What's in a name?

So, first for this to all make sense I suppose I should say...it's a girl!! Yay for no circumcision fights!

But of course things are never simple. I called my dad to tell him it was a girl (and also because i had to ask a tax question). I also sent him and my mom the latest ultrasound pictures by email...still radio silence from my mom (haven't talked to her since I told her I was pregnant in December) but that's something to angst about another day.

When I told my dad we are having a girl, he immediately asked if I would consider naming her after my dead grandmother - his mother - the one whose funeral inspired me to start this blog back in 2007 when my dad used the eulogy to go on about how he has to make sure to pass on judaism to his kids.

I had actually been considering naming her after my grandmother already. Only I don't really like her name - her English name (Which she went by) was "Lola" which is a little too "she walks like a woman but talks like a man" for me, and her hebrew name was "Liba" which I like even less. So B and I had been considering basically every name that has two L's in it. In the end we decided the one we like best is "Lilith"- it has sort of a feminist connotation (yes I know there is no evidence for the "Lilith being the first wife of Adam" story before the 1300s or so) and I like the sound of the name and best of all, it doesn't end with an "A" like most other double-L names, since her last name will start with an "A" and neither of us like names that run into each other like that.

Anyway we hadn't told this to my dad, but today he sent me this email:

Hi Abandoning Eden,

Hope you are feeling well and that the pregnancy is proceeding well too.

After our last conversation I was thinking further about the Jewish name idea and thought I would pass this along for your consideration. Having a Jewish name, and specifically naming after Savta, is something that would be meaningful to me. It would help memorialize her life. On the other hand, I realize that Lola, Liba, Ahuva or other derivatives of Savta's name may not be fashionable for a girl's name these days or may not be what you had in mind. So, how is this for a proposal? Why don't you name your future little girl whatever you and B would like to name her with. I could go to my local Rabbi, and, with your permission and in a private ceremony, he could perform the prayer that confers a Jewish name for her, specifically, "Liba," Savta's Jewish name. No one would ever have to necessarily refer to her by that name on a regular basis. It is common in secular circles for children to have a separate Jewish name but not use it.

If it is all the same to you, this would make everyone happy.

Please let me know what you think. Thanks.

All the best,

Abba

This is what I'm thinking of writing back:

Hi Abba,

We actually have considered a lot of different names that sound like Lola, and are thinking we will give her a middle name of Lilith which is the one we liked the best (we don't want any name that ends with an "A" because her last name will start with an "A").

I really don't feel comfortable with you having some private religious ceremony on her behalf and giving her a jewish name. First of all, it would be similar to B's mom having a private ceremony with her catholic priest and naming her "Christina" or some other christian name, I wouldn't feel comfortable with that and I would worry that this would create inroads for her to try to convert my daughter to Catholicism later on. Second of all, I hate the name Liba more than the name Lola- no offense, but it reminds me of the word "Labia" which is just weird.

Of course you can do whatever you want without telling me about it, but I would rather you didn't. I remember you and mom saying that when I was born people wanted me named after some dead relatives, but you decided to go with the name that you wanted to name me. Please respect my purview as a parent to name my own daughter.

Love,
Abandoning Eden

Letters composed in my head at 5am

Well it finally happened. My dad sent me an email last week saying he saw a couple of his cousins (who are both my Facebook friends so know I'm pregnant through that) and they asked how I was doing. So I wrote back and told him about how I'm doing- much better now that I'm not throwing up every morning anymore, although I've barely gained any weight because of said throwing up ( only abut 3 pounds so far) and then a bunch of other stuff just updating him on what's going on with my life. And he wrote back and one of the things he said was "so have you thought about if you are going to give the baby a Jewish name? A bris if it's a boy?"

Ahh the bris question. I'm surprised he managed to hold out until I was 18 weeks along. But like, seriously, what does he think the answer is going to be?

I haven't written back yet cause I'm not sure exactly how I want to say "no, most definitely no on both counts." But heres an email I composed in my head this morning at 5am when i couldn't sleep (finding it uncomfortable to sleep lately cause I can no longer sleep on my stomach, not supposed to sleep on my back because it can compress a major vein, and I dont like sleeping on my side, which is my only choice. Plus kicking waking me up).

Dear abba,

No we are not going to give our kid a Jewish name or a bris. I know you had the idea that when I got pregnant and had a child I would want to become more religious, since you've said as much, and otherwise why would you ask me that question when you already probably knew what the answer was? But I still am an atheist and dont want to be part of any religion, and am not planning on having any religious ceremonies for my child, whether a bris or a baptism.

I know this probably disappoints you, but I guess we both had unrealistic expectations of how me being pregnant might change things. You thought I might become more religious, and I thought mom might want to actually have a relationship with me, and maybe be excited about becoming a grandmother the way most normal people react to that kind of news. But instead she hasn't responded to either of the emails I sent her with pictures of ultrasounds, and I haven't heard from her since you put her on the phone when I called to tell you I was pregnant 3 months ago. I imagine she hasnt told any of her friends about becoming a grandmother (her mother certainly had no idea when I called to tell her) because she is still obsessed with how this might reflect on her image or whatever.

Why would I ever want my child to have any part of a religion that tells mothers to treat their children and grandchildren this way?

Love,
Abandoning Eden

17 weeks 3 days

I definitely have a bump, although not so much that you would look at me and be like "Pregnant!" I don't think.  Especially since it's not a particularly smooth bump. Although maybe I'm just fooling myself there.  I'm wearing my loose /fat clothes to work from before I lost 30 pounds and lots of sweaters and jackets and stuff (Which I always do anyway) and I doubt my students suspect I am pregnant yet. My colleagues all know of course, they are throwing me a "surprise" baby shower this summer I hear.  I invited my dad and he said he and my mom would try to come if it's on a sunday afternoon.

Speaking of my mom I still haven't heard from her since I told her I was pregnant back in early December despite 2 emails I sent her with ultrasound pictures.  But after B's dad died, my dad sent him a really nice sympathy letter in the mail, saying he knows how hard it is to watch a loved one die of cancer. The most religious it got was he said "Facing a loved ones death is a sobering and contemplative event. For those who believe, it is comforting to think that their souls are at rest in heaven. For others, it is comforting to think that their pain and suffering have ended and they are at peace." And then he went on to say that on behalf of him and his wife (my mom) he wants to extend his condolences. I thought that was nice of him. I should probably send him an email at some point thanking him for the nice letter.

The baby has now had first and second trimester tests for downs syndrome and trisomy and spina bifida, and they all came back negative, yay!  Last week we had a regular checkup and my doctor gave me a small heart attack when it took her like 2 minutes to find the baby's heartbeat- but it turned out she was on the wrong side of my belly, and the heartbeat was fine, 162 (Down from 170 the first two times we heard the heartbeat, but perfectly within normal range).  I've started to be able to feel the baby move around in there which is freakin awesome.  I'm really enjoying being pregnant in a way I didn't think I would...it's so cool to carry my baby around with my everywhere and be able to feel it before anyone else can. Of course the morning sickness sucked...I was terribly sick all of my first trimester, and threw up at least 1-3 times a day, usually in the middle of the night and felt nauseous all day long. When I hit 15 weeks I woke up and started feeling fantastic, and only threw up 1 time all of week 15. But then I threw up 3 days in a row in week 16. Haven't thrown up in week 17 yet, so I'm hoping my morning sickness is mostly gone.

In 2 weeks we have another ultrasound where they do a big anatomy scan and we find out the gender. I'm not sure if we're going to tell people though..if it's a girl I don't want to be bombarded with pink shit. If it's a boy I don't want it to get back to my parents (and since my parents I assume will be coming to my baby shower, and if I told anyone it would be my colleagues who are throwing the baby shower, then I'm guessing I couldn't keep it a secret from them if I told anyone else). I just don't want to even have to have a conversation with them about circumcision. It's just not going to happen, and I don't want to fight about it. But I guess they would find out eventually.  Once we know the gender hopefully we'll have an easier time narrowing down names.  We definitely have a first name picked out for a boy, and I think we are pretty close to consensus on a first name for a girl  (at least I know the name I like the most, not sure B is entirely sold on it) but so far our middle name choices have mostly been of the semi-ridiculous variety that I'm not sure either of us are serious about (like "Artemis" for a girl's middle name. I do love that name but it's a bit much probably...)

In gardening news I planted a new blueberry bush to replace the one that died last year, and also planted a blackberry bush for good measure. Not this summer, but next summer, I'm going going to have asparagus and blueberries and blackberries and a toddler to go outside and pick them with!  This weekend I also planted lettuce (3 kinds- romaine, mesclun mix and microgreen mix) and snap peas in my veggie garden, and have a whole bunch of garlic I planted at the end of last year that is still growing (it grows over the winter and matures in the late spring). I'm also going to start some basil inside soon, but not going to bother with late summer veggies this year like peppers and eggplants, since I'll have a newborn when I should be harvesting those. Should be able to harvest a few asparagus this year, but not more than a meal's worth probably. My lemon tree has been growing lemons since right around when I found out I was pregnant in November, but they are not full sized yet and none are mature- I think they take 6-8 months to mature so I might have some lemons a month or two before the baby comes.  I might also plant a pumpkin patch and perhaps some zucchini somewhere depending on how mobile I am in May when it's time to plant such things.

Soon I have to start thinking about registering for baby stuff and signing up for some kind of baby care/birthing class. But I'm going to worry about that stuff in March.  Next weekend we are going to the beach for 2 days- I have a conference right on the shore, and the hotel is dog friendly and right near a dog friendly beach, and since I'm driving I don't have to buy B a plane ticket (my job covers the hotel and gas), so B is coming with me and after the conference on Friday afternoon and then all day Saturday we're going to go to the beach. It'll be too cold to swim of course (although it's predicted to be in the mid 60s...love Southern February!) but the beach is known for lots of interesting sea shells and shark teeth type things, so should be fun.

My father in law

Yesterday morning B's dad Jim lost his nearly 6 year battle with lung cancer and passed away.  

Jim really stepped into a "dad" role for me when my own parents douched out and disappeared. I talked to him on the phone for hours when I was buying our house. We planned a family vacation to Italy/greece together by sending each other about a million emails (me and him did most of the actual planning) and he gave me lots of career advice when I was on the job market. 

I haven't written much if anything about Jim here, because I knew Jim read my blog.  Unlike my real parents, he wanted to know everything I was going through- he signed up on facebook to keep up with his family, and would read my blog regularly. Every once in a while when I would be feeling particularly bad about how my parents were acting, and would write a blog post about it, an email from Jim would show up in my inbox- "Hey, I read your post and I wanted to remind you that me and B's mom are here for you guys if you need anything."  He would also leave nice comments on my facebook posts.

Here's a story that is iconic of Jim: In 2009 we took a trip to Europe. On our stop in ancient Olympia Jim wanted to come and see the ruins, but he was on an oxygen machine and we had to leave him to rest at the entrace while we did the tour because he was too tired to walk around after the walk to the entrance. When we came back he had a new BFF- a friend he had made who also couldn't handle the walk. Jim already knew his whole life story.  That was typical Jim.

Jim stopped cancer treatment last November because it was no longer working. For christmas we got him a framed picture of our first ultrasound (his first grandchild), and had been planning to send him updates. We never got a chance to mail out the second ultrasound pictures, but we were able to text them to his phone right before they sedated him and put him on a ventilator on Saturday...so that was one of the last things he saw.

The whole time I knew him he was dying; he was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer about 3 months before I ever met him.  But instead of sitting around moping about the things he couldn't do, or the fatal illness he had been diagnosed with, he went out and traveled the world (literally he's been on at least 15 cruises at least in the last 5 years) and was always chatting up strangers and making friends with everyone. He was my role model of what a happy person and loving parent is like. I am so disappointed and sad that my children will not get to know him.

On the other hand, I'm so happy I got to spend as much time with him as I did, and that I got a chance to know him and love him.  He got to come to our wedding (He won't be at B's sisters wedding in October), we had that amazing trip to Europe together that I will never forget, several thanksgiving and christmases, and I'm so happy he at least got a chance to find out that I was pregnant and he would be having his first grandchild before he passed.

In lieu of prayers, B asks that you donate to cancer research, and register as an organ donor.

Mother issues continued

Since getting pregnant I feel like my issues with my mother have gotten worse. Not in terms of our actual relationship with each other, but in terms of how much I think about my mom on a daily basis and feel hurt by it.

Since I told my parents I was pregnant about a month and a half ago, I have heard from my father several times. He's sent me many emails and has even called a couple of times since then (which is more frequent than he usually calls).  I sent him and my mother emails with pictures of the two ultrasounds I've gotten and he wrote back right away saying things like "Wow that is so amazing, you can see the face, it looks like you and B!!"  And wonderfully, he hasn't brought up religion in any of those communications.

I haven't heard a word from my mother, not even a response to the two emails I sent her with pictures of the ultrasounds, even after she said she would write back to my email (when I talked to her to tell her I was pregnant). And while I shouldn't have been surprised by this, since even though we have supposedly "reconciled" my mother still never initiates any contact with me and hasn't...well basically ever, I am still hurt by this.

Recently, elsewhere, someone posted a link about narcissistic mothers.  It has a list of 33 questions about your mother and "yes" answers indicate narcissistic traits. I answered yes to 25 of the questions.  And since then I've been reading a lot about narcissistic mothers, and so many things perfectly describe my mom. The way she was so focused on outward appearances constantly, the way she seemed to have one personality when she was home and an entirely different personality when in public, even the concept of the "golden child" vs. the "Scapegoat" perfectly describes me and my brother (I have an OTD brother who lived at home openly OTD, driving to work on shabbas, etc, until age 28. I was told to find another place to live after college because I was OTD even though I would never break shabbas or any rules in front of my parents.  He got a car from my parents and monetary help from my parents to this day, didn't work until he was done with college, I was told when I 16 that if I want to have any new clothes or do anything fun I should go get a job and have worked since then, and I've never owned a car except the one that came with my husband. As a child I had a very heavy chore load while he did basically nothing because "I'm older so I have more responsibilities" even though he's less than a year and a half younger than me).

According to what I've been reading there are two types of narcisstic mothers- the engulfing type (who doesn't let you have your own life) and the ignoring type (who only pays attention to you insofar as how you reflect on them in public).  I think my mom is the latter. 

Here's a description: Ignoring Parents: are Narcissistic Parents who don't actually care much about their children. Unlike Engulfing Parents, an Ignoring Parent sees the boundary between themselves and their child, and has no interest in their child.

This can be extremely confusing and bewildering as the child grows to feel unloved, uncared for, hindering future relationships for this child. Often, an Ignoring Parent doesn't even bother helping a child with physical cleanliness, teaching hygiene, or helping with school work.

I have tons of memories from my childhood of time with my dad- playing games together, him telling me and my brother stories before we went to bed, going on adventures every weekend (without my mom).  I don't have memories like this with my mother. Mostly because these types of things never happened with my mother- even though my dad worked like 70+ hours a week and my mom was a stay at home mom.  My strongest memory of my mother is the iconic position she had for most of my childhood - sitting on the couch with her nose buried in a book, not paying attention to the kids.  I felt like I struggled in childhood with hygiene issues because my parents never taught me certain things, and that I experimented a lot with how to take care of myself until I found things that worked for me, because I never had any guidance.

Once when I was around 3 years old and my brother was 2 years old, we were upstairs watching sesame street on tv by ourselves. And my brother climbed up on the window seat and pushed the screen out of the open window and fell out of the window. This is one of my earliest memories. My brother was perfectly fine (he landed on a bush) and my mom later loved to tell the story about how I came downstairs to where my mother was sitting on the couch reading, and said to my mom "D fell out the window" in a matter of fact voice.

But looking back...why were a 2 year old and a 3 year old sitting in front of a tv with no supervision on an entirely different floor of the house from my mother, while she was downstairs reading? Is that normal? I mean I don't have kids yet, but that seems a little young...why couldn't she be reading in the same room as the kids?  Why do I have so many memories of hanging with my brother at a very very young age and entertaining each other, alone, without my mom around?

Someone recently posted on facebook asking about childhood memories of being sick. Well my childhood memory of being sick is that every time i was home sick, I would sit in my parent's bed and watch all 3 star wars movies, or all 3 Indiana Jones movies. What I don't have any childhood memories of re: being sick is my mom. I mean I'm sure she was in the house since she was a stay at home mom, but it seemed her solution to me being home sick was to park me in front of a tv and go on doing her thing (usually curling up on the couch with a book). I remember having to get out of bed to get my own drinks/food/etc when I was sick.

Anyway these are all small things by themselves, but when taken together I just see a pattern of feeling like my mom was preoccupied with other things and that i was in charge of taking care of myself.

Thinking back, I almost think all the issues I had in high school re: fighting with my parents constantly might be related to this. Before high school I felt I was constantly ignored, while my brother, the "Golden child" got all the attention.  I got good grades and he didn't, and he got into trouble a lot at school while I never did (before high school).  Then in high school I stopped caring about my grades/stopped getting good grades, and started getting intro trouble in HS constantly.  Now I'm sure a lot of that was normal teenage rebellion/finding myself stuff, but looking back I think a part of me just wanted my mom to pay attention to me the way she paid attention to my brother, and I had this idea in my head that breaking the rules would get me more attention.

Realizing how much this stuff still affects me now makes me scared to become a parent...there is so much power to screw up your kid's head. Like take B- whenever B gets really depressed about something/feels bad about himself he said "I'm useless, I'm just completely useless."  Recently while hanging out with B's dad, his dad was telling a story about some fight they had when B was a teenager and said something like "B was being useless and I got really mad, etc"  And look- that's the exact same word B uses to describe himself when he feels bad about himself. 

My mom had lots of favorite expression as a kid that haunt me.  One is "I may have to love you but I don't have to like you."  She said that countless times to me as a teen and young 20 something, pretty much up until the time we stopped talking for several years. This was the only time she ever told me she loved me too- it was always followed by "but I don't have to like you." WTF is that? What that says to me is "I don't like you or love you (cause who loves people they don't like?) and I like pointing that out"  And you know what? I'm 75% convinced that the reason it was SO EASY for my mom to disown me and not talk to me for years on end whene I got married to B, was because she never liked OR loved me to begin with, and this was just a convenient excuse to cut me out of her life.

So where does this leave me now? I don't think my mom is going to magically change to be a warm loving person who gives a crap about me. And I definitely do not want to emulate her behavior subconsciously with my own child. And what I really don't want is to go on feeling bad about my mother. I already feel she has too much power over me.  I haven't even talked to her in over a month, and yet I woke up at 5am feeling bad about her today, and I think about her way too much in general. I want to move on from these issues because I feel they are holding me back, and I feel it's very important to have my mental shit together as much as possible re: my mother, before becoming a mother myself.

After checking around the internet I got a book from the library with the sappy title of "Will I ever be good enough? Healing the daughters of Narcissistic mothers." I read the book last weekend and there were lots of points in there that made me tear up a bit because they so accurately describe how I feel, and explain all these weird things I do and all my weird self esteem issues (like never becoming friends with people at the same "Rank" at work, always becoming friends with people at a lower "Rank" because I never feel like I'm good enough to be friends with people at the same level as me...).

The book basically says that the way to heal from mothers like this is to a) accept the fact that they aren't going to change, accept their limitations, and try to come to an understanding of why they are the way they are b) let yourself feel bad if you feel bad about things, let yourself grieve the mother you never had and the childhood you never had because if you repress your feelings about it and don't feel bad about it you'll never get over it c)start working to get over feelings of not being good enough that are based on your childhood

So I'm working on step one with a little bit of step 2. This weekend I called my grandmother (mom's mom) to tell her I was pregnant, and that really reminded me that my mom has her own narcissistic mother who probably taught her to act the way she does. That's scary because I see the inter-generational transmission of bad mothering that I don't want to continue, but it also helps me understand my mom a bit more. And the book also helped me understand my grandmother too- when I told her I was pregnant she was like "Ok" no congrats, no "bsh'aa tova" no nothing, and then instantly changed the subject to ask whether I had gotten a new job, since the last time I had talked to her like 6 months ago, I had mentioned that I was going to apply for a couple of jobs this year to see if I could move to a better university.  I told her the truth, that I didn't get a different job this year (I only applied to 4 and they were all top 20 universities, so a reach) but that I'm happy with my job now so I'm in a good place- if I get something better I can move, but either way I'll be happy. And she kept asking more about jobs and moving to a better university (not that the university I work at is "bad" by any means, but it sure ain't Harvard) even when I tried to change the subject back to the fact that I was pregnant.

Why change the subject to that? Well after thinking about it I can only conclude that my grandmother loves to brag about my academic achievements to her friends (which she does, the last time I saw her at my cousins' wedding she was going around introducing me to people as her granddaughter who was about to be a professor) but she can't brag about me having a kid because my husband isn't jewish and/or she has so many great grandchildren from my charedi cousins (8) that she doesn't care about more at this point. She only cares about the stuff she can use to make herself look better to her friends. And where does *she* get this from? Well her own mother died when she was 14, and she then had to basically raise her little brothers because she was the only girl and her father assigned all housework and childcare to her after her mom died. I can see how that would mess you up. 

Meanwhile, I see no indication that my grandmother cares about me as a person, anymore than I see my mother cares about me as a person.  Even before we stopped talking for several years, my mother never really wanted to hear about anything about my life and gave the distinct impression that she disapproved of anything I wanted to talk about- the only thing she wanted to hear about was my academic achievements and whether or not I was losing weight/going to the gym. She has always focused a LOT on my weight, ever since I went through puberty and stopped being a skinny bean pole kid. Appearances and achievements, but what about getting to know me as a person? I don't think she knows me at all.

I'm not really sure how to conclude this blog post other than to say these are things that have been on my mind, and I would like to move on from them, but for now I am in this "Processing my thoughts and emotions regarding this stuff" phase which it seems I have to go through in order to move on. Or at least I'm hoping that moving on will be the end result, that I will accept my mother's limitations and stop feeling so damn disappointed all the time because she's not being the mom she never was and is probably incapable of being.

Meanwhile, resolved to never use expressions like "I may have to love you but I don't have to like you" to my kids. Resolved to tell them I love them on a regular basis without it being followed by a snarky followup. Resolved to get to know them and their unique personality and not bury my nose in my laptop all night long the way my mom buried her nose in a book. Resolved to act more like my dad and less like my mom.

Also, I'm thinking I might want to learn more about quilting and make my baby a quilt from me, since my mom doesn't seem to be offering to make me one even though she's made dozens over the years for various other people...I guess those are only important when she wants to impress other people, not when her own daughter is having a baby. But why sit around being disappointed about her, why not just make the damn quilt myself? I found a link to an online tutorial for a simple-ish pattern here and it doesn't look too hard, although the person didn't really include info on how to do the back of the quilt...but I'm sure I can find info on that too. I don't know, maybe it's a ridiculous idea, and i may never actually do it, but something I'm contemplating...

Meanwhile today I am officially 14 weeks pregnant, which means as of today I am officially out of the first trimester and into the second! We recently did another ultrasound and got even cooler pictures in 3d. It was so awesome, we saw the baby jumping around and flipping over. At one point the baby flipped over so it's back was turned to us and it looked just like B does when he turns over in his sleep.  Much more exciting than the first ultrasound when it just looked like a peanut with a heartbeat. Baby was also tested for downs/trisomy stuff and it was all negative, yay! :)  I sometimes think I can feel the baby move now, but I'm not entirely sure. I'm not showing a crazy bump or anything, but I'm definitely getting wider, and I can't button my regular jeans anymore.  Unfortunately my daily throwing up has not gotten better but I'm hoping it will soon...