A few weeks ago, I went to a wonderful event with Gloria Feldt. She is one inspiring woman!

Once a teen mom, Gloria went on to raise three children and to work for 30 years for Planned Parenthood, serving as its national president until 2005. I’ve only made a dent into her book so far (it just came out last week!), but the in-person event was a fabulous way to rekindle my feminism and help me to think about my commitment to holistic health within that context. So much rides on the telling and retelling of stories.

Gloria Feldt (right) and event host Joanne Bamberger (PunditMom.com)

Alas, life with a young baby sometimes gets in the way of my telling stories in a timely and thorough manner. (I know: “no excuses,” right?) A few of my com-madres got their thoughts down, though, including Kim at I’m Not the Nanny and Joanne at PunditMom (who hosted the evening). Check those out posts for a preview of what’s in store tonight, Wednesday, October 13, when Gloria gives her official reading at Busboys and Poets at 5th and K NW at 5:30 p.m.

I’m sharing the press release with RSVP info in case you want to join in and/or spread the word!

My attendance will hinge on things like baby and babysitter, feeding and nursing. But if I don’t make it there in person, I will be there in spirit, will continue to enjoy her book, and will keep up with Gloria online at www.GloriaFeldt.com

From the press release:

Please join us for a reception to celebrate

I don’t understand why people get so defensive when strangers make the wrong assumption about their baby’s gender. Who cares what other people think? Why is it an insult either way? I’ve heard lots of people complain about ignorant commenters, “I mean, she had bows in her hair. She was wearing pink!” Or “He had on a dark collared shirt with a football on it.” These defenses are delivered as though anyone who could not understand these crystal clear messages was just clueless at best or possibly even traitorous. Play by the rules, people!

I’m actually heartened by the fact that other people would ignore these conventions and go with their gut. Perhaps gender could be just something one senses rather than something that has to be identified by a uniform.

Don't make me see the world in binaries!

Blue kimono, pink hat, lavender socks. Who's confused?

In any event, I find these reactions not just sexist but heterosexist. It’s as though people who cannot appreciate the dainty femininity of a girl are somehow implying that she’s, gasp, boyish. And if a stranger dares to call into question the masculinity of a little boy (even if his penis is still as small as a garden slug), well that just ain’t right. It all seems based on the notion that there is only one way to be, and that’s all predicated on being not the other because the other is what you’re supposed to marry.

I suppose I might change my mind about this someday, but if I do, will that mean I have started to accept a narrow definition of what it means to be a girl or a boy? When I was getting my M.A. in Women’s Studies, I scoffed at people finding out the gender in utero. But then I when I was pregnant with each child, I was so clear about the energy of each: my son told me he was a boy, and my daughter just screamed “girl” to me, so I chose to find out rather than be caught way too off guard if I was wrong.

I accepted plenty o’ girl clothes this time around but have also put her in a lot of her brother’s duds. And I don’t care if people think she is a dude. They always apologize, like they’ve offended me. No matter. She is who she is, but I get the impression that these people’s worry for me that their thoughts of “boy” are going to beam themselves into the baby’s newborn subconscious and turn her into a lesbian.

There is also the other reaction, where the person says of my son, “Really? He looks like a girl.” This sort of person seems uncomfortable with being wrong and so wants to hold firm to his or her position as though to warn me that I’d better cut his hair or just do something about him if I want him to be seen as a tough guy.

To be completely honest, my son did answer “pink” when I asked him what color Crocs he wanted if I went to REI. And they did have pale pink, but I couldn’t bring myself to get them. They’d get so dirty so quickly! And he is always saying that his favorite color is blue… So I, too, am guilty, but he wasn’t with me, and if he’d been there and really felt strongly about wanting those exact pink ones, I would have bought them. I hope.

But I don’t mind him wearing the barettes a friend got for his sister, and I think it’s funny that he found it funny to put on a pair of black pumps of mine. I hope I can stay in that place instead of running out of REI with no purchase made.

So I offer here a few of my daughter’s recent looks. I just think she’s cute and that small clothes are cute. If you saw her on the street, what would you think she is? And why would you care?

Last month I attended an amazing session on the politics of writing motherhood at the Split this Rock Poetry Festival.

Read more about it here in a piece I wrote for Mothering.com

And even if I’m not, we all suffer from homophobia and heterosexism. But I’ve been slacking on the activism that isn’t related to health issues. Well, this is. I just let myself put it in a different category.

I got a phone bank call last night from GLSEN, the Gay-Lesbian Straight Education Network. I used to sponsor the Gay-Straight Alliance at the school where I taught, and I’ve been to three GLSEN conferences. They do important work, and I’ve been slacking in my support since I’m no longer in the classroom and my concerns these days tend to deal more with health and wellness in a medical and nutrition sense. But LGBT youth (and adults!) are still having a hard time, and their health and wellness are important. There have been two assaults in the past week at Georgetown University that involved anti-gay slurs.

So, yes, I will renew my membership. I get a lot of mail and a lot of free return address stickers for groups I may or may not want to support, but sometimes an old-fashioned phone bank calling while my son is still awake and not yet melting down – and reminding me that his future safety in school might depend on what action people are taking today – well, sometimes that’s what makes the difference.

Today was the first day I’d had any childcare in two weeks. There was snow, then a fever, then my boy’s dad got sick and needed tending. Today’s four hours of babysitting went fast, but when they were over, I had a supremely lovely time with my son. It was a chilly rainy day, and I decided I was just not going to leave the house. E had had a mini outdoor excursion with the sitter and the other little girl who came over, so we just hung out. After spending a week nursing him like he was a newborn and hearing “can you hold me?” and “can I nurse” in that weak voice punctuated by a cough, it was great to have my buddy back.

I have a journal I’m developing to help me record developments and special events month to month, but I don’t often sit down and just write to my kid. A friend gave me The Mommy Journal, and I almost picked it up tonight, then thought about writing his “birthday letter” a month early (I did one at one year and think I never did year two – yikes!) but somehow I feel right now like I can get so much more down through a keypad.

So here’s part of the letter I’d like to write to my son today.

Dear E,

I write a lot about you, my dear boy, some for blogs, some for essays that will probably never make it into print, some for poems and essays that have. If something happened to me, you’d have a lot of insight into my mind. But every once in a while I realize that it would be wise to tell you to your face and to write directly to you simply how I feel about you in a way that is not skewed to the side of frustration or mommy-self-exploration. So this is the long version of my looking into your eyes and saying, “You are so much fun.”

In fact, you are a rock star. Your dad and I cannot believe the things that come out of your mouth, except that I keep hearing myself or him or some cosmic combo of what we’d say if we turned into one person. This morning, your dad left late for work because he was still a little sick, and he was still here when W got here to watch you and S for the morning. You were telling W about the valentine that D made for you the other night, describing in detail the cute flowers that pop up. I thought your story needed illunstration so W could appreciate how spot-on you were, so I fetched the card off the mantel.

You then went on to point out to W that behind where the card had been was a photo of Barack Obama. It’s actually a photo your grandma took on Inauguration Day, of you looking at Obama on the television screen, and it’s pretty cool. (In case you haven’t heard the story enough, your dad biked down to the Mall that day, and I left early, before either of you was awake, to go with a friend to see the ceremony from seats right in front of the Capitol. It was amazing, but it was a long day, and I had a hard time fully appreciating the privilege I had. In fact, you’ve heard so much about my tale that you‘ve been telling me, “Then the Metro was broken and you had to get out and get a taxi cab. And you were frustrated!”)

Anyway, W asked you, “Who is Barack Obama?” You answered in the clearest voice imaginable for a child who is not even three years old, “He’s our President!” Your dad and I were wowed that you responded that way totally unprompted. (And, lest you wonder about my politics if I should turn colors in old age, underneath our pride and astonishment in you was a deep relief that this reality has come to pass and that you will know this man as your first memory of a president.)

But we really shouldn’t be amazed by your sharp replies. They come out of your mouth all the time, with joy, with exuberance, with delight at the ability to express yourself. You were telling me today about someone “offering” you something — maybe it was when T peeled you an orange the other day at your dad’s band practice. Sometimes I wonder if the Waldorf education police are going to come after me for talking to you too much or making you get too big a vocabulary for your little stature.

But it’s not all fancy words. You know how to work it with slang, too. Yesterday I wrote on my other blog about how you said to me “C’mon” to get me to rethink my complaint. But when I wrote that, I’d forgotten that you used that phrase earlier in the day looking for a colorform/sticker of Murdoch, one of the Thomas trains (whose names you suddenly know after I relented to just one of your many desires in Staples last month and bought you that goofy workbook). You said, “Where are, Murdoch? Come on, Murdoch. Oh, there you are. I found you.” There are big and small stickers of the various trains, and you call the big one the “mama Percy” and the little on the “baby Percy.” Often when we talk about real babies, you ask or tell me whether or not the baby is crawling yet. “He doesn’t walk. I think he just crawls. Yeah. He does.”

Your hand gestures are opinionated and intentional. You point, you show us a serious two (one index finger on each hand), you put your hands up for not knowing. We recently watched old video of you babbling with crazy, meaningful gestures at around a year old; now those gestures elaborate clear-as-day words. You seem to have just about perfected your “R.” I caught you on video at the zoo a few weeks ago (our first diaper-free outing!) talking about a “funny biRd.” You slow over the R’s as though you’re making sure you’ve gotten it out and have been heard. The L’s are not so defined but are still highly intelligible.

We had a nice afternoon today after W and S left. You played well while I ate lunch, and then we worked on a puzzle before having a quiet nursing time and then moving on to make rolls for school (after I got a chicken in the oven). Even when I had you on the other side of the kitchen gate so I could deal with raw meat unfettered, you happily chatted with me. What a treat!

Two weeks ago you were so ill, you would hardly let me leave your side. We were nursing on the couch most of the day. If you weren’t asleep, I had to have you on my back in the Ergo. You had a fever for a full week, went back to diapers (new pull-ups, which you took to calling “undies”) and were so pale and quickly thin, we hardly recognized you. One night you showed enthusiasm for eating whatever random food we had but then, in the hour I was out tutoring, threw it all up, your shrunken tummy too overstuffed. Then you ate nothing for two days and when you finally told us to see how your rice tortilla was a plane a few nights later, we knew you were back.

I was kind of stressed out and busy before you got sick, so I was not fully present to your coolness for a while there. Having had to pause to deal with illness, now I’m having so much fun watching you learn about the world and get excited to show me things you’ve come up with. Normally I try to acknowledge what you’ve done without judging or heaping empty praise, in line with what I’ve read of Alfie Kohn and Unconditional Parenting. But when I videotaped you today, I was trying to capture some of your verbose essence and so kept prompting you to make you talk. I asked you questions and said, “Good!” when you shared a response. (Your father assures me this does not sound like the normal me.)

Even though I hate listening to myself, I’m glad to have captured a long convo for your part. I asked what else you ate with rolls at the Waldorf school (thinking butter), and you said, “Enzymes” (as in digestive enzymes, which we’ve been taking for the last few months). “But you forgot to bring my enzyme yes-ter-day,” you added, using the word that has come to mean “at any time in the past.” I asked you what the weather was like today and you said, “Well, it stopped raining!” To my inquiry about it being cold or warm, you replied “It was freezing!?!” and then proceeded to describe your time outside this morning running down the hill in our back yard.

I know from watching that older babble video the other day that I really will forget what life was like at this point in time. The more I write, the more I can hold onto. And I hope for you that all this time I’ve spent writing — while mostly for me to keep me sane — will possibly tell you something about yourself that you’re glad to know.

I sure do love you. Thanks for teaching me so much.
Love,
Your mama, Jess

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to attend Hooray for Books‘ book release party for The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had, a novel for middle grade readers by first-time novelist Kristin Levine. I did, however have with me my son (just a month younger than the author’s daughter), and keeping him from pulling books off the shelves of the cute Old Town Alexandria bookstore kept me from hearing all of Kristin’s backstory about the creation of this wonderful historical novel. I do know that events are based on experiences of her grandfather, and I know Kristin put in a good bit of research to pull off this great story.

The narrator, Dit, is an eleven-year-old white boy in 1917 Alabama. Although he has nine siblings, he’s looking forward to the arrival of the new postmaster — who traditionally rents a home from his family — because the postmaster is supposed to have a son Dit’s age. Dit hopes to show this boy his baseball glove and play with him over the summer. Much to Dit’s chagrin, the new postmaster from Massachusetts has a bookish daughter, not a son. And to everyone’s surprise, the family is black.

The novel does a great job of conveying in many different and non-cliched ways the theme of not judging a book by its cover. The message, infused throughout with humor, can be appreciated by the target audience and adult readers alike. Dit tells his story in dialect, an approach that roots the narrative in time and place — and in the voice of a child just learning about the world — but does not alienate twenty-first century readers of any age.

This fresh window into early twentieth-century history tells serious and scary truths in an accessible and surprising way that will have even the most jaded readers feeling hopeful. The book, which came out out just days after Barack Obama’s inauguration, seemed to fit right into the emotional wave we were riding here in the DC Metro area where the National Mall was packed with people pinching themselves that we’d made it to this point in history.

Having taken a writing workshop at the Writer’s Center with Kristin, I was not surprised to find her novel such an enjoyable read. I am thrilled for her that she’s getting such great reviews (check out her web site at www.kristinlevine.com) and inspired to have seen a fellow mama (not to mention a pregnant mama, and a La Leche League leader, and the wife of a former teaching colleague of mine) have such great success!

Today a friend in my writing group sent a link to a contest for essays about “what this inauguration means to you.” I don’t know if I can come up with anything intelligent-sounding by midnight January 8, but I will say that I had a lump in my throat today when we saw part of the scaffolding from across the reflecting pool (after visiting the train exhibit at the Botanical Gardens). Come January 20, that is really going to be some sight.

(Too bad we locals keep hearing warning upon warning not to even try to come downtown that day at all, much less with a child and certainly not with a backpack. I never thought I’d stay away, having gone so easily via Metro in 1996/7 just to check out the parade and in 2000/1 to protest in the rain. But it sure sounds daunting.)

Everyone and her dog is writing and talking about the election. It’s one of those phenomena we all have to talk through endlessly to process. Did it really happen?

Yes, it did. The United States of America elected its first black president. Two weeks ago, a campaign button made the impact of this reality — then just a hoped-for reality — sink in for me. It was a black and white image inside a red border that read in white lettering “America’s Next First Family.” I didn’t photograph the button, and I can’t find an image online, but trust me that the B&W image and the angle of the photo — taken looking up at the seated family, if I recall correctly — conjured the image not of splashy and colorful 2008 or the future but of the Civil Rights era. This was old school. The button’s photo looked like a still from the PBS documentary Eyes on the Prize, but it was reflecting today. And tomorrow. A black family. I really got it.

How powerful an image, especially for this former teacher, a white woman who used to work predominantly with students of color, many of whom lacked a second parent (usually father) at home and many of whom seemed to have written-off mainstream America as simply not their world. Who can blame them?

I hope we don’t start to hear arguments that because Obama was elected, now the playing field is level and everyone can do anything. There are still grave inequities in education, health care — and the list goes on — that will not go away just because of this powerful new image.

But I do feel that swelling of optimism, that buzz from the idea that the country believes we can have this kind of hope and see it through. Obama’s decisions and policies will be important, but right now the elation I and many of my friends and family feel seems to come from this sense of a new beginning, a start of something that seemed impossible, an opening where we thought there was none. Much of this collective euphoria comes from the way Obama speaks and conducts himself, sure. However, it is impossible to say something to the effect of “he’d be effective even if he were white.” He is not white. He is who he is, and he has always been who he is. Everything he offers comes from that identity, that past, that sense of self. That reality that there may be an uphill battle but that nothing is more rewarding than the privilege and ability to make the climb.

When people who’ve previously succumbed to cynicism now can see a mountain as an opportunity, the game of life is simply transformed. That is the kind of future I want my son to inhabit.

This post originally appeared on DC Metro Moms on October 10, 2008

Yard Sign Blues

She replied to my “WANTED” request. I imagined her the other night: maybe after cracking an anti-liberal joke with her husband, she turned off the TV without even considering watching Stewart or Colbert, got on her computer and wrote me a note: “It has a bum wheel, but it always worked for us.” And then the next day, “Actually, I saw that it has two bum wheels, but it works fine. You’re welcome to check it out and leave it if you don’t want it.” That’s thoughtful. That’s nice. That’s a Republican?

As I shook my head and blinked my eyes on my way up to the patio to check out the wagon, I started to question myself. Who was I to make assumptions and categorize half the country? Hadn’t I learned – and taught – in graduate school for women’s studies, not to mention while working in at a feminist non-profit, that generalizations are dangerous?

Sure, but I also maintained during my twenties that everything was political, and it just would never have happened that I would have chosen to associate with people who didn’t share my core beliefs. When you’re super committed to something, you want to save people from making a horrible, terrible mistake. What difference is there really between a religious conservative and an unapologetic progressive? One witnesses to a non-believer so he/she will be spared an afterlife in hell, and the other witnesses to a non-progressive so that lots of other people will be spared a life in hell on earth.

There I go again. Painting issues as black and white when I spent so much time theorizing about shades of gray and constructed, contextual realities. It seems I haven’t figured out what it means to be an adult – a woman who expects to never see herself on the Red side of almost any issue and yet who mingles with folks who do. These include neighbors and people I’ve met because I’m a mom. You have a dog or a kid, and you’re going to talk to a lot of different kinds of folks.

So here’s some proof I’m not as tolerant as I might want people to believe:

1)When a friend I met while pregnant asked if we could talk about the election and then disclosed that she didn’t “trust” Barack Obama and probably wouldn’t vote for him if he were nominated, my reply was, “Actually, could we just cut up these apples instead?” I didn’t want to hear where her fear came from. I just wanted her not to have it and for her to be like me!

2) The Freecycle thing (see above)

3)The urge to have a family kicked out of my son’s preschool when I saw a Moms for McCain sticker on the perky blond’s mini-van.

Proof I’m not as consistently committed as you’d think based on the reactions above:

1) I haven’t done anything for the Obama campaign outside of donating money and plunking down $5 for a yard sign at the farmer’s market (after the campaign staffer gave my son a sticker). I later learned from an article in the Washington Post that there’s been some controversy about the limited availability of Obama yard signs in Virginia. But the article didn’t mention them being sold at farmer’s markets. Does this make me a maverick?

2) I went ahead and contacted the neighbor girl about babysitting even though her parents had a McCain sign in their yard. It’s not her fault; she’s just a kid. She couldn’t really brainwash a two-year-old, could she? I did, however, wonder if her mom would forbid her from watching my son if she saw our Obama sign. So far the girl’s schedule is, I’m told, just too packed to take on any sitting jobs. Sure.

3) I smiled politely when I found out that the husband of the woman who’s watched my son several times (without asking for reciprocating childcare! what a generous spirit!) works for the Bush administration. Well, that’s not true. I first blurted, “He works for __________(insert high-ranking name here)?!?!” The excess punctuation could have been construed as awe of power, regardless of party preference, right? I’m sure I smiled and nodded after that. I don’t know if she’s walked past my house on the way to the park since I put my sign up.

There are a couple of moms in the neighborhood I just met, one of whom used to work for a Republican governor. I wonder if my sign will push them away. And if it does, is that a problem? If we don’t agree on fundamentals like priorities a government should have, how can we have a meaningful relationship? I never understood those bipartisan couples like James Carville and Mary Matalin or the Governator and His Girl Kennedy. And yet, failing to believe that I can hold two possibilities in my head at the same time is both so un-post-modern and also not a great model if I want my kid to have an open mind.

Then I think of my son’s food allergies (and our no junk food snobbery). Maybe I can take a cue from the way we talk to him about what he eats. No food is bad or wrong. It’s just that we don’t eat certain kinds of food because they don’t work for our bodies. So we just don’t vote for some people … because they don’t work for our bodies.

What happened with the wagon? Well, I reasoned, my babysitter had asked for one so my son and his friend could amicably get to the park during our four weekly hours of childcare. Those bum wheels didn’t seem to make a difference. So I hoisted the tired Little Tike off the porch, found it was too big to fit it in the trunk and then worked on stuffing it into the front while my son snoozed in his backseat Britax.

A passerby nodded as he made his way past me up the sidewalk. I cringed a little, both for standing just two feet away from The Sign and for looking like an imbecile trying to fold down the red seat flaps and maneuver the wagon’s wide blue body into the front passenger seat without first thinking to move or even tilt the seat back.

Later, as I hosed the wagon down (for dirt, not for Republican cooties, I swear!), I mused about what the nice Freecycler mama had done with her children and told them about life while they sat in that wagon. And I continue to wonder about her reactions to debates and strategies as the election draws closer.

My farmer’s market Obama sign purchase happened the following week. My son and I first brought it inside. I wanted to clear it with my husband who had once stuck in our yard — without my consent — an “Impeach Him” sign a canvasser gave us. I put my foot down on that one because I felt like I couldn’t intelligently defend that position. (And because I had a student coming over to be tutored. Instead we used it as a sled until it shredded.) But this time, the issue is a forward direction that I really hope our country takes.

Still, I dragged my feet for a few days, worrying I’d be judged as I had judged. Then, unceremoniously, my husband stuck it out by the magnolia, set back a respectable distance but still highly visible on our corner lot. There we were: out to all. The funny thing is, I have a son who notices every tiny little detail, constantly asking “What’s that, Mommy?” to things I gloss over. I can’t stop looking at signs, but after ours left our living room for the front yard, my son has never remarked on it. Or on anyone one else’s.

Today it was in the Washington Post Style section that I came across the already-tired backpeddle, “We wouldn’t be asking these questions if Sarah Palin were a man.” I say: Bullshit.

Although I concede that DeNeen Brown probably had to reference this position early on in her otherwise interesting and insightful piece on how women are responding to Palin (“Who Do We Think She Is?”, C01, 9/12/2008), I do think the article stopped short of pointing out just where the sexism lies. It’s not that “we” are holding women to an unfairly high standard; it’s that “we” let men off the hook when it comes to looking at how their home and work lives intersect. So maybe we should stop not caring about what kind of parents and partners men are.

People seem to think it’s okay that we wouldn’t seriously question the responsibility and choices of a man who went back to work as a governor with a three-day-old at home, to say nothing of his role as mentor to a teenage mom. We should raise flags. If that man later went on to accept a bid for the second-highest national office that would by necessity keep him away from that special needs four-month-old or put the baby in another caregiver’s hands, I’d have serious qualms and would not be quiet about them.

So I’m not going to be quiet now that it’s a woman in question. As a woman with a feminist background and a degree in women’s studies, and as mother who envisioned an equal division of labor with her husband in marriage and, to the greatest extent possible, in parenting, I would not feel any better about a mythical Mr. Palin candidate than I do about the female version. In fact, I would think he was a self-serving jerk.

I can just hear myself: “How dare he saddle his wife with all the care of their newborn! What is that baby going to think about his father, who’s never home or is always occupied with other business? If he’s being a good father, how can he possibly be functioning effectively as a governor, to say nothing of Vice-President or, gasp, President?”

People need to have jobs. Fine. But people do not need to seek the most stressful possible path right after having a child. It seems highly ironic to me that someone who is so concerned with not allowing women to control their bodies in the event of an unwanted or troubled pregnancy would blithely hand over her child at three days old.

Of course, I don’t know what the Palins’ life looks like at home, but the teen-rebel-with-clueless-parents in me wonders if it was a little lacking in conversation to land Bristol and her boyfriend might on the other side of unplanned conception. And, though I was glad to hear that Palin spoke of pumping breastmilk to People magazine, she can’t possibly have provided the body-close kind of early bonding that folks like me think is crucial for both mom and dad/the other partner if he/she is going to be a trusted care provider. If my husband had balked at wearing our son in a sling or the Ergo, if he acted like watching the baby was babysitting instead of just what a father does, if he let “your job” slip more than a few random times when comparing my identity as a stay-at-home mom to his as a working-outside-the-home dad… well then there would be hell to pay.

So forgive me for not admitting to being some kind of catty sexist bitch for questioning how Sarah Palin could leave her baby or cart him all around in the high-stress jobs of governor and VP candidate. If her husband did it, I’d assume he was a pretty scummy partner and crappy dad.

Even before John Edwards admitted his affair, I was disappointed that he’d move forward with a presidential bid knowing his time with his wife and with his family as an intact unit might be short. I don’t know much about Joe Biden’s decision to go forward taking the oath of office for Senate after his wife died, but I’ve heard he had to be persuaded to follow through by advisers who told him he could always resign if he needed to, and that his sister came to live with him and his young sons. I think that must have been hard and really sucked, but I doubt that would have helped anyone’s grieving for him to give up his newly-elected position. His wife was dead, and, assuming the boys got the love and support they needed to mourn their loss, they needed to see their dad living on, into the future.

This baby, Trig, is just starting out. He will never get another chance to be a young vulnerable baby. He may never participate in some aspects of life like his siblings, but if he was going to be brought into this world, it seems to me that he should be done so full-on and lovingly. As a former teacher who knows how hard it is to lovingly care for 120 different students (some special needs, but none with Down Syndrome), I simply can’t imagine how Sarah Palin can perform and seek these intense jobs and do right by her kids, especially a newborn with Down’s. And I honestly don’t understand how she can possibly muster up the strength and focus as a new mom, especially if she is indeed nursing. (See author Melissa Stanton’s piece on the MotherVerse Blog: “How does Sarah Palin juggle work and family? I’m not judging. I’m just curious”)

Maybe Trig’s mom will never get the chance to be a VP candidate again, so it was now or never. Every moment in life is unique, and we have to make choices, if we are legally allowed and economically privileged enough to have them. So Sarah Palin made a choice. I don’t respect it, it wouldn’t be mine, and it doesn’t make me feel good about how she might make other choices. But I do think I might have an easier time simply granting her the right to make a choice if she supported other kinds of choices for women.