Today’s Mother Words installment is one of longing and perspective from Cynthia Lehew-Nehrbass.

Conversations With My Daughter

Often as I listen to my friends express the woes of communicating with their teenage daughters, I wonder what the experience would be like. Conversations about messy rooms, requests for shopping sprees, exorbitant phone bills, and broken curfews — they all intrigue me. Their motherly struggles with finding the right tactic to curb the pubescent whiners and “back talkers” that inhabit their homes — I am almost jealous. Probing for details on how these conversations might go — I want to know everything. Why? As a mother, I would give almost anything to have even just one conversation — no matter how rocky — with my own teenage daughter.

Sarah Grace, my thirteen year old, has Down syndrome and hearing loss. She speaks in minimal, one to three word sentences — usually with prompting; and struggles through shyness to verbalize nearly anything. Daily, I see the frustration in her brown eyes as she attempts to express herself. From a young age, I always knew that Sarah would need help in the area of speech; but I thought that with years of therapy, by the time she was a teen, she would finally find her voice. (more…)

Today we continue to share essays from the Loft’s Mother Words class. Gretchen Sage-Martinson shares how she’s learned to see the world through her son’s optimistic point of view.

“And that one is up”

Last year I was out driving somewhere the day after a big storm had swept through the area. I had my two year old son in the back seat. He was babbling away to himself as usual. We pulled off the highway and drove through a section of St. Paul that had many trees down. For some reason this really hurt me. Seeing those destroyed trees, roots pulled completely free from the ground, made it hard for me to breathe. “Oh Theo, look at all the trees that are down!” I whined to my small child. In the rear view mirror I saw him lift his tiny chin so that he could see out the window. “Oh Mommy, but look, that one is up, and that one is up.” Honestly, for the next 5 minutes Theo continued to point out every tree he saw standing tall. Then he went back to mumbling, but he managed to lift my spirits.

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Below is an essay from Jessica L., a student of Kate Hopper’s Mother Words class at the Loft Literary Center 

Motherhood and the Potential Hazard of Carpet Fibers 

 I sleep with a baby monitor in my bed. The volume is cranked to high; the steady stream of static blasting in my ear keeps me alert and ready to bolt at the slightest stirring of my four-month-old son. Never mind that his room is right next-door. Never mind that I keep the door open and could probably hear his cry perfectly well without the monitor jammed in my face. But I like to be on top of things. If his binkie drops out of his mouth, I like to know about it. If he grunts or yawns or passes a bit of gas, I like to be involved. I enjoy being woken up every fifteen minutes to eavesdrop on his nightly pontifications.

Before I had my son I heard that new moms sometimes suffer from a special kind of baby anxiety; checking their babies’ vital signs while they slept, blow-drying their butts after each diaper change, pushing hand sanitizer on anyone within a three-mile radius —things of that sort. Oh how I laughed at the silly stories in those mommy magazines: “Garlic and Gassiness,” “Can Breastfeeding Cause Cavities?” and “Why Your Baby’s Stuffed Animals Harbor Allergy-Inducing Critters.” What a bunch of hypochondriacs, I thought to myself. I refused to buy hypoallergenic teddy bears stuffed with clumps of emu fur.

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Cribsheet is glad to present another series of essays from Kate Hopper’s “Mother Words” class at the Loft. Check back with us each day this week to read perspectives and insights from brand new to well seasoned mothers. We start out this week with Mother Words instructor, Kate Hopper sharing what she has learned from her classes.

I began teaching “Mother Words” at the Loft Literary Center almost two years because it was a good fit. I was working on a book about the premature birth of my daughter, and I wanted to create a space for other women to write about motherhood. I was also interested in the politics of that kind of writing—how we, as a society, view motherhood literature.

I’m still interested in the politics of writing motherhood, still become incensed when a critic lumps all motherhood literature together into the derogatory categories of “momoir” or “chick lit,” but I’ve realized that teaching “Mother Words” has affected me on a personal level as well an intellectual one. It has changed how I parent and how I think about parenting.

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Cribsheeters, if you could see us now…..We’re on Pangkor Island, off the west coast of Malaysia, a little piece of paradise -that is, if paradise included package tourists and a four-member Filipino band named “Fourplay.”

We’ve breakfasted on papayas and watermelon with a view of the calm Straits of Melaka. The sand is talcum-powder soft and black and white hornbills swoop down to eat cut pieces of coconut right by the pool. My mother is gazing happily at her granddaughters all day. My father is complaining goodnaturedly about the price of the two sets of plastic buckets and shovels he bought at the hotel gift shop. And my brother has brought a bit of light beach reading - Greenspan’s “Age of Turbulence.” In other words, nothing’s changed in this family….

It’s been a hectic two weeks in the city… yes, I know how you feel for us, you in the tundra. But with some friends and family going through some trying times, it’s been a particularly intense visit. It’s been nice to get away to the beach for a weekend.

Must run. Fourplay - one guy with a synthesizer and three gals in black miniskirts and knee high boots - has started up and my innocent Minnesotan children are on the dancefloor. Zoe, 4, has met a tall, dark and handsome Brit, Jack, 9, and they’re dancing to “Together in Electric Dreams”…..More soon.