POV

Personal observations from the front lines of parenting.

The Hot Flash by Claire Acerno

The shit about getting older is not that you get tired at four in the afternoon, or that your face starts to look like it’s melting, or that you can’t remember what you knew five minutes ago, or that you work out five days a week just to look like the very worst version you imagined yourself at when you were twenty five, or the eyes that you used to be able to thread a needle in the dark with, now need reading glasses to see your own face in the mirror. Or when you check out a cute random guy you realize you’re about twenty five years older than that person and you are now that old perv, or… I could go on and on but you get the point.

On Being Prematurely Aged by Mary DuChene

I have become completely convinced that I am destined, in any arena where I judge others, to become those others.  A karmic way of reminding me that my tendency toward judgment is really just a trick of perspective. And so this week I have become my adoptive parents.  Watching my child marry and reproduce long before I am ready to accept it is even a possibility.

Letter from London by Bee Lavender

"This is a war between the people and the government."
--kid on the street, London August 7 2011.

Four nights ago London erupted in spontaneous violence, rippling out from a council estate north of my home to gradually encompass every borough. Riots and looting were widespread. Cars, buses, and buildings have been torched.

I'm writing this from from the relative safety of a third floor flat in Hackney, east London. Over the last few days I've listened to nonstop sirens, watched armoured vehicles rumble past, helicopters hover overhead, as cops partitioned part of the neighbourhood. I have watched from the window as kids streamed down the alley toward or away from danger, watched on the news as riot police charged and bashed their way through crowds of angry, frightened teenagers armed with bricks.

On Character, Cleavage, and Being Cool by Dana Udall-Weiner

I am not a cool mom. I can’t get into the whole good-for-you-flaunt-it-if-you’ve-got-it-mentality. I don’t think it’s such a great thing when women parade around without much clothing, particularly when the intended audience is young children. As a result of these uncool beliefs, I sometimes find myself in bed (ideologically) with religious, right-wing conservatives. The same people I warn my children about. I wake up thinking, “How the hell did I get here?”

Size 10 by Lisa Peet

Do you ever get a break, I wonder, from how fiercely you love them? I'm just curious... how are you supposed to let them leave home, lose jobs, get their hearts trampled on? I know everyone does it, everyone survives it. But sometimes it just seems so unlikely, unless I can just get a little respite from this horrible hot love that hits me behind the knees. Motherhood can be such a mindfuck.

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