The ideal of nonconformity
There’s a sequence to life that’s drilled into the heads of young girls - by their parents and by popular culture - high school, then college; marriage, then children. It’s touted as the “right” way to do things, a modern version of how to meet and marry the prince and ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after.
Problem is, following the rules doesn’t guarantee a white knight outcome. Plenty of women adhere to these so-called ideals only to discover that they’re miserable. Their lives seem idyllic to observers, but underneath, they’re festering with resentment. I did everything like I was supposed to, and THIS is how it turned out?
Rebecca Woolf’s memoir, Rockabye, is particularly refreshing for those of us who followed the rules, but wondered (and still do sometimes) about those paths not taken:
“…while living in Europe, the summer I was nineteen, I persuaded a magazine to send me on location to international music festivals, working as a journalist with no journalistic experience. Passionate and fearless, I booked meetings with a blank portfolio and the kind of confidence that could only come from teenage naivete…”
The summer I was nineteen, I took Calculus II and worked at a bookstore. Worlds apart from the life Rebecca led.
Even so, I could identify closely with her feelings about her friends, the people around her, as she described them:
“…friends you go out with, who know your name but not your story. The kind of friends who never ask, who cannot be bothered to know. Mutual acquaintances disguised as friends.”
She was a caretaker, filling other people’s needs while camouflaging her own. Letting them take from her, though it appeared that she was giving to them.
But it was when she took a pregnancy test - six of them, actually - that she realized she couldn’t go on that way:
“I want everyone out of my life who has taken from me and not given back - all the cool cats living their ninth lives. I do not want them near my child. Not even now, as it grows inside me.”
It seems that feeling of protectiveness is universal among mothers, even those who weren’t “breaking the speed limit and racing down the freeway with music blasting, ashtray overflowing” prior to learning of their pregnancies. Just that knowledge itself, before the baby can be seen or felt, is enough to spark changes in how we see ourselves and the people around us.
As her due date draws near, Rebecca voices her concerns about how her body will change - concerns that I imagine most women share, but very few discuss:
“I don’t want to be perceived as a baby-making machine instead of a sex object; I don’t want to lose my feminine power - a power that, no matter how hard my friends try to deny it, is based on sex.”
I have great respect for Rebecca’s honesty on this point. We’ve all felt the rush that comes with realizing that our appearance - our anatomy - affords us a means of manipulating others. Call me anti-feminist, but power is power and having it feels good, no matter what the source of it may be.
Rebecca’s devotion to her newborn son, Archer, is nearly overwhelming:
“I’m crazy in love and scared out of my mind because the world is so fucked-up and jaded and my baby is so new and perfect and I want to protect him from the monsters. Just like my mother wanted to do for me, and her mother for her, and every mother through time.”
We all begin as new and perfect and completely innocent beings, unaware of all the wrongdoings in life. Even now that my oldest child is six, I still yearn to preserve her optimistic outlook, her confidence and faith in the grown-ups around her, and yet in order to help her survive, I must teach her of the monsters that do exist.
Having a child brings a shifting perspective. As Rebecca describes it:
“I want to be taken care of, and at the same time I want so badly to be able to take care of myself. And I can’t. I want to help everyone, but I can’t. I want to show Archer that life is not perfect…”
And coming to terms with the changes in her life that occurred so suddenly is incredibly difficult:
“…sometimes it sucks being a mom and a wife. Sometimes the pressure is too much. Sometimes I just want to be alone. Have my old life back. Sometimes I think, How did I get here, and who are these strangers in my house?“
Again, I greatly respect Rebecca’s honesty. Because even when the ambiguous sequence of life is followed - diplomas are framed, engraved wedding invitations are sent, and ovulation predictors are employed - we still sometimes wonder how in the hell we ended up where we are.
And even when it appears on the surface that a marriage is serene and satisfying, I expect that very few couples have the sort of perspective that Rebecca and Hal do:
“[Marriage] is about trying. And messing up. And falling down. And getting up. And making up…Marriage is about the flowers that grow wild in the sidewalk cracks, often disguised as weeds and equally hard to manage.”
Most of all I admire Rebecca’s gleeful enjoyment of parenting:
“Our days mainly consist of chasing each other in circles until one of us gets hurt. Sometimes, when we’re both tired and neither of us feels like napping, we eat Cheerios straight from the box and watch Sesame Street side by side.”
And her dedication to Archer’s individuality:
“I want him to grow up knowing what a beautiful thing it is to be different. I don’t want him to follow the leader or feel more comfortable in a crowd than he does on his own.”
Those so-called ideals, the sequence of life, are still the norm to which most parents hope their children will aspire. Following those rules may make life easier, but there’s no guaranteed outcome - for boys or girls. As Rebecca succintly sums it up:
“Of course you have to know the rules before you break them, and Archer will certainly know rules. But he will also make his own. And I will make sure that he knows that although conformity is a way to get by in this world, it has never been the way to excel.”
Her circumstances of love, marriage, and motherhood may be out of the ordinary, but Rebecca Woolf is one mother from whom we can all learn.
Rebecca’s book, Rockabye, is available at Amazon. Her West Coast book tour is in progress - check her website for details. For more reviews of Rockabye, check out Parent Bloggers Network.
April 28th, 2008 at 5:57 am
Wow, thats one of the best reviews of Rockabye that I’ve read.
April 28th, 2008 at 5:58 am
I’m not biased, or anything (ahem) but this is one of the best reviews I’ve read — breaking down quotes and really making her message “sing” loudly.
The truth is, there are so many damn messages in her book that there really is something for everyone.
Or maybe it’s somethings.
April 28th, 2008 at 6:06 am
The best part of the review was getting to reread the book again through it. I loved it too for many of the same reasons you did.
April 28th, 2008 at 6:37 am
Great review, Mothergoosemouse!
April 28th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Wow! That was incredible. Thank you so much for such a thorough well-crafted review! Just beautiful. So grateful you liked the book, MGM. My love.
April 28th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Great review - can’t wait to read this book!
April 28th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
the summer i was 19, i was living in a basement apartment in omaha, working as a receptionist for a real estate firm, and dating a roadie. this summer, i’ll be a 35-year-old mother of a (hopefully blissfully normal) infant and a bipolar 6 year old, married, living in the burbs.
“wondering how we got here” is putting it rather mildly…
April 28th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
After my first child, and the day my mom went back home to take care of my dad–leaving me along with Emelie, I remember my face crumbling as I watched her drive away.
I wrote:
“I am not as strong as everyone thinks. My daughter is only a few days old and I’m certain she’s stronger than me. How will she raise me?”
I’ll have to check out this book - it looks excellent; thanks for the review.
April 30th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
What a fantastic review! Thanks for sharing it MGM.
I finished the book over the weekend, and it was such a great book. I’m highly recommending it to everyone.
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:56 am
[…] were taken by her sincere expression of non-conformity, that in parenting our own children, there is only our gut, our own instinct to guide us. As one mom […]