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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Postnuptial blues
After the wedding bells stopped ringing, she wanted nothing but sleep.
By Ellie Forgotson
[06/30/99]

The write time
One classmate is on her way to literary fame, anointed by the New Yorker; the other's on her way to the grocery store.
By Tracy Mayor
[06/29/99]

Problem family
When domestic abuse showed up in my neighborhood, I had to decide whether to help or keep my distance.
By Jill Wolfson
[06/28/99]

The tyranny of fashion
As clothing comes to signify less and less about a person, I wonder if I should bother getting dressed at all.
By Erin J. Aubry
[06/25/99]

Column
Dog day
The death of a beloved friend makes plain the beauty of this world.
By Anne Lamott
[06/24/99]

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By Sallie Tisdale

July 1, 1999 | I have from time to time been called a curmudgeonly writer. It hurt my feelings, as it seemed to mean someone full of sour complaint. I like to complain, true enough, but I rarely feel sour for long. I am blessed with many things, few of my own making, and one is a kind of native optimism. I feel a grand passion for the world -- for its beauty and complications and mystery. When I grumble, I grumble as a cheerful observer, a sotto voce mumbling about our textured, wild world. Literature has had many great complainers: critics of the human condition, like Mark Twain, and sharp wits like Dorothy Parker, and sad watchers like E.B. White. I am not their equal, but I am their glad companion.

Sallie Tisdale Sallie Tisdale's column appears on the Mothers Who Think site every other Thursday. + Biography + Archives Love Sallie Tisdale? Read more at BARNES & NOBLE

Here's one grumble: I've never liked the name of this site. It's one of those back-handed compliments like, "She's a great woman writer." In private, I call it Mothers Who Think Because Somebody Has To and Mothers Who Think Because Nobody Else Does and Mothers Who (Duh!) Think. I am, like many women, a mother who thinks, about motherhood and a lot of other things, and nobody needs to tell me that. There's nothing quite like being the continual source of safety, education and civility to a helpless human being to make you think -- twice. Nothing like being that all the time, no matter what else you are and no matter what else you do, being that even (and especially) when you don't want to be it. As they say about the guillotine, it concentrates the mind beautifully.

Sometimes I think you should have to get a license to have children. But in most systems, I wouldn't have qualified. I was 20 years old, poor, unmarried until the fifth month, when I began to show and my father was too embarrassed to be seen with me and so my live-in partner and I decided to do the mature thing. I learned on the job, and made a lot of mistakes, but I planned to be a mother and have largely been glad I was. When my second husband and I decided to adopt, we were turned down by a couple of agencies because I'd been divorced and we weren't Christians. (A few years later, the worker from the agency that accepted us said we'd shown them that you "didn't have to be a Christian to be good adoptive parents." She meant it as a compliment.) Some of the worst parents I've seen are middle-aged, prosperous professionals. One of the best parents I know right now is a 30-year-old single father living in a tiny house. Perhaps the best marker of who should be a parent is how much one is willing to pay: not in money, but in all the other ways. How much time, leisure, sleep and just plain stuff are you willing to do without in order to give children what they really need? Are you willing to give up a lot more than you imagine you must? Give up, as it were, a whole lot of players to be named later?

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