeping her boys in line.  It contrasts in my head with my mental image of “Mommy”, a harried young woman in yoga pants running her kids to soccer practice in her SUV.  There is no one right way to be a mother:  it doesn’t matter what skin color you have, what you drive, what you wear, or what your kids call you.  But somehow I identify with being a “Mama” rather than a “Mommy”.

Earlier this evening I was speaking with a colleague who had read this blog and suggested focusing it as a “mommy blog”, encouraging me that there was a market in such blogging.  I clearly write about my family a great deal; stories of Thomas and Theo are woven throughout these pages.  And I have actually thought on many an occasion that this blog needs a more tightly defined mission; be it mothering, sustainable cooking, or activism.  I actually do have a food blog in the works, but to limit myself here to “mommy blogging” seems as much a straightjacket to me as the word “Mommy” itself.

Thomas tried out the name “Mommy” for me a few times and I gently, but firmly told him that I didn’t like that name and not to use it with me.  When he asked why I told him, “I don’t completely understand why I don’t like it, but I know that I don’t.  Somehow it makes me feel small, not like myself.  I really like being called ‘Mama’ and I am so glad that I get to be your Mama.”  I followed up with, “You don’t like to be called ‘Tommy’ right?  It’s the same thing.  Why don’t you like to be called ‘Tommy’”?     I saw the light bulb of understanding go off over Thomas’ head and he replied thoughtfully, “I don’t like ‘Tommy’ because it is boring.  Thomas is interesting.  Let’s both call each other what we like.”  It is moments like that, that make me proud to be his Mama.

“Mommy” might be easier for a busy physician to remember, it might be what all the other kids call their parents, and it might be a better way to reach an audience with my writing, but it is not who I am.  Thomas has his surgery tomorrow and I have made a promise to myself that I will make sure that his doctor calls both of us by our proper names.

The week after I graduated from high school I took a portion of the very generous money that I received and went out to our local Wal-Mart.  Among other things, I bought plates and dishtowels, an iron and a little ironing board; everything I thought I might need to set up my own mini-household at college – more than three months distant.  (Aside:  I am not entirely sure why I thought I would be doing much ironing in college – no one at Caltech, including me, gave a damn whether or not my clothes were wrinkled).  In June I began packing my room at home in boxes as if by being ready to go I could somehow make the time pass more quickly.  High school was fine, I wasn’t running away from anything; I had an exciting summer planned: I would earn my private pilot’s license and had a lead in the local production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”.  I was happy, yet I could not restrain myself from living in the future.

I’ve always been this way.  I recall disliking the other children in my kindergarten class; they all seemed so young and immature to me; I wanted them to grow up so they would be more interesting.  I dreamed longingly of how much better things would be in third grade.  I thought of middle school as merely a necessary evil to be endured before high school.  High school was simply preparation for college.  And there was never any question that I would go to college straight after high school.  I picked the college I attended primarily because it was the best.   (It didn’t hurt that they paid for me to visit unlike their rival MIT and that the weather there was 70 degrees and sunny during said visit).  After college grad school was a given and I began a Ph.D. program in astronomy without giving a great deal of thought to it – it was simply what one did with a bachelor’s degree in planetary science.  After two quarters in the program I was utterly miserable and my wise soon-to-be husband asked the obvious (to everyone but me) question, “Why don’t you just quit?”  I quit and took the first job that was offered to me; never even contemplating taking some time to figure out what my next step in life should be.  I knew that the job was “wrong” for me in oh so many ways but I thought of it as a means to an end.  I was thrilled at the salary – four times my graduate student stipend and visions of being able to be more “wealthy” than I had ever been danced in my head. I got married, a good thing overall, but something I rushed – seeing no point in waiting.  I was just shy of my 23rd birthday.  I received a diagnosis of severe endometriosis and an edict to “try to have your children before you are thirty” which sent me in to panic preparation mode:  we bought a house just after I turned 24, in large part because I wanted a home for my, as yet, non-existent children.  I took a new, better, job again knowing that it was wrong for me.  I went to grad school and got a master’s degree, again, because it seemed like the next logical step, pushing away the thought that would creep into my head during an advanced propulsion class:  “Wow.  I could not care less about this.”  It was as if I was on a hamster wheel – always running away from where I was, but never going anywhere I wanted to be.

People talk about stopping to smell the roses, but until recently I don’t think I even noticed roses existed.  That all changed in November 2006 the moment Thomas came into the world.  When Thomas was a baby it seemed that I wanted life to slow down, rather than speed up.  Although I looked forward to a future of sleeping through the night and older kids I was in no hurry for it to come.  I feel the same way with Theo, he woke up three times last night between 8:00 pm and midnight, and I truly didn’t mind.  He’s growing up so fast that I savored the minutes spent singing, rocking him to sleep, and stroking his wispy hair.

After I started a pastry and baking program a couple of months ago I had something of an epiphany:  that very few decisions in my life have actually been decisions. Rather than a conscientious weighing of options I have simply continued on a path that I am not even sure when or where I began.  I am loving culinary school, however, I don’t think that, in the end, a pastry chef is what I will be.  But I am so thankful that even though it was a “rash” choice made over the course of only a few days, culinary school was truly my decision.  In addition to the sheer joy of baking large volumes of bread and other delights two nights a week, school has given me the joy of freeing me from “the wheel”.

But the lure of the wheel is strong.  I work part-time at my paying job, 20 hours week.  As of this morning I had already worked 20 hours this week (and them some).  Yet, I was tempted to go into work today; not because I was asked to, not because I had a particularly interesting project to work on, but because I felt that I hadn’t done enough.  There really was no reason for me to go into work other than sheer masochism and yet I still considered it.  It is going to take a long time – perhaps the rest of my life, to stop listening to the voice in my head that tells me what I “should” do and start listening to myself.

In the end, I didn’t go to work today.  I wrote here to leave a record of my thoughts, to proclaim that I will live my life in the here and now instead of allowing it to lead me.  I will make the decisions.

When the police asked us to come back into our home to tell them what was missing after our house was burglarized we immediately noticed the absence of the camcorder, the digital camera, the Wii, and the contents of Thomas’ money jars.  Although it now seems obvious, I didn’t, at first, think to look in my nightstand for my jewelry.  I kept my jewelry in two clear plastic organizers, one neatly labeled “Gold” and the other “Silver”.  The organizers were easy to use – I could see all of my jewelry (except my pearl necklaces – they were too large for the boxes) at a glance.  The organizers were also easy to steal; as soon a I remembered to check for them I knew, with certainty, that they were gone.  By sheer luck, I still have the three white pearl necklaces that were kept separately from the rest of my jewelry.  They live in a small, ornate antique box from my Grandma Doris which which was atop my nightstand but somehow went unnoticed.  I ran through a quick inventory of the stolen jewelry with the officer.  There was only one piece with any significant monetary value, but my heart sank as I thought about the many items that meant much more than a dollar sign to me.  It’s trivial, I know, but I’ve loved my pierced ears ever since the day I got them done when I was six years old.  I wear earrings every day.  I would sleep in them if I could.  I will leave the house without make-up, but I feel naked without earrings.  When, after 43 hours of labor, I felt that Thomas was ready to be born, I pulled my hair back and put in my earrings.  I purposefully wore those same earrings, a simple gold with pearls, when Theodore was born.  They were my favorite earrings and looked good on any occasion – even childbirth.  Also gone were the earrings I was married in.  The black pearl necklace made from a pearl that Jeff’s brother brought back from Moorea. The earrings made from my, now deceased, grandmother’s pearls.  The necklace Jeff had made for me with Thomas’ birthstone.  I had hoped, one day, to pass on the most meaningful pieces to a daughter or granddaughter; now they are in a pawn shop or up for sale on eBay or craigslist.

A couple of days after the burglary we headed off to Target to replace a few of our stolen items.  I hit the clearance section of the jewelry counter and picked up one pair of silver and two pairs of gold earrings.  But the earrings don’t mean anything to me; lipstick on the pig of our house being violated.  Despite the new items, I find myself choosing, most often, the earrings I was wearing on the night of the burglary.  They are just simple gold hoops, but my mother-in-law gave them to me, and I smile when I think of her.

Our head chef instructor for the baking and pastry program I am studying does much more than teach us two nights a week; she is an accomplished food writer/author and, in addition, devotes time going out to Los Angeles (LAUSD) schools to teach healthy cooking.   A couple of weeks ago during class I had a free moment while I had one product baking in the oven and another in cooling in the fridge and I asked chef if she ever needed any volunteers to help her out during her (LAUSD) classes.  She said that she didn’t really need any volunteers, but that the program itself was always looking for chefs.  “Oh,” I said.  Then after a couple of moments, what chef had really meant dawned on me, “Oh,” I said dumbstruck, “I will be a chef.” While I am sure it seems as obvious as white chocolate against dark to everyone else, somehow the conclusion that I was in school to begin a new career, to advocate for sustainable, healthy food, to have fun had not all added up in my mind to the fact that I am going to be a chef.  Chef; as in, I will be qualified to have people pay me to cook food for them.  I somehow was stuck with the idea that I would be  still be an engineer/analyst that happens to be rather good at and enjoy baking rather than an engineer/analyst and a chef or perhaps even just a chef.  This realization has officially blown my mind…in the best of ways.  And to celebrate, I think I’ll just have to go bake something.