Vagina World

As I walked into the feminist art exhibit last week, there was a painting of people entering an art show through a giant psychedelic vagina. As you walked further down the hall, there was a huge piece of red fabric resembling the vulva and clitoris. This was Vagina World.

My son Trevor and husband Kevin were not really digging the exhibit. "I guess I can't really relate to it," they both chimed in together. Well, they could still support female power even if they weren't female.

My parents Ruth and Phil considered themselves liberated feminists. They had a couples women's lib party. They thumbtacked slogans written on cardboard on the groovy corkboard wall in our living room. The only saying I recall was, "Herstory not History." I remember my mother wearing a purple psychedelic dress and holding a gin and tonic.

My mother Ruth was a feminist and a rebel. In the 1950's, when most married women were home raising their children, Ruth was a police reporter, covering the notorious Sam Sheppard trial. Sheppard was a doctor accused of murdering his wife near Cleveland, Ohio. My mother interviewed him in prison when she was pregnant with my sister Wanda.

Ruth covered politics and crime, and hung around with scrappy hard drinking men. She married one of these men, a fellow reporter in Cleveland. He turned out to be an alcoholic and he left her with a two-year-old daughter to raise alone. Ruth was a working single mother before it was fashionable, and her parents helped raise her daughter Lolli.

Ruth then met another reporter, my father Phil. He was five years younger than this strong feisty woman and fell madly in love. She continued to work as a journalist, but eventually stayed home for a time to raise her three daughters. She resented being home with her children, and always talked about her glory days of police reporting and running into burning buildings.

She was a fiercely intelligent woman, but, at home, she waited on my father hand and foot. He would sit in his Lazy Boy pleather recliner and clink his glass of ice for a refill and expect dinner on the table every night when he got home from work. I never quite understood her resentment and their fighting and stress until recently, when I realized what she gave up to marry my father and raise her children. She left Ohio, where she had a flourishing career. In New Jersey, she worked briefly for a newspaper and later, in marketing, which she hated.

Do I have a liberated marriage? Hardly. My husband Kevin and I have fallen into traditional roles, with Kevin working full time as a television producer and writer while I have stayed home to raise our two children. That arrangement was fine for a while, but for the past few years, I have been bored and would welcome a more intellectually challenging career. I have thought about going to medical school, but know it would be difficult with a small child at home. I'm about to go back to work as an early childhood teacher, a traditional career that I chose after leaving public relations and advertising.

Now that I have a daughter, I think more about my role as a woman and how my daughter will see me as a role model. Three-year-old Esther has just started saying, "I want to be a mommy when I grow up." I hope that she pursues a challenging and creative career, and can move beyond what I've chosen. She is strong and feisty, just like my mother Ruth. I have the utmost faith that she'll go out into the world as a strong female, maybe even stronger than myself.

Mystery Child

I thought I was pregnant this week. I wasn't celebrating, I don't want to be pregnant. I'm 43 years old and have two kids already. Two's enough for me, thank you. My uterus is closed for business.

Kevin's train doesn't usually unload it's cargo in the tunnel, if you know what I mean. Well, it did a few weeks ago, and I was worried. My period seemed to be on it's way, I was getting zits and cramps, and then it mysteriously stopped. "Hmmmmm.......that usually doesn't happen," I thought.

"Oh god, I cannot be pregnant."

Kevin was bugging me, "Did you get your period yet?" he asked me a few times a day. His constant pestering was annoying me, I was trying not to think about it, and I was sure the stress could throw my period off.

What if I really was pregnant? What would I do? I looked at my three-and-a-half year old daughter Esther playing happily with her ten-year-old brother Trevor. After a rough few years, they are both finally at a good place in their lives. Esther is loving school, making friends, becoming more independent. Trevor is in fifth grade and about to start middle school in the fall. He is feeling confident and happy now. This would be a terrible time for us to have a new baby thrust into the equation.

Kevin and I are people who can't handle a lot on our plates. Three kids would put us over the edge.

Besides, I don't want a baby, my husband doesn't want a baby. Nooooo baby.

Okay, so what if I was pregnant? I guess I would have to terminate. But I do not want to put my body through that. Well, I wouldn't have a choice. I'm sure I'm probably not pregnant, I told myself. Okay, maybe not SOOO sure....I counted my period cycles for the last six months. I had one 34 day cycle. This month had been 30 days so far. I usually get my period after about 25 days, but could I possibly be having one of those long cycles?

I fell asleep last night thinking about what my life would be like with three children. My dreams were a surreal montage including this mystery child that would probably never exist.

I woke up this morning with cramps, and I knew that my dream would never be a reality. I was so relieved.

Slobberino

I'm a slob. Everyone in my family is a slob, even my three-year-old daughter Esther. "I like messes," she proclaims and then dumps buckets of toys on the floor.

I wasn't the neatest person when I met my husband, Kevin, but he was the king of all slobs, and he sucked me into his world of extreme sloppiness. When we first started going out, Kevin was living in an attic bachelor pad carpeted with a three-inch layer of dust bunnies. His apartment hadn't been vacuumed in three years. If you put something on the floor and then picked it up, it was covered in dirt. It was kind of like the Munsters.

His toilet was coated with three years worth of shit. It was black inside. I'm not kidding.

His sheets were brown, although, I don't think they were meant to be.

This was even too messy for my taste.

I borrowed a vacuum from the Wongs, the family downstairs. I actually scrubbed three years worth of shit from his toilet. Now that is true love. I threw out the neglected can of Progresso soup that sat on his stove for years, covered in a layer of gray fluff.

I bought new sheets.

Wow, what a palace. Actually, it was still a dump. Since then, we've lived in a series of dumps, including our current apartment.

Kevin's home office (which he won't let me vacuum) is still covered in a layer of dust bunnies and when Kevin comes home, he throws his pocket change in the piles of dust bunnies. It's like those restaurants with sawdust and peanut shells on the floor.

My son Trevor picks quarters out of the piles of dirt to buy candy and I pick quarters out for the parking meter. It's a festive family activity.

Okay, so it's not so bad a slob. It's actually kind of fun.

Birth of a Blog

Push.............................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Puuuuuuuuuuuuuushhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!Just one more big push and she's out!!! Congratulations, you've just given birth to your first blog. Oh, my god, now what do I do? Do I have to take care of it? Feed it? Pay attention to it when I'm tired and just want to space out?

Why do people write blogs anyway? As soon as I made the decision to write this blog it started freaking everyone out. My 10-year-old son Trevor was stressing out, "Are you going to write negative things about me? If I get in trouble are you going to post it on your blog?" Trevor asked in a worried voice. I think he's scared that the whole frigging world is going to know about his self conscious prepubescent life.

When I told my sister Wanda I was writing a blog, she felt threatened. "That's so selfish, why do people write blogs? They should spend more time outside getting some exercise. You're just going to sit inside and be a shut in? What are you going to write about? You want everyone to read about your life, your private business? I hope this isn't going to cut into our chatting time."

I have to write. I have to live up to my family legacy. Both my parents are journalists and they both wanted their three daughters to be writers. They coerced me into majoring in journalism in college, certainly not a great major for someone shy like me. I did what I was told,, and majored in journalism, hating every minute of it. I even worked in public relations and advertising for a few years out of college. It sucked, big time.

I needed to break free, do what I wanted to do. I became an elementary school teacher. Exactly what my mother Ruth didn't want for me. A traditional woman's career? Ruth was no traditional woman, and her daughters wouldn't be either. But she couldn't hold me back forever.

But then, I married a writer, a guy just like my father. Loud. Larger than life. Big ego. I tried to run away from that family expectation, but that's hard when you're married to someone just like your father.

Okay, so fast forward about 20 years. I was a teacher for five years and a stay-at-home mom for 11 years. My brain is fried!!!! I need to express myself!!!! I need to write!!!!!!!

I guess I have to resign myself to my family history. Maybe I was meant to be a writer after all.

Mabel, Mabel