And now, another word from my mother.

There used to be a television program "Queen for the Day" or was it "Queen for a Day."  My recollection is they paraded out an overweight housewive on daytime TV and put a fucking crown on her head, like Miss America, gave her flowers and prizes which consisted of washing machines and regriferators, or was is mixers and blenders? The woman cried.  She was so grateful someone appreciated the fact that her life was an endless service nightmare and in return, she got one fantastic day in the fantasy world of daytime TV to acknowledge the fact that she was trapped in a role in which she could never explore her creativity except as it related to cake decorating and curtain making. "The best day of her life," except of course perhaps her wedding day. Not the day of the birth of her children, since she had been robbed, via anesthesia of experiencing herself in perhaps, the most creative, powerful and simultaneously humbling moment of her life.  Oy, the fifties. Oy the 00's.

A brief word about my mother. She is currently a doctoral student in a program called "Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology" at the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute in California. This branch of psychology concentrates on how our earliest life experiences, including those in the womb and during birth, affect our lives. Pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood and women's health, particularly as they relate to the empowerment and disempowerment of women, have always been important to my mom. Now more than ever, she sees a lot of oppression in the world through the lens of our original engagement with power and control--the way it is exerted on us at the moment of our birth. Also, lately she seems to have a lot of insight into the bizzarre messages of 1950s television. Unfortunately, she is too busy with her full-time job and full-time graduate study to consume or criticize any 00's television. That's our job.