One of the best times of my life was the birth of my younger son and the few hours right after. The birth was so easy compared to my first son’s birth. I didn’t consciously push; my body just surged twice and his head came out into my mother’s waiting hands, then my body surged again and the rest of him came out into my midwife Martine’s hands. After my son and I were cleaned up and tucked into bed, Martine had to fill out paperwork and monitor me, so my mother made coffee and I could hear the two of them talking and laughing in the living room while I snuggled in with my new baby. It was the safest I’ve ever felt, surrounded by the love and strength of these two smart women, my mother and Martine the healer.

At the prenatal care visit right before I gave birth, Martine and my mom and I had been talking about maternal mortality rates in Haiti, and how there was a fledgling initiative to save women’s lives by giving them two piece of string (to tie off the cord) and a clean razor (to cut the cord). Those two small things were preventing mothers and babies in Haiti from getting sepsis and dying. Think about how simple those things are–string and a razor–and how heartbreaking it is that mothers were dying because they didn’t have them. I was so, so grateful to be born where I was so that I not only had access to clean supplies and a safe birthing place, but a knowledgeable midwife who was dedicated to keeping my baby and me safe and healthy. Why shouldn’t every woman have that?

Today my ex-husband and I threw a birthday party for the baby I had that day, who turned 7 on Thursday. I made the cake he wanted and he had friends over to play Wii and act like 7-year-olds. I thought about the day he was born, and I thought about all the women who, for lack of clean supplies or safety, aren’t alive to see their children turn 7.

I won’t be with my children on Mothers’ Day tomorrow–their father and I have switched Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day this year because of vacation schedules. But there are so many mothers who won’t be with their children tomorrow because they died of preventable causes. And 1,000 mothers will die tomorrow, on Mothers’ Day.

That’s why I support the No Mothers Day campaign for Every Mother Counts. I’ll be observing 90 seconds of silence with my own mother tomorrow for all the moms who aren’t with their children anymore. Watch the video to see what you can do:

Magda Pecsenye writes about parenting at AskMoxie.org and about co-parenting after divorce with her ex-husband at When The Flames Go Up.

Follow her on Twitter at @AskMoxie and join the AskMoxie Facebook page.

In honor of Mothers’ Day, I thought I’d highlight some of the tv moms that have caught my attention, either because they’re great or because they have serious problems. Modeling? Schadenfreude? Whatever the reason, I love to watch these women, and they make me think about what I really want to be doing with my own kids.

A few minutes ago, President Obama affirmed his support for same-sex marriage.

It’s about time.

When he campaigned in 2008, what I took out of his campaign was that he was going to be a President who supported equal rights for all. Once he was in office and was not willing to push for same-sex marriage, I felt disappointed and betrayed, if only by my own interpretation of what I thought he’d been saying.

Equal marriage rights is a topic I feel passionately about. As a straight woman who has been married and divorced, I cannot imagine why my rights are more important than my friends’ rights are. I cannot imagine how my friends’ marriages are more threatening to anyone than my divorce is. I just can’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt children by denying their parents the same rights other kids’ parents have, or why anyone would want to hurt parents by denying their children the same rights other parents’ children have.

I am so thankful that President Obama has done the right thing, even if it took four years. Thank you to his children for talking to him about it, and for his constituents for pushing him on it, and to him for being open to new information and compassion.

Thank you.

Magda Pecsenye writes about parenting at AskMoxie.org and about co-parenting after divorce with her ex-husband at When The Flames Go Up.

Follow her on Twitter at @AskMoxie and join the AskMoxie Facebook page.

So after I wrote the post right below this about teens drinking hand sanitizer, HLN (a cable news channel) was looking for a mom blogger to talk about it on Prime Time with Vinnie Politan. And I got to Skype in and be on a panel with a doctor and an expert in teen addiction talking about drinking hand sanitizer. It was a great experience and I got to make my second point (that teens used to be limited only to our own bad ideas but now they have a whole internet full of bad ideas to try), but did not get to make my main point, which is “Why would you drink something that tastes that bad???”

I texted my mother to tell her I was going to be on with Vinnie Politan talking about it, and she replied that the first thing she thought when she saw the hand sanitizer story was, “Do we give them so much stuff that tastes awful that they don’t even MIND the taste?!” Ironic, as she used to give me carob when I was a kid.

Anyway, the truly funny thing about being on the Vinnie Politan show was that I had scheduled (weeks ago) a makeup party at my house to start 10 minutes after I was off the air with Vinnie and the doctor and the addiction expert. So Tiffany my makeup artist (one of my best friends from high school) came early and did a full face on me before I went on Skype, including a Smoky Eye. It was a lot like when she used to do my makeup for high school theater productions, only I was supposed to look like myself, not the Bride of Frankenstein or a Muppet. (Tiffany went on to be a model and actress and then sales director for Mary Kay, and I went on to the glamorous world of educational software and mom blogging. Being friends with her again is one of the best things about having moved back to the Midwest.)

Then I Skyped in and talked to Vinnie, and then Tiffany and I poured wine and the party guests came and we all got Smoky Eyes and talked about sex and online dating and cheese.

The next morning I had a Smoky Eye-slash-wine-slash-Skype hangover, renewed initiative never to do online dating, a dishwasher full of wine glasses, and leftover cheese from the cheese plate (one hard, one soft, one goat).

I love throwing parties (except for that long 20 minutes right before people are supposed to start arriving in which I wonder if anyone will really come because why would anyone actually come to my party because it’s just me?), but my favorite part of the morning after the party is the leftover cheese. I know this may be odd, but I really do love waking up and opening the refrigerator and seeing my little cheese stubs all saran-wrapped and ready for me to turn them into something decadent. This is what I did on Thursday morning:

I put some of this delicious, sweet, shade-gown Haitian fair-trade Singing Rooster Mountain Bleu coffee into my coffee maker and started frothing milk.

Then I took two eggs and cracked them into a mug and added a little cold water and some Baleine sea salt and stirred them up with a fork, while I was heating a saute pan with a little butter in it. I poured the eggs in and let them start to set, and cut off chunks of leftover chevre (soft white goat cheese) and dropped them into the eggs as I scrambled them. I turned off the heat before the eggs were set so they’d be more of a French scrambled omelet than an American scramble, put them on a plate, and hit them with some ground black pepper.

The coffee plus the eggs with chevre = perfection. I was happy the rest of the day, and more productive, and not even remotely tempted to try hand sanitizer. And that made me realize that my mom was right: If we can just get these kids used to delicious coffee and breakfasts made with care, they might not think ingesting non-potable, unpalatable substances is reasonable.

Magda Pecsenye write about parenting at AskMoxie.org and about co-parenting after divorce with her ex-husband at When The Flames Go Up.

Follow her on Twitter at @AskMoxie and join the AskMoxie Facebook page.

What in the Sam Hill is wrong with kids today?

I turn on the Today Show this morning innocently enough, and discover that teenagers are being admitted to the hospital with alcohol poisoning because they are drinking hand sanitizer.

Hand.

Sanitizer.

Back in my day, being admitted to the hospital for alcohol poisoning was something that didn’t usually happen until you hit parties at college, but even if you started drinking way earlier than college you at least had the sense to drink potable alcohol, like Everclear or Zima or Bartles & James wine coolers.

Hand sanitizer. It’s positively Darwinian.

I understand that their little adolescent brains are going haywire and cause and effect doesn’t lay itself out the same way for them, which is probably why most high schools don’t require any kind of statistics class. (Reliable? Yes. Valid? No.) But holy hell, drinking hand sanitizer is just like drinking rubbing alcohol, which every three-year-old can tell you not to do.

Years and years ago I met someone involved in product research for Procter & Gamble, who told me that they’d noticed some strange sales patterns for Vicks Vap O Rub in a small town among the 16-21-year-old demographic. They investigated, and it turned out that the teenagers were using the Vicks as a sexual lubricant.

I’m gonna let that sink in for a few seconds.

This was not some special cooling lotion or a Hall’s bj, this was actual Vicks Vap O Rub clinging to your delicate parts, soaking into your mucus membranes, not easily washed off and lingering for hours and hours. With menthol. And these teens were buying it in enough volume that corporate researchers noticed it.

I know some of you who didn’t like my piece about American parents not being horrible are going to say that probably the children of Tiger parents and les enfants francaises don’t do things like drink hand sanitizer. This may be true. However, Tiger parents don’t leave their offspring alone long enough to access the hand sanitizer, and the French kids are getting crocked on actual wine with dinner from the age of 14 and don’t need hand sanitizer. Plus, the Vicks story was from another country, so it can’t be that only American kids have stellarly poor judgement.

My grandfather used to tell my mother “Keep your head with you” when she left the house, and she used to say that to me. Out of habit, I say it to my own kids, but now I’m beginning to worry that I’m going to have to explicitly state ALL the things they shouldn’t do when they go out as teens: “Keep your head with you, keep your hands to yourself unless specifically asked, don’t drink poison,  don’t use poison as a sexual lubricant, don’t text and drive, don’t text dirty pictures of yourself with your head in the shot, don’t set things on fire, etc.”

We used to only do the stupid things we could think up, but now we have an entire internet’s-worth of harebrained teenage schemes to choose from.

How will our species survive?

Magda Pecsenye write about parenting at AskMoxie.org and about co-parenting after divorce with her ex-husband at When The Flames Go Up.

Follow her on Twitter at @AskMoxie and join the AskMoxie Facebook page.

Jesus died for our sins. Not to give us a free pass, not so we can keep being assholes on purpose, but so that the bad things we do don’t rule us. There is more to each and every one of us than our sins, and Jesus came and lived on earth and then died a super-painful death to pay the price for our sins so we could be worth who we really are.

This I’ve known for years. It almost makes Easter anticlimactic. It feels like blasphemy to type it, but if paying the price for our sins is the whole point–if that’s what allows for grace–then why does Easter matter anyway?

For the past few months I’ve been nearly obsessed with the Drake/Rihanna song “Take Care.” (I know other people like the Florence and the Machine version better, but there’s something bleak and spare about the Drake version that sucks me in.) It just won’t leave my head, and I find myself singing it at all odd times, like this morning. The Drake line in the song that keeps hitting me hardest is the first part of the first verse:

Today is Good Friday. It’s the most holy day for Christians (arguably–some consider Easter holier, but I think they’re equal opposites).

I’m not with my kids this year on Good Friday, because of a work trip, but every year I struggle with what to tell them about this day.

We don’t have any special meals or activities on this day. No trees or chocolate eggs (apparently it never made any sense to do any Pagan celebration tie-ins with Good Friday). And it’s really hard to explain to kids why we call the day something horrible happened “Good Friday.”

I got the chance this morning to explain Good Friday to my friend’s daughter, who has no knowledge of Christian history or lore. When I forced myself to step back and think of how it would make sense as a narrative but also to explain the cultural significance and points of mystery and significance to her, I realized that I have been spending way too much time wanting my kids to like Easter. As if their faith or knowledge depended on their being snookered in by the chocolate bunnies. I thought I’d been going in with the clear understanding that I’m responsible for their religious education, but not their faith, which is something they can only share with God. I can encourage it and answer questions and share my own experiences, but at the end of the day liking Christian holidays is neither necessary nor sufficient for faith.

But I’d tricked myself into thinking my children’s faith was something I had control over.

It took me a long time to understand what people meant when they talking about the discipline of faith. I understood that it meant work. And then I understood that sometimes that work consisted solely of showing up every day. But it took me longer to understand that part of the discipline is cultivating the ability to be wrong, again and again, to slide off the path and yet keep turning back to God instead of hiding in shame. Being wrong repeatedly builds up muscles I didn’t know I had, but it gets easier the more I admit it.

I’m sure there’s some larger analogy, a pretty bow, to draw around my discovery of my own stupidity this morning and that it happened on Good Friday but it centered around a misappropriation of Easter. I don’t want it, though. I’m going to take it for what it is, and rethink how I approach Easter with my boys in two days, and then keep trying.

May this weekend be meaningful for you whether you’re celebrating a holiday or not.

Magda Pecsenye write about parenting at AskMoxie.org and about co-parenting after divorce with her ex-husband at When The Flames Go Up.

Follow her on Twitter at @AskMoxie and join the AskMoxie Facebook page.

It seems like the latest sport is bashing American parents, and anyone with a theory about how we’re Doing It All Wrong seems to be able to get a book deal these days. (It reminds me of the internet back in 2002, frankly.) And then the media latches onto it and takes it seriously, and we start worrying about every move we’re making–what time our kids go to bed, if we breastfeed or don’t and how long and how we quit and where we do it, whether we drink a glass of wine in the same room with our kids or a different room. Pretty much anyone other than Americans are better than we are–people with animal characteristics, people from other countries, anyone else but us.

Well, I call horseshit.

If you are a white mother of white kids, like I am, you have probably been watching as the Trayvon Martin murder story unfolds with a sick feeling in your stomach. Because a black boy was stalked and murdered by an adult with a history of stalking other black boys and no one in law enforcement seems to care. But also because you know that your children could end up being part of a system that allows this to happen.

I’m not suggesting that any of our children are going to be racist predators like George Zimmerman. But there were an awful lot of systematic things that allowed Zimmerman to murder a child in cold blood that shouldn’t have happened–a community unwilling to talk productively about race, fear on all sides, complacency (maybe even complicity) of law enforcement, inaction by people who witnessed Zimmerman’s verbal and written rants about black people (especially boys). If that system had been healthy and functioning, Zimmerman wouldn’t have been given de facto permission to murder a child.

By doing nothing, and allowing things to go along as they were, white people (yes, us) allowed hatred to be the norm in that community. If a few people had spoken up and tried to be thoughtful about community relations years and months ago, Trayvon Martin might not have been killed. By not taking responsibility, we allowed ourselves to be part of that system, because every time we didn’t act or speak, we said it was ok for it to continue. Implied consent.

I rescind my consent.

I am not sure it’s possible for anyone to be truly non-racist. But we can work on it, every day. And we owe it to our children to help them rescind their own consent to be part of a racist system. It is not perfect, and we can’t fix things (indeed, it is presumptuous to think that we can). But we work toward understanding. It hurts sometimes. (A lot, sometimes.) But we have to do it. This is what I am trying to do:

1. Notice. Wherever you are, notice whether there are people of different races and ethnicities around you, or if everyone in the room is white. If everyone in the room is white, think and talk about why that might be. Sometimes it’s natural (a family reunion, a visit to a small town with only one ethnicity of people). Sometimes it’s not. Is something preventing people who are not white from being where you are? What could that be? Is it something we could help? Even if it’s “natural,” why does it happen? Talk about it with your kids.

2. Speak up. It is horrifying the things white people say to other white people when no one of color is around. Maybe you’ve let some comments go by because you didn’t want to “start something” in front of your kids. But your kids need you to teach them what’s right, so in front of your kids is when you need to speak up most. Some racist remarks are made out of ignorance, some out of malice. Treat each remark in the spirit in which it’s intended, and teach before fighting. But speak up, so your children know what’s important and what’s right. Then, later, talk about what happened and what you said.

3. Ask questions. Exclusion is not always conscious, so ask questions and invite conversation in places and groups that are not actively inclusive. Give people a chance to think about the question, “Is there something we’re doing that makes people feel unwelcome that we could be doing differently?” If a group isn’t willing to explore, you may need to find other places to be. But chances are, people just haven’t thought about it and might need your supportive help to change. Then, talk about it with your kids.

4. Shut up. Everybody’s racist, but some people suffer the effects of racism consistently. Most white people do not, whether we realize it or not. Every story isn’t about you. Being quiet and listening to other people’s experience will never hurt you. Then, talk about what you heard with your kids.

Children make sense out of the world they experience on their own, but what they deduce may not be what you want them to know. Talking about your values is key to raising people of honor. White people can’t “fix” racism, but it’s everyone’s responsibility, and none of us can do it alone.

Let us all have the courage to say and do what needs to be said and done.

(This post was heavily influenced by the ideas in the “Why White Parents Don’t Talk About Race” chapter of the book NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, and by the broken windows theory of criminology of Dr. James Q. Wilson.)

Magda Pecsenye write about parenting at AskMoxie.org and about co-parenting after divorce with her ex-husband at When The Flames Go Up.

Follow her on Twitter at @AskMoxie and join the AskMoxie Facebook page.

Here’s my confession: I watch Days of Our Lives.

I started watching it when I was in junior high, and watched on and off for years. But when I moved to Mexico it was out of my reach, and then when I was an at-home mom of little kids I tried not to watch adult tv in front of them, and then I was a single working mom who left the house at 7:30 am and got home at 7 pm in time to start dinner and the evening routine and then do my freelance work once the kids were in bed. It never crossed my mind.

But when I moved to Michigan and started working from home, suddenly I had time and space and energy in my life. A friend mentioned DOOL one day, and I thought it would be fun to check it out, so I tuned in on my lunch hour. When I heard the opening music, I teared up, and as soon as I saw John Black giving Marlena his best Blue Steel, I was hooked again.

I cannot express the joy watching this show again has given me. When I’m home, I watch on my lunch break. When I’m not home, the episodes record on my DVR and I get the delicious pleasure of watching a few days’ worth at a time when I return. I get to watch every moment of melodrama, intrigue, backstabbing, passion, discovery, espionage, and bone-headed stupidity.

Yes, I watch it for the stupidity. I can’t be the only one who sometimes thinks she hasn’t played the hand she was dealt as well as she could have. I mean, single mom, divorced, back in school, struggling to get back into shape after allowing a perfectly good body to lie fallow for years, etc. So it’s refreshing to realize that I may not have made all the best decisions in my life, but at least I’m doing better than the citizens of Salem, collectively and individually.

To wit:

I have never tried to kill the father of my children, and to my knowledge, he’s never attempted to kill me

Nor have the children or any of our parents attempted to kill either of us. I think it’s pretty normal while going through a divorce to wish that your child’s other parent would just disappear. In Salem, though, people put on black leather gloves and buy handguns and actually attempt murder. Or kidnapping. Or to make the other person go insane. My ex and I just had a lot of fights by text.
Photo credit: stock.xchng

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So, when I look around my messy house and realize I’ve forgotten to send in the field trip permission slip and I’m swamped with client emails and I still have 200 pages of reading on corporate strategy to do before I go to sleep and I ate too many cookies, I know it could always be worse.

I could be married to Stefano DiMera.

Moxie Madness 2012: Misery Poker Tournament of Champions is open! Voting starts Thursday, March 15 and the finals are April 2. Download your brackets and make your picks, then vote early and often.

Magda Pecsenye write about parenting at AskMoxie.org and about co-parenting after divorce with her ex-husband at When The Flames Go Up.

Follow her on Twitter at @AskMoxie and join the AskMoxie Facebook group.