By Heather Strasburg

Clara Louise Kimber, age 3, hates green beans.

She prefers box elder bugs and grasshoppers to spiders. Her favorite teacher at preschool is Miss Jenny and her favorite crayon color is green. Clara says that she loves chicken and likes chocolate milk.

Clara's wheat-colored hair is cut in a bob that curls under just below her chin. The top is sectioned off in four braids with fuzzy pink elastics at the ends. The cut emphasizes her round face and big blue eyes. Clara refuses to wear jeans, a battle her mother gave up a year ago, so she's wearing pink stretch pants that flare at the bottom and a button-down shirt with a sequin heart on the pocket.

Her feet are bare, the way she likes them.

Clara is sitting on her mother's lap giggling as she answers the questions. Her mother, Jenifer Kimber smiles and tickles Clara's side when she says how much she likes chicken. "We have a carnivore on our hands. She'd rather eat chicken than ice cream," Jenifer said.

Amelia, Jenifer's 18-month-old, is napping so the house is quiet. Clara and her mother hold hands. Clara places her head on Jenifer's shoulder. It's apparent in the sunlight streaming through the bay window, they have the same high cheekbones.

The next day, however is not as serene. Clara's face gets red when she's angry. Just like her mother's. Their cheeks flame up at the same moment when Clara won't stop moving her little sister's chair during a lunch of cheese quesadillas and green beans. Amelia leans back in the booster seat that is strapped to an antique chair and swings her head from side to side trying to figure out why her chair keeps jolting forward.

Undaunted, Amelia yells, "Maaaaa," and shovels more green beans into her petite mouth in between jerks. She's become accustomed to lunches like these.

"CLAR-RA," Jenifer's voice seethes each syllable. Her tone freezes Clara in mid-shove and Amelia in mid-shovel. Clara grins and shoves Amelia's chair one last time sending a plastic cup, brimmed with milk, to the floor.

Jenifer jumps up from the couch and darts toward Clara. Instead of grabbing her Jenifer breaks her with words. "Fine we won't go to dad's work you can sit on your bed instead." The threat was hollow considering they've already eaten lunch.

"Shut, up Mom!" Clara yells as she runs down the hall to her room; her feet scuffling along the hardwood floors, "I hate green. I hate horses. Ho-ho is not coming." Her bedroom door slams. "I gonna jump out my window and lock my door." Her voice trails off.

By 8:30 p.m. the girls are bathed and in bed. Both of them received a good night kiss and a storybook. Jenifer's husband, Chuck, after bathing the girls, sits on the couch and watches the History Channel. He works in the Extensions Office at Utah State University as a computer programmer. He usually gets home around dinnertime, 7 p.m. or so, just in time to play with the girls before their bath and help put them to bed.

The whir of muffled machine guns floats from the muted volume of the television into the interview.

"I know that I'm supposed to be the adult, but it hurts when Clara tells me to shut up. Sometimes she says that she hates me or that I'm stupid. They just don't understand how much you do for them and what you have to give up to be a mom," Jenifer said.

Jenifer's eyes remain low as she picks lint that isn't there off her plus-size black turtleneck. Her lower body bound by too tight jeans from Lane Bryant. Across the island in the kitchen there is a picture of her on the fridge surrounded by crayon drawings from her girls and magnetic plastic letters. In the picture she's talking on a cell phone and her slim figure is draped in deep violet velvet. There is mascara on her eyelashes and gloss on her lips. Her trim face looks free. The picture was taken four years ago.

"After graduating I was planning on working as a paralegal while I studied for the LSAT and then going, hopefully, to law school at University of Utah. I had a lot of dreams," Jenifer said."Chuck and I really wanted to join the Peace Corps or just travel, but we got pregnant instead. So, after we got pregnant we got engaged and were married three months later."

Jenifer graduated from USU with a double major in Political Science and History. "Sometimes I miss going to class and having real discussions with other adults. I don't want it to sound like I don't love my kids, they are amazing but they are just so hard right now. Sometimes I wish I could shake into them what it feels like to be a mother. It feels desolate."

Madelyne Toogood came into Jenifer's life and the lives of Americans suddenly. In mid-September the airwaves and the newspapers were smeared with clips and photographs of Toogood beating her daughter in a grocery store parking lot. She was caught throwing her daughter in the backseat of her SUV. The camera angle shows Toogood's hands flying in the air as she hit her daughter and pulled her hair. Her daughter appeared to be on the floor of the vehicle, by the way Toogood's slaps were aimed, while the beating took place.

There was a moment when it looked like Toogood glanced around to see if anyone had seen her. She strapped her daughter in her car seat and drove away. By the time Toogood turned herself in, she already had a scarlet A branded across her chest. This time around the letter stood for abuser.

"I was at my mother's house when I saw the footage of Madelyne on the news." Jenifer said, "It made me sick. I couldn't sleep that night. There have been times when Clara will not settle down and she's not minding and she keeps pushing me and I think, what if you know?"

Within a month of the Toogood incident Oprah Winfrey aired two shows dedicated to mother's being honest about motherhood. Following the first one, "What Your Mother Never Told You About Motherhood," the show received 20 times the amount of e-mail it usually does.

Susannah, a woman from the fist show made the most controversial statement, "The -- iconic status of motherhood in all societies means that you're not allowed to fail. You're not allowed to find it difficult. I don't know where it came from, and maybe we women are responsible, partly responsible for the perpetuation of the ideal, because none of us have had the courage to stand and put out hands up and say, You know what? This sucks 80 percent of the time."

Women were either incensed by what she said or validated by it.
On the second show Gail said, "Where did you get all these complaining women? I am the mother of two children. I didn't need help and it was incredible."

A woman named Erica said, "It seems as though there's somewhat of a competition. People don't want to fully divulge how much of a challenge motherhood is."

Ms Wolf said, "I'm going to come out and say these things and I'm going to get a scarlet letter that says 'Bad Mother, you know, and I'm going to go out and I'm going to find I'm the only person who feels this way."

Behind every comment there seemed to be a shadow of Toogood. She was an example of the stress of motherhood exploding. She said there were, a million and one reasons," why she beat her daughter that day.

On Good Morning America, Charles Gibson asked Toogood if her daughter would be in danger if she was given back. Toogood said, "Somebody said that she was bright and, and, and beautiful and healthy and extremely smart, which she is all of the above. She wasn't, she would, never just came that way. She was always that way. She, she, she, she never just hatched smart, beautiful and not. She was raised smart, beautiful, and loving. And 25 seconds can't make up for four years."

Just as quickly as Madelyn was thrust into the lives and homes of Americans; she was gone.

Many of the women on Oprah Winfrey were looking for solutions. For mother's like Jenifer, who live in Cache Valley there are many. If a mother needs solutions to problems or advice she can call; Division of Child and Family Services at 787-9180, Family Institute of Northern Utah at 752-1976 or the Family Resource Center at 755-5171.

Jenifer is looking into getting a membership at The Sports Academy because it has an on-site childcare center and every membership comes with three hours of babysitting a day. Sometimes she also goes to Fred Meyer because it has a playland where her girls can be taken care of while she shops. There are also scrapbook shops around Cache Valley that have class at night so moms can get away from home and spend time with other moms.

"I still love reading about history and keeping current on politics." Jenifer said, "It's important for me to have a part of my life that's just for me. However small that gets sometimes; I know that it's there and it helps."

Today Jenifer's girls chase each other around the living room with hats made out of newspapers and socks on their hands. They tumble to the ground giggling as hard as they are breathing. Their giggles gurgle like a bubble machine. Jenifer looks at them and smiles, knowing these grins won't last all day.

NW
SR

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