A Little Existential Post, for a Friday Afternoon

My "immigrant" post below raised a certain question, one recently asked by Kuri & Ping on their blog.

When I was living abroad in Tokyo, did I consider myself to be an "expat" or an "immigrant?"

We did live in one of the Azabu neighborhoods, which I think automatically qualifies me for "expat" status on some level. But the truth is, I considered myself an immigrant, which perhaps explains why I follow immigration issues so closely.

This also explains why I`m so homesick now -- Tokyo was my home. I jointly owned property there, I was paying taxes, I was involved in our local community. I was going to apply for permanent residency in Japan, but decided against this for one reason: I might want to sponsor household help in the future, and I can only do this if I have a business manage/investor visa.

Of course, I have no intention of ever renouncing my U.S. citizenship, because I want to be able to vote in elections. I mean, hey, U.S. foreign policy has such a huge impact on the world at large now -- why would I want to give up my teeny tiny little bit of power to have an impact on it, one way or the other?

But according to Merriam-Webster Online, my main dictionary resource, the definition of an "immigrant" seems to hinge on residency, not citizenship:

Main Entry: im·mi·grant Pronunciation: 'i-mi-gr&ntFunction: noun: one that immigrates : as a : a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence b : a plant or animal that becomes established in an area where it was previously unknown- immigrant adjective

I remember when I was first married and living in Tokyo, and went to register at the ward office as required. These were the days when all aliens still had to be fingerprinted.

I handed in my registration form, and I had left blank the part where it asked for, "Address in Home Country."

The kindly clerks asked me to please complete the form, but I was young and angry and was determined to make a statement, goddammit!

"Japan is now my home country. I live here now. Japan is now my HOME!"

Yes, fine, they said, and suggested, could you please just fill in whatever U.S. address is on your passport?

"No! I don`t live at that address anymore! I live HERE now!"

So then most of them shrugged, and said, okay, fine, whatever, and they accepted my paperwork as it was.

But one young clerk insisted on telling me, You can live in Japan, but since you`re not Japanese, it can never be your home.

As I`ve said before on this blog, home tends to be wherever your loved ones are. Right now, we expect to go back to Tokyo in four or five years, but if our plans change, and we end up staying in San Francicso, I can imagine that at a certain point it will be "home," too.

But right now, I have to admit the place I call my "home" is a country that will never consider me to be one of its homies.

Even if I change my nationality, I will never be racially Asian, so many Japanese people will always view me as an outsider.

No wonder our poor kids are so confused.

Question That Raises More Questions

Big Son: "Mama, nuns don`t like boys, do they?"

Me: "Um...what makes you think that?"

Big Son: "Well, they can`t get married, because they`re married to Jesus. So that must be why they don`t like boys, right?"

Me: (!!!!!!!)

A Few Thoughts on the Subject of Immigrants

Okay, I`m going to do another post today, because I`m sick of having that "Dark Memories" post on top of my blog, on such a cold, gloomy, rainy afternoon here.

So let`s move from the morose, to the cheerful. My house is CLEEEEEAN -- our cleaning woman came yesterday, and did her usual stellar job.

As I commented yesterday on Friday Playdate, if my cleaner didn`t come twice a month, I might never put our non-perishable groceries away. We would just use them right out of the bags on the floor by the door. Most weeks, I`m sure she thinks I`ve just returned from a massive morning shopping trip, as I scurry to pick up stuff and say, "Let me just get these out of your way!"

Little does she know that these cans of soup and boxes of macaroni and cheese, plastic bags of junk and cleaning supplies from Target, etc., have been piling up for two weeks. I do make an effort to put away the frozen food, having once learned a very costly lesson involving mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches, but the rest tends to stay wherever it first falls.

We didn`t hire our cleaning woman ourselves -- she came with the house we`re renting, and we just kept her on. It never occurred to me to ask her if she`s in America legally, because it doesn`t seem like any of my business. I would certainly feel differently if she were a babysitter, since I don`t want anyone watching my kids who might be hesitant to call for help in the event of an emergency. But when it comes to simple house cleaning, I feel very comfortable employing someone whom my landlords trusted for years.

Overall, I feel as if I have a big personal stake in America`s immigration policy, which is currently being rewritten. In addition to enjoying the services of my immigrant house cleaner, I enjoy fresh fruit and vegetables picked by immigrant laborers. In fact, I`m sure I enjoy immigrants` services in a myriad ways of which I`m not even aware.

I have my, ah...let`s just say, differences with many of George W. Bush`s positions. But I do agree wholeheartedly with his view on immigration -- or at least, with his speechwriter`s view:

"No one should claim that immigrants are threats to American identity because immigrants have shaped American identity. No one should claim that immigrants are a burden on our economy because the work and enterprise of immigrants helps sustain the economy."

I grew up listening to my grandmother`s stories about how her father came to America, in the early part of the last century. At that time, Polish boys were drafted into the Czar`s army at the age of 15, but my great-grandfather wanted no part of that. With his family`s blessing, he set off to seek his fortune, journeying on foot from his town outside of Warsaw. He walked by night and slept inside haystacks by day.

My great-grandfather came to this country as an illegal stowaway on an ocean liner he boarded in Amsterdam. He was discovered partway across the Atlantic, and put to work as a waiter to earn his passage. Three generations later, I have to say that I am grateful that he was a lawbreaker -- I think I am far better off for it. And since most of my great-grandfather`s descendants are well-off people who pay lots of taxes, I will say that America is better off, too.

I am a person who generally respects laws, and I know that many immigrants break laws to get here, or to continue living here.

But any people in this country for a chance to work hard, better themselves and lead productive lives are my kind of criminals.

A Post In Which I Share A Few Dark Memories

To the person who found this blog searching, "can a horse become homesick?" -- you know, I`ll bet they can.

I`ve also attracted a few people searching "post-partum depression" after I mentioned it a few posts back, so perhaps, as a public service, I should share my own stories of that subject before I forget about them. Already, the dark times following the births of my babies are fading back into the recesses of my personal history.

I`ve never been a "depressed" person. Throughout my life, since early childhood, I have been prone to bouts of irrational anxiety and kept awake by recurrent nightmares, but what I felt for the few months immediately after giving birth was profoundly different. The only way I can describe it is to say that it felt like being in a deep hole in which I was unable to feel anything except for a nagging sense of guilt that I wasn`t happy to have a beautiful, healthy baby. What was wrong with me -- why was I so ungrateful? I figured the nagging guilt must be a sign of some deep character flaw.

I am an educated, informed person, and therefore it`s a little surprising to realize in retrospect that I missed something as obvious as my hormones playing dirty tricks on me.

My first post-partum experience got off to a rough start, when Big Son`s birth caught me off guard. By this I mean that though he was wanted and planned, and I had nine months of gestation to buy nursery stuff and prepare for motherhood, none of it seemed real to me until I actually held a real, live wriggling baby in my arms.

And then, suddenly, I was on call 24/7, breastfeeding, recovering from a c-section (which was hardest the first time around, because it came after a few days of ultimately futile Pitocin-induced contractions). Hub was also unprepared and overwhelmed, and wasn`t able to take much time off from work.

My mother came for just a few days. She was still working then so she couldn`t stick around for long -- which was actually for the best, because she wasn`t much help. She kept ordering me around -- "Put a fresh diaper on him, now. Change him into this new outfit because this one has spit-up on it. What do you mean, you`re too tired? You need to learn how to do all this yourself! You are so immature, I can`t believe you had a baby!" etc.

Hub and I needed all the help we could get, but we were nonetheless glad to wave goodbye to the new grandmother, before we resorted to covering her mouth with duct tape.

Big Son`s arrival into the world was more than two weeks overdue, and Hub had planned his travel schedule around my original due date. So when Big Son was 10 days old, when I had only been out of the hospital for a week, Hub left on a trip to New Mexico. He was organizing an event there, and the governor was coming, and I assured him I would be fine by myself.

Oh, but I wasn`t fine, I really wasn`t. Hub could tell over the phone that I wasn`t fine, and without my even asking him, he came home a few days early, as soon as he could. Without him to remind me to eat, shower and brush my teeth, I probably would have forgotten such frivolous maintenance chores.

I remember telling a pediatric nurse practicioner, at one of our first infant checkups, that I felt "as if something is very, very wrong with me." So she asked me the usual questions:

"Are you thinking of harming yourself?"

No, I was not.

"Are you thinking of harming your baby?"

No, I was not. While I was beginning to have serious fantasies about abandoning him, just to get to sleep for an uninterrupted 45 minutes, I had no thoughts of harming him. In fact, quite the opposite -- I was getting morbid fears that something bad would happen to him and it would be my fault, and waking up after horrible nightmares about him getting burned in fires and eaten by bears.

"Well, you sound all right to me!" said the nurse, and reassured me that lots of new mothers lack confidence at first, and that everything would get better with time.

That nurse`s assessment became my new mantra: I was all right. When people, including my own OB/GYN, asked me how I was doing, this was what I told them. I believed that in time, I would mean it, if I simply forced myself to stay upbeat. Goddamnit, why couldn`t I be more grateful for the blessing of a healthy, beautiful baby? How dare I complain about anything, when so many people in this world had real problems?

So I lived in my dark hole for the first nine months or so of Big Son`s life. The hole became my daily reality -- I completely forgot I had once known another life outside the hole. But gradually, I did start to feel better, and only then did I realize that I had not been "all right."

I tell people that the first year of Big Son`s life was the worst year of my life so far, and I mean it. He was a difficult, demanding baby who would sleep four or five hours at night, and then catch the rest of his sleep in 20-minute catnaps during the day. I tried every piece of advice I could find, to get him on some kind of nap schedule so I could catch up on my sleep, too, but nothing worked. Finally, at 10 and a half months, he started walking, and apparently tired himself out enough to nap in the afternoon.

I told Hub that if we were going to have another baby, we needed to do it IMMEDIATELY, before I chickened out. I just wanted to get this horrible time of my life over with. I was pregnant again by Big Son`s first birthday, and this time around, I resolved to seek help crawling out of any hole in which I found myself.

But that`s the thing about holes -- no two are alike. Daughter, bless her heart, slept 20 hours a day as an infant. I was putting Big Son in daycare two mornings a week, so I was able to get freelance work done during my pregnancy with Daughter and after her birth. I had also joined a gym with childcare. I felt healthier and more productive, and I was getting enough sleep and could see sunlight at the top of my hole this time.

To be sure, I still felt pretty rotten for many months after Daughter`s birth, but this time I knew the familiar nagging feelings of guilt and anxiety would go away, so I decided to just bear with it.

I remember one night having a rare dinner alone with a childless friend, and describing my day-to-day life to her. I didn`t think I was complaining, just telling it like it was, but she was appalled by what I told her.

She said, "You know, you never even smile anymore! Don`t you get any joy from those two little children at all? Why did you have them in the first place, if they just make you so miserable all the time?"

That`s when I realized that though the second time around wasn`t nearly as bad as the first time, I was still not quite "all right." Plus, I realized I was no fun to be around, either.

Ironically, having learned from the first two times that post-partum depression was probably going to darken my life to at least some extent, I then had my third baby in a country where mental health is somewhere back in the Stone Age. I had heard (incorrectly, as I found out too late) that medication for post-partum depression is unavailable in Japan, for all but the worst cases involving in-patient treatment. So I figured I would just stoically tough it out, having done so twice before.

I went back to work when Little Son was 14 weeks old. Once again, I was mostly "all right," but sometimes, for no reason at all, I would start crying at my desk. Ordinarily, I`m not much of a weeper -- this was a totally physiological phenomenon. Fortunately, my desk faced a wall, so I would just dab at my face with a tissue and pretend as if I had something in my eye, sometimes even making coughing sounds as if I were having an allergy attack. I didn`t think anyone noticed -- ha! Can you imagine, reporters not noticing something?

One day a sympathetic co-worker said asked me if there was anything he could do to help me, since was obviously having such " a hard time." And once again, I had to admit to myself that I was not "all right."

A decade later, I look back on the first year of Big Son`s life, and wonder if my untreated PPD in any way contributed to his present adjustment problems. Did he sense that his mother was a total mess inside, and did this set him on the path to become such a nervous, sensitive kid, with confidence problems? If I had been a different kind of mother that first year of his life, would he be a different kid now? I will never know this.

I have very few regrets in my life, but I wish, if I could go back and change the past, that I had insisted to that nurse pracitioner that NO, I was NOT all right. I wish I had told my OB/GYN that I was not all right, I wish I had joined PPD support groups, and I even wish I had tried medication. I wish I had taken full advantage of all medical science had to offer, and all the support and resources available to help new mothers crawl out of their holes.

And my words of advice, for the next mother who finds her way here searching "post-partum depression," are this: if you think you are not all right, then believe yourself, and not the people around you who tell you that you are.

I did not experience natural childbirth, but I did go through "natural PPD," and I was an idiot for doing it that way.

Be smarter than I was.

Over It

Okay, I`m crawling out from under the bed now. Ha ha ha, who the hell did I think I was, Dooce? I gotta keep this all in perspective. I am still a paramecium in the blogging ecosystem -- sure, a slightly bigger one than I thought, but still a single-celled organism, paddling around in my own tiny life.

Let`s stick to my party metaphor -- say, for instance, that I was expecting two dozen people, and instead, five dozen show up. What would I do? I would pop in a DVD for the kids, order a bunch of pizzas and open a few more bottles of wine -- send Hub out to buy more, if necessary. So here we go. Sit down and pour yourselves another glass, all you great people. I will make my way to all of your blogs sooner or later, now that I know where to find you.

Now for some blog business. I`ve received an appeal from rabid Catholic Holy Fool, on behalf of someone named Ron in Mankato, Minnesota, whose blog, A Wing And a Prayer, I do not read. I am in the Catholic cafeteria, and Ron seems like the type of Catholic who would never set foot in there. He has been out of work for a while, and I guess things in his life are getting desperate. Holy Fool writes, "Let slip the Blogs of war! Let's storm heaven with our prayers and storm Ron's need with our support! Will you join us?"

I figure the least I can do here is provide Ron`s link, and people can click it or not, as they wish. What I`ve learned about this whole blogging thing is that you never know who reads what you write. Someone I knew in Tokyo, a woman working for a rival wire service whom I met from time to time at press conferences, just found her way to my site last week. So maybe the next person who reads this site will be an employer in Mankato, Minnesota, who wants nothing more than to hire a devout Catholic guy.

(And Ron, if you come here to see who linked you, here`s a word of advice: do NOT read my blog -- it is NOT the kind of Catholic blog you`d like, okay? Trust me on that.)

Speaking of religion, I have a question for the "barely religious" Mormon who commented yesterday, if he`s still around. Do the Mormons have any equivalent of the Catholic cafeteria -- people who dissent on some of the teachings and yet still consider themselves church members? I`ve wondered that.

Continuing with the non sequiturs, I was also wondering about the person who found my site searching, "microchip in my brain." And now I know.

And to the person who was searching, "what does a 160 pound woman look like," please fuck off, okay?

I will leave you with a haiku written by Big Son yesterday, and let him have the final word here:

I was a dumb boy,
And I tried to be smarter.
I am smarter now.

Be Careful What You Wish For

At first I was grateful, then surprised, then intimidated by the number of incredibly cool and worthy people who took the time to comment below. You mean if all my posts start to suck, I`m going to disappoint this many people?

Excuse me, while I go hide under my bed for a bit, to ponder that....

A Delurking Post of Sorts

Now that my site meter shows my hits back in the single digits again, I`m going to ask, who are all the new people reading this blog now?

This is not one of those blogs whose usual readership could fill a small city. In a good week, I probably get enough readers to fill a decent party, and most of them are my real-life people with whom I have indeed actually partied in the past. I started blogging mainly as a way to keep in touch with far-flung friends, and making new friends came as an added bonus. I am also amazed at the therapeutic potential of blogging -- putting my thoughts into writing really has helped me think through some of our adjustment problems, and readers` comments were a highly valuble part of this process.

My blog is small enough so that I like to keep track of who is reading it. Last week, thanks to my response to MIM`s "False Advertising" post (which I won`t link, because I think everyone finally wants that whole kerfuffle to go away now), my site meter was spinning out of control, and I got more comments than I could keep up with. I gave up trying to check out commenter`s blogs to see who you all are.

So I will ask -- who are you? Who are you people who came last week, and decided to come back? People who`ve come since my last delurking post are invited to step forward, too. Please let me know who you are, where you are, and what you do -- or just say "hi."

A particular invitation is extended to the people who found their way here through weird searches that raise many questions. To the person searching "weird parts of mens` bodies," what parts did you have in mind? The searcher for "my boys` underwear" should know better than to look for it here. And why ever would someone search, "everything went fine?" What could you possibly have been hoping to find with that?

Please, take a minute and let me know.

Thanks.

Happy happy, joy joy

Big Son had a huge grin on his face when he came out of school today. No, Huggy Nun did not resign, effective immediately -- even better, he got an invitation to a birthday sleepover party this Friday. Only five boys were invited, and he was one.

"D. only invited his friends! And I`m his friend!"

This puts our overall household sentiment firmly in the "positive" category, cancelling out the lingering negative sentiment from Daughter`s team losing both of their weekend basketball games, as well as someone finding Mama`s blog while searching, "small Philippino boobs."

My Worst Fear = Hub`s Greatest Wish

Little Son will be four years old next month. Daughter was about this age when we started having the "one more baby?" discussions.

And right on schedule, Hub is getting those big moony eyes whenever he sees an infant.

"Wouldn`t it be so great....?"

"....to have what feels like a killer hangover for nine months, to get my stomach and my thinning uterine walls cut open again, to have another six months of post-partum depression and then breastfeed for a couple of years, while you work long hours and travel? Ah, no -- that would SUCK."

People have asked us whose idea it was to have our third kid. It`s funny -- no one ever asked us that for the first or second kid, but when I was pregnant with Little Son, it was open season for invasive personal questions. "Was it planned?" came up a lot, too.

The truth is, it was originally our babysitter`s idea for us to have a third child. We had a great Fillipina babysitter/housekeeper in Tokyo, and she especially loved little babies, and kept telling us how wonderful it would be if we had one more, until we started to see things her way. So she gets the credit for planting the idea in our heads.

This became a running joke -- I would make a serious face and tell intrusive strangers that our babysitter was really great and we were afraid she would quit, so we had to have another baby just to keep her. There are probably people out there in the world, telling the story of a crazy family they met in Tokyo, who had another child just to keep good help.

But it`s really no joke that Hub wants one more, now that I`ve decided my aging body won`t be going through that again.

"But you`re Catholic!" he says.

"Nice try. If I were a good Catholic, would I have married you?"

The most ironic part is that when Little Son was only six months old, we had a pregnancy scare, and Hub was singing a different tune.

Apparently, we got a defective home test. After a few minutes, NO lines appeared -- not even the control line. The instructions on the box say to throw it away if the control line doesn`t appear. But after an hour, I pulled it out of the trash to look at it one more time, and there were two extremely faint lines there.

Two lines. Everyone knows what that means. For better or for worse, it`s a sight that brings out strong emotions in anyone who beholds it.

"Umanai! It won`t be born," said Hub, over and over. "Umanai! It won`t be born, it won`t be born!"

Now, I am not pro-life, and I am a strong advocate of keeping abortion legal. But still, I deeply resented that Hub had already made a decision about something that was, after all, growing inside my body.

So we had a huge fight about it -- the last serious fight I remember having with Hub. He was adamant that we would not be having another baby so soon, and stormed out of the apartment.

I reached for the phone, and the first friend I called told me Hub was right and I was being unreasonable.

"How can you even think about having another baby so soon? Think of the time and the money involved -- it`s not fair to your kids. It`s not fair to your husband. It would be selfish of you to risk your marriage and family like that."

Okay, that particular friend had aborted her only pregnancy and never had any more, so I could understand where she was coming from. But I was surprised to get the same reaction from the next friend I called, a mother of two.

What happened, I wondered, to that old my body, my choice argument? Did it only apply if the woman was choosing abortion over childbirth, and not the other way around? Is abortion now the automatic "best" option for an unplanned pregnancy? Are the pro-lifers right: has the subtle bias among educated, middle class feminist women shifted from "pro-choice" to "pro-abortion?"

My informal poll, taken on my brief night of crisis, only surveyed three such women, and the third was decidely "pro-choice" in the original (and, I think, best) nuance of that slippery term. She tried to discern what I was thinking, and what I wanted to do, and took into account Hub`s reaction and my reaction to Hub`s reaction, and told me I needed to think everything through very carefully.

I don`t know for sure what I would have done had I really been pregnant, but fortunately, I was not. The next morning, I bought another test -- a different brand this time -- and it was clearly negative. The control line was dark as it was supposed to be, and no other line ever appeared. No baby in there, nothing to worry about -- yay, yipee, do a little happy dance, and then life went on.

But now, I think, if I showed Hub two lines on a pregnancy test, he wouldn`t say, "Umanai!" He would get those moony eyes, and get all happy, and start buying soft little clothes and toys again.

Um... how many more years left until menopause?

More Catholic Stuff

Oh, dear. I`m still getting tons of traffic from my "weight gain" post, and I suppose I should be writing some really sexy posts to snare all of these new readers and keep them coming back. But instead, I`m going to do another Catholic post that only four people will read, proving that I must subconsciously crave obscurity after all.

Mo-Wo`s comment on my post below reminded me of the time when Big Son was a newborn, and I unsuccessfully attempted to get him baptized in Los Angeles.

This attempt was made entirely for my dear late Gramma`s sake -- Big Son was her much-adored first great-grandchild, and I think she was really concerned about him ending up in limbo and not in heaven with her. (Actually, I think the Catholic church quietly dropped the whole concept of limbo after Vatican II, but no one bothered to tell Gramma.) So I told Gramma I would look into it, and made an appointment to talk to our parish priest.

I was not a churchgoer at the time, and I hadn`t signed up at this parish, which is in kind of a ritzy LA neighborhood and has a very good parochial school. We knew Hub would get transferred back to Tokyo in a few years, so elementary schools were not even on our radar at the time. However, I now realize in retrospect that this church probably gets a steady stream of new parishoners seeking to join just to give their kids an edge in getting accepted into the school, and that this means the parish priest can pick and choose which families to welcome.

The priest was elderly and Irish -- and I don`t mean Irish-American, I mean Irish-Irish, which was immediately apparent from his brogue.

I didn`t lie to him at all. I told him I married outside the faith, and my husband didn`t initially agree to raise our kids Catholic. I told him about my promise to my grandmother to look into baptism, and Isaid I knew that doing something like this to please someone else wasn`t the best reason, but that nonetheless I wanted to do it as a sign of love and respect for my grandmother.

And surprise, surprise -- he was okay with that! I mean, relatively speaking -- he did frown a lot, and shook his head, but he muttered about being able to work something out for us.

But then.... he asked me why I didn`t go to mass, and why I had fallen away. I should have stuck to my main story, about marrying outside the faith, but I had resolved to be completely honest about everything.

So I told him, "I have trouble with the Church`s views on homosexuality and abortion." And I might as well have just dumped a liter of stinking horse crap on his desk.

He turned purple. Veins in his forehead stood out, and began to pulse. He stood up, trembling, and told me that the homosexuality was "A SIN AGAINST NAURE!" and abortion was "THE GREATEST ABOMINATION FACING MANKIND TODAY!"

Then he walked to the door, and held it open for me to leave.

Oh well.

I called my grandmother that night, and told her what had transpired.

"You had to go and open your mouth," she said. "But at least you tried." She seemed satisfied -- I guess Gramma figured God gives credit for trying.

Nine years later, I told that story to the old Italian Franciscan in Tokyo who wanted to baptize my kids, when he found out no one had done so. I didn`t leave out the part about my views about homosexuality and abortion, which he couldn`t possibly have condoned. But instead of turning purple and fuming, he just lowered his voice.

"I think it is wrong to refuse to baptize someone, no matter who their parents are or what they think," he said.

When he goes home to Italy, he said, beggers always target him when they see he`s a priest.

"I never refuse them, even if I suspect they`re going to just spend my money on drugs or drink," he said. "I always err on the side of generosity."

So this generous priest baptized all three kids at once, one Sunday after mass. My parents came over for it.

"Wow, you did it! And lightening didn`t strike you dead!" said my mother afterward.

Not yet, anyway.

Explanations of All the Seemingly Incongruous Catholic Stuff In Our Life

Recent commenter H. writes,

I have to ask why you have put your children in a Catholic school? I feel so bad for your little guy that he has had to change countries, languages, cultures and schools. Now it seems like he is caught between religious beliefs as well. I have been following your posts on standupandspeakout. You seem to have your own issues with the Church and seem to be fighting your own religious wars, so I wonder why you would put your little ones on the *front lines* in a religious school? I have to wonder if part of the problem isn't the disdain you seem to have for Church teaching? Plus, you have said that your husband is not supportive at all about their religious education. I don't want to sound hard, but I do have some real concerns about your situation if you don't all get on the same page somehow. It is something to think about...

Excellent questions, H. !

I`ve answered many of them on this blog before, but it`s about time I answered them all in one place and put it over there under, "About This Blog."

In order:

I have to ask why you have put your children in a Catholic school?

Long story here. When we were preparing to move to San Francisco from Tokyo, we had to make a lot of quick decisions about where to live, and where to educate the kids. After some discussion about moving to San Mateo, where Hub`s predecessor lived, we decided to live in the city instead, for exactly the same reasons we lived in the center of Tokyo: our love of urbanity, and convenience.

We wanted to put our children in a school that resembled their wonderful neighborhood public school in Tokyo, which was 1) very small; 2) had cultural, ethnic and socioeconomic diversity; and 3) had a close community of involved, committed parents. We also preferred that our kids attend a school within walking distance of where we would be living, to strengthen our ties in our neighborhood.

We looked into public schools, but San Francisco has a convoluted lottery system. Our move was planned for July, by which time it would be "open enrollment," meaning we`d have to scurry for places that remained after all the rounds of the lottery were complete. A very nice counselor at the Unified School District`s Educational Placement Center told me they couldn`t guarantee to place both a third grader and a fifth grader at any school of our choice. She kept asking me, "Can`t you just move over here four months earlier?" This made me realize what kind of odds we were up against.

I also looked into Catholic schools, and visited the two closest to the house we would be renting.

The first one had 2 classes of over 30 kids in each grade and no foreign language program. It was farther away, in a more upscale part of the neighborhood, and looked very, um....white. When I asked if they had any remedial programs for kids behind in English, they told me they couldn`t accept our kids at all, if they weren`t up to grade level. So I scratched that one.

Then I visited the school in our parish, a few blocks away from our future house. It had only one class of 25 kids or fewer in each grade, and a Spanish language program. It was in a traditionally working-class neighborhood, and had a very diverse student body. The school administrators told me they would be happy to accept two kids who were behind grade level in English, and would do their best to help them acclimate. Big Son has had some problems adjusting, but overall, I would say they have.

As for the religious aspect, I want to teach my kids about the religion in which I was raised. Hub isn`t wild about it -- it makes him a little uncomfortable, but he doesn`t oppose it, either.

I feel so bad for your little guy that he has had to change countries, languages, cultures and schools. Now it seems like he is caught between religious beliefs as well.

He always was. This is nothing new in our life. It`s all part of growing up in an interracial, interfaith, international, bilingual family. We`re not the first family to be in our situation, and I`m sure we won`t be the last.

And thanks to H. and everyone else who`s been concerned for our little guy -- he`s been doing much better lately. He`s decided he`s an athiest because God doesn`t make logical sense to him, but I decided exactly the same thing when I was his age, so he`s right on schedule.

You seem to have your own issues with the Church and seem to be fighting your own religious wars, so I wonder why you would put your little ones on the *front lines* in a religious school?

I`ve blogged about why I left the Church, as well as what prompted me to decide to raise the kids Catholic after all. As for "fighting" my own "religious wars," I`ve never thought of it that way. My internal back-and-forth is more like a friendly spiritual arm-wrestling match. "Front lines" implies some sort of battleground for my kids` souls, which doesn`t describe our particular school. It is certainly a Catholic school -- make no mistake about that. But it welcomes students from all different backgrounds, from families running the gamut from devout to "cafeteria." And about a fifth of the students aren`t Catholic at all.

I have to wonder if part of the problem isn't the disdain you seem to have for Church teaching?

Sorry if it seems like "disdain" to you -- I`m a natural smart-ass, so I`m sure it does come off this way sometimes. I have great respect for the Church`s teachings, even several with which I do dissent. Remember -- I was Catholic before I was anything else. Long before I was a feminist or an environmentalist or a free-trade and free speech fanatic, I was a newborn baby in a white lacy gown, getting water splashed on my forehead.

Since I learned the Catholic point of view first, it became the lense through which I saw everything else. Some of my later views are in direct contradiction to Catholic doctrine, and I don`t attempt to reconcile them, as some other people do. For instance, is it possible to be a good Catholic, and not be pro-life? I`m not sure. Since I`m not pro-life, I have to accept that this means I might never be a good Catholic.

You have said that your husband is not supportive at all about their religious education. I don't want to sound hard, but I do have some real concerns about your situation if you don't all get on the same page somehow.

Not only are Hub and I not on the same page -- we aren`t even browsing in the same bookstore, and I don`t think we ever will be.

Yes, it`s true that Hub is a little freaked out by Christianity in general, because his only early exposure to them was comprised of earnest young missionaries looking for converts. He has a bit of a "church allergy" -- he has accompanied me to mass exactly once since we moved here, and as soon as it was over, he ran away as soon as he could, like a vampire from garlic.

Racial, cultural, and religous consistency within a family is great, because it makes everything very simple. But you know, sometimes, people from totally different worlds meet and mate. It is our particular challenge -- and responsibility -- to make sure our offspring are exposed to the best of both our worlds, not the worst.

We`re taking it all day by day. How else can we approach it?

Okay, I`m off to church now -- alone. I could probably make everything a little easier by staying home, and never going at all. It would sure be consistent -- but would it be better?

Oh, my god.....

Someone just found my blog searching, "sister and brother going to church porn."

No News Is Good News

Has anyone noticed something? Like, I haven`t complained about a certain nun in a long time?

Big Son appears to have had another good week -- I say "appears," because I didn`t get any papers with smiley faces from Huggy Nun. I think she just got tired of doing that.

But I did see her after school a few times, and she said hello and smiled, and said Big Son seems better. "Yes, Sister. Thank you, sister," I said.

On the wall outside her classroom, she`s hung her students` drawings of the things they gave up for Lent. I noticed that Big Son`s said he`d given up playing with his GameBoy.

"But you lost your GameBoy," I pointed out to him.

"I know, so it`s really easy to give it up."

Good answer, I thought.

But then he found it, and I caught him playing with it.

"It`s okay," he assured me. "I don`t believe in God, anyway."

Ooooh. Another good answer.

This kid is really learning a lot in Catholic school.

The Fat and the Fury

This week, I literally got a thousand times my usual traffic, after my "weight" post on Monday got linked on a few very famous blogs, as well as a bevy of lesser-traveled ones.

(Google, oh Google -- you never sent me those ads I signed up for a few weeks ago! What a lost opportunity! And by the way, if I don`t hear from you soon, I`m going to take down that public service solicitation, and put something pretty up there instead. UPDATE: Horray! Finally got `em! But wow, what bizarre ads...)

I never intended for over 5,000 people to read my personal reflections on my weight and my marriage, but as they say, if you don`t want people to see the naked truth, don`t take your clothes off and stand in front of the window.

Fortunately, all of my years working as a journalist inured me to negative reader feedback. I got used to getting emails about my articles on Japan`s recovery, or a particular company, or China`s exchange rate outlook from people who told me I was full of shit and they couldn`t believe someone paid me to write whatever I wrote. Sob, boo hoo -- I cried all the way to the "delete" button.

Of course, MIM is in the eye of the shitstorm, and I am just a nasty little side flurry. MIM and I go back to the days before I had a blog, and our very first encounter on Blogging Baby was an argument, complete with capital letters, about whether or not to spank kids. I started reading MIM`s blog because I like her honesty, even though I don`t always agree with her. In fact, I didn`t agree with the main premise of her "False Advertising" post that started all this.

Nonetheless, as one blogger put it, I became " some sort of poster child for why MIM's post is so aggravating," as a couple of feminist sites I`ve read and admired in the past picked up the discussion.

Hub got the brunt of it, of course, for something he didn`t even say out loud. There were many reasons why he didn`t want me at his Christmas party, not the least of which was that wives usually aren`t expected to attend Japanese office functions. People who know me in person (the original intended readership of this blog) know I`ve been crashing his parties for years.

People even made fun of his blog nickname. "She calls him Hub, does that mean he’s the center of her life and she`s just one of his spokes?"

Ah - no. "Hub" is just my unoriginal abbrevition for "husband." I`ve never called him that in real life, but I kind of like it on my blog. It`s never made me think of a wheel -- instead, it reminds me of airports, as in I want to fly direct, but I have a layover at the hub.

To be sure, Hub`s remarks about how much I eat are not nice, and I let him know that whenever he utters one. But as I said in response to a commenter on one of my posts, I have to say that my husband`s "nice" actions far outweigh any of his rare "not so nice" comments. Is anyone nice 100% of the time? Is any relationship perfect? If my husband of 15 years is loving and affectionate, and a good father to the kids, can I still call him "nice," despite the fact that I know he honestly wishes I would lose a few pounds? It`s very hard to convey the entire dynamic of a relationship in a blog post.

Over the years, Hub never stopped loving me through three untreated bouts of post-partum depression (two moderate, one severe). In other words, the man has seen me at my very scary UGLIEST, and I`m not talking about my appearance here.

In other words, he`s not perfect, but neither am I, and he`s NOT a fucktard. You`ll just have to have take my word for it.

Okay?

A Post Containing Both Sex Toys And Nun References

Call me "Prudence."

Hello, my name is L., and I am a prude.

No two prudes are alike. My own attitude is rooted not in shame but in a deeply ingrained belief that private things should best stay private. In general, I am a big-mouthed, outspoken person, and in my college days, I briefly experimented with talking about sex a lot. I found this only got me a reputation as a sex fiend among my fellow students, so I shut up, moved to Japan, and have kept it all to myself ever since.

I have never seen either of my parents naked. I cover myself with a towel when changing in public locker rooms, and when I first moved to Japan, it took me a while to get used to all the single-sex communal nakedness at public baths and hot springs. I like my body just fine in private -- in fact, I like it very much. But please don`t expect me to share it with you.

I was raised in a New England Catholic family. For me, sex is a lot like religion -- I am not fully comfortable talking about either my sex life or my spiritual life in all settings. I believe that both sex and religion should be practiced in private, by consenting adults who know they share the same values. If you know someone is open and receptive to praying with you or having sex with you -- great! Go for it! More power to you! It`s only when people try to shove their sexual or religious values on other people that trouble begins.

So how ever did I find myself attending a "Passion Party" given by one of the most religious moms I`ve met at my kids` Catholic school?

For the uninitiated among you, "passion" in this case has nothing to do with Palm Sunday. It refers to sex toys and sex-related accessories. Picture a Tupperware party. Now instead of Tupperware, picture a table full of lotions and devices, in all shapes, colors, sizes and flavors.

Now picture me, nodding earnestly through every demonstration, and trying very hard not to look uncomfortable.

I`m sure you`re wondering, why did I even go? I was there to support my friend, the party`s host, whom I will call "Host" (not to be confused with the Eucharist). Host is a warm, considerate human being, and right from the start, she has been very kind to my older son, who is in her son`s fifth grade class. Host sympathizes with my son`s adjustment problems, and has made a point of inviting him to her house.

I was surprised when Host told me about her party, and I guess I shouldn`t have been. Host is a regular churchgoer, and a very devout Catholic who opposes abortion. If anyone out there assumes that all people who are anti-choice are anti-sex, Host is living proof that some are not.

I don`t know if the Catholic church has any official position on sex toys. I know it opposes artificial birth control, on the grounds that every marital act of intercourse must be open to the possibility of the creation of human life as a fact of natural law. I suppose that anything that enhances the marital act without interfering with possible procreation is probably okay -- but I`m not holding my breath that Pope Benedict XVI will make dildos the topic of his next Encyclical.

Damn -- I can`t even type the word "dildo" without blushing. So imagine, if you will, how difficult it was to fight the urge to flee from this party the minute I walked through the door.

I was the first one to arrive, because I had to leave early for another party (in fact, a meet-up party with fellow parent bloggers). Host was still fussing with her food trays, so her co-host (henceforth to be known as "CH") gave me a private demonstration.

CH was a gray-haired, bespectacled middle-aged woman, of average height and build, who would not have looked out of place at our parish bingo night. She could have been any of the dozens of Avon ladies I`ve known in my life, except her particular cosmetics were meant for body areas that normally don`t show.

"Isn`t this nice? That`s our plumeria scent," she said, as she rubbed something on my forearm. "It contains pheromones."

Great -- so now if anyone at my next party is inexplicably attracted to me, I will know why.

"And this is a male masturbation sleeve," CH said. Ah, now here was a product the Church wouldn`t sanction -- except she was showing me how it could be used by couples. That might be okay.

I couldn`t help thinking that perhaps, since Host and I both had sons in the same class, wouldn`t it be funny if we chipped in to get their teacher a present? What would Huggy Nun like? She might faint dead away if she opened a box with a dildo in it, but perhaps some of the scented oils would be nice? Or maybe one of the little vibrating devices for her feet?

The doorbell rang, and it was one of Host`s neighbors, an older man. He was obviously there as a favor to Host, too, because he quickly poured himself an alcoholic drink and sat down on the couch. I tried very hard not to make eye contact with him, as he did his best to look comfortable.

"Are you shy?" CH asked me.

"Um...why do you ask?"

"Well, I`m wondering if you`d like to try some of this special cream on your nipples."

"I`m SHY!" I practically screamed, and I knew it was time to go. Funny -- I hiked up my nursing bras and breastfed all my babies in public, but when it came to "special cream" at a passion party, I was overcome by a sudden attack of shyness.

Who knows -- maybe after a few drinks, the older man on the couch would try her special cream. But I didn`t want to be around for that.

And in case you`re wondering, no, I didn`t buy anything -- yet. I saved the catalogue, and I`ll probably order something later as a favor to Host.

Because even prudes have fun behind closed doors, in the privacy of their own homes.

Let`s Make This A Weighty Trifecta

Just when I thought I had finally achieved the perfect balance of health and self-satisfaction with my body, another issue reared its ugly head.

Actually, I should say, reared its three adorable little heads. What good are all my carefully honed attitudes, if I can`t pass them to my kids? What good is my health and happiness, if my daughter turns on herself, using food as her weapon, or if my sons won`t speak to "fat" girls? I now spend far more time worrying about this than I do about my own weight, and in fact, I worry about the latter primarily in regard to how if affects the former. Forget about my husband (please!) --- my primary motivator has shifted from being skinny and attractive, to being a healthy role model for the next generation.

Since I weaned her, Daughter has never been a "good eater." Sure, she plumped up on breastmilk for the first couple of years of her life, but after that, she`s been a picky eater, with "food issues." She is now over the 50th percentile for height....and under the 10th percentile for weight. Our latest pediatrician is unconcerned, because Daughter is small-boned, and except for her long, bird-like legs, her physique definitely takes more after her Japanese side than her thick-waisted Eastern European ancestors.

When we saw Daughter`s growth charts, I was alarmed, and Hub was ecstatic. However, these seemingly divergent attitudes come together nicely: as long as she`s healthy, Hub would prefer Daughter remain skinny, whereas I think that it`s fine that she`s skinny as long as she`s healthy. See? We`re reading from different books, but somehow, we`re still on the same page.

I`m trying to keep us there, and work on maintaining a united front on weight issues. So far, we seem to be pulling it off, after clearing a mountain of baggage from both sides.

Hub is Japanese, so his idea of "normal weight" greatly differs from mine. According to a survey result released in April, 2004 by Japanese underwear manufacturer Wacoal, the average Japanese woman in her 20's is 158 cm tall (5.2 feet) and weighs 49.7 kilograms (about 110 pounds). That`s average, mind you -- not the models, not the skinny minnies, but the people that you meet, just walkin` down the street in your neighborhood.

When Hub met me, I was 19, and both taller and thinner than the Japanese average. But I never had a classic Japanese body -- even when I was skinny, I had curves in places Japanese women lack them. I used to despair of never being able to find bras in my size in Japan that didn`t have extra padding, because it was the last thing I needed. (Three kids and a couple decades later, let`s just say it`s still the last thing I need.)

As I said in my first "weight" post earlier this week, I grew up surrounded by unhealthy food attitudes. My overweight mother constantly nagged me about my eating habits, and her mother, who lived with us, constantly pushed food on me. If I had grown up living with just my mother, I might have become anorexic, and if I had grown up with just my grandmother, I might have become overweight and/or bulimic. But as it was, the two women balanced each other out, and I grew up eating a lot, exercising a lot, and learning to just tune out when people talk about how much or how little I`m eating.

So whenever Hub made a comment about my gaining weight, or eating too much (and NO, I will NOT be specific here, because there are too many people on the Internet already chasing him down with lanterns and pitchforks), I tended to shrug it off. As my close friends will tell you, over the years, I have not been the most, ah...secure person. If I perceive that someone is maligning my intelligence, especially my writing, I ah... took it personally. I really did, and sometimes I still do.

But thanks to my mother and my grandmother, my neuroses have never extended to my appearance. If people insult my looks, my response is usually an annoyed, "So?"

The two women I loved most in the world when I was growing up, my two strongest female influences, used to pick on not only my body, but on my clothes, too. They could never agree on whether I needed to eat more or less, but they were in total agreement on hating anything I happened to like.

Actual reconstructed conversation, from my tender teenage years:

GRAMMA: Whose shoes are those?
ME: Mine. I just bought them.
MA: Well, they`re ugly!
GRAMMA: Yeah, they`re really ugly.
ME (though gritted teeth): I like them. I paid lots of money for them.
GRAMMA: Well, then you got ripped off, because they`re ugly.
MA: Maybe the store will take them back.
GRAMMA: You should make the store take them back, because they`re so ugly!
ME: (getting pissed off) I like them. I`m keeping them.
MA: Okay, if you want to go around wearing ugly shoes.
GRAMMA: I don`t know why anyone would want to wear such ugly shoes. But here, have another cookie. Or would you rather have some banana bread?
MA: Will you stop feeding her so much? She needs to learn to watch her weight!
GRAMMA: Look who`s talking! Watch your own weight!
ME: That`s it, I`m moving to Tokyo to get as far away from this as I possibly can.

Okay, so I took some liberties with the last line, but you get the idea.

I figure, if I grew up in the crossfire of dueling food attitudes and still managed to end up liking my middle-aged body, Daughter should be able to navigate her way through the hall of funhouse mirrors reflecting all the different Japanese and Western ideal female body images, and somehow emerge alive and healthy on the other side. And even if our sons grow up to marry super models, I hope that at least they`ll be healthy, confident super models.

The first thing I did was banish Hub`s comments about weight in front of the kids. Not just Daughter, but the boys as well, because I don`t want them growing up thinking someone else`s weight is an acceptable topic on which to pass judgment.

This has been a hard habit to break, and I take full blame for that. I`m a "foodie." Even when I was thin and determined to stay that way, I`ve always been an eater -- I was just an avid exerciser, too. Hub has always commented on my eating, and it`s never bothered me much, thanks to my being desensitized at an early age by my mother and grandmother.

But over this past year, after I had several hissy fits whenever poor Hub mentioned weight in front of the kids, he`s finally on board -- I hope. He is for now, anyway, and as in all parenting areas, we`re tackling "promote healthy body images" day by day. Granted, sometimes, it`s a "two steps forward, one step back" approach, involving damage control, but that`s life.

My sons are now almost 4 and almost 11, and Daughter just turned 9, so it`s far too early to say whether or not our efforts will pay off in the long run. But so far, there have been a few small victories, as well as a few ongoing battles.

Daughter, who reminds me so much of my mother sometimes that it`s terrifying, often refuses to eat when she`s upset. For example, if I tell her to clean her room, or do her homework, her response is, "Fine! But I WON`T EAT DINNER! And you can`t MAKE me!" Since I have resolved never to let her make an issue out of food, I just tell her, "You`ll eat when you`re hungry," and leave it at that.

She`s still a picky eater, but on nights she turns her nose up at the family`s dinner, she is now allowed a few other choices we always have around, such as Japanese miso soup, a bagel, cereal, fruit, etc. The only thing I force her to eat is her daily multivitamin.

And the victories? Well, I have to say, I was gratified that both of my older kids had close friends in Tokyo who were significantly overweight. Some of their peers picked on those kids, but mine didn`t. They didn`t seem to notice.

When we were still in Tokyo, I asked Daughter, then in second grade, if she had a boyfriend.

"No, but I have a friend who`s a boy," she said, and named a very chubby Phillipino classmate.

"Why do you like him?" I asked. I was really curious, because I guessed this kid was picked on not only for his weight, but for the fact that he was foreign, too.

"Because he`s nice to me, and he`s funny," she said. "Isn`t that why you like Papa?"

In fact, that`s exactly why I like Hub.

So now we all have to do is keep this going for the next couple of decades, and we`re set.

(Regular readers of this blog, please stayed tuned, and we will soon return to our regularly scheduled episode of "Trouble with Nuns," as well as that sex toy post I promised.)

Weighty Postscript

(UPDATE: Last night, after like the 500th hit on yesterday`s post, I asked Hub, point blank, "Did you not want me at your office Christmas party because of the way I look?" and he looked up wearily and said, "No -- it`s because when you drink, you have a big mouth!" And then he said, "Um, why are you asking me this now?" Oh, no reason --- there`s just a bunch of people on the Internet now who hate you because of something your big-mouthed wife said about you on her blog...)

I don`t quite believe what a massive can of wriggly worms MIM opened up with her weight gain post. No, actually -- I do believe it.

And my own post on weight gain yesterday is now linked on both Tertia`s blog and Suburban Bliss (one of those famous sites I`ve never read regularly, but I guess I now have to start, because she appears to be a fellow long-suffering bride of a metrosexual). I thought my sitemeter was broken or something, because I`m getting so many hits from those two sites.

I never intended my post to be a counterpart argument rebutting MIM`s -- more of a complementary one, with my own personal take on it.

I also never intended to trash my husband, by drawing attention to what I will say is a relatively minor issue in a long and mostly happy marriage.

Hub and I have been together for over 20 years, and tomorrow is our 15th wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary, Hub! For your present, I made you into a Mommy Blog villain -- isn`t that so hip and cool? Dozens of complete strangers now think you`re an asshole!

I also want to follow up to say, after reading more of MIM`s comments, and others` comments, and thinking about it all some more, MIM never defined what she meant by, "attraction," and I think that word means something different to everyone.

"Attraction" is not synonomous with "love," although in some relationships, they are so entwined as to be inseparable. Not so in mine -- certainly, in the beginning, before we could speak each other`s language well enough to communicate, sexual attraction was a main pillar of our relationship. Hell -- it was the ONLY pillar of our relationship, until we both brushed up on our language skills.

Sexual attraction still matters now, but let`s just say it`s no longer at the top of the list, or even in the top ten. Please, commenters, do not jump all over that and tell me that that`s a "bad score"-- the only satisfactory amount of sex in any relationship is the amount that`s acceptable to both partners.

Our own numbers dropped for many reasons: Hub is a workaholic, our 3-year old sleeps in our bed, I have a totally irrational terror of getting pregnant again, etc. I could go on and on, but it`s most important to stress that my weight, which has fluctuated from a low of 105 to a pregnant high of 185, has NEVER directly affected our sex life. It`s been about the same, in frequency and quality, no matter what I`ve weighed.

Hub`s present concerns about my weight are strictly related to my appearance, not our intimate life, which is why I am more dismissive of them than I might be, if the opposite were true. As I said to MIM in an email, if it would directly enhance our sex life, I would probably consider losing or gaining weight, shaving my head (or more sensitive areas), even getting plastic surgery. Sure, losing a few pounds wouldn`t hurt, but at this point it would make less of a difference than taking the time to go away for a romantic weekend, which we keep saying we`re going to do, but haven`t done since we moved to San Francisco.

Appearances count to Hub, and as several commenters suggested, some of this is his cultural baggage. There`s an old Japanese saying, something along the lines that men from Tokyo spend all their money going to see Kabuki shows, men from Kyoto spend it all on fine kimonos, and men from Osaka spend it all on food. Guess where Hub is from!

Plus, Hub`s university degree is in something called "Aesthetics," which appears to be a combination of art history and philosophy. So yeah, the guy is obviously very interested in what everything looks like.

When we were first dating, Hub would comment on my clothes, and this really bugged me because he reminded me of my mother. But then he started combing thrift stores, and buying me vintage Issey Miyake and Yoji Yamamoto and Comme Des Garcons clothes, and I thought, hey, wait -- I kind of like this! I considered the true tests to be those occasions when I still wore something that I knew he didn`t like, and he kept his mouth shut. This proved to me that appearances count for him, but they`re obviously not everything. If appearances were mostly what mattered to him, I wouldn`t have stayed with him.

MIM`s post was not just about weight, but also about hair length. Of course, most commenters picked up the "weight" ball and ran with it, but the "hair" ball is just as important. (Damn, that was an unfortunate metaphor, but I`m going to leave it in because it made me laugh.)

When I met Hub, he thought short hair was sexy. Consequently, my hair was very short for over a decade. I personally like it better long, but when the man I love kissed the back of my neck and murmured, "Please...cut...your...hair....," I cut my hair.

But then Hub grew a beard. He didn`t consult me -- he just did it, and I HATED it at first. It looked kind of cool, but it was like kissing a hairbrush-- pffft!

So out of spite, I grew out my hair, and told him I wasn`t cutting it until he got rid of the beard. I bought a bunch of cool barrettes to pull it back. In time, I decided I LOVED his beard, and I liked my own hair long. I chopped my hair off last summer, but regretted it and am now growing it out again.

As for Hub`s appearance, he`s put on more than a few pounds over the years, too, because I`ve fattened him up with my cooking. When I was young, I was only attracted to very skinny guys, but that changed in direct relation to Hub. When he got fatter, I developed a proportionate attraction to fatter guys. I know it doesn`t always work that way, but in my case, it did.

Anyway, I guess my bottom line here is that marriages are complex, attractions are complex, weight issues can be complex, and there are no right answers. There are probably several right answers at any given moment, in any given relationship, including mine, including MIM`s -- and including yours, too.

Right?

Weighty Stuff

(NOTE TO READERS: Those of you who are visiting here just to read this post are also cordially invited to read the two related posts above.)

MIM`s recent post about weight gain in a marriage really hit home.

In it, she says she "work(s) to maintain my figure for myself and my husband. If I had been 160 pounds when we married that would one thing. Then it would be totally unreasonable for him to want me to be 120 pounds. But it would be false advertising if he’d married his 120 pound girlfriend and ended up with a 160 pound wife."

That`s the title of her post: False Advertising.

My husband can relate to this. He married his 110-pound, extremely weight-conscious girlfriend, and now has a 155-pound wife, and he doesn`t like this one bit.

MIM, in her post, says to a group of other women, "Personally, I think it would be unfair to Husband if I gained a bunch of weight and did nothing about it."

MIM is one of my alltime favorite bloggers, and judging from what she writes on her blog, she seems to be very happily married. So I find absolutely nothing wrong with her statement, just as I find nothing wrong with statements like, "I don`t eat any animal flesh." I start having trouble when people continue the sentences, and say, "...so neither should you," and presume that what they have decided is truly right for them is truly right for everyone else, too.

Since MIM didn`t continue her sentence, I won`t continue it for her -- I will just say that never in my life have I thought about my body weight in terms of being "fair" to my husband.

Let it be known that Hub met me when I was a very skinny 19-year old. Before our wedding six years later, I starved myself for a long time and was probably underweight to an unhealthy extent. Without going into details, I`ll say that my body was sending me many signals that said, "eat more or else!" -- but damn, do I look great in my wedding photos.

I also gained a lot of weight during each pregnancy -- my prenatal weight peaked every time at a little over 180 -- but I managed to lose almost all of it within a year of each birth, and get back to my normal adult weight range, which was between 125 and 135. I did that without dieting -- all I did was exercise and breastfeed, and the weight slowly melted away.

In January of 2005, we found out that Hub was going to be transferred to San Francisco. I gained most of my extra weight in the six months that followed -- an average of five pounds a month, that crept onto my frame as I went out for farewell lunches and dinners, said goodbye to my favorite restaurants and enjoyed lots of good wine with friends I would be leaving shortly. We did not have a reliable scale, so I didn`t notice how much I was gaining.

Yeah, I did notice my clothes getting tighter, but since I walked 2 miles each way to work and back everyday, I knew I was still in good shape, and didn`t worry about -- on any given day, I had plenty of other things to worry about first.

To be sure, there was also some classic anxiety eating. I left my job just a week before we left Tokyo in July, and Hub had to transfer to SF in March, so I did all the moving preparations myself while working fulltime and dealing with the kids. So there were those Cadbury Fruit and Nut bars consumed at the end of a hard day`s packing, those brownies baked just to smell something cooking in my lonely, empty kitchen after the movers packed most of our stuff. You know -- those "I`ve-had-such-a-stressful-day-that-I-deserve-these-extra-calories" snacks.

Overall, I recognize that my eating habits were not in a healthy, sustainable pattern, but that ended once we settled into our new life -- and once we bought a new scale, so I could keep track again. Okay, and once I stopped eating rice pudding, which I have.

But here I am, half a year later, and I`m still carrying those extra 30 pounds. And you know what? They truly don`t bother me. But oh, do they ever bother Hub.

In the past, the extra weight certainly would have bothered me. I would have dieted and exercised and not given up until I had sweated and starved my way back into a size 4/6.

I grew up surrounded by very unhealthy food attitudes. My mother has been very overweight since I was a little girl -- not just an extra 30 pounds, but enough to raise health concerns. She hurt her knee playing tennis in the '70`s, stopped exercising, and inflated like a life boat when its release cord is pulled. She was clearly jealous of her skinny daughter, and every time I had an extra dessert, she would start her routine of, "You`re going to be so fat someday. You wait -- you`ll be just like me, if you keep eating like that. "

But this was balanced out by my grandmother, with her attitude of "I-show-my-love-for-you-by-cooking-for-you, now-show-me-you-love-me-by-eating-a-lot." She would say, "You`re too skinny! Here, have another chocolate chip cookie!" Even at a very young age, I recognized some possible theories on why my mother -- my grandmother`s daughter -- got into the "comfort eating" pattern.

Between the two women, I ate like a horse, and exercised like one, too -- and stayed skinny.

Something changed, though -- and I`m not quite sure what. Why don`t I care about my weight as much anymore?

Part of it is that I`m not working fulltime anymore, so lots of my favorite size 6 work clothes would be on hangers in the back of my closet whether they fit me or not. My favorite casual clothes, my large T-shirts and sweaters, still fit me just fine. Maybe it`s because the pleasure I get from food has finally supassed any pleasure I would get from looking good in clothes -- and that I truly believe I look good enough in clothes? Maybe it`s because after a youth spent obsessing about my appearance, after I had 3 kids and turned 40, I finally started believing that looks aren`t as important as other things, like health?

And I am unquestionably healthy, according to my doctor. My blood pressure is fine, and I can climb stairs, chase my kids, even go running on the beach on nice days, and I don`t get out of breath. I don`t notice the extra weight at all -- except I catch guys staring at my boobs a lot, which rarely happened before.

As one of my American friends married to a Japanese guy in Tokyo once said to me, "It`s not about health. My husband wouldn`t care if I were tubercular -- he just wants me to be thinner."
Now, Hub is not an asshole -- or rather, he sometimes certainly IS an asshole, but not about the weight issue. He is never threatening me, or teasing in a disrespectful way. Mostly, he just sighs and shakes his head a lot, and sadly says things like, "I can`t believe you`re still hungry."

Hub didn`t want me to go to his office Christmas party, nor has he invited anyone from work to our house. When I joked that this was because I was "no longer a wife worth showing off," he got very quiet. Saying nothing at all was infinitely worse than anything he could have possibly said.

Before we left Tokyo, I talked about my weight with a few male friends of mine -- notice I say, "mine," and not Hub`s.

Their opinions were eerily unanimous: "You used to look really good before. You don`t look anywhere near as good with all this extra weight. It`s natural that this bothers your husband, because it`s really important to guys to have wives who look good -- so you really should go on a diet."

Damn. And these were my friends.

MIM says in the comments of her post, "I'm not suggesting someone becomes overweight due to lack of self-respect. Rather, I'm saying it's a symptom of it. "

I don`t seem to have any deficit in the self-respect department. I feel great, and I still truly like what I see when I look in the mirror.

I just wish my husband liked it, too.

Real Life

(UPDATE: Wow, I guess I have to count this toward my allotted 15 minutes of fame.)

Whenever I read on other people`s blogs about people in the blogging community meeting in person, I can`t help but feel left out. Most of these meetings take place in other cities, so it`s not precisely a "left out" feeling -- more of a feeling that other people somewhere are leading more interesting lives, and connecting in ways in which I`m not.

I always vowed that if I did meet any blog friends, I would refrain from posting about it, to avoid making anyone out there feel the way such posts made me feel.

Well, today, for the very first time, I met a whole bunch of them at once. I`m not going to say who, because they all took photos, and I`ll likely be appearing on other people`s blogs in the near future, and don`t want to draw attention to graven images of myself.

I will say that I was very grateful to the organizers and hosts, and amazed how well we all got along -- as if we`d known each other a long time. And in a way, of course, we had -- for months, we`ve been reading about each other`s lives, our pasts, our hopes for the future.

I will also say that I went to this party immediately after a very different sort of party -- kind of an "adults only" Tupperware party. One of the moms at our Catholic school has a new side business selling sex toys and other personal products (and I can`t WAIT to check my site meter tomorrow, after writing that).

I will be blogging all about the first party, as soon as I stop blushing every time I think about it.

You know you`ve moved to an Irish-American enclave when...

...your children HAVE A DAY OFF FROM SCHOOL today.

Yes, St. Patrick`s Day is a school holiday here. Our church was built in the 1920`s, in what was then a working-class Irish neghborhood, and named for a sixth-century Irish saint. Our school was founded in 1964 and originally staffed with nuns from Cork. The holiday tradition lives on, even though Hispanic and Philippino parishioners now far outnumber those of Irish descent.

Our sports teams are called, "The Shamrocks." It is bad enough that I have to dress my children in uniforms with little shamrock logos, but NO WAY will I ever be caught dead cheering, "Go Shamrocks!"

I`ve decided the only possible explanation is that God compelled me to send my kids to this school to punish me for all the years in which I stubbornly refused to acknowlege St. Patrick`s Day, let alone celebrate it. I figure this means God is not only Catholic, but Irish Catholic, and He is laughing his ass off at me right now.

Oh, I suppose as a small child I must have worn green clothing to school before I fully understood the implications, but not after I found out that St. Patrick`s Day celebrated an ethnicity to which we did not happen to belong. I mean, we didn`t wear tribal costumes in honor of Kwanza -- why the hell should we wear green on St. Patrick`s Day?

So instead of green, I used to wear red and white to school -- the colors of the Polish flag. I was prepared to defend my fashion statement to anyone who asked. No one ever asked.

For a while in high school, I dated an Irish-American boy, and I was utterly baffled at the extent of his ethnic pride. He read books on Irish history and followed current events there. To hear him talk, you`d think his family ties to the old country were fresh and strong, but the truth was that his ancestors had come over many generations ago.

"I don`t get it. Your family was already well-established in America when my family was still plowing fields back in Poland and Lithuania," I remember saying, "and you don`t see me waving any little flags and marching in parades."

No, my ethnic traditions consisted of going to the Polish church with my grandmother every now and then, and learning a few recipes. The only Polish words I know are food words like "capusta" and "galumpki." (If you ever meet people who pronounce the "l" in the latter word as a "w" sound, you can bet they know their Polish cooking.)

Polish food includes many dishes consisting of cabbage and boiled meat, which is something else that annoys me about St. Patrick`s Day. You`d think the Irish invented cabbage and boiled meat, the way they go on and on about it. They didn`t, and even if they did, is their cuisine really something to be so proud of? At least we Poles don`t boil our potatoes, too -- we fry them up into yummy little pancakes, and serve them with sour cream. And my Lithuanian grandmother, before Alzheimer`s stole all her marbles, could make one mean kugeli.

Okay, so the Irish did give the world Guinness, which is widely appreciated. But krupnikas, the Lithuanian spiced liquor? Mmmmm! A few shots of that, and even badly boiled beef would taste good.

I spent most of my adult life in Tokyo, where St. Patrick`s Day is celebrated in a few Irish pubs and private homes, but not by the general population, so it was never an issue. This year, though, St. Patrick`s Day came around, and I found myself trying to explain it to my newly repatriated, Japanese-centric kids.

"Why is it supposed to be fun to be Irish? Because they get to drink a lot?" asked Big Son.

"No, Mama`s not Irish, and I drink a lot, don`t I? So that can`t be it. The answer is, I don`t know, but you don`t have to worry about it." (I`ve found that last line to be a very useful parenting tool, by the way.)

Little Son came home from his preschool yesterday proudly wearing a big paper shamrock. Okay, fine -- but the teachers wrote his name on it, and "Irish-ized" it. For instance, if Little Son`s name were "John Smith," they wrote, "John O'Smith."

I know, I know -- I should lighten up, it`s all in good fun. Yeah, whatever. But that "O" really bugged me. The paper shamrock went into the trash as soon as he went to bed, and fortunately he didn`t look for it this morning.

We`re already dealing with enough identity issues in this house. I have enough of a challenge convincing my kids they`re American, without making them wear another culture`s ethnic symbols and changing their names.

Do you think my antagonism toward St. Patrick`s Day might have something to do with the fact that I was born in 1965, the year of the snake?

I wonder.

It doesn`t get much better than this.

I have a nice sugar buzz from two Hello Kitty Pop Tarts (with pink frosting and Wild Berry filling), chased down with champagne.

I was celebrating Big Son`s amazing streak of five good days in a row, counting last Friday. Today when I asked him how his day was, he said, "It was much worse than even my worst days in Tokyo were, but it was the best so far for San Francisco."

Huggy Nun gave him a "Most Improved" certificate to bring home. She wrote on it that he is "starting to particpate orally and trying to do his written classwork."

Those are good words -- "starting" and "trying." Now hopefully the rest will come.

Commenter Mary P. asked why I call her Huggy Nun. This story of this moniker predates Big Son`s problems, but even after he started freaking out and Huggy Nun started getting frustrated and freaking out, too, she continued to make her huggy attempts whenever I spoke with her.

I have to say, she is genuinely happy that Big Son is acting like normal boy again -- she runs up to me in the schoolyard to tell me about him, and she all but turns cartwheels. I`m sure it was no fun for her when Big Son was insisting he didn`t understand what she was saying, and glaring at her like a desperate, caged animal.

She has a new thing that she does. Because I now stick my elbows out so that she can`t easily hug me, she reaches up and puts both hands on my shoulders. Between her persistant hugginess and my equally dogged efforts to deflect it, we look as if we`re engaged in some kind of isometric exercise.

"Wow, that looks just like what we do in our karate class," Big Son remarked yesterday, after watching the daily huggy struggle.

I realize it`s only been a week since our meeting with the principal, and the whole situation could regress at the drop of a hat, but until then.....

...I`ll be happy.

And I`ll have another Pop Tart.

Why I Left One of my Former Employers

I got an email from a former co-worker in Tokyo who never comments on this blog, which I decided to share here -- anonymously, of course.
(Remember, I`m a journalist, and I would never reveal my sources, even if trapped in a confined area with wild animals emitting high-pitched glass-shattering cries, as they watch the same episodes of "That`s So Raven" over and over and over. Oh wait -- that`s my life. Nevermind -- just a little momentary confusion there.)

My friend wrote:

"Sometimes, after a shitty day, I read your blog. And it cheers me up."

But then this person added this:
"Note: Despite what the above might imply, there's actually no correlation between the quality of any given day I have and my inclination to click on your blog! So relax, OK?"

Now, as I read the first part, I indeed did think of responding with, "Oh, so you only check in and read my blog when you`re having a shitty day, huh? What makes you associate shitty days with ME?"

But as I framed that reply in my mind, I read the paranthetical note, and remembered why I stopped working in that particular office.

Because the company implanted a fucking microchip in my brain, and my co-workers could read my thoughts.

We`re on a cautious upswing here.

Okay, this trend might not last, but I`m going to enjoy it as long as it does.

Big Son had three good days in a row at school this week so far, and today, he asked if he could go into the after-school program to be with his friends until 5:00. At the beginning of the year, I signed both him and his sister for this, even though I`m not working, just in case A) I went back to work, and/or B) they wanted to hang out with their friends there after school.

I peeked in, and he was doing his reading homework with the other boys.

"Wow," I said to the after-school care worker, "He`s doing his reading homework!"

She gave me a look that said, "Yeah? So?" Obviously, she doesn`t know the extent of Big Son`s problems, and therefore doesn`t understand how simply wanting to play with classmates and doing reading homework without a struggle, like a normal boy, are causes for rejoicing.

Huggy Nun was waiting for me in the schoolyard. She has started giving me a daily written report on Big Son`s progress in her class -- this week`s has so far consisted of three smiley faces.

"He had a rough start in the morning," she said, "but then I said to him, Don`t give me a hard time today! You are giving me a headache! Do you understand? And he was fine after that."

Hey, Huggy Nun is definitely onto something there. Those are words Big Son understands, because he hears them often... from his mother. Don`t give me a hard time! Don`t give the nuns a hard time, or it will make your life worse! You know, you are really giving me a headache, and that will make me even meaner, so STOP!

It only took Huggy Nun seven months to figure out that the words, "You are a bright boy and you could do the work if you really wanted to" were not having any effect.

But if there`s one thing that Big Son intuitively understands, from his experience with migraines, it`s that you don`t give people headaches, or everyone will suffer.

I am looking out my window right now....

...and watching as a sudden hailstorm utterly destroys a large pink rose that finally bloomed this morning, and hoping this isn`t a metaphor for my life.

Surprise question of the day

I switched my volunteer day to Monday at the Japanese retirement home, so that I can help with the arts & crafts instead of nodding off during the bingo games on Tuesdays.

Today while I was eating lunch with the residents, one of them asked me, "What do you think that Japanese economy will do, now that the BOJ has ended its quantatative easing policy?"

I sta