Dear Abby: Can't They Just Stay Dead?

So far, Dear Abby has waded us into some deep waters: the Mommy Wars and the decision of when to have children. 

Grab your life vest, because this week, we're going deeper.

This week, we're helping a reader take a swing at an existential curveball.  As he put it to me, "what's with all the zombie and vampire stuff?"

To be clear, he was not asking me about the flesh-eating zombies in Florida.  He was asking about all the blood-sucking and staggering and crazy eyes you see every time you turn on the television or go to the movies or try to buy a book.

My answer?  I have no earthly idea.  But as with all things for which I have no answer, I blame Tom Cruise.

Every craze has its roots somewhere.  'N Sync is to Boys II Men as CrossFit is to jazzercise as Michelle is to Jackie.  And back in 1994, Tom Cruise finished absorbing Jack Nicholson's version of the truth, let his fangs grow, and contained his urges to brush Brad Pitt's golden locks on the set all day.  Instead Tom just sucked Brad's blood, the two lived in creepy vampire non-bliss, and Interview with A Vampire went on to make almost $225 million.

Somewhere that same year, Stephanie Meyer celebrated her 21st birthday by remembering she was a Mormon and baking some cookies.  Ten years later, she had a dream about some blood-suckers and wrote Twilight.  Five years later, humans everywhere divided themselves up according to Team Edward or Team Jacob and fought a war of global proportions until God killed everyone for being so stupid.

Not so much as to that last sentence.  Pretty much pure fact as to the others.

In any event, Stephanie Meyer clearly had it bad for Tom Cruise and had it out for the rest of us.  Because the Twilight phenomenon took our cultural zeitgeist (take that Scripps National Spelling Bee) by the throat and didn't let go until it, too, had been drained of all mortal blood.  Every citizen of the world under the age of 7 is either named Bella or lives in a house made of the Twilight series books or movie posters.

Hollywood likes nothing better than a solid bandwagon, so within years there was True Blood on HBO and The Vampire Diaries on the CW and Grimm on NBC.  Tim Burton and Johnny Depp threw Dark Shadows into the cinematic mix, nipping at the heels of such gems as the Underworld movies and the Blade movies.  There's even a remake of Dracula in the works.  And "vampire fiction" is a legitimate new genre of Young Adult fiction.

Kinda makes a girl miss the days when Buffy was just paving the way for Angel and then everyone cried when Sex And The City ended.

I haven't read a single one of the Twilight books.  I half-watched half of the first installment in the movie series and had to stop because it felt like my blood actually was leaving my body.  I am Johnny Depp's long-lost wife and even that relationship isn't enough to guilt me into going to see Dark Shadows.  The vampire phenomenon is an enigma to me.  (Seriously, Scripps, are you feeling any remorse yet at turning my Bee Application down?)

Someone, please explain the allure to me.  I will cite you when I funnel that information to my similarly-puzzled reader who opened this can of coffin worms in the first place.  What is attractive about extra-long, extra-pointy teeth?  How is having your neck aggressively drilled an appealing way to not die?  If you're going to have some sort of eternal existence, wouldn't it be cooler if it could take place in the sunlight and in comfortable clothes and with friends?  Why is the corner of the entertainment world dominated by the likes of this heavy breather and Anna Extra-Space Paquin any fun at all to buy tickets to?

And for goodness sake, what's the difference between a vampire and a zombie, if any?  (The way they're spelled is not an acceptable answer.)

Long story short, I wish vampires would go back to whatever six feet of dirt they crawled out of.  I wish the Stephanie Meyers of the world would keep their trippy dreams to themselves.  I wish I didn't live in a world where Anna P. had a platform to discuss her bisexuality or her baby-making with co-vampire Stephen Moyer.   

I know it's not nice to disrespect the dead, but can't this vampire trend just finish dying already?


Submit your idea or suggestion for a "Dear Abby" post by emailing me at abbysblog@rocketmail.com. All the other intricate details of this something-for-everyone are explained here.

Dear Abby: How Will I Know?

It's Week Two of the Dear Abby extravaganza!   Why don't you take a few minutes to kick your feet up and give this a little read before you hop in the car to sit in traffic for six hours?  I'm pretty sure hamburgers taste as good at your destination as they do in your own backyard, so there's no need to rush into National Bar-B-Que Weekend.  And posts like this only come along once in a blue...um, week.

Last week, we explored mom-on-mom cannibalism in all its over-hyped, under-rationalized glory.  This week, we're going to put the proverbial horse before the proverbial cart and muse on another reader's question:

How do I (and my wife) know when we're ready to have kids?

Even if you know, at some basic level, that you want to have kids someday, the question of when someday becomes today is a big one.  In fact, I think it is The Big Question of most people's lives.  I'm not the first to point out that having a child is the one decision you cannot un-make.  You can transfer schools, leave a job, divorce a spouse, sell a house, and send your entree back.  But once that baby comes into the world, you will be forever defined as a parent.  You may be a good parent or a bad parent or a helicopter parent or an absent parent.  Whatever kind of parent you are, the point is you're a parent.  Switch the adjective, absorb the noun.

I think we can all agree that, if I've achieved anything thus far in the post, I've now sent today's questioner and others like him searching for the nearest paper bag.  In the distance, I can hear someone screaming, "I know I'm supposed to be taking this shit seriously, but did you have to go and turn up the volume?!?"  Yes, in fact.  I did.  It's called an INTRODUCTION. 

In my mind's eye, I had always seen myself with children.  I hoped for two, and hoped to have them when I was relatively young.  Once I became an attorney working insane hours, though, I started to wonder when I was going to be able to fit a baby into the frenetic pace of my life...and into my small Manhattan apartment.  I distinctly remember boarding the 6 train at the 86th Street station to head south to my office one morning and being hit with a wave of nervous confusion.  Don't ask me why, but at that very early hour on a muggy summer morning, I was consumed with a single question: when am I ever going to be ready to become a mother?

I soon resolved that I was going to stop thinking about it, because it was so out of the realm of possibility for my husband and I at the time.  Both of us were working at a grueling pace, we had little to no disposable income, and we had still only been married for a short time.

A couple years later, something great happened.  Well, great for me, not so great for those hoping I can shed some light on the baby-timing dilemma.  The great-for-me thing was that all of a sudden, something in me just clicked.  I powerfully and clearly and absolutely felt the need, the urge, the pure desire to have a baby.  And guess what?  The feeling first struck when I was taking the exact same subway commute as I'd been taking when I first felt so utterly whacked out by the whole proposition.  Bizarrely poetic.  Or just bizarre.  (Or statistically not so interesting, given the amount of mornings I commuted to work on the 6 train.)

I didn't question the feeling, just like I had somehow convinced myself not to obsess over my previous confusion. 

I don't think my husband ever felt a similar impulse on the issue.  When I told him about mine, he listened with a certain tinge of fear in his eyes, but it didn't take too long for him to get on board.

Given my story, when people ask me how I knew I was ready, my response is completely unhelpful: I just knew.

Maybe that's not so unhelpful, actually.  The lesson there is that life or biology or your subconscious or whatever can be trusted to throw you a bone.  Even though it's a huge question, the answer may come from as simple a place as your gut.  I can tell you that I trusted mine, and it worked for me.

On the other hand, maybe you're keeping my first response in the "unhelpful" column.  You want more concrete analysis from someone who's been on both sides of the decision.  For you, I present some practical considerations that I think can help you determine if you're ready for some company.  Of the 7-pound, 21-inch, no hair or musculature variety. 

1.  Do you have the money?

This is a crass and perhaps unsentimental place to start, but you discarded my whole "trust your gut" approach, so I'm thinking practicality is your thing.  There's nothing more practical than coming to terms with the fact that babies are expensive.  So are the kids that babies grow up to be.  Being pregnant means an entirely new wardrobe for mom.  I'm talking top-to-bottom wardrobe here, from undergarments to shoes.  Plus all the hats for the days mom is too tired or nauseous to do her hair.  The hospital stay for birthing the baby will cost thousands of dollars.  Then all the baby gear.  The diapers, the wipes, the onesies, the spit-up cloths, the crib, the changing table, the rocking chair.  And those are just the basics.  People will tell you that you need a stroller that costs more than your rent, a bottle warmer, a wipes warmer, multiple ointments and creams, every outfit you ever see in a baby-store window, and every variation of pillow.  I can tell you that you actually need none of those things, but you won't believe me.  You should just take an honest look at your finances and answer for yourself: can I afford every variation of Sophie the Giraffe, that cover for the shopping cart, and the sheep that makes noises to put my kid in a catatonic trance?  If the answer is no, maybe you should hold off.  If the answer is that you don't believe in providing for the comforts of others, maybe you should get a fish and walk away from the baby idea for good.

2.  Do you have the space?

When a little bundle of joy first arrives, the only free space really required is a bassinet for sleeping, a flat surface for diaper changing, and your front torso for holding.  Then that bundle morphs into a more three-dimensional object and starts doing things like rolling over and crawling and teetering and tottering and walking.  Then that three-dimensional object morphs into a tornado and spends years running, hiding, and jumping.  Usually when you're trying to get them dressed.

So you're gonna need some space.  For the little person itself, and also for all that gear I mentioned above.  If you live at the L.A.'s Staples Center or one of the homes Brad & Angie are not currently using, then you can skip this step.  You're fine on space.

Otherwise, consider the following.  When we lived in Manhattan, my daughter's stroller was forced to serve both as a baby vehicle and as a piece of furniture -- it was so big relative to our tiny "foyer" that we had no choice but to hang coats on it and store snacks in it.  You're going to need to be able to dedicate sections of your counter-space and shelves of your cabinets to bottles, baby food, teething crackers, formula, and every cardboard box with a Sesame Street character on it that your local grocery store sells.  Your bathtub needs to be able to contain hundreds of plastic water toys.  And no one has more swag than your kid.  It's like the world is their personal gift shop.  You're going to need some storage space.

3.  Do you have the mindset?

While money is important and space is helpful, I think there is no bigger hurdle to be sure you can jump than "mindset."  You can lie to yourself about your earning potential and about the shabby chicness of your kid sleeping on a dog bed in your living room/dining room/kitchen, but now is the time for brutal honesty.  Don't mess with yourself on this one.  You've got to be able to handle your own truth.

I'm going to tell you some things that come with the territory of being a parent.  It's impossible for you to ask yourself now if you're ready for any of these, because no one is ever "ready" for them.  What you need to ask yourself is: "Am I dry-heaving, breaking out in hives, or doing my unattractive cry when I think about any of the following?"  If you are having these or similar bodily reactions to the upcoming list, congratulations, you're the lucky winner of an easy answer: now's not the time for you to have kids.

Being a parent means, in part and in no particular order:

• Never eating an entire meal sitting down or empty-handed.
• Having to plan for every possibility - wet diaper, dirty diaper, bored child, thirsty child, hungry child, child with a cold, child with dirty hands, child with a friend with a cold or dirty hands, car-jacking, apocalypse (the last two might be unique to me) -- every time you leave the house.
• Sleeping soundly only from 9:00PM to 9:45PM.  On Tuesdays.
• Lying a lot.  White lies, but still lies.  Because there are only so many ways to try to rationalize with a toddler about why "all the toys" can't come home with us.
• Never going to see a movie again.
• Answering questions about things you never knew could prompt a question.
• Becoming a doctor.  You're the one who has to figure out why your 3-month-old is crying hysterically, how to soothe the gums of a teething baby, whether the tick had embedded or not, if that's a temper tantrum or paranormal activity, and where on the spectrum of actual injury an invisible gash to the knee falls. 
• Getting comfortable with saying words like "boo boo," "potty," "listening ears," "cooperating time," and "don't make me say it again."
• Becoming an actor.  Because the public cannot see or guess at the embarrassment/fury you're containing as your daughter strips naked, smacks you in the face, and yells "I'M NOT READY TO LEAVE!" when you tell her church is over.
• Watching Aladdin every night for three months and realizing that if you were given one wish from a genie, it'd be for a weekend.  A real one. 
• Never sitting still.  Unless it's because it's 9:00PM on a Tuesday and you're sleeping.

I'm hoping these are helpful, but I'm guessing your Siskel & Ebert review is somewhere in the neighborhood of one middle finger, all the way up. 

I'm sorry.  There's no easy answer. 

Except the trust your gut one.

Now, are you free to babysit? 

Submit your idea or suggestion for a "Dear Abby" post by emailing me at abbysblog@rocketmail.com. All the other, intricate details of this something-for-everyone are explained here.

Dear Abby: The Mommy Wars

Today I will be kicking off my "Dear Abby" series, where I do a post on a topic that a reader has suggested to me.  I've decided that I will do these posts every Friday.  Which means fathers everywhere will soon be confused when everyone starts saying Thank God It's DAD every Friday.  You can explain to them that DAD is Dear Abby Day.  I'll be too busy blogging.

Today's topic is the magazine cover heard 'round the world.  It's this rectangular powder keg, in all its glossy glory:

I picked up Time's May 21, 2012 edition the other day.  The last time I read a Time magazine was the time I forgot to bring my book to the gym in 1999.  Upon greeting my long not-lost non-friend, I closed my right eye so I could stop looking at Jamie Lynne Grumet's boob and was immediately underwhelmed.  Either Time is really taking a bullet for the eco-conservative Green Team or they've hit the bottom of the material well, because the issue was shorter than the alphabet books my daughter makes at pre-school.

I'm guessing the slight heft of the magazine is more owing to the latter.  In fact, if I were to put on my Michael Jordan I'll-Bet-On-Anything hat, I'd wager that the editors at Time are afraid that's exactly what they're running out of: time.  I bet they're desperate for readership and trying to cut costs so that Father Time doesn't tell Time that its time is up.

After I read the mommy article, I became convinced I was right.  And I was mad I lost my Michael Jordan speed dial button because I could have just made myself some millions.

The desperation over at Time was confirmed because the content of the article only tangentially related to the explosive image and headline on the cover of the magazine.  Clearly the boob-sucking pre-schooler and the gauntlet-throwing "Mom Enough" challenge were simply a clever ploy to get all of us riled up and ready to spend $5 on 6 pieces of paper.  If they'd accurately depicted the "related" story in a pictorial, it would be a photo of a grandfather dressed in scrubs lecturing a frazzled mother while trying to hide his giggling from her.  And the caption would read "Science -- Who Needs It?"

Needless to say, I have a lot of reactions to the story, but I'm going to try to boil them down to three. 

Reaction 1:  The actual subject of the cover story, Dr. William Sears, is a jerk.

The focus of Time's reporting is not Pilates teachers with breasts just waiting to be suckled.  Instead, it's Dr. William Sears, who published the first edition of The Baby Book in 1992.  In that brick of a book (it's 767 pages long!), Dr. Sears advocates for "attachment parenting."  Boiled down, attachment parenting dictates that "the more time babies spend in their mothers' arms, the better the chances they will turn out to be well-adjusted children."  The basic tenets of such a doctrine are that:

• Mothers should not let their children fuss.  At all.  Every cry should be tended to.
• Mothers should not put their babies down.  Ever.  If mommy needs to use her hands for something other than toting Junior, Dr. Sears sells a sling that mommy can rig to her torso and deposit Junior into.
• Babies should "co-sleep" (ie. share a bed with) their parents.
• And yes, as Time walloped us over the head with, mommy should breastfeed Junior for as long as possible.  Biologically possible.  Not socially-acceptable possible.

As I will discuss more below, I have no real issue with attachment parenting in and of itself.  It is certainly not for me, but if some mothers feel like that's how this whole parenting mystery unfolds itself for them, fine.  And wow.

But I have a real issue with Dr. Sears.  He, together with his wife, cobbled together the attachment parenting movement relying on their personal histories, their Catholic faith, and their random reading choices.  Both Dr. and Mrs. Sears felt abandoned by one or both of their parents in their own childhoods.  Both are deeply religious.  And both got the idea for their life's work from a book called The Continuum Concept.

This book was written by Jean Liedloff, a college-dropout turned part-time model who decided to go dig for diamonds in Venezuela in about the 1960s.  (I'm serious.  On all counts.)  She noticed that the indigenous people in the South American jungle carried their children with them all the time, and that those children seemed to "cry less" than American babies.  Based on her uneducated observations, she wrote The Continuum Concept and told mothers everywhere they needed to be more "connected" to their children.  She went on to decide never to have children of her own.  The Searses went on to decide to make her their prophet.

They've so bought into the attachment parenting thing that Mrs. Sears actually says things like "[leaving a baby] to cry in her crib damage[s] her brain."  Dr. Sears is quick to chime in with a comment that putting a baby in a crib is putting a baby "behind bars."  The only way to save your baby from dyslexia or jail, they conclude, is for mommy to a stop everything except lactation.

The couple peddles this lifestyle despite the fact that there is no scientific support for their statements and mountains  of it to contradict them.  They hold essentially firm despite the decidedly sexist undertones of their message, which they try to soften with suggestions that fathers "do the dishes" or book mommy a massage.  Their response to doubters is simply to say that their method is the method God likes, and that their preaching is based on the practices that have worked for them.  Then they condemn any mother who would dare put her baby on a schedule or on a bottle, even though that's the method Dr. Spock likes, and those are the practices that have worked for millions.

My bottom line: if your idea of childbirth is just moving a baby from the womb to other side of your epidermis, enjoy your years as a kangaroo.  I just hope you have a reason better than Dr. Sears' say-so to do it.  To my mind, his game is an exploitative racket.

Reaction 2:  The whole "Mommy Wars" firestorm needs to be extinguished.

Time magazine is just as exploitative.  After the whole Ann Romney "don't tell me I don't 'work' just because I never 'worked' outside the home" debacle, the world has fallen down the Mommy Wars rabbit hole.  "Working" moms versus stay-at-home moms.  Attachment parenting versus helicopter parenting versus I just want my kid to be a good person and not too clingy and eat the occasional vegetable parenting.  Time magazine asking if you're mom "enough."  As if mothering is some beach the U.S. Marines are trying to storm.

Enough, already.  In the history of time, no perfect parent -- much less mother -- has ever been identified.  Probably because every parent started off as the kid their parents scarred or neglected or screwed up in some way.  Imperfect children grow up to be imperfect parents, and the whole wide world is made up of imperfect people. 

Some kids grow up to be better people than other kids grow up to be, sure.  But I think it'd be tough to argue, with a straight face, that Johnny is so much more well-adjusted than Albert because Johnny piggy-backed his mother until he outweighed her.  There's a lot that goes into making us who we are.  Of course a huge building block is how we're raised during our formative years.  I can say, though, that a lot of who I am is the result of things I had to go off and do on my own during, for example, the big bad years of kindergarten.  My mother could have never let me shed a single tear under her watchful eye, but I probably would have still suffered from confidence issues after a crush wasn't reciprocated or some other fact of life -- that my mother had no control over -- hit me upside the head.

In other words, an extra month of breast-feeding does not, to my mind, a Mother Theresa or Warren Buffett or Gisele Bundchen (I'm using her as a self-confidence standard-bearer) make.  Not in and of itself.

What WILL make a difference, way more often than not, is a semi-sane, semi-grounded mother.  And whatever it takes for mommy to find the sweet spot to her parenting is what mommy should do.  As long as, of course, it's not the sweet taste of coke on her teeth after she snorts a line or some similarly illegal and universally frowned upon parenting technique.

Mommy pitting herself against mommy is just unhelpful.  Spend your time taking care of your kids and taking care of yourself, in the way and to the degree that resonates with you.  Don't worry what the mommy next door is doing if it's just to criticize it.  Find a different way to reassure yourself that what you're doing is right for you and yours.  Cutting your fellow mommy down to size to make yourself feel righteous is very middle school of you.  That's a sure-fire way to teach an imperfect attitude and approach to life to those kids hanging from your neck.

And every media outlet or other third-party who wants to do the pitting just to generate sound bites is beyond unhelpful -- it's cheap.

Reaction 3:  This is just too good of an opportunity to pass up.

Despite all of the above, there's no way to look at that cover and not feel like it's raining softballs.  In that vein, let's end this on a light note. 

I think you can take your cues from your kid on when is the right time for you two to stop with the breast-feeding routine.  If your kid can verbalize any of the following, I'd say you're getting more than just cues that the end is 'nigh.  You're receiving spam from Mother Nature delivered via a megaphone:

• "Mom, I need to wash down the spaghetti o's.  Has your right breast recovered from this morning?"
• "Hey guys, I need to take a break from tag.  I'm parched.  Mom, put down your book and pull up your t-shirt!"
• "Move over, Sam!  You're hogging all the boobs!"
• "Today Bobby was telling me about these things called juice boxes.  What in the world are those?"
• "Mom!  I passed the test!  I got my driver's license!  Can we celebrate with both sides?!?"
• "MAAAAA!!!!  THE BREAST MILK!!!!"

Submit your idea or suggestion for a "Dear Abby" post by emailing me at abbysblog@rocketmail.com.  All the other, intricate details of this something-for-everyone are explained here. 

Dear Abby

My parents didn't name me Abby for nothing.  It was only a matter of time before I had access to some forum where people could reach out to ask me questions or give me suggestions.

No, I'm not talking about being a mother to an inquisitive and highly opinionated daughter.  I'm talking about this blog.

Every weekday, I sit down to write about things that are going on with me, things that I've been thinking about, or things that catch my eye in the news.  And that is very, very selfish.

The other night, I was "meditating" (that's the word I like to use for "folding laundry") and I was having all these Eat-Pray-Love deep thoughts.  Thoughts like:

• Why have I still been so unsuccessful at finding a product that tames my frizzy hair?
• How am I supposed to get in shape when food is so delicious?
• Why does my husband have so many white undershirts?

The one I really noodled on, though, was "how do I get my readers more involved in the blog?"

You see, some bloggers have community forums, some bloggers receive tons and tons of comments on their posts that they respond to, and some bloggers have actual fans who consider them to be some kind of celebrity-deity combination.  I'm too stupid to figure out how to set up a forum, I'm apparently not provocative enough to get the people who do read my blog to comment on a post, and I'm not Jenny from the Butcher's Block, so I will never reach a level of fame beyond my household acclaim for best bed-maker.  (Which I won solely because I'm the only bed-maker.)

But there was this formula floating around in my head.  I want people to like reading this blog.  People like reading about things that ring true to them, or that are on their mind, or that they want an opinion on.  I have an email address for this blog.  People who read this blog necessarily have some form of Internet access, and probably an email account of their own to boot.

So I whipped out my TI-82, called my accountant, cried a little bit, and came up with the following:

I formally invite you, and you, and YOU to write me with a suggestion, an idea, or a request for a topic for me to write about.  It can be anything that strikes your fancy.  A celebrity you'd like me to insult.  A play-date etiquette debate you'd like me to resolve.  My thoughts on the Greek austerity debacle. 

The way to reach me is pretty easy.  See that email address winking at you in the upper right-hand corner of this page?  Look, I'll even put it right here so that it's easier to cut and paste:

abbysblog@rocketmail.com

Put that in the "to" line of an email.  Then in the message, just tell me whatever it is you think I should write about.  You don't even have to assign a subject to your email.  That's how easy I'm willing to make this for you.

I won't identify you in the post where I address your suggestion (unless you specifically tell me you want me to).  And I will also give you a heads up via email to let you know when I'm publishing my post on your topic.

Can you feel the love already?  It takes a village to raise a blog, so let's get this going!  It doesn't have to be today, or tomorrow, or next month, but whenever that flash bulb of an idea goes off, now you know where to find me and you know that mi blog es su blog. 

I think that this kind of something-for-everyone would qualify my blog as socialist and bad for America in some circles, but I don't even care.  Let's stick it to the man, fellow Left Over-ers!  This way is so much easier than living indefinitely in a tent!

Love,
Dear Abby