Hump Day: Messy but Inspiring

This is what our coffee table looks like by Wednesday. (Actually, this is what it would look like any day of the week if one of you dropped by unannounced. If you want a cleaner house, we need at least a few hours notice.)

The entire living room looks much worse: There are a couple of days-old half-full glasses of water on each side table (at least they're on coasters). And the mantel is a temporary resting place for an unopened box of light bulbs, a sorrowful Christmas cactus, an IKEA lamp that still hasn't found a permanent place to live in our house, the receiving end of a baby monitor, a ball of multi-colored sock yarn saved from the jaws of our cat, a bright yellow 100-foot measuring tape that weighs about five pounds, and a lovely set of Chinese bud vases some dear friends gave us as a house-warming gift (this last item really does want to live on the mantel, but can't really feel at home what with the overcrowded conditions).

Think of our coffee table as a symbol of the rest of our house: messy but inspiring.

For instance, from that pile emerged a great essay from the June 30 issue of the New Yorker: "Altered State" by Andrea Lee. I'm still thinking a lot about the ideas of belonging and patriotism I wrote about in my July 5 posting (which some of you talked to me about offline--thanks for the feedback!). So perhaps I'm just ripe for Lee's thoughts about her home state of Pennsylvania--about which she writes, "I'm not sure I love it, but it's mine."--and her sense of always feeling like a foreigner. But what most struck me, aside from her amazing skill as a writer, was the deep thought she's put into her past, not simply narrating it, but contextualizing it and using it to explore how she ended up where she is today: an African American novelist who married an Italian and is now raising her family outside of Turin:

When describing another American family (oddly enough, also from Pennsylvania) that lives nearby, she writes, "[They form] a traveling homeland still magically connected to that landlocked region, where there are school friends, cousins, acres that bear their name."

When remembering how she was the only African American child at a summer camp, she describes trying to fit in: "I try hard, out of an animal sense of self-preservation, but also because I've always imagined winning the hearts of hateful people."

When pondering why one brother stayed in Philadelphia while she and her other brother live an ocean or continent away, she posits that the brother who stayed was her mother's favorite and writes, "And who can say whether being your mother's great love doesn't trigger a lifelong passion for your home, your city, your state?"

And near the end, when reminiscing about her home state with an Italian movie director, she realizes that perhaps he is "Someone who can stare, as he does, across land and sea toward a shimmering mirage of America."

Maybe it's because of the Fourth of July that I really took a shine to this piece. Or maybe it's because I've spent so much of my life feeling like an outsider. And it's hard to not to see some of James Baldwin (a hero of mine--and hers, I'm willing to bet) in Lee's work, which makes it especially compelling. But perhaps it's because there's an incredible amount of self-reflection going on right now--people exploring how they live and why, through books and lifestyle changes and blogs like this one--that it's inspiring to see it done right and well, artfully and eloquently, in an essay like this one.

Home-living over books and snack?

Where does my daughter get her love of domestic chores? Here she is, voluntarily sweeping the porch with my BFF's adorable son.

From a very young age, SB has always been a regular in the home living area of her daycare, which is decked out with a play kitchen, dining room, couch, dress-up clothes, and baby dolls. During free play time, home living is a "choice"; there are lots of other "choices," including doing art, playing at the sensory table, reading in the library, and having a snack. But her teacher tells me that, 90 percent of the time, SB makes a beeline for home living to cook, clean, and take care of babies.

"She picks that over snack and books?" I asked, incredulous, wondering if this small person has been paying attention at all to how things go down at our house.

I mean, I rarely choose to hang out in the home-living section of our house. Alex likes to cook meals, even on weeknights; I could subsist on take-out and finger foods. He does a lot of the cleaning, too; I haven't touched the toilet or cat litter box in years (still coasting on the whole "pregnant women shouldn't clean the cat box for fear of contracting toxoplasmosis" rule). I specialize in fun domestic chores like making elaborate desserts and storing bulk foods in attractive containers and scheduling social activities.

In my observations of my friends' domestic lives, this arrangement seems fairly common--not at all as unusual as it might have been a generation or two ago. And it turns out that this kind of equity in domestic chores will at least keep us in the business of being a country: Did anyone catch the New York Times Magazine cover story this week, "No Babies?" It's fascinating look at how birth rates are dropping so drastically that some European countries are facing population declines and demographic shifts that are, according to one professor, "pathological." Some sociologists think one of the causes for this decline is the growing tension between traditional and modern roles of women: studies show that women who do the majority of the housework and child care have fewer children than those who have partners who "share the load."

But population replacement rates aside, I assumed this gender role shake up would somehow be visible in my daughter, evident in a kind of genderlessness--you know, playing with trains in a princess dress, bouncing a ball while rocking a baby to sleep. But maybe it's only been confusing to her? When she was about two, she commented that "Daddies go to the office and mommies stay home," and I corrected her by naming off all the working moms (myself included) she knew. But the reality/perception thing baffled her for months.

She's getting older, though, and figuring it out: A couple of months ago, she told me she was choosing art because she didn't like to clean up the home-living section after she was done playing. And a couple of weeks ago, she remarked, "Dada's a good cooker and cleaner. He's the boss of the house." Then she hurriedly added, "But Mama's the boss."

"Sure," I said, my defensiveness immediately quelled by the formula of Mama=omnipotent, Dada=middle management.

Then she wandered off to cook in her play kitchen, reciting a list of things she was going to pick up at the grocery store--after she was done with her "deadline." Aha. She's been watching us after all.