Ode to My Badger Mother
LatestWhen I first read about “Tiger Mother” Amy Chua and the pressure she put on her offspring, I felt a glimmer of recognition. Like Chua, my mother was strict with me, enrolling me in piano lessons at age 6, making sure I practiced, limiting the amount of time I spent around other miscreants in our tiny northwestern Wisconsin town, and expecting that I got A’s in every class.
In my house, there were no PG-rated movies without prior parental approval, no PG-13 movies until I was at least 13. No ear piercing until 7th grade. No sitcom watching. PBS nature show watching abounded (which is funny, as most PBS nature shows are mostly animals fucking and eating each other, which is way more raw and damaging for a child than watching Zach Morris sass his teachers, but I digress), as did encyclopedia reading.
As a child, I remember thinking that what she and my father were expecting of me wasn’t fair, that they weren’t allowing me to be a typical kid. My pink and purple pastel diary was fraught with hand ringing expressed in blocky 4th grade girl script and ALL CAPS complaints about not being allowed to drive to Rice Lake with Stephanie and her mom and spend the afternoon just bumming around in the mall. We didn’t have cable, so I didn’t know anything about the shows kids were watching. We only listened to NPR in our house and so all I knew of pop music, I learned on the bus ride to and from school. In retrospect, though, they were effectively giving me a childhood by sheltering me from the constant barrage of pop culture noise that awaits media-exposed American. Instead of watching crap TV, I spent hours playing outside and reading books. Instead of dating, I spent hours playing music- singing, playing piano, practicing flute (aside: practicing flute ended up being a huge dating asset later in life! Double tonguing! Whoo!) (Second aside: Mom, if you’re reading this, that was a joke.). Instead of playing video games, I learned how to sew and crochet and bake and chop wood, and thus when the zombie apocalypse comes, I’ll be able to mend and bake my way out.