Recently, my family has become bombarded with the reality of homophobia and prejudice in our schools, a place we hear about as a cesspool of ignorance, but hate to admit it as such.

I’m going to tell you about it in vague terms, for the sake of my kids’ safety, and privacy: a dear young friend of ours was recently the victim of bullying, harassment and alienation at school because some kids decided she was gay.

My own daughter was terrified and shell-shocked by the verbal brutality and back-stabbing she witnessed, directed at her dearest friend. My kid wasn’t the one getting bullied, but she heard the hatred. She found herself witness to cruelty. She shed tears for her friend. She saw the ugliness and was forced to face it, head-on.

You want the best part? This terror was justified by some of the parents involved. Eventually, despite the ignorant defense of the behavior, it was handled.

But what about the child who had to face it? What about her little soul?

What about my kid, who had to watch it, and deal with it? Somehow.

Why the hell should they be dealing with this crap?

And why aren’t more parents freaking the fuck out?

The next time I saw this child, I hugged her a little too long. As she sat curled up with Ava on the bed, giggling and looking at books, playing Barbies, lost in their fantasy land, I wanted to move my family to an abandoned island. I wanted to pull all kids of all people I know out of school and homeschool them (you know, cause that went so well last time I tried it).

But my feelings were not all so gushy.

To put it bluntly, I was also fucking pissed.

AND I STILL AM.

A certain sentence keeps coming to mind: “You’re either part of the problem or part of the solution.”

I see the truth of those words everywhere:

If you aren’t doing something to change it, you’re doing something to maintain it.

And people, that is where we are right now.

Our kids are going to school with the offspring of the ignorant. They are hanging out with kids raised with bigotry and hatred. They are going to school with children indoctrinated with beliefs and approaches we would rather not believe even exist in 2012.

But they do.

And the thing is, it isn’t enough to just not be bigoted ourselves. It isn’t enough to teach love and acceptance of others and figure our kids will know what to do when they are confronted with some kid getting bullied. We all want to think our kid won’t be the follower of the bully, but it isn’t enough to think, or hope, or assume. We must face these things directly.

It isn’t enough to send our kid to school each day figuring they’ll stand strong when the homophobia of American society stares them in their young faces.

It isn’t enough to figure “We live in a liberal community. Everybody is open here.”

Bullshit. They aren’t.

If we aren’t part of the solution, we’re part of the problem.

If we aren’t explaining to our children the injustices of society, we’re part of the problem.

If we aren’t empowering our kids to act, we’re part of the problem.

If we aren’t making it VERY CLEAR what we’re up against in holding the belief that all people deserve equal access to civil liberties, we’re part of the problem.

This isn’t about marriage equality (though seriously, how do we not have it yet?!). I’m not talking about politics. I’m talking about basic respect for humans, whether or not they live like you do.

My friend came out when he was 15 years old. He immediately faced harassment. He approached his teachers and they did nothing. One day at lunch he walked up to a table to sit down with the kids who used to be his friends, and none of them would sit by him. He turned around and walked out of school, and never went back.

[Incidentally, he moved to San Francisco and joined the circus, which clearly makes him the coolest human being to ever walk the earth, but that’s another story.]

The fact is that someday our child will be the one standing next to the kid who just came out.

Our child will be at that lunch table, deciding, watching.

Our child will watch a girl’s face fall as it turns toward the hatred of her bullies.

Our child will be the one who will make the decision, to be part of the problem or part of the solution.

What are we doing to help determine the outcome of that moment?

Or, our child will be the one who just came out.

There is so much power in the home. There is so much power in motherhood. WE are the ones creating the new wave of citizens. Often we think of power as prestige and control in a high-powered position. As a spot in government. As a place “above” a bunch of people…

But I believe a bigger power lies in the words and hands of mothers and fathers, in the way we speak to our kids about what’s going on in the world, in the books we choose to read, in the version of history we share. In the tools we place in our children’s hands: awareness, perspective, a sense of justice and morality, a sense of what’s right.

And a passionate desire to defend it.

When I was around 5 years old, my babysitter was a lesbian. One night I spent the night at her and her girlfriend/wife’s house (not sure which). The next morning, when I got in the car with my mom, I asked “How come they are both women but they sleep in the same bed?”

She responded, “Because sometimes women love men, and sometimes women love other women.”

And I remember thinking to myself “Oh, okay.”

And I never questioned it again. Such is the power of a mother, to form the foundation upon which a lifetime is built.

Yeah, this is a call to arms: for you, for me, for us. Why now? Because I’ve been shocked by the proximity of ignorance and hatred to my own children.

And it ain’t funny.

Once again I see that I can’t protect them fully, block them from the assholes, shield them from what I’d like to ignore.

And so I must choose. To back down, to turn away, to let it go. OR NOT.

These are our kids. This is our future. And we’ve got some say in that.

Because we’re mothers.

And such is our power.

I feel the urge to write something interesting.

I want to be funny.

I want to make you laugh.

But I’m gonna level with ya. I don’t have much in me right now.

Sometimes, I’m a shit-talking nutcase who thinks EVERYTHING is funny and cracks herself up in the car writing blasphemous things in her head. I get home, crank something out, and laugh while I’m doing it cause it’s fun and it’s real. There is no effort.

But lately, there’s been effort.

It’s ALL BEEN EFFORT. My whole life has been effort.

I’m in one of those spots where I just don’t see it. I’m not seeing the meaning. I’m not catching the vibe. I’m not smelling any damn roses.

I feel a little lost, though I’ve been here before.

I want to blame it on my life. I want to blame it on our lack of money, or the fact that I hate our neighborhood, or that I’m tired or worn out or stressed about school…or cause I have no idea where I’ll be in a year – will I have a job? Will I go on for my PhD (shhhh! Don’t tell! But I’m thinking about it.). Will my husband still be wishing he were doing something else? Will I have lost these final 30 pounds? When is it going to change?

Will it ever get smooth?

And when, people, WHEN, will I grow up?

When I was a kid I had this idea that someday life would make sense. That there was this place, right around the corner [Right there! I can almost see it!]  that I was heading for. It was waiting for me, and when I got there I would know. I would just know.

The hole would be filled. The questions answered. The hunger satisfied.

But instead I have life. Moment to moment, fired at point-blank range.

Nothing else. Just life.

Sometimes I look around and I see no meaning in any of this. The grind. The working. The marriage, the kids. The dog pissing on the floor. The boy who won’t EVER JUST FUCKING DO WHAT HE’S TOLD. The girl who insists on growing up and asking deep questions I’m unqualified to answer. The toddler, oh, the toddler, who runs runs runs and drags and pulls and sucks my heart right into her smile and my whole life into her chubby little palm, as she tows the last shred of my energy with her constantly spinning feet.

I want to blame all that. But I can’t.

Because I know life is RIGHT HERE, right now. This IS the spot “around the corner.” This is the space where meaning lies…there is nothing else.

And these kids bolting around, driving me nuts, are like flashes of lightning against a night sky – so astonishingly beautiful – if only I can catch a glimpse.

See them for what they are.

Boom.

See the shattering light of their energy against a limitless night sky.

But instead, lately, I’ve been preferring to stare at the small dark circle around my own wandering feet. A tiny patch of ground.

I know it’s my choice. I know I’ll pull out of this. I know my perspective is small right now, and self-centered, and ineffective.

But sometimes, damn it, life just isn’t inspirational. It isn’t funny or cute or even vaguely interesting.

It’s just WHAT IT IS.

And the hardest part is that I am just what I am. A flawed human being, unable to perform all the time. Telling myself “Janelle! Write something funny! Be entertaining!”

And I’ve got nothin’.

But I write anyway, cause this is the truth, and I don’t want to be fake with you, and I don’t ever want to write because it’s what I think people want to hear, like it will cast me in a better light, make me seem better than I am, more than I am.

It’s funny, you know, the way when we’re kids we’re just SURE we’re gonna be something incredible – something special. Change the world. Be president.

And then we find we’re just one more human, trudging along, dodging life’s bullets, passing whole days sometimes, staring at nothin’ but the ground.

And I have a feeling some of you, maybe, sometimes, can’t quite find the sky either. [Even though it’s right above our damn heads.]

And maybe that’s why we’re all here, crazy as hell, laughing our asses off, looking for it somewhere.

You know what’s scary? Now that I have a kid who’s almost 11, I somehow consider the baby/toddler time the “easy” portion of parenting.

Yes, I know. “Easy” is perhaps not the most appropriate word. Being 20 in college is “easy” (though at the time, we are somehow just so overwhelmed with it all). Sitting on a beach with a beverage and an open schedule is “easy.” Somebody said Sunday mornings are “easy,” but I beg to fucking differ. Sunday morning is when I realize all the things I didn’t do on Saturday now must happen today.

How is that easy?

Anyhoo, the thing is, when you have a baby, you just respond to his or her needs. And yes, they have a remarkably large number of needs. But I don’t believe a baby manipulates or gets crafty with the parents. I know there are parents out there who believe a baby exits the womb with a parental-unit attack plan, but I don’t buy it. I think a baby cries when it needs something and so my job is clear: do something when my baby cries. Meet needs. Love. Play. Repeat.

But then, all the sudden (not that this happened 8 years ago in Sacramento with Ava or anything) your 2-year-old starts banging forks on a table in a Chinese restaurant and throwing her body across the bench seat, totally ignoring you as you realize “redirection” is not going to work in this particular situation and suddenly you’re like “Oh, damn. We better start disciplining this creature right now.”

And it’s all downhill from there.

Because then, all the sudden, you’re responsible for instructing and guiding and doing the real parenting work, which will either mold the kid into a well-adjusted human or break her soul.

No pressure though.

And you can read all the books and ask all your friends, subscribe to some “school” of parenting that tells you exactly how to talk to your kids, how to handle each situation, how to not break souls, or, you can be like me (though I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it), and just go into important parenting moments (the crossroads, the high-stakes shit, the deal-breakers) totally unprepared, vastly confused, and slightly terrified, hoping your gut will pull through with something, cause fuck me I have no ideas.

Sounds like a winning combination, right?

Sometimes when these real stumpers come up, when I’m looking at my kid and they’ve just behaved really badly, or the kids at school are mean to them, or something profound has come up in their young lives that must be addressed in one profound way or another – I get this pang of anger toward motherhood, for making me the one responsible for this shit, but providing me no actual tools to do so.

Recently we were at my mother-in-law’s house. After dinner, we were all upstairs in her office when I realized it was nearing 8pm and we needed to get home. So I started the “let’s go” broken-record routine (you know, where you repeat the same words 6 thousand times and not one single kid acknowledges you until you start yelling and barking empty threats?)…ten minutes later, Georgia was removing the contents of a box she found, Rocket was engaging in some nonsense involving headphones and a fork, and Ava wanted to look at a pile of photographs she found in a box on the floor. She asked me if she could look. I said “No,” and then continued my efforts toward departure.

Five minutes later, when I was nearing my breaking point, I turned around and saw Ava sitting on the floor, looking at the pile of photographs.

And for some reason, I got really, really mad. So mad, in fact, that it took every shred of my restraint to just say (okay, fine, maybe yell): “Ava! What are you doing? I just asked you not to do that! LET’S GO!!!”

When we got in the car, I was fuming. Something about the blatant disregard for my direction infuriated me. It was the way she just said nothing, indicated nothing, but sat down and just DISOBEYED, right in my face.

Now, if it were Rocket, a special gentleman who blatantly disobeys me approximately 4 thousand times a day, I wouldn’t have been trippin’ so much. But it was Ava. Ava doesn’t do that. It was like WAY out of character.

And as I was talking to her in these angry exasperated tones, trying to decipher what the hell just happened, trying to be The Effective Disciplining Mother, I looked at her sitting next to me with her frizzy little head and dusty jeans, and I saw a look on her face that leveled me. It was a new look. It was a look of apathy. It was a look of boredom. It was a look that announced in no uncertain terms, “Mom, you’re talking to me, but I don’t give a rat’s ass about what you’re saying.”

And in that moment my voice fell silent. I looked out the window at the barely decipherable mountaintops against the rising moonlight. I saw the gorgeous order of the farmland rows, the perfect symmetry of the dirt, the impeccable lines of green, and its harmony seemed to mock my own chaos. My eyes filled with tears as the thought crept in, so clearly, so brightly, so plainly: “she’s turning into a teenager.” A couple of them poured down my cheeks. I looked out at the land, silent, turned my head away.

I felt like a stranger in this car, sitting next to this kid. My feet were on no ground, my heart yearned for an indication of my role in this new story, my task in this moment, my spot next to this person, who I barely knew and yet knew completely, with all my soul.

I felt the truth like a dagger: she’s becoming her own person for real now. She’s walking a path that doesn’t involve me the way it did 5 years ago, or last month, or maybe even yesterday.

I felt disarmed, fumbling to find myself in this new place, this place that just showed itself, this very moment, in the form of a kid with a hint of adult, bubbling just beneath the surface.

I wanted to reach out and grab her and beg her not to go. I wanted to scream with all my might “Don’t ever disobey me! Don’t you dare walk away! YOU MAY NOT GO!” I wanted to whisper against her petal soft cheek “Please, baby girl, stick by my side. Tell me how to make this all right.” Tell me how to get through these next few years.

Tell me how to let you go, little by little, as you need it, even though I can’t.

I just can’t.

And yet, I could.

I’m doing it right now.

I knew my place was not to scold her. My place was to hear her, see it from her side. I found myself asking “Ava, did you look at those pictures because you couldn’t see what my reason was for saying ‘no?’ Did it seem to you I had no purpose, like I was just telling you no for no reason?”

She answered with a barely perceptible sigh of relief, emphatically, “Yes. That is why.”

Then something came out of my mouth that I really I didn’t expect. I grabbed her hand and said “Ava, if I ask you to do something and you don’t know why, please ask me. Question what I’m saying and I promise you, I’ll explain it. If I’m wrong, if I don’t have a valid reason, I will say ‘yes.’ But please, baby, don’t just ignore me. Don’t just walk your path behind my back. I will always do my best to be reasonable with you, but you’ve got to trust me, and I’ll trust you.”

She smiled and said “okay, mama,” and I told her I loved her and we cruised into the moonlight, on this new ground I never asked for.

Me and my little girl, who’s moving right along just fine, into the fringes of adulthood, dragging me behind, kicking and screaming and confused, wondering how we got here and where we’re going now, thinking of the toddler banging on the table just a few years ago, wanting to hold her and put her on a damn “time out,” but instead settling for a spot beside her.

Right here, beside her.

In awe, in love.

In that strange place of motherhood, where only your gut can guide you.

us, then.

1. Georgia’s new trick is to climb onto the toilet and then onto the bathroom sink, using the toilet paper roll as her support. Once up there, she drinks out of the faucet, douses her head under water, or “brushes teef.”
2. Tonight, just to spice things up a bit, she decided to rub hand soap in her eyes. Why was she alone long enough to do that, you ask? Because I’m a bad parent. No really. That’s the reason.
3. Damn. I should have said I’m into “free-range parenting,” then my neglect could seem purposeful. Not that free-range parenting is neglectful. I don’t know enough about it to form an opinion. At this point, I’m just talking shit.
4. How surprising.
5. Honestly, I think I kind of lean toward free-range parenting, unless it involves leaving my kids unattended in a park. Not because I don’t trust my kids, but rather because I don’t trust humanity. Period.
6. I went on the Paleo diet for 6 days. Yes, that’s right you heard me. Six days. Why? Because I want to lose the last 20 pounds and I thought that diet might help me break my crack-addict need for sugar. Why only 6 days? BECAUSE THAT SHIT IS FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE. Also, I’m a quitter.
7. I have an exam tomorrow in a linguistics class that constitutes 25% of my grade. I hope that explains why I’m sitting here writing a blog post, and gives you an idea of how well this semester is going. You know, my level of engagement.
8. Yesterday was my mom’s birthday, so we drove to Chico to visit my brother. All of us (my mom, brother, his wife, their 3 kids and my brood) all went on a bike ride in this enormous park with a creek, then we went back to his house and ate great food and cake (yes, that was the end of my Paleo diet).

And in the days leading up to my mom’s birthday, I was thinking about her.

I was thinking of the woman who nursed me until I was four, who never said I couldn’t sleep in her bed, even when I was 18 and home from college and just felt like it.

I was thinking of a single mother who packed up her kids with no money and a bursting heart and drove them up the coast of California, through Oregon and Washington to British Columbia, with not one campground reservation nor shred of restraint, camping along rivers, hills, in storms, in the sun, catching fish, building fires, shielding us from the rain and the world.

But opening it to us, too.

Of a woman who snuck us into events we couldn’t afford, laughed at crap in her way, stretched a few rules, but only the “little ones.”

Don’t bother telling her it can’t be done.

She’ll do it.

I was thinking of a woman who sang Grace Slick in the car and Big Brother & the Holding Company and talked of the first time she heard “The Times They are A-Changin,” how she cried because his words were so true, and she knew them to be true. How she listened to Sunday concerts in Golden Gate Park in the 60s, worked in a candy shop in high school, and for Francis Ford Coppola later, drank Southern Comfort with Janis Joplin. A woman with some history.

I was thinking of a woman who faced empty pockets but never defeat, started businesses on her own and when they failed, and she found herself at zero, on the ground, she packed up those kids, went to the beach and started again on Monday.

Don’t bother telling her it can’t be done.

I was thinking of a woman who taught me about natural birth and breastfeeding, and when the time came, she helped me do both.

I was thinking of a woman who raised my children while I lost myself in the depths of alcoholism – of a woman who held me but let me go, at just the right time. Of a woman who became “nana” to my babies, who love her and sleep in her bed, just like I did.

Of a woman whose message – single, undying, clearest message – the message she lived, not said – the one that now lives in me like a gospel hymn, the song of my mother…the one down deep in my bones that never quiets, no matter where I am…

No matter what, it can be done.

So get up, and move your feet, and make it happen.

Words that rose up from my soul in my darkest hour, wrapped me in the warmth of a mother’s bed, and pulled me onto my feet.

So happy birthday, mom.

I was thinking about you.

[P.S. I had NO idea this post was going to turn into this, which is why it’s part goofy part serious. Sometimes I start writing and what comes out is not at all what I expected. But I think we’re good enough friends that I can just leave it, and you’ll probably understand.]

my mom and my girls…

So you know how the kids keep writing those “awkward moment” cards, and you see them on Pinterest all the time – they seem to materialize out of nowhere and yet, there they are. Repeatedly. Yeah, well, I had an awkward moment recently and I’d like to share it with you.

To do so, I made an “awkward moment” ecard because I’m hip and cool (stop laughing) and all the cool kids are doing it. No really. Stop fucking laughing.

Yes, indeed. That is an awkward moment, and it happened to me recently.

My daughter, Ava, is 10, and she’s an amazing kid (right. as if I would have said something different) – very, very bright, witty, driven, sensitive and thoughtful – but she has a temper. Oh holy shit it’s a big one. Sometimes, when the stars are aligned just perfectly (or something), she loses her shit at her brother. She gets in his face and screams. She’s terribly mean, fuming with all kinds of rage in her voice “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?!!”

And I get upset when she does it. She alarms me. The look in her eye is shocking, the rage in her voice disturbing. The other day she did it. I watched her tower in fury and her brother shrink into himself and I opened my mouth to stop her, but as the words were coming out…”Ava, why are you talking to your brother that way? Why are you acting like that?”…a blinking neon banner ran across my mind, the answer to my very own question: Because you, you fucktard, YOU act like that. She learned that from YOU.

And I realized I was punishing my child for acting exactly like me.

It was not a pretty moment.

You know there are things I do as a mother that fall into the “haha I’m a bad mother let’s all laugh” category. Like feeding them toast for breakfast 3 days in a row because I can’t get my act together to make real food. You know, no big deal kind of things.

But then there are bad mother moments that I’d rather not talk about it. The real shit. The seedy dark underbelly. MY OWN PERSONAL, SERIOUS FLAW AS A MOTHER AND HUMAN. (again with the all caps. why can’t I stop?)

And for me, it’s losing my temper.

Sometimes I raise my voice. Yeah whatever who doesn’t. But sometimes, oh sometimes, I lose it. I simply explode. I get in their faces and yell. And you know what I’ve said?

“What’s wrong with you?!!!!!”

I see their faces and I want to die. The fear in their eyes. The sadness in their shoulders. And I cave into myself as I’m doing it, trying to make it their fault, screaming while simultaneously totally aware that I am acting horribly but I can’t stop. Because I’m seeing red. I’ve crossed the line.

And when it’s over, I can’t stand the idea of myself.

Because I know I am the problem. It is not them. And it never has been. In those moments I use my power as a mother to bully them, because I’m bigger and stronger and louder and I think I have some right to dominate – to GET MY WAY – and I don’t mean to lose my shit…I do not believe this is an effective parenting method – this is not the person I want to be – but sometimes people I’m just so tired. And I repeatedly fail to take care of myself. I find myself tired and hungry and running late and headaches and noise and it all builds, builds, builds until. Something. Clicks.

Boom.

And it isn’t funny at all.

 I walk away and breathe and I know I’ve blown it. I really fucked up.

I want to crawl in a hole. I cry. Invariably. I want to take them in my arms and beg them to forgive me.

But I don’t beg. I gather myself and I walk back and apologize for my poor behavior just like I would any person who I’ve wronged. I own my shit. I tell them I’m human. I tell them I lose my temper too, and I’m learning patience, just like them. And maybe we can work together on this stuff, both of us, all of us, trying to be better.

But I am the adult and should know better. And you are a wonderful child and this isn’t your fault and if I could figure out how to never do that shit again, my God I would so, so please, please hang with me little one, as I navigate this strange world of motherhood — where the stakes are so high and the guidance so scarce.

And I wonder what the hell is wrong with me.

Two days later I open Facebook and read a post from Peggy O’Mara of Mothering magazine that reads “The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice” and it becomes clear to me that mothers don’t do what I do. Mothers read things like that and they are filled with inspiration – they take that information and transform it into the elusive ability to only speak to their children in hushed soothing tones…good, wholesome words of support, to become a solid inner voice.

Me? I read things like this and think are you fucking kidding me? If this is true my kids are finished. Don’t put this crap on me. Don’t tell me I BECOME THE VOICE IN MY CHILD’S HEAD. I can’t be all there is! I can’t!

But if she’s right, if my poorest moments are the loudest voices in their head, if they sit in school and wonder “what’s wrong with me” because their mother said it a few times…if that’s true, well I’m going to give them the rest of the story, the other half: Your mother is a human being who is doing the best she can and loves you with every fiber of her imperfect being and so that voice, that voice that yells, it is only ONE voice. There is another. There will always be another. There is the world and god and there are grandmothers and teachers and friends and there is that mother who would lay down her life for you.

[Maybe while yelling, but still.]

The other day I called Ava after treating her poorly. At the end of our conversation I said “Ava, you are a great kid” and I said it with tears in my eyes and a cracked voice and heart.

She responded with words so full of love it took my breath away. Without hesitation, without affectation, she said confidently “And you are a great mother.”

I can only go forward. Each day, one foot in front of the other.

Moving toward becoming the person my kids already think I am.