Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)

Editorial Masthead

Toepell, Andrea Riesch

Book Reviews 
did not seekout essays by men. I t  would be interesting to learn if the emotional 
responses and experiences of men are similar to those of women who care for 
aging parents. That criticism aside, the collection shows the strengths and 
vulnerabilities of a diverse group ofwomen who share their stories and describe 
the energy required to be in two lives, their own and their parents. 
Reading these stories gives us permission to think what otherwise might 
have been unthinkable: that to trulybe "dutiful" to our parents, we first have to 
be true to ourselves. This bookshould be read by daughters entering the foreign 
land of elder care, and by their brothers, husbands, and sons so we all can learn 
to care for our parents, in awaythat maintains the dignityofeveryone involved. 
And the Skylark Sings With Me: 
Adventures in Home-Schooling and 
Community-Based Education 
David H. Albert 
Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 1999 
Reviewed by Andrea Toepell 
David Albert is a supporter ofpublic education. But, as much as he likes the idea 
of universal education, he sought to educate his own two children to the best 
of his ability. He  did not send them to public school. Instead, he created a 
home- and community-based educational environment for them. And, some 
ten years later, he is proud to show off the results. His daughters achieved 
enviable levels of mastery in many areas, especially music and science. 
Albert is careful to demonstrate that his family is not genetically "loadedn 
with musical talent. He reasons that success is possible when children are 
allowed to blossom on their own terms, in their own time, in a culturally rich 
environment. Albert argues that most, if not all, children can attain high levels 
of achievement, given an appropriate level of support and guidance. Albert 
suggests that the public educational system cannot possibly provide the 
environment necessary for outstanding success. (The book refers to the 
American educational system, but it is likely applicable to the Canadian 
educational system as well.) 
In  order to provide the optimal developmental milieu for their children, 
the author and his wife made significant changes to their lives. They both left 
their careers and found employment that enabled them to devote their time and 
energy to raising and educating their children. It appears from the book that 
these new forms of employment were less rewarding-intellectually and 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 207 
Book Reviews 
financially-than their previous endeavours. 
Albert's educational philosophy is based on ideas developed initially by 
Jean Jacques Rousseau and imported into North American educational think- 
ing by John Dewey. Rousseau argued that, given a proper environment, the 
"noble savagen in a child will blossom into a successful and accomplished 
person. He  felt that formal schooling is detrimental to the blossoming process, 
and that one learns better by "doingn rather than studying. Apparently, 
Rousseau's concern for the welfare of children was more theoretical than 
practical: he abandoned all five ofhis own children to orphanages. Albert takes 
the opposite approach by sacrificing his entrepreneurial career for the sake of 
his children's development. 
The book is well written and a pleasure to read. It includes a rich 
bibliography, complete with the author's annotations on many of the sources. 
Its language is sophisticated, dear, and succinct. For the reader who agreeswith 
Albert and Rousseau's thinking, this book will prove satisfying. For the 
opponent, there is much "meat" in which to sink one's intellectual teeth. 
Transformative Motherhood: 
On Giving and Getting in a ConsumerCulture 
Linda L. Layne, ed. 
New York: New York University Press, 1999 
Reviewed by Jeanne-Marie Zeck 
TranJfomative Motherhood, a collection of anthropological essays, is a valuable 
book for parents and educators. Linda Layne and her contributors present 
research on mothers and children who have been marginalized in American 
culture and, until recently, neglected by anthropologists. In this collection, the 
authors examine the experiences of adoptive mothers, birth mothers, and their 
children; surrogate mothers; foster mothers; and mothers of physically and 
mentally handicapped children. Layne herself presents research on women 
who have lost children through miscarriage, stillbirth, and death in infancy. 
What unites these essays is an examination of the rhetoric of gift giving and 
receiving. Each author analyzes how those in her particular research group use 
gift terminologyto explain their experiences, to define themselves, and to grant 
full humanity to children who often are dismissed by a culture that focuses on 
physical "perfection." 
Adrienne Rich's 1976 history of childbirth in America, Of Woman Born, 
was the first academic study to include a mother's personal account of care 
giving. In the tradition created by Rich, the anthropologists in Layne's book 
searnlessly incorporate their own experiences of mothering into their research. 
208 1 Volume 4, Number 1 


English

And the Skylark Sings With Me: Adventures in Home-Schooling and Community-Based Education

Steele, Cassie Premo

Cassie Premo Steele 
Dreams of Fire 
7:45 a.m. I wake from a dream. The image burns. His clothes in her 
crib. He has left them there. His underwear. 
He touches me. The baby is not yet awake. An invitation. I pull 
away. 
The fire goddess, Pele, makes volcanoes rise from beneath the earth, 
and makes islands out of her anger. 
I am an island. Made of fire. My dreams burn in me, and I turn 
away from my husband, from his desire. 
I am a survivor. I say it. To myself. What I suffer from is my 
own past. But the dream is what I suffer from in the present. In the dream 
it is my baby. In danger. 
So I wake. As a mother. And wonder. 
Alone. 
70 1 Volume 4, Number l 
2:16 a.m. I wake again, hot and anxious, worried about Lily's new 
preschool, certain that the teacher is not good for her. She is too 
nervous, too talkative, too much. 
Lying there, in the dark, I remember that "too muchness" is a signal 
of trauma. 
I get up, go to the couch in the living room, start to write. What 
I know to do. T o  survive. 
Today, I write, when I picked her up after her first day, the 
teacher's face was red and sweaty, and Lily's body was limp and exhausted. 
She felt like a doll, filled with lead. 
I tried to talk to Meili about it before we went to bed. He  was 
tired, turned over. Told me to let it go. 
I begin to page through the yellow pages, looking for another 
preschool. I find that the one we have an appointment to visit has flexible, 
part-time rates. This calms me enough that I think I can finally go back 
to sleep. 
The cat walks in to the living room with a huge cockroach in her 
mouth. I look away. 
I survived by looking away. 
When my father raped my mother, I looked away. 
When he whipped his belt against my bedroom wall, I looked away. 
But still I heard the sounds. 
No. 
Crack. 
Journal ofthe Association for Research on Mothering 1 71 
Cassie Premo Steele 
*** 
No preschool today. Lily is home, safely. As she crawls on a blanket on 
the back porch, my thoughts turn to work: a deadline for an essay due in 
two days, an email I need to send to an editor, thoughts of a new project. 
The only time I feel she is safe is when she is with me. She is not 
safe at her school. She is not safe when I am sleeping. She is not safe 
when I go away. So I keep her home from school. I do not sleep. I do 
not go away. 
I am so tired, I feel like I am on fire. 
It is said that when Pele is angry, she appears as a woman, stamping 
her feet. The earth shakes. Fire rises. 
I want to make something burn. Shake myself, take the dreams out of 
myself, make all the earth take notice this way. 
3:18 a.m. I wake again from a dream where my desire returns, and we 
try to make love, but Lily's crib bars are down, she might fall out, so we 
tryto put them up, but they squeak, and she wakes, so wedo not makelove. 
What were we doing in her room? I think, in the dark. Has someone 
been in her room? 
I get up, walk to her room, quiet and black, open the door slowly, 
and feel the floor for wet semen. 
Butterflies rush in my blood. I can hear my heart pounding. I find 
nothing. 
72 1 Volume 4, Number l 
Dreams $Fire 
Lily is napping and I pick up the phone. Call the rape crisis hotline. 
Tell them. 
Say the words. 
I am a survivor. And I am having dreams. Dreams of my daughter, 
abused. By her father. I don't know if it is happening. For real. 
The counselor uses the word, "Revisitation." I see it, like this, 
with capitalization, a category, in my head. Like visitation. He has come 
back To get us. 
Visitation. A one-bedroom apartment in Siow Falls, Iowa. The 
bedroom is filled with papers he has collected. Receipts and paper 
placemats. Sheets of his craziness. 
We  will sleep, in the hot summer night, on a bare mattress in the 
living room, all three of us, my father, my sister, and me. 
Before bed, he rubs apple cider vinegar over my sister's sunburned 
back. She screams. The skin burns red. Erupts. Volcanoes. He does not 
stop. Someone told him it would work, he says, again and again, getting 
angry. 
My sister gets quiet at his anger. Afraid he will erupt. Only her 
skin still seethes. I look away. 
The counselor, still on the phone, suggests a group for survivors. I say 
I will consider going but know I won't go. The truth is I don't want to 
dig deeper, fear going back any more will make me crazier. I want so much 
to be stable, grounded, solid. Hanging up the phone, I see myself trying 
to jump through the air. But when I land, the earth shakes under my feet. 
8:03 p.m. I put Lily in her crib, and she turns on her side and 
sighs, sleeping. On  my way out of the room, I carefully put a small block 
behind the door. If the door is opened in the night, I will know it. 
Journal ofthe Associationfor Research on Mothering 1 73 
Cassie Premo Steele 
*** 
That night my mattress is on fire. I flee, again, in my dreams, 
where I am screaming. 
No one hears. 
I wait for dawn. 
The fire of the sun. 
Hear her crying. 
Go get her. The block knocks against the door as I open it. Unmoved. 
I tell her good morning. 
Lily gets a new teacher at school. The nervous, sweaty one is 
gone. And she is happy. Smiles as I'm leaving. Eyes bright when I pick 
her up. For two days this week, I have gotten some work done. 
Small things. Reading. Queries. One poem. 
I think about writing about this. This. The fire I feel. 
Revisitation. Mother Survivor. Titles come to me. I am afraid. 
I call a writer-mentor friend. She is distracted, not really 
listening. Tells me towrite when I'mready. This is notwhat1 need to hear. 
I am on fire. 
4:52 a.m. A redheaded four year-old girl, an orphan, comes to us, 
in my dream. We take her in. But I don't thinkwe can keep her, it is too 
much, I am not able to focus on Lily, I am distracted, exhausted, I can't give 
her all I want, it isn't fair to her. 
74 1 Volume 4, Number l 
Dreams of Fire 
I wake, tell Meili my dream. "It isn't fair to her?" he says. "It 
isn't fair to us." 
In the morning, I write again. The dream was a breakthrough. 
Somehow, as cruel as it sounds, I cannot take in this orphan (who is myself 
as a child) and be the mother I want to be. I have to give my self as a 
child back in order to be the mother Lily needs. The mother I want to be. 
I call her. The woman who was the witness to my memories almost ten 
years ago. We  make an appointment. I write it down. 
The teacher is back. She had only been out temporarily, and now 
she's back. I talk to the director. I am almost in tears. There is 
something wrong with this teacher, I can feel it. 
That afternoon, when I go to pick Lily up, the teacher is diapering 
her in her crib as I walk through the door. This is strange, I think. Then 
as I get closer, I notice Lily is asleep. So why was the teacher, so close, 
moving her hands over the baby's body, in her sleep? I pick my baby 
up. And never take her back. 
Allison listens. She wants to know every detail. The crawling on 
the floor at night. The blocks behind the door. The dreams. Lily's limp 
body. The teacher. My fears. Everything. 
And as the words come out of me, like ashes, I feel the fire burning 
down. I see the razed ground. I see my skin again, in need of healing. 
Journal ofthe Associationfor Research on Mothering 1 75 
Cassie Premo Steele 
She hands me bandages. With her eyes. I place the tears, 
carefully, over the blisters, to cool the wounds. 
The dreams go away. So do my suspicions of my husband. We  find a 
new preschool. The redheaded girl recedes. Goes back into my past. 
The flames are gone. But sometimes, at dusk, I can still smell the 
land, smoking. And when I do, I trust my husband to rock our daughter 
to sleep, and I go outside, into the air of cooling night. I breathe deeply, 
and slowly, I begin to write. 
76 1 Volume 4, Number l 


Dreams of Fire

Addante, Martha

Rupturing the Patriarchal Family: Female Genealogy in Disappearing Moon Cafe

Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering
Fall/Winter 2002, Vol 4, No 2, 268 pages

Bailey, Nicola

Brown, Geraldine

Letherby, Gayle

Wilson, Corinne

"The Baby Brigade": Teenage Mothers and Sexuality

Klimaszewski, Melisa

Writing the Victorian Home: A Nursemaid's Persepctive on Maternity and Empire

Blanch, Sophie

The Sacred Space of the "Mother-House": Reading Maternal Metaphors in Antonia White's Frost in May

Pietsch, Nicole

Un/titled: Constructions of Illegitimate Motherhood as Gender Insurrection

Rosbrook, Bernadette

Something More: Immigrant Mothers in Anzia Yezierska's Early Fiction