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T A B L E++T A L K Do you slave away in the kitchen every night or take the kids out to eat whenever possible? Discuss feeding the family in the Mothers area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Wax on Second Thoughts Drama Queen Candidates
How to ruin your kids' summer vacation Someone to watch over me BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK FEATURE ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - Mamafesto
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BALLAD OF A BOHEMIAN CHILDHOOD | PAGE 1, 2
Whether Dad was at the hospital, working on his highly autobiographical (yet still unpublished) novel or romancing his mistresses, he remained a strange, endlessly imaginative body in the wobbly galaxy of our home. Of all Dad's grand projects (and there is always one afloat, from mastering physics to understanding the entirety of sumo culture), one from my boyhood sticks especially in memory. He converted our parents' bedroom ceiling to a scale model of the solar system. A large light bulb encased by one of those round, crinkly, Japanese shades hung as the sun. The planets, painted paper orbs, dangled from fishing line. I remember standing below tiny blue Pluto, shivering. The coldness was partially inspired by Pluto's loneliness, hovering in a bleak corner of the room away from Earth's action, above a crater of clothes. But mostly I shivered because it was winter and we heated our house with a wood-burning stove. When Dad wasn't tripping my mind -- "If I wanted, I could sell you. There's quite a market really for healthy, white babies" -- he was strengthening my body. Every couple of months a green, anonymous truck dumped a small mountain of cut wood in our backyard. It was up to my brother Asher and me to stack it quickly, covering the bristled wedges with a tarp before the rain and snow got to it. Each morning, groggy and twitching in the chill of winter, we were to stock the iron wood holder for the day, while the other kids in the neighborhood were inside, warming themselves with cups of Swiss Miss hot cocoa. Those same neighborhood kids attended the local public school, while my parents -- naturally -- sent my brother and me to a Waldorf School where we studied knitting, bee's wax and German. The kindly nodding teachers were trained exclusively in Waldorf-founder Rudolf Steiner's methods. The children were to learn to love learning. Languages and crafts took favor over history and math. We had a friend named Rama Moon. Another was Plato Rafael Hieronimus, who remains my oldest chum. My parents divorced when I was 11. They hadn't been getting along for some time; I always remember thinking they would be better friends if only they weren't married. This has been true. Dad moved to Northern California soon after the split, and lives there still. He works six days a week as a shrink and publishes poetry in a magazine he founded called Edge. He's still putting the Dad back in dada, treating life like one enormous piece of found art. The last time I stopped by he was in the middle of designing a "brain chip," which I understood to be like a computer chip, but for the brain. When he finished explaining the various lines and diagrams scattered about his work table, I could only ask weakly, "So, you want to go get a grilled cheese sandwich?" Mom moved into a communal household of several friends near Washington, D.C., finding something closer to peace than happiness. Mom speaks candidly about things like spirituality and destiny, and believes with certainty in God and reincarnation. I can't relate. My mind isn't open in those ways. A devout nonbeliever of most things, around my mom I feel like I should be nicer to people so I don't spend my next life as a blind ant. I feel more like a close friend to both of my parents than a son. They
continue to lead such unique, uncompromising lives that I find them
fascinating, curious, frustrating as hell. Like friends should be.
During a rough patch a while back, I e-mailed my dad for ... what?
Advice, I guess. He wrote back: "Are you still
desultory about certain observed behavioral patterns which may be
genotypic and/or learned?" I leaned back, away from the monitor, and
thought, no. No, I wouldn't mind being like Dad in many ways, and Mom
in the other ways. No, I have never really wished I had a different
upbringing or truly wanted to be anyone else. Now 27, I see that
more than anything else, I feel as if my parents gave me an honest
introduction to the world. It is a strange, wonderful, often cruelly
disappointing place, and if somebody tells you differently,
their parents misled them.
Maccabee Montandon is a writer living in Portland, Ore.
Baby
Hunger The cynical hipster daughter of a couple of bohemians finds
herself dragged inexorably down the dark tunnel of maternal longing and
domestication.
Why take a trip when
you can sip How one man's unconventional mom
got him hooked on java at age 4.
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