matronly tyranny

I went on a tear with my singing group - via email, of course, which is NOT NOT NOT what I'm supposed to do (none of us are) but I was incensed and so of course violated protocol and lightly flambeed the group about moving rehearsal locations and times. You'd think a suggestion to move reherasal from 6:30 to 7, and from Fort Green to Williamsburg would be no big deal at all. Not for crazy controlling micromanaging mom of two. Not when it means having to bring home the pump from the office, so I can pump in case I miss Clayton's 10 feeding because of the fucking G train taking forever to get me home, getting home late and having zero time alone all day, and spending an extra hour of my life on the subway, instead of getting the one outdoor walk I enjoy once a week to and from rehearsal. Or if we keep it at 6:30, getting the babysitter to show up early, and missing an extra hour of my kids awake (there are a limited number of these hours in my life now). I know theoretically that requiring everything to stay the same all the time causes me pain, because it definitionally can't happen, and I won't be getting things the way I want them, and thus I'll be pissed off, and if I was more relaxed, I'd be happier with whatever happens, but frankly that's not me anytime soon. Strike that. Any time ever. And I am seething with resentment at the rest of the group who cancel rehearsals because they want to go to a concert, show up late because "there's traffic" (there's ALWAYS TRAFFIC. PLAN FOR IT), don't practice outside of reherasal, and then wonder why we sound like shit at shows. I used to think I felt this way and they didn't because I was older. Now I know it's more than that. And it's not because I'm a mom. The underlying reason is that I'm damn responsible. That's why I have kids, that's why I plan for traffic, that's why I never cancel, that's why I stress about 30 minutes, that's why I'm miserable.

why do people call you "cool" in a pained yet mocking way?

There are certain people at work who react to my clothes - in particular my outside clothes (coat, hat) - by saying things like; "you're looking very downtown," or "i see you're looking very cool, Soho, Village...". Which I will caveat immediately - I do not look like any of these things, at least by my understanding of these loaded terms - i'm not wearing anything by obscure belgian designers, anything you might see in a self-published groovster mag whose models are guys in bands i never heard of, or anything even vaguely sexy. And 90% of my indoor clothes are distinctly frumpy - ann taylor pants, eileen fisher sweater, naturalizer shoes, and target underwear. The act of naming this stuff explicitly is powerfully depressing. I think my ass got lumpier, my boobs saggier, my hair greyer, and my politics more uninformed just by writing this all down. So what do the work people mean? I've been thinking about it - 90% of what invokes these comments are my thrifty clothes. Which clearly date me, as my idea of thrifty nice is 40's, 50's, early 60's - not the 70's, 80's and 90's stuff that actually cool kids like. Which means that the work people and me are officially uncool, as we are stuck in the patterns of our youth. We froze our assessments of groovy by about 30, and stayed there. which means i'm as lame as they are. because frozen groove is distinctly uncool. I think. well, I know frozen intellectual thought is insanely awful and sad (the "i had one good idea and wrote a book and got tenure and i still have that same idea and all the theoretical apparati that went with it and i'm not moving one inch" professor comes immediately to mind). Great minds move. Is it the same for great looks? Are signature looks ok, but signature thought is not? or can the thought/look be sufficiently dense with productive materials so as to continue to be creative, even if it's not "new?" Neither my intellect nor my wardrobe are sufficiently loaded to let me be creative via pastiche/collage/reorganization, let alone supportive of true avant-garde new production. So I guess i'm back to frozen cool, which is just plain sad.
I started thinking about this in part because of the way the work people said the words "cool," "downtown," etc. - and now i think i understand the impulse behind the tone. the tone was one of very light anger/envy - somewhat sneering even as it was admiring. And it's because they think I am/was one of the (here comes a stomach-churning embarrassment painful phrase even to write) "cool kids" in high school, back when we used these very clothes to mark the terms of cool-for now/then. It's what they wanted to say to me 20 years ago, but only thought. Yuck. The whole thing is depressing.

one more thing about the lactation room

or the "mommy" room as it's called (which I hate, as being a mommy is reserved for times when I am actually with my children - the rest of the time I'm a mother) - there's a large floor to ceiling mirror in it. Which of course, 4 months post delivery, I'm not interested in looking at. I wonder why they put it in. I know I use it to make sure I haven't forgotten to put some necessary clothes back on - i have this strong fear that if i someohow get in some way naked at work, I'll forget to get clothed again, and walk into the hall with my boobs showing....please don't analyze this.

so a year later....

i had a baby, and now i'm back to work - day 2. large portions of the day have been spent pumping breast milk. It feels very very strange to be exposing your breasts in the office, even if it's in a special breast-exposing room. I do not like having to go into the special breast-squeezing room, either, walking past the people who work next to it. do they hear the swishing wonnka-wonnka of the pump? yuck. the whole thing is too personal to have to do in this office where i pass as normal all day. SOmething about being semi naked is the strongest reminder that I am passing here.