White Moon

Thank you, thank you, for your sympathetic words, and especially the literary reference connecting ovulation pain with the fabulous Ethel Merman. My ovaries are at peace now (relatively speaking), my stomach is settled, and now all I have to get rid of is this awful hacking cough. If anyone's looking for someone to play that consumptive maiden aunt in the back bedroom, I'm your gal. Wan and drawn are my middle names right now.

Today, besides attempting to free my lungs from their sickly chains, I'm going to help my friend from Mongolia work on a research paper for her English class. In return, she really wants to feed me, which means meat dumplings. Now, I'm a vegetarian and have been since high school, but for Mongols I have to make an exception. There's basically nothing else to eat there except milk, meat and flour products, and though Mongols have expanded their culinary repertoire over the years, they remain "meat-and-potatoes" folks. That's what their land and traditional lifestyle provides: fat animals.

This month following the lunar new year is called the "White Moon" or white month. Back in the day, people would travel from camp to camp, visiting, sharing news, eating, drinking, singing, and so on. Today, it's a time when, as far as I understand, unannounced visits are commonplace, and there are always batches of meat dumplings waiting to be popped into the dumpling-dedicated steamer.

What I enjoy about getting together with my Mongol friends, among other things, is the way children are treated. Of course, not everyone from Mongolia is the same, but the folks in our town are so laid back that it stands in sharp contrast to the (dare I say it) neurotic and rigid attitude I see among some Anglo-American parents I know. The kids' needs are seen to, and the adults lovingly make sure they have plenty of food and company, but then the adults talk about adult things and the kids do their kid things. Sometimes, the spheres overlap playfully, but basically the kids are left to their own devices, though they are never far from the adults. There is this faith, it seems, that the kids can act with a certain degree of independence without harming themselves. And for the most part, the pact works, and everyone has fun. This reminds me of my own very independent experience as a very loved child.

Perhaps I'm overthinking this, based on some parties I've been to where the kids are the obsessive focus of the interaction. A little of that is fine, of course, especially when it's, say, the child's birthday. But I've found that it gets impossible to have an adult conversation about anything, or at least not for more than five seconds. Maybe this is the bitter infertile talking, but I don't see why that's any fun for anyone involved: the kids don't get to do kid stuff, and the adults can't even get a word in edgewise.

In general, I am so resistant to all the structure children are subjected to nowadays. I mean, school for me was bad enough. Then you come home and it's all play dates this and activities that. It's like some kind of posh prison or something. And there's so much fear lurking everywhere, about everything.

Yet how will someone like me, who's struggled to have a child, let go enough to let them run a little wild? How will I let my hard-won child be? How will I combat the fear and the fear mongering?

I have no idea. Pass the dumplings.