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By Mama Paloma, 25/08/2010 22:31

Long ago, I embraced the identity of the horrible mom. I consciously chose not to obsess about sippy cups or apply for preschool before my child was born. I have lugged my kid to story slams and New Years Eve at the Dresden. Most of the time, I think this makes me a pretty cool mom–even if horrible by current LA-obsessed-parent standards.

Recently, though, I have been feeling like I should do more with AJ. There are so many things for kids around. I have started to feel (dare I admit it?) guilty for not showing up for story time or mid-day kids concerts at the mall.

I can’t afford full-time childcare so Wednesdays have been our day together for some time. Recently, I have been working more and my mom has been helping out. But, it’s nice to have a re-connect midweek, so I am trying to resurrect Wednesday mornings as AJ and Mommy time.

Today, I had planned to take him to the mommy-n-me movies which, honestly, are for mommy. We haven’t done this in a while, as he has become so much more aware much more easily frightened by violence or noise and curious about, err, certain things. So, today, Inception was out but The Kids Are All Right and Eat Pray Love (the other two films playing at our neighborhood theatre) were possible, with strategic distraction/eye covering.

Then, this morning, he was playing and enjoying himself and I realized that either of those films would be so dialogue heavy he would be miserable and miserable to deal with. I remembered hearing other moms talk about and then seeing a poster for this great kids’ museum in Pasadena. We had never been. In a moment of now-uncharacteristic spontaneity, I decided to go. We had a great time, AJ and I, right up to the end. The end, however, required a letter to the Director of Operations and Chief of Staff. I’ll let you read about that below.

In spite of this fiasco, we left in high spirits, and I am determined to be a less horrible mom at least once a week from now on.

———

Dear Ms. Earp and Ms. Maclean,

I am not sure who to address this concern to but, after looking at the staff listings, it seems most closely related to operations and overall museum planning.

Today, I brought my two and a half year old son to KidSpace for the first time. It was great! He loved exploring and interacting with the exhibits and activities. I was considering an annual membership.

As we approached the end of our visit, we needed to use the bathrooms. He had gotten very wet in the water features and needed a diaper/clothes change and I, well, I needed a loo. We used the ones by the cafe. First, we had to wait quite a while as there was only one stall with a diaper changing table. Then, when I got inside, it was filthy (likely, because it is the only one and gets overused.) Have you ever tried to change a feminine product with one hand while balancing on a toilet and holding on to your toddler because the floor is SO disgusting you don’t want them to sit down? It’s not fun. I avoid many places to avoid this experience. After a morning of encouraging my son’s curiosity, I found myself barking “Just stand up. Don’t touch anything. It’s dirty.”

Then, the pieces de resistance. After juggling our personal hygiene needs, we emerged to wash our hands. The sink area is tiny, and we had to squeeze by a woman who had tired of waiting for the changing table and was doing a ‘stand-up’ switch on her toddler. I stepped past her, up to the sink and almost fell, catching myself and twisting my right ankle as I narrowly avoided sprawling on the floor. I looked down to see what my left foot had slipped on and it was, well, poo-poo. I admit, I used a more adult term in that moment, then realized that I was surrounded by children and corrected myself.

Someone, (I think the woman who was doing the stand-up change right then, but she denied it) had seemingly dropped a nice-sized, quite green and viscous blob of feces on the floor.

Now that’s pretty disgusting. Whoever did it shouldn’t have. But, being a mom, I have some empathy for the challenges of negotiating public toilets. I couldn’t be upset with the person who gave up on waiting on the one changing table and went ahead with the stand-up change. If they were in one of the tiny stalls without a changing table, struggling to juggle such an operation, a ball of poo could easily have escaped and rolled under the stall divider, into the path of the next unsuspecting hand washer.

The problem, really is the set-up. I had a particularly unpleasant experience with the toilet facilities but overall, and unlike the rest of the museum, the toilet facilities are not at all set up for parents and young children. Also, there are very limited facilities for women, though all together in our time there I spotted exactly four men there with children…and only one who was there alone with a child. Most of the children were attended by women.

So, here’s where I get positive. While having more and more spacious facilities would be ideal, I have some concrete, possibly not-that-costly suggestions to make the bathroom situation more like the rest of the museum experience:

1. Allocate more toileting facilities to women or to be not gender specific. Do an attendee census and have bathroom facilities reflect typical usage.
2. More frequent cleaning of facilities, especially on busy days like today. Sanitation and regular stocking of diaper changing tables.
3. Install child containment seats in all stalls. This one retails for about $120 but I found it for only $72!

http://www.sustainablesupply.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=B-KB102-00

4. Clear signage in each bathroom indicating the location of other toilet/changing facilities and the procedures for reporting unsanitary conditions.

In our case, I cleaned my shoe the best I could, went to the ticketing window and told the young man there what had happened. He called the cleaning crew and said they would help me with my shoe. I waited a few minutes but, honestly, my son was verging on a meltdown and I wasn’t far behind him. We made our way to our car, I stuck a napkin to the bottom of my shoe to keep any residual crap from getting on my car floor, and we came home.

Again, though this was a horrible way to end our time there, I really loved the museum. I hope that this message is helpful to you in improving the mommy friendliness of your facilities.

Sincerely,

Dove Pressnall

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By Mama Paloma, 23/08/2010 06:11

That’s not my brilliant title. It’s a memoir by Tracy McMillan. Before you say, “Oh yeah, the one who wrote Waiting to Exhale,” that was Terry. This is Tracy. I like Tracy’s writing better, even though I have yet to see Mad Men, which she reportedly has written for. Waiting for it to be available on Hulu or for me to figure out the online Netflix thing. Don’t have a TV.

Anyway,  I Love You and I’m Leaving Anyway is Tracy McMillan’s story as she tells it…or at least the part of her story that is about her relationships with men and her realization that they all (especially the parts that don’t work for her) connect back to her loving but deeply flawed and thereby absent dad.

A friend gave me the book to read…actually, she is on the Board of this little nonprofit I started that’s all about stories and the importance of how we tell them. She thought I would like the way Terry told her story…and she was right. Though she describes a pretty horrific childhood–dad whose career trajectory took him from pimp to heroin kingpin to prison for life, mom and step mom who took what he had to give, revolving door foster placements–she doesn’t feel like a victim. She effectively separates who she is and who she intends to be from the worst parts of her experiences.  She is a survivor and this is her truth. It’s exactly what Survivors’ Truths is all about…telling the part of the story that showcases the people and qualities that have allowed her to become who she is and not who she might have been, without in any way diminishing or making light of the difficulties she has come through.

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By Mama Paloma, 21/08/2010 07:27

So there’s this situation. It wasn’t of my making but has come to affect me. The whole ‘he was single only he wasn’t and kept saying he was when he wasn’t…long after it mattered…until I get an email from the other woman involved who is first ‘so sorry’ and then vindictive and says pretty horrible things about me and my son and his father’s intentions and in the next virtual breath tells me not to contact her again and I ask him to address it but he won’t and I feel, once again, wronged and shat on and I am supposed to just sit here and take it? situation.

Yes, that is a ridiculous run-on sentence. This is a ridiculous run-on situation. I need some punctuation, some way to make sense of the many threads of perception and treachery and accident and intention.

So, I put the onus where it belongs: on the one who started it all by swearing that he was single (indignant that I would lump him in with the all-to-common breed of man who carries on parallel but compartmentalized lives while living overseas), by knocking me up and telling me he was in it for the long haul, by letting me find out the truth when it was too late to take a different path.

And he won’t man up. He won’t own his actions, his untruths. He won’t stop this game of telephone and state the truth, unvarnished, to everyone involved.

Which leaves me with a dilemma. Do I take on his dirty work and set the record straight? And if I have to do that, do I have the right to present my story truly honestly?

Because I want to. I want to say “The love of your life denied you, over and over, even when being with me wasn’t an option. It was and is his default to deny your relationship, to refer to you as his ex, to say that he always knew things would not work out with you.” I want to say, Ha. I don’t want to be in his life. I have, at not insignificant cost to myself, allowed him to be in our lives. At his request.” I want to say, “You self-absorbed little ____, this isn’t all about you. It’s not all about me. It’s not even about him. You and I have been affected…both betrayed, my life turned upside down…but that is not more important than the fact that there is a kid. His kid, our kid. I get that you are still practically (and apparently, emotionally) a kid yourself but you are a much bigger kid than your ex-boyfriend/fiancee/whatever’s son and certainly old enough to understand that a kid comes into the picture, the grown-ups take a step back and that kid’s needs become the priority.”

And, yes, that last bit would be a bitchy retort to her pointed-yet-inaccurate comment on the age difference between the baby-daddy and I.  (1) She added a couple of years to my life and 2) I apparently am supposed to be insulted that he lied about his age because he knew I wouldn’t date him if I knew how young he was.)

And, yes, that last bit is the problem. I want to be bitchy. I want to respond in kind, with unkindness. And I am good at that. It’s 90% not my nature…but, man, that other 10% could rip this poor girl to shreds with my keyboard and enjoy it.

I am angry. With him for creating and sustaining this situation. He wants to move forward, past the wreckage of his past actions. I say that wreckage is piled up in the middle of my house. I have to edge around it, try to minimize it by arranging the furniture different ways…so that we can  move forward, step by step, stubbing my toe now and then, keep space clear for my son’s needs to be the center of our ‘unconventional family.’ I say he needs to clean that shit up.

I am also angry with this girl I don’t know. She dragged me into their drama this time around. Dropped an email on me without knowing anything about me or the situation. I offered to give her information if it would help her and she responded with such a retaliatory flurry I came to see that she doesn’t want to live in reality…she would rather swallow the admitted and repeated liar’s latest treacle than face the fact that her life has been based on these lies, that she knew it and chose to continue, that perhaps she still is. I don’t really know. I don’t really care if they are together or not. I do care to know if I can trust him at all…if I am setting up my son for disaster.

And I do care about being slandered and attacked and maligned. Maybe I shouldn’t but there it is. And any action I take right now will be driven by that…the ‘ego’…the desire to be acknowledged as right…which is the path 10% of me finds irresistible. For now, the other 90% rules and I don’t write my vengeful opus…only say these things in a relatively incoherent way–for anyone to read.

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By Mama Paloma, 09/08/2010 02:33

…but lately have been feeling pretty house-bound. First, there’s the fact that much of my work is done from my dining room table. So, I work and live (with my two-and-a-half-year-old son) in a not overly spacious but very homey 1928 one-bedroom apartment. Second, my current financial and work situation doesn’t allow me to get out all that much…except for work-related events. My going out has been much more limited recently as my mom, my mainstay, my main means of surviving this single mommy thing, has had surgery on both of her feet in the past few months and can’t make it up the stairs to my lovely flat, let alone keep up with the aforementioned progeny.

I am at once in desperate need of adult interaction and exhausted beyond being able to carry on a coherent conversation. I am a lonely hermit.

This, too, will pass. Mom’s feet are healing up, I am working on an office for Survivors’ Truths (anyone want to volunteer to head up that effort?), and AJ is getting more independent each day. A couple of friends have offered to try having a sleep over. We are planning trips for work and family.

But a part of me does yearn for the kind of easy by-the-seat-of-my-pants travel I used to know. A friend’s recent post of caving in the Southwest US reminded me of a magical evening in Paris. I looked up the email I sent to friends and now share it here…proof of the adventurer I once was.

Dove Goes Underground–October 26, 2005 (with some minor edits)

OK, folks, this is by far my BEST Paris story yet. It’s a bit long but, I think, worth the reading. Leaves being asked out by cops in the dust….Maya, you will be proud (and maybe a little jealous)!

So, yesterday, after waiting around for a long time for my friend Penelope to come from Brussels (Penelope, where are you? Are you OK?) I decided to go see some sights. It was already afternoon, so I headed down to the Denfert-Rochereau Station to see the Catacombs. This is a place where bones from various cemeteries were moved to underground tunnels in the late 1700s-early 1800s to make room for new dead people/buildings.

There are tunnels all over under Paris. Some are were originally made by miners taking stone from under the city to erect the city above, others are old sewers, still more are built-over Roman structures and medieval streets. The small section of the Catacombs Museum is open to the public, the rest technically illegal to explore. My plan was to have a peek at the Museum and then walk up to the Luxembourg gardens before going to check out a couple of bookstores with lots of books in English. I arrived just as the place was closing and was one of the last group of people to be let in for the day.

After descending a ten-meter spiral staircase, I was wandering around these tunnels, taking photos and generally enjoying myself. I overheard a woman in front of me saying she was named Heidi and was from California. I did not say anything to her or anyone else, but that bit is important to the story later.

As I was taking a photo of a sign in the tunnel, a young man who was sitting there (turned out to be an employee) said something to me in French. I responded ”Pardone, I do not speak French.” He spoke a little English, and asked me if I wanted to see the ”renovations.” I had no idea what he was talking about but he took me back into some areas that were behind locked gates to a place where someone ages ago had carved a replica of one of the Paris palaces out of the limestone. It was really cool. This was still within the “museum’s” area and well-lit, so I was not worried about going back there with him. We came back to the group and I thanked him. He said “No problem. If you like, I can show you the forbidden catacombs.”

Now, I am, generally, as sensible person (no comments from the peanut gallery, thank you), so my first thought was:

“It is probably not a good idea to go into underground tunnels with some guy I don’t know. If something happened i.e. he turns out to be a rapist/psycho killer, even if I kicked his butt, I would not be able to find my way out.”

Of course, my second thought was:

“That sounds really, really cool.”

And who wants to tell the story of how they could have gone to the forbidden catacombs?

So, I sidled up to the aforementioned Californian and said “So, you’re from California?” I think I kind of freaked her out because she responded “What, are you a mind reader?” I explained that I had overheard her talking earlier and then told her that this guy had offered to take me to the forbidden catacombs but I was a bit nervous about going on my own. She was very interested in going, so we agreed to act like we were friends. If he wasn’t thrilled to be taking both of us, forget it.

The museum closed and we were all led back up to street level. The other people from the tour left and we were standing there. The guy asked if the other woman was my friend and I said she was. He asked her if she would like to go to the forbidden catacombs and she said yes. Now, keep in mind that neither she nor I speak French and he really speaks a very little bit of English. So, after some confusion, he handed me a paper with his phone number on it. He said to call when we wanted to go. I asked when we could go and he said “Any time you like.” “Now?” I asked, and he, hesitantly,  said “Sure.”

He was kind of looking at me funny and it occurred to me that I might not be dressed for such an adventure. I was wearing a white dress with a black and gray pattern on it, a black cardigan, black coat, blue scarf, and my new (very cool) knee-high high-heeled boots. I was looking very chic and Parisian, if I do say so myself. Anyway, I realized that perhaps this get-up is not really what one normally wears in the forbidden catacombs so, using sign language and a bit of Frenglish, I asked him his opinion on the matter.

He was emphatic that I needed different shoes–tennis shoes or hiking boots. I explained that I did not have either with me but could go buy some. He got on his mobile phone, made a couple of calls and said “Let’s go.” I surmised that he was arranging some shoes for me to borrow.

We followed him through the neighborhood to an apartment complex and went in. Turns out we were going to his house. It is actually the government-subsidized housing, what we in the US would call a “project” (in the area that, a short couple of weeks later, was in riotous flames) but it is very nice and clean (unlike most of our ”projects”). His mum was home with three babies–she has a little day care operation going. So, we played with the babies while he made some arrangements. Then, he gave me some tennis shoes (think they were his mum’s) and clothes–camouflage cargo pants and a huge t-shirt. I changed and we were off.

We walked along the street a bit and then, with little warning, he jumped over the wall. I followed, though I can’t say I really jumped, more like scrambled/clawed/pulled my way over, then Heidi. We walked down some steps to some old train tracks then about 1/2 a kilometer into an old  unused metro tunnel. It was about then that we introduced ourselves to each other. Turns out our tour guide was a 22-year-old named Charles.

It seemed we were going to be in that tunnel forever when Charles suddenly stopped and pointed out a (seemingly very small) hole along the bottom of the wall with “HELL BOUND” scrawled above it in graffiti.

We crawled through that hole into a tunnel. Charles, thankfully, had brought torches (AKA flashlights) because it is really, really dark underground. A couple of times, we turned our torches off and it was darker than any dark I have ever experienced. We walked along corridors and through smaller tunnels where we had to crouch down. We walked through underground streams with very cold water up to our knees. I expected to feel claustrophobic (tend to be) and generally nervous, but I wasn’t.

It was also completely silent. If we all stood still the only sound was our breathing. Every once in a while, there would be a rumble of a metro train nearby…but even that sounded very distant. At one point, there was a loud knocking sound. It sounded almost like someone drumming but different. It is the only time I felt a bit scared. We kept walking and came to a place where there is a man-hole cover some 30 meters up through a tunnel and water was coming down and hitting some coke cans someone had dropped down there. The sound of that was really loud and echoed through the halls. We passed that and were in silence again.

Some of the tunnels are marked with the names of the streets above. There are lots of side tunnels, some that open up into rooms. In several places, I was sure we were looking at the remains of old Roman baths…I had seen some at an archeological site near Notre Dame and the structures seemed quite similar. Some of the rooms had amazing graffiti, one had a bunch of fake plants and flowers with a sign “PLEASE KEEP OFF PLANTINGS SPRING BULBS ARE PLANTED HERE,” one had a large stuffed bunny rabbit and a deflated blow-up doll (really creepy), and another had a large carved castle and gargoyles (really cool). A couple of times, we stopped and lit a bunch of candles (Charles the Prepared had also brought a bag of tea light candles with him). It was really beautiful and amazingly comfortable, sitting there with these strangers, far below the Paris streets.

Eventually, we were really hungry and decided to go out. Charles led us along a ways and then we climbed maybe 20 or 30 meters up to a man-hole cover which then refused to budge. We climbed back down and went back the way we had come (i.e. a long way). We ran into some of Charles’ friends who were going in. Apparently, there is this whole sub-culture of tunnelers. They seem quite nice and friendly. Anyway, Charles asked if we wanted to stay and hang out with those guys but we were pretty tired and hungry so we went on out (emerging about 4 hours after we went in), back to his place where I changed back into my own clothes (Heidi had to stay all wet and muddy), and then Heidi and I took him for a nice Italian dinner in the Ste. Michele area.

All in all, it was one of the most surreal experiences and the most fun I have had in a long time.

Update: I recently came across this email from Charles, sent then next day. Poor boy was confused by my misuse of the the phrase “se bon.”

good day my dove

  goes then your satisfies of your soiree yesterday?
that is this you do beautiful I want to see you. I
want to pass a soiree in tete has tete with you. I you
had that I have to crack for you you so pretty and
great sympathique.I do not know if you have a boy
friend but me I fell in love with you I does only
thought has you you know.  kiss has you my beautiful
one.

charles
(catacombes) kisssssssssssssssssssss

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By Mama Paloma, 02/08/2010 05:51

Memory: When I was a kid, my sister Maya and had a dance contest. Maya is tiny and beautiful and graceful to this day. She always loved ballet and wanted to be a dancer. Maya came out and swayed around the living room, where my parents and brothers and sister sat. Everyone oohed and ahhed at her beautiful dancing. Then it was my turn. I felt the music and leaped around, vividly expressing the emotion and story in my head. My family laughed. My mom suggested that I should do more gymnastics. I was good at the balance beam.

I was crushed. I didn’t imagine I was great, but didn’t think I was all that bad. Not so much because I couldn’t dance but because my perception of myself was so wrong. This sense of not being able to judge how I appear has permeated my life in weird ways. Like tonight, when I am feeling like a social outcast and not sure if that is a moment of clarity or a complete distortion.

Maybe it’s just because I am tired or spending too many nights alone lately watching Hulu or working too much from home/in an office where I don’t really interact with colleagues, but I feel like I am losing my social skills. What little I had. The thing is, I am actually what they call an introvert and socializing is really a huge effort. It’s like my dancing. If I can forget it, I feel I am doing all right, but once I start to think about it I realize that my mom was right. I am totally ungraceful. I should stick to gymnastics.

I have always been painfully shy, always had the sense of being an outsider and not quite knowing what is going on or if I just said something awfully wrong and everyone is just smiling out of pity and compassion, trying not to humiliate me. The effect of this is that I generally feel vaguely ashamed, awkward, bumbling.

Like this post.

People I have shared this with never believe me because, they tell me, I appear at ease in group/social situations. But I am not. I am overwhelmed and intimidated. I freeze up and get tunnel vision. I go on a sort of auto-pilot that makes remembering names (even when everyone has a name tag) embarrassingly impossible. Making small talk is weird and worrisome because I am far too likely to forget what someone just told me–about their dog, their job, their child. My brain becomes like my son’s Magna-doodle–doesn’t matter how great a picture you draw, a shake or slide of the magic magnet wand and it’s gee-oh-en-ee gone. The more time I spend alone, the harder this is to handle. It used to be just in large, loud groups but now a simple dinner party can put me in this weird head space. I am not sure what to do about this.