It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Skirting Safety

A few nights ago, I went with a friend to a club in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco.  I tend to look at clothing as costume – what role am I playing today? – so I’d deliberately chosen an outfit to suit the evening.  Short skirt, knee-high boots, leather jacket, acres of cleavage – basically light-years and numerous personae away from my default soccer/basketball mom uniform of jeans and scoop-neck T-shirt.

I suppose it wouldn’t be shocking for me to say, “The outfit made me nervous.”   After all, I’m a suburban mom cruising rapidly toward 45.  Many of my peers would consider that particular costume ‘daring’ and have an outbreak of nervous giggles.

And maybe that’s part of the problem…

As we got ready to leave, I did have a flash of concern, hearing the sum of decades of internalized voices – books, friends, movies, mother, grandmothers, magazines, news articles…

“It isn’t safe to go out like that.”  “You’re asking to get raped.”  “You aren’t THAT kind of girl.” “Cellulite.” “Sagging boobs.” “Cheap.” “Classless.” “Slutty.” “It isn’t safe.” “You’re asking to get raped.”

The astute reader will notice the repeat of two phrases.

That split second showed how deeply the message that women’s sexuality causes rape runs. 

There isn’t much I can say about the dangers of victim-blaming, slut-shaming, and rape culture that hasn’t already been said more eloquently and with better references by others.  But I think it’s worthwhile to point out the small moments in which this form of misogyny infiltrates our everyday lives.

When a woman has to worry about whether her outfit puts her in danger, something is wrong.  Men – actually, I should say white hetero-cis-men – aren’t put at risk by clothes unless Medea has been involved in the tailoring (Greek myth; look it up, folks.)

When a girl is sent to the office for wearing a top that shows her shoulders but her male classmates are not, something is wrong.

When a woman’s competence in the workplace is measured by the length of her skirt, something is wrong.

Think about it – how often have you said (or heard and nodded) any of the following:

“I can’t believe her mother let her out of the house like that.”

“That top is too distracting for the classroom/workplace.”

“If she didn’t want the attention, maybe she shouldn’t have worn that skirt.”

“Wardrobe malfunction.”

Every time we judge a woman’s worth, virtue, competence, or right to basic safety by her clothing, we contribute to a tacit okay to assault and discrimination.

For the record, I wore the outfit, went out, and had a great evening.  And I was exactly the same person, with the same rights to safety and respect, as I was the next day in my jeans and T-shirt.

Update:
In the original version of this post, I left off a critical classifier for male safety -- white.  Men of color are not given the same privilege of safety and impunity with regard to clothing as their white cohort.  Privilege and associated problems will be another post entirely, but I thought it was important to recognize that men of color are also judged and put at risk by societal attitudes toward attire.

It's also worth noting for this article that when I use the term "women" I refer to cis and trans women inclusively since we are all judged and targeted.  Masculine privilege is a more complex thing, hence the use of specific identifiers to denote the group given sartorial immunity.

Why "Fifty Shades" is Shady. Or, What Mainstream Society Can Learn From Kinky Folk

I have a shameful confession.

I read the Fifty Shades of Grey books…all three of them.

I just read them for the mystery, honest!

For the most part the writing was the sort of over-done, yet simultaneously shallow, cotton-candy fiction that tastes sweet in the moment but leaves one feeling nauseated, hollow, and sticky in a not-good way.  In retrospect, however, I’m most ashamed of having enjoyed the sex scenes.

“Well, duhhhh,” you say.   That’s the whole point.  The sort of “kinky” sex sensationalized in the books is supposed to provoke shame, to titillate with taboo.  That’s why the upcoming movie has gotten so much hype I keep forgetting it hasn’t even been released yet.  The sex portrayed in the books and movie is the fictional version of a multi-car pile-up or reality TV.  After all, the whole point is to tease our darkest fantasies while reassuring us that unlike those characters, we are “normal,” “not sick.”

And that is why I’m ashamed.  Like so many out there, I fell prey to the sensationalism.  I equated the sexual relationships depicted in the book with actual kink and like many others, was happy to level judgment before returning to my vanilla world.

And therein lies the danger of these books and of similar movie and TV scenes – the sex so luridly described bears about as much resemblance to actual BDSM (the acronym stands for Bondage/Discipline, Dominance/Submission, Sadism/Masochism) as the “Real Housewives” of Whatevertown bear to any of our friends, neighbors, or selves.

But, BDSM, like any culture or practice that doesn’t fall under the middle of the societal bell-curve we call “normal” makes for an easy media target.  Many of the elements and practices commonly employed in BDSM touch uncomfortable places in the collective psyche.  Cuffs, rope, whips, clamps, hoods – these things have become societal symbols for horror and even torture.  The common narrative then, is that anyone who enjoys using or receiving any of these things is sick or troubled.

What if I told you that mainstream society could learn a lot about healthy relationships – mental, emotional, and, yes, sexual from BDSM practitioners?

I can’t speak to all societies, but at least in the U.S., we do a terrible job of acknowledging and accepting our own fears and darknesses.  We so desperately fear the shadow-self – our inherent violence, wildness, and uniqueness – that we live lives of pallid conformity.  We confine ourselves in matching, stucco boxes with manicured lawns and granite countertops.  We avert our eyes from the “different” – the ones who stick out, who talk to themselves, who dress outside the rules of gender conformity.  And we hide in the darkness, consuming diets of shame, corn syrup, and clandestine porn.  We don’t discuss the things we want.  We don’t admit our deepest needs, even to ourselves.  And we certainly don’t negotiate in our relationships to meet those needs.

Consent and Communication

This is why I’m ashamed of having enjoyed the Fifty Shades books.  I’m not ashamed that individual elements spoke to some of my fantasies.  I’m not ashamed of having been turned on by descriptions of bondage.  I’m ashamed of not having recognized the portrayal of an abusive relationship for what it is.  Like so many others, I assumed that coercion was just part of the sex, that all “kink” was essentially abusive.

And that is where I was terribly wrong.

BDSM is a partnership that depends on clear communication and explicit consent for the emotional and physical safety of ALL partners.  When you are playing with power, pain, or bondage, without a solid foundation for trust and a clear plan, things can go quite wrong quite fast – for both parties.  That’s why folks in BDSM relationships tend to negotiate and discuss details before anything physical ever transpires. 

“Do you like X?”

 “I’m really triggered by Y, so that’s off the table for me.”

 “I’m into D, but if you aren’t, that’s okay.”

 “Let’s use ABC if you need me to slow things down or back off.  Say XYZ if you need to end play.”

What if we entered ALL relationships with this sort of clear understanding of our own and each other’s needs and limitations? 

Think about it. 

How many of you have taken a job without negotiating a written contract in advance? (*raises hand*)  How many of you have had that same job go awry due to a lack of clear understanding on both parts? (*raises hand again*)

How many times do we send our children off to be taught without knowing the pedagogical approach of the teacher or having a clear understanding of the lines of communication in the school?

How many times in romantic relationships do we flounder around, waiting for a “signal” from the other person to direct our actions or responses?  How often do we hesitate to ask for what we need or give our partner honest feedback about what works or doesn’t work for us?

How often do we get into fights or feel resentment because neither partner really knows what the other expects or has a clear sense of “role?”

Before engaging with any of my BDSM partners –oh, don’t look so shocked; you didn’t really think I was writing all this from a purely academic perspective – I have a clear idea of their preferences and concerns, and I know that I have communicated my own likes and limits.  Each of us knows that there will be kinks (no, I couldn’t resist) to be worked out.  And we will have communicated enough to trust that if something doesn’t work quite right, we’ll work through it cooperatively rather than from a place of damaged ego.

If all this sounds like a pretty far cry from the villainous dungeon masters, neurotic submissives, and manipulative doms of TV and movie-land, it is.  Media tropes may be silly and seem harmless, but a message repeated becomes a pattern; clichés lodge in our brains until we lose the nuance.

I’ll be writing several posts on this theme.  I have no desire to convert anyone to kink (ewwwwww), nor am I looking for shock value.  Rather, my goal here is the same as with all of my writing, to normalize variation, and maybe, if I do it right, to help others see themselves and each other as individuals rather than tropes.

 

Into the Wild Places -- A poem for my daughters

Don’t teach my daughters to fear.
Show them instead how to go into the wild places
the forests and deserts
the labyrinths of concrete, asphalt
the frost, flame, and famine of their own
bodies,
minds,
hearts.
Let them leave long blue hairs on lovers’ beds.
Let them carve paths in the mosaic cobblestones of foreign cities and drink too much beer in a smoky polyglot hubub.
Let them shorten their skirts, tattoo their breasts, and raise their voices in the throb of human music.
Let them dig with their minds, unearthing the truths buried in statistics.
Let them weave solutions of fact, fury, and compassion.
Let them fuck joyfully – when, how, who they choose.
Don’t tell them the fire burns.
Show them how to leap the flames, to sear doubt and a good steak.
Don’t tell them their petals char to dirt in the heat.
Show them steel is forged in the inferno and that eternal roses bloom from iron.
Don’t warn them the trees are high and the branches frail.
Let them climb above the birds, skin their knees, and learn to fall.
Don’t ask them to cross their ankles,
wash their hands,
tie their shoes,
shave their legs,
pretty their faces,
trim their waists.
Let them roll in the mud, eat too much cake, drink more than they should, curse and laugh from their curving bellies, and dance without grace.
Don’t ask them to leash themselves to your fears.
Show them instead how to go into the wild places.

No Closets in Davis -- My Coming Out

“What’s that on your arm?  Have you been bar-coded or prison tattooed?”

My oldest daughter was hanging out on my couch before biking across town to her dad’s house, and we were doing the post-last-day-of-school debrief.  She looked at her arm and chuckled, explaining that since she didn’t buy a yearbook, a friend had signed her arm, which, she said, was better than her forehead.

“What’s it say?”

“#GAYVASIAN2014.  That’s what he put in everyone’s yearbook.  He’s gay and very, very proud of it.”  She grinned and laughed the sort of amused, partially delighted laugh she has over any of her friends’ enthusiasms.  “He and another kid go around asking people, ‘Why are you straight?’” She laughed again, “There are no closets in Davis!”

“Well,” I bantered.  “Why <i>are</i> you straight?”  We’ve long since had the ‘you can be attracted to boys or girls, everyone is unique’ discussion.

She waved her arm in my direction and raised an eyebrow.  “Pot.  Kettle.  Why are <i>you</i> straight?”

“Well, actually, I think I identify more as flexible than straight.”  I don’t even know if she caught it; the conversation drifted back to whose phone numbers she’d gotten preparatory to getting together over the summer.  In the grand scheme of talks, it wasn’t a big deal.

Except it was.

For all that we have raised our kids to be accepting of everyone (as long as they aren’t assholes), this was the first time (as far as I know) that either their dad or I had ever given any of our kids any indication that they have a parent (me) who doesn’t fit in the heteronormative, monogamous box.

Most people who know me at all, even through social media, know me as a staunch LGBT ally.  A straight one.  From the outside, my closet looks like a tidy bedroom.  No secrets, no variation from the expected.  Didn’t date much before marriage, but only dated men.  Married to one man for 17 years, recently separated, I look like an educated, middle class, middle-aged, straight, white, cis-woman – maybe with a creative streak, maybe slightly quirky, but nothing unexpected or “out there.”

My closet is quite livable.  It’s spacious, nicely furnished, has a fridge and a mini-bar.  Hiding in it produces precious little pain or inconvenience to me, and my world isn’t terribly different inside the closet than it would be outside.

But I’m increasingly confronted with the realization that remaining in that closet is both untrue to me and a betrayal of those around me.  I have friends and loved ones for whom “coming out of the closet” has been a necessary leap of courage and has come at a cost.  I have three children, and while they all give every indication, as I did at their age, of fitting into society’s boxes, I wonder about the cost to them when they find, as I did, some portion of themselves that doesn’t match with the models they’ve been shown.

It’s been easy for me to keep parts of myself hidden.  I justify it by telling myself that my life is none of anyone else’s business, that I don’t want people using what they know about me to speculate about my decisions or relationships.  But, that is, to a certain degree, bullshit.  Those who would speculate and gossip about me have probably already done so.

And there is a larger responsibility at play. While I don’t owe everyone the details of everything I think or do, I think there is a certain societal obligation to show up as one’s authentic self.  By not doing so, by presenting only the pieces of ourselves that we think are acceptable to the majority, we make it harder for each individual to step out of his or her own closet.

Think about it.  If each of us revealed more of the things we keep hidden – our differences, our quirks, our secret shames – what would be left to fear or hide?

The only way to make it so that there are truly “No closets in Davis” (or San Francisco, Topeka, Juneau, etc.) is to normalize our differences, to celebrate the many ways of being.

I grew up in a loving, supportive, and fairly liberal family.  There wasn’t much in the way of gender stereotyping – my sister and I had Tonka trucks as well as dolls, we learned to shoot as well as sew.  No one ever overtly said that any one way of being was superior, but assumptions trickled through as they do in most families.  “When you start bringing home boys….”  “When you get married…”  “When you have kids…”

In my family, you married one person of the opposite gender – for life.  The few divorces in the extended family were mentioned obliquely or not referenced at all.  If anyone in my family didn’t fit squarely into the heterosexual box, I never knew about it.  None of this was touted as the “right” way; there just wasn’t another way that was ever shown or discussed.

By the time I got to college (I was a late bloomer), it was pretty clear to me that I was mostly attracted to people with boy parts.  I felt relief.  My life would be easy.  Conventional.  No need to rock any societal boats.  I could crusade for others from the security held by a member of the privileged majority.

Except.

Every so often, I’d catch myself looking at another woman’s breasts or legs or lips.  I’d be drawn to a friend, find myself fantasizing.  And then it would pass – or so I told myself.  If by pass, I meant the feeling would be ruthlessly squashed back into the corner of my mind from which it had leaked.

At the same time, navigating the emotional complexities of dating within a fairly narrow group of friends, I found myself repeatedly battling strong feelings for more than one person at a time. 

This wasn’t just a potentially problematic side of myself – it was completely unacceptable.  I’d been raised on fairytales and romantic stories.  And as I was the product of eight years of Catholic school, the whole relationship/attraction road was pockmarked with potholes that dropped straight to Hell anyway.  Everything I knew was clear on this point.  While it was fine for some people – not me because I was straight, of course – but some people to be attracted to or love someone of the same sex, having feelings for more than one person was just wrong.  In my head, that capacity – to love and be attracted deeply to more than one person at a time – made me a bad person regardless of whether I acted upon it.

I folded, squashed, and pounded these errant desires into submission, never realizing that I was packing away parts of myself, that by denying how I love, I was inhibiting my ability to love, to connect, to show up and be present as my full self.

Accepting that I can be attracted to individuals regardless of sex or gender (yes, those are two distinct things) and that I am capable of connecting with and loving multiple people in multiple ways has, rather than breaking me, made me better able to form friendships, be confident in my daily life, and open myself more fully to the people I love.

That’s the problem with closets.  When we hide – from others or from ourselves – the things that we fear will be unacceptable to others, we deny our essence, and we limit the gifts we could give.  Also, by hiding the things we fear, the things that make us different, we contribute to the other-ization of those traits.

Human beings aren’t homogenous.  We aren’t tidily layered in all the same flavors.  We don’t fit in boxes or on distinct points along a line.  We’re a messy, lovely, kaleidoscopic jumble flowing along a vast spectrum.

In the last few years I’ve done enough research to learn that there are not only labels for my ways of being – pan-sexual, polyamorous – but there are lots of people like me, and a fair bit of research to suggest that, especially for a cis-gendered woman, the ways in which I am attracted and love are biologically quite normal.

I don’t much like labels, and there are nuances to both terms that don’t always fit me, but they are as good a step out of a closet as any.  I’ve shied away from publicly owning them until now because I worried that people would latch onto the words and see every one of my actions through the filter of the labels.  And, that may happen.  But if it does, that is the choice of the people seeing me.  My actions are my choice and my reasons for my choices remain private, mine.  However, who I am, how I show up – well, that is part of my obligation to society, to my family, and to myself.

So, I’m throwing out a challenge.  Whatever your closet: you live in a family of vegetarians but sneak out for a burger; you’re an atheist who accompanies your family to church because it’s the thing to do; you let your young kids watch action movies but tell them not to talk about it with their friends; you’re an intuitive or artist among scientists and trying desperately to seem rational…whatever your closet, think about how hiding inside it prevents those you love from knowing the entire you, think about how remaining in your closet may inadvertently be causing others to stay in theirs.

What would happen if there really were no closets in Davis…or Omaha, or Seattle, or Madrid, or…

[Note: I’m deliberately not defining terms in this essay.  If you are unfamiliar with a word I’ve used or don’t understand the distinctions, and especially if you call me friend, ask.  I’ll be more than happy to explain and discuss – outside the closet!]

Connection, Trust, and Kicking the Football

A ewe picks her lamb out of the flock of other wobbly, frolicking cotton puffs – recognizing her baby by sound and smell.  Horses separated from their herdmates call back and forth across fields and canyons, screaming their fear, excitement, and isolation.

Animals are wired for connection.  For many species, herd, pack, or flock instincts promote survival from predation or, in the case of predators, facilitate hunting.  Community bonds enable them to eat, mate, fend off or avoid attack, and raise their young.

The human animal has the same needs – food, safety, sex, nurturing.  We are wired for community and connection.  For millennia, humans have gathered in tribes, villages, and cities, growing food, building infrastructure, caring for children, pairing and un-pairing, forming bonds – connection.

You would think we’d have it down by now.

Yet, it seems like the simple acts of community and connection – expressing needs, asking, listening, seeing the common nature of our humanity have become mired in a swamp of confusion about belonging, ostracism, rules, and separation.  How often, in our everyday lives, do we reach out and truly see each other?

A friend reminded me the other day of a quote from C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  The little girl Lucy is asking nervously about meeting the lion Aslan.  She wants to know if he is “safe.”

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

This friend reminded me that, like Aslan, connection is not safe.

But, it is good.  Connecting with others seems ridiculously difficult for a behavior that is so necessary to survival.  We stand in crowded elevators, carefully examining our own shoes.  We scan our phones while waiting in lines – anything to avoid accidentally intense eye contact.  When disaster strikes, as it often does, we find ways to distance ourselves from both the victims and the perpetrators.  It didn’t happen in our country/state/city/neighborhood.  The shooter/bomber/villain was crazy/evil/an extremist/from another country/of another religion/from a broken home/spoiled as a child/neglected as a child.

We find labels and boxes for everyone and everything.  Labels categorize.  They sort.  They organize.  They separate.  Rules and structure, while necessary to social order, can also do much to keep everyone in his or her own box.  Isolated. 

We like the idea of community, of connection.  But, when it comes down to the moment, most of us are deeply uncomfortable with the realities of connecting with other members of our local or global community.

Connection and even daily interaction have prickly edges, sharp places where we poke into each other if we get too close.  Our offers may be rejected.  We might feel guilt over having to deny a request.  We are afraid to truly see another human in need or pain, afraid that we might actually find out how thin is the line between “them” and “us.” We demonize those who do “bad things” for fear that others might recognize what our hearts see – the shared humanity between perpetrator, victim, and observer.

We crave moments of true connection, of seeing and being seen, of feeling a part of the world rather than an observer perched in the nosebleed seats of life’s grandstands.  We crave connection, and it scares the shit out of us.

In the moments where our humanities collide, we are naked.  If you’ve ever looked into another person’s eyes without flinching, you know what I mean.  There aren’t any barriers; all of the things that we hide, from others and from ourselves, flow from us to the other person.  Connection takes trust.  And trust makes us vulnerable.

It is easy to feel like Charlie Brown with the football.  We screw up all of our courage, put our trust in another person or group of people, and have it yanked away, only to find ourselves lying on the grass with our socks in a tree.

But, here’s the thing?  Was Charlie Brown stupid?  Foolish for trusting, over and over, in the face of all evidence to the contrary?  Or, was he on to something?

We have two choices when it comes to trust.  We can be Lucy.  We can call the overly trusting person a “blockhead” and refuse to risk our valuable trust once it has been violated.  Or we can be Charlie Brown.  We can recognize that trust will be broken, it will be betrayed, it will not be safe.  But we can choose to trust others, and trust our common humanity anyway, knowing that the football will probably be pulled away again.

Why would we do this?  Why set ourselves up for a fall?  Why put ourselves in the path of failure, shame, and ridicule.

The answer isn’t because we expect or have blind faith that someone will hold the football still.  The answer lies deeper than that.  It lies in who we choose to be.  We can choose to be the person who trusts, who tries, who keeps trying to connect with a world that often doesn’t want connection.

 Or, we can choose to be the person who pulls away the football.

I retweeted a poem written by the singer Amanda Palmer last night.  It’s a piece full of connection that is far from black and white, an uncomfortable look at our complex, shared humanity.  Not surprisingly, the internet trolls, and probably some very well-meaning people, came out in droves to pull away the football, to condemn her for finding connection in a place of social taboo.  One of those trolls caught me, and my first response was to want to justify myself, to explain who and what I am – to make him see me.  My second response was to curl up and run away from social media, and by extension a society that doesn’t want my attempts at reaching out.

But, here I am this morning.  And here is the link to Amanda Palmer’s poem.  http://amandapalmer.net/blog/20130421/

Those socks up in the tree?  They’re mine.  It’s okay, leave them there.  Another pair will join them soon.  I choose to keep trying to kick that football.

More Than Infinity

It feels like a travesty to write anything and a sacrilege not to.  I have three healthy children, asleep (or mostly asleep) beneath mounds of covers and stuffed animals.  In Newtown, Conn., there are 26 empty beds, with 20 sets of stuffed animals whose children will never cuddle them again.  I know people who have lost children to disease, accident, and even violence.  The same thought penetrates every time – those of us whose children live and laugh, or those of us who have never had children of our own, have no place from which to speak.  Except, possibly from the place of our darkest fears.

I didn’t run the mile and a half from my desk to my children’s school yesterday morning.  I wanted to.  But, I watched the reports throughout the day, fragments of confusion scrolling past in 140 characters or less, rumor mixed with official news, and I contented myself with hugging my three a little harder when I saw them.

This world of ours has become weirdly connected, and with that connection, has turned into the family reunion where everyone imbibes a little too much.  I’ve seen yesterday’s tragic shooting blamed on: lack of gun control, lack of mental health services, violent video games, exploitive media, lack of prayer in schools, lack of armed school security guards, and possibly everything in between.

Every author of every post means well and is, I’m sure, absolutely convinced that if we fixed this one thing, this one cause, the violence would stop.  There would be no more.

The blame hurts almost as much as the news of the tragedy itself.  Life is too complicated, too fragile, to narrow these events down to a single cause, a single fix.  We don’t even know all of the facts surrounding the events of yesterday’s shooting.  We may never know.  The media didn’t even report the correct identity of the shooter for hours.

The ugly, horrific, unendurable truth, is that the line between control and evil is much finer than we want to believe.  Responsible people own guns and use them responsibly.  People walk around every day with significant mental illnesses that remain under good regulation.  Seemingly “sane” people suddenly behave with complete unpredictability.  Kids, teens, and adults role-play violence daily.  Small children pick up sticks and yell “Bang! Bang!”  Teenagers play violent video games and sing in church choirs.  Kids watch movies and television shows with violent scenes, yet refrain from acting out that violence.  Adults, decent, kind, loving adults play the same games, watch the same movies, and even express anger with words of violence.  Yet, most never act upon these shadow impulses.

We blame because we fear.  The fear we refuse to express is that it could be our child or loved one in the news – as the victim or as the shooter.  We don’t know why many of these things happen.  We don’t know why one ostracized teen goes on to found a major technology company and another becomes a mass murderer.  We want a cause. We want something we can fix, something we can control.

I’m not saying that our society is beyond redemption.  I’m not saying that nothing can or should be changed.  I happen to be an excellent shot, a daughter and granddaughter of hunters, who believes in the necessity of guns for protection against predators or for seeking food, but who also believes that we need better regulation of gun purchases, and that guns designed to take human life belong only in the hands of law enforcement and military.  I have friends and family who are mental health professionals and friends and family with mental illnesses.  I do believe that mental health care in our country is insufficient.  I am married to a gamer; my children watch action movies.  I abhor the violence in some of Mike’s games, but I don’t believe that either he or my children are unable to distinguish between fantasy and real life.  I believe in a higher power, but I don’t believe that prayer has any business being imposed upon others.  I also don’t believe in a deity who would refuse to protect children over a matter of legislation – that’s insane.  I attended a high school where violence was a matter of course.  A police presence on campus did nothing to deter the knife and fist fights.  I want my children safe, but not at the expense of learning in an armed camp.

In the end, there is no easy fix, no one policy, person, or thing to blame.  I’m not even sure there is any good way to pray for the lives that have been lost and ripped apart.  Those wounds won’t heal, not really.  All that we can do, in the end, is to ache for those who have lost, and love more deeply those who remain.

Yesterday, as I pushed Sierra on the rope swing at school, the swing twisted, spinning her body within inches of the tree.  I flinched, and she saw it.  “Were you afraid I would hit the tree, Mommy?” she grinned.

“Yes.”

“Well, I have to die someday, you know.”  She laughed and swung harder, matter-of-fact and joyful.

“True…but I’d prefer it not to be until you are bigger.”

“You mean older?”

I thought of all of the children who will never outgrow their next pair of shoes, who will never get older.  “Yes.  Much older.”

When we tuck Sierra in at night, we each say the same phrase.  “I love you more than infinity.”

Blame doesn’t work.  Politics don’t work.  All that we can do is to love our children and each other – more than infinity.

Remembering

I wrote this piece a few years ago and have never been able to figure out what to do with it.  Sometimes it seems trivial and pointless, sometimes it feels symbolic of something bigger.  But, I think that may be the point – our perceptions of things, event, and people shift as the circumstances in our lives change. 

This essay is pretty long, so bear with me.  I think for me, it illustrates how the seemingly trivial is always important to someone.  Kurt Vonnegut once wrote of fiction writing, “Every character should want something, even if it’s only a glass of water.”  The water may be the most important thing in the world to that person in that moment.

That’s the thing, one person’s trivia is another person’s disaster.  At our cores, we are all driven by desires and fears that we ourselves don’t even understand.  When we forget this fact, or assign judgment or value to someone else’s basic needs, we lose sight of our shared humanity.  And, in a post 9/11 world, I would submit that we all need that common humanity more than anything else.

--Christy

 

            Post 9/11.  That’s how we talk now.  Before and after 9/11.  Where were you?  The world has become a darker, scarier, more uncertain, and more cynical place.  Or, was it always thus, and did it take a cataclysm for us to notice?  I remember where I was.

            In those days, I kept a small travel trailer at the clinic for the nights when I was on call.  Sometimes my husband would bring our daughter down and they would keep me company.  Some nights I was on my own.  The trailer sat like a small island in the gravel parking lot, incongruous next to the horse stalls.  I viewed it alternately as a prison and as a refuge; it all depended on my day.

            That morning, I listened for the whistle of the tea kettle as I tried not to whack my elbow on the bathroom door while brushing my hair.  When my cell phone rang, I expected it to be the office calling with an emergency.  For some reason, it never occurred to the receptionists to walk the 50 yards to my trailer door.  I picked up the phone – my husband.  Oh, please not another ear infection, I thought.  Our 2 year old daughter was the frequent victim of mucus laden attacks on her inner ear.

            “Turn on the TV.”  Considering that it was not even 7 am, Mike sounded far too awake.

            “Huh?”  Normally I’m the morning person.  However, this was just the beginning of the global slide into chaos.

            “They’ve attacked the World Trade Center.”

            “Who’s attacked what?”  I turned on the television, and, like millions of others that morning, watched the scene that changed everything. 

            Shamefully, I don’t think I really knew what or where the World Trade Center was before that day.  I’m a native Californian, I’ve never been to New York City.  It wasn’t on my mental radar.  I can’t say that about many landmarks anymore.  Can anyone?  Now, when I hear of a place, I turn to the internet, to a globe, to the paper.  I have learned to dread the guilt of my own ignorance.

 

            On a personal level, that was a strange day.  Yes, I know that is an abominable understatement.  Clients dropped like leaves from the appointment book.  They didn’t cancel; they simply didn’t show, and the phone was Gothically silent.  Even the parking lot for the small animal clinic, normally a seething mass of people and pets, was a sea of unrelieved asphalt.  The few of us in the office turned lost ears to the radio and traded “where were you” stories in the hushed tones of mourners at the funeral of a well-known stranger.

            When the phone rang around 3pm, we all jumped.

            “Can the doctor come check my lamb?  He’s still not right from yesterday.”

As I opened my truck door, the insanity of the moment washed over me.  Thousands of people were dead, more were missing, no one knew what would be attacked next, and I was driving to someone’s backyard to check on a sick lamb.  Quite frankly, I was surprised that the lamb had made it this far.

            “My lamb was playing with the dog in the back yard, and I don’t know what happened, but we have sprinklers that stick up, and there are guts coming out.”  The blond titan trembled as he clutched a bundle to his chest.

            “Let’s take a look.”  My smile held more than a little confident condescension.  Certain truisms exist in modern livestock medicine.  Profuse bleeding is rarely profuse.  Broken legs are almost never broken.  Guts are hardly ever guts.  Owner assessments are notoriously unreliable.  Except when they aren’t.

            The lamb lay on its side wrapped in a beach towel.  As I peeled the technicolor terry cloth back from the fuzzy white body, I saw it.  A loop of glistening pink, like a beautifully polished fat worm, protruded from the white curls of the abdomen.

            Oh dear.

            Evisceration is not generally a good thing.

            “Hmmm... yes, you’re right.  That is intestine.  This is pretty serious.  We could do surgery...”

            “Do whatever you can.  He’s our pet.”  The panicked expression sat oddly above the burly muscles and straight shoulders.

            Cop, my mind said. “Ok, I’ll get a technician to help me, but I need to let you know that sheep have a bad tendency not to survive things like this.  They’re just not very tough.”

            “We have to try.  Please.”

            “Ok.  It’s probably going to run $400-500....” Lambs sold for $30-40.

            “That’s fine.  I know it’s just a stupid sheep, but he’s our sheep.  I can’t go back and tell my wife that we didn’t try.”

            “Ok.  I’ll do my best.”  I was beginning to look forward to this.  The lamb was cute, and it was refreshing to have such a concerned owner.  “Do you want to stay?”

            “Yeah.  I can help.  I’m a cop.  I’m used to stuff.”

            Bingo.

            “Great.  Give me a minute to get everything together.”  I set up for the surgery, and guided owner and lamb to the stainless steel table in the middle of the garage that doubles as our exam room.  “Ok, hold his head here.”  I turned the knobs on the anesthetic machine to release the flow of gas.  Catching a sharp whiff of the isoflurane gas, I jammed the rubber opening of the plastic mask over the lamb’s muzzle.

            The small body stiffened briefly as the anesthetic kicked in then relaxed, crumpling onto the cold steel of the table.  The cordless clippers stuttered before engaging.  Animal hair wreaks havoc on clipper teeth.  The teeth peeled strips of white fuzz from the abdomen.  I covered the offending intestine with a saline-soaked gauze square, then prepped the now smooth, pink expanse with disinfectant.  Taking pity on the small, half-bald body, I slid a thick bath towel under the lamb.  My fingers slipped an IV catheter into the tiny jugular vein and started the flow of fluids.  Drip.  Drip.  As I placed a blue drape over the lamb so that only the surgical site was exposed, the breath whooshed from the man hovering near the lamb’s now concealed head.  I understand.  Though, it helps me preserve a sterile field, the drape obscures the patient and robs it of identity.  I turned to the sink to scrub my hands and don my gloves.  Though my student days dwindle further into the mists with each year, I am still unable to scrub for surgery without feeling the ghost of an instructor at my shoulder, ready to criticize my technique. 

            Gloves snapped into place, I turned to my patient.  The fluids dripped into the line in counterpoint to the hissing rise and fall of the black rubber bag hooked to the anesthetic machine.  Good to go.  “Ok, I’m going to start now.”  As the scalpel blade broke the first thin line of scarlet across the pink skin, I heard a shudder sweep through the room.  I looked up at the clammy face of my owner cum assistant.  Oops. 

            “I don’t feel so good.”  An impossibly small voice gasped from the brawny man.

            “Go.  Now.  Go next door and tell them to give you some water and send me a technician.  Go.  We’ll be fine here.”

            Victim out of the way, I proceeded with the surgery.  The intestine snaked through not one, but two holes in the abdominal wall, eventually tunneling out under the skin.  Miraculously, blood flow to the intestine appeared intact, and the abdomen lacked the gross contamination I had dreaded.  Mumbling a silent entreaty to an indifferent universe, I extended the incision, replaced the loop of intestine and flushed the abdomen with fluids that trickled over the drape, towel, and onto my shoes.  After flushing and exploring the abdomen, I realigned the abdominal muscles and began to suture the muscle edges together.  Like making a pillow, I thought as I closed the last layer of skin. 

            My fuzzy patient surprised me by sitting up shortly after I had removed the anesthetic mask.  Maybe you’re tougher than I thought, I mused as he swung his head around like a drunken cobra.  Go for it, lamb.  Do this.

            Leaving the lamb with the technician, I went to see if my client was conscious, and to tell him the good news.  His head came up as he caught my entrance into the waiting room.  “All done,” I projected as much confidence as I could muster.  “He’s come out of the anesthesia and is doing well for now.”

            His shoulders sagged as the tension rushing from them deflated his body.  “Really?  He’s ok?”

“For now, yes.  The rest is going to be up to him.  The next few days will tell us a lot.”

“Thank you so much.  God, I can’t believe he’s ok.  Thank you!”

“Don’t thank me yet.  I still don’t know how this will turn out.  And you are going to be giving him a bunch of shots at home.”

“Ok.  I think we can do that.  I’m so sorry.  I don’t know what happened to me back there.  I’ve seen so much worse as a cop.”

“It’s different when there’s an emotional attachment.  Come on back over.  He should be done with the fluids about now.”

Lamb and owner reunited and sent on their way, I relaxed into the evening.  The next morning, the world ended.

 

As I climbed from my truck into the eerie stillness of the neighborhood of small ranchettes, reality fractured.  Nothing moved that afternoon.  Road noise was muffled; the sky was empty.  It felt as though time had stopped, yet here I was, checking on a sick lamb.

The woman at the door looked both frazzled and unaccustomed to being so.  Her gestures were the jerky movements of someone unused to a lack of control.  “I’m sorry.  I’m not usually like this.  I’m just so worried about him.  He doesn’t want to play, and he’s not eating much.”

 

“Ok, let’s take a look at him.  He may just be a bit painful.  He did have a fairly major surgery last night after all.”

 

“Oh, do you think that could be it?  I hadn’t thought of that.  I know you must think I’m so silly to be worried about a stupid sheep with everything else that’s going on today.”

 

“No, you’re not stupid.  He’s obviously important to you.  I do have to admit that you are my only appointment so far today.”

 

“I bet.  I called work and told them that I couldn’t come in.  That I have to take care of my lamb.”  A slightly chagrined look crossed her face.  “I’m a cop, too.  They called all of us in.  That’s why my husband isn’t home.  But I told them I wasn’t leaving my lamb.”

 

And I fell a few more feet down the rabbit hole.

 

The lamb looked at me brightly from his soft bed in the kitchen.  Vitals, hydration, incision, everything looked fine.  “Is he straining to pass manure at all?”

 

“No, he hasn’t had any trouble with that.”

 

“No problems giving him the antibiotics?”

 

“No.  Neither of us like poking him with the needles, but we’ve managed to get it done.  But,” her voice softened hopefully, “he is almost due for his evening…”

 

“Would you like me to give him his evening meds?”  This is not an uncommon request.

“Oh, yes.  Would you please.  I just hate sticking him.”

“Not a problem.  I think we’ll increase his pain medication a bit.  That should perk him up.”

“So you think he’ll be okay?”

“It’s still pretty early, but everything looks good.  I think he’s just feeling a little sad and pathetic.”

“Thank goodness.  I was so afraid he had peritonitis or something.”

“No sign of it.  I think he’ll be fine.”

 

As I drove home that evening, down abandoned freeways, past the strangely still airport, ringed with law enforcement cars, I thought of the people who had lost their lives that day, and briefly, of the lamb who had lived.

 

Shame Yields Right-of-Way to Joy

I live in fear of the misunderstanding -- not the big, relationship-rending miscommunications but the small gaffes, the simple ‘oops, I got that wrong’ moments.  This sort of minor awkwardness has never been something I’ve been able to brush off; instead, my fear of “getting it wrong” is occasionally paralyzing.

What if the party wasn’t today?  What if I’m at the wrong house?  What if I pronounce his/her name wrong?  What if I’m standing in the wrong place?  What if I was the one who was supposed to call?  What if I wasn’t supposed to call?

This circling rat’s nest of anxieties has a simple name.  Shame.

Shame is the feeling that dogs me at 3A.M. following an embarrassing miscommunication (often one so minor that I’m the only person who notices.)  Shame is the heat that floods my face, creeping up from my chest and paralyzing my legs when I realize my error.

We all experience shame in one place or another.  For some, those feelings may center around work.  For others, parenting, or sex.  We all have the things that trigger shame, that we try to work around, to avoid, to pretend don’t bother us.

But, we aren’t perfect.  And so, the stuff we try to protect against pops up anyway.

I’ve written before about Brené Brown’s work.  Brené is a ‘shame researcher’ whose books The Gifts of Imperfection and the one I’m currently reading/listening to, I Thought it Was Just Me (but it wasn’t), address the issues of perfectionism and its counterpart, shame.  As Brené says, she researches the things that get in the way of joy.

And, boy does shame get in the way of joy, but guess what – joy can get in the way of shame, too.

Recently I had one of those dreaded miscommunication moments.  It was so minor as to be a blip in time – a matter of my misinterpreting something someone had said to me.  Yet, once I realized what had happened and how I’d misunderstood it, that familiar tail-chasing, self-name-calling cycle started.  I had forgotten something the other person had told me, and that had led to my not catching the meaning of the conversation later.  No big deal, right?

Well, of course, me being me, not only was I ashamed for misunderstanding, but I fell into the self-centered trap of being appalled at my own self-centeredness.  (That one can chase itself in a circle for days.)  About the time I was using self talk like You stupid bitch, why can’t you get out of your own stupid head long enough to remember something for someone else.  I ran across something so beautiful that it completely broke the cycle of shame and self-negation.

I found this on both Facebook and Twitter, shared by Brené Brown and Quiet author Susan Cain on each of their pages.  This was posted recently on the Atlantic’s website – a flashmob, performing (appropriately enough) “Ode to Joy.”  The sight of all these people, risking vulnerability, putting themselves out there, risking ‘standing in the wrong place’ just to make something beautiful completely changed my mindset.

If you let it in, joy is the antidote to shame.  In the meantime, watch…

 

 

The Other Side

I am a child of the 70s, a child of equal rights, of feminism, of the era of sensitive males.  I grew up believing that anything boys could do, girls could do better, that women could compete with men, toe-to-toe and head-to-head, but that men still were supposed to open doors and that boys couldn’t hit girls.

My sister and I were the only children and the only grandchildren.  We learned (with varying degrees of success) to cook, clean, sew, shoot, whittle, fish, sail, row, woodwork, and dig really deep holes in really hard clay (ask about the swimming pool debacle of 1990 sometime.)  There was no “men’s work” or “women’s work” in our childhood home; there was just work.  There were chores to be done and whoever was best suited or was free at the time did them.  We played with dolls and with Tonka trucks, had tea parties and waged battle in forts.  In our day, there was still a term for girls who “played like boys” – tomboy.

I married a man who could cook and clean, who would be an equal partner in child-rearing, not (as I told my mother-in-law early on) because I was lucky, but because in my mind, these things were required.  I entered a profession, once dominated by men, at a time when the pendulum was swinging the other direction.  Today, roughly 90% of graduating veterinarians in the U.S. are female.

This trend in veterinary medicine mirrors educational trends throughout the country – more and more women are holding higher and higher degrees.

In general, I applaud all of these societal shifts.  I’m female.  I have never had any desire to be defined by my gender or my reproductive capacity.  Yet, I can’t help wondering – as our societal expectations for men and women have evolved, what are we leaving behind.

For those of you who are parents, think of your children’s classes for a moment.  What is the gender breakdown of kids who are considered “difficult,” “challenging,” or “hyperactive?”  I’d be willing to bet that the percentages skew heavily toward the boys.  Now think back to your own childhood.  How many of the men among you (or brothers, neighbors, or cousins of the women) played with toy guns, owned a BB gun, set things on fire, or played with illicit explosives?  Come on, don’t be shy.  Raise your hands. 

I’ve been taking the same informal poll for the past 20+ years, and so far the results have been unanimous.  Ever adult man of any generation I have questioned has admitted to lighting something on fire or blowing something up as a kid.  Most of them played army or war.  Many admit to “near misses” and “close calls” – brushes with mortality of which they still hope their mothers are unaware.  Many report getting in the odd fist-fight or two – over name calling, a toy, a girl.

Now, jump back into the present.

How often do kids roam the neighborhood in packs – on foot, bicycle, or skateboard?  We tether them to electronic leashes (cell phones) or shuttle them from one supervised activity to another.  Homemade explosives of any sort tend to attract the attention of federal law enforcement.  Kids are helmeted, padded, and sunscreened to the extent that they may as well be placed in plastic hamster balls.

Historically, the classroom setting – despite the complaints of my generation that teachers “favored boys” – has had a female bias.  Since the late 1800s, teaching has been one of the more feminine professions, and the virtues of the classroom (sit still, wait to speak, focus on one task at a time) tend (though not always) to come more easily to the girl-child than the boy.  But, boys had recess.

Again, think back.  Who dominated your childhood playground?  Where did the exuberance and aggression of youth happen?

My kids are fortunate – their classroom setting provides opportunities for active as well as passive learning.  Boys and girls alike are taught skill such as handwork, cooking, gardening, and woodworking.  They are allowed to wrestle and to climb trees.

Yet, I see a trend that troubles me.  Increasingly, parents are demanding a crackdown on “aggressive play” on the playground – a banning of sticks as “weapons,” a ban on “war games.”  Ok, so I don’t want kids whacking each other with sticks, and I’m generally opposed to war and killing in real life.  But, when did we become so afraid of our innate aggressions that we grew terrified to let our children playact?

I’ve heard people say that kids can’t distinguish between the world of imagination and that of reality.  This may be true for the 3-4 year old, but for the grade-schooler, I call Bullshit.  I’ve seen young kids, immersed in a fantasy world, look derisively at a parent who attempts to join in.  “It’s just make-believe, Mom,” they say.  “Duuuuhhh.”

It isn’t PC nowadays to say it, but men and women are not the same.  Equal is not alike.  Boys and girls have different parts, different hormonal influences, and different evolutionary drives.  Yes, nurture impacts nature.  But we dismiss our nature at our peril.

I’m reading an advance copy of a terrific non-fiction book called Zoobiquity.  This book, written by a human cardiologist, looks at the correlations between diseases and conditions across species.  One chapter is devoted to adolescents and adolescent risk.  Across many species, one demographic stands out in the fields of risk-taking and aggression.  You guessed it: the young male.

Think about it from an evolutionary standpoint.  Which males are most likely to survive and to reproduce their genetics?  Sorry, not the sweet, sensitive, cautious ones.

No, I’m not advocating a return to the era of the cave man or even to disco.  But I do worry that we are systematically stripping away behaviors, mores, and character traits associated with masculinity without replacing these traits.  We have created a world in which women and girls expand well beyond traditional or evolutionary roles, while at the same time narrowing the world of men.  You can nurture, we tell our men – but most primary caregivers are still female.  We honor your service, we tell our soldiers, but we chide our sons for playing army.  Even in the bedroom, we women have taken an increasingly assertive role (and I say yay), but what have we left as “appropriate” for masculine sexual expression?  (I’m only qualified to speak to heterosexual interactions.)

My son turned ten yesterday.  I worry about him sometimes – sandwiched between two sisters, raised by a mother with no brothers and a father who never knew his own dad.  I wonder if we are giving him enough of a sense of his own identity and place, as a male and as a person.  I don’t want him to grow up “masculine” in the misogynistic, hyper-aggressive, insecure-hiding-behind-macho sense, but I do want him to have a strong identity and a place of his own in the world.  I don’t want him to grow up afraid of his own strength, of his darknesses, and of his power.  I don’t want that for him, or for any of his generation.

Right now, Aidan knows who he is.  He will shake his hips to Lady Gaga or wield a Nerf Gun with the best of them.  He’s fine playing “Pretty Pretty Princess” with Sierra (with the indulgent sighs of an older brother humoring his baby sister) or with leading her on an armed assault against an unknown enemy.  He will cuddle into our laps for snuggles or try to burp the alphabet. 

It should (though in deference to the black and white nature of modern society and the internet, I’ll say it anyway) go without saying that I’m not a fan of fighting, war, sexual violence, objectification of women, arson, or risk-taking-induced injuries.  But, the fact that I don’t like these things doesn’t eliminate them from the species.  I wonder what we are losing when we consistently strip away opportunities to test boundaries and to find identity.  Thanks to modern agriculture, technology, and medical advances, we no longer need men to fill the roles of hunter or protector.  But what are we giving our boys in return?

Amazonian fantasies aside, no good will come of a society of ill-educated, insecure, or submissive men.  We need to either find new ways for our boys to test and challenge themselves or to loosen the reins of political correctness and fear.  Shifting the pendulum to a female-centric society will do no more good than a history of patriarchy has done.  Women lose when they are denied the opportunities to work with, compete against, and partner with men equally.  When we are denied the chances to work through our darkness, how are we supposed to fully develop our light?

 

Maternal Conflict

I’m Mothers’ Day conflicted.  Well, actually, I’m conflicted and confused about mothering and discussions of motherhood, in general.  Mother, mothering, motherhood – such loaded words for a biologic process aimed at species survival.  It seems as though this generation of parents and non-parents has managed to attach such a monumental pile of baggage to the parenting, and particularly mothering, concept that it is amazing that the whole institution doesn’t just collapse in dusty, mismanaged exhaustion.  Yet, here I am, adding my own superfluous two cents.

We have become as conflicted about the role of mothers and what constitutes a good mother in modern society as we are about our own mothers.  Freud and friends would have had a field day. 

Time magazine recently managed to turn what was supposed to be an article discussing a particular parenting style (attachment parenting) into yet another breastfeeding battleground with a deliberately provocative cover.  Now, I’m all for provocation, so long as it is productive.  But, how many times can we circle around the breast?  As a veterinarian, I find all the hype about breastfeeding to be simultaneously inane and sensationalist.  Humans are mammals.  Some mammals nurse more successfully (I use this in the nutritional and biological sense, not to assign value.) than others.  Some require nutritional replacement.  Let’s move on.

I’m sitting here sipping tea at my computer on Mothers’ Day morning, with a totally self-indulgent day of painting and food planned.  Yet, I can’t help identifying with many of the points writer Anne Lamott makes in this recent Salon.com essay titled “Why I Hate Mothers’ Day.”  She’s right – on the face of it, it is weird and morally suspect to have holidays that essentially elevate parents above non-parents.  As much as I love the special hugs, handmade cards, and school-crafted gifts from my kids on this day, receiving them feels awkward – as though I’m tacitly agreeing payment of some debt.   Animals reproduce all the time; it’s hardly a medal-worthy process.  And as much as I appreciate the upbringing my parents gave me, and as much as I thank them for said upbringing, I’ve never felt that children owe any debt of gratitude toward their parents.  Especially in the modern age of birth control, the decision to have children is a conscious one, and the burden of responsibility falls upon those who make the choice.  My kids don’t owe me.  They didn’t ask to be born.  Mike and I are the ones who owe them the best upbringing we can provide.

A friend recently emailed me a link to an article on “difficult mothers.”  It was part of a larger conversation, not an indictment – I think.  The article makes some valuable points on relationships, bonding, and security, but part of it left me feeling twitchy.  For the record, I feel the same (or maybe the polar opposite) twitchiness when I read things or hear discussions about the glories of motherhood, the “natural wisdom” of mothers, etc.  Yes, parents have a huge impact on their children; there is certainly enough research to prove that one statement.  However, most of us are not demons, and precious few are saints.  Discussions – overt or implied – of good vs bad parenting leave me feeling oppressed and discouraged, regardless of where I land in the balance of the discussion.  The fact is, none of us gets a manual.  (I’m still quite irritated with Kaiser about that.  A manual would have been far more useful than a plastic diaper bag covered with purple bunnies.)  None of us knows what we are doing until the end, and maybe not even then, so how can we, as individuals or as a society, pretend to have some sort of empirical scale for parenting?  Breast, bottle, attachment, Ferber, working mother, stay-at-home, two-parent, single-parent, same-sex parents, private school, public school, day care, processed foods, whole foods – these things are all just words, and yet we throw them at each other like snowballs packed with the sharp rocks of judgment.

Enough.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all of us: parents, former parents, non-parents would just come out and admit that we don’t have a freaking clue what we are doing on this rock and that we just make the choices that seem best to us at the time?  How hard would that be?

We don’t, of course.  Because admitting that there is no one “right” way means admitting the thing that we fear the most.  We have no control beyond that which we possess over our own choices.  Those of us who have chosen children realize deep in the scariest, dankest corners of our hearts that we have absolutely no control over what happens to our children or who they become.  There is no choice that will protect us from the thing we most fear – loss.

I can’t contemplate Mothers’ Day without thinking of the mothers I know who have lost children or the people I know who have lost their mothers.  These are the fears that I know I fight when I lock into judgments about good and bad families.  And yet, these losses that are almost too much for the mind to view head-on teach us the key point.  Loss happens, and it doesn’t care what parenting methods, lifestyles, or philosophies we choose.  Loss doesn’t care whether we bring our mother flowers on the second Sunday in May, or call her on a Friday evening.  Loss levels the playing field; it doesn’t care whether we are “good” or “bad.”

In the end, we are each responsible for living up to and embracing our own choices.  We don’t need special days to celebrate those choices, but if the day gives us a talisman to focus, well, who am I to say whether that is right or wrong?  There isn’t any special magic that gestated in my womb along with any of my children.  Mothering hasn’t given me superpowers or eternal wisdom, damnit anyway.  It is one of the experiences of my life, and like any other experience, it brings to me only what I am willing to put in and what I am willing to learn.

The Gender Line

I don’t much follow celebrity news, but Ashley Judd recently wrote a beautiful essay discussing the harm done by the objectification of women.  Harm done not just to women, but by women as well as men, and the harm done to men as well.  This essay keeps being labeled “feminist.”  [Side note: as I was finding the link for the essay, I noticed the title.  “Ashley Judd Slaps Media in the Face for Speculation Over Her ‘Puffy’ Appearance.”  “Slaps Media in the Face” – really?  The editors at the Daily Beast couldn’t find words to headline an essay about the dangers of stereotyping and objectification that didn’t involve a metaphor that conjures the most stereotypical image of female celebrity?  Shame.]

My own relationship with feminism is an uneasy one.  I don’t even like the word, not because I’m somehow opposed to the philosophical ideal of female strength and equality, but because it is a word that divides.  I don’t believe that men and women are the same.  I like feeling feminine, and I like doing many of the things that are considered “masculine.”  I prefer to exist beyond the labeling of my reproductive organs.  Can I be a humanist instead, please?

Misogyny, sexism, chivalry, feminine oppression, patriarchy, gender-bias – it doesn’t matter what terms are used.  There is an ugly undercurrent to each, a thread that says “We are different members of humanity, our differences and complexities scare the hell out of us, and we can only resolve them by assigning roles and expectations.”  In a world where physical strength conferred a distinct survival advantage, these labels may have made sense.  However, as technology and education have leveled the career (survival) playing field, our expectations around gender serve only to confuse, to enhance conflict and distrust, and to prevent us from celebrating – yes, celebrating – the very real differences that exist between us.

We all contribute to the problem of separation and expectation.  Daily.  The strident feminist who shuns makeup, refuses to buy guns or trucks for her son or dolls for her daughter is as guilty as the middle-aged man who states outright that no woman “can do that job as well as a man.”  And, the mother who pushes makeup on her adolescent daughter “just to cover up that blemish” is as guilty as the father who tells his son to “toughen up; don’t cry.” We all do it.  Don’t pretend you can’t see yourself here.

 What about the mothers whose default is to call the other mom to set up a playdate, even though the father is picking the child up from school?  What about that time you looked at a woman and thought (or said), “There is no way she should be wearing that.” When was the last time you had an opinion, really any opinion, about a man’s attire?  How often do we excuse a man lashing out in anger when we know that he is really frightened or hurt?  Why do we make the excuse?  Oh, well, because that’s just how men handle these things.  Why aren’t we angry at a society that refuses to allow men emotional expression beyond anger or fucking?  Why aren’t we angry that we set separate parenting standards for men and women?  We do.  Don’t deny it.  A man can be a good father just by showing up.  What about the mother who lets her son go off for an overnighter without clean socks or underwear?

Yet, we run around claiming that all is equality and fairness.  We tell our daughters “You can do anything a boy can do.”  Yet, we raise our sons with the expectation that they need to somehow treat women differently than they do other men.  We tell them, “Don’t hit girls.  Well, don’t hit anyone, but especially don’t hit girls.”  We train them to hold the door open for women.  Are they supposed to let it slam shut in the face of the guy behind them?  We tell our daughters, “You can have any career you want.” But we don’t give them the tools for that career.

A man is expected to state his needs and expectations in the workplace.  A man is expected to speak up when he sees someone underperforming.  A woman who speaks her mind professionally risks being classified as a bitch.  Yes, this phenomenon is real.  I have heard male colleagues yell and curse at clients with dangerous horses.  I have had those same clients call the office to complain about how rude I was when I suggested that the horse was dangerous and needed some training.

This isn’t an example of the poor, oppressed woman.  This sort of gender divide harms everyone.  Women lose (obviously) in terms of self-esteem, performance, and career advancement.  Men lose the input and experience of half of their colleagues.  And they lose the opportunity to put their own egos to the side and hear an alternate view.  Whenever we are allowed to entrench deeply within our own experience and self-expectation, we lose.

It starts so early.  Walk onto an elementary school playground and look at the first grade.  In kindergarten, those same children mingled, irrespective of gender. The active children rolled around in the grass and mud like puppies on caffeine while the more sedate children built castles of blocks and dreams.  By first grade, though, the lines begin to be drawn.  Girls clump together, trying on tiaras and cloaks, while the boys wield sticks and charge across the yard.  They still blend their games, but often the cross-over is gender-specific: the girls need a groom for the wedding or a king for the kingdom; the boys need someone to rescue. 

Earlier this year, I had an odd experience.  I was picking Sierra up from school, and as my whirlwind child tore through the classroom and out into the yard with a pack of boys, a mother of one of the other girls smiled and said to me, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but Sierra reminds me a bit of Ramona (from the Beverly Cleary books) – I mean in terms of her…of her physicality.”  The other mother trailed off as though she wasn’t certain that she hadn’t said something inappropriate.  She didn’t look critical; she looked almost half-envious, as though she wished that she had been that exuberant child.  But, that physicality wasn’t, and still isn’t, considered quite the norm for girls.  Sierra is Ramona in many ways.  Thirty years ago, she would have been branded a “tomboy.”  It isn’t unusual to see her, resplendent in princess gown and tiara, chasing her brother through the neighborhood armed to the teeth with Nerf gun and sword.

I hope that she will maintain this balance.  But, I’ve already seen the pressures of society begin to bend her older siblings.  Aidan, by default a sweet, sensitive, cuddly people-pleaser, has begun working on his “cool” act.  He’s always had an affinity for sports, guns, and cars, but he is less and less willing to let any side of him other than the sport/gun/car/class clown face be seen around his peers.  Caitlin struggles socially as she and her peers enter their teens.  “Most of the girls just want to talk about makeup and hair and clothes and music,” she complains.  Caitlin loves to shop, will play with makeup a bit because she likes things that are pretty, even herself, but she doesn’t see the point in talking about these things.  She’d rather hold lengthy discussion about the merits of Marvel vs DC comics, or the more subtle points of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or compare and contrast Star Trek and Star Wars, but already, those conversations are the purview of the boys.  When we separate, sort, and label, everyone loses.

I don’t have a fix.  I wish I did.  I think that the only solutions to the big problems are the small ones.  What if each of us stopped, paused before allowing a judgmental thought on a woman’s body to be fully articulated?  What if we stopped before saying, “Don’t cry” to our sons?  What if we took a breath before leaping to the “bitch” label for a woman stating her case, or before brushing off the rudeness of an angry man?  What if we gave each other small spaces in which to move beyond the labels?  What if we quit blaming clothing, makeup, beer commercials, or politicians for our societal woes?

What if we ditched words like misogyny and feminism and moved toward one label?  I’d like to be a humanist, please.

Occupying My Mind

Tomorrow at least six of the twelve adults who will gather around our Thanksgiving table are products of the University of California system.  My parents both hold degrees from UC Berkeley, my sister and her husband from UC Santa Cruz, my husband and I from UC Davis. 

My campus is in the news this week.  While I was in Texas, continuing my education, my academic birthplace dominated headlines and social media feeds.  UC Davis isn’t a headline kind of place.  It’s not the school you seek if you’re hoping to rabble-rouse, party hard, or set the world afire.  Pastoral, self-effacing, hard-working – those descriptors generally fit the campus, its students, faculty, and culture.  Seeing that campus in the news, the quad packed with thousands of protestors, is like opening the morning paper to find that the quiet kid in the back of math class is the celebrity of the month.

The Occupy protests and their associated ramifications and consequences trouble me, even as they inspire.  Since Occupy Wall Street began, I’ve been curious to see how the movement would play out, and I’ve been unsettled.  I don’t think I’m alone.  To say that our society is not at a tipping point is naïve.  We’ve been hurtling toward the precipice for a good decade or more.  Like people, all societies have a finite lifespan.  We’re all dying, but some are doing it faster than others.  In the past couple of decades, American society has been chain-smoking, binge-eating, and drunk driving its way toward economic and cultural terminal illness.

Group-think scares the hell out of me.  Most bad ideas manifest as a group saying, “Hey, look.  Here’s a really good idea.”  So, while I believe firmly in advocacy, action, and speaking out, mass demonstrations make me squirm.  As much as my personal economic theories range toward the socialist end of the spectrum – I’m sorry, but I’ve just never understood why the concept of shared wealth and support became a bad word – I’ve also resisted the notion of corporate-political conspiracy.

And yet…

I was born just a few days before the Kent State Massacre.  My parents graduated from UC Berkley in 1967.  I’m not a child of the Free Speech Movement by any means, but I’m old enough that the lessons (good and bad) of the 60’s are a part of my consciousness.  Among the basic principles of my childhood were:

1)      Think for yourself.

2)      Stand up for your beliefs.

3)      Defend those who need you.

4)      Never.  Ever.  Judge another person until you have ‘walked a mile in their shoes.’

That last principle confounds things more than you could possibly imagine.  In an increasingly black-and-white world, it’s tricky to maintain objectivity and even trickier to feel justified in my own opinions while trying to see through someone else’s eyes.  And that’s a good thing.  Despite what pundits, protests, and politicians tell us, thought and belief shouldn’t be easy.  This is hard work, folks.  We should scrutinize protests, even those with goals that generally match ours, and see beyond the placards and chants.  We should look at everything – from the trash on the ground to the behavior of authority – and we should question.

This is one of the things that has always made me a bit queasy about large-scale protest.  It’s like advertising – protest deliberately puts out only one side of the story.  But stories are like onions (and ogres), they have layers.

So, this fall, aware of the layers, I’ve watched the Occupy protests from the distance of a computer screen, ignoring the e-mails from community organizing groups to join the movement.  And there’s the lesson.  Ignoring issues doesn’t drive them away.  No matter how far into that sand we bury our heads, sooner or later the predator finds us and bites us on the ass.

It took the courage of students who were born sometime during my undergraduate years to show me that sometimes the other side doesn’t have much of a point.  These students, raised into a world of $5 coffees and disposable electronics, face a world for which nothing had prepared them.  They lived their childhoods in an America of ridiculous affluence and excess.  They face adulthood in an American that has crumbled under that excess.  They’re mortgaging their futures in the pursuit of education in a system that has failed to deliver its side of the contract.  I’m worried for them.

And, I’m worried about members of my family who will be dissecting their stuffing to pick out offending mushrooms and sticking olives on their fingertips.  I wonder if my children and their cousins will have any hope of obtaining the affordable, amazing education that was taken for granted by previous generations of Californians.  Is education a right or a privilege?   Many who already have or who never wanted higher education seem to now take the view that the experience is a privilege.

They are wrong.  The point of the state university system was to eliminate the concept of a privileged, educated elite.  The driving force behind the public universities of California was the notion that if you were smart enough and willing to work hard enough, you should be entitled to the same caliber of education as that obtainable by the scions of wealth.  Education, in short, was a right.

When I entered UC Davis in the fall of 1988, tuition fees were around $450 per quarter.  My understanding is that UC tuition is now ten times that amount and increasing.  I’ve seen projections of annual tuition of over $20,000 within just a few years.  Add in books, housing, and food (ramen at best), and a Bachelors degree will soon cost roughly the same amount as the house of my childhood.

What are these students getting for what amounts to a mortgage on their lives?  A deal that would cause any businessman worth his salt to break the contract immediately.  In what other business transaction does the seller get to increase the price by an indeterminate amount during the period of the contract while simultaneously lessening the services provided? 

If cutting classes and raising registration fees weren’t insulting enough, the UC system has, for several decades now, decided that the best method of handling client complaints is through condescension, broken promises, and now force.  The tone of Regents and campus Chancellors alike toward students over several years has been one of exasperated adults toward fractious children.  This attitude prevails on most college campuses, I suspect, and it may be inevitable where you have a population comprised of “experts” in their fields placed in positions of teaching and administrating a demographic whose days of Saturday morning cartoons aren’t far in the past.  However, this must cease.  University students are not children.  They are adults by the dictates of law, society, and physiology.

And, on Friday and through the weekend, on the UC Davis campus, the students were indeed the adults.  They occupied a campus, not as trespassers, but as shareholders and stakeholders.  They occupied a campus that is theirs by right as citizens of the state of California and as paying registrants of the UC system.  They held their ground peacefully in the traditions of non-violent protest that have deep roots in academia.  And they were met by violence of the worst kind.  The campus police were not pushed to the brink or threatened by an unruly mob.  They pepper-sprayed a group of seated students with the contempt of pest-control technicians. 

It speaks volumes that the faculty have chosen to stand with the students who swarm their office hours begging for a better curve on the midterm or an extension on a paper.  The faculty of the departments of English and Physics have called for the resignation of Chancellor Linda Katehi.

Chancellor Katehi and UC President Yudof have given lip-service to their “horror” at the actions of the UC police on the Davis and Berkeley campuses.  Yet, more telling than all of the pretty, rote, and empty words, was the expression in Chancellor Katehi’s eyes at the protest on the UC Davis Quad this weekend.  In video shot before her ‘apology’, you can see the Chancellor roll her eyes as a student speaks.  Words mean nothing, Chancellor.  Courage means everything.  And you have none.  You, and any of your like-minded colleagues, must go.  Californians want our universities back.  Our children deserve better.

The video below was posted on YouTube by Capital Public Radio:

 

 

Holding On and Letting Go -- In Three Acts

The first time I went back to my alma mater to do some research in the Health Sciences Library, my heart pounded against my chest, my mouth dried out, and my legs felt like overdone pasta.  I was nervous – terrified.  Ridiculous, I told myself.  Why on earth should a 40-something, qualified veterinarian be nervous about looking up a few articles in the veterinary school library?  Why duck her head apologetically around the students – students, for God’s sake, nearly young enough to be my kids! 

But, here’s the thing.  I spent the entirety of 1992-96 waiting for it to happen.  I kept waiting for someone, a secretary, or maybe the dean himself to tap me on the shoulder and say, “I’m sorry, but there’s been a mistake.  You don’t belong here.”  You see, in my heart, I knew that I didn’t belong.  I was a decent student, but not the sort of platinum over-achiever that gets admitted into a highly competitive professional school.  My required-sciences GPA was just above the minimum.  Obviously, there had been some mistake.  It didn’t help that during the first year or so of veterinary school, I was dealing with a rejection at a personal level that made me believe that I really didn’t belong anywhere, but the upshot was that I entered my chosen profession convinced that I was an imposter.

The odd thing about my current parallel career is that it is forcing me to accept my place in the veterinary field.  For magazine articles, I’ve been forced to interview some of the top experts in their fields.  In my new job, many of my veterinary colleagues are highly qualified, specialty-boarded, and well-recognized veterinarians.  Yet, I’m forced with the measly three letters following my name, to interact with them as equals.  And I should.

I’m learning to hold on to something that is rightfully mine, and something that is mine to keep.  Today’s blog post, however, is about the opposite.  I may have been influenced by the Ira Glass parody sex tape, but today we present, in three acts, stories about people letting go of, or holding on too long to something that no longer belongs to them, or perhaps never did.

Act I – Letting Go Gracefully

It’s every high-achiever’s worst nightmare.  You get a phone call (or a letter, or an e-mail) informing you that you have been nominated for one of the highest honors in your art or profession.  You have just long enough to let the euphoria set it when you receive another notice: Oops!  Sorry, it was a mistake.  We didn’t mean you.  Sorry about that.

The short-list for the National Book Awards had an unprecedented two entries listed in the Young Adult section this year.  Why?  Someone goofed.  By mistake, Lauren Myracle was entered for her book Shine.  The intended entry had been Franny Billingsley’s Chime.  Personally, I’m trying to see how that could have happened – are the National Book Awards nominations typically composed by someone talking on a bad cell phone?  But, regardless, for a while, even after it had been publicly announced that there was a screw-up, both books were on the list.  The theory here was apparently that since Shine is an excellent book in its own right, they would just have two books short-listed for the category in order to make amends for the error.  That’s kind of like the hostess getting caught dividing the soup into an extra bowl to make room for an uninvited guest; it just looks bad no matter what.

But, then the story gets worse.  After all of this, Myracle received another call from Harold Augenbraum, the executive director of the National Book Foundation saying that “the position was being changed and that people wanted Shine off the list.”  Myracle describes her ordeal in the interview with Vanity Fair from which the above quote is taken. 

The final scene in this act is the scene of true grace.  “I felt gutted. I felt embarrassed, and ashamed that I had the gall to believe that this book was worthy. So over the weekend came the question of, Do I withdraw, or do I let them strip it from me? I first thought: They made the mistake; they can clean it up. Then I realized that I had a chance to either be classy or be seen as someone gripping with white knuckles to something they didn’t want me to have. And I was going to be taken off the list regardless.”  Classy indeed: Myracle withdrew her name from consideration, instead asking the National Book Foundation to make a donation to the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

Act II – When the gyre unwinds

The end is rarely pretty.  And it seems that endings happen more frequently in the middle of life than we are conditioned to expect.  The cliché of the mid-life crisis really doesn’t do justice to the pain of waking up one morning – or, more commonly, over a series of mornings – to the realization that the life you thought you lived, the life you expected to keep living is no longer the right life for you.  It no longer belongs to you. 

It must be something about the 40s, but it seems that my circle of acquaintance has been filled in recent years with career and marriage upheaval.  People living lives that seemed to be right only to find that the plan suddenly no longer fit, was broken, or was suddenly destroyed.

Most of the people I know have handled the pain of job loss, home loss, or divorce with extraordinary grace – keeping the bonds of family even through pain and uncertainty.  They have been adults, and have faced the situations with adult grace – letting go of that which can no longer be salvaged, holding their sense of self and self-worth, and starting again with dignity.

Then, there’s the other side of the coin.  I’ve watched a (fortunately small) minority of one or two unravel under the pain and anger, spewing public venom, ignoring obligations, and generally burying themselves so deeply in their desire to cling to something that no longer exists that they risk losing that which is rightfully theirs.

Everything ends.  Everything that we have and are has a finite lifespan.  Jobs, relationships, people – one day, it stops.  The pain of that ending, the pain of waking up and realizing that something you thought was a part of your life is no longer yours (or, maybe never was) is an amputation.  But, we aren’t given control over the endings.  We are only given control over what we take away.

We can either face loss with the grace of Lauren Myracle or we can go for the nuclear option of our next act.

Act III – “And what rough beast”

In Zanesville, OH today, law-enforcement are attempting to round up wild animals that escaped from a private farm.  Not a few animals, and not just zebras and such.  We’re talking lions, (not sure about tigers), and bears – oh my! 

Most disturbingly, the owner of the aforementioned preserve was found dead on his property, with all of the enclosures opened.  The circumstances are still sketchy; as of this writing, there is some suggestion by law enforcement that the man may have released the animals and then killed himself.

Regardless, this is an example of the extreme of holding on or letting go of that which does not belong.  Large predators do not belong in private ownership.  They barely belong in institutionalized captivity.  News reports suggest that the man in question had legal and personal problems.  If so, the picture is beginning to emerge of someone holding onto things that should not have been his, and letting go in the absence of grace.

 

Ultimately, I guess this post is about both letting go and holding on.  It is about finding what is ours, what belongs most deeply within us, and it is about knowing how to hold that part of ourselves so that we can let go of the things which no longer fit, the things that cannot stay, the things that, perhaps, were never ours to begin with.

Finding the Thread -- Fear in the News

Readers of this blog may have noticed that I’ve never attempted the sort of “weekly round-up” posts seen in other, more focused blogs.  This is a technique that works great for blogs that cover one topic or niche, but since this blog is essentially a reflection of my brain (scattered), I’ve generally felt that trying to tie up bits of news from the week that stuck out for me would be like trying to string a bunch of random beads into a pattern.

Yet, there are weeks when certain news items stick to the brain, and it seems as though there should be a thread that joins them.  Perhaps this is simply a reflection of my current thoughts, but it seems as though I may have found a thread for the events and issues that have stood out for me this week.

Here are my “beads” of news, in no particular order.

1. The debt ceiling talks collapsed (again.) In other words, the president and Congress began tattling on each other and John Boehner took his ball and went home.
2. Though we are having a mild summer in CA, worry about friends, family, and colleagues has me following the heat wave in the Midwest and East.
3. The bombing and shooting tragedy in Norway is made even more horrific by the age of so many of the victims and the choice of disguise of the murderer.
4. A breastfeeding doll popular in Europe causes some controversy in the U.S.
5. School board members decide to un-ban a book after they actually read it.
6. A study indicates that modern playground safety modifications may actually be detrimental to children.

There they are, snippets of world events from catastrophic to idiotic.  What is the thread that ties these things together?  Here’s a clue.  When I took the above picture this morning, I was afraid to use it.  The beads are kind of blurry, and the whole photo is shadowed weirdly.  Then it hit me – those are the aspects that make the picture perfect for this post.  My beads, these bits of news, stood out from the media storm randomly and kind of blurry.  But, the whole picture is tainted by something unpleasant and shadowy.  Fear.

Yesterday, I posted about fear on the personal level.  Today, societal fear seems to be the thread that connects these issues – at least in my mind. 

Wait.  What about the heat wave? Fear didn’t cause summer heat.  Yeah, I hear you.  Inserting the heat wave into the list reminds me of the old Sesame Street game, “Which of these things is not like the others?”

The thread of fear is pretty obviously strung through some of these events.  This morning, I found it interesting to note that NPR, not generally an alarmist news outlet, used the words “fear” and “afraid” in the blog post on the debt-ceiling crisis.  Should the public be afraid?  Probably.  The potential global economic impact of a failure to raise the debt-ceiling is pretty awful.  But, what struck me is how fear is affecting the process.  Why do politicians lock into a “my way or the highway” mindset?  Fear.  For humans, the loss of ability to compromise, to be flexible, indicates a loss of our higher brain functions.  The more we are driven by fear (fear of losing power, fear of losing face, fear of losing money, elections, etc) the more rigid we become.  Posturing to show “strength” is the human equivalent of puffing up our feathers or spines to look bigger to the predator.

“Terror” was prominent in the headlines referencing the bombing and shooting in Norway.  An apt adjective, for sure.  While the bombing in Oslo is horrific enough, I can’t imagine anything more terrifying than what the kids at that summer camp must have endured.  The thought of them seeing someone they believed to be a police officer – a person sent to keep them safe—open fire on them is nauseating.  But here, fear seems to be not only the result of the murderer’s actions, but the cause as well.  News reports refer to the suspect as an extremist who believes that immigration, multi-culturalism, and particularly Islam are destroying Norway.  A man acting from fear creates fear.

Now we drop into the seemingly banal.  However, in my mind at least, fear breeds fear.  The more we close our minds, bodies, and hearts, in self-protection, the more we make room for the truly dark things. 

Playgrounds – remember metal slides?  Do you remember the really tall ones, with their tight corkscrews and rickety ladders?  Do you remember how the metal burned your legs below the hem of your shorts on a summer day?  Do you remember the metal merry-go-rounds?  Do you remember trying to keep your legs moving as fast as those of the older kids, until you screwed up the courage for that jump and then landed on the spinning platform?  Do you remember the pit of fear in your stomach just before you took that leap?  My kids won’t.  And if you are a member of my generation or those that follow, neither will your kids.  As parents, we have clamored for freedom from fear for our children.  We have smoothed the edges, lowered the peaks, and softened the landings for our kids.  We are one step away from bubble-wrapping them into incompetence.  And, in our desire to protect our children from the scrapes and fractures of life, we have taught them that life is to be feared.  We are creating adults who will not have the skills to stand against the darkness of fear.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie is on my to-read list, so I’ll admit that I am not yet qualified to speak intelligently about it.  (There are those who would say that I’m not qualified to speak intelligently about a number of things, but why let fear stop me?)  However, I was intrigued by the news that the Richland, WA school board had reversed a decision to ban Mr. Alexie’s book after two of the members originally voting for the ban decided to actually read the book.  The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian tends to spark controversy due to the “dark” nature of its subject matter.  The semi-autobiographical story of a boy raised in poverty on a Native American reservation attending a mostly-white high school deals with themes that middle class parents often fear exposing their children to.  The book was one of those listed in the recent rant against YA fiction in the Wall Street Journal.  I’ve already written my thoughts on the article and its implications, but for anyone uncertain as to my views on book banning, here they are:

1. If you don’t want your kids to read a book, fine, tell them.  However, your fears do not get to dictate what books my children can find in their bookstore, classroom, or library.
2. If you fear a book, read it.  Don’t make judgments based on hearsay and supposition.  Know what you fear.
3. The most famous book censor in history was Hitler.  Talk about a guy with fear issues.

I have to applaud the members of the Richland school board for having the courage to revisit their decision, and to look societal fears in the face.  Good job, guys!

Now we move on to what is, to me, the weirdest item on the list.  Sure, you say: “Breastfeeding doll, pretty darn weird.”  Nope, don’t misunderstand me.  I don’t think the doll is weird at all.  I think it’s weird to object to a doll that gives children a more accurate picture of the way babies are meant to be fed.  I think it’s weird that we began by making dolls that nursed out of plastic bottles.  I think it’s weird that modern society (and particularly American society) has such a dysfunctional, fear-based relationship with the bodily function that defines us as mammals.  What sort of self-loathing drives us to reject a fundamental aspect of our humanity?

My youngest child is now six, but I’ve never really gotten over some of the strange incidents that stuck out over a collective 6-7 years of breastfeeding my children.  (The breastfeeding resume extends over three kids; do the math before you freak out.) 

• My mom urging me to “go to the ladies’ lounge” to nurse Caitlin while we were in a mall restaurant.  “And do what,” I asked.  “Sit on the sink counter?”  Let’s face it, modern restrooms distinctly lack a space for actual “rest.”  But, more critically, I never could understand the logic behind socially isolating a woman who was feeding her baby the way it was meant to be fed.  No one would tell a woman with a bottle to go into seclusion to feed her infant.  I like intelligent lunchtime discourse.  Babies may be cute, but they are not great conversationalists.
• The same elderly women in a shopping mall who had cooed over Caitlin in her stroller giving me dirty looks a short while later as I sat on one of the padded benches nursing her.  For the record no “private parts” of my anatomy were on public display.  But, judging by the reactions of these women, you’d have thought I was doing a pole dance in a nursery school.
• The confused and paranoid responses of TSA agents to my breastpump as I prepared to board a flight to a conference.  Really, what’s the tricky concept here?  How are basic medical devices not a part of their training?
• The couple who pulled back the folds of my baby sling to see the “adorable baby” and who recoiled with horror as they realized that “the adorable baby” was having lunch while I pushed my cart through Costco.  Now, I think they should have been embarrassed for assuming that it was okay to touch me or anything on my person without my permission.  However, I wasn’t the least embarrassed about feeding my kid.   A screaming baby in the middle of a big-box store would have been more disturbing to me.

Our societal views on gender, sexuality, and reproduction are so fear-ridden as to be nearly completely dysfunctional.  It’s amazing that the American middle-class hasn’t become an endangered species.  Why do we refuse to talk to our children about reproduction until they are so deeply confused by their hormones that they are incapable of listening?  Why do we assign euphemisms to some body parts but not others?  How confusing must it be for children to hear a penis called “pee-pee” or “wiener”, but to know that an elbow is always an elbow?  Why do we permit our children to watch cartoons and play with toys that emphasize costumes sexualizing the female breast, but freak out at the concept of a doll who uses the breast for its intended purpose?

Fear.  Fear drives us.  Fear limits us.  Fear was meant to help us survive in a harsh, unpredictable natural world.   When the lion leaps from the grass, fear is a pretty good response.  This brings me to the last, and rather oddly shaped, bead.  How does extreme summer heat fit onto our fear necklace?

Two thoughts come to mind here:

1. Fear for the safety of the people and animals affected by abnormal or extreme climate conditions.  This is probably a ‘healthy’ fear as long as it doesn’t become incapacitating.  Fear of natural disaster can inspire us to plan and prepare; concern for others can pull us out of ourselves into a greater good.
2. Climate change.  The science is solid.  Climate change is real.  We are experiencing its effects, and will continue to do so.  Without action, we could really have something to fear.  However, an issue of fact continues to be a subject for debate, with substantial numbers of people denying the evidence.  Why?  Fear.  Humans don’t like to contemplate a reality that forces change.  We fear the unknown.  We fear loss of comfort, jobs, convenience.  We fear change.

Like climate change, the cycle of fear is real and prevalent.  And as with climate change, until we learn to look fear in the face and recognize it for what it is, it will continue to grow.  A friend posted a link to a podcast by author Tara Brach in the comments section to yesterday’s post.  Ms. Brach’s book Radical Acceptance (recommended to me a few years back by another friend) is one of my favorite tools for identifying and processing the fears that cripple me, and the podcast has some wonderful insights.

Closing with some of the best words ever on the subject.  Enjoy!

 

When Darkness Enlightens

Annnd, we're back.  It seems that every year or two, someone launches a discussion of the 'degeneration' of books for children and teens -- especially teens.  In the June 4 Wall Street Journal, Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote an "article"(my apologies for the sarcastic quotes; you'll see why in a moment) entitled "Darkness Too Visible," bemoaning the "damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds."  Seriously?  An op-ed, I can see, but the WSJ actually seems to depict this piece as a news article.  Nice, objective descriptors, Ms. Gurdon.  Despite my biases regarding censorship or anything that smacks of it, the article has any number of flaws, not the least of which being that neither the author nor the mother portrayed in the lede anecdote appears to have spent any time in the young adult section of a bookstore or with teenagers, for that matter.

 

    Amy Freeman, a 46-year-old mother of three, stood recently in the young-adult section of her     local Barnes & Noble, in Bethesda, Md., feeling thwarted and disheartened.

    She had popped into the bookstore to pick up a welcome-home gift for her 13-year-old, who had     been away. Hundreds of lurid and dramatic covers stood on the racks before her, and there            was, she felt, "nothing, not a thing, that I could imagine giving my daughter. It was all vampires     and suicide and self-mutilation, this dark, dark stuff." She left the store empty-handed.

Nothing?  Really?  If I get out of a bookstore having spent less than $50 on books for my 12-year-old daughter, I count myself fortunate.  Now, I'll grant you that Caitlin's tastes run more toward middle-grade fantasy right now than to YA, but I've spent a fair amount of time in the YA shelves myself, and while, yes, there are any number of "dark" novels (and a fair amount of cotton-candy tripe), there are also books I can't wait to buy for her, or for myself.

Regarding the topic of "darkness" in literature: it's always been there, always will be.  But, besides the persistence of this debate, modern parents need to pull our collective heads out of the sand.  (I was going to say that we need to pull our heads out of somewhere else, but this is a family blog.)  Anyone who thinks that sheltering a teen from topics such as drug use, suicide, cutting, or rape will somehow prevent these things from ever touching the child's world wins the Ostrich of the Year award.  Ms. Gurdon claims that teen literature delves deeper into these topics than the books of 30 or 40 years ago.  I'm sure she's correct.  And, I say GOOD.

"If books show us the world, teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is. There are of course exceptions, but a careless young reader—or one who seeks out depravity—will find himself surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds."  As the mother of a pending teen, and with two more children trailing in her wake, I hate to face this, but adolescence is a "hideously distorted [portrayal] of what life is."

25 years ago, I shied away from the darker books.  I read The Outsiders and Lord of the Flies in school, but at home I gravitated toward Anne of Green Gables, Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Whimsey, and a rather deplorable series of historical romances.  At school, there were gang fights, drug use, teen pregnancy, bomb threats, and bullying.  My junior year, one of my best friends attempted suicide.  She called me immediately after swallowing the pills.  A year or two later, the brother of another friend succeded in his suicide attempt -- bullets are more decisive.  My point?  Exposure or lack thereof to "dark" topics didn't change my adolescent interactions with the real world.  But, reading about misfits and loners made me feel less alone.

While the WSJ piece shies away from actually advocating censorship (though some of the wording terrifyingly echoes 1950s purity standards), it seems to suggest that a movement should be made by parents to push for the writing of enlightening work.  Ok, here is my message to every author, editor, bookseller, and librarian.  Give my children the truth.  Give them words that speak to their hopes and to their fears.  Give them fodder for their minds and their imaginations.  Give them insight into lives completely foreign to their experiences and give them insight into their own hearts.  Give them books that comfort them, and give them books that terrify them, opening the dark places of their hearts and letting out the decay.  I don't care what words you write, just write the truth and let them decide what to do with it.

Regarding censorship, and for those who wonder whether I really am ready to put my money where my mouth is, the piece below was written by me in 2010 and originally posted at http://www.blogcritics.org:

 

 

Sexual situations involving minors, vulgar language, murder, violence, drug use, rebellion against parental authority, suicide.  What sort of rating would this work garner, and how can parents protect their children from such obscenity?

In case I slurred around the tongue firmly adhered to the lining of my cheek, the work in question is William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  I have recently read several online discussions regarding a trend toward a purportedly excessive use of realism in children’s and young adult literature. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1101971/Childrens-books-violent-need-health- warning.html http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/specials/edinburgh/article6808533.ece

 http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2009/09/you-tell-me-should-childrens-books-be.html

 Imagine a world with content advisories or ratings listed on the backs of middle grade and YA books.

            The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton – gang violence, language

A Ring of Endless Light, Madeline L’Engle – death, discussions of sexual situations, partial nudity

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg -- runaway children, theft, nudity

The list could continue ad infinitum.  I recognize the concerns involved in the exposure of children to the grittier side of reality.  I recognize that a time and place exists for discussions of death, sex, violence, substance abuse, etc.  However, as a mother of three, I am painfully aware that we do not always get to choose the time and place for such discussions.

Our children dwell in an imperfect world.  We cannot and should not protect them from the knowledge of the darker sides of life.  Death and violence will confront them regardless of whether they have been prepared.  As they enter adolescence, sexual feelings and confusion will swamp them despite our careful censorship of their media exposure.  The drug dealer on the corner or in the schoolyard does not care that we prohibited the book depicting substance abuse.

My oldest child is a frighteningly precocious ten-year old.  She reads at the level of a high school sophomore.  Discussions of appropriate content are not an abstract argument in our household.  At the deepest levels of maternal terror and concern, I want my children to never have to face the darkness of violence, loss, or addiction.  I’d prefer also for them to exist in a sexual vacuum until they are well gone from my house.  However, this choice is not mine.  My husband and I have instead made the decision to discuss rather than censor content with our children. 

Have media ratings http://www.mpaa.org/FlmRat lessened the problems of sexual promiscuity, violence, and substance abuse in children and teens?  I have been unable to find any data that suggests that these instances have declined since 1968.  Personally, I would prefer my children to watch a movie depicting intelligent themes that spark meaningful discussion, even if that film contains scenes of sex or violence, than to have them watch some of the blather that passes for children’s programming.  Given the choice between showing them Joss Whedon’s Serenity and Sponge Bob Square Pants, I’m going to stick with Joss.  There may be moments in which I experience discomfort, but at least I won’t have to watch the grey matter ooze from my children’s ears.

In a world that has become increasingly sanitized, polarized, and consequently unreal, books are one of the last havens of intelligent discourse and truly free speech.  To have children’s authors constrained by arbitrary standards of “decency” would be a travesty.  Should an author shy away from writing a book that deals with difficult topics such as drug use, rape, depression, or discrimination in a meaningful way for fear of being saddled with a “Mature” rating and thus becoming unmarketable for a publisher?

Discussions of book censorship are far from new.  http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/Speech/libraries/topic.aspx?topic=banned_books  Notions of content censorship date back to the ancient Greeks. From the advent of the printing press, various groups have attempted to control the spread and content of the written word.  In my opinion, placing content warnings or ratings on books would facilitate the descent into censorship. 

It has become far too easy, and tragically common for parents to relinquish the responsibility of rearing their children.  Warnings, Ratings, Parental Control devices and software have enabled parents to avoid looking critically at the exposure of their children to outside influences.  Rather than look to outside sources to tell us what our children “should” or “shouldn’t” read, as parents, we need to accept responsibility.  Books can be incredible jumping-off points for frank and necessary discussions.  Classic literature is rife with examples of phrases and scenarios which many would consider unacceptable in modern society.  Rather than avoiding a book or skimming over an inappropriate slur when reading to children, why not use the opportunity to discuss the changes in social ideals?  A YA novel may contain discussions of sexuality or sexual situations that a parent considers inappropriate.  Rather than forbidding the novel (which the child will then read in secret), the parent could have a frank discussion with the child about their family’s sexual mores.

The value of the written word lies in its ability to stimulate imagination and critical thought.  If we seek to shelter our children from the richness of literature, we do them a grave disservice.  Life the predator is not tamed simply because we choose to ignore the fangs.  Let us send our children into the arena armed with the wisdom of storytellers.

One Lab Accident Away...

It’s a poorly guarded secret that our household is one of geeks.  Actually, given that my two oldest children have been known to harmonize the Imperial March from Star Wars, it’s not much of a secret at all.  We are geeks.  We embrace geekdom.  The family joke is that our oldest is “one lab accident away from becoming a supervillain.”  For anyone who has ever watched Caitlin’s hazel eyes go black as her brother pushes her too far, this doesn’t seem like much of a stretch.  But, she has a saving grace – humor.  For Caitlin, a joke from the right person or a funny chapter in a book is the “undo” button for anger.  “Undo” is a critical function, and one that we often seem to overlook. 

Think of your prototypical villain – Lex Luthor, Two-Face, Green Goblin, Darth Vader.  What distinguishes the supervillain from an ordinary, flawed person?  Evil?  Well, in many cases, the villain starts out as an okay guy.   Sometimes he’s a slimy political type or a petty criminal, but where does he start to devolve into supervillainy?  I’m not trying to be sexist here; the example holds for female villains as well – Catwoman, the evil queen from Snow White – not so much Cruella De Ville (what was up with that whole Dalmatian fetish anyway?).  The trigger is usually quite simple – a painful incident from which the villain is unable to let go.  The bad guy clutches the pain -- and its associated anger -- to the chest like a teddy bear, repeating the grievance as he falls asleep at night: nursery rhymes for evil doers. 

What our friend the villain fails to realize, is that the pain is a parasite.  When held close, the parasite burrows tentacles of anger into the victim, each tentacle releasing toxins.  The toxins begin to alter the victim’s mind, rewarding each negative thought with a surge of energy.  And the villain’s brain rots from within. 

Comic book hyperbole?  Sure.  But, the metaphor is pretty transparent.  And pretty pertinent.  Anger is tied to the release of chemicals within the body, epinephrine and norepinephrine.  Think about it.  How do you feel when you are angry?  Strong, right?  Powerful.  Nobody’s gonna hurt you and get away with it.  Well, of course.  Epinephrine in particular is the same chemical that gets released when you need to fight for your life.  That surge of power is a survival tactic.  Great response if you are being chased by a lion.  Crappy response for dealing with other humans.

Is anger natural?  Yep.  Can it be a productive catalyst?  Sure – moral outrage has led to some of the greatest changes in society.  And to some of the worst.  So when does anger lead to the Civil Rights Movement, and when does it lead to the Holocaust?  (Okay, before the outraged comments begin, yes, I deliberately picked extreme examples.) 

Here’s the thing about anger: it is often fear in disguise.  Remember our friend epinephrine?  It gets released when someone insults you and when someone threatens you.  Our brains aren’t always able to tell the difference between fear and anger.  In my opinion, this is where we need to find that “undo” button.  Call it what you will: humor, forgiveness, acceptance, grace.  The ability to let go of the pain, to unwrap the tentacles of anger from around our hearts, and to look openly into the face and the cause of the pain is what separates us from the supervillains.  It doesn’t take a lab accident or a volcano planet to corrode our hearts and minds – it only takes unresolved anger.  That surge of power is a trap.  It is the zombie virus that destroys our brains and bends us to its will.

Don’t let anyone fool you – not even me.  In the short term, letting go of pain doesn’t feel good.  It feels lonely and scary.  You feel weak, vulnerable without the iron mask of anger.  You miss the kickass power surge.  You miss the feeling of moral certainty.  When you put the pain down and look at it with honesty, you are forced to see how much of it was your own creation.  That sucks.

So why bother?  Why let go of the pain and anger?  After all, someone else caused this, right?  Why should you feel bad?

Well, for one thing, the cycle needs to break somewhere.  As it stands now, we are heading toward a society of villains.  And, besides, what happens to the villain in the end?

Co-Creating

“All things by immortal power,/Near or far,/Hiddenly,/To each other linked are,/That thou canst not stir a flower/Without troubling of a star.” – Francis Thompson

“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;” – John Donne

“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” – Newton’s Third Law

I could go on with the quotes, but I think you get the point.  We are all connected.  No action exists in a vacuum.  No choice, no word is without consequence.  We know this.  We see with incredible clarity the effects of the choices of others upon our lives.  But how often do we own our own actions and the ramifications of those actions, for good or ill?

In this era of instant connectivity, we need more than ever to be aware of the so-called “butterfly effect,” that gem of chaos theory.  The butterfly effect is a metaphor stating that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in South America can change the weather in Central Park.  It was used in reference to the predictability (or lack thereof) of long term weather patterns, referencing the incredibly complex equations upon which these patterns rest.  In life, the metaphor can be stretched a bit further.  Small, seemingly localized actions can take on tremendous consequence.  Sometimes these events are benign or amusing: a video of a laughing baby goes “viral,” a snake goes missing and within a few days has over 200,000 followers on Twitter.  Yet, other choices speak to a darker side of humanity. 

Speech is good.  I’m a writer; by default, I am a huge fan of open communication.  As a recovering, conflict-avoidant introvert, I also recognize the danger of keeping words buried within.  Yet, words have power.  The effect of language to inspire, wound, and persist is evident throughout documented history.  Through the internet, and particularly social media, we have developed a 10 second attention span (perhaps less, did you just blink?  Oh look, a kitty!) and an infinite presence.  The words that we publish with a single click last.  Forever?  Until the machines take over?  I don’t know, but they are out there.  Google yourself.  Go on, I dare you, just this once.  That comment you posted on a forum last year, it’s there.  It may even be on multiple sites.  You can’t undo it – no takebacks. 

In the 90’s, there was a great animated series called The Animaniacs.  This deliciously snarky show had a recurring short feature called “Good Idea, Bad Idea.”  The premise was simple.  A skeleton in a bowler hat enacted two similar sounding, yet disastrously different concepts.  “Good idea – climbing a mountain.  Bad idea – climbing a mountain lion.”  There are days when looking through Facebook, Twitter, etc, leads me to believe that either many people did not watch enough 90’s television, or that we integrated the wrong lessons. 

Good idea – posting a well-thought-out comment, correction, or critique below an article.  Bad idea – indiscriminately bashing the author for his views, choices, lifestyle, and hair color.

Good idea – honestly discussing an argument, misunderstanding, or other pain with a friend, spouse, etc.  Bad idea – trashing that person on your Facebook wall, their wall, or the walls of unsuspecting friends or strangers.

Good idea – posting a single correction to an error in a review of your book.  (Better idea, privately communicating that correction to the author; or just leaving well-enough alone.)  Bad idea – posting a nuclear meltdown series of rants on the reviewer’s blog.

Good idea – engaging members of other faiths in discussion about the similarities and differences of your religion.  Talking about fears, concerns, and hopes.  Bad idea (Tragically disastrous idea) – burning the holy text of another faith.

The examples could go on almost as long as these words will bounce around whatever electronic trampoline the internet provides, but I think you get the point.  Recently, I interviewed a life coach for an article I was writing.  In our discussion, she said something that stuck.  She mentioned the importance of recognizing that we “co-create” our circumstances.  This concept is fundamental.  It goes back to childhood.  Come on, say it with me… “It takes two to start a fight.”  Indulging in a culture of victimhood serves no one.  Occasionally, as with certain violent crimes, we may be true victims of circumstance.  However, we choose our circumstances more often than they choose us, and failure to acknowledge our ownership of our lives denigrates not only ourselves but humanity as a whole.

When we speak, we choose to release words that others may not want to hear.  Just as it is our right and choice to speak our “truth,” it is the right of others to disagree with or to be offended by that truth.  When I write, I force myself to pretend that I am writing in an impenetrable bubble.  I can’t put my thoughts into words if I imagine a world looking over my shoulders and being hurt or offended.  But, before I seal the envelope or hit send, I must imagine every one of those people, and admit to myself that even my most benign words may give pain or offense.  When the comments come, I have to be prepared for the reality that I will be misunderstood, that I will be judged.  Here I have choices:  lash out in pain; retreat into my hole and never type another word; or look again at my words, making corrections or accepting that my truth may not be the truth of others.

With the evolution of the ever-present, but somewhat ersatz support network of social media, it is easy to succumb to the lure of airing every emotion publicly in our search for understanding.  I’ve done it. I bet you have too.  But, how much do we have the right to share?  When it is no longer just our pain, but that of another person, does the dirty laundry get to go out on the line?  Speaking of lines, where is that line?  What is the distinction between venting about a rough day with my unruly children and exposing the growing pains of my kids to the world?  Where is the line between bitching with the girlfriends about “men” and releasing a private beef with one’s spouse to all?  And, do you really want to put that argument out there?  How long will it be before others see your role?  Can you look in that mirror?

All of these things pale before the horror of religious warfare.  Even I can’t blame modern culture for this one.  Humans have destroyed one another in the name of God or of gods for millennia.  But I was struck by the words of one of the pastors responsible for the Quran burning in Florida.  “Wayne Sapp, a pastor at the church, called the events "tragic," but said he did not regret the actions of his church.

"I in no way feel like our church is responsible for what happened," Sapp said in a telephone interview on Friday.” – NPR

If you feel strongly enough about another faith to burn its holiest text, shouldn’t you own your view enough to accept that members of that faith may have a violent or outraged reaction to your act?

One last quote to close:

“Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.” Max Ehrmann, “Desiderata”

 

 

 

Madness. Sense. Expectations.

Much Madness is divinest Sense --

To a discerning Eye --

Much Sense -- the starkest Madness --

'Tis the Majority

In this, as All, prevail --

Assent -- and you are sane --

Demur -- you're straightway dangerous --

And handled with a Chain --

--Emily Dickinson

 

Shhh….I’m going to tell you a secret.   Try not to be too shocked.  Ok, are you ready?  Here it is: Our society has different expectations for women than for men.  Oh, goodness, are you okay?  I didn’t mean to just spring it on you like that.  I’m sorry.  I know what you’re thinking: ‘Really?  We haven’t figured it out by now?  Suffrage?  Women’s lib?’  No, sorry, the car has not pulled into the parking place.  The ignition hasn’t been turned off.  We’re not there yet.

I realize that you’re still reeling from the first blow, but sit down -- I have another one for you.  Art, of any kind, is a hobby, not a career.  Adults are supposed to have a practical plan, a secure career.  Then, in a well regulated fashion, they may indulge these dangerous whims.

The preceding paragraphs do have a unifying element – other than sarcasm.  Emily Dickinson had it right.  Humans take comfort in conformity.  We like the expected.  We label, identify, and categorize.  If we can label a thing, we must therefore know its nature, and thus, it is safe. 

Children are permitted to dream.  We tell our children, “You can grow up to be anything you want.”  We encourage them to ‘reach for the stars,’ to have heroes, to pursue their passions.  And, then we expect the dream to stop. 

Somewhere, 4^th, 5^th grade, perhaps, we begin to shift our children’s focus from the stars to more serious pursuits.  We no longer encourage them to believe that they can become astronauts, dancers, actors, painters, and star athletes.  After all, those shining spots in the firmament belong to a select few.  The rest of us toil in the earth.

We tell our girls, “You can have it all.  You can grow up to do anything a boy can do.”  We tell them the lie we want to believe.  While letting our daughters play with Barbies and discouraging them from joining the boys in their climbing, muddy war games, we tell them that they can compete with men on an equal footing – so long as they look pretty, and don’t act too pushy.  We tell them, “You can have a career, family, or both.  You are lucky.  Your generation can have whatever it wants.”  We don’t throw the switch until later, until a woman enters her 30s.  Then we begin the delicate (and not so delicate) probing into her reproductive plans.  I have yet to meet a childless woman over the age of 30 who has not been subjected to a battery of questions and comments regarding her lack of motherhood.  We tell our daughters that they can have a successful career and be good mothers.  At least, we tell them that until the baby crowns.  Once the sheets flood with amniotic fluid, the conversation shifts to the importance of maternal bonding, to the risks of working mothers to every facet of a child’s physical, emotional, and mental well-being. 

In the late 1980s-early90s, science was the career choice.  Those lucky enough to possess a decent aptitude for the sciences or for finance were assured the golden ticket – a safe, lucrative, permanent career.  Those who chose a liberal arts degree were guaranteed a position in food-services as a fried-potato engineer.  Being a good girl, and being blessed with an adequate, if only barely adequate, scientific mind, I chose the sensible path.  Writing was for dreamers, but veterinary medicine was a career.  Don’t get me wrong: I love animals, I love working with people, and I have been blessed to have a magnificently challenging and rewarding career for a number of years.  However, I have come to believe that while nothing worthwhile is easy, fighting to squish oneself into a shape that fits a mold is a sure sign that the mold is not the correct one.

Like the stepsisters in Cinderella, throughout vet school, I bound, stretched, and lopped off parts of myself in order to make the role of ‘vet student’ fit.  My stories and poems retreated from paper back into my skull while I memorized nerve pathways and formulae I have never used in practice.  Yet, like the blood seeping out of the glass slipper, the writer in my head had a way of oozing into my life.  Need a flyer?  I’ll write it.  Newsletter?  Ask Christy.  Educational handout?  I’m on it. 

When I began working in large animal medicine 10 years ago, the questions from clients said everything one needed to know about gender expectation.  “How long is this one going to last,” the ranch wife asked my technician after pointedly appraising me.  “Oh, is that the woman?  There’s no one else available?” was always my favorite telephone call.  “They sent you to pull that calf?”  The elderly dairyman wasn’t about to pull any punches.  As I proved myself willing to dig in, working through first one, then a second pregnancy, the gender comments diminished over the years.  Diminished, but didn’t evaporate completely.  

I think the award for all-time best I-can’t-believe-he-actually-said-that goes to a horse breeder of a certain age.  He and I were discussing an associate that had just started with the practice.  The man looked thoughtful after I assured him that the new doctor was a wonderful vet, and said, “Well, at least Tom hired a man this time.” (!)

Gender image is generally a bit more subtle than this.  I saw it most commonly when returning from maternity leave.  “Oh, we’re so glad to have you back!”  Then, in almost the same breath, “Wait.  Where’s your baby?”  Paradox: a veterinarian should be practicing; a new mother belonged with her baby.  The fact that both occupied the same body seemed to create a quandary.  Note that not one person ever asked my husband following the birth of any of our children, “why aren’t you with your baby?”

These sets of societal expectations have converged in my mind recently as I bid farewell to long term clients.  Naturally, the clients whose animals I have treated for so many years want to know where I will be going, what I will be doing once the practice closes.  My admission that I lack the resources to set out in practice for myself tends to be met with understanding nods.  Any delusions people once had about the wealth of veterinarians have cracked in the past year or two.  But the nods turn to looks of condescension or consternation when I explain that I have been freelance writing part time and intend to turn that into a full-time career.  Writing is an oddball ‘hobby’ for a vet, and it seems incomprehensible that someone would jettison a “practical” career for a risky venture like writing.  Then I say the magic words and relief sweeps across the other person’s face.  “Well, I’ve spent a huge chunk of my children’s lives on call and away from home, and as they get older, they probably deserve to have me around more.”  One sentence shifted me from flighty dreamer to good mother.

Madness: I am changing careers.  I am quitting private practice and starting a freelance writing business.  Sense: I am losing my job due to the economy, taking some time to be with my children, and doing some writing. 

Madness.  Sense.  I guess it all depends upon the discernment of one’s eye.  But, I know this:  the other day when Aidan said something about his future as a pro-football player, I opened my mouth to remark on the slim odds for becoming a professional athlete.  Then, I looked into a mirror.  My sensible path has turned out to be as much illusion as any dream.  I closed my mouth, smiled, and said, “That’s great, Bud!”

Hannibal ante portus

Broken boards dangle from the fence.  Gaps, like missing teeth, lie among the rows of bottles on the shelves.  My work boots went into the trash last week, uppers yawning away from the sole, swallowing mud over the tongue of my foot.  It feels like the last days of Rome as we finish out these final few weeks at the clinic in the knowledge that our era has ended, that we have lost, and the invaders have conquered the city.  Hannibal ante portus.  “Hannibal is at our gates.”

There are no elephants.  Elephants would be cool.  Instead, we simply opened the gates to “pink-slip” e-mails stating what was already known: essentially, ‘Large Animal is closing, and since you were unique, there is no place for you in the company.  We wish you the best.’  I wonder if this is what happens to politicians in the lame-duck period.  Do things begin to fall apart?  Does no one refill the stapler?  Is it hard to sort through the in-box or to go to ribbon-cuttings that are so ill-timed as to require the presence of the walking dead?  My truck could stand to be cleaned.  But there seems to be so little point.  Of our fleet of three, only one truck is operational at this point, and a colleague and I rotate it between us on our alternating days.  I could pull everything out, scrub and organize it, but by the next day that I work, it will again be “all humble-jumbled” as Sierra would say.  And so I content myself with taking out the trash, scooping up the syringe case that has rolled and jammed beneath the pull out drawers, and periodically scrubbing the instruments and buckets.

The pillaging and looting have begun as well.  The phone calls are changing tone.  Now, there is less mourning and more people looking to “stock up on supplies” or refill prescriptions, “before you close.”  ‘Where were you six months ago,’ we want to ask.  I received a card yesterday from a sometime client, telling me what an asset I have been to the community and how much I will be missed.  It would have been heartwarming, but for the fact that this particular person, by her own admission, routinely used other practitioners and only called us in emergencies, when none of her cronies were available.  We have had angry phone calls from people wanting to know who they are supposed to call now in the middle of the night since we were the only practice they could reach at those hours.   Clients who scorn routine work and pride themselves on only calling a vet “when it’s really bad” are crushed that we will no longer be available.  Again, I want to say, “Where were you?  How did you think we would earn a living?” 

I don’t ask.  It’s not their fault.  We bent over backwards trying to accommodate everyone: answered every phone call, squeezed in clients at all hours, complicating our own schedules even for cases that could have waited for the next open appointment.  We hadn’t raised prices in nearly five years, assuming that we were doing our clients a favor.  We dispensed hours of free advice over the phone.  We didn’t show that we valued ourselves.  In retrospect, how could we have thought that this attitude would make others value us?

And yet… All of this makes me sound bitter.  And some part of me is; I think bitterness is part of the process, part of the grief.  And yet, sometimes, there are moments like yesterday.  Moments in which, while being appreciated, I realize that appreciation was never my job.  It’s easy to forget, in the midst of anger, sorrow, and loss, that my job was never to be appreciated, nor to be loved or lauded.  My job was to make things better.  

I had two calls on the book yesterday.  The first looks straightforward in writing.  Three horses to vaccinate.  Dread dragged my feet; I stalled leaving the office as long as I could.  I know these three horses.  One is old, no problem.  And then there are the other two.  Both had been donated to this non-profit by a well meaning owner who had spoiled them until they became dangerous. 

One, the gelding, I have known since he was a foal.  In fact, I gelded him.  I suspect he holds a grudge.  Along the way, he learned to rear and strike when things aren’t going his way.  Apparently his previous owner thought that this was a cute trick.  It may have been cute in a 200 lb foal (personally, I think not), but it is downright lethal in a 1300 lb adult horse.  He isn’t needle shy in the truest sense.  He simply doesn’t like being messed with and doesn’t like the vet.  He and I have reached an arrangement over the years.  Once I take his lead rope from the ranch manager and we go for a walk, it is established that I am the boss mare, and then generally vaccination proceeds without incident.  However, part of his game involves trying to pull away as the handler passes the lead rope to me.  Yesterday, thanks to a 12’ lead, we moved past that stage smoothly.  Our routine then involves me asking him to walk, back, and turn.  I mix up the order and repeat the steps until I feel that his attention is engaged.  Then I pet and play with his face and neck until he allows me to take the roll of skin just in front of the shoulder in a move we refer to as a “neck twitch.”  Neck twitching a horse doesn’t hurt.  It provides a means of control, and in many cases, I have watched horses lower their heads and relax their ears as they are neck twitched.  With this particular gelding, typically, once I have a hold on him, he never even acknowledges the needle.  Unfortunately, since I am right handed, I use my left hand to grasp the roll of skin, and my right hand to inject the vaccine.  My left hand is the one that I broke this summer.  Yesterday, in the chill wind, I could feel my metacarpal ache, seemingly at every screw.  I lost hold of the neck twitch between shots.  Sure enough, my friend the gelding pulled away, and reared.  Repeat process.

With him vaccinated, we turned our attention to his “sibling.”  Now, the mare is barely trained – what we call green-broke.  And she is truly needle-phobic.  Not only does she feel the needle, she reacts violently to the sensation.  And, joy, oh, joy, she has the same escape mechanism as her partner.  Rear, and flail.  We try the usual desensitizing steps.  No go.  The neck twitch does not relax her.  She simply realizes that it is a prelude to the dreaded shot.  Finally, I rub her face, rubbing over her closed eyelid, and with her vision obscured, inject her neck in one quick jab.  She pulls away as I withdraw syringe and needle.  Great.  Vaccine done.  Wonderful, except that she is due for two.  She’s onto me now, and the challenge of giving the second shot is magnified.  Eventually, we get the job done.  The old gelding is a piece of cake.

As I walk back to the truck, the ranch manager and I chat about the closure of the practice.  He seems truly sorry, and there’s this weird sense of something floating between us.  A giant elephant painted with the words “LAST TIME” walks between us, and neither knows how to address it. I’ve seen this elephant a lot lately.  I want some good parting words, something meaningful, but not sappy.  And yet, we aren’t friends, not really, just Dr. and client.  But, Dr./client doesn’t cover the relationship we have had.  And thus, the elephant.  The ranch manager looks at me.  “Do you like Divinity?  The candy?”

I smile and he makes a dash for his truck.  Returning, he presses a plastic wrapped box into my hands.  I give him a slanted hug – awkward for us both, and dive into my truck, biting back tears.

My next call is a sadder one.  A young steer has gone down, as the result of a leg injury sustained some weeks ago.  The owner had been trying to manage on his own, with advice from a nearby vet, but the steer has continued to deteriorate, and the owner, not a “real rancher,” confesses to our office manager that he can’t bear the thought of shooting the animal himself.

Sure enough, when I finally crest the hill of his long driveway – after passing two lurking CHP cars, missing the driveway, and attempting to find a safe place to turn around on the rolling, two-lane highway – the gentleman is almost pathetically relieved to see me.  Given his house, hair, and bearing, I suspect that he is or was a businessman, and sure enough, a few sentences reveal that he has come to ranching late in life.  He shows me the steer, asking without asking, if he is making the right choice.  He is.  The animal has shed at least 150 lbs from the pre-injury weight that the owner describes, and of course he has lain down in the lowest corner of the paddock, in the slickest mud.  I climb over the panel fence, bashing a shin as my clay-slimed boot slips on the rail, and kneel next to the steer as the owner asks questions that he doesn’t want to sound nervous.  Do I have to hit a vein?  Will we need to halter the steer?  What’s the discharge from his eyes?  Do I think he’s started to develop pneumonia? Yes. No. Infection.  Probably.

I climb back over the panels and under the oak branches, retrieving from my truck: a pair of clippers, two IV catheters (if you grab two, the first one will work), a stethoscope (more signs of the fall of Rome – one earpiece is missing), and 60 cc of pentobarbital.  60cc is excessive; 35 would have done the job.  However, when it comes to euthanasia, overkill (pardon the pun) is no bad thing.  I explain the process to the owner, using words that are their own script, slide the catheter into the vein, and inject.  Seconds later, the flanks stop moving; the muscles stiffen and then relax.  I check for heartbeat and corneal response – none and none. 

My client has changed, even as his steer exhaled the last breath.  I can feel the exhale of relief, the sense of pulling together in the man.  He takes the clippers from my hand and offers to assist me over the fence.  His sense of normalcy, of control is returning.  As he asks a few more questions, probing for my thoughts as to what happened to the steer and what he could/should have done differently. 

This is what matters in the end, in these last days.  It doesn’t matter that some of my patients may have been unruly.  It doesn’t matter that the owner of the steer consulted with another practitioner throughout the injury, only calling me in the end.  What matters is that somewhere along the line, someone’s life is returned to normal: horses are vaccinated, suffering is ended.   What matters is the work.

The Wrong Sort of Ride

Up and down, round and round.  Horses flash, faces flicker through mirrors, a clown leers with gaping mouth at the brass donuts tossed his way.  Although I am, in essence, a roller-coaster girl, I’ve always been fascinated by merry-go-rounds.  From such a simple premise – wooden animals revolving on a platform – we receive a host of emotions.  The merry-go-round is the quintessential ride of childhood.  Picture proud parents standing next to a strapped in infant, barely old enough to sit upright, a lollypop clutching child, giggling teens leaning toward each other, or – in defiance of gravity – out over the edge of the platform.  Yet, for all its candy-coated pleasure, the merry-go-round holds an air of menace.  How many of us have lost track of our spinning child as the music stops?  Think of the scenes in TV and movie thrillers – the flashing face of menace flickering through the mirrors, the suddenly empty horse.

Amusement park rides are easy metaphors for life.  You stand in line, pay your ticket, and embark with the rest of humanity on the ups and downs.  When the ride stops, you get off – no choice.  Here I choose rollercoasters.  I prefer the wild exhilaration of a car hurtling through peaks and valleys so fast that it’s impossible to catch my breath.  The thought of circling sedately, returning to my start point over and over, exhausts me.  Life on the circle is tempting, predictable, and it tantalizes with the elusive promise of the brass ring.  For most of us, however, the ring bounces off the nose of the clown, or maybe his ear, no matter how many times it is thrown.  Yet, we try again, and again – stuck in the same act, the same argument, the same message, pounding our heads against the same wall – as we revolve in an endless, tail-chasing circle.

A few months ago, I published an article entitled Extremism? over at Blogcritics.  Upset by current events and an exchange with a friend, I wrote an opinionated piece calling for those who espouse hate and violence to be held accountable for their words.  I wasn’t the first to do this, and as the last few days have shown, certainly won’t be the last.  I stand by each of the beliefs listed in that piece.  Yet, today, I can’t help wondering if I missed something, if I, like so many before and since, fell into the trap of the brass ring.  If I throw it enough times, I’ll hit the clown’s mouth.  If I yell loud enough, my point will be heard.

That this country is angry seems undeniable.  Anger begets violence, and violence anger.  Anger is not always a bad thing, and sometimes, even violence can catalyze the best in humanity.  But, only if we can step off of the merry-go-round.  Today the calliope shows no signs of droning to a halt; the up-and-down exchange echoes without rest.  Perhaps the accelerating punditry grows from our now 24 second news cycle.  It is impossible to pause for breath or a nod of understanding when everyone from blogger to newscaster can broadcast an instant headline.  And this is the change our last decade has wrought.  For a moment, however brief, following 9/11, there was a pause, a collective inhalation, a nano-second of unity.

A little girl born on that day lost her life in this most recent national tragedy, and our nation has lost the bitter lesson of her birthday.  To be fair, the moment of national unity crumbled shortly after the attacks of 9/11, before the smoke could clear or the rubble could settle, but there was a moment of pause.  Fast forward to this week, opinion pieces hit the ether concurrent with the news of the bullets sprayed in Tuscon.  Liberals blame Conservatives for incendiary speeches.  Conservatives accuse Liberals of politicizing tragedy.  Gun sales spike as fears of government control are waved like battle flags.  Gun control lobbyists point fingers lax firearms laws.  And the merry-go-round spins.

The universal question echoes.  Why?  Why do bad things happen?  There must be a cause, an inciting event, someone or something to blame.  We must know why.  This is human nature; somewhere, we believe that if we can understand events, we can control them.  And so we spin, pointing fingers, throwing ring after ring.  To this point, no one knows the synapses that fired in Jared Loughner’s brain as his finger hit the trigger.  It is doubtful that even he understands the full series of thoughts and emotions that led to his actions.  How many of us know why we do anything?

I still believe that we are responsible for our words.  The right to free speech comes with a price.  Freedom has consequences.  But, we are all responsible for our words.  The anger that I have seen fly from my cohorts to the left of the political spectrum fuels the merry-go-round just as much as any invective from the right.  Whether the tragedy in Tucson was the detached unhinging of a single mind or the result of a turbulent national feud is almost irrelevant.  Why doesn’t matter if it won’t change the what.  The gun was fired.  The wounded will bear scars forever.  The dead are dead.  The what can’t change.  We may never know the why.  Groups and interests will continue to scream into the void.  That is the nature of our mixed and mixed-up nation.  But, on an individual level, each of us can make the choice to step from the merry-go-round, to stop throwing useless trinkets at an impossible target, and to listen to others, and to ourselves.  Perhaps if enough of us tune out the calliope of the howling mobs and ask, “what do I really feel, believe, want” the ride will slow down a bit.

NaNo 0.5

“If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.”  --Max Ehrmann, “Desiderata”

Those lines hold one of the many reasons that poem occupies a large chunk of landscape on my hallway wall.  For someone who was never athletic – yes, I was the kid no one wanted on their kickball team – I am intensely competitive.  At physical therapy, I push against my own numbers; improvement is the only acceptable outcome.  When I missed the valedictorian spot in high school by three hundredths of a grade point, I railed at my mom for months for not letting me compete in Academic Decathlon which would have added an extra grade point to my average.  My narrow-minded parents had strangely thought that eight periods a day were enough for a high school senior.  I don’t like to fail, and there is a hard-edged, prickly, shadowy place within me that defines failure as anything other than being the best.

This is, of course, where reality crashes into ego.  “Best” is indefinable, and regardless of definition, my abilities at pretty much anything fall more into the range of “okay.”  Reality can really mess with one’s head.  For most of my life, the nagging of my ego turned things inside out – if I’m not the best, then I’m probably not any good at all.  I even managed to wrap a shroud of inadequacy around my ambitions.  It’s conceited, after all, to worry about being better than other people, and conceited isn’t nice, and I wanted to be the nicest person possible, and…

And round-and-round it goes.  I’m betting that I’m not the only person stuck on the merry-go-round of ambition and insecurity, and that is, one of the best things about the uncertainty of adulthood.  There are so many things that none of our schooling, lessons, training, or reading prepare us for, that the playing field is essentially level. 

At work, we joke that “it’s better to be lucky than good any day of the week.”  In a field where biology and fate trump knowledge and skill daily, one learns quickly to abandon ego, and simply to gratefully accept whatever tools come one’s way – if a brilliant insight comes from within, great; if someone else saves your patient, be happy that it was saved.

Parenting teaches me humility daily.  What makes a “good” parent?  Which philosophies, techniques, theories are best?  Not a clue.  What works with one kid one day may backfire with epic pyrotechnics with a sibling the next.

If I’m paying more attention to the world than to my own fears and pride, I realize that I only have to turn to the news to see how futile comparisons are.  “Expert” scientists – the best and brightest in each field—are contradicted by the work of their colleagues on a regular basis.  One critic’s great American novelist is another reader’s over-rated hack.  The financial crisis – well, regardless of politics and persuasion, we can pretty much all agree that those who were considered the luminaries of the world of money fell off a rather large cliff.

So, where was I going with all this?  Oh yeah, balance, and comparing myself to the person I want to be rather than to some external benchmark.  On a smaller, less grandiose level, today is November 15, the halfway point of NaNoWriMo.  If I compare myself with others, I may become vain or bitter. In the forums, there are writers who have already crossed the 50K word line, and there are others far behind my 27(something)K.  I haven’t read their work, and I have no way of comparing their words with my own.  So, I must be content with the fact that I’m right on track with the goal I set for myself at the beginning of the month.  Sometimes it is no bad thing to be happy with what is.

Here’s an excerpt.  But, you may only read it if you promise not to compare it with others!

Instead, Mr. Loupe’s face was serious, and old – that was the weirdest thing in this whole freaky afternoon.  Mr. Loupe was the youngest teacher at the school, just out of college.  Most of the time, he didn’t even look like a grownup.  But, when Sylvia mentioned the glowing cupboard, it was as though all of the light had been sucked from him as well.  Lines crossed his forehead and cheeks where none had been before, his eyes seemed to recede into his skull, and in the faded and flickering afternoon light, he appeared shrunken and stooped.  “I was afraid of that.  The Balance truly has gone, then.  And so,” He turned, as though speaking to an invisible presence in the room.  “And so, it is time then.  I was wrong.”

He gathered the children toward him and leaned forward.  “I had hoped that we had more time, that this would be unnecessary, that I could give you a better explanation.  But,” The wind banged louder against the window, and the whole room trembled.  “But, there is no time.  This is it.  Just remember,” and he raised his voice into the howling gale as the room darkened and threatened to fly apart around them, “everything you need, you have within you.  Sylvia, you have learned all that you need to know, but you will forget.  Listen to your brother and sister.  They remember what you have lost.  Richard, use your words.  Remember St. George.  Remember that you have been a knight of Michael.  Dylan, everything you believe is true.  Keep the stories within you.  And Dylan,” he seemed to fade before them, swallowed in a vortex of wind and darkness, “the cold is the key.”

The wind roared as the room pulsed, ready to fly apart.  “The floor is tilting,” Richard yelled.

“Don’t be stupid, the floor is always like this.”  Dylan tried to look scornful, but the dark pulled at her.  She grabbed for Sylvia’s hand.

“Richard’s right.  We’re sliding!  Hold on to something!”  Sylvia grabbed her brother and sister, searching the twisting room for a firm hold.  “Richard, grab that rod.”

The room bucked and tipped, pouring them toward the cupboard, now glowing again.  The cupboard mouth seemed to yawn wider, waiting to swallow them.  Richard thrust out a desperate arm, and his hand closed around a smooth, round, piece of wood.  It burned his hand and he almost let go, but clenched his fingers tighter, trying to stop their plummet.  The floor heaved again, and they fell, tumbling like grains of sand into the burning gold light.

In Memorium

Tears that I had held back while delivering a eulogy poured down my face as the guns sounded outside the funeral home chapel:  three blasts, followed by ‘Taps.’  We didn’t feel lucky that October day five years ago.  My Grandpa Bligh, Carl Conrad Corp – Navy Veteran, and survivor of WWII’s horrific Pacific Theater – had lost his last battle, against his own white blood cells.  At the time, it seemed ironic that a man who had survived an impoverished and sometimes abusive childhood, a war so scarring that he wouldn’t talk about it until late in life, business struggles, and the deaths of two wives could be defeated by mutations in his own DNA.

Our family was wrong that day.  We were lucky.   Grandpa was one of the lucky ones.  Two days ago, NPR's All Things Considered aired a segment by a reporter embedded with the 101^st Airborne outside Kandahar City in Afghanistan.  Two soldiers were killed in a suicide attack.  Private First Class Andrew Meari and Specialist Jonathan Curtis didn’t get the opportunity to die in their own beds, to have last good-byes, last ‘I love you’s with their families and friends.  Specialist Curtis left behind a child.  His grandchildren will never hear ridiculous tall-tales from their grandfather.  They will never hear a booming voice shout out “Hey, there!” as he walks through the door. 

Neither young man, nor any of the men and women that we send to die on foreign soil, will get the chance that the lucky ones, the rest of us, have – to make mistakes and fix them, to love and to lose, to build something of our lives, watch it crumble to dust, and to pick up and build it again. 

I am a pacifist.  I believe that wars are, more often than not, fought for the aggrandizement of a few powerful men.  Yet, those who put their lives at risk, do so, not for the leaders of their governments, but for something far more specific.  They fight and die for the people and ideals that they love.

We owe it to our soldiers to choose our leaders wisely, to engage ourselves in the process of government, and to stay informed, to keep up a dialogue even when we disagree.  And, we, the lucky ones, owe it to those who will not return to make the most of our chances, the chances they will never have.

Pushing Reset

A couple of months ago, during the endless drive between the fields flanking I-5, I thought, “I just want to push the re-set button on my life.”  What’s the old joke: “when God wants to get even with you, he answers your prayers?”  Or, at least, “be careful what you wish for…”  In my defense, I was sick: literally, Prilosec-popping, stomach-grinding, shoulder-clenching sick at our financial situation; sick of commuting 75 miles each way to work; heart-sick that my career, my avocation, had failed us; sick of farming my kids out to grandparents for childcare through the summer; sick of rejection letters from literary magazines; sick of spending nights on call away from my husband and kids; sick of aching joints; and sick of waking at 4:00 AM in order to eke out an hour of writing time.  I couldn’t see any way off the treadmill; someone had disabled the STOP button.

At the end of June, the week of our 14^th wedding anniversary, phase 1 of the reset was taped to our front door.  As I’ve posted previously, the foreclosure on our house became inevitable.  The universe does nothing by halves.  In the weeks that followed, my iPhone erased itself and my first professional article was published.  An essay I had written about losing our home was accepted by Salon.  That essay changed the way I viewed myself as a writer and switched my writing in the family eye from “hobby” to “side-job.”  And, if it hasn’t exactly broken down walls or opened doors into the literary world for me, it has cracked a door or two ajar.  Whether anything lies behind those doors is unknown, and I suspect much of it depends on me.  The rest is up to luck.  Fate?

Fate – at some point, I become skeptical about coincidence.  Two days ago, I was performing an exam on a horse.  In 30 years of horsemanship, I have lifted thousand of equine legs.  The steps inherent to this task flow through my muscles and nerves.  This particular patient resented manipulation of his hind limb: he pulled away: I held on, wrapping my fingers more tightly around the cannon bone; he kicked toward me; I held on; he jerked the leg away; I heard a SNAP as my little finger was pulled laterally with the leg.  ‘Oh, God, this is gonna …’ On cue, the nauseating ache and instability of a fracture made themselves known.  “Ok, we will now pause the pre-purchase exam while the vet tapes her fingers together.”  I’m still a little proud that I said this with a grin and an even tone, and that I didn’t throw up on anyone’s shoe.  Professionalism is key.

Taping my finger back in place gave enough relief to complete that exam and an ultrasound on a mare that turned out to be the same horse that had run me over 9 years ago.  Coincidence, really?  X-rays taken at the ER gave me the news that the re-set had indeed been pushed.  Rather than the minor broken finger I was expecting, I had managed to break my 5^th metacarpal in what they call a “boxer’s fracture.’  I didn’t hit the horse, I swear!  Today I follow up with the orthopedist, but my understanding is that my left hand is out of commission for about a month.  There has been some discussion of a modified return to work, but in practical terms, a one-armed large animal vet is fairly worthless and at worst, dangerous.

The re-set button has been pushed.  I don’t know what changes, if any will result from this string of events, but I do know one thing: I think I’ve done enough wishing for a while…

iPhone Amnesia

At the close of one of the early seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer – forgive me for not knowing exactly which one; the DVDs are boxed away – we see Buffy trudging down a dark street, leaving Sunnydale behind.  Everything she valued is lost to her in that moment: friends, love, family.  In the commentary, creator – and mad genius – Joss Whedon states that he wanted to see how his creation would react with everything taken from her; he felt that complete loss would define her character.

My iPhone suffered a similar loss of resources yesterday.  During its first backup onto my computer, it had what can best be described as a massive brain injury.  My phone has complete amnesia; apps, e-mails, notes, calendar items, phone numbers -- everything was obliterated with the unwitting click of my mouse.  In the moments surrounding the concurrent thoughts of ‘huh, that’s funny; the wallpaper changed’ and ‘oh my God, where did everything go?’I realized how unreasonably dependent I have become on technology – not only for data storage, but more insidiously for a form of validation.  My contact lists, my e-mails, my Twitter feeds, my Facebook updates, even the silly Words With Friends app: all of these link me to others, give me a perception (sometimes valid, more often false) of being loved, of being that holy grail of my introverted youth – popular.

While much of my phone’s neurological trauma is annoying and certainly inconvenient, catastrophe is unlikely to ensue.  My husband reminds me that everything important that was put onto the phone can be re-entered.  Still, I find myself unnerved and, in a strange sense, grieving.  As I scrolled through the now-empty contacts list, I realized that what I had lost was not data, it was the adult version of a security blanket.  Like a child toting a blanket or stuffie from room to room, I carry my phone everywhere, and check it incessantly.  Yes, it even sleeps by my bed at night.  I tell myself that I need my phone to check for e-mails or other “important” messages.  What I am really checking is myself.  Mike is right; the contacts that I need, I can find through the network of friends and family, old e-mails, etc.  But, there is a category that probably won’t make it back onto my phone, the group of numbers and e-mail addresses that gave me the greatest feeling of “belonging.”  From conducting numerous interviews over the past year, I had amassed a collection of author phone numbers and e-mails.  These contacts were for the sole purpose of the interview, and I wouldn’t have dreamed of imposing upon any of these people again, but the numbers stayed in my list.  They were my membership card, the secret password allowing me entry into the clubhouse of writers.  What I have known all along, but pushed aside, is that the password changes, the membership was a guest card, and that speaking to authors does not make me one of them.  My writing career, successes and failures, has to stand on its own.  No security blanket will change it, or me.

Whedon wanted to see what Buffy was made of.  Of course, it turns out, she was made of pretty good stuff.  In properly edited fashion, and with the intervention of a few monsters, she was able to pick up the pieces of her life one by one and return, wiser for the experience to her place in Sunnydale.  Even as I spent an hour with Apple tech support yesterday, my brain began formulating plans for reconstructing the life of my phone.  This is what we do when faced with loss.  Even as our brains process and grieve, some deeper portion of us rises to the surface and begins outlining steps for reconstruction.  As I made mental notes to Facebook message friends for their information, to download my apps, my mind saw boxes.

Recently, our family has been forced to cope with the real loss of much that we know.  Our home is in foreclosure; one day soon we will leave our version of Sunnydale behind for good.  Yet, even as we read the nearly incomprehensible legalese on the letter taped to our door (yes, they really do that), plans began to form.  The checklist started: find rental house, get boxes, donate large/unused toys, sell trailer, sell Nordic Track, move horse.  As we box up our lives, we are reconstructing them.  The towers of cardboard forming along the walls of the dining room, entryway and living room are the pillars that will support our new lives.  As I am not defined by the contents of my iPhone, my family is not defined by our address.  The boxes hold more than books, china, and DVDs; they contain our past and the proof of our resilience as we move into the future.

Orders of Magnitude

Numbers fall out of my brain.  I sometimes picture it: a sprinkling rain of dripping digits, tumbling through the sieve holes of my mind.  Monetary amounts, dates, inventories, miles per gallon, even on occasion my own phone number – they drift mirage-like past my awareness.  “Math is haarrd,” comments my husband in a facetious falsetto, mimicking an ill-conceived Barbie from the ‘90’s, whenever my number-block rears its head.

Math isn’t really my problem.  I wouldn’t have made it (albeit kicking and screaming) through college calculus if I were unable to grasp mathematical theory.  It isn’t the theory, so much as it is the numbers themselves that I am incapable of holding.  Numbers, those little Arabic squiggles, have no intrinsic meaning for me.  They are place fillers which inadequately describe sets of individuals.  I need the shapes, the colors, the textures, the faces in order to give form to the quantities.

Glancing around the islands of the Arco station (a BP subsidiary) while I fill my gluttonous pickup, I begin to suspect that I am not alone in my abstraction of numbers.  How many barrels?  I’m an NPR junkie; numbers wander through the news.  Yet, while an interview with a Gulf fisherman or a marine biologist may hold me captive with despair, horror, and guilt, the instant statistics are given on the order of magnitude of the BP oil spill disaster, my emotional slate is wiped clean.  Numbers sanitize.  The black and white impenetrability of a large number acts as an anodyne.  The mind calibrates the degree of emotional response appropriate to the number, filters the response through the equation, and produces said response with the detached efficiency of a supercomputer.  No mess.  No fuss.

This numeric anesthesia isn’t limited to the hydra of an oil well.  Look at any disaster:  earthquake, war, storm, flood, fire, bombing, job losses, genocide, epidemic.  The greater the numbers, the more detached we become.  The individual faces of the suffering are lost in the incomprehensibility of place value.  Thousands dead hit the brain and stop.  The heart cannont comprehend orders of magnitude beyond double digits.  Nine die in international waters and the world erupts.  Hundreds face poverty, disease, homelessness, and the absence of basic freedoms in the destination of the boats, and the world continues about its business. 

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.” Spock’s Vulcan logic is incontrovertible, yet – for humans – the one garners the emotional response that we cannot muster for the many.  I’m not decrying the need for numbers.  They are valuable place holders for the intangible.  We need to know how many homes were burned, how many have fallen in battle, how many feet of water cover the streets, how many have succumbed to disease, how many no longer have paychecks, how many face deportation, how many birds have oil caking their feathers.  We need to know how many.  But, even more, we need to know how and who.

NPR (did I mention that I’m an addict?) recently aired a segment profiling an Iraq-born artist.  In an attempt to bring comprehensibility to the order of magnitude of the war in his home country, Wafaa Bilal is having individual deaths tattooed on his back.  A map of Iraq engraved across his shoulders, he has the tattoo artist place one dot for each war casualty.  Red dots represent fallen American soldiers, and, in ultraviolet ink, one dot is placed for each of the myriad “silent dead” – Iraqi civilians – invisible until displayed under black light.  One could argue that the dots are simply another form of place holding, but Bilal holds the place of each individual beneath his own skin.  And, as the dots are placed, the numbers are given faces.  Volunteers read the name of each soul lost.

I’m not advocating that we brand ourselves with each victim of fate, but, as a society, we must delve behind the crawl-screen statistics; give air time and page space to the stories of individuals; give faces to the numbers.  “All statistics lie and all liars are statisticians.”  The platitude bounced so often through various college science classes that I have no idea to whom it can be attributed.  But it underscores an important truth:  numbers are tricky little devils.  Deceptive in their absolutism, numbers lead us to forget that they are only as objective as those who measure and present them.  Numbers blind us to the faces, allow us to forget that the “them” is comprised of individuals with lives much like our own.

Maybe I'm Stupid, But...

...I just don't get it.  I've heard all of the arguments, seen all of the presumptive Biblical support, and -- nope, I don't get  it.  What on earth does it matter whom, or if, another person loves?  Does the presence or absence of a relationship change one's talents, personality, intelligence, or gifts?  I suppose one could argue that love has a reputation for enhancing some and diminishing others of these traits, but I don't think the intrinsic traits are changed.  Priorities shift, yes, but the person is the same.

I recently reviewed a gorgeous novel (please note: novel, as in fiction) for Blogcritics.org. http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-the-marien-revelation-by/

. The Marien Revelation, by Miguel Santana is a beautiful piece of writing. It is primarily the tale of two parallel lives: that of a modern Mexican-American woman named Marien, and that of a young Jewish girl of two thousand years ago named -- you guessed it -- Mary.

Now, in Santana's story, he touches on the premise that Jesus had a lover, the disciple referred to in the Gospels as "the one whom Jesus loved." Now, while judging by Santana's Facebook page and blog, he does appear to be a gay rights advocate, this particular subplot is a minor component of the book. I think this was clear in my review. In the only two comments on the review, what did people get agitated about? Yep, Jesus' sexuality.

First, The Marien Revelation is a work of fiction! Neither I, nor the book's author had actually contended that Jesus was gay. Second, what would it matter? Ignore the dogma for a moment: what would change if Jesus had had a lover -- male or female? Would his good deeds be somehow lessened? Would miracles (for believers) suddenly be non-miraculous? Would the teachings of the Gospels be void?

This is the same logic that confuses me so badly in the modern debate over gay marriage. Opponents of gay marriage use the argument that they are protecting the institution of marriage. Huh? Is my marriage somehow jeopardized by the fact that my children have classmates with two moms or two dads?

Now, there are plenty of factors that can put marriages at risk. I would argue that most of these factors arise from inside the marriage. However, I'll concede that external forces can play a role in the disintegration of a marriage. But, I fail to comprehend how the marriage of two other consenting adults can possibly diminish or threaten an existing union.

Will I somehow forget to kiss my husband goodbye if I see matching bands on the hands of a gay couple? Will he decide that he doesn't need to come home at night if two men are permitted to marry? Will we separate because one of our kids has a playdate at the home of a lesbian couple? Nope, I still don't get it.

I don't get the use of a string of nonsense and meaningless dogma to heighten fear and deprive people of what should be a pretty basic civil right. But, maybe I'm stupid...

Down With Lemmings

Greetings!  We interrupt this week’s previously scheduled thoughts on the school year to bring you a rant.  This rant has been brought to you by the conservative wing of the Republican Party which appears to be suffering from a collective delusional paranoia.  I’ll have to check with my sister on the specific diagnosis, but a break with reality has obviously occurred – either that, or they’re just mean.

In case you enjoyed a media free weekend, here’s a brief recap on the latest controversy.  Today, President Obama will brainwash thousands of schoolchildren with a diabolically masterminded scheme in which he subliminally imprints upon their impressionable young minds the virtues of – GASP! – education, hard work, and personal responsibility.  That’s right, folks.  Obviously, the man has gone too far.  He actually wants children to learn.  Well, we can’t have that!  An educated populace – can you imagine?  Picture it, a world in which children are active and curious participants in their educational experiences, a world in which the next generation becomes a horde of informed, critical thinkers.

Well, gee, I wonder why Conservatives are scared.  Why on earth would they not want children to grow up with the ability to think critically, to choose their own paths and ideas, to not be lemmings?  Oh, right.  It’s much harder to base a society on close-minded intolerance when the society is lemming-free.  So, instead, I have an idea.  Let’s clamp down as hard as possible; let’s break out the terror words; let’s appeal to the primal fears of the most vulnerable in society.

Let’s tell the working and middle classes that a focus on environmental preservation will cost them their jobs.  Let’s tell the elderly (who, by the way, are participants in a National Health Care program) that Health Care Reform will result in their premature euthanasia.  Let’s tell parents that the president is trying to go behind their backs to foist his socialist agenda on their children with a super secret speech that will be delivered nationally and that has been posted in advance on the White House web site.  Oh, yes, and in case you missed it, let’s call the president a socialist while we’re at it.  But, if one of his advisers had the temerity to make disparaging remarks about the Republican Party before he held his position, well, we’d better run that guy out of town on a rail.

Come on, people!  Americans are smarter than this.  I hope so, anyway.  If our country falls for this propaganda, then we are doomed.  No one can prevent a future of resource depletion, environmental disaster, poverty, violence and despair.  Personally, I think better of humanity.  Maybe I’m naïve, but I think that humans are capable of overcoming lemming-hood. I’ll leave you with a quote that my high school U.S. history teacher (obviously a diabolical socialist plant) posted in our classroom (Thanks, Mr. Guerra!).  Sadly, I don’t know the source, so the quote will have to be unattributed.

“That knowledge is better than ignorance, that the mind that is informed becomes the mind that understands, that the mind that understands becomes the heart that cares about beauty and goodness and about human beings.”

Showing Seams

I’m falling apart at the seams – literally.  The left shoulder seams of my work shirts are fraying.  At first, one or two shirts showed rough patches in the middle of the top seam.  Then, the holes started appearing.  “Cheap shirt,” I thought when the first hole made its presence known.  But other shirts followed.  Paranoia set in.  Why the left shoulder?  I began to check myself for strange deformities.  Had I developed some Cardassian-like bone spur?  I would run my hand over the top of my shoulder, peering into the steamy post-shower mirror.  No scales.  No wings.  I had lost some weight, but surely I hadn’t possessed that much padding.  And why was it only the left shoulder?  Why only my work shirts?  The next question brought reason.  Okay, my job is pretty physical.  I must be doing something that presses or rubs on that shoulder.  I searched my mind – blank.

Heading down I-5 in the pastel light of morning, the answer hit me.  I shifted away from the seatbelt that pestered my neck.  Aha!  My seatbelt is wearing holes in my shirts.  I took this as an indication of something I’ve suspected for quite a while.  I spend way too much time behind the wheel.  One hour each way to work, plus an average of 15 minutes out of every hour seeing appointments – on a given work day, I spend approximately 4 hours driving.  Wear and tear on my shirts, wear and tear on my joints, time away from my family – where’s the good?

The light clued me in.  During my adolescence, I became convinced that someone could blindfold me and set me down at any spot in the Central Valley, and I would know the general region into which I had been dropped.  Unlike most of my adolescent theories, this one seems to be supported by the experience of adulthood.  To most outsiders, this Valley appears as an endless stretch of monotony.  “Flat.”  “Hot.”  “Brown.”  “Foggy.”  “Muddy.”  “Boring.”  I’ve heard the epithets most of my life – uttered many of them at various points of disgust and discontent.

However, this Valley of mine is deceptive.  Like a plain or strong featured woman who becomes unexpectedly beautiful in moments of animation, the Central Valley shows her glory in the subtle shifts and minute scenes.  Hers is not a flashy beauty; no showy grandeur of cascading water or dramatic mountains.  Her loveliness appears in the quiet moments.  A lone and ancient oak presides over a field lit gold by a rising sun.  Wild blackberries creep in a tangle of green and purple over a wire fence into a fan of wild oat.  The diamond white head of an egret peeks above the stand of cattails rimming a small pond.  A Swainson's Hawk shrieks her shrill cry as she is pursued by a cluster of tiny blackbirds – prey turning upon the predator.  The ubiquitous summer dust softens into a taupe pillow as the sun blazes into the horizon in an incomparable blanket of tangerine and crimson.

We have done our best to destroy this beauty, to force her to conform.  We have given her ill-considered makeovers, thrusting upon her a style that is not her own.  We pave over her wrinkles and imperfections with the Botox of sprawling concrete subdivisions.  We poison her fertile ground with generations of chemicals and diversions of her water that we are certain will enable her to be more productive.  We apologize to others in hushed tones for her plainness – sorry that she is not as spectacular as her sister the Sierras, regretful that she will never have the vibrancy of her cousin the Bay Area, sad that she does not play as well as her Southern California friends.

Yet, she continues to feed, clothe, and house us.  Rows of crops blanket her flesh and feed the world.  Fields of cotton dot her southern regions.  She feeds and houses the livestock that give us meat and milk.  Into the endless subdivisions we have tattooed upon her flesh, she has welcomed all those seeking a better, easier, safer life – refugees from war, from poverty, from the Bay Area.  She shelters us from a myriad of disasters common to her more spectacular siblings – we are largely protected from disastrous storms, she muffles the shocks of earthquakes, through her landscape shelters us from the worst of fires.  Even those disasters which escape her watch are often brought through our own neglect.  Levees erode, ranges are poorly managed, soils in the west lie dead from years of toxic runoff.  We are poor tenants.

Perhaps our oblivion is not entirely our own fault.  How can a society accustomed to virtual explosions, digital sound, a constant barrage of entertainment see the value in a landscape whose variations are slow and subtle?  A few have managed.  Artists such as Wayne Thiebaud and Deladier Almeida capture the unique light and shifting curves of the Sacramento and Delta regions.  Authors such as William Saroyan have caught the specific culture of the southern San Joaquin.  In isolated pockets, groups essay to preserve the heritage of the region through festivals, rodeos, historical societies, and museums.  Yet, it takes a careful and perceptive eye to appreciate the beauty that spans the heart of California.

Will enough of those eyes reach out before it is too late?  Unless we stop apologizing for and attempting to reinvent our Central Valley, she is lost.  We have permitted outsiders to pillage her land with the promises of jobs and have gained empty buildings and abject poverty.  We fight among ourselves over land use, water use, smelt, and shrimp. Instead of sewing the wonderful patchwork of cultures and languages of her inhabitants into a bright and warm quilt, we have allowed our fears and prejudices to bring our youth to violence.

Go outside in the early morning light.  Watch the gold of a wheat field reach into the periwinkle sky.  Walk through a downtown and listen to the music of different accents.  Eat from a mobile food cart or in an unfamiliar “mom and pop” restaurant.  Read a book by a valley author.  Visit an art gallery, take in the glorious swirling color of the California plein air painters.  Quit apologizing to out of town visitors for the weather or that “there’s nothing to do.”  Rejoice that there still exist towns with main-street parades and asparagus or crawdad festivals.  Stop at a fruit stand.  Look beyond the frayed seams.

"Through a Glass."

We look through narrow windows.  On the countertop we see the detritus of a long day: eggshells, a drift of flour, crumpled paper, the slithering drip of candlewax.  We draw a conclusion; the room is a mess, the life is a mess.  We forget the restrictions of our view.  Our window doesn’t show us the well-laid table: the golden tower of a soufflé, the gleaming crystal and china, the glowing candles.  Someone else peers in through the dining room window; he sees only the feast, none of the labour.  He surmises a life of privilege and elegance.  Neither view is whole.

I forget this sometimes.  I forget that we only see into the lives of others through small windows.  Sometimes the other person restricts the view, sometimes we forget to walk around to see if another window is open.  I forget that even with the people closest to me, those whom I believe I know best, I am granted only a limited view.

I think that as a society, we’ve been fooled into believing that the window through which we peer represents the entire view.  A tabloid photograph, the image of a moment, has come to represent an entire person, as though we could distill a complete and complex life into one frozen millisecond.  The thirty second sound-bite purports to give us all the information we need.  One sentence becomes emblematic of an entire career.  I wonder how much this problem is exacerbated by our constant, yet cursory feed of information.  How do text messages, Facebook, Tweets, and blogs influence our views into the rooms of others?

I am an admitted text junkie, have a mild Facebook problem, and obviously I blog.  I haven’t found a use for my Twitter account yet.  As much as I find these methods of communication compelling and addictive, I wonder about the effect on my relationships.  I know firsthand how easy it is to narrow the window to an arrow-slit via text message.  I wonder what anyone would conclude about my life by reading my Facebook status – probably that some form of medication is definitely in order.  I use these media regularly, and I enjoy their use by others, but I know that I manipulate my windows to suit my needs and I’m sure others do as well.  I think the danger lies when we are seduced into believing that the fragment we see is the whole.

The danger is real.  For too long now, as a collective, we have been far to willing to be fed the picture.  We don’t walk around the house, look for the other view, check to see what’s hiding in the corner.  As long as we stay glued to our narrow window, those with designs on power, or interest in manipulating a situation can feed us whatever picture they desire.  Look at recent events:  senators, entrusted with selection of a Supreme Court Justice, base arguments not upon her record, but upon one sentence in a speech; town hall debates on health care are disrupted by cries of "SOCIALISM!"– insurance companies claim that they are sending “talking points”; senators cleared of any ethics violation are admonished by the Senate for failure to avoid the appearance of misconduct.  In high school, I had a history teacher who used to tell us “perception is more important than reality.”  Perception has become the all.  Even when presented with the reality, people cling to an initial perception.  Seriously, are folks still debating President Obama’s citizenship and religion??

“Talking points,” bullet points, slogans, and rallying cries have supplanted informed debate.  In California, a cry of “no new taxes” has snarled the budget into a hairball of previously unseen dimensions.  Now, I will admit that I do not love giving chunks of my paycheck to the government.  I don’t know anyone who looks at the withholdings on a paystub and smiles.  (If someone is out there who does this, get help, get help now.)  However, I recognize that an economy is like a biological system.  Each component depends upon the function of the others for survival.  In a body, a deficit – of red blood cells for instance—results from two factors: increased consumption and decreased production, basically from the inability of the supply to meet the demand.  The fix for a low red cell count is two-fold:  find the source of the loss and stop/slow it, increase production.  Now, if I were to look only through my own window at the state budget, I might see a place of excessive spending, where more of my income than I would like is diverted to services that I will never use.  I hope.  And this is why I walk to the next window.  How far are my worries about giving more of my income to the government removed from worries about not having an income with which to feed, house, or clothe my family and thus relying upon the government?  The distance between views is shorter than we would like to think.  Additionally, when services are cut to the most vulnerable, the overall economy suffers.  If a family receiving medical assistance is suddenly forced to divert a greater percentage of their income to medical care, that money will not be spent in the larger economy:  they won’t buy those back-to-school clothes, forget eating out.  In turn, the store clerk loses a job, the restaurant loses income, and the server loses tips.  The government loses sales tax revenue.  And the health care system?  The family will pay what they can; when they can pay no more, hospitals will be forced to eat the bill, and the burden on emergency rooms will increase.  For a system to function whether it is a body, a society, or a government, all organs must be healthy.  We can’t afford to narrow our view to our own interests.  John Donne had it right.  We are “each a part of the whole a piece of the main.”

What can we do?  For my part, whenever I catch myself thinking, ‘why would anyone do that?’ I’m going to try to remember that that person has portions of his or her room that I cannot see.  When I listen to a news article, I will ask myself what lies in the corners of the room.  I will try to look through even the windows that make me uncomfortable, that may prove me wrong.  And, I will try to pay more attention to the views that I give to others.  Maybe I’ll pick up some glass cleaner and new curtains.

In Praise of Print

Will no one speak for the book?  Since the release of Amazon’s Kindle, I have followed discussions of features, e-book pricing, piracy, and the Orwellian weirdness saga.  Yet, I have seen nothing that touches on my primary concern.  Books – I love books.  I love the feel, the smell, the sound of pages flipping, the thump of a closed cover.  I like to hold them, to feel the comforting heft of a hardcover or the breezy frivolity of a paperback. 

From a rational standpoint, I would be the ideal Kindle owner.  I read compulsively, eclectically, and with disturbing speed.  My purse doesn’t leave the house without a journal, pen, and a book.  (My wallet has been known to remain at home on the desk under a book.)  A landscape without trees is pointless; I have been known to literally hug a tree.  I recycle everything, yet every flat surface in our house holds a potential avalanche of paper-wasting books.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Granted, packing for trips or even a “me time” run into the City would no longer require the use of a pack donkey or llama.  (At least I could carry a smaller purse.)  And, I would no longer be forced to cart home kilos of “absolutely necessary” volumes.  Though, this isn’t as much of a problem as it used to be.  What happened to Stacey’s books??

But, I love books and bookstores.  Shelves of books intoxicate me in a way that on-line catalogues never will.  How can I know what titles attract me without picking them up, fondling them a bit, taking them out for that first drink?  Selecting a book electronically has all of the romance of picking a hooker out of a database.  (No, I do not speak from personal experience here.  Hyperbole, people, hyperbole.)  Amazon gets my business only when searches of mainstream, independent, and used bookstores fail.

We live in a world where the use of our senses is becoming increasingly (and to my mind dangerously) obsolete.  Once, children played with Legos as basic sets.  You remember -- the little interlocking bricks that could be made into castles, airplanes, boats, or dragons.  Then, the sets became specialized; yes, my children can make a realistic Millennium Falcon, but heaven forbid one piece crawls beneath the bookcase, or the pre-schooler colors on the instructions.  The next, and apparently obvious step, was the invention of Lego video games -- all of the joy of Legos without the hassle of those little pieces.  Right.  This is where I step off of the ride; I don’t understand the attraction of moving Lego shaped characters around a video screen.  My techno-geek, gamer husband points out that the fun of Lego video games has nothing to do with construction.  I counter with the notion that since we used to build the Legos and then play with them, a vital step is being lost.  Where is the satisfying click of assembly?  Where, for that matter, is the pride of assembly?  Where is the cooperative search for the long, skinny blue piece?  I can’t help wondering if books are going the way of Legos. 

A Google search of the effects of electronic media on the brain produced 1,520,000 hits.  Most of these hits involved visual media such as movies and television, and the effects on the developing brain.  I was unable to find (in a short time and with a lap inhabited by a 4 year old) a perfect reference to support this point, but I think the mind interprets words differently on screen than on paper.  I know that I cannot adequately edit my own work without printing it out in hard copy.  If truly stuck, I will shut down the computer and break out the pen and paper.  I know that I read the news in more depth in a print form than from an online version of the same periodical.  I can’t put aside the feeling that the electronic format robs us of the essence of the book experience.  We are not all visual learners.  Personally, I tend to be a kinesthetic learner.  My brain processes information better when I use my hands as well as my eyes.  What provides the more complete kinesthetic experience:  flipping through pages or scrolling?

I may be a victim of early conditioning.  My mother was a school librarian.  Thanks to her frequent trips to author signings and sales events, I treasure autographed copies of books by Avi, Beverly Cleary, Gordan Korman, and others.  How can an author sign a Kindle?

The internet may house the definition of every word ever coined, but when dinner table linguistic debates arise, we trek to the living room and heave the appropriate volume of the out of date OED from its case, and delightedly break out the magnifying glass.  The sense of treasure hunt through the OED’s irritatingly miniscule type cannot be replaced with a quick electronic search.

I will be the first to admit that my relationship with books is messy and imperfect.  I leave them on tables, chairs, desks, bed, and floor.  They overflow the shelves and block the entrance to my closet.  Bookmarks in my house disappear into the void that houses paperclips, matching socks, and pens.  As a result, books in my care are often dog-eared and occasionally (don’t tell my mom) propped open face down.  I post-it note, highlight, underline, and write intermittent notes.  Pages of my favorite books are smeared with samples of my favorite foods.  I am a book slob.  Yet, I wouldn’t trade my messy, imperfect house for a sterile white-walled, stainless steel habitat.  I wouldn’t trade my messy, imperfect family for a Stepford husband and children.  We may be dysfunctional, but my family and my books understand and love me.

So, I’ll leave it to others to debate e-book pricing and sales, to agonize over privacy and copyright implications.  I’m going to the bookstore.  And when I finally fill the house with books, well, I’m sure we can find somewhere to put the kids.  They like their grandparents.

Rant Part 1 -- What's for Lunch?

Part 1 – Food

Food (n.): 1. What is taken into the system to maintain life and growth, and to supply the waste of tissue; aliment, nourishment, provision, victuals.

            b.  What is edible, as opposed to ‘drink.’

            c.  Sustenance, livelihood.

So sayeth the Oxford English Dictionary.  Food – a basic need, a source of controversy, and anguish.  In most of the world, food is truly a basic need.  Food is scarce, and therefore precious.  Many people lack the luxury of agonizing over what they eat; they can’t afford to be that choosy.  In contrast, Americans are increasingly aware of and paradoxically disconnected from our food. 

On an early camping trip with my daughter’s Girl Scout troop, I asked one of the girls to get the Ziploc bag of stew meat out of the cooler.  She couldn’t find it.  At that time, the girls were all 8 or 9 years old, none were vegetarians.  Caitlin walked over to the cooler, and grabbed the bag.  As the bag was emptied into the pot, a chorus arose.  “Eeewww, what’s that?”  “That’s not meat.  Meat’s brown.”  “Meat doesn’t look like that.”  “Ick, is that blood?”  None of the girls knew what raw meat looked like.

A good friend of mine was raised on a ranch.  She and her husband farm hay, garden, and raise a handful of beef cattle.  She came home from work one evening completely perplexed.  “People keep asking me about buying one of our steers.  They want to know all this stuff about how it’s raised.  They seem to get really excited about the fact that we pasture graze them.”

“Yeah, that’s the latest thing, didn’t you know?”

“What?”

“Grass fed beef, locally raised food.  Small farming, local produce, you name it.”

“Uh, why?”

“Better for the environment, less fuel, less methane, etc.”

“So,” she paused and looked at me strangely.  “You mean the way I’ve always eaten is trendy?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“I thought that was just food.”

I think that sums it up nicely.  All of the hype about sustainable farming, local produce, etc. is just food.  This is how our grandparents ate.  If you raised an animal for food, you ate the whole animal, used what you could.  Fruits and vegetables were eaten fresh in season and preserved for out of season.  Children knew where their food came from; they helped feed it until slaughter time, they helped pick and peel it.

Why are we alarmed and confused by an obesity epidemic when so many children think that food grows in cardboard, cans, or McDonald’s bags?  Cereals where sugar and high fructose corn syrup are listed in the top five ingredients get marketed as healthy breakfasts because they are fortified with vitamins and minerals.  We didn’t see this one coming?

Children can be excused ignorance.  It is the job of adults to help children understand the world around them.  There is no excuse for educated adults who have never given a moment’s thought to the source of their dinner.  I find it appalling that someone can complain about the environmental cost of ranching while eating a hamburger, or rant about hunters while eating steak.  Meat eaters have a responsibility to respect their meal enough to be honest about the source.  I am an omnivore.  I eat meat.  My metabolism and physiology support my belief that humans have evolved as omnivores.  And, I prefer to be at the top of the food chain.  (See previous post.)  That said, I respect the position of ethical vegetarians.  If you choose not to eat meat, that is your right.  It may be a more moral stand than mine, I don’t know.  However, I do know exactly where my dinner comes from.  I have stood in a slaughter house.  I have been involved in animal agriculture at each level of production.  I was raised in a family of hunters and fisherman.  I believe that the sin is not in the taking of one life to sustain another, it is in the pretence that lives with greater aesthetic or emotional appeal possess greater value.  Why rank a horse above a cow, a pig over a fish?  For that matter, most vegetables are also living organisms, but that’s just an aside.  Where else in the world do people have the luxury of quibbling over or scorning certain sources of protein?  The fact that Americans are able to eat primarily, in many cases only, the skeletal muscle of an animal, the fact that we legislate which animals may be raised and slaughtered for food, the fact that we have the time and energy to fret over the tossing of dead fish in a public market, these are the things that brand Americans as spoiled and out of touch with the rest of the world. 

When our society demands cheap, mass-produced housing, and raises those houses on fertile crop-land, why are we surprised to find that agriculture becomes a crisis?  My father grew up in Mountain View, CA.  He remembers earning money cutting apricots in the summer.  Go find an apricot orchard in the “Silicon” Valley.  I dare you.  When we take the children to Southern California to see family, my Anaheim-raised husband gets lost.  His most frequent comments:  “That used to be a strawberry field,” or “That was an orange grove.”  I was raised in Merced.  I’ve lived in California’s Central Valley for most of my life.  Farmland dwindles year by year, submerged in a tidal wave of cloned buildings that now sit vacant with “bank owned” signs dotting the landscape.  Several years ago, during the most recent building boom, Caitlin asked about all of the new houses being built.  She wanted to know, “but what will people eat?”

I would love to challenge every urban and suburban dweller to find out more about his or her food.  Talk to a farmer, a rancher, read a Farm Bureau newsletter, visit a farm, a dairy, a cattle ranch.  The farmers and ranchers with whom I interact daily sense the disconnect of the society that they have given their lives to feed, and they are understandably bitter.  They feel besieged by conflicting and impossible demands.  To a large extent, agriculture is at the mercy of uncontrollable forces: weather, fuel costs, soil, plant and animal biology, disease, and legislation at all levels.  Society demands food that is cheap, plentiful, convenient, and yet magically raised without cost to the environment or genetic or chemical manipulation.  Something has to give.  People who rise before dawn, for whom a hard day at work involves dirt, unbearable heat or cold, broken machinery, lifting, bending, sweating and bleeding may be left with a bitter taste in their mouths when they hear well-dressed, well-manicured pundits blathering about the havoc being wrought by agriculture. 

That said, there is another side.  Agriculture has had a tendency to shoot itself in the foot.  Proactively addressing issues of sustainability and animal welfare does not indicate caving in.  In many cases, changing the way “things have always been done” may increase productivity. Locking into a position and refusing to police oneself means that policy will eventually be imposed from the outside.  Living and practicing medicine in California, I have heard multiple complaints about Proposition 2.  However, I want, but have lacked the courage, to ask ranchers and poultry growers why their own industry hadn’t implemented these changes themselves.  Or, alternatively, why they hadn’t done a better job of educating the public on the value of the targeted methods of livestock production.  In the cases where practical agriculture has worked hand in hand with the theoretical, great strides have been made.  It’s time to quit arguing and deal with the crisis.

The real problem that threatens our food supply is the fact that the people who legislate many of the issues affecting agriculture represent voters who have no grasp of these issues.  Farms have become something people drive past on freeways.  Several weeks ago, NPR aired a wonderful series titled Five Farms.  http://cds.aas.duke.edu/fivefarms  This series did an impressive job of highlighting the breadth of agriculture in this country and the issues facing those who have chosen this vocation. 

Food.  Why don’t we just eat food?  What would happen if we quit asking for cheap, homogenized, microwavable, individually packaged, nutritionist approved, exotically flavored, calorie restricted, environmentally and politically correct, sterilized supplementation, and just ate food?  If you eat meat, great; do you understand the costs?  Are you willing to use the entire animal?  Do you really need the out-of –season peaches from God knows what continent that will taste like Styrofoam anyway?  If you want to have a French fry, or a milk shake, enjoy it, savor it.  Rather than wrapping ourselves up in guilt, excess, starvation, and binging, why don’t we just accept food as something we need, and something that brings us pleasure?  Why do we talk about being “bad” or “good” with what we eat?  Be grateful if you have enough.  Bon Appetit.

That reminds me.  It’s time for lunch.

An Elegy for Common Sense

It’s time for a rant.  This will be a rant in several parts.  I begin to believe that our society suffers from a spiritual and intellectual bulimia.  When I Googled the phrase “spiritual bulimia,” most hits seemed to pertain to binging hollowly on religious ideas.  I use this phrase a bit more broadly.  Middle-class America’s insatiable desire for quantity, convenience, and entertainment mirrors our simultaneous purge of effort, discomfort, and complexity.  We seek comfort with the blind rooting of infants, confusing excess with nourishment, wallowing in the accompanying guilt and subsequently flogging ourselves for any deviation into pleasure or individuality.  In our frantic quest for validation, we have jettisoned the trait that could save us. 

Common sense has become an endangered species in almost every facet of middle-class American life.  Food – do we really need books to tell us that food is fresher and tastes better when it hasn’t travelled thousands of miles by airplane?  I’m fresher (and probably taste better) when I haven’t been bundled into storage and shipped, too.  Health – how many “experts”, books, and videos does it take for us to learn that the only way to lose weight is to expend more calories than we consume?  Politics – seriously, when did “they started it” become a platform for debate?  Raising children – you mean we can’t make the world a magical, safe, pain-free utopia?  Damn.  Gender roles – Haven’t we reached the point as a society where we no longer care who earns the money or keeps the house just as long as there are clean socks?  The environment – does anyone actually want the earth to undergo catastrophic meltdown?  During lunch a couple of years ago, a good friend of mine compared modern America to the Roman Empire in its last days:  a military superpower, a society bent on the pursuit of pleasure and distraction, as the empire disintegrates.  Looking back, this comment appears to have been not only insightful, but down right prophetic.

In our emulation of the infantile decadence of fallen empires (ancient Rome, the Ottomans, the pre-revolutionary courts of France and Russia – have we learned nothing?), we have created a society so polarized and hypocritical that we are no longer able to function.  Our relentless binges have broken not only our national economy, but that of the world.  The world is too complex and much too small for humans to be governed by our own greed and fears.  Our failures to behave as adults threaten to destroy the planet. The rant will continue over the next several weeks. The wheels are coming off, folks.

Independence?

The smoke still smells the same; an acrid odor of burnt tires and excitement billows out with every burst.  The strobe flashes still pop with the staccato of a giant stamping bubble wrap.  The lingering hiss of the fountains still sounds like the quenching of stars.  And despite the growing number of regulations (I miss sparklers,) a sense of adolescent rebellion lingers.

 

Last night, my youngest child cuddled in my lap, sucking the thumb of one hand, clutching my earlobe with her other while her older siblings huddled together in the adjacent lawn chair chanting “Ooooh.  Ahhhhh.  Ohhhhh.  Yaaayyy,” in a pod-people monotone. This chant was followed by the cynical giggles of co-conspirators.  Less than an hour before, Caitlin had informed me that Aidan had no reason to exist.  Her tune changed as darkness fell; apparently he’s warm.

 

“Look.  When a parent or a teacher tells you to do something, you don’t get to ask why.  You don’t get to say ‘no.’  Unless it’s something dangerous or something that makes you feel uncomfortable, the only proper response is to do as you’re told.”  Hmmm… doesn’t exactly have a “we hold these truths to be self-evident” ring to it, does it?  In my defense, when I uttered this proclamation, I was driving an extended (not club) cab F-150 containing my three kids and my mother-in-law.  Aidan had challenged every statement I’d made that morning, and yes, I’d forgotten what day it was.  Still, I was the one who had made a big deal the night before about the meaning of Independence Day, and freedom from tyranny.  Oops.

 

Fireworks have become a major event in our family.  In a family where everyone cooks, cleans, and sets the table without regard to gender, the 4^th of July fireworks are archaically sexist.  And, for the most part, we like it that way.  My husband and future brother-in-law traditionally mount an expedition to buy out every fireworks stand along the road.  They and my father elaborately prepare and present the display to the admiring women and children.  This year, stogies were added “just to light the fireworks.”  Rebellion?  Nah.  Of course not.

 

Bottle rockets shot over the house from a neighboring yard.  Where does the boundary for freedom and justifiable rebellion lie?  “No.  You may not kick your brother.  Ever.”  “Don’t bite your sister’s leg.”  “Do NOT toss the water bottle around in the truck.”  “That is enough loud singing.  I will stop the car.”  Safety? Annoyance?  Ideology?  Our Founding Fathers declared treason against their lawful king.  The Honduran military just deposed their elected president.  Yet another member of our military has been discharged for the nature of his personal life.  The night before last, after our 5 minute symposium on The Declaration of Independence, the kids and I sat down to a living room picnic and movie.  (Burgers, corn, root beer floats.)  As we watched National Treasure, Caitlin looked up and asked, “But, Mom?  If they wrote all that stuff about ‘all men are created equal,’ where did the disrespect and bad treatment of African Americans come in?”  Oh dear.

 

“Well, umm… You see, most of the men that signed it, and Thomas Jefferson, the man that wrote the Declaration of Independence, they owned slaves.”

“What!  That’s stupid.  That’s wrong.”  Her outrage continued for several more paragraphs.

“Well, yes, of course it’s wrong.  It takes a long time for people to change ideas.  That’s why I always tell you guys that quote about how ‘the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing.’  If people don’t speak up for what they believe when they know something is wrong, nothing will ever change.”

“But, Moomm,” this one earned me an eyeroll.  “Everyone thinks that what they believe is right.”

Thank God for action sequences.

 

As the fireworks popped and bloomed, and my husband puffed on his repulsive cigar, I found myself wondering again about the nature of independence and right.  When is it justifiable rebellion against tyranny?  When is it treason?  What happens when our rights crash into the rights of others?  What if the sparks from our rockets light the neighbors’ roof on fire?  What do we do when “everyone thinks that what they believe is right?”  Uncertainty, destruction, chaos, these are the prices we pay for disrupting the status quo.  Stagnation, rigidity, intolerance, abuse of power, these are the risks of resting securely within the system.

 

I kind of like the explosions.  Happy Independence Day!