Let's get real, Mommy!

So now I'm going to turn to a blog I've got a bit more of a love-love relationship with. Meet Mir of Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda, a remarried mother of two teenage children. I laugh out loud nearly every time I read a post. And (despite my lack of qualifications, having never birthed another human being), I think she does a pretty good job of telling a realistic story about motherhood. Maybe I'm falling into a bit of a third-wave trap of always wanting to be the most REAL but damn it, Mir seems pretty real to me. And I like that about this blog.

You won't find many cute pictures in Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda. In fact, you won't find pictures or the real names of any of her family members. You will find this picture, though, of Phil the cockroach , who her daughter decided to rescue from the horrid fate of fumigation and adopt as a pet, in the interests of LOVE and SCIENCE.

Speaking from my childhood, my brother and I were a lot more likely to do something along those lines (I seem to recall an ant farm) than be happy and shiny all the time. I know my mother loves us both dearly, and I know she wouldn't give us up for anything, but I also know we could be a pain in the ass when we wanted to be (and a lot of times when we weren't even trying). When I was reading about Mir's struggles trying to help her daughter with a math course, all I could think about was my mother's nearly identical experience trying to teach me circle geometry when I was sick and missed almost a month of high school. 

I like that Mir doesn't spare us the challenges, because I know my own mother and other mothers have dealt with these issues. I imagine I'll have to deal with similar ones some day. I think mommy blogs have the potential to be a use-at-your-own risk parenting manual of sorts. Or at least a I'm-not-the-only-one-and-I-haven't-fucked-up-much-worse-than-them-ual. In this post, for example, Mir discusses the difficulties she's facing with her daughter being underweight and having a rather complicated relationship with food. Another post reveals other struggles with her daughter. It talks about her her reactions to a parenting advice CD her daughter's therapist wanted her to listen to, about her fears that somehow, in all her efforts to make it better, she might make it worse.

One of the things Mir does in her blog is write about experiences she's had where she's been treated differently (read: inferiorly) because she's a woman, such as this incident with an insurance salesman. And then she teaches her children why this just isn't ok, even if you do live in Georgia. In one of my favourite posts, she's looking for replacement lenses for her prescription sunglasses, and discovers they're absurdly expensive. The following conversation ensues between Mir, her son, and the optometrist:

"He smiled even wider, said, 'Tell your husband you really NEED new lenses. He'll take care of it.'

I blinked some more. Then I turned to Monkey, who was standing behind my chair, and smiled at him as sweetly as I could manage. 'Honey, are you listening to this?' He nodded. 'This is why feminism exists and is still necessary in 2013, son. Because this gentleman right here just suggested that I need my husband's permission to spend money.'"

This, to me, is a more radical re-encoding of motherhood. This is a motherhood in which, sure, Mir is still responsible for her child's moral well-being, but she is able to teach him about gender inequality through every day situations. And then she tells us about it. Her husband is doing the same - the responsibility is not just on her shoulders. As I'm decoding her message, I'm thinking that if I teach my (future?) children about these things, not only am I not the only woman doing so, but that it's a pretty cool way to handle a misogynist situation. And I should expect my partner to do the same.

When I read Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda, I get the sense that Mir is producing meaning that is more or less reflective of the every day experiences of being a mother. As Dawn DiPrince explains, "When readers choose to read mommy blogs and memoir, they are seeking a truth claim and an authenticity that we relate to a person who exists outside of the text." But, as DiPrince goes on to explain, the relationship between truth and memoir/blogs is a complicated one. Although Mir's blog reads quite authentically to me, this is very much a controlled representation of herself. I only know what she chooses to share with me and her other readers. I don't know that it's important whether or not this blog is a true reflection of her experiences, just that I read it this way.