Nerds and Non-parents

Realizing I’d promised to write about family-hood and other domestic pursuits since returning from my year of imposed solitude, I’d like to natter on a bit about step-mother-hood if I might.  Well, if you’re still reading, I suppose that answers that. If not, well, I already have a five-year-old, so I've learned not to cater to toddlers.

I do find myself bombarde by mom-ness these days.  It's not what you think though. Actually, it started before I even got back to 'Merica. All over the social medias I'm seeing mom-ness. Everyone who can is making babies, and throwing up pictures. All the time the talk is about the babies. For the most part I'm still pretty well conditioned to turn and run the other way when I see stuff like this. Anyone who knows me knows my feelings about having actual babies, and while I don't believe I've ever come right out and said it, my earlier post, Mountains to Climb, is a pretty good introduction to my ambivalence about the joys of parenthood. Nevertheless, I tried to use the baby frenzy as a sort of jumping off point for my imminent leap into step-parenthood.  This, along with a decided bias on the part of most of my female colleagues at work back in Astana towards The Awesomeness-and-Necessity-of-Being-a-Mom even had me looking forward, at times, to coming back to a ready-made family.

I find I’m feeling a bit left out since coming back, though.  The truth is, I’d envisioned being a step-mother as something quite rewarding—trying, at times, to say the least, but the ability to shape a young mind, to share some of the things I’d loved as a kid, to watch as a child made newer and bigger discoveries—however I’ve found it to be rather, well, not.   I suppose I imagined that in coming back to a country so much more forward thinking in terms of women and children and families, I’d feel this great influx of solidarity and warm fuzzies and feelings over my choice to be a parent. Yes, just a stepmom, but still, it was a choice I could’ve said no to.  Could’ve happily gone my own way, not got married, moved on in my happily kid-free state. So many parentless kids in the world, so many progenitors-but-not-parents, and I chose to be a parent to a kid I didn’t even make!

Let me go back just a little bit. In Kazakhstan—on a side note, I’ve also often come to wonder if I’ll still be using that phrase 50 years from now, and if people will still be asking where that is and if it’s actually a country—all women are mothers, even if they don’t know it yet. I’m not making it up! I have friends, actual real friends, being reminded every day that having kids is the thing they should and will be doing.  Doctors. Loan agents. Bosses. Relatives. Having kids is just a thing women do over there. It’s not glorified; there is no cult of motherhood there. Women just get to a certain age, have a few kids, move on.

Thus my sense of being left out—cue flashbacks to middle school and being shunned by the popular kids because I didn’t have the right color backpack (or whatever it is I was being shunned for at any given moment [I was usually reading something so didn’t really stop to find out what it is I was being shunned about])—when I came back to the land of free choice and freedom to not reproduce and all those other things women have come to take for granted back here in ‘Merica.  Now that women are so free, all the time, to do and not do things, motherhood has become this cult, and only the great sacrifice will get you in.  No buying membership to this club, no, if you didn't push it out, they will be pushing you out, and don't let the door hit you.

Every once in a while someone who doesn’t know me sees me with the husband and stepkiddo and makes the mistake of referring to me as his mother, and I immediately find myself looking around, waiting to be found out, revealed for the fake mom I really am. For someone who already has social anxiety, it’s really a stressful situation. Doesn’t matter how many meals I cook, how many lifeskills I impart, how many tantrums I successfully ignore—because every good fake mother knows that giving in and giving the attention said tantrum-creator wants is just bad fake parenting—I’m still not a real mom. I don’t get to have the real mom feelings. Don’t get to have the real mom credit.

Well, yes of course he has a real mom (this is hypothetical me, answering the totally real and next question of hypothetical you), because of course you’re going to ask that the minute I start talking about wanting to take real mom credit for any feelings or doings I do while being the fake mom. And that’s what I’m saying. I was sold a lemon. Got talked into this great scheme called parenthood, only to find out I’m not qualified anyway. People keep asking when I’m going to have one of my own. I say I’ve already got one (usually at this point I’m walking away because I don’t want to get rejected from the mom club again), when I stick around to hear the answer it usually revolves around the strange notion that I need to have a baby, will want it even; raising a kid, apparently, is not the same thing as being a parent.

But at least I’ve had one question answered. I’d always tried to fathom why it is that the nuclear family is such an important things in good old OOSA, why everyone’s always scrambling to determine paternity, why women always have to have the kid, and don’t get to opt out through crazy things like abortions or birth control or whatever. Because anything but a birth parent isn’t really a parent here. Must be one of those laws they never talk about. You’re not a card-carrying parent unless you made it, then decided to take care of it. For all you librarians and sundry computer nerds, the Boolean operator you’re looking for is AND. No ORs need apply. Have we any NOTS? Don’t worry, just like the kids, you’ll be left out. Probably forgotten.

Oh yeah, you're probably wondering about the "Nerds" in the title. Nerds, being left out, literal definitions of things. You figure it out.

Rites of Spring

Spring has certainly done whatever is the equivalent of springing in Russian/Kazakh here in Astana.  After the rivers of water flowing down the streets we're starting to see signs of real life here, especially in the form of actual people-shaped people, rather than amorphous blobs of winter coat.  This past weekend marked the official beginning of spring, and with it the beginning of the New Year in Kazakh culture.  This, naturally, means that all the cultural objects that were put in the attic for winter have been brought back out for the enjoyment and edification of the populace.

Tulips, culturally relevant, I suppose, for the fact that the Netherlands is one of the few countries in the Western world not currently trying to exploit Kazakhstan for some reason, decorate every building and street-corner.  And horses, so important to the historic and culinary identity of Kazakhstan—sensitively explained to us by the American and British news media—are also everywhere.  Life-size statues of them proudly prance at all the prominent intersections, mocking drivers with their apparent speed in the face of the ridiculous traffic jams that constantly ensue when motorists become convinced that if two lanes of traffic are good, three must be better, even is only room for two lanes (a remnant of the Soviet era, I suppose, when Russia proved that anything is possible if you're willing to let enough people starve to accomplish it [a noble principle, indeed]).

Yurts abound, especially on the aptly-named Green Avenue, which connects the president's palace—erm, residence—on one end with KhanShatyr, the great tent-shaped center of shopping and all things circular, and features numerous fountains, gardens, and needlessly placed steps throughout its length.  These yurts show how life used to be on the steppe (perhaps even where we're sitting right now [though not, I gather, in the winter—those nomads really knew what they were doing with the whole nomadic lifestyle thing]) and there are also lots of (horse-oriented) statues that illustrate the fun games the Kazakh nomads used to play for spring (naturally, on horseback).  Walking among all this festivity really made me appreciate how public funds can really beautify a city without relying on private investment.  Just goes to show you can do anything when you've been doing it for twenty years without asking anyone otherwise, I suppose.

It's great to see all this culture coming back out of storage, but I can't help but think of it in terms of those dioramas of Native American longhouses we used to make back in grade school.  For a couple months a year we learned all about the people that used to make their homes where our desks were now sitting, and were all very fascinated by it and so very sad that all that was left of those once-thriving cultures were casinos, cheap cigarettes, and tax-free gasoline.  And then we moved on to the Titanic and found something new to be fascinated by and sad about.  But the tribal displays, festivals, and cultural celebrations live on, and a few times a year (maybe more out west, where the reservations were more defined [and more resonant of genocide and cultural collectivization] than back east) you can go see the longhouses (or tipis), and colorful dress, and interesting religious practices, of the cultures that would probably still exist if they hadn't been forcibly replaced by something far more staid and, well, American.  And because you're a good open-minded American you'd be very interested and fascinated, however guiltily (part of being a good, open-minded American), at least until the next Starbucks came round the corner on your way back to civilization.

Personally, I haven't gone to see the yurts yet.  They're just a little too educational for me.  There aren't any little shops to visit (love a little shop), no way to carry home a souvenir of your cultural experience. That's where these Kazakh people are still making up ground, I suppose.  But when you don't have the responsibility of governing the land your people once called home, like these Kazakhs are now saddled with, now the Soviets have given up (didn't have that good old American fortitude to keep up with the forcible occupation gig for the long haul), I suppose you have more time for creating kitsch and clutter, more time for remembering without the day-to-day trials of actually living a culture.

And, not to be upstaged by horses and yurts, even the Bayterek's dolled up for the occasion.  Every night for a week you can drop by and see a great light show (it's on loop, it can go all night), with music to boot!  Just don't spend all your time looking up if you decide to walk around: the ground's a warren of cables sending power to all the light tower installations (tourists be wary!).

Bayterek, with laser-light entourage.

Great shot of the color change, except for the unfortunately-placed streetlights.