I am the comfortable marriage and bearable mortgage, not the idealistic dreamer of genteel, educated poverty. More hearth guardian Mrs. March, less fire in the belly Jo.

And yet Anne was a mother, a mother of, let’s see: Jem, Walter, Di and Nan, Shirley, Rilla, yes, six. Why can’t I be a mother like Anne? She never yelled, she probably composed odes to eyebrows and greeted each day as a grand adventure. She made her kids feel loved, and special, and unique, and different in a good way. Recited poetry at the dinner table instead of reminding of the “no singing at the table” rule.

Yesterday Callie was awful at Hobby Lobby and Costco and waiting during Parent-Teacher Conferences for Avery. She ran down the aisles, included Lucy in her crazy shenanigans. She said she wanted to do something fun. I just wanted some quiet. In the car she read books to Lucy and passed crackers to the baby. Lucy couldn’t see the pictures from the back seat and Callie told her kindly to use her imagination.

I thought: this is the Anne Mother Moment. My kids are not a dead loss. They are worth what I am doing here, they are worth watching, worth listening to, worth my attention, worth describing and remembering and liking. (Loving, always, that goes with the heart milk; liking is harder, except when it’s a free gift).

But I am not the Anne Mother. The minivan stops at our next stop and it’s back to fighting or whining or snotty nose crying and I am not the Anne Mother.

I am the Marilla Mother. And I guess the best thing about her is that she really didn’t want Anne, she wanted a hardy farmboy, but what she got was a fragile yet strong, slender and red-haired, day-dreamer, flavor the cake with liniment girl.

And she kept her.

On our walk home from church I reported the conversation to my sensitive ten-year old and told her she had four options: 1) continue as she is, and realize that boys talk about things like underwear when it’s visible (and probably even when it’s not), 2) wear leggings/bloomers/shorts, 3) sit “like a lady,” or 4) go shopping for some nice trousers to wear.

Giving her that fourth option was a little like reverse psychology, hoping she wouldn’t go for it or balk at the other choices if she knew that (as far as I’m concerned) wearing pants wasn’t forbidden (and therefore desirable), but not really like reverse psychology because if she had given me a spiel about it not being fair that boys can sit however they want and that she wanted to wear pants too, I would have taken her to get some nice pants to wear. (Note: I didn’t point this out to her; the world is sexist and unfair and she’ll figure that out and be bothered or not by it in her own time.)

She thought it over for awhile and the next Sunday she wore leggings under her skirt. We haven’t talked about it since.

Yesterday I read a BCC post (it’s really just two links and a provocative comparison) that pointed me to the new dress and grooming guidelines for missionaries on LDS.org. The other link was to an interesting article on Huffington Post about how, if we want to encourage girls in the life of the mind (my awesome phrasing), we should ask them what book they are reading rather than telling them they’re pretty upon first meeting. (I have thoughts on that too, because I tell my girls they are cute all the time, but maybe that’ll be another post.)

I hadn’t seen the dress and grooming pages, and when I did, I was flabbergasted. Flabber-gasted. Really, you have to go there now and flip through all the pages. Don’t forget the makeup gallery and the makeup tips and the hair style gallery and the accessories page with the colorful ballet flats that would be so practical for walking on cobblestones for ten hours.

Then I got on Twitter and said that the pages seem superficial, condescending and creepy to me, and they are not the message I want to send to my daughters. Several women chimed in for the next two hours (though mostly they disagreed with me). Someone on the original BCC post said they recognized some of the skirts as costing $120 at Anthropologie; someone else calculated how much this kind of wardrobe (all “outfits,” no coordinating separates) would cost ($10,000). Most interesting was that two women who served missions in Belgium said the pages were great and necessary. Then one of those ladies went back and actually looked at how extensive and detailed they are and said she felt like she was on Pinterest (a website where design/crafter/hipster-types collect images of things they like).

A friend on Facebook echoed other comments that the pages seem necessary because immodesty is such a problem. I was surprised that many thought the pages were an attempt to get sister missionaries to tone down their appearance and makeup, when I thought they were clearly sending the message that women need to spend more money, time, and energy on their appearance in order to be good missionaries/Mormons.

Are the pages a call to frump up or frump down? Probably depends on how (non)frumpy you consider yourself, so my umbrage may certainly have to do with feeling inadequate and plain ugly (and middle-aged) compared to the models.

And I haven’t even mentioned that the Dress and Grooming guidelines only showcase women. I know there are strict guidelines for men, but they are not online (yet?) for some reason. And even when they are published, I doubt they’ll have an equivalent to this nugget of advice:

Tinted moisturizer with SPF is another quick way to get color and base. To minimize the appearance of dark circles under your eyes, use a yellow- or pink-toned concealer lighter than your skin tone to blend.

More subtly, the makeup section does have an “If you choose to wear makeup, here are some tips,” disclaimer, but this is the front page:

Huh. I wonder if makeup would help you look your best for the elders at zone conferences?

I have nothing against preaching modesty (so long as it’s taught as something a girl does for herself because she loves and honors herself and appreciates the wonderful body God has given her, not as a means of saving boys from themselves). And I also think it’s pragmatic and whatnot for the Church to have missionary guidelines and standards, to encourage/require a professional, be-your-best-you missionary force. But these pages go too far in suggesting that looks and clothes and accessories are all-important for women.

And here’s where I morph into a comment on the priesthood and how I feel about women not holding it. Doctrinally, it’s not a big issue for me. I like being able to do the things I can do as a woman that men can’t do, and I’m okay with different gender roles and biology and etc. But the practical ramifications that seem to follow, in our culture, from the fact that men, by virtue of holding the priesthood are in charge of correlation, in charge of what gets approved for curricula and the website and policies, in charge of telling women how they should look — it seems really unfortunate that women do not have a similar say in these matters. Can you separate doctrine from practice? Can I be a good Mormon if I don’t shop at Anthropologie?

—-

(If you’re on the Twitter and want to catch our next impromptu chat on #mormsandmakeup (TBA), you should follow @imaginaryzina, @compulsivewrtr, @grouchyteacher, @andrea_aka_mom, @hollywillnot, @oneinamelia, @jet_set, @suedonym, @thatfig, @lesliehatch and @emihill   There are many, many other cool Mormon women on Twitter, and, of course, all heresies and infelicities of thought are my own. Just to give credit for lovely ladies helping me think this through, hope I didn’t miss anyone. I’m @seagullfountain.)

—-

And don’t tell me that this whole set of pages was done at the inspiration and execution of women — I don’t think I could handle the disillusion.

Danielle is my mother’s first name. Avery comes from a short story by L.M. Montgomery called White Magic, and although Avery is the shallow older sister of the heroine Janet, I picked it for my first daughter’s name about ten years before she was born. (Janet is my grandmother’s name, but it seemed a little prosaic at the time.)

Callie Louise has my mother-in-law’s middle name as her middle name, and Callie comes from another book (okay, a Nora Roberts book, if you must know, but it’s one of her better ones, I promise, and initially I wanted to name her Catherine Louise, after the Catholic saint memorialized in Egypt since she was conceived there, but my mother-in-law said we should name her what we were going to call her, and what do you know, she was right). We also had a great friend in Japan named Maria Louisa (called Lou; all of her sisters were Marias), and I think of her when I say Callie-Lou-Lou.

Lucy Grace has my great-grandmother’s name for her middle name, and Lucy is for L.M. Montgomery. When my family was going through our Would You Rather? phase, I made up the dilemma: Would you rather have 50,000 dollars or discover 50 new books by your favorite author? Now, I like money. I would really like $50,000 to finish my basement and pay off some debt. But I would take 50 books by L.M. Montgomery over that.

By the time Molly came, we had a theme of sorts. Not the cool one my friend Andrea has — her sons’ initials spell the word TREE. But we have two syllable first names ending in a long “e”. And they’re alphabetical. I did work in the library at BYU. So we thought of Sydney and Zoe also for Molly, but finally Molly it was. Zoe would have been cool as a bookend, A-to-Z, thing to signify our done-ness, but it seemed a bit too trendy. I always like names that are around the 300s or so in the Social Security records, as found on the Baby Name Voyager. (That is the coolest name tool. I can spend hours on it.)

We had decided on Molly Shannon for several months, because if fathers can pass on their names, why not mothers, but then I really, really wanted to use the name Marilla, after the woman who adopts Anne Shirley in the book by (can you guess?) L.M. Montgomery. If only Valancy were as moving a name as The Blue Castle is a book. I would have four daughters named Valancy. Valancy Jane, Valancy Marie, Valancy Anne, Valancy Claire.

I like the M.M. thing for Molly Marilla because of M.M. Kaye, too, of course.

So there you have it. Why we named them what we named them, and I confess that I chose each and every one of those names with almost no input from the second x-chromosome contributor. I always said he could name the boys and I would name the girls. How was I to know that would severely limit his influence? In fact with several of the names (especially Marilla), he was quite in opposition, even to looking up names online as I was filling out the birth certificate paperwork just before leaving the hospital after Molly was born, hoping to find something I’d like better. He did not and I did not. Weeks later he told me (as he did with the other names), that it was actually rather cute and he liked it.

I should probably end there, but as a matter of public record, here are my pet peeves associated with the naming of children: weird spellings, weird names, not giving females a middle name (yes they can use their maiden name as a middle name later, but does that mean if they never marry they are never a full person?), listing women only by their first (and middle if existing) name on wedding invites (as if a half person is marrying a whole person, I don’t care how traditional/etiquette-bound it is).

I realize the wedding invite thing doesn’t really pertain to the initial naming of the child, but it seems all of a piece. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t give your daughter a middle name, you’re probably going to say that “Betsy married Jonathan William McNaughton III” too.

I think it’s good to choose an uncommon-ish name and spell it the most common way, to choose a name that has meaning, especially from books and the family tree (yes, even for girls!), and to not listen to anyone else (except me*) when thinking of a name for your child. I like strong consonants and long vowels, and “m”s and “l”s that roll off the tongue.

*that was a joke, kind of. Mostly.

**this post was inspired by a #nayme conversation on twitter that inspired a post on DIZZLEFIG months ago. I hesitated to post it because, full names, ack, but I’ll break the birth dates and social security numbers into several other posts, so we should be okay.

Yesterday Avery and I had a long talk that left us in tears at the same time it made me glad to be here, glad to be her mother. My daughter has a “best friend” who will apparently think she is weak and a crybaby if she does not join her in being mean to a third girl, a girl who used to be one of Avery’s good friends. It turns out that Avery is also the odd girl out in a similar situation at school, with two girls who are now best friends to her exclusion.

Can we go back to talking about sex and cigarettes, and how we wait till we’re married to experience the transcendent glories of the first and how we’ll never try the second, no matter the pressure of friends?

I told Avery that being kind to everyone is the most important thing. And it’s true. I know we have this hierarchy of sins, especially in the Mormon culture, where smoking and drinking are almost the worst things you can do, and I’m not saying I’d be happy if she took up a 2-pack a day habit tomorrow, but I would rather she negotiate this next few years of tweenage girl-child hell with grace and kindness than never drop acid.

Maybe I say that because I know how hard it is to be a ten-year-old girl, except when I was a kid, it was even harder to be a twelve-year-old girl. And I have no firsthand experience with acid.

But it’s true, isn’t it? Being kind to those who despitefully use you, standing up to those you want to impress and befriend, doing what’s right and plain being nice at all times are the hardest things to do, ever.

I showed Avery the verse in John where Jesus wept because his friend Lazarus was dead. Does it take a strong heart to cry with compassion? Is it weak to take the first step to end a fight you’re sure the other person started?

Avery said she just wished she knew why the two girls at school don’t like her any more so she could apologize. And I asked, “Were you mean to them?” and she said no. Then it’s not you, I said. You are perfect, there’s nothing you could do or apologize for or change about yourself to make me love you anymore, to make Heavenly Father love you anymore. You are already beautiful and smart and kind.

She asked me to show her where that scripture was again so she could highlight it in her own Bible.

And she promised to think about it some more and to try her best to treat the the odd girl out as if she were the odd girl out.

(How Spot gets my attention, shaking the Aspen Mills Honey Whole Wheat at my elbow while I sit at the computer, and once I turn to acknowledge her, she tacks on the please? in a high, placating voice with a fake smile.)

—

Daddy’s Girl

Susan informed me yesterday that she puts both of her socks on first, then her shoes, not one-sock, one-shoe like I do.

(I have a horror of getting interrupted in the middle of putting on my shoes — Hi, I’m a Mother — and then getting my socks wet, so one-sock-one-shoe-and-then-the-other-sock-other-shoe, is my motto. Which I didn’t realize until Susan pointed it out to me.)

But Susan is sure her method is right, or at least equally valid, because: “That’s the way Daddy does it. Daddy and I do it the same way.”

—

Sally came home from Activity Days where they did mysterious, secret things with yarn (“A potholder for Mother’s Day?” No.) and went straight back out to roller skate with the neighbor girls. At 6:15 (she was late for dinner, but dinner was even later, so I skipped the caning) she rushed into the house, flushed and breathless, having tryed Megan’s older sister’s in-line skates and not fallen once.

Why am I so relieved, ecstatic, jubilant when my kids find something easy? Wouldn’t it be better if they learned now what a hard, miserable slog life is?

(kidding.)

—

Teaching kids to do chores (cheerfully, without being asked, without nagging, without criticizing good-faith efforts) is the hardest thing I’ve done so far as a parent — even harder than potty-training and getting up at night (which is saying a lot). On Monday, before my nap, I asked Sally to do her dish job and the other kids to try not to mess up the downstairs much, because we were having guests for Family Home Evening. I staggered downstairs at 5:30 pm, to a clean kitchen, and to Sally directing the other two in picking up toys and putting away shoes (and she wasn’t yelling; they weren’t rebelling!). They even had the vacuum cleaner out. I almost cried; I just about had time for it, because they had saved me so much work.

This, this once-in-a-lifetime glimpse of how things could be, is why I have hope for the future.

Yesterday Susan or Spot or Sally, somebody spilled something and didn’t clean it up. Made a mess and wouldn’t take responsibility. I couldn’t get a confession. I resorted to, “I don’t care who did it, I just want you to be honest.” They are too young and trusting (and short-memoried) to know that I do care, and that once I’ve lavished the child who was honest with praise, I’ll still make them clean it up. Susan finally relented. “Mom, can I tell you the real, real truth now?” Of course, I said, pleased. “It was Spot,” she said.

Several weeks ago at lunch, Carina said she’d read somewhere that if your kid hasn’t asked you about sex, or where babies come from by the age of seven or eight, they already know, from someone who is not you. I started to panic. Sally was turning nine the next week, and she had never asked, or when we talked about the baby, she was satisfied with answers like, “people can have a baby once they’re married and you love your husband.”

But I thought, I know my child, my girl-child who would rather gallop like a horse than strut like a Bratz doll, who reads boy books and girl books without knowing that some people think there is a difference. Who wears her holey jeans to school with the same air of indifference that she dons her church dress and says she’d prefer to get her hair cut again because she likes it just below her ears.

Who, even though I offered first when she turned eight, and again before she turned nine, doesn’t want to get her ears pierced, not yet, not now. She is wholly, completely, gloriously, still a child, my child. Who doesn’t have a cell phone, doesn’t know how to work a computer without my help, who has never seen a video game, for whom a half hour of TV watching (Fetch with Ruff Ruffman on PBS) is a treat, one that doesn’t happen every day.

Some days she watches more TV, if I am done, for whatever reason. Sometimes she will only eat one of each vegetable in the salad, and makes gagging noises when we make her try the tilapia, despite warnings to set a good example for her sisters. Sometimes she wails when I ask her to unload the dishwasher, even though I’ve been expecting it of her for what seems like a decade. Sometimes I think she must be starting her period four years early as she screams, “You hate me,” and barricades herself in her room.

But I go up to her room later and see the twenty-seven horse posters on the wall and the picture of Jesus torn out from The Friend, and, in the front and center of her dresser, the picture of a three-year old Sally in her father’s arms, kissing his cheek, in front of the great pyramid. She knows I don’t hate her.

I came home from my lunch and asked her, casually, if she knew what sex was, and how babies are made. She shrugged and said no. I breathed in relief and went to find Tom to let him know we’d be having The Talk with Sally that Sunday.

On Sunday, after my nap, I sat Sally on the couch and told Tom that, yes, he needed to actually be there, to sit and listen, and maybe say a few things. I was surprised how apprehensive I was. I’m not shy about sex, or uncomfortable with my children, but The Talk is a delicate thing to balance.

I wanted Sally to a) feel how much we love her and want her to be happy, b) believe two seemingly contradictory things: that 1) sex is good and fun and special and 2) it’s only like that after you’re married (I want her to both look forward to sex as a wonderful, natural, normal part of life, and to resolve within herself to wait for it), and c) to comprehend some good, accurate information (I spent the years eight to thirteen thoroughly confused about one part of the male anatomy).

I started out talking about how dad and I got married, but resorted to the same thing that calmed me on my wedding day. I asked her about Adam and Eve, and what God told them, and what they did. I don’t believe the only purpose of sex is procreation, but it’s a big part, and it helps to think of it in those terms, biologically, especially as my own tummy gets rounder and rounder. I explained that sex also helps married people love each other more.

She had some questions. “Have you and dad, you know, done it?” I said, well, we do have three kids. “When do you do it?” And I told her, if our door is locked, like on a Saturday morning or a Sunday afternoon, you probably don’t want to come in anyway.

And then she asked, “How does it feel?” I looked at Tom. He didn’t want to answer that one. I said, you know how you feel when you’re really, really hungry and then you finally eat something? Or when you have to sneeze and then it finally comes, and it’s a relief? Something like that, but better. “But how does it feel?” (That was the only question I deferred until she’s older, like thirty-five and engaged. I promised to tell her everything when she is engaged.)

It was easy to explain keeping our bodies clean and pure to Sally, and why we do things differently even when the rest of the world takes sex lightly, because she’s used to choosing modest clothing from racks of stuff “we don’t wear,” and she knows that there are kid movies and mommy movies, for example, and that some good things are only good when you are older, like riding in the front seat of the car (even Spot can tell you that you have to be twelve for that). (There have been exceptions, of course, but only when mom said so.)

I remembered how, when I first went through the temple, I thought, this is all stuff we learned in Primary. Be obedient, serve the Lord, keep your covenants. The Talk is a little different, just like the temple the first time is a little different. It’s a big milestone, a moment in time that separates you a bit from childhood and pushes you toward adulthood. But I realized, instead of being disjointed, instead of being some big thing outside everything else we’ve ever taught her, it was just another step in what we’ve always been teaching her. (Forget for a moment how I teach them to yell and swear, when I forget that everything I do that they see is teaching them something.)

Tom finally made a contribution, at the end. He told Sally that she could ask us anything, anytime. In fact, we want her to talk to us about this stuff and not her friends, because we know there is a difference between sacred and secret. Of course when she’s older she’ll talk to her friends, her roommates, and that’s okay. As long as she remembers where she heard it first.

And then she asked one last question. At the beginning of The Talk, she was curled on the couch, knees to her chest, eyes half-hidden, giggles issuing from her circled arms. Slowly she unfolded, turned towards us, as her interest overcame her embarrassment.

So despite all my faults, my tantrums, my discontents, the days I shout for no reason and use the mean voice instead of the patient voice that is smart enough to know these kids are only children, only young, only innocent, Sally asked, finally, “Can I have a hug?”

And I wondered if Susan, at five, is really too young for The Talk.

So we were talking about pregnancy last night, because I wanted an early start monopolizing the conversation. I am sicker this time than ever before, and I weigh a lot more. I weigh more at the beginning of this pregnancy than I did at the end of my first pregnancy nine years ago. Though I am only 8 1/2 weeks along, I feel encumbered when I bend over, out of breath when I climb the stairs, and nauseated beyond belief at food that smelled good an hour ago.

My body image/contentment is at an all-time low, especially as I know how important good health and activity are to my labor/delivery/recovery and mental well-being.

Also, I just feel fat and ugly, and it makes me sad.

I mentioned my friend Beth who is suffering the hemorrhoids at the end of her pregnancy, and how she can’t understand how some women love being pregnant. I love feeling the baby move, hearing the heartbeat, and thinking about the new baby, but I do not enjoy being pregnant.

So my friend who is staying here told me that she liked being pregnant because it was the one time she was proud of her body. She’s pretty happy with her legs and arms in general, but her middle has always been a trouble section, with dips and rolls and when she is pregnant and that’s all smoothed out by the baby bump, she is happy with her body. She feels beautiful.

She is in awe that her body can work so well to grow a beautiful baby, and she just feels happy and proud, Look What I Can Do!

Good point, I thought. It will sound even better in the morning, when I am on the other side of this nocturnal barfiness.

About an hour later Chrysanthemum was here to watch Fringe with us, and we came across a post inviting shocked! outrage! over these Cotton Mother Dolls that Rixa highlighted (very favorably) a year ago.

My friend obliged, saying there was something wrong about that, the dolls are gross, and why would you want your kids to see that? My initial reaction to Rixa’s post was that the dolls were a little scary, but that was a year ago, and I am always ready to disagree, even with myself.

Because life is not as neat as a blog post, I stumbled around, settling with: “Would you rather your daughters played with Cheerleader Barbie who’ll teach them anorexia?”

These dolls are graphic, anatomically correct; they’re probably not for everyday play, though it’s hard for me to articulate why. Certainly they’re better than boob-job, impossibly-long-legged Barbie. Would it harm my daughters in some way to see and hold a realistic representation of a mother giving birth, on hands and knees, to a baby? Or to play with a doll that models breastfeeding?

Why don’t I worry about it when they worship everything princess, sparkly, and fake? Why don’t I cringe when we pass mannequins at the mall with Victoria’s Secret bodies and push-ups?

If pregnancy is the one time you’re proud of your body, shouldn’t that be an image to cherish?

I understand if modesty is the main concern, the feeling that the body (and its form) is too sacred to be played with on the living room carpet by cheerful, irreverent toddlers. But I hate to tell you: our Barbies are more often naked than clothed. And my girls just really don’t need to be seeing that.

That night we were doing math. Mr. Bennet helped her first the night before, but he does not see math as clearly as I do, so I took over. Sally tells me that she doesn’t like math, isn’t good at it, it’s hard.

This breaks my heart. Why? Because I was good at math. Ergo, the oldest fruit of my womb is also good at math. Naturally. (Ergo, also, anything she wants to master she can, though we are not responsible for musical aspirations.)

(And when I explain it to her visually, concrete-ly, metaphorically, the light does go on.)

I asked her about piercing her ears at eight, because I was eight when I got my ears pierced.

She likes many foods that I did not as a child, but when she gags at the thought of onions or garlic, I smile tolerantly. More for me, I say, and you might change your mind when you’re older, I say.

I joke a lot about not looking forward to the teen (and pre-teen!) years with my three daughters. If they are anything like I was at that age, we are going to need a lot more kleenex, several beater cars, and patience as vast as the Sargasso Sea.

If they are anything like they are now, and barring alien personality-transplants they should at least resemble their current selves, it’s going to be awesome, a cross between Little House on the Prairie, Rainbow Valley, and Little Women, only with better hair, fewer Presbyterians, and no infallibly-wise Susan Sarandon mother figure. (Just me).

I read a post the other day where a mother was complaining about how difficult her daughter (also eight) is. Mother and daughter fight over what the daughter will wear to school. The daughter throws a tantrum to end all tantrums after not being allowed to cut bangs in her hair like her older sister. Mom and dad prefer their girl with long, thick hair, so no bangs it is. The daughter holds it together at the stylist, then cries inconsolably for an hour once home over wanting her hair how she wanted her hair.

And all the comments, many from mothers of similar daughters, commiserate. So sorry you have to deal with such a recalcitrant daughter! So headstrong! So willful! So impossible!

I check my calendar. And my passport. This is the twenty-first century, right? This is America?

Of course there are forms of self-expression that I will try my hardest to stamp out. Smoking. Sex before marriage. Swearing of the excessive and uncreative variety.

But bangs? Plaids paired with polka dots?

H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks, GIRL, shave your head if it makes you feel better! Wear magenta with burgundy! Ride your bike faster than all the boys! Get mud on your face! Everyday!

(Just don’t say math is too hard.)

A couple weeks ago, Sally rushed into the house with a roar of MOM that was half-way between mad and hurt. At least it sounded mad a bit, but turned out to be all hurt, and a baby cub’s aggressive appeal for comfort. She had fallen off her bike on the way home from school and busted up her chin. I gave her sympathy, hugs, ice, and decided after a couple minutes that I was glad I’d showered that day because a trip to Insta-care was in our immediate future.

Sally got scared when I mentioned stitches. Years ago, when she was our only child, Mr. Bennet and I taught her to say please before she took her medicine or got a shot, on the theory that she’d view them as desirable if she had to ask for them politely. Sometime in her seventh year she wised up and regressed, shaking and crying (quietly, which is even worse in these situations) before any traumatic medical intervention.

I said it wasn’t a very deep cut, but since it was on her face, she’d probably want stitches so there wouldn’t be a scar. And she asked me, “Does it matter?”

I know part of that was her fear of pain, but a good part of it was her really asking if scars matter, and I am still trying to think up a good answer for her.

It would take all of my fingers and all of my toes to count up the small scars on my body: on my shoulder from two surgeries, my hands from cooking and carelessness and living, my forehead and knee from chicken pox, my abdomen from appendicitis, my shin from the time Rory chased me on the bleachers in high school.

Does it matter?

Last week was our first time to drive Susan’s preschool carpool. We pulled up to her friend’s house and his mother said for us to go ahead, she wasn’t done doing his hair yet. At my blank look she reminded me that it was picture day. I looked at Susan, with her bedhead hair for afternoon preschool, and the outfit she’d put on: blue shirt under a pink and green plaid jumper. And I shrugged, half-rueful, half-proud.

When Sally turned eight I asked if she’d like to get her ears pierced; at first she wasn’t interested at all, and I didn’t push, but several months later when it came up again, she asked if it hurts. I said it did a little, but not bad at all, and she asked for clip-on earrings. Those pinched, and now she is thinking it over, or would be, if she hadn’t already forgotten all about it.

Then yesterday I noticed something odd in the laundry. Sally’s pants, bought over the summer on several trips to DI do not have holes in the knees. I lamented for years over the holes in Sally’s pants, not that she was active enough to rip them, but that pants are expensive. Three wearings from Sally the Horse or Sally the Cheetah, and even the nicest jeans from the Gap (a gift) were shredded at the knees.

Now her pants are un-holey. A bit grass-stained and stretched out at the knee, but not holey anymore.

So to answer your question, Sally, three weeks and four stitches later: Scars don’t matter, and if you need to get holes in your pants to play the way you want to play, please do.

I hope this explains (metaphorically) why I feel so strongly about appropriating and using the word Good rather than adopting Bad in reaction to the “Good Mother” stereotype.

Ugly Girl

What about the media stereotype of Beauty? If my daughter comes home from school crying because she has been called ugly, do I tell her that we should change the meaning of the word “Ugly” to “Beautiful” and that she should call herself an Ugly Girl with pride?

Or do I teach her that the media stereotype of Beauty is not only wrong, it is stupid, unhealthy, damaging, anti-feminist, and a construct of our particular time and place and not an eternal truth?

(and that she IS Beautiful, by the way.)

Do I call her my Ugly Girl or my Beautiful Girl?

Which word do I want ringing in her head?

It’s been a year now, and my sister is stronger. Harder, in some ways, and still soft and vulnerable in others. She risks becoming a bit emotionally careless herself as she negotiates new relationships. Power, the power of being the one who cares less, the one who loves less, the one who needs less, because one is damaged or hurting or scared, or simply, carefully, guarded, is the only real power there is. Relationships become a zero-sum game, where the one who won’t cooperate with a partner who longs to cooperate, wins.

And then there’s the specter of domestic violence. The Rihanna – Chris Brown thing horrifies me. Not only because of what happened, though that is terrible enough. But for the reactions of teenage girls to the alleged attacks. (Alleged, yet heavily substantiated by photographs, police reports, and Chris Brown’s own statements.)

In the paper today, there are quotes from ninth graders speculating that Rihanna “probably made him mad for him to react like that” and that Chris Brown shouldn’t be punished because she took him back:

“So he shouldn’t get into trouble if she doesn’t feel that way,” one girl said. “She probably feels bad that it was her fault, so she took him back.”

My sister was willing, even eager, to take her husband back. She was ready, even eager, to forgive him for infidelity and abandonment and narcissistic disregard for the feelings of everyone around him.

And she changed herself. First, unwillingly losing twenty pounds (that she didn’t need to lose) because she was too sick to eat, and her stomach too sick to digest what she could choke down. Then she bought flattering clothes and highlighted her hair (as I’d been nagging her to do), and wore more makeup and remembered earrings more often.

She wondered if it was her fault.

My beautiful, sweet, innocent, loving, trusting, sacrificing, and forgiving sister wondered if it was her fault.

Do you have any idea what I would do if Dick beat me or he left me? Words fail me.

I stake my life, my hopes and dreams and my children, on the belief that Dick will never betray me, or us. There are men who are worthy of the hearts and lives that we entrust them with. Men who honor covenants and who would sooner hurt themselves than strike a woman or a child.

How do I guard my daughters against the others? How do I teach them, if I cannot protect them from the betrayers? If I, and they, cannot expect to recognize the danger, because betrayers often don’t start out that way?

How do I love them and sculpt them enough so that I never hear them wonder: Was it my fault?