The not-so-secret confessions of a Phd mum

An original 100 part miniseries

When I started my Phd, I felt like I was on top of the world. I was literally this dancing pink girl. I had gotten into a good program, with people much more experienced than me, and I thought I was the shizzle.

But see that little speck? That smidgen is me now, cut loose in planets catapulted out of their orbits by a swirl of equations and tables that is statistics. I loathe it, always have. Is there a doctoral degree on earth that doesn’t involve statistics? Show it to me please, I will be happy to shift. In all seriousness though, in a short two months (that have felt like years), I have gone from thinking I know my trade, to I Know Nothing, and the realization that the world is big, and we are microscopic.

That’s my life there, drawn in a framework during a class on (you guessed it), frameworks! The Phd is trying to edge the baby out, but the baby doesn’t get pushed around easily, so he is holding on. The husband, not as tenacious as the baby, has gone off quietly in that tiny bubble of green in the corner, occupying himself with the very many things he likes to do.  Gym, groceries, paying bills, hobbies, are all taking a backseat. Friends and family, which lets face it, we all need, hopefully will be around by the time I am done. And leisure? Hah!

 

I have loved it so far, honestly. The nerd in me—I was one of those kids who had a badge that said ‘a reader is a leader’ on my schoolbag—has embraced academia like you would a friend returned from war. Being at the library makes me intensely happy, there is something about the smell of books, the hum of fans, the quiet.

But I struggle with the guilt of leaving my 18 month old and going off everyday. It was different while I was working. But now, this degree is a privilege I feel, and something I am indulging in. And many times a day, when I think of that smiling little face, my stomach does a flip, and I question my decision. Is it fair to go off on my own pursuits when they grow up so quickly, and this time is so fleeting? I was perilously close to tears the other day when a colleague asked me admiringly “How do you do all this with a baby?” I wanted to sob out, “He is a good baby, and makes sacrifices for me, his terrible, terrible, mother.”

Thankfully, I didn’t.

I am also on the road to burnout. I walk in the jittery steps of a caffeine addict, my laptop clutched to me pretty much the same way I hold the baby, telling myself to slow down, take in the green that is the campus, and eat a lunch that is not 10 seconds long, while running to the train at 5 pm. I rationalize that even presidents have time to eat lunch, and I am no president. The husband (lets call him B and the baby A for future reference), says that one day, he is sure to come home and see me typing away on my laptop, only to discover that, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, I was typing “All work and no play makes GG a dull person” over and over again, all along.

 

Not quite there yet, but I did spend time trying to come up with different permutations for the letter Phd, so not far either.

And there we are, trying the last one

 

 

Disclaimer: This is original ‘artwork’ by the author. Any attempt to reuse this without credit will be taken very happily! 

 

 

A lovesong

 

1.

Will you ask me one day my boy,

Why are the pages of this book empty?

And will I have to tell you my struggles

Of wearing motherhood

Like an ill fitted cloak,

Scared, panicked, terrified,

I wouldn’t be able to.

 

Or will you breeze through life,

With your impatient stride

Your loud, arresting laugh,

Without stopping to ask, or wondering?

I hope so, my love.

 

2.

How can I ever begin telling you of all the strength you give me?

To be better, to live longer, to protect you?

I wear my heart on my body,

As all mothers do.

Your pain is my pain,

Your lips curled in disappointment makes my throat sour.

And every day you push me

To be the best I can be.

This love, without conditions and conjectures

Is the best I can have.

I will tell you this.

Motherhood did not shackle me.

It set me free.

I soared.

 

3.

I will tell you of the country we come from

The beautiful, vile place

Home

Where we are we and they are they

And the poor don’t have feelings

Family

Tragedy

Nothing touches them

Until it touches us

 

4.

In my selfish way,

I need to protect you

I do not want to say

The story of the boy

Washed up on the shore, red on blue

Fleeing a war;

Or the other boy

Struck dumb,

Coated in dust, a statue caked in mud

His home in rubble on the ground;

Or those others

The ones that gave their lives

For a country to be born

Only to see their children

See it struggling for air.

 

5.

Yet. I must tell you, for

I want you to be the person who defies norms, rejects fear, stands up, for himself, for others, bold, defiant, kind

My demon slayer, my lover of words.

I would take a bullet for you

I hope you would take it for your beliefs.

 

6.

A twinkly-eyed, dimpled, brash

Boy, who loves to climb and

How he makes me smile and sparkle and

In the morning whispers his love song with

Kisses, soft, and giggles, deep; you are the good in the world.

 

My reason to believe.

 

7.

As I breathe in your curly hair;

Your pink lips smiling at your dream angels;

Your soft hand on my cheek;

I will my heart to slow down;

To breathe in this;

This moment.

We will feed the fish, mimic the birds

Wake up at midnight to look for the moon

Make out the shadows in the sun

And give it different names.

This.

Now.

The wonder.

 

 

 

Can women be in charge of anything, really?

 

Clockwise: Marie Curie, Nobel Prize winner, discoverer of radioactivity; Margaret Crane, inventor of the home pregnancy test; Amelia Earheart, aviator, first woman to fly across the Atlantic solo; Begum Rokeya, writer, women’s rights advocate, pioneer feminist of Bengal #deeplysatisfyingtomakefunofcertainpoliticians, #despitebeingawoman

This story caught my imagination from the moment I read it. At the dawn of the “sexual revolution” in 1967, a 26-year-old product designer called Margaret Crane, in charge of designing lotion and lipstick tubes at a pharmaceutical company, came across a row of shiny tubes displayed at her New York office. When she asked what they were, she was told that these were tubes to collect urine in and send to the doctor’s office, to test for pregnancies.

Later that night, Ms. Crane started working on an idea, and started to build her own prototype of a do-it-yourself pregnancy test. She had seen friends find out too late about unwanted pregnancy, and get desperate for abortions, at a time when abortions were still generally illegal, and 26 states barred women from obtaining contraceptives.

However, as she discovered, the road to finding out about your own pregnancy was not an easy one. To make a very long story short (but please, read this piece titled “Could women be trusted with their own pregnancy tests”, its absolutely brilliant), in spite of many oppositions and her company trying not to give her credit for the test they finally did patent, the first ever home-kit for testing pregnancies is now displayed proudly at the Smithsonian, with the crackerjack Ms. Crane claiming rights when she contacted a New York Times journalist, four years ago, asking why had she been omitted in a story they wrote about the origins of home pregnancy tests?

It can’t? Oh.

I love stories about women inventors, but this was much more than that. In 1967, the misogynistic reactions from a group led by (surprise, surprise!) men ranged from panicked reactions at the thought of “hysterical women jumping of the bridge when they found out they were pregnant” to a doctor writing “patients (i.e. women) cannot follow the simplest instructions”, in a national newspaper! This was 40 years ago, when from what we can glean from certain television shows, it was all right to slap your secretary’s butt if she did good work, or if you just felt like it; but I wonder if fundamental perceptions have changed since then, in undermining a woman’s agency in taking control of her own body, and her ability to take her own decisions when it comes to it.

 

When I feel cynical about the world though, I think of certain stories. And one I keep on repeating is the sea change that took place in Bangladesh, starting in the mid 70s. A team of female health workers, went door to door, in an 88% Muslim predominant area called Matlab, distributing contraceptives, counselling women on their use and side effects, and accompanying them to health facilities, and in the history of the world, this is not an easy thing to do. This is a story of women acting as agents of change for other women in creating collective capabilities, and the overall effect of this very successful campaign is that the fertility rate in Bangladesh came down from a whopping 6.7 to 2.2. The only other person who I match in zeal in talking about Bangladesh’s family planning success is Hans Rosling, and you can see how here. Incidentally, this was also 40 years ago.

I will never forget that frisson of delight and disbelief I felt when I saw that faint line appear on the pregnancy test, which now costs about 3 USD. For that, and not having to wait two months for results to come back from the doctor’s office, or having to pee on bags of wheat and barley, and so much more, thank you Ms. Crane!

 

 

5 things I love about being a farang

One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster; at least you can eat them at China town

And I just found out I don’t even qualify as one. According to definition, a farang is a colloquial Thai word for a white man of European descent. That’s pretty definitive, if you ask me. And that is Reason Nueng: the sheer ignorance that comes with being a foreigner. You are just a dumb farang (or not, as I have just discovered). It’s my favourite line to use here in Bangkok, when I act like one. I can talk absurd in thai.I once asked for an eyeliner sharpener, and then gestured, the shopkeeper looked horrified, and I will leave the rest to imagination or this. I can wear a beach dress in the city (I actually really judge foreigners who do that, or walk barefoot down Sukhumvit), and no one bats an eyelid. You can stroll through the narrow alleys of Chinatown at midnight, blissfully safe in not even knowing if it is.

Reason Song: Every day is a holiday. Really. When I first arrived in Bangkok, I was overwhelmed, trying to get by and set up in a city where no one understood what I was saying. But now life has a rhythm, and is punctuated by visits from friends at home, who are here on holiday, so we pretend we are too. We eat out, have a Hokkaido ice-cream in the middle of the day, and go on merry go rounds at the riverside.

 

Of course, we work and there’s the baby, and errands, and bills, but those are small details. As people living away from home, you feel a certain lack of responsibility and an excess of light heartedness, which is difficult to simulate at home. You are a tourist every single day.

The anonymity. I cherish it. I would never want to give it up, and it’s a huge Reason Sam. No one knows you or cares, so you don’t care when you step out of the house. I can walk out in my frumpiest clothes and it’s all right. I can cycle down the road in rain, and it doesn’t matter. Oh, I’ve had one or two hairy situations where people from Dhaka have spotted me, in tiny shorts at the grocery, and invariably it has turned out to be the very conservative accountant from my workplace back home. There are two ways to deal with that: you can be brave, smile, while avoiding eye contact, which can get pretty awkward; or you can walk on, pretending it didn’t happen, and mutter about a twin living in Bangkok the next time you meet. I opt for the latter.

Reason Si: and this one I am dead serious about. I call this chapter Zen and the Art of Letting Go. When I first arrived, I would be frustrated often. I once cried at a grocery store not being able to find a clothes rack, and no one being able to understand what I was looking for. And then, slowly, I caught what Thais have, the smile bug. If I get annoyed or angry or embarrassed, I laugh uproariously. It is such a simple way of dissipating any tension and controlling aggression. It makes everything better, except the crow’s feet around your eyes. Of course, lets be real, you can’t always do it, such as that time when the psychotic cab driver screamed  f***** farang, apropos of nothing, and kept on glaring back while driving, as I cowered. Clearly, he isn’t aware of the definition either.

7-11, they should really be called 7-24, but I think they haven’t read this blog yet

The fifth reason, or Ha, said in high pitch like a question mark, I haven’t figured out yet. The 7-11s would be it, I think. My heart rejoices at these little convenience stores that are open 24 hours, 365 days a year. You can pay your bills there, return online purchases, and buy all kinds of junk. Plus, they give you stamps, which I haven’t figured out the use of, but heard from sources that if you collect enough, and give it a five-month waiting period, you can get a plastic chest of drawers with Rilakkuma on it. That’s kind of special, right?

I will write a whole blog on this later. But for now, sabai sabai from this brown farang, and a deep, meaningful meme.

Deep meme. Foreign, but not a farang.

You know nothing, Gina F

Last week was  World Breastfeeding Week, and yesterday was  Mother’s Day in Thailand. Two things that I thought would come naturally to me when I gave birth seventeen months ago, in spite of people telling me repeatedly what a challenge it can be to be a first time mother. Unless it happens though, it is difficult to imagine; the sleep deprivation, recovery from surgery, and a bawling infant depending directly on your body for sustenance, combined with the fears that you don’t know what you are doing, that nothing you do is good enough, becomes….

….not the picture I had envisioned. You see, when I was in the glowing stages of a pretty easy pregnancy, I had pictured my future as a magazine mama. I was going to sit in my rocking chair, in white, while my baby cooed on the white rug in front of me. Note that I don’t own a single piece of white furniture. Obviously, reality resembled this more.

I found breastfeeding very challenging, although I was hell bent on it. I couldn’t hold the baby properly, the little bugger would not latch for three whole weeks, I pumped so that I would not have to give in to one drop of formula, which I was convinced would poison my baby, to the point that I was about to drop from the sheer fatigue, and more often than not, was crying louder than the baby. I convinced myself that the baby had silent reflux, was lactose intolerance, and I was not producing enough, because he fed every 45 minutes, and the books had told me a well fed baby should go three hours. Whenever I was not feeding, I was reading up on feeding, and as my husband likes to joke, fenugreek supplies in Bangkok had run out, because I was stuffing myself with tea, powder and tablets.

There are so many misconceptions surrounding breastfeeding, and some amount of reading help dispel some of the myths, but the rest don’t. My favourite among these is the Gina Ford book, How to Train Your Baby to be a Robot. No, that’s not the real name of the book, but it could be. The routine goes something like this, “Your one month old will wake up at 7:14:56 am, take 3.4 ounce of milk from one breast. Then he will change himself, while you pump the other breast, to get exactly 3.8 ounces. At exactly 9 he will fall into deep slumber, and then you, magazine mama, can paint your toes, or the many things mama has the luxury of doing, before the next feed.” Ok, so this is not what she really says, but you get the drift. It is so regimental, and so precise, that no human baby can possibly achieve this. Or a human mother.

As new mothers, there is so much pressure that society puts on you, overshadowed only by the expectations that you put on yourself, that it is a constant struggle. Post partum depression is a serious issue, and is not helped at all by people saying there is only one way to do things, when new mothers already feel so inadequate.

Seventeen months on, I am still not the magazine mama, no coiffed hair or impeccable whites. The baby doesn’t coo. But he is one boisterous, gleeful little monkey. And I am the kind of mother that I always wanted to be: casual. Does my baby eat sugar? Yes, at times (I can hear the collective gasp), but he also eats his vegetables like a champ. Does he have a routine? Roughly, but we have a lot of flex for fun times. Did I ever end up feeding him formula? I did, although I breastfed for as long as he wanted to. Are we the perfect mother-son duo? Not by a long shot.

But we love it.

I can’t stop the feeling, so just dance, dance, dance!

I have always been a dancer, in my head.

In real life, not so much. Let’s just say I am one of those people who would not be naturally called graceful. A couple of years ago, when I went to my first Zumba class, I was nervous.

A very heavy Thai man stood in front of me, and I slunk in behind him, sure that he would hide me, and make me feel better about being a crappy dancer. How the smug with preconceived notions are fallen. He moved like the wind, swung his hips with the grace a ballerina would envy, and I muttered to myself, and tried to keep up. But I was blown away. Loud, cheesy pop hits played while people just…. moved, spun, jumped!

It was exhilarating.

This is why I love Zumba. Its non judgmental. It was even started by accident, by a Latin aerobics trainer, who forgot to bring his music to his aerobics class. He grabbed a tape from his car, improvised, and that was the start of that party. You can follow moves perfectly, or not at all, and the instructors won’t point it out. You can really bust out the moves on good days, and take it easy on others, but you will burn calories and the endorphins will last you the whole day. I think any exercise is bearable if you have music, even yoga, where I fidget continuously and every minute feels like an hour.

I have always been uncomfortable with my body.

It’s not about weight, even at my skinniest I have hunched. It has so much to do with where you are brought up, how you are taught to cover yourself, how you like to be invisible. For the first time in my life, I feel liberated with my body in public. I don’t care who is watching, when I see 50-year-old Thai women dance like teenage girls, I am inspired to not care as well, and do it with ease. I have learnt to like my body better, imperfect weight and all, because of the strength it displays, the flexibility I still have. I walk straighter, not exactly with a dancer’s gait yet, lets be honest, but more confident.

David Kahn, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School writes, “Dancing adds another aspect to exercise and its effects on our bodies and brains, because it’s a joyous activity.” That is exactly it.

It isn’t only women whose desire to express themselves is stifled.

When men like to dance, they become objects of ridicule. I came across a public forum recently, where someone asked, ‘Where is a ballet class available, because my male friend is too embarrassed to ask.’

It really made me think of how oppressive the idea of binary gender stereotypes can be, in putting others in a box, and then I came across someone’s comment in the same thread, of this comic. My 17-month-old son loves to dance, he bobs his head to music, tries to copy my moves. I love it. I want him to experience personal liberation as a way of life.

For years, dance has been used as an expression of protest, as an intervention tool in autism therapy, and as a way of keeping you younger and your memory intact!

Dhaka, the city where I am from, has been reeling from the shock of a terrorist attack like we have never seen before. Twenty hostages were killed by Islamist militants in a café that we visited every time we went back. It was a peaceful place by a lake, built with love. We have been dealing as people living away from home deal, glued to news, hungry for any information that would make sense of any of this. One of the most powerful pieces of writing I came across was by the trailblazing dancer Lubna Marium. She writes about a theater performance she attended, a month after the attacks. The audience was tense, the mood somber, the drama a powerful ‘diatribe against violence and intolerance, determinedly striking back against threats to our very existence.’ Amidst the insecurity and fear, the theatre was packed. Rejecting fear, the artist danced, and delivered her searing monologue.

This is the city I left behind; people are passionate, people dance. To me, dancing has become yet another freedom, a way to strike back.  To quote Rumi, one of my favourite poets, “Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.”