All the bad things that could happen
Maternal worry as coping strategy. Also: 'marriage rage,' returning the 'consequentiality to sex,' and more in the weekend roundup.
The other day, I was over-caffeinated and reading the news when I came across a story about the danger of beach holes—as in, holes that kids dig at the beach. It was an article from Slate about “rare but harrowing instances” of children being either injured or killed by this ubiquitous and innocuous-seeming phenomena.
“Sand holes—even relatively small ones—pose a very real threat to children who climb inside them,” the piece read.
I quickly posted a screenshot of the article to Instagram Stories with a little note about how my “parental (maternal?) brain catalogs stories about potential injury and death (inhaling popcorn into the lungs, pulling a pot of boiling water off the stove, etc etc) and now *beach holes*?!?!”
About twenty seconds after posting, I deleted it.
That phrase “potential injury and death” had kept echoing in my brain. It triggered thoughts of all the mothers, and parents, some 7,000 miles away in Gaza whose worries of “injury and death” are not a lengthy list of far-fetched hypotheticals. It is immediate and real. They aren’t reading about it in the news, they are watching it unfold in front of their eyes.
I thought of Biden casually holding an ice cream cone the other day and telling reporters that he sure hoped for a ceasefire soon. That was days before Israeli troops massacred over 100 Palestinians who were trying to get food from a humanitarian convoy. “They went to retrieve aid. They returned instead with the dead and the food they desperately wanted for their families now covered in their blood,” reports PBS.
There is plenty I could say about how our lens of focus and care widens and collapses in this way, and how it allows us to both function and avoid. For now, though, I’ll leave you with a broad, sweeping question that I’m asking myself: How does my far-fetched catalog of potential threats act as an outlet for the helplessness I feel to control the very real horrors of the world?
To the links…
and ask if “mom rage” is actually “marriage rage.”Relatedly(!), conservatives want to return the “consequentiality to sex.”
Go read this fantastic essay by Anna Holmes on her obsessive virtual relationship with a man who won’t meet her in real life. Toward the end, there’s a quote from one of Holmes’ friends that I think applies to so many arms-length relationships, including those IRL: “Of course you still think about him. It was a mind trick. You never knew him.”
Jessica Bennett’s profile of Sophia Amoruso unpacks her “girlboss” legacy, as well as a culture that delights in knocking women off pedestals.
Two books that are going straight to the front of my reading list:
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