Rabenmütter vs. Casera

Let the record show that if it weren’t for Penfold pointing out that it’s been over a year since I wrote, I wouldn’t have bothered.

What took me so long?

I suppose it took me quite a few months to get over the physical tiredness and the moral heaviness: that murky, clinging residue of centuries of shame of having your first child alone.

The truth is out now. My son was born. In the past six months, I have been through a spectrum of emotions. When he was just born, I thought I better had get to work quickly. What will everyone think? How will I provide for him? What kind of person am I to not stick him -- like a nameless chicken in an industrial farm -- in a cot in day care like everyone else and tramp off to work?

“He’ll be fine!” Everyone said.

Yet, as he grows and as each milestone approaches and then fades, going back to work pales in comparison to the fascinating spectacle of a human discovering the world. 

Then there are the mirrors: how his growing reminds you of yours.

At the time of writing this I am in Lima, where I was born, and more specifically in my grandmother's house. Waiting for lunch to happen (another luxury of being here) I pore over pictures of my childhood. I marvel that I call my son the same thing that I used to call myself: Mousey. Precisely, at age two, in the manner of Madonna or Prince, I renamed myself. My mother was drying me after my bath and I very assertively took the towel from her, draped it over my shoulders as if it were my ermine cape, kept the shower cap on as my crown and announced that I was to be known hereafter as: "Princesa Mousey, Flor de la Lechuga." Most regal.

There are things that I taste that remind me of my childhood: olluco, a tuber that is shredded and then stewed with beef, which I loved, and grenadilla, the insides of which my father called "elephant snot" but which are strained of their numerous snotty seeds and made into the most delicious juice that tastes just what it was like to be 2, and perhaps even before that, but I can't remember. 

So, the other day pushing Mousey around the block I grew up on (till age 4 when we went to Ah-mehr-i-kah!) I dropped his organic cotton frog rattle. (His godfather, my brother, gave me the eco-conscious gift). Being rather un-conscious, I didn't notice and a lady called me: "Seño!" a couple of times before I turned around. I asked about this appellation: Are we not bothering to finish the word with a -ra or a rita as the case may be? My cousin's wife replied: "You're lucky. They used to call us Casera." Which literally means housewife, or very literally, housey. Or perhaps homey. I prefer housey. Sounds like a good place for Mousey. 

At any rate, I imagine around the time women began to wear jeans more than skirts, a scandal being made by Peruvian women who wanted respect for their burgeoning cottage industries or college degrees or whatever they were scheming about and refusing to be called Casera. Silly that. We've now come full circle and decided that was perhaps a bit too extreme. I believe this women's lib era should hereafter be known as "When we threw baby out with bathwater," because men's response has largely been, go ahead and work but you'll have a hell of a time getting your hallowed Housey-wife status back, at least without lashings of guilt about how you could possibly be so lazy as to only raise your children.

Isn't the education and the nurturing of a human the most important thing there is? At least, if we are all on the same page and we all cherish life. Never mind the sorry fringe of humanity that may does not value life. 

How could anyone possibly write a novel when her child is learning to crawl nearby? Never mind a novel. I've had to breastfeed countless times since I've started writing this blog. I started writing a play over a year ago. I just got around to the second act a few weeks ago. It's not impossible, it's just easier once the learning of basic human functions plateaus when they go off to school.

Women in Germany used to be called "Rabenmutter," (raven mothers or bad mothers) for working instead of raising their children. There's nothing wrong with that; most women have to. I suppose if I can stretch it out, I'd like to. Just a little while longer. Till he walks. Or, till he talks. Or, till he can tell me, "Goodbye!" or "Later, Alligator!" as he goes off to school. Every single successful "Rabenmutter" has told me the same thing since Mousey was born: they should have waited to go back to work. You don't have to tell me twice.