Hi, remember me? ALL of the children finally got back off to school Monday, just in time for me to get a too-many-trips-to-the-park-the-movies-bouncy-playland cold. There was a suspiciously drippy looking toddler at the bouncy place I am blaming it on. I know I have to get back to writing when my father in-law, who made it possible for me to lie prostrate on the couch, sniffling, watching Life as We Know It, My Life in Ruins and The Switch*, unmolested by my children, tells me he's tired of reading the same old post every day.
Back in the saddle this morning or rather, the van, I heard, for the first time, Beyonce's new song, "Run the World".** The opening marching band drum roll (stolen from Gwen Stefani), and the awesome lyrics "GIRLS! We run this mutha'!" set the stage for some major Beyonce sass, and it delivered. Although the examples of success focused a little too much on "checks", for my taste, and the sexuality-as-power expressed with the phrase "my persuasion can build a nation" made me gag a little bit, it is, yet another, perfect girl-power song. Also perfectly timed.
I've been trying, my damnedest, as of late, to finish up some articles and get them published (read: write the last two-thirds of them and submit them), and it just doesn't seem to be working out. I won't go into it all again. Use the search bar above to query the terms "single parent/work widow", "school volunteering" and "housework" and you'll be all caught up. H and I had a pretty intense, wine-fueled discussion about it while cooking dinner Saturday night, during which I told him I was tired of being "a supporting character in my own life" (lucky guy, that H, huh? Histrionics like that are only part of my charm). H was loving, complimentary and supportive, as any man would be when dealing with a half-drunk hysteric holding a knife, telling me what I do is so important. And I do believe that, some days.
Look at almost every important job, and if you follow the chain backwards, you wind up with mostly women, making this work possible - nurses, secretaries, nannies. Is this the work we are drawn to? Are women more naturally inclined to cooperative work and made to feel badly for it in this society of shining stars? Before World War II, when very few women worked outside of the home, keeping a home was considered a profession, and caring for a family was a woman's life's work. Giving to others, your family, was considered a duty and privilege. Now it seems sort of sad, if a woman does that with anything but thinly veiled bitterness.
After hearing this song though, it made me see, again, what so may women do that can be viewed as supporting, is really, what makes the world turn, and always has. I think the difference now is, we want some recognition for it, that, without us, the worlds we have created would collapse.
So thank you, Beyonce Knowles, for while the world at large, may not recognize enough the contribution we make to a functioning society, you do. Even if you do it wearing a truly fucked-up looking headdress.
*Which were good, awful and very good, in that order. Jason Bateman is like the bacon of acting. He makes everything better - even Jennifer Aniston movies.
**Thank God, the radio in the van is finally fixed. It took the dealer a month to get the new part. Four weeks of listening to Little Man's incessant babbling ("What color is the sky Mommy?..."Blue, buddy."..."Why, Mommy?"), and the girls re-tell me entire chapters of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, from memory, and I would have been institutionalized.
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