mama community

ColorfulMamas had a Winter Holiday Dance Party this past Sunday. And it was NICE. Really. To be surrounded by families of color. To watch Soluna play and giggle and be so excited to be around other babies. We're looking forward to more events to come.

Thank you Mitzi for these great pictures!

This little boy was honestly hitting on Soluna! hehehe. He's 11 months, has a history of liking older women, and went in for a kiss. Check out his hand on Soluna's foot!

Colorful Families

Being one of the first of my friends and my cousins to have a baby has been such a struggle. I've been searching for community and friends with babies who have like interests and politics to connect to on some new level. The ColorfulMamas, listserv/mama's group, has been great. We finally had a Colorful Families BBQ today.

It was a beautiful day with lots of babies, mamas and partners. It was inspiring to talk to mamas who feel like normal 3 months post-partum (it took me way longer to feel normal), who have jumped back to work and are loving it, who are in school getting their JD and hoping to get pregnant again pretty soon, who have made a conscious choice to stay home and take care of their babe as long as possible, etc. They are teachers, writers, administrators, pediatricians, non-profit professionals, organizers. These are women of color, grounded in community and family with an analysis of race, class, gender, etc., who I have a lot to learn from.

It's also nice that Soluna is around a lot of other hapa kids. Everyone seems to be a mix of ethnicities: Mexican/Vietnamese, Mexican/Puerto Rican/African, Corean/French-Algerian, Chinese/Filipino...

Soluna spent the time hanging with her pre-walking homies, Jair and Chencho. She is also very interested in dirt. I was impressed by some of the babies eating skills & their mama menus. I'm going to try to feed Soluna some more stuff. I'm looking forward to many more Colorful get-togethers.

We had our picnic at Roberts Park in Oakland. And I am definitely heading back with the family. There is a great kids playground AND pool.

off topic: "You can't eat your dollar!"

I saw this as an e-mail signature from one of the ColorfulMamas:

After the last tree has been cut down,
And the last river is poisoned,
When the last fish has been caught;
Only then will you find that Money cannot be eaten.
-- Cree Indian philosophy

It made me remember my great-grandparents or, at least, a story my mom always tells me about their life as immigrants in the Mission. Money was always tight and my grandma Bridgette was so excited to see big ripe mangoes at a nearby market, but she didn't buy any. She was surprised that they were $1 each. At the time, and even now, it seemed like a lot of money. But my grandpa Ed told her something like... "You can't eat your dollar!"

This is a conversation that my Mom overheard and retells to us. I guess I've never been stingy or cheap with buying good food. I don't spend a lot on clothes, fancy tech stuff or anything else. But food, food is important. And it so absurd to be trading paper for goods. Money is so weird.

I think the philosophy above says even more about money and food.. About the people, maybe even us, depleting resources faster than we can replenish them. Hoping for more and more dollars, without thought. But what will those dollars do when all resources in the world have been spent?

separation anxiety... diverted, for now.

I didn't get to write in my blog about this earlier but I wanted to share an email I sent to my ColorfulMamas group a few months back:

Hi mamas,

I posted a few months ago about Soluna's separation
anxiety at 2 and a half months. I thought it was a
phase. I pushed back going back to work to be with
her and tested the waters every once in a while to
see if she could stay with my husband or parents for
an hour or two or three. My husband has a great
relationship with her and my parents have been coming
to visit at least once a week since she was born.

Now that she is 5 months, it's still the same. When
I leave her, she is okay for a little while, but then
she cries and cries and cries. It's the kind of cry
where she is gasping for her breath, her face is red
and she has huge tears streaming down her face. She is
loud and the cry seems to scare my parents. She usually
cries herself to sleep in the arms of whoever is caring
for her and whimpers in her sleep. She usually refuses
the bottle. It breaks my heart.

I will be going back to work part-time in about a month.
Any suggestions on how to make this easier on both of us?
Any one with similar experiences?

Aya

Whether it was from Colorful Mamas or from friends, I got all kinds of great advice and/or just words of support about this. Mamas told me their tricks on getting a picky breastfeeder onto the bottle. I heard from mamas who had the exact same problems and how they just had to move forward and deal with it. Mamas shared how they spoke to their babies about how things were going to happen, why they had to go to work and when they would go back and swore that babies somehow understood. Papas told me about how you gotta just let it go. Mamas told me to really appreciate this time since it's just a short phase and before you know it your baby will be jumping out of your arms to play. Parents always say attachment is a good thing.

We made the transition slowly. I encouraged Benji to spend more time with Soluna. I did start trying to explain to her what was happening. I think she's starting to get it. She got more comfortable with Benji weeks ago and...

when I came home on Monday, my parents were smiling & Soluna was smiling and eating peaches. They were having a great time. AND she did her little "happy dance" when she saw me. She kicks her legs a few times and reaches out for me while smiling big! I love it. I'm sure we'll have more days of anxiety in the coming months, but Monday was a really good day. I started part-time work two weeks ago and Soluna has been staying with my parents, my inlaws or my husband. It's usually for a few hours at a time. She has had less and less anxiety and fewer tears.

I better knock on wood and hope that this continues.

blogger mamas of color (re)claiming internet space!

Being that my blog has been alive now for a week, I went googling to find other links to mama of color bloggers. Instead, I found this interesting article, "Mommy & Me: Looking for the Missing Voices in the Burgeoning World of Mom Blogs." Veronica Arreola writes about the exclusivitey of online mama spaces that rarely include women of color or low-income women. She attributes this lack of diversity to the digital divide, little outreach, economic barriers, and the cultural differences between mamas of color and mainstream mamas.

I can see how all of these reasons can lead to lack of participation. During my pregnancy and after Soluna was born, I went searching for books written by mamas of color and found very few. I checked on-line for support sites for mamas of color and found only the Mocha Moms. At the time the site didn't apply to me since I was planning on going back to work full-time. When I went on mainstream mama sites, I didn't always feel like the topics were relevant or spoke to my experiences. Needing to talk to other mamas of color was a necessity and I luckily found a Colorful Mamas group/listserv forming here in the bay. But, we meet on a private listserv or in real spaces rather than throwing out our issues to the internet world. There are topics that come up in our discussions that I don't think any of us would feel comfortable bringing up in spaces where we were on the margins. How do you have frank discussions about how race, class, politics, globalization, immigration, capitalism and culture shape the experiences of mamas and our babes in the unsafe space of the internet?

Hmmm... But I see the need to at least begin talking about these subjects and to connect mamas of color to find mutual support. Where are you at mama of color bloggers?? Maybe we can start our own thing!

If you know any mama of color bloggers, let me know.