I dig the cynical disdain for the holiday of lovers, I do. But it does seem to brighten my gray February a little, no matterhow not-Anthropologie-worthy my decor is and how not-Family-Fun-worthy my breakfast is. I had intended to get up and make those apple ring pancakes I found on pinterest, but then I slept in (till 8!) and maybe the kids had Cheerios?

When we lived in The Bronx, Tom brought home a bunch of little presents for Valentine’s Day. I remember especially a tiny sweet pot of African violets and a roll of duct tape. Both were appreciated at the time, I assure you. I couldn’t tell you what we did or got last year (if anything), but it is still a nice day, because fourteen years ago was our very first date — pizza and the nickelcade on State Street, which we both did not “get” and so ended up streetwalking and talking instead. (We were doubling with his roommate The Hairy Ape — he really was quite hairy, and happened to be in my Humanities class, where we were reading Eugene O’Neill, and he wore overalls (the roommate, not the playwright).)

This year we sent out Valentine’s Day cards instead of holiday cards, and it is a practice I highly recommend, if you are the card-sending type. Much less stressful, and again, something to brighten the after-holiday winter lull. The picture we sent out was taken by my dad at the Manti Temple (where we were married thirteen and a half years ago); the occasion was my youngest sister Karin’s wedding last month. It was the best picture we got that day (sad), completely unstaged (obviously), and the more I look at it, the more I like it.

I love you, Tom. I love you, Avery, Callie, Lucy and Molly. I may not get around to making fancy (or lame) valentines for you today, but that would be a lack of craftiness, time, and imagination, and not a reflection of the depth of my feeling.

It’s time for another breastfeeding post! Or as I usually call it, nursing. As in (to my baby because she’s the main one I talk about this to): Time for nursing? Want to have nursing and nappers? Nursing and nigh-nights? (I never thought I’d babytalk, and then you should have heard Tom and me even before our first baby beluga was born. After she was, and Tom was bringing her in on the subway so he could go to class and I could go home from work, he would call and ask if I had prepared the nets for her to sleep in. Now I’m confused as to why nets would be good for a beluga whale; maybe I need to check the lyrics again?)

(Also true story, I worked as the Assistant to the Chair in the Economics department, and often the Chair was not in; this is before he went to DC to do something for some guy named Bush. I nursed Avery to sleep many days, both of us lying on the floor, her on a blanket, in his spacious office, while my angel of an office manager posted a sign on the door that said “Do Not Disturb. Exam in Progress.” That was the sign she put up on empty grad student offices for me twice a day while I pumped, too.)

When I was at the BYU, there was a big kerfluffle (or according to motherhood aphasia, a ferdluffle) over a few Rodin sculptures being excluded from a traveling exhibition. Including The Kiss (which is the only one I remembered. Sunstone, however, reminds me that there were four, and that it was also this transition from Rex E. Lee to President Bateman at the time that made me sad).

Sunstone also reminds me that though the four pieces not displayed were of male nudes, the female nudes were exhibited. Also, that the museum director said it was the “lack of dignity” rather than the nudity that disqualified the sculptures.

Anyhoo, that’s not what I’ve brought you here today to talk about. Several months ago Grampa came from Florida and we took him to visit the Museum of Art on BYU campus. We also ate at JDawgs and played a round of bowling at the Wilk. I think we even finished off with ice cream at the Creamery!

Among the religious paintings highlighting Jesus Christ’s life there was this fantistic Nativity by Brian Kershisnik.

I love that the angels include people of all ages, and that they’re so focused on the nativity until they’re past it and then they’re rushing out into the world to bear witness. I like that Joseph looks a little overwhelmed, and Mary looks exhausted but exultant. I like that she is attended by two women. I like that newborn Jesus has that squished, red newborn look, and most of all, I love that they’re getting belly-to-belly contact and that he’s nursing, or she’s nursing him. The baby’s little fist kneads her breast and she rests one hand over Joseph’s while her gaze and her other arm are all encircling her little one.

I like the curious dog.

I really, really like the nursing.

I like the differing individual reactions to His birth, and again, poor Joseph. This painting is a little white, and I hope the open exhibition of it is not just a reflection of Western preference for female nudity over male. (Not that there’s much nudity here, but that is a sliver of her breast! and this is BYU!)

Molly has now been nursing longer than my other three kids. I still enjoy it most in my day, though not the occasional industrial suction through two rows of robust teeth, or even more the flailing foot and the busy busy hands and arms that wrap in and out and around my bra and shirt instead of drifting peacefully off to sleep. I have a trip planned in a few weeks, just a short three-day visit that my child-smothered mommy heart is calling the helpline to demand. I thought I would take Molly, because I’m her mother, and she still could fly free on my lap, of course I would take her.

And then I thought of the freedom of three nights away from all of the kids, three days and nights of no one needing nothing. It is bliss, no? Until I sat there this afternoon, rocking her and nursing for nappers, and worried, what if she forgets me in that short of time and weans without me? I would come home and my baby would be no longer be my baby. Ambivalent does not begin to describe it. (Well, actually ambivalent exactly describes it, but I mean, even more emphatically.)

I would turn around once in a circle to the right and find myself the mother of teenagers, or once in a circle to the left and find my own sweet line of ducklings, the youngest one still eager to be with me, be one with me, complete the circuit that is my left arm and my right arm. Which would I come home to? If I never leave her, would I ever be able to stop? Or will she stop one day, ready or not, and the next it’s off to college?

*More art by Brian Kershisnik: This is us on a Sunday afternoon, ahem.

*In Breastfeeding in Public: What’s the Big Deal? I posted a video and more pictures of nursing. In the comments there is a discussion of specifically LDS (Mormon) perceptions of public breastfeeding. I’m for it, in a big way.

During Madonna’s half-time performance today there were several jokes on Twitter about her age and looks.

Like:

(Maggie Smith is 77; She plays old ladies on BBC.)

Madonna (I wasn't going to include pictures, because that's so, so shallow, but I had already googled them anyway.)

 and

(Which is actually pretty funny. But I bet Madonna would be watching something hip, like Jag. That’s what my mom, who was born the same year — 1958 — as Madonna, likes to watch of an evening.) (Okay, my mom doesn’t really like television, but she’ll watch that with my dad, who is 6.5 years older, despite my pleading with them to try NCIS.)

There were enough (and more vitriolic) jokes to inspire this tweet:

So I wondered on Twitter, as you do when you have a burning need to point something out, if we would be making fun of Madonna’s age and looks if she were a man. Several people responded with examples of men who have either performed at half-time and been mocked or who would be if they did.

Only problem? The ages of those comparison males ranged from 9-16 years older than Madonna. For scientific purposes, they were:

(Madonna, and my mother, are 53)

Mick Jagger: 68     

Steven Tyler: 63

Bruce Springsteen: 62

Paul McCartney: 69

Pete Townshend: 66 and Roger Daltrey: 67 (The Who, which I am telling you because I had to look their names up)

So Madonna is compared (unfavorably) age and looks-wise to men who are, on average, thirteen years older than she is.

Possibly this is because she tries too hard to appear youthful, or because this is how people naturally age, men growing old gracefully (George Clooney, Sean Connery) and women hagging out early ([insert female movie star playing the mother/teacher/Mean Queen instead of the love interest]).

What bothers me is that there was also much indignation on the twitters about the GoDaddy commercial in particular and several others that objectify women. Why is it okay to judge a woman on her age/demeanor explicitly and implicitly/subconsciously by arguing it’s okay to mock her because her supposed male peers have faced the same (I say supposed because are people thirteen years older really her peers in the age stakes?).

A lot of the jokes were funny. Madonna is a public figure and well able to take anything we could dish out. I just worry that this is evidence that we’ve bought into the vast media conspiracy selling us on how women should look, how young/attractive/sexy they should be in order to merit our attention/approbation/respect.

I mean, there wasn’t even one twitter reply-er outlier who said, It’s fine to make fun of Madonna; I riff on Bono all the time. Those tinted glasses? Puh-lease. (Bono is 51)

(If you’re on Twitter, I’m @seagullfountain. If you follow me long enough, I’ll retweet the smart people I conversed with tonight and then you can follow them too!)

Molly knows how much I like mysteries. Perhaps she overheard my lamenting how Britain is punishing us for our colonial rebellion by delaying the second season of Sherlock until May. And certainly she has noticed my love for Inspector Lewis (Oh, Robbie!).

So she likes to drop clues for me. Some are blatant though occasionally resistant to abductive reasoning: a certain stink in the air usually portends a diaper change but can signal merely a passing of wind. Rubbing her eyes might mean she is tired, but sometimes is just a ploy to score some more nursing. At the table, handing me her sippy cup is often a red herring, asking for more juice rather than evidence of thirst quenched.

But some clues are unambiguous and escalating. First the undesirable food elements are dropped plop plop on the floor, then the plate is rubbed (food surface down) on the top of her head (especially if spaghette was on the menu), and finally the bib ripped off and handed imperiously over. Today I caught her after the plate and before the bib. 

*I only watched the first four episodes of Downton Abbey last year, and now that everyone loves it, I feel even more reluctance to finish, though that is probably cutting off my nose. I finished the Inspector Lewis on Netflix too quickly and resorted to buying the fourth season on iTunes (and I’m wondering about Inspector Morse on half.com). I’m trying Midsomer Murders, but though Barnaby’s voice is mellifluous x 10, I’m not hooked yet. Can you help a hopeless Anglophile out? What’s your favorite British TV?

** Oh, and thanks to Tara for the Inspector Lewis heads-up!

I have spent the last eleven years waiting for the day my little ducklings would drift off into other rooms rather than playing and singing and chattering always a few feet away from m;, a few feet from dinner prep on the kitchen island, a few feet from the nursing chair as I read, a few feet from the toilet . . . a few feet or underfoot, if I was really wanted.

Last Sunday we sprinted home after church, as you do when church is three long food-less hours. I looked up from foraging in the fridge and wondered where Avery was. Molly in the booster seat eating cheese, check; Lucy not putting her boots away, check; Callie not hanging up her coat, check. No Avery.

She was upstairs on her bed, reading.

Two days before Avery’s birthday we had a party for her friends. In the past my plan has been that the kids can invite half as many people as they are old, and that they must plan, write and deliver the invitations and help with decorations, etc. This cuts down on friend parties quite a bit. In fact, seven-going-on-eight seems to be the age when my kids are aware and determined enough to do their part (that’s seven friend-party-free years!). This year there are only eleven girls in Avery’s fifth grade class and anything exclusionary gives me junior high hives, so I told her she might invite everyone. She stamped her invites with celery-head roses.

(What’s the hooker quotient on those hand-me-down boots from Karin? They’re not black, leather or stiletto. Still . . .)

Eight little girls/almost-grown-ups showed up and dressed pizza rounds. (Question: how does a Mormon girl grow up in exurban Utah and not know how to make pizza?) They drifted upstairs to the dress-up box and then regaled us, in full costume and at full volume, with their Hope of America songs. I probably would have been weepy-eyed if it had been five decibels below eardrum-piercing.

They ate, watched The Princess Bride, opened presents and scarfed down fruit pizza on a sugar cookie base. Tom herded the other cats to bed, then asked Avery how the party was. She had glanced at the balloon bouquet and then never protested her sisters’ gleeful assault on it. “It was the best party ever,” she said.

The next day she and I got up early for a  swim meet in Salt Lake City. She swam respectably in the first session and then we had six hours to kill before the second. We ate a decadent breakfast at a “fancy” (her words)/”tacky” (mine) diner, ran to a store for sunglasses to replace mine that got stepped on and for Avery to spend birthday money on the graphic novel of Twilight (despite all my pleadings). I let her pick a cheap pair of earrings (hope they really are “hypoallergenic”) for her birthday.

(This girl has not experienced nitrous oxide (or anything stronger than Motrin) yet. Oh, the humanity.)

We walked around the Gateway even though it was cold. I realized later that the Anne Mother would probably have encouraged more playful shenanigans in Anthropologie. Since it was my first visit ever, I spent the whole time scared we’d break a whimsical fifty-dollar salt cellar. We were too late to see the second Sherlock Holmes movie, so Avery chose the planetarium and a viewing of Flying Monsters. I didn’t realize that the Amanda Quick heroines who dig for fossils in the caves on the coast in England were so historically-based.

Avery smoked them in the 100 meter freestyle that evening for her final event despite a couple disheartening disqualifications earlier. I mean, beat them by a length almost. Of course, she had a slight advantage being surely the oldest ten-year old there.

We stopped for Chick-fil-A nuggets and then small chocolate shakes on the way home. Avery told me she likes books so much because they never change. You can re-read your favorite parts later and they’re still the same. It was a lovely sentiment, but I had to disagree. When you grow up, I said, books change when you re-read them, and if it’s a good book, that’s not a bad thing. She said she wished today was in a book so she could experience it again. Another lovely thought; I told her she could write about the day any time, in a book or a letter or her journal. She said it wasn’t the same. Sometimes, I think it’s better. In writing or reading, you don’t get the same spine-crunching feeling of suffocating sauna and sound that I did up in the concrete bleachers through endless heats of the thirteen & fourteen-year-old’s men’s backstroke.

On Sunday she turned eleven. She acted embarrassed to be sung to in Primary, but would’ve been devastated if they’d forgotten. Grandma and Grandpa, newlyweds Karin and Justin and Marcy and Hans and their seventeen children all came over for dinner and cake. That night I discovered, hidden in my room, waiting for wrapping, the bag of small presents, a few clothes and a Jessica Day George book, that I’d been gathering for Avery. I kissed her good night and told her she could have them the next day after school. Since she hadn’t asked where they were, or noticed their lack, I wished they were bigger and shinier. But not really.

I am getting old. I am the mom in the book instead of the coming-of-age heroine. I am Mrs. Bennet clucking over five husband-less girls. I am Marilla Cuthbert, mopping the kitchen floor, weeping, after seeing Anne off to Queens while her pretty bosom friend goes on a picnic with cousins.

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.

I’m not very musical, despite the obligatory piano lessons in my tweens. But I wrote some words for Esther and Deborah verses for the Jesse Tree. Now for Abish to the tune of Army of Helaman . . .

Esther’s Courage (to Nephi’s Courage)

The Lord commanded Esther to go and wed the king

Haman told Ahaseurus the Jews were rebelling

Esther and Mordecai worked to save their lives

Esther was courageous and she would reply:

(chorus)

I will go, I will do, the things the Lord commands

I know the Lord provides a way, He wants me to obey. x2

Deborah the Prophetess (to Follow the Prophet)

Deborah the Prophetess judged her people well

As she served the Lord and lived in Israel.

She led them to battle with her friend Barak

They defeated Sisera who never more would mock.*

(chorus)

Follow the prophetess, follow the prophetess, follow the prophetess, don’t go astray.

Follow the prophetess, follow the prophetess, follow the prophetess, she knows the way.

*Previous versions of this line included “Deborah knew Sisera would fall by Jael’s hand” and “They defeated Sisera as she did foretell.