More Perfect

wherein i attempt to do all the things that women are supposed to do and generally make myself miserable in the process

Saturday, September 01, 2007

All Me All The Time - Newspaper Edition

Two years and three essays later, I've finally made it into the Modern Love column in the New York Times.

Last week the copyeditor/fact checker person from the Times called to inform me that the Times has only published the word "farts" once in their entire history, and it was the last name of a marathon runner. (And I thought I had a sort of annoying last name!) They therefore needed to change the word "farts" in my essay to "passes gas," which is a phrase I've probably never uttered in my life.

I pointed out that "farts" is a lot funnier than "passes gas" and they were all, yeah, but we're the Times. So that's how that ended. Also I apparently do not know the true meaning of the word "dilemma."

Either way, I'm thrilled to have made an appearance in the column - hope everyone enjoys it.

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posted by Hana @ 1:22 PM  

7 Comments:

  • At September 01, 2007 5:36 PM , Anonymous Sylvia said...

    Congrats on the column! (and you are right, farts is funnier)

    Love your blog, my kids are grown up now and your posts bring back fond memories. I was always different than all the other moms, and my kids turned out fine!

     

  • At September 02, 2007 12:57 PM , Blogger Jamie said...

    You know, you and Ayelet Waldman need to get together for lunch some time--because you are the two most annoying, neurotic mothers writing
    about parenting who exist on the planet. Get over yourself already--don't expect your baby to be able to relate to your pseudo-sophisticated urban embarrasment about saying "I love you." As you suggest in your own article, your unwillingness to express love--and your husband's too--is creepy. Furthermore, what you are doing is perpetuating yet another generation that is emotionally closed off and unable to talk about feelings or express intimacy appropriately. Instead of consigning your son to a household that is silent about love and family, why not see a therapist?

    This is one time when those parents on the internet have it right. Don't expect approval just because you happen to have the platform of the New York Times
    and they don't. And no, I don't habitually write to the people who write the Modern Love column--but yours has left me intensely pissed off; I really feel sorry for your poor son; and I hope you will snap out of the extreme silliness in which you seem to be mired.

     

  • At September 02, 2007 2:12 PM , Blogger Lara said...

    Hana,
    I am a Park Slope mom as well, and a neurologist.
    I just read your I love you article. I do feel that you approach this from a cerebral perspective, too cerebral really.
    When I read your article, I was struck with a few things. Telling Milo you love him only after he misbehaves does seem like a mistake. Because it makes it as if his bad actions put that into question.
    Your childhood questions to you dad really do scream out a need to hear that you are loved and valued. It makes the whole not saying I love you thing seem pathological, and sort of scarring. That somewhere in you is some thirst to hear it, that just kind of closed over time.
    It may be obvious in every fiber of your being that you love Milo. But there is real value in making the obvious manifest. In expression. It's comforting, it's lovely.
    Trust me, we all walk around Park Slope watching unbelievable displays of over-parenting (and sometimes exhibiting them).
    So you could try it, the next time he runs into your arms when you come back from the laundry room, Squeeze him and say "I love you so much".
    It would be weird to save it for some stilted post divorced phone call.

     

  • At September 02, 2007 6:33 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

    oh boy--have you checked out the stir you caused on UB?

     

  • At September 02, 2007 8:57 PM , Blogger Deborah said...

    I smiled (and grimaced) when I read your Modern Love column. My visits to Park Slope (where my son and his girlfriend live and my daughter lived, before moving from the area) have always provided, shall we say, "interesting encounters" with young parents. My favorite, for lack of a better term, was sitting outside a coffee house on 7th Ave. on a lovely spring morning, sipping a cup of steaming coffee, and having my blissful moment completely disrupted by a young mother sitting near me who placed her daughter (and not a toddler, a child of perhaps four years old) on a portable potty and then when the child was finished, wiped her behind. As her daugher stood. With pants down. Right there on the sidewalk. As people walked by. And even they appeared surprised by this over-the-top-Park-Slope sort of behavior. My daughter, who was sitting with me, shrugged. After all, people curb their dogs so why not their children?
    I have witnessed parents "reasoning" with screaming children. I have gaped at children running amok with obvious parental approval and pride. I have marveled at how proudly parents exhibit their investment in their children, as though needing to outdo one another. How exhausting. So much work.
    But I digress.
    I will finally get to the point here and tell you when I started saying "I love you" not only to my children, but also to my mother. I, too, believe that those in our lives whom we love know this without constant reinforcement just as we know they love us too. My mother always told me that actions speak louder than words. I understood that just as you understood after listening to the unfortunate mother (and her equally unfortunate targets) screaming "The Wheels On The Bus" for all to hear.
    As my children grew up and I began to appreciate my mother, I began to say, "I love you." When my mother survived chemo and a stroke and myriad other health problems, I continued to say, "I love you." Every night when I talk to her over the miles that distance us and know that each conversation is a gift, I say, "I love you."
    As my children grew up and began to make their way through a hazardous world, I began to say, "I love you." As I watched a colleague frantically punch numbers on her cell phone on September 11, trying to locate her son who worked on Wall Street, I called my children, neither of whom were in NY at the time, and told them, "I love you." We have all become accustomed to and comfortable with closing all our conversations with these three simple words.
    Having come from a family that never uttered this sentence very much, I've learned how simple it really is to say it and mean it. Articulating the love I feel for the most important people in my life has come late in the game, I guess, but I have to say that it is a joy to both give and receive.
    Perhaps you Park Slopers are a bit ... enthusiastic ... in certain methods of childrearing, but my advice? Saying "I love you" may seem to be a bit overdone by some, but it will come naturally enough in time. Might as well start practicing.

     

  • At September 03, 2007 1:34 PM , Anonymous Sylvia Martinez said...

    Oh please, get over yourselves. Saying words doesn't make them true. Say it, don't say it, whatever. Just be yourself.

    It's crazy the way people treat their children as extensions of their own neuroses. Once I saw a mother feeding her son on a swing - she was running back and forth... push, stuff food, push, stuff food... when he needed neither. Just a lot of showy, wasted effort. The perfect metaphor for an overcompensating parent.

    Insisting that a particular set of words will innoculate your child against emotional problems is just silly.

     

  • At September 06, 2007 5:02 PM , Blogger angela said...

    Okay, dude. I have to read the column. But don't you love people psychoanalyzing you over the internet. WTF? Hope you're doing well. Screw those people! Angela

     

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