12 april 2005
That Census Guy
by Nanci Olesen
Every person invents for themselves how to be a parent. Every child provides the unique materials for that invention. It's a curious sort of give and take about where's my shoe and I need something to EAT and "you guys we've got to get going". Somewhere in the midst of that is a woman who used to not be a mom who has put a lot of things on hold in order to have and to hold these babies that grow like birch trees in the sun. Just when you've begun to make sense of a particular time in their precarious lives they change and move into another stage. Old as the hills, these stories of trying to keep up and trying to manage their souls and your own and the way they collide and collaborate and complete themselves, tumbling out onto the rug all the blocks, we just put them away for crying out loud. Okay, yes, let's get them out again.
My mother in law is trying to figure out why I would want to spend my time talking about these things. She just "did it" as they like to say, those of the Greatest Generation. And with all due respect, I have to insist that because I am just DOING IT, I need to hear about it. Way more than I need to hear about the Dow Jones Industrial Average. I need to know what it's like for the woman whose baby died in infancy to be pregnant again. I want to hear her whole story on the radio. I want to hear a professional basketball player mom tell about being on the court again just 2 months after her baby was born and how she felt completely different and yet how determined she was to keep playing and how she figured out how to do it. And I want to hear the report from Northeast Minneapolis where another mom has just succeeded in getting her baby, who’s in an infant seat, her toddler who’s still learning to walk, and her preschooler who wants to slip and slide on the ice, out of the car and into the house in a calm and gentle manner. This is news. This is the world where many people live each day. And in this country, you can open the door for the census guy and look him right in the face and you can be watching your friend's kids while she teaches violin lessons and you can have supper on the stove for 5 people, three of whom need it to be spooned into their mouths, and you can have a load of laundry on the couch and a computer humming away with three different writing projects staring you in the face while you help with the bodily functions of 3 small living breathing humans who without you would be in grave danger and that VERY SAME CENSUS man can look you in the eye and say "do you work?" And your answer, IN U.S. CENSUS TERMS, would have to be "no". Although if you had a stand in, a babysitter, her answer would be "yes". And that census guy would record HER and not you. For real.
I think we’ve got to change that. We can’t just stand by while that Census guy writes down “no” while
standing in our kitchens.
—Nanci Olesen
producer and host, MOMbo: 1990-2007 |
