I missed the memo about “Mom Jeans”.

You’ve probably seen that hilarious SNL sketch, and when I first saw it, I was laughing on the outside, but crying on the inside.  Even before I was a mom, I think my denim preferences veered dangerously into mom jeans territory.   I have a hard time finding jeans that are flattering and unfrumpy because even when I’m at my fighting weight, I have a mid-section that can best be described as “Homer-esque.”

I tend to have a perfectly imperfect roundness which starts in the belly region and extends all the way around to my ass.  On cartoon characters, it’s cute, but on me, not so much. 

When the very slinky low-rise jeans became fashionable, I nearly surrendered to the frump.  “Muffin top” does not begin to describe what’s going on when I attempt to wear low-rise jeans.  I think a more apt description would be “banana bread.”  And even when skinny, I’m kind of modest.  And I like to wear underwear.  And I get cold easily.  For all of these reasons, low-rise jeans are just not for me. 

But check this out….

Here’s the impossibly skinny Keira Knightley wearing impossibly low-rise jeans on the left (I mean really, is that zipper like, 2 inches long?  OK, stop looking at her crotch, it’s getting weird…)  And on the right, Ms. Knightley is wearing jeans that go waaaay up. 

Am I nuts or does she look pretty cute in both pictures?  These are two very different looks and each may have suited the occasion for which she chose them.  And in my life, there are sadly fewer and fewer occasions at which it would seem appropriate to show almost everything south of my navel and north of, well, you  know. 

My angst about jeans and many other fashion questions has led me to worship at the altar of Stacy and Clinton.  On their show, What Not To Wear, they almost inevitably  recommend mid-rise jeans.  Not so low that people can finally find out if the carpet matches the drapes, but not so high as to risk strangulation.  Somewhere in the middle probably looks and feels best.  In life and in denim, the path to enlightenment is along The Middle Way.  Memo received.

© 2011 Jamie Walker Ball

I missed the memo about being average.

When I was in college, one of my classmates, who was exceptionally tall and had glorious auburn hair, referred to herself as a “statuesque red-head”.  I thought that sounded so much better than “blonde girl of average height” which is exactly what I am. 

According to Wikipedia, the average height of American women is right about 5’4″.  And I am exactly 5’4″.  When I see the leggy super models in fashion magazines, I feel a pang of envy, but really being average isn’t such a bad thing. 

Recently, Mayim Bialik caused a bit of stir in the mommy blogosphere when she penned this piece in which she described her approach to dealing with the developmental “delays” her sons exhibited.  Knowing other parents who have dealt with similar issues, the anxiety that comes with wondering whether your child is “normal” is just gut-wrenching.  While it would be an over-simplification to say that Ms. Bialik  wasn’t worried about how her sons were doing, it was interesting to hear about her choice to not pursue aggressive interventions to speed up her children’s developmental progress.  She was OK with them not being average. 

Reading Ms. Bialik’s article and some of the critical responses to it made me thank my lucky stars that my son is pretty darn average in lots of ways.  I’ve been spared the worry and wonder about how he’s doing because he has been  hitting developmental milestones right about when he’s “supposed” to hit them.  I am so grateful he is so average.

The word “average” gets kind of a bad rap.  We want above average incomes and below average body fat.  But sometimes being right in the middle of the bell curve is a pretty comfortable place to be.   In lots of ways, the world is an easier fit for average people…for example, I’m a lot more comfortable in airplane seats than my husband, who’s an above average 6’3″. 

I’m no cheerleader for conformity, but I’m figuring out that by lots of measures, I’m pretty average and there’s no shame in that.  Average doesn’t always mean mediocre, it just means that when it comes to that particular measure, I’m just like a lot of other people, and there’s a sense of solidarity in that.   I never thought plotting my place on a bell curve would foster a sense of kinship and community, but in fact it does.  Memo received. 

© 2011 Jamie Walker Ball

I missed the memo about boredom.

It happened.  After a weekend cooped up at home due to illness, my nearly three-year old son pronounced that he was bored.  In fewer than 36 months, he had seen it all, done it all, and had exhausted his imagination.  He was bored. 

After torturing my own parents with similar pronouncements throughout my childhood, I finally got the memo about boredom in French class.  In French, the verb “ennuyer,” which means “to bore” is reflexive.  In French, you have to say, “Je m’ennuie” which means “I bore myself.”  Boredom isn’t a passive state of being, it’s something you’re actively doing to yourself.  If you’re bored, it’s your fault.  Oh, snap! 

I remember dutifully practicing the conjugation of the verb…I bore myself, you bore yourself, they bore themselves…and I thought to myself that it’s pretty embarrassing to be a bored French person.  If you have to say “I bore myself” then you have to acknowledge that you’re boring. 

From that day in French class, I began thinking about boredom differently and it was actually pretty empowering.  I began thinking of boredom as a character flaw that could be corrected with the right kind action and the right kind of attitude.   It also meant that I didn’t have to wait for something interesting to happen, I could make my own fun. 

Then, a few years later, I was watching a movie wherein some sexy brunette says, “Only stupid people get bored.”  (Salma Hayek? Penelope Cruz?..for the life of me, I cannot correctly recall which movie it was….extra credit to any reader who identifies it!)

Yikes.  So, if you’re bored, you’re not only boring, you’re dumb to boot.  But again, I felt a bit empowered at the suggestion that I could combat boredom with intellect.  Stuck in the airport with nothing good to read? No problem…I’ll just flip through my cranial Rolodex of amusements to keep myself occupied.

Maybe when my son is a little older, I’ll give him a lesson in French grammar and then tell him to go read a book or go outside and play.  Je ne m’ennuie plus.  Memo received.

I missed the memo about how to deal with my hair.

(Left to right…age 5, nice bangs, thanks Mom…9th grade…again with the bangs, this time my fault, and for extra new wave credit, it’s crimped…couple of years ago–this is my hair in its natural state, note that its poofiness exceeds the frame…and alas, me with an “appropriate” hair cut and professional blow out.)

This might seem like a bit of vanity and folly, but I think I have what amounts to a serious disability when it comes to my hair.  I have kind of a Samson Complex combined with a congenital klutziness when it comes to using blow dryers and other gizmos which are designed to keep one well-coiffed. 

While many women enjoy their trips to the hair salon, I dread them.  Nothing about the experience of getting a hair cut is pleasant for me.  As a consequence, I get about two hair cuts a year.  For a few weeks after the hair cut, I look polished and presentable.  I vow that I will go back for trims and maintain my “look.”  But as the weeks tick by, my resolve weakens.  I begin to resemble a caucasian Diana Ross.  And I’ll let you in on a little secret… I like looking like that.  I like having long, crazy looking, curly hair.  I feel more natural.  I feel more feminine.  I feel sexier.

Early in my professional life, though, I got the memo that my big, sexy hair was probably sending the wrong message.  When I was a freshly minted lawyer, one day I came to work without torturing my hair into straightness and submission.  A male attorney said to me, “Your hair looks wild…I like it!”  And we all know that’s code for “You look like a whore…come to papa!”  I don’t want people getting the wrong idea, so especially for big meetings and court, out comes the blow dryer and the flat iron. 

But when I get home, the scene is something like this, except instead of a star-spangled bustier, it’s an old Oglethorpe University T-shirt and yoga pants:

The neat-haired girl is just the alter-ego I put on to disguise my true identity…

But perhaps some day I’ll ascend the bench and then I’ll have to care less what colleagues and clients think of me.  Then I’ll just let my crazy locks fall where they may. 

(Remember Dyan Cannon as the Hon. Jennifer “Whipper” Cone on Ally McBeal?  I could sooooo rock this look.)

“Judge Jamie” does have a nice ring to it, don’t you think?  Memo received.

© 2011 Jamie Walker Ball

I missed the memo about pedicures.

My mom worked in the beauty business when I was a kid, so I suppose the idea of going to a nail salon on her day off didn’t seem like fun.  No mother-daughter mani-pedis for us.  Strike one.

I have some weird working-class sensibilities about things.  For a long time, the idea of paying someone to literally sit at my feet and pamper me just seemed elitist and wrong.  Strike two.

I hate feet.  I hate my feet, I hate other people’s feet.  I don’t really like my feet to be touched, I don’t like touching other people’s feet, and if someone touches me with their feet, I have a little freak out.  Strike three. 

As a consequence of the foregoing, I was well into my adult life before I ever got a professional pedicure.  Like me, Liam Neeson, was also late to the pedicure party, and he recently told Jay Leno all about it:

The Unknown star told NBC’s The Tonight Show With Jay Leno on Tuesday that he was a “late convert” to the treatment but credited it with helping ease pain in his feet.

“This gorgeous woman called Jackie in New York who is from Brazil used to come and do my wife’s feet and fingers, and she now still comes and does my mother-in-law’s feet and fingers,” he explained.

“Every time I passed the room I’d see this incredible process going on and the look of bliss on my mother-in-law’s face, and I thought, ‘I’ve got to try this!'”

He added: “It’s changed my life around. I used to have ingrown toe nails for 30 years. This gorgeous little creature just gouged them out. It was instant relief after 20 minutes!”

Liam Neeson is all kinds of awesome and I give him props for spreading the pedicure gospel.  When I finally got a professional pedicure, it wasn’t life changing, but it was very nice.  It took me a while to get over my initial discomfort and ticklish-ness but now I look forward to pedicures more than I look forward to Christmas. 

Here’s the thing about pedicures that I didn’t understand before:  It’s not just the process, which can be very comfortable and nurturing when it’s done by a skillful and gentle nail tech, but it’s also the product.  My feet look and feel a gazillion times better when their maintenance is entrusted to a professional.  Bust out those strappy sandals and show off those toes!

And here’s something else.  For me, getting pedicures was a little lesson in the benefits of vulnerability.  When I finally (and literally) dipped my toes in the pedicure pool, I didn’t feel haughty, I felt humbled.  I’m not much of a Bible scholar, but I guess I felt kind of like Peter when Jesus offered to wash his feet. 

Peter initially resisted when Jesus offered to wash his feet.  I mean, Peter was just this lowly fisherman and Jesus, was, you know, Jesus.  But the thing about foot washing  is that it’s not just a humbling act of servitude for the washer, it’s a humbling act of stillness and acceptance for the washee.  Pedicures have been good for my feet, and they’ve been good for my soul, too. 

So pedicures as religious experience?  Yep.  Memo received.

© 2011 Jamie Walker Ball

I missed the memo about having babies.

I mentioned in a previous post that I found a nice guy and settled down some time ago.  What I didn’t mention is that we were married nearly 10 years before we finally took the plunge and decided to have children. Having married relatively young, we had the luxury of fooling around for nearly a decade before certain biological and logistical pressures started to really kick in. 

Both my husband and I were kind of ambivalent about children, but we had never said to each other, “Let’s not have kids.”  Kids were always out there in the nebulous ether of “someday.”  But I didn’t want to be one of those women who turns 40 and says, “Oh crap, I forgot to have kids!”  So in the summer of 2007, we pulled the goalie and I braced myself for the infertility that was sure to afflict me as a 30-something, over-educated, white woman. 

About six weeks later, I locked myself in a stall in the ladies’ room at Target and peed on a  pregnancy test that I had purchased moments before.  (Yeah, I’m that impatient…that’s a whole ‘nother stack of memos…)  And you guessed it…pregnant.  Shocked, awed, and pregnant. 

About two weeks after that, I started to bleed.  Even though I hadn’t had much time to get attached to the pregnancy, my grief at the prospect of miscarriage was immediate, desperate, and awful.  It was in that moment that I finally acknowledged to myself how much I really wanted this baby and it literally took my breath away.  Inconveniently, but mercifully, I turned out to be one of those pregnant ladies who bleeds for no apparent reason.  My pregnancy continued with few complications and my son, Atticus, was born in April of 2008. 

When I say I missed the memo about having babies, I think what I’m really saying is that I was vainly and stupidly presuming that all of the clichés about having kids somehow didn’t apply to me.  I was smug and dismissive about the overwhelming love people professed for their kids.  It just seemed terribly sentimental and I just didn’t get it.

And then I went and won the baby lottery. 

Atticus is the total package…healthy, handsome, robust, smart, sweet, and relatively well-behaved as little kids go.  Even as I sometimes struggle with the mundane aspects of motherhood, I marvel at how insanely lucky I am that I get to be this kid’s mom.  Now I’m one of those saps I used to roll my eyes at.  And that’s fine by me.  Memo received. 

© 2011 Jamie Walker Ball