Le Tente Rouge Posted on 5-13-06
by Erin Quinn

I’m probably one of the few women who did not read The Red Tent. I did buy a used copy at last year’s library fair, but when reaching for it one night I accidentally knocked a full glass of merlot onto its porous pages making it quite red and unreadable. Yet I like to think I’ve read it and thus have reason and authority to envision just what a modern day Red Tent would look like.
Instead of women going there to bleed -- though bleeders would by no means be prohibited -- I’d like to think of us going there to recharge our maternal batteries. A timeout from the soccer/swimming/t-ball/birthday planning/diaper changing/sock bleaching/peanut butter and jelly making/housecleaning/working/wifeing/partnering/nurturing/playdate arranging/homework assisting/Dora watching/Dr. Seuss reading existence.
           Not that there’s anything wrong with that existence, but repeated, day after day, week after week, year after year, a gal likes to think that there is a Red Tent to retreat to from time to time, and not just when she is hopped up on Midol and wearing a depends-like pad, and not just for the one, commercially-spawned Mother’s Day in May. This is the annual celebration of Motherdom where we are treated, hopefully, like goddesses, and given flowers, macramé plant holders, shellacked wood frames with our children’s pictures in them and goofy Hallmark cards that say lots of nice things that rhyme.
          While it’s always nice to have a day where we are given the societal license to take a break and be treated kindly, I’m thinking more of an entire month -- a Mother’s Day season -- where kids and partners and friends come to visit us on the weekends during specifically delineated times and then they must return, leaving us to our Red-Tentness.
It’s kind of sad that I tend to romanticize a getaway at the Hudson Psychiatric Institution. I find myself daydreaming about watching Jeopardy in the community room, then taking my meds, and joining the group at the arts and crafts table to carefully wind strips of brightly colored yarn around small twigs to create God’s Eyes like we did in camp.
         Lately I’ve been imagining a different place, less institutional and more analogous to the Red Tent. Instead of a hut for menstruating women in the forest, though that does kind of sound fun, I like to think of the modern Red Tent as more of a salon, or a day spa, preferably with a view of the ocean or lake or stream -- even a vernal pool would do, so long as there was some water to catch the sun and moon’s reflection.
        We would receive massages, pedicures, mineral baths, mud wraps -- take optional hikes, swims, and of course, naps. At night there would be an open bar and café. We could socialize or return back to our bedrooms, to read, watch TV, paint or listen to music undisturbed. There would be zero-balancing workshops, Pilates classes, and essential oil rubs. We’d be bathed head to toe in lavender, our chakras realigned and our minds cleared by chanting monks.
       The staff would be all men.  It would be court-ordered. Some countries have mandatory military service policies for their young men. Well, our country should have mandatory spa training for men, so that they could serve us once a month and pay us back for all of their alleged shortcomings the rest of the year.
      This Red Tent would be of course publicly funded. Since uber-wealthy women already have these luxuries at their daily disposal and more often than not have nannies, personal assistants, maids, cooks, personal trainers and multiple homes to retreat to in various scenic corners of the world, they wouldn’t necessarily require a visit to their local red tent. They live under the global red tent that shadows their every move.
Since this current administration doesn’t seem eager to fund anything other than pre-emptive wars, then we might have to rely, in the meantime, on some generous donor or foundation -- an Eleanor Roosevelt-like foundation that pledges its support to the rejuvenation of mothers during the month of May.
      May is the perfect time for the Red Tent season. It would allow mothers to have that cellular recharge which could allow them to finish off the baseball season with a smile and sense of calm. And it could help them prepare for the end-of-the-school year when they will more likely than not be slaves to the public pool, shuttling children between day camps, or entertaining their kin in their backyards in one of those plastic swimming pools that attracts mosquitoes.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Mother’s Day. You can always count on a geranium, an extra hug and kiss, and a card written in large Crayola letters that says “I love U Mom.” That is a treat in and of itself, and worth all of the nights of holding vomiting heads above toilets and changing pee-soaked bed sheets or having to listen to an entire book filled with bad knock-knock jokes.
        There’s nothing I like fantasizing about more (except the revolution that would overthrow the Bush administration and exile the neo-cons to work camps in New Orleans where they were forced to rebuild the levee) than I do the Red Tent concept. If we’re unsuccessful in lobbying for public funding, well, hell, we could always try again next year. Until then I’ll just see you at the park, or the next t-ball game, or in the shallow end of the public pool or out in our gardens, placing those geraniums into the ground so that they can grow even bigger next year.
Happy Mother’s Day!

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