MAMA: Adventures in Martial Arts and Motherhood

Recently one of my Facebook friends posted this article from PBS.org, entitled "Raising a Powerful Girl":  http://www.pbs.org/parents/raisinggirls/powerful/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Fanpage&utm_campaign=PBS+Parents   Of course I was interested. I have a young daughter. I couldn't wait to learn from the "experts" about how to make her grow up to be confident, strong and successful. (Girls rule, boys drool!) I read it immediately. What a disappointment. Not that it didn't have plenty of good ideas for how to raise your child. But for a panel of experts they sure didn't have anything unique to say. Let her make her own choices? Encourage her to join a team? Tell her you love her even if she is fat? Really? Is this the best you could come up with. Some cliched parenting mantras I could have learned from a pamphlet at the OBGyn? Why won't people just say it? Girls  are  different from boys. Maya wanted to play princess long before she...

Today in my BJJ class we did the same drill for 45 minutes. Literally. And by literally I do not mean what teenagers say when they really mean "a lot", as in my feet are literally killing me. (Um no, unless your toes are currently pointing a gun at you, they are not.) I mean that our teacher showed us the move (which we have been working on all month) and then told us to partner up and go. Forty five minutes later, class ended. I can say, with absolute certainty, that I am now fairly good at the Toreando guard pass. One of the things I like about this drills class is that we work on the same few moves for an entire month. This is good for my jiu-jitsu self esteem, which is like a small child and needs constant coddling. By mid month I can perform the drill without any help and by the end of the month I am almost competent. Sometimes I even manage to do the moves we learn in drills while rolling at full speed. Hurrah! But the class was never quite like this. Repetition i...

New Yorkers, especially those of us who have lived here forever, have a way of being alone in a crowd of people. This skill is a necessary one when the woman next to you on the bus starts preaching about Jesus at top volume (happened to me yesterday) or when you are pushing your way through Times Square. (I don't go there.) This skill may be why people from other places think us city folk are so rude. It's not that we don't like you. We just want to be left alone. Yesterday I was forced to spend four hours in the level of hell known as the DMV.(I figure if I can handle a triangle choke I can pass a driving test in New York City. However,  I am willing to accept that I might be wrong.) Just my luck, it seemed that everyone in Brooklyn also had business there. There is a special kind of incompetence that exists at the DMV. First I waited in a line outside the permit testing room. This was the line for the line inside the room. There was a guy whose entire job was to tel...

The martial arts road is long. You start off with the best of intentions. You have good shoes, a comfortable backpack and a lot of snacks. You think you have thought of everything. A few good friends know where you are headed, just in case. You set off, excited, envisioning the Emerald City that is at the end. (You will lose weight. You will learn to defend yourself. You will kick everyone's ass!) Somewhere along the journey unexpected things begin to pop up. You trip over a rock and injure your foot. You are not progressing as fast as you had hoped. You get bored with the scenery, the same damn trees over and over again. But other things happen too. You start to learn more about these strangers you are traveling with. You survive a particularly long night together. You help each other over obstacles in the road. You start to notice subtleties in the landscape that weren't there before. You start to enjoy the tiredness in your feet. Suddenly, it does not matter so much w...

Yesterday I had one of those "bad mommy" moments. Maya and I were walking Chloe (our 2 year old beagle/pointer mutt) back from the park. It was a longer walk than normal, a choice that had been made by Maya's insistence to keep doing "one more block". About halfway home she announced that she had to use the bathroom. (Maya, not Chloe who had already peed on two trees and someone's stoop) We were on Bedford Ave, surrounded by hipsters with coffee, overpriced boutiques and trendy cafes. I had a preschooler and a rowdy dog. This was not the ideal scenario for a bathroom break. So, rather than tie Chloe to a parking meter and ask someone if we could use their restroom, I told Maya to just keep walking, hoping we would make it home in time. We didn't. With each block she grew more and more insistent. "Mommy I need to go pee. Mommy I need to GO PEE! Mommy I need to go pee RIGHT NOW!" Maya never has accidents anymore, she hasn't for at least a y...

A few months ago a woman came into our dojo who was a little odd. She seemed very skittish, eyes darting left and right, hands fidgety as if she was unsure where to put them. She was interested in trying a class but had a few questions. I gave the usual explanations of prices and classes she could take. She listened, nodded, glanced around nervously. There were about 10 kids on the floor at the time, enthusiastically hitting pads. "Is there contact?" I explained that there was only contact in the sparring classes, which she was not required to attend. "I notice everyone is barefoot. I have a problem with my foot that makes being barefoot very difficult. Would it be ok if I wore shoes?" I said that normally we did not allow any shoes on the floor, however if it was a medical problem we could probably allow some kind of special pair so long as she didn't wear them outside also. She nibbled on a fingernail. I could tell she was trying to come up with more ques...

In general I try to stay away from the abortion discussion. "When does life begin" is one of those issues that there is no point debating, people believe what they believe and are not budging an inch. So I try to concern myself only when it effects me, my body, my rights. Or those of my daughter. I recently read an article on the NY Times website entitled " Ruling on Contraception Draws Battle Lines at Catholic Colleges." (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/health/policy/law-fuels-contraception-controversy-on-catholic-campuses.html?_r=1) Basically, many Catholic college health services are refusing to cover or prescribe birth control, despite laws requiring them to do so, claiming it is against their religious beliefs.  Students at these colleges who are seeking birth control have to pay for it themselves. And if they can't afford it? Go elsewhere. Or don't use it.  Lets pause for a moment and consider this. Yes it is a Catholic college. But these are you...