"ethical duty to enjoy oneself"

"Mrs. Post would have understood that. She wrote in a world in which mourning was still recognized, allowed, not hidden from view. Philippe Ariès, in a series of lectures he delivered at Johns Hopkins in 1973 and later published as Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present, noted that beginning about 1930 there had been in most Western countries and particularly in the United States a revolution in accepted attitudes toward death. "Death", he wrote, "so omnipresent in the past that it was familiar, would be effaced, would disappear. It would become shameful and forbidden." The English social anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer, in his 1965 Death, Grief, and Mourning, had described this rejection of public mourning as a result of the increasing pressure of a new "ethical duty to enjoy oneself", a novel "imperative to do nothing which might diminish the enjoyment of others." In both England and the United States, he observed, the contemporary trend was "to treat mourning as morbid self-indulgence, and to give social admiration to the bereaved who hide their grief so fully that no one would guess anything had happened."
One way in which grief gets hidden is that death now occurs largely offstage. In the earlier tradition from which Mrs. Post wrote, the act of dying had not yet been professionalized. It did not typically involve hospitals. Women died in childbirth. Children died of fevers. Cancer was untreatable. Death was up close, at home. The average adult was expected to deal competently, and also sensitively, with its aftermath. "

- Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

We've arrived, obviously, and are surviving camping-style with much borrowed goods from caring friends.

Truth is, though, we're in hiding. I can't put my finger on it, but I'm not too keen yet on reconnecting with local friends, especially those who do not have an infant or toddler.

Our lives have changed that much.

I have no time. We have no nanny as of yet, we have a million things to do around the house. We've just as of yesterday been connected to the internet (but no wireless router or printer/fax/scanner/copier as of yet). And the little one is ill. Waking up 3 to 4 times a night. And giving us a heckuva time trying to put her down for her naps. We are not in full working mode, and any additional complexity, such as seeming gracious and having reasonable meals available for friends who may come over, may make me keel over.

But also we have two secrets, one of which is hard to share without inviting pity upon myself, which I'm not interested in receiving, particularly from those who have not gone through something similar.

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I was deeply stressing out about going back to work, then as I was about to write 'call work' on my day planner, I realized that I was about to jot down "call MSFT" instead of the caring, deeply-supportive and flexible women's organization I now work for.

I am so grateful that the location of our new home means generally not having to drive by the campuses and revisit that past.

We have landed.