Success and the Ooze of Life

Time is out of joint

Scene: Kitchen. Three women, two on the passenger side of a kitchen island. One on the cockpit side, deveining shrimp. All three are mothers. One is a professor, one is a painter of the visual artist variety, not the interior/exterior house variety, and the third is a writer. The professor is cooking. The other two are her guests. What I left out of those job descriptions is that two of the three have “and stay-at-home-mom” appended to them. Can you guess which two? That’s correct, the painter and the writer. The professor, although also a mother, doesn’t have any explanatory appendage to her job description.

What does this mean? Does it mean that being a mother isn’t part of her job? Her only job is the academic post? 

Does it mean that the painting and the writing don’t equal “real” jobs? Or that they are part-time? Maybe that, huh? 

The painter says, “I still hold myself to that Nineteen-fifties ideal.” 

I think about this. Donna Reed’s famous New Look dress and coiffed hair comes up in the brain register automatically. But is that what the painter means? She’s younger than I, and I am too young, actually, to have watched Donna Reed. Yet I know her as shorthand for 1950s housewife, cook, ever-pleasant, perfect-house, homemade-everything Mom.

The point here is that after a second, I thought maybe I needed to clarify that we were all talking about the perfect housewife, cook, cleaner, child-minder. Because this painter doesn’t look at all like Donna Reed. I'm pretty sure she's not secretly longing to change her jeans for a pouffy circle skirt and set hair, but I want to make sure she’s talking Ideal Mother. The mother who is put together herself, and keeps the whole house together and never raises her voice. Now, in the 21st Century.

Yes, the painter says, that is what she meant. And by holding herself up to that standard, she is failing: because she likes to be with her children, to take them to the park and the playground. That means she gets tired with them, and when she gets home, there is all the rest of that Ideal Mother crap to deal with. With which to deal. However, she doesn’t “really” do it. The house is messy and the meals are thrown together. So the housework is not a priority; and cooking square meals isn’t either. But still the idea that it should be hovers. She feels guilty that she’s not doing more. As if minding the children isn’t enough - well, to be exact, as if minding the children and painting isn’t enough. 

And like the writer, the painter finds it really hard to make time for painting, since the nature of childcare is that it oozes to fill all spaces. Like spray insulation. Or Silly Foam. So there is guilt about not painting enough, and guilt about not houseworking and cooking enough. And general frustration, too. Very familiar to me. 

Meanwhile, the professor. When we turn to her I say, Well at least you know if everything goes south - if your husband dies  or loses his job - you can provide for your family. I am totally dependent on mine, financially. 

Yes, says the painter. That’s another way we feel like 1950s housewives. There is tremendous guilt and inadequacy around not earning money. As good feminists, we object to this dependent status. As artists we need it, especially since were we to take on jobs, most likely teaching or something else not particularly lucrative, we would spend our non-kid hours doing work that was secondary to what we wanted to do, spend our tired hours with our kids, and turn over most of our paychecks to childcare. 

The professor says she does feel that her work is very creative and fulfilling; but it is overwhelming and nonstop, even when she comes home. So she feels stretched thin as a parent and as if she is barely getting that done. Guilt, guilt, and more guilt.

Seems to me that because her job is paid and she is accountable to others, her students and her department, that work starts to ooze around the family life that she also wants to have. So she feels overwhelmed by the demands of her work. Whereas the painter and I feel overwhelmed by the demands of the parenting work and our desire to do our personal, creative work. Because we are accountable to ourselves to do that personal work, it’s very hard to enforce the boundaries; therefore, that creative work often gets short changed. There are questions of legitimacy relating to money and to self-confidence in valuing what we do when we do it for nothing and no one for a lot of the time. That applies to the creative “work” we do as well as to the other creative stuff we do called raising children. We can’t call it work, except amongst ourselves, because it’s not considered legitimate “work” unless we earn something tangible from it like money. Or prestige. Prestige counts sometimes, too, intangible though it is. As Anne-Marie Slaughter points out in her new book, (haven’t read) and in this interview (have read), one of the major issues we face societally is that we devalue childcare, or care of any kind. So those of us who spend much of our days doing that kind of work feel crappy about ourselves. Therefore, we insist we have to also fit in a full-throttle creative kind of work, like writing or painting. Then we feel crappy about ourselves because really, caring for young children is full time work and there is just not a lot left over to do the so-called “work.” 

Bottom line: We are all stretched thin, “working” and “not-working.”  We each need to be able to institute boundaries around our time, so we can do that thing we’re supposed to do - have it all. We all need it, but life as currently structured makes it too hard to do that satisfactorily. It’s not sufficient to say we can have it all, just not at the same time; because the teeter-totter nature of balance is, well, kind of stressful.

The state of women. Is this how we want life to be? 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2015/10/21/nurses-fathers-teachers-mothers-why-do-we-devalue-someone-the-minute-they-care-for-others/

Annals of Successful Parenting - Tuning in to the Program

Warning: This post is full of delaying tactics. The meat starts about halfway through. But if you like my nonsense, please read all the way through.

I am trying to get with the program and eat at regular times, but this morning I ate my second breakfast - excuse me, I believe the technical term for the ingestion I undertook at about 11 a.m., following the inadvertent Zumba class is “refueling”. That’s what the nutritionist said. MY nutritionist. 

That’s right. I consulted a nutritionist. I consulted a nutritionist about The Uninvited Guest (mentioned in this previous post). Actually, that’s not really true, although the Uninvited Guest was a prod. The real reason I consulted a nutritionist was that I wanted the 16 year old to consult one, because she dances two to four hours a day six days a week. She’s the one who really needs to refuel. And I wanted someone besides me to tell her that Goldfish are not nutritious. Knowledge is power, as my longtime friend - let's call her A - tells me, when I tell her things like I can’t look at my bank balance. (No longer true, A). I don’t know why I’m writing to A. A never reads my blog. She will never even know I mentioned her. Knowledge is power, but when it's your mother who's imparting that knowledge, it just seems to have a little less oomph.

But anyhow, knowledge IS power, and another one of the bits of knowledge I’d like her to have is how to avoid that dance world cliche of an eating disorder. “Her” meaning the 16-year-old, not A. 

So I figured, if I was taking her to a nutritionist, I might as well take myself, too. And so I did. 

And now I’m under strict instructions not to go any longer than five hours between meals. 

Bwahahahha. Excuse me while I fall off my chair laughing. I’m not sure I’ve ever gone that long without eating - except at night. Which, come to think of it, causes me to wonder if I’msuspposed to get up and eat a midnight snack? Maybe a meal between my first and second sleeps?

Okay, I’m just playing with ya. I know that’s not it. 

By the way, the Zumba class was inadvertent because I don't intentionally go to Zumba. I went to NIA, but the NIA teacher was away and the substitute teacher they got was a Zumba teacher. It was fun, actually, and had lots of Bollywood in it. I definitely needed that refuel afterwards. 

I have to go to the dentist. My tooth has been aching, off and on. I wasn’t sure if it was a cracked tooth or that I was clenching my jaw. Then I got a bad cold last week and couldn’t breathe through my nose and my teeth stopped hurted. So obviously, I had been clenching, but no longer could. See, there’s the silver lining. 

On the down side, last week I had a bad cold and so, despite by operating theory that it’s almost always better to exercise, I didn’t. Last week was just not one of those times when it was better to exercise. 

Okay, Readers, I can no longer delay getting to the reason for this blog post's title. 

In further news, I am a terrible mother. Yes, I am. Here’s why. The other day, I picked up the 16-year-old from a sleepover. After she finished giggling and hugging goodbyes to her friends, she slipped into the car and said, “This whole time I’ve been freaking out because XXX of five sauce was performing last night at Wembley Stadium and he got burned by some falling debris and I’m just so worried. He’s supposed to perform again tonight.”

Translation for those of you who don’t know what five sauce is: A popular - wildly popular - band comprised of 4 cute young men. One of whom had facial burns now. A band, mind you, playing across the sea. A band called Five Seconds of Summer (5SOS - five sauce).

Readers, I know about teenybopper love. I really remember the stomach-churning love feelings elicited by photos in Tiger Beat of (and here I further date myself) Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett. I really do. Reeeelllly. 

So did I bring up those old feelings and really get into empathy mode with my daughter, who has spent I don’t know how many hours hunched over YouTube videos of Five Sauce? Did I accept with kindness and generosity this information she shared with me that was obviously very important to her?

Hint: No, I did not. I just could not. It was these words, "This whole time I've been freaking out." Something curdled in me. Had she really been freaking out about this transatlantic incident during that whole sleepover, which included actual, live boys for the evening portion? Really? 

All I managed was a matronly, “Oh dear, that’s terrible,” which lacked all intensity of inflection that might have saved me. I kind of flatlined it, in truth. And then, because the image popped right into my mind, I said, “Michael Jackson’s hair caught on fire once. He was okay.” 

Silence. That blistering silence that radiates disapproval engulfed me. The 16yo turned on Spotify and filled the void with music. 

“It’s not that I don’t care. I mean, I’m sorry he got hurt and I hope he’s okay,” I tried to recover my humanity. Then I turned to her, “But you do know you don’t actually know them?” I said. "What happened with the guys at the party?"

Glare.

Yeah. That was smooth. 

At home, she bounded into the house ahead of me. When I arrived in the kitchen, she was telling her father about the burned sauce. 

“Wow, that is terrible,” he said, inflecting. “Is he going to be okay to perform tonight?” His voice rounded the curve of the question on an upnote. Inflecting further. 

At least she has one good parent. Damn him. 

Other news, that may or may not be good, is that I discovered chocolate ice cream made out of goat’s milk. Although I am lactose intolerant I can tolerate goat’s milk products, digestively speaking. It is delicious. This is small consolation. 

And yes, I know it seems ridiculous now, but Leif Garrett and Shaun Cassidy were really cute.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/c4/98/96/c49896d37510eed7443ba57b7e6e3d62.jpg
Leif Garrett

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N7LCvMQxHU

Motherhood Check-In

So this morning started out well - and by well I mean poorly. I rearranged the carpool schedule to make it to a physical therapy appointment at 8 am, at a place twenty minutes away, because everything is twenty minutes away from me, except the coffee shop and the library, the reasons I liked this town; anyway, I arrived, parked askew because I was a minute late, and discovered that my appointment was for a different day. Yup. 

Then I had to decide whether to drive all the way home and then back out again for my next appointment (dermatologist for annual skin check), also twenty minutes away, or whether to go somewhere for coffee. Naturlich, I had no book with me, because I’d been running late. So I had to buy a magazine. So I went to the coffee shop near my next appointment and read Psychology Today. 

Well, so here’s a thing. Never one to miss an opportunity for reassurance, I finally did ask the dermatologist about my itchy feet. Remember those? The dermatologist said I had itchy feet because of dry skin - and offered a solution. The solution involves a solution, a solution of baking powder and water. I’m to soak my feet in this solution, then dry them, then apply a heavy moisturizing cream. I’m to do so for several days in a row, and then, voilà. This will make me feel better than getting a cheap pedicure at the local nail salon where the workers might be abused and poisoned, according to my favorite paper. 

In other news, in case you haven't noticed, both my children are teens now. This means that when I make myself available to them after school by lingering around the kitchen and doing dishes, there is no converstaion. Both are bowed over their electronic devices and simultaneously inhaling snacks. Silence is broken only by requests for money or signatures on school forms. 

At this point, I’m the chauffeur. They’ve figured out my old scam that allowed me to eavesdrop on their conversations. All I had to do back then, once upon a time, when they shushed one another in front of me, was say, “Oh, don’t worry. I can hear you, but I don’t know what you’re saying. I don’t speak kid.” Then they’d resume talking in front of me. "Don't worry, she doesn't speak kid," I heard one of them say to another friend once and I did a (internal) victory dance.

Those days are gone. Now I’m password-excluded from their Instagram and Tumblr accounts and text messages. Never mind that the experts insist parents should have those passwords and be checking those accounts regularly. Not happening in my house. I can’t remember my own passwords. What am I going to do about theirs? And they keep changing them anyway. And making other accounts that I don’t know about. Except that I know about their existence. 

At this point, as Madeleine Levine unreassuringly pointed out in her book Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success, my influence is basically nil. It’s all peers all the time now. So if I haven’t imprinted upon my offspring to this point, tough luck. "Tough titties" as we used to say with a giggle back in fourth grade. Childhood is really not a time of innocence, Readers.

On top of that, I read in the Sunday NYTimes that daughters of working mothers earn 23% more than daughters of stay-at-home-mothers (SAHM’s). This led to a (totally not at ALL defensive) conversation last night after our family meeting about how I am not “just” a SAHM. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Ahem, ahem. But that I do work professionally - I’m a writer. I just don’t earn any money to speak of. But I work. Do they think of me as working, I inquired? They, being somewhat clever children, quickly responded that of course they think of me as working. 

Then I said, "Well, my feeling is this. If it turns out that it is better for you that I am a working mother, then I am a working mother. If it is better for you that I am a SAHM, then that is what I am. Because that is what I’m about. What is best for you."

And I have to say, that gave at least one of them pause. I saw it. The pause it gave her. So there was a moment when one of them was listening. I’ll take it. 

#TBT A Parenting Fail

Ok, this is the husband's suggestion, so blame him if you don't like it. What is "this"? Why it's a Throwback Thursday (#TBT) blog post. I wrote this when the 7th grader was in 3rd grade, right at this time of year. I thought it was a fun look back.

Why am I doing this? Aside from being a way to post more frequently, it's a fun way to see where I've been, and how I've looked at success and failure and (of course) myself over the last few years. As my book proposal sits on the desks of editors - please send positive vibes, as many as possible as frequently as possible - I have to admit that things have changed. For the better. Except for my body. But I'm supposed to look at that in a new way: being grateful for my body for being here for me, for being healthy and strong. And so I do. And so I do.

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A Parenting Fail

While it's stimulating to discuss theories of success and failure, most of my time is wrapped up in the ongoing venture called motherhood, an endeavor whose ultimate success or failure is my biggest concern, and whose outcome depends on myriad small choices.  Like the following one.

So the 3rd grader is in a school play. Something about fish and finding your unique self.  There has been lots of drama about this play around our house, with involved daily updates about rehearsing for various parts and about when parts would be finally assigned. Each child would rank their first four choices and hand them in to the teacher. Then, one day, accompanied by lots of pouting and complaining, the update was that the 3rd grader's class had agreed to perform the play with another class, which meant each part would be doubled up.

"It's supposed to be a play about finding our own unique selves," she pointed out. "It doesn't work if there are two of everything." Well, she had a point, but two children reciting in unison would be cute, from a parent's point of view. I told my child it would be fine, meanwhile marveling at how much she seemed to care. She's not the most obviously dramatic of my two children, but she was actually in tears.

Two days later, the 3rd grader's traverse from the school bus to the front door looked like the gallows walk. Parts had been assigned. My child had been given her fourth choice, Clownfish 1.

Oh the tears. Oh the misery. So much angst. "Clownfish 1 doesn't even get to tell Swordfish his problem. All the other fish get to tell Swordfish their problem." So there I am, staring at my usually rather stoic child, in tears again, this time over her lack of lines. At least I'm assuming it's a lack of lines that is the problem. I'm also thinking, wow, how did acting get to be so important to this child? She has recently joined an after school acting class, and I guess she really likes it. Maybe she'll become a movie star and I can finally go to the Academy Awards. I hope James Franco won't be hosting by then. Maybe Tina Fey.

Anyway, it seems the trouble is the lack of lines, and that she didn't get her first or second choice part.

So here's where the parenting needs to happen. Do I say, in effect, look, not everyone can get her first or second choice, and some people don't even have a line, so buck up? That's the "Sometimes we don't get exactly what we want but we're all part of a community" lesson.

Or do I say, well, look, if you're really upset, maybe you could talk to your teacher about adding a line to your part, so Clownfish 1 can tell his problem to Swordfish, too? Advocate for yourself. Maybe that's the parenting lesson here.

Reader, I chose the latter. Immediately my child wanted me to e-mail her teacher. No, I said, you can write her a note, or write her an e-mail from my account, and we'll make sure she knows it's from you. So during the 7th grader's piano lesson, the 3rd grader wrote a note, apologizing for being upset and making her suggestion about the line. I open up my e-mail, make the subject line state who the e-mail is from, and my child types out her message and we send it.

Cue to dinner time, when the 3rd grader is relating all the iniquity of the situation to her sister and her father. There's a certain amount of sympathy, and a certain amount of tearful eye-welling.  Before dessert, I check my e-mail. The teacher has responded that she's sorry my 3rd grader is upset; that she'd had her do Clownfish 1 because she got the beats on the humor so well in all the lines. She'll be happy to talk to her about the change tomorrow.

Do I detect a certain weariness?

Lines? Plural? I go back to the table. I confirm with my child that she does, indeed, have several lines.  How did I miss this? How did my child miss this? Now I'm annoyed. And embarrassed.  Look, I tell the child, your teacher gave you a real part with lots of lines and said you're good at it. If you want to be part of a play, you have to accept you might not get the exact part you want. That's the way acting is. At least you got a part. So buck up, quit being so negative, and do your part.

I go back to the computer and send another e-mail to the teacher, subject: Sorry. I tell her I'd encouraged my child to advocate for herself. I had also told her, I assured the teacher, that her request might be denied.

I had a parenting choice, and I made the wrong one. That's what my 7th grader calls "a fail."

Keeping Promises to Myself

I have twenty minutes until the 13-year-old’s friends arrive to celebrate her birthday with pizza and cake and sleepover. An hour after they are due, one of my book clubs is meeting here at our house for dinner and intellectual conversation and cake. No sleepover.

Intellectual conversation. Oops, there’s the timer for the cake!

Intellectual conversation might be a stretch. I’m intellectually depleted. Today I gave a thirty minute talk on Shakespeare and how the Gunpowder Plot affected him, so tonight, I relax. I relax as much as is possible with several 13 year old girls in the house.

Anyway, I now have fifteen minutes to get out a blog post. I could wait and write something amazing and coherent – but why start now? I’m trying to stick to my goals this week. I promised myself I would accomplish two writing goals, and so I shall. The first was to write that paper on Shakespeare for the women's club to which I belong. The second was to get out a blog post. 

Sticking to goals is one of those things I do intermittently. It hasn’t gotten to be habitual for me, yet. But I’m working on it. 

So. Last week I mentioned I would talk about the Pomodoro Technique. I'm not sure why we don’t call it the Tomato Method. It’s based on the timer that the method’s originator used, one of those kitchen timers that looks like a tomato. Or a pomadoro. If we’re Italian, which I guess maybe we would prefer to be. Because, you know, of that European sophistication. Pomodoro sounds so much nicer than tomato, I suppose.

But I digress. The tomato method is a fancy term for what I tell my kids to do when they have a difficult challenge: work steadily for a short time, then take a short break; then return to work. Use a timer if you like. Be sure to take advantage of the short break.

Now, I can report to you, Readers, that this method worked for me this week, as I was racing to finish my reading and note-taking and then to write my paper on Shakespeare. I didn’t use a tomato, though. I used my iPhone. I set it for 20 minutes. Then took a short break. Then back for another twenty minutes.

I have to say, it worked really well. And I even found myself wanting to work through my short breaks. Interesting, I thought. I made myself take the breaks, though, and they did refresh me.

So. Pomodoro-tomato-good sense technique, thank you.

By the way, it occurs to me that I worked my way up to the PomTech, I didn't just dive right in. I started, in fact, with the Inverse Pomodoro Technique. This is a method by which you relax and delay for a longish time, then get down to work for a short, non-threatening amount of time, then repeat. 

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Also in the news this week:  My $13 chocolate bar is still here. It is not totally gone. I have managed to exercise my willpower and have made it last. 

Small victory. I will bear it in mind, as I deal with the reality that now I am the mother of two teenaged girls.

* 

Also, last week I mentioned I had some news. Well, here it is. I have a literary agent. That's all I can say for now. 

Lost Lovey and Other Life Challenges

While my book has remained untouched this week, I have solved two problems I mentioned in my last post. The first, easier to solve problem, was the crazy eyebrows. Solution: eyebrow gel. This looks like clear mascara, and is available at the drug store.

The second problem was the left behind lovey. That one’s not solved yet, but plans exist for a solution. Ah, the saga of Bunny. Not my bunny, Bunny, but the 10^th grader’s bunny, Bunny.

She still needs Bunny

I would have to tote this up as our most major trip-related glitch. To effect the return of this fifteen year old stuffed bunny – and I’ll believe it when I actually see the grey old thing again – has so far required about a thousand and twelve emails with the Hilton Garden Inn at Rome Fiumicimo Airport, the filling out of two forms, faxing (required, who knows why) of my credit card information, a copy of my passport, and two trips to the shipping center because we don’t have a fax machine and the fax didn’t go through the first time – why not? Because Italy?  The return now has involved at least one random Italian bank holiday, my MIL, my MIL's friends, my MIL's friends' son, one of my brothers-in-law, and, I am grateful to add, kind offers from at least two friends to transfer Bunny into their hands, or into the hands of a relative of theirs, when next they go to various points in Europe.

What a cosmopolitan set I run with!

Anyhoo, Bunny will be delivered by DHL to my MIL when she is in London visiting friends next week at a cost of 36 Euros (plus credit card fee, I’m sure). Not to mention one phone call to Rome, and $7 to fax the above-mentioned information, which may or may not be safer than scanning and emailing it, but is certainly more costly and inconvenient. I’m hopeful that Bunny will wing it back to the states at the end of next week. Then we’ll just need to force ourselves to get to NYC to pick her up. I don’t know how or when or why we’d ever want to force ourselves to NYC…..

This plan remains theoretical.

The glitch aspect is real, though. Although preferable to breaking an ankle, leaving behind this lovey has been an expensive and time-consuming problem. There’s the need to not forget about Bunny, to follow up with the operations manager and the front desk at the hotel on sending the required forms and obtaining price quotes, which takes energy and periodic allotment of time. There’s the processing of the news that to return Bunny to us at home would cost 70 Euros. That’s over a hundred dollars. That’s a lot of smackeroos, but still falls under the heading of Be Careful What You Wish For, because, if you remember from my last post, I hoped simply that the cost would be less than doing laundry in our hotel in Rome was, and it is that.

I’m pausing to let that last bit sink in for you, Readers. Travel tip: Before you leave  home, research laundry services that pick up and deliver, if you won’t have time to visit a Laundromat. Hotel laundry can be repulsively expensive. And yes, we did wash a bunch of stuff in the sink; but a family of four racks up more than a sink’s worth of laundry in a few days.

But, really, when it comes to a lovey, value is inestimable. Right? I still have my bunny, Bunny. She’s basically thread and disintegrating, yellowed foam at this point. I would show you a picture of her, but you might laugh – and then I’d have to hate you, Readers. Bunny is kind of my Dorian Grey portrait, if I think about her existence in a certain (bleak) way. Thread and yellowed foam stuffing, patched over, with shredded ears of unequal lengths, in an old doll’s dress. She’s fifty years old.

I’ve held up better than that.  And now that I’ve got this eyebrow gel, things are looking good.

Who knows if the fifteen year old will hang on to her bunny as long as I have? But I want her to have the chance. So, if you’ll excuse me, I have to follow up with Simone, Francesca, Alessia, and Oscar at the Hilton Garden Inn at Rome Fiumicimo. 

Why Am I Not Danish?

It’s not that I long to talk about TV shows, but this one has been so interesting that I can’t resist. I’m

Maybe on a good day.....

speaking of a Danish drama called “Borgen,” which is about the Prime Minister (PM) of Denmark, who happens to be a woman. We watched the last episode of the second season of Borgen yesterday and I dreamed about the PM, Birgitte Nyborg, off and on all night.

Spoiler alert! But, as my Shakespeare professor once said, if you’re upset to discover that Romeo and Juliet die at the end of the play, you’ve lost the point of literature. Okay, maybe I’ve lost the point of it, by now, eons later, Professor Finkelpearl long retired; but his message was that knowing the ending of the story doesn’t lessen its impact, it makes the story richer. So, I am performing due diligence in warning you of spoilers; but I’m telling you, Readers, a spoiler doesn’t matter in this case.

This season found Birgitte pinioned by the demands of her job and her desire to be available to her children. One of her children had an acute mental health crisis, and following the shrink’s injunction that her recovery would require big changes in the family, the PM decided she had to take a leave from work. Naturally, this made big news. Other (male) politicians, of course, took advantage of her absence to build themselves up while running her down. Predictably, they turned her gender into an issue. Questions about her mothering, and whether a mother could handle the job of PM dominated the press. She was a bad mother, because her daughter was struggling; and she was a bad politician, because she was distracted by her child. Eventually, even though she wasn’t quite ready to return to work, she did return, because her advisors suggested the situation was getting out of hand, and policy implementation was foundering in a perceived power vacuum.

The PM’s instinct was to ignore the press. She refused to respond to the insinuations that her gender affected her ability to lead. She told her aides that responding was beneath her. She was happy to talk politics, she said, not gender. It would have been easy to get on the TV and angrily ask if journalists would be asking these questions of a man. And of course it would have been easy to say that a man would probably not take a leave to be there for a child - because men assume the women will do it. Women have to shoulder more roles. That doesn’t mean they do inferior work, by any means. But Birgitte didn’t go that route.

The PM had been struggling all season as a single mom, by the way. After her first year in office, her husband Philip left, feeling frustrated, neglected, and probably emasculated when she took on the demanding job of PM.

Jerk.

Finally, in the last episode, she told him off – thank goodness – and said he’d given up too fast and hadn’t been understanding enough of the demands of her new job and how long it would take to adjust to them. When a former male PM got on the news and talked about how hard it had been on his wife, how neglected she had felt, and how inevitable that neglect had been when he was PM, it seemed to strike a new chord with Philip. While he didn’t say so, one can hope the realization had begun to penetrate that he’d been an ass. I believe that’s the technical term. He’d applied a double standard to Birgitte. I thought it was a nice touch to show Philip getting driven around by his new girlfriend, a busy pediatrician, another strong woman; the suggestion being that he was entirely too passive about his life choices and didn’t know how to fight. Also, that he both enjoyed and was immobilized by the powerful women in his life.

When the PM returned, she gave a short speech to the legislature. It was marvelous. She pointed out that the first four women in Danish politics were elected in 1918, therefore, the debate about gender was about a hundred years too late. That ship has sailed, she said, in different words. Danish words. Her point was, here I am, I am PM, and I am doing what I have to do, so shut up about my gender and get back to work. It was great.

This was all entirely diverting and engrossing, and there was added pleasure, too, that the husband said the actress who plays the PM looks like me. But it was an uncomfortable feeling, too, when I consider how mired and stuck I sometimes feel in my own life, and how unfledged I am professionally, and when I see how much she does in her life. In fact all the women in the show are professionals, and it makes me feel like I haven’t done enough.

There’s been a whispered, provocative question circulating among feminists and sociologists that it’s awfully interesting that our society discovered, just at the time when women were getting into the professions seriously and moving out of the home, that mothering is a fulltime job requiring 100% attendance at home to provide a solid base for the children. Mom can go back to work, the suggestion is, but her kids may turn out sociopaths. So go ahead and take away some deserving man’s job, but watch what you reap.

The implication, I suppose, is that my generation grew up to be a bunch of miserable degenerates (slackers, anyone?), because a lot of us had parents who worked - and who, by the way, practiced a more hands-off style of parenting. Therefore, we try to give our children what we think we missed.

Yet now there’s a move away from “helicopter parenting” and a yearning for the freedom kids experienced in the latchkey kid days. Or was it the fifties and sixties when kids were outside all day long, roaming freely, while their moms were home suffering from the problem with no name? It’s all so confusing. What’s a feminist mother to do?

I can’t help wondering if I’ve been hooked by some line cast by the feminist backlash. Because I surely felt my attendance at home was preferred. I felt that my kids needed me home, at least when they were little. However, now that they are older, and feminism has moved back into the mainstream, I want to earn money and show them a “productive” role model. Unfortunately, now it’s much harder to build a meaningful career because I’m, well, older. So I flop around on the deck, regretting my choice.

After all, I am not a degenerate, even though my parents worked. My stepmother stayed home with my sister for a while, but the honest truth is that I was happier when she wasn’t there. We had a housekeeper, so I was not a latchkey kid, though several of my friends were – and it was fun to go to their houses after school. But I did manage to grow up and attend college and graduate school and get married, have children, and become the neurotic, anxiety-riven overthinker that I am today, without winning a lot of ribbons for participation in soccer, without Mom being There for me. On the other hand, the minute my first child was born, I was all in. I wanted to be there for all of it. I don’t regret that.

Ah, the pendulum. Back and forth, back and forth. We are all getting sleepy. I relate to Birgitte Nyborg in this: the push-pull conflict over women’s roles needs to end. Cease the discussion about qualifications. We need to move to a new understanding of women’s needs, of children’s needs, and of men’s needs, too. The line between working at paid work and caring for family needs porosity. It’s still too rigid. A mom who needs or wants paying work, needs places to go. Let’s talk about that.

On Not Sending the New Year's Card and other Failures

I missed my weekly post last week. Sorry. There was the middle school musical. It was tech week and then there were four performances. This wouldn’t have been so much to do if I weren’t on the Make-Up Committee, but I was on the Make-Up Committee. And there was a lot of make up to apply for the show, Seussical, Jr. For a 7 pm start time, we had to arrive at 4:15. With a cast of 65, there were a lot of faces. I painted giraffes, leopards, wolfish things (including the 6^th grader), as well as eyeshadows on Circus McGircus players, and forehead swirls on Whos.

It was fun, Readers, okay? I got into this situation because a couple of years ago I did the make-up for the 11 year old and her friend when they went trick or treating as Goth girls, and apparently my skill in that endeavor reached certain channels leading to the middle school musical make-up committee. Okay, truth: At the informational meeting that followed auditions, all parents were instructed to volunteer for one committee or another, and as we swarmed around a table filled with clipboards, my friend, whose child was a Goth girl with mine that Halloween said, “You should do make-up, cuz you did that Goth make-up so well.”

I am sorry to say I failed to take away a single photo of my work. I was so busy. So you’ll have to take my word for it. It was spectacular.

I did take away a cold, however. When a large portion of 65 children breathe in your face, it’s the thing you do. I’m not complaining. It could’ve been a stomach bug. I gave them nothing as long-lasting. As one of the other make-up committee members and I confided to one another, we made sure to eat a mint before working, and to apply more make-up than usual (which is usually zero in my case) to ourselves, so that we would project competence to the middle schoolers who presented their faces to us.

So. That was last week. Now another week has gone by and I am sorry to say I am avoiding writing. I’m avoiding the blog. I’m avoiding the shitty first draft. I’m avoiding the labels for our New Year’s card. The card that is waiting patiently in a nice stack of identical siblings to get enveloped and stamped and sent to sixty lucky recipients. Sixty. Not even enough to cover everyone on our mailing list. How did that happen? Vague memories of having lots of extras the last time we sent out a holiday card (it’s been a few years) in tandem with no memory of how many of that year’s cards we ordered. So we estimated. Underestimated in this case. I’m actually pleased to know we had more people on our list of friends and family than we thought. Chuffed. I’m chuffed. Though not chuffed enough to go to Staples, buy the blank labels, print them at home and slap ‘em on the envelopes.

And now we have one more piece of evidence why I’m not a household name. I can’t even get myself to get my name into the households of people who actually know and care about me. Purportedly. I don’t want to assume too much. For instance, to assume that people on the list would enjoy receiving a New Year’s card from me. From us, I should say. From the family. With a line or two of personalization across the back. That would be presumptuous.

It’s a really cute card, though. The husband and I are absent from it, leaving only the younger members of the family – the girls and the dog – which ups the attractiveness of the card, although perhaps lowers the total interest receivers might take in it, as it eliminates the chance to examine how life has aged us. This wasn’t intentional, this omission. I would’ve opted for a photo of all of us; but if we’d waiting any longer to get a good one, then we wouldn’t have ordered the cards, which have been sitting on the dining room table, ready to roll, for three weeks. 

With all this baggage surrounding a holiday card, it’s not marvelous that I hesitate to impose myself on people who don’t know or care about me, an endeavor that would help make me a household name.

If I were a household name, I would have an assistant who could go to Staples and send out these cards.

Oh, look, Readers! I managed to write something! Next time I’ll write something more meaty. 

Am I a Millenial?

Too much luggage under the eyes to show my face...

A couple months ago, I decided I needed to read actual news articles, not just opinion pieces about news. I thought, since I’m a big girl now, that it might behoove me to read facts presented to me and draw my own conclusions about them, rather than let other people tell me what to think about selected facts. That meant that I resisted what had been my favorite section of The New York Times – the Sunday Review – in favor of that thing in which they wrap the Sunday Review. I think it’s called the front page?  

And it was good. Indeed, just two weeks ago I read an incredible story about a death that appeared to be suicide, but may have been murder from domestic violence. This story, which I saved, would make a fantastic novel. And just before I saw that article I was thinking about how I’d love to write another novel, only I don’t have a plot. I am not good with plot. Well, this front page article contained a plot, let me tell you. I wish Elmore Leonard were still around. He would write a doozy of a novel about that.

Does that sound callous? It does, doesn’t it, Readers? I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be callous.

My point is that last weekend I caved and read the Sunday Review. There were two pieces that resonated with me. One was about the Real Humanities Crisis. Here is it is, if you want to read it. The other one was about the Millenials, who are, FYI, defined as people born between 1980 and 2000, which also means they are Generation Y, which means there are two names for them, which seems unfair. Although come to think of it, there are two names for my generation, Generation X. Namely, Gen X and Slackers. And before you whip out your calculators, classmates, I know that technically I am a Baby Boomer, but there is just nothing about baby boomers that relates to me, and everything about Generation X that does. Here is that article for your edification.

One article is about how the Millenials are searchers, looking for a new definition of success and for lives full of meaning. Which means that perhaps I am actually a Millenial, because – hello - I am a searcher and I’ve been reframing success. This article, by the way, starts out by characterizing the millenials as the”most self-absorbed generation, ever.” But I distinctly recall the Me Generation being called that. And come to think of it, just who are the Me Generation? I have a sinking feeling that is also my generation.

The conclusion to draw here is that every older generation looks at the twenty somethings coming up behind it and thinks these twenty-somethings are the most selfish ever. That's simple envy: underemployed twenty-somethings have a lot more time to dawdle in cafés and grow beards than fully grown up folk.

But the article goes on to say that in fact these Millenials have been “forced to rethink success so that it’s less about material prosperity and more about something else.” And that something else is, apparently, meaning. They want to make a difference. They want to do good. Indeed, more than happiness, they want meaning in their lives.

And my researches on success lead me to conclude that, therefore, they will succeed.

Then there’s the other article, called, “The Real Humanities Crisis.” This is about the plight of most creative people, as well as about jobs in K-12 education, which should fall under the rubric Ways for Creatives to Earn a Decent Living Doing Something Meaningful.  Sad to say, now those jobs are being strangled by standardized testing, and any parent of a public school student knows how beleaguered The Arts are, since there’s not a direct link between arts education and friggin’ test scores. There is a link, though – don’t get me started. I don’t have room here for that discussion.

“Most creative artists, even successful ones, are not able to earn a living.” That’s what the article says. You know, it’s good to see that in print. And bad. Most of all, it’s a relief. Of course it’s the final dousing of any idea I had of, um, making a living from my writing. From my creative writing, that is. But it lifts one burden of failure from me. If most creative artists can’t make a living from their creations, then failure to make a living is not a sign of failure as a creative artist. It’s just failure to make a living.

I am sure I’ve mentioned this before, but when the financial crisis happened in 2008, New York Times columnist Judith Warner wrote about commuting into NYC on the train surrounded by Wall Streeters and lawyers and how she had come to feel diminished or unappreciated for being a journalist. She saw herself as surrounded by people who felt that choosing to do a job that didn’t maximize one’s income potential was morally suspect. Or at least idiotic. Now that these people, some of them, were out of jobs, she thought maybe people like her, or people who had chosen helping professions that didn’t have super high incomes, might come to be respected again. At least that’s what I think she wrote. Memory does strange things, though. Perhaps she said nothing of the sort. Perhaps I’m putting my own words into her pen.

I certainly relate to that sentiment. I’ve both imbibed that message and struggle against it. It’s one of my biggest conflicts: choosing to do what I love and think is important (writing and being a full time mom) makes me feel that I’ve done something misguided and foolish. Sometimes. The opportunity costs seem too high. Sometimes.

Maybe the Millenials won’t struggle with the same conflict. As the article says, they have been forced to look beyond making money to find satisfaction. According to the article, studies show that when economic times are pinched, young people turn to helping others. When economic times are expansive, I guess, they tend to fill their pots with money - screw meaning.  But times are not so expansive. Thus, people are reconsidering how they spend their days. “The point of work should not be just to provide the material goods we need to survive,” says philosopher Gary Cutting. “Since work typically takes the largest part of our time, it should also be an important part of what gives your life meaning.”

Hooray for the searchers, I say! I also say thank you in advance, since they – those Millenials – are the largest generation since the Baby Boomers and they’re going to have to help support me when I’m old.  I’m pretty sure the government isn’t about to start handing out pensions to mothers and writers. But I could be wrong. 

Why I'm Thankful for Envy and Jealousy

The blogosphere and the sphere in general – the American part of it, anyway – are awash in proofs of thankfulness. This is all to the good, and very mind improving. Many of us are seriously cultivating gratitude in order to shape our brains to be more positive, and not just on Thanksgiving. As I said, this is all to the good. Every little degree positive anyone turns has got to be good for all of us. As long as there’s no deviation into smarminess. Smarminess is just aggressive do-gooding, and as Ma Burnside, Auntie Mame’s reluctant future mother-in-law might say, “That’s mighty bad form.”

Well, Readers, today, instead of the standard litany of gratitude I’m going to go where I more naturally tend. Towards the perverse and contrary. I was thinking of what I’m grateful for yesterday, as we made our rounds of thanks at the table. Here are a couple samples, by the way. From nephew: I am thankful I was reincarnated as a human. From niece: My teacher said we need to go around the table and say what we’re thankful for. Oh, we already did.

So, for what am I thankful? Well, I’ll tell you. I’m thankful for jealousy and envy. That’s right. Those annoying, petty emotions. I’ve decided that rather than fight them, I’m going to listen to what they tell me. I think they’re useful, although I sure wish I’d evolved out of them. Or just aged out of them. That would be fine, too. But they’re unflagging companions, turning up at the most annoying times.

Take envy. I know I’m not the only one who feels it, but I’ve got my particular items to envy. They are all about writers. I don’t, for instance, envy Wall Street financiers or Acadamy Award winners. But writers who win awards or hit the bestseller list? Check. That’s professional envy and it’s instructive. I need to pay attention to my writing and treat it seriously.

Now jealousy is a much worse feeling. But I’ll admit to feeling it at times. Usually these times occur when I hear about some accomplished person’s accomplished child getting into an Ivy League. In this case, the emotion is useful in showing me that I’ve drifted too close to becoming a parent whose self-esteem depends on the accomplishments of her child and am definitely in the red zone for depending on arbitrary elitist markers of success. Step away.

So that’s why I’m thankful for them emotions, envy and jealousy. Now, please step away, E & J. 

To-Do Lists and Stairway to Paradise

I feel mired this week. I just can’t seem to get anything done. The to-do list keeps splintering into ever more branches.  Our drying rack broke, necessitating a boring, stupid errand to replace it, but a simple one. You would think. But there doesn’t seem to exist a replacement for it. I went to Lowe’s, but the racks there were too small. So I went to Walmart, and I found one, except all the boxes were open or dented; plus, it needed assembly. Nevertheless, I selected the least-dented box and I traipsed the miles of registers to find one open and discovered the only open ones were at the farthest point from the door near which I’d parked and they all had several people in line. For some reason, I hadn’t taken a cart when I entered the emporium, so I was carrying this box. All that traveling and carrying gave me time to think, and what I thought was that I had no interest in buying a box of aluminum rods that would have to be assembled. The result would undoubtedly be a rickety, poor replacement for the fantastic, most perfectest laundry drying rack ever created. Except that it broke, so it wasn’t perfect. But it was closer to perfect than the dented box of aluminum rods in my arms, and also, come to think of it, less broken than that, too. After all, last I saw it, my broken drying rack was mostly assembled. So I left the box and marathoned my way back across the store and went home. Energy and time expended, job still undone.

The week has been like that.

Add to that my new normal sleep pattern, which seems to be a decent night’s sleep on alternate nights, interwoven with total wide awake insomnia on the other nights. Thank you, perimenopause.

Then there was the realization that I’ve been operating as chauffeur without the full schedule of events for the 10^th grader’s ballet because we were out of town for a particular meeting at which a particular list of events was distributed; and because the parent who is in charge of distributing updates and information via email is a little bit distracted this year because her child is applying to college. So I had to scramble for information and rides and then ask for the missing list. Which I have yet to input into my electronic calendar or my marvelous new planner made out of paper. Then there was an email listing exactly sixty three trillion and seven soccer practices, which I have yet to input. That’s for the 6^th grader. Who also just auditioned for the school musical and now will have to check the website every day for those practices. Do I need to reschedule French horn lessons?

There was more. So much more. Yet nothing accomplished. Kind of like the government, if you think about it. And kind of like a government employee, I was working without pay.

But you don’t come here to read my complaints, Readers. I’m aware that my life is good. Despite these periods of churning and frustration, things are okay. Sure, I’d like a little more consistent sleep. Sure, I’d like never to step foot in Walmart again.  Sure, I’d like to publish a book and earn some money. Sure, I understand the latter is not contingent upon the former. I do have a spiffy new planner that has lots of list-making space. I'll start by updating my to-do list. And if I’ve learned anything about life on this journey to perimenopause, it’s that when I feel mired and unproductive, making a list is a first step towards feeling better. A list is like a ladder, if you think about it. So before you can put foot to rung, you’ve got to have a ladder. After that, it’s just one foot in front of the other.

Did I manage something profound? No? Well, I tried. Listen to Rufus. He's more entertaining than I.

Borgen and Me: The Political Gets Personal

Do you know what Borgen is? Until a few weeks ago, neither did I. Among the husband’s side of the family we’ve become obsessed with Scandinavian television and literature. Well, "literature" may be overstating the quality of the reading material. I'm talking about the genre known as Nordic Noir*, specializing in barely functioning yet mesmerizing detectives trying to solve grisly murders without themselves becoming victims of either their own weaknesses (how Shakespearean) or of the killers they’re trailing. Some of these novels have been adapted for TV, but now we’ve discovered – and by "we" I mean my mother-in-law (MIL) – original television series on DVD. The latest one she passed along to us is a Danish show called “Borgen.” She passed it along to us, and with it, she passed along a request that I blog about it.

Borgen, for those who, like me, know zero about Denmark besides that it was the land of Hans Christian Anderson, is the locus of Denmark’s parliament. “Borgen” the TV series is about its fictional first female Prime Minister, Birgitte Nyborg, a forty-something brunette with a husband and two children. Turns out that the real Denmark also has its first female Prime Minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, a forty-something blonde. There, now you know as much as I do about actual Danish politics. 

So let’s begin with this: what I think I know about Denmark. What I think I know about Denmark is  it’s one of those Scandinavian countries with a strong socialist system that fosters equality between the sexes and classes and where everyone is attractive, white, and wears burly sweaters. This is also what I think of when I think of Sweden, Finland, and Norway, but to prove that the MIL is right to expect something intelligent from me, let me also say that I do differentiate among those Northern European countries. For example, while my idea of Denmark is that it’s one of those socialist countries that fosters equality between the sexes and where everyone is attractive, white, and wears burly sweaters, I don’t stereotype everyone there as tall and blonde. That’s Sweden. Denmark has brunettes, and possibly redheads. Norway has brunettes, too. This I learned on my junior year at Oxford. And Finland? Cell phones and excellent schools.

This is the sum total of my knowledge of these countries. Wait, no, that’s incomplete. I know from Nordic Noir that there is a fine heroin trade with Asia, a sex slave situation from Eastern Europe, and racial tension with the few immigrants there. Despite the existence of poverty and junkies there, Denmark has come a long way since the Little Match Girl died of cold and starvation back in H. C. Anderson’s day.

Why am I writing about “Borgen”? Because the MIL was right. There is a lot to say about it. I’ll admit I’m feeling a smidge pressured, though. She expects I will have something interesting to say. And for the MIL, interesting is more than witty. There has to be pith there, too. Evidence of intellect. That kind of thing. This is a problem, because most of what I think about when I think about “Borgen” is that Birgitte Nyborg, the Prime Minister in the series, is not a super-skinny woman, but has some curves, and even half-heartedly despairs of them. So I think about how fat or not she thinks she is, and how fat or not I am in comparison to her – TV adds fifteen pounds, so really she is not at all fat, the actress, I mean, and how I’m not on TV so does the mirror add fifteen pounds or is that just life? - and what percent of her life she spends thinking about it – the fictional character, I mean - considering that she is the Prime Minister.

But despair not, MIL, because my point – and Readers, you know I have one - is that this show has a realistic, complex view of its characters. Furthermore, the main character and one of the key supporting characters are women, and the show explores the many roles they fulfill as educated career women with considerable nuance and realism that you don’t see on American television.

For example, in the third episode, a character has an abortion. Can you imagine that happening on American TV? Not only does she have an abortion, but her decision is dramatized. The viewer watches her learn she’s pregnant, get an ultrasound to confirm it, and hide it from her employer - because she's conflicted about being pregnant, not because she's worried she will be fired. Katrine is twenty-eight, and a rising TV political analyst with a public profile and obvious ambition. She had been having an affair with a married man, who died suddenly, after which she discovered she was pregnant. Both people she tells about the pregnancy expect she will terminate it. One is her ex-boyfriend, who assumes she will terminate. The second is her mother, who tells her to. Can you imagine that? And not only that, but also, her mother tells her to have an abortion despite being a practicing Christian. She tells Katrine she is hanging onto this pregnancy for the wrong reason – grief that the father of the baby has just died, and she wants to have some part of him. “You’re the one who believes in God,” says Katrine, who expected a different response from her mother. Her mother says, “God has nothing to do with this. You must look out for yourself.” 

God has nothing to do with this. From a Christian woman.

Not only that, but Katrine has this abortion (which is presumably covered by her health insurance, which is presumably covered by the taxes she pays to her government who then invest that money into a social safety net) without incident – though not without a few tears – and returns to work immediately. She is not maimed by the experience physically nor psychologically, and apparently her religious mother isn’t worried for her soul, either.

Can you imagine any of this on American TV? Or in American discourse in any way?

That Katrine Fønsmark in Denmark can get an abortion safely, legally, and with excellent anesthesia, apparently, in a clean and well-run health facility, on national television, shows that Denmark is way ahead of us. This very common plot point in the average professional woman’s actual life in America is kept hidden from view on US TV and in the movies. For wouldn’t I have done the same as Katrine if I were a young, single, rising professional who got knocked up by a married man? Yes, I would have, and most of the women I know would have – or did – too. The majority of abortions performed in the US are on women in their twenties. Over 90% of the abortions are performed at thirteen weeks’ gestation or less, and about 70% at under eight weeks’. There are about a million abortions performed a year. (http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/data_stats/) Only we aren’t allowed to talk about it. And while we are busy not talking about this very common solution to a very common problem, unwanted pregnancy, we are forgetting to fight for our right to it, and we are in danger of losing it.

There has been much talk lately about the dearth of female leaders in corporate and political affairs, and a renewed look at feminism and work-life balance, and at the challenges women face maintaining careers and families and returning to careers after focusing on raising children, and this is terrific. I am all for this kind of talk. But, as Deborah Spar, President of Barnard, said recently on NPR (she has a new book about feminism), the feminist agenda needs to focus on a few other things as well. It needs to return to the activist, civil-rights bent it had back before my generation thought we’d reaped the benefits of the women’s movement and were all set. Deborah Spar, like Madeleine Kunin, says we need to focus on equal pay; paid family leave; and quality childcare.

However, this agenda presupposes that women have control over their reproductive systems. This agenda steps around the edges of this right, because there is still that infuriating minority of legislators and deluded constituents who are working as hard as they possibly can to undermine it. If women can’t control their reproductive systems, then they can’t really control anything in their lives. Which is exactly how a few wildly flapping fundamentalist sexists want it, but is not how most people want it to be.

But also – and here’s where I start sounding like one of those liberal conspiracy theorists – while we are fighting to retain the right to abortion and birth control – yes, even to birth control - we are not advocating for those other three agenda items: paid family leave, equal pay, and quality childcare. These agenda items might cost a lot more government dollars overall than legal abortion. Perhaps it suits certain powerful minority voices to keep us plugging the reproductive rights dyke, because while we have our fingers over there, we aren’t lobbying over here for these other measures that would potentially fundamentally change the structure of our working lives and therefore of our society.

So I have to ask myself, who benefits from the way things are now? Who benefits if things don’t change? And what might things look like if this so-called feminist – but really just humanist – agenda came into being? Furthermore, if we don’t let ourselves get distracted by the assault on abortion, at least not entirely, and if we do return to the more civil-rights focused aspects of the women’s movement and get these family-friendly policies installed, then I imagine reproductive rights will be strengthened along with them.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. As Walt Whitman said, “I contain multitudes.” We all do.

* For a great overview of Nordic Noir, try this.