It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Speaking while voiceless

The worst part is the feeling of the strain, the empty weight of impotence in your throat.  Your mouth opens again – if you try harder, someone will hear, someone will help.

Most of us know that dream, the one in which you are in mortal danger, trying to scream for help, or in protest, or simply to speak to explain, yet no sound emerges – you are voiceless.

The real-life analogue is less dramatic than the scenarios spun by the horror-writer of the subconscious, but no less disempowering.  And waking up is more difficult.

The disconnect between the instructions we receive and the realities we face rob each of us of our voice – of our right to be heard, to speak, to share, to be understood.

As children we are told, “Speak up so I can hear you,” but also “Don’t be so loud.”  Those of us who are introverted get told, “Get out of your shell, socialize more,” but we often find ourselves faced with confused looks that fade into disinterest when we attempt to reach out, to offer our opinions, because no one really wants to hear the in-depth explanation.  “Vote,” we are told.  “Your voice matters.”  So we cast our ballots.  And nothing changes.  “Be yourself.  Be authentic.”  But, the subtext implies, “Make sure your authentic self isn’t too different from the culturally accepted norm.”

I was hushed in the delivery room.  In labor with my first child, my voice crying out in the primal vocalization of mothers throughout species and millennia, I was hushed.  “You’ll upset the other patients,” I was told.  The natural cry of my body wasn’t acceptable. 

I gritted my teeth, silenced my voice, and retracted the authenticity of my moans.

Women were institutionalized for libido.  The very term hysteria derives from the notion that madness in women is connected to the womb.

When I was small, I made stew from my plastic alphabet letters.  Not soup, which I guess would have made sense in the greater social context, but stew.  I liked stew better.  It never occurred to me that to make soup, or WORDS, with the letters would have been more “normal.”  There were toys, and I was playing.  This moment of random play somehow became family shorthand for “Christy is different.”

I posted a painting of nude faeries.  This simple act – to me, an artistic experiment in pen and watercolor without first sketching in pencil – prompted familial concerns that I was mentally unstable. 

I deleted the painting from my Facebook page, agreeing to censor myself rather than enter into conflict or cause concern to those I love.

Emily Dickinson wrote it well, “Much madness is divinest sense, to a discerning eye.  Much sense the starkest madness, ‘tis the majority.”

A good friend once described me as having a perspective that is “rotated slightly from that of the collective norm.”

We all hold individual perspectives – rotated, spun, warped, askew, inside-out.  Yet there is a pretense that everyone agrees on certain things, that there is a collective consensus on matters of morality, social acceptability, even esthetics.

At the same time, we acknowledge the ills in our society – racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, able-ism, income disparity, relationship dysfunction. 

I submit that those ills are born of the tacit collusion to conform.  The only people who have ever effected real change to society’s sicknesses have been those who speak the truth of their individual experience, those who stand up and paint, write, speak, sculpt, protest, sing, or research from the basis of their unique thoughts, beliefs, and feelings.

Avoiding subject matter that strikes at the viscera buried beneath our collective comfort isn’t sanity, it is mass denial.

A keystone of this pretense of majority standards is one unspoken, yet persistent, rule: “Only those who are famous, dead, or otherwise special may break with the group.  Anyone else who acts as an individual or rebels against homogeny is disturbed.”

It takes courage to stand up and declare oneself “special” enough to break with the flock.  It’s hard not to bend under the shame of the implicit hubris of daring to declare individuality.  For those of us who love our families and friends, there is the added burden of knowing that our individual truths touch on and stem from the experiences of those we love.

Every personal essay I write risks exposing those I love to pain or embarrassment.  Visual art that acknowledges human (or hominoid) anatomy or that pokes into dark or uncertain places of the psyche may break through the comfort zones of my loved ones.

I’m not famous, dead (yet), or particularly talented.  And that is why I write and paint.  I use the “voice” of art in hopes that my doing so will give others some sort of permission to share their own truths.

Sometimes that truth comes about by accident.  My “shocking” painting wasn’t intended as social protest.  The off-scale genitalia resulted from poor technique rather than any sort of fixation.  I hadn’t painted a male nude before, and as an exercise in reducing my perfectionist tendencies, I have been experimenting with sketching in pen rather than pencil and forcing myself to share my imperfect work.

But, I’m going to file this particular imperfection under “Serendipitous Greater Meaning.”  That screwed up painting and its aftermath made me think deeper about what I do and what responsibility art bears.

Only through displaying our individual perspectives and flaws can we ever change the collective norm.

Note: I recognize that my use of the word “voice” is, in itself, a form of ableism.  Word choice and metaphor also need to be examined.  At the moment, it is the metaphor that is lodged in my brain, but I welcome conversation around that and suggestions.

Valentines in Five Dimensions -- Love in Non-monagamy

Welcome to Valentine's Day -- the day for either random Roman tortures or the commercialization of couplehood.  Scrolling through Facebook this morning, I saw one or two articles on "Being your own Valentine" and a plethora of paeons to pairing. 

I identify as polyamorous, a GrecoLatin hybrid loosely translating as many loves.  One question I get from those brave enough to ask is, "So, you're really just sort of casually dating, right?  I mean, you can't really LOVE multiple people; it would dilute out."

We have this notion of romantic love as something with a defined beginning and defined end and an almost pathologically co-dependent middle.  But think about it -- I have three kids.  I don't love each of them any less than I would if I had two or one. 

I've found with polyamory not that I love any individual more or less than others or than I would if I were monogamous, but that I define love differently.  I don't really break it down into the standard loose catagories of  sexual love, platonic love, familial love, etc. anymore.  Instead, I feel what I feel for each person in my life at any given moment.  And I recognize that those feelings will shift and change with life and time.

So, here is my Valentine...

 

I will not love you – singular and only – in the nebula of “forever”

With doily-pocked hearts suffering atrial hypertrophy and ventricular strictures.

I love you-the-plural in the eternal moment of conjoined space and time where and when we each intersect

The cut-between of trails across our multiverses.

There is no greater or less than – symbolic alligators have no mouths and crocodiles only devour unworthy cardia.

 

Instead, I love you because you know to use a spoon and that Han shot first.  I love you with a delivery of garlic fries and a tattered blue bathrobe.

I love you in pajamas and sore muscles with beer on my tongue and your beard against my neck.

I love you darlin’ in bourbon-laced strips of cane and trickles of trochee.

I love you with the ease of a blade slicing satin, dripping it onto concrete.

I love you in the mounting hilarity of texts flung into my vortex of phlegm and despair.

I love you with the patience of a moment that may never see this branch of our tree but in the calm of laughter and golden spirals of touched heads.

I love you in Medusa-curls that warm the stone of my fingers and slide across my purring flesh.

I love you because we know how to make the Giants score, but they don’t get chocolate.

I love you in downy heads and skinned knees.

I love you in tracks of dirt and doors left ajar.

I love you in paralyzing waves of laughter that roll across undulating sheets.

I love you as the world’s problems linger in the dregs of an endless bottle of wine.

I love you in strokes of charcoal and dabs of paint made flesh.

I love you in a cepahlopodic tangle of limbs and noodles in the jet-lagged no-time.

I love you in a last sip of port and awkward farewell.

I love you in the spinning battle between cuffs and bolt.

I love you in bubbles of beer on a dappled patio.

I love you in vast, feral skies lingering in half-hooded lids.

I love you in shifting curves that out-run radar.

I love you in ripples dancing in the lights on a river.

I love you in cobblestones that catch our legs as we walk.

I love you in the stillness of my own bed and the silent intimacy of space.

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.

 

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!]

Transitions

This poor blog has been neglected over the past year, and with reason.  Last October, my husband and I separated, and I've been trying to decide how I want to mesh my personal writing and personal life.  Many of these things will become clear over time, and I have no desire to tell any story but my own.  However, because I've written much on family and relationships, and will likely continue to do so, it needs to be said that he is a wonderful man, fabulous co-parent, and is and will always be very dear to me.

From time to time, I suspect my posts will pick up some of the backstory of my past year, but as happens with life transitions, I'm likely to be shifting focus somewhat with this blog.  I'll be likely to focus less on veterinary matters since I write about those for a living. You can find my veterinary-related writing at www.vetzinsight.com, news.vin.com, or thehorse.com.

This space is likely to be used for issues that matter most in my life right now -- parenting, sexuality, relationships (of all sorts), mental health, and feminism.

 

Banish the Should -- Notes from Yale Creek, 2013

Everything I love about the hour around dawn has coalesced.  The chill, silent breeze embraces the deck where I curl into a futon, glad for my sweatshirt and jeans.  A blank notebook, the first after a too-long hiatus, is propped against my knees.  A thump echoes behind my right shoulder.  The tree just missed my head.  I pick up the lumpy green apple, salute the tree and the rising sun peeking from behind the hill, and take a bite.  Clicking my pen, I begin to write.

The tree threw an apple at me, so I thanked it for my snack.  The lambs have awoken the hillside, bawling their cotton ball dreams to their mothers.  The cows respond with the bass line from downslope.  Light is peering between the hills across the valley.  Its bleary eyes chase a jet trail into the periwinkle sky.

We’re an early lot this morning, kids trickling out of tents and beds.  The occasional body is still cocooned in odd places, the couch, the deck, none in the bathtub, though.

Brand new notepad for dreaming, for letting my pen slide across the lines, straying into the unknown spaces.

The apple was tart and crisp-perfect – until I went too far and got a bitter mouthful of the wormy center.  I spat the metaphor into the bushes and chucked my gift from Newton after.

I have a headache born of a hard mattress and too little sleep.  The moon awoke me on its path; it barged into my window, a violent, beautiful intruder stabbing my eyes with a white knife.

Instruments are everywhere, guitars gossiping in the corners and spilling onto the couch, cellos and violins in their black suits by the hearth.  Here and there the oddball – the almost banjo made from a Sierra Nevada case (perhaps that’s what the guitars are criticizing in their living room klatch), a violin case cracked open in an arm chair, a bongo drum standing mute by the coffee table, Caitlin’s cello case, alone in electric blue glory in a sea of black nylon.

The writing meanders through the week at Yale Creek Farm, drifting down the hill to examine the hops climbing their poles, digging its toes into the mud of the pond with the tiny, translucent leeches, sitting at the edge of a mosquito-bitten evening, listening to campfire tunes drift from the odd conglomerate of cellos, violins and guitars who have magically formed an orchestra.

It is a week of fundamentals – the building of shelter (in the form of two straw/clay construction cabins), the preparation of food (for 30+ from produce gleaned and dug from the soil of the farm), and the gathering of community (through games and music and work).  My body is tired on this first morning back at home, arms and shoulders bear testimony to hours of mixing and packing of straw and clay, legs moaning gently about the hills they encountered.  Yet, the work was effortless, a form of love and play.

“Don’t should on yourself,” a friend tells us, in response to some comment about dishes or dinner prep.  Her blue eyes grin beneath black brows as she waits for us to process through the other “Sh--“ word that hits the ears first.  “Only do what brings you joy,” she finishes.

I have trouble with shoulds and with obligation and joy.  Should is a thief, stealing the joy from basic tasks, necessities.  I “should” make dinner.  I “should” put down the phone and chat with the kids.  I “should” do some laundry.  My shoulds have been particularly toxic and self-critical of late.

But, with clay beneath my fingernails, the sun on my shoulders, and the songs of strings drifting up from the pond, the shoulds are beaten back into a corner.  Anxiety, perfectionism, fear, and judgment can’t stand against the elemental nature of the moment.  A blister has formed and burst on the heel of my hand, worn there by the corner of the chunk of wood I use to pack the straw and clay mixture into the crevices of the cabin framework.  My muddy hand-prints mix with others on the shared mason jar of water one of the women has carried up the hill from the kitchen.  The water is still cool and fresh; we’ve left our fears of germs and the odd stray gnat behind in our communal thirst.

I meditate sometimes at home, on a cushion gazing into a candle flame, or eyes closed on the mosaic bench at the front of our house.  Yet, in those cultivated places, thoughts chase like amphetiminized squirrels through my brain.  In the basic acts of building, of chopping vegetables, of feeling my arms cut through the murky water of the pond, the brain centers into a deep stillness.

Thump.  Thump.  The feel of the stick ramming the straw and clay vibrates up my arm and pounds the blood inside my ears.  I swirl a sudsy sponge across the never-ending mountain of dishes in the sink.  With over 30 hungry and thirsty people, the chore is Sisyphean.  Slicing carrots into awkward sticks, joy wells inside me as a worry dashes through my head and is pushed out.  “This too,” I tell myself quietly, echoing the meditation phrase as I keep chopping.  “This too” and the should is gone.

Back home, it’s easy to feel the shoulds and self-judgments piling up.  The lists and worries started lining up at the back of my brain, demanding entry on the drive south.  I’m not quite sure how to keep them in their place.  ‘I should clean the algae from the water pitcher.’ ‘I should go for a run this morning.’

“Only do what brings you joy.”

The green scum on the paper towel, still smelling slightly of vinegar makes me smile as I rinse and fill the now clear filter pitcher.  Once I hit SAVE and upload this post, I’ll put on my running shoes.  Thinking of the feel of my feet lightly slapping the pavement, of the hard-earned strength of my legs gives me joy.  I find myself planning dinner tonight – not as an obligation, but as an act of love.

 

The Other Path

Have you ever noticed that the closer you get to something you really want – attaining a goal, buying a house, embarking on a new relationship, graduating from school – the more afraid, sad, and downright dissatisfied your mind becomes? 

What’s up with that?

On the one hand, you can see where you want to be; it’s right there, just at the end of the road.  And you’re rubbing your feet together in bed in excitement the way you did when you were a kid on Christmas Eve or before a trip to Disneyland or the day before the public pool opened.  But, on that other, sinister (left) hand, your brain is screaming things like “I can’t do this!” and “This sucks; I hate paperwork” and “I’m all alone.” 

Yep.  That goal, that shiny, haloed, glowing Nirvana is right there in front of you, just steps away, and your brain is turning you around, and forcing you off the road and onto the trail that leads from anxiety to self-loathing and despair.  One minute, you’re rejoicing in the warmth of your connections, the intensity of an emotional bond.  Seconds later, your brain says “Why did you say that?  That was really stupid.”  The brain then leaps off of the road you’ve so carefully paved and into the thickets of “They don’t really want you here.  No one wants you.”  From there, it’s a hop, skip, and a flounder into “You are going to die alone on an iceberg and even the seals won’t want your pathetic corpse.”

It seems deranged that the closer we are to some sort of achievement or happiness, the more likely our brain is to try to snatch that vision away and steer us into the darkness.  Certainly every social condition says that this train of thought is nothing short of demented.  All of our interactions with others, with our computers, our radios, our televisions tell us that in this mindset, we are completely alone. 

And there is nothing like believing you’re the only one so pathetically lost to really fuel that trek through the dark woods.

“Wow, your race is coming up fast.  You must really be excited!”

“No, actually, I’m scared shitless, and I can’t remember why I’m doing this anymore.”

“Oh that’s just nerves.  You’ve been training so hard.  You’re going to do great!”

“Pretty sure I’ll be hauled off by the clean-up wagon as they sweep the streets.  If I bother to go. But thanks.”

OR

“I can’t believe you’re graduating already.  You must be thrilled to be done!”

“Not really.  I think I’ll go back to bed.”

“Aren’t you excited about your new school/job/travel?”

“No.  Pretty sure I failed that last final, and not looking forward to sitting in the sun in a hot gown, but thanks.”

OR

“Ohmigod, congratulations!  You two are just so great together.  I have goosebumps just looking at you!”

“I’m feeling really lonely right now.”

“That’s just because he/she is away tonight.  You’ll be so happy tomorrow!”

“There’s a giant hole burrowing into my heart, and he/she is probably going to dump me anyway, but thanks.”

OR

“Congratulations on your new job!  How fabulous!”

“I think I should stay where I am.”

“Don’t be silly.  This is an amazing opportunity!  You can do so much there!”

“I’ll be canned in a week and a half.  Plus, I don’t like the hours.  But thanks.”

OR

“What a beautiful baby.  You must be so thrilled to be a mom.”

“Not really.  I’m leaking from places I didn’t even know I could leak, and I haven’t showered in three days or slept in seven.”

“Oh, the first week or two is always hard.  You’ll be such a terrific parent!”

“I’m pretty sure I’m going to leave the baby carrier on the car roof, and I’m not certain it’ll be an accident, but thanks.”

I’m going to go out on a vulnerability limb – yes, that’s me sliding along the branch, please put down the saw – and suggest that most people can relate to one or more of the above (purely hypothetical) dialogues.  We’ve all been there.  And we’ve all been the person with the superfluity of exclamation points as well as the person tacking on the obligatory, “but thanks.”

We haven’t learned comfort with our own darkness.  The deranged voice trying to steer us away from our shiny goal isn’t the enemy.  If we let it in, maybe even offer it a nice pillow, it will reveal itself to be, if not a friend, at least an ally.

That voice is our devil’s advocate, our fact checker, our bad cop.  It exists to make sure that we are, in fact, doing the thing that is right for us, that we have prepared, that we understand the risks of both failure and success.  But it has to shout to make itself heard over all of the cheerleaders.  So, like anyone with a sore throat who feels that the pom pom girls and drum majors have once again stolen the spotlight, it gets a little testy – and a lot strident.  Instead of saying, “Hey, maybe you want to slow this attachment thing down a bit; go for a walk or something,” it says “You suck at relationships; you’re going to trash this anyway, so you should just prepare to die alone.”  Rather than pointing out that you might want to make a contingency plan or develop some good self-talk for when you get tired in a race, it says “You haven’t run farther than 20 miles; you’re going to hit that mark and your legs will just stop working.  Don’t even bother thinking about 26.2; just prepare to fall over and die at 20.”

I make no secret about the fact that I adore writer/director Joss Whedon.  Only the tatters of my sanity and self-respect keep me from approaching crazed, stalker, fan girl status where he is concerned.  He gave a graduation speech at Wesleyan University in which he addresses this notion of our inner contradiction and embracing that duality.  I’ve embedded it below.  Watch it.  It’s amazing.

As I’m currently the rope in the tug-o-war between cheerleaders and inner doomsayer, I don’t have spectacular answers for handling this dichotomy.  However, I’ve learned one thing.  Fighting the voice is useless.  It will be heard.  You might as well sit back and listen.  Say to yourself: “I feel like a failure.  I feel sad.  I feel alone.” You can hear it.  You won’t die.  Because, here’s the thing; you do have to listen to the voice, but you don’t have to do anything about it.  You can feel like a loser and still go out and train.  You can feel sad, and still do the things that make you happy.  You can cry into your pillow with loneliness and still form increasingly close connections.  The voice doesn’t change who you are, it just helps tell you all of who you are.

If I come up with any other insights on this, I’ll let you know after my marathon in two weeks.  If I don’t die at the 20 mile mark, that is.

  

The End of the Story?

The hiking boots collapsed into a heap on the floor, crumpled socks tossed by their soles.  The journey had ended.

“When is the story over?  How do you know it’s over?” a friend asked me a while ago.  We were talking then about the stories we tell ourselves, the tales we spin of memory and emotion, the stories that grow, if we aren’t paying attention, to define us.

Another friend, with whom there have been innumerable endings and beginnings, once said during a similar discussion, “Yeah, but there are always sequels.”

When do our stories end?  When does the final page drop into blankness?  Do we close the book and move away, or do the lines and characters linger, writing and rewriting us?

This morning, I came out to the living room to find my hiking boots and a pair of wool socks in a heap near the couch – a cairn marking the end of my oldest daughter’s trip to Hawaii with her class.  Their group’s story is nearing its final pages; graduation, the final chapter, is in three and a half weeks.

And what a story it has been.  I worked with this class earlier in the year during their creative writing block, and we discussed the elements of fiction: setting, character, conflict, plot, theme… the saga of the class of 2013 has had it all.

The story begins in different places and at different times, a rose-accented redwood building and a kindergarten smelling of warm bread for a few; a yellow-painted second grade room full of sun for some others; a room with blue walls echoing the sky; a turquoise room; and for at least one, a periwinkle room with a skeleton in the closet, a room in which their journey ends.

In The Breakfast Club, the students mock the labels the adult world has stuck on them:

“You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain...and an athlete...and a basket case...a princess...and a criminal... “

It would be equally easy, and equally false, to label the cast of the class of 2013.  A writer, an athlete, a clown, a musician, a bookworm, a cheerleader, a brain…Nope.  It can’t be done.  They all have had their moments of leadership, their moments of triumph and insight, their moments of sloth, of minor cruelties, of extreme dorkiness.  But, one day, during their writing class, they defined themselves.

Me: (discussing dialogue) Your characters will speak differently depending on who they are talking to.  For instance, you talk slightly differently with an adult you don’t know than with a kid your own age, right?

Nodding heads all around

Me: And you talk differently even to adults you do know, like me or Dr. Tan, than to your friends.

Fewer nods, some murmured, “Not really…we know you…well, maybe…”

Me: And you probably even talk differently with your best friends than you do with another classmate you might not be as close to.

Blank looks dropped across the entire classroom.  For an instant, all of their faces bore the stamp of the clueless, stoned out teen.  Then the protests began.  “What do you mean?  We are all close.” The words flew from around the classroom, not just one clique, not just the girls, not just the boys.  They rose up as one, and one sentence defined them.  “We’re all best friends.”

This character sketch, like most, is at best incomplete, and certainly not always literally true.  Like any good story, theirs has held plenty of conflict.  In a school system where the teacher moves with the grades, theirs was the class that couldn’t hold a teacher.  In the lower grades, accusations of “bullying” or “disruptive behavior” were sometimes tossed around.   Their social circles collided, burst, and re-formed, over and over. They argue – not civilly, but in tones that crash off of walls and ring through the rafters – with each other, with their teacher, with their parents, with school administration.  They do not go quietly into acquiescence, particularly when some deeply held value is threatened.  Theirs is democracy – in its coarsest, brashest, and often most eloquent form.  They form sharp edges and knock them off against each other, again and again.

Character, conflict, and setting shape plot.  The events in their story have reached the climax and are sliding into the denouement of graduation.  Solos have been sung and played; presentations have been given; the last lines have been said and bows have been taken.  They have snow-shoed, forded rivers, won and lost competitions with tears and hugs for both.  They have danced their last dances, and they have told their final stories around the campfire.

Yet, theme carries plot past the ending.  When we close a book, the story doesn’t leave us.  When we graduate; when we lose a job or a loved one; when we say goodbye, the story doesn’t end.  The plot is passed.  Events are over, and no amount of attempts can ever recreate them.  Yet, echoes of those people, those events, the joyful and the abhorrent, remain with us, to be passed to those we meet.

We can choose which themes we carry.  Do we bring the memories of squabbles or name-calling?  Do we apply that interpretation to the next people we meet?  Or, do we take with us the memory of a class united in triumph on a basketball court, or the sense of trust that can’t be quantified – the knowledge that a friend has your back, even though they’ve never said it?

 

Guest Post: Mother's Day Thoughts

When I first started writing this blog, it didn't have much of a purpose other than to get the things trapped inside my head some oxygen.  It literally began because "It seemed like a good idea at the time."  However, over the past half-decade or so, an embryonic glimmer of a purpose has begun to unfold.  I've found that I often write to try to give space to the things many of us may feel, but may feel are not "appropriate," not "shiny," or just not "what we are supposed to feel."  As I've wandered down this path toward my own more real self, I find that I want to make that journey a little less shadowy and rocky for others.  I have no idea if I'm having any impact.  Some days, I get excited if a post gets more than 10 reads.  But, I'll keep plugging away, and if some phrase makes a difference somewhere, great.  If not, at least the thoughts have taken a breath or two.

Along those lines, I'm pleased to present a guest post by a dear friend, Eden Myers.  Eden and I were talking yesterday about Mother's Day and about our conflicted feelings around this and similar holidays.  And, underneath it all, we both suspect we aren't alone. So here is Eden's post on Mother's Day...

Now that Mother's Day is over, and safely behind us one more year, I want to take the opportunity to say something. 

Keep it to yourself.  Leave me out of it. 

This is not to take anything away from those who appreciate it, and see it as an opportunity to express how genuinely blessed they are, either as a mother or by their mother.  To quote one woman close to me, "Mother's Day is a time to reflect on how lucky I am to be a mother and how blessed I have been with the children I have."

Some of us just don't feel that way. 

There may be a reason.  Maybe we aren't mothers; maybe it just never happened for us.  Maybe for lack of trying, or lack of interest.  Maybe, bitterly, despite a great deal of time and money spent trying.  Maybe we quit trying after we lost heart along with pregnancy after pregnancy.  Maybe we just lost interest along the way.

Or maybe some of us are mothers, and we still feel like outsiders.  The experience didn't go for us the way it did for everyone else.  We lost our mothers, or our children. Or we had bad mothers and cry to ourselves alone with fear that we will do the same to our children. 

A friend recently said of holidays in general, 
 

   " I generally don't like holidays, as most of them simply end up being a great place for me to feel like a defective outsider. I hate all the expectations... I hate how it becomes a form of culturally enforced minimization and denial of the aspects of our experience that don't fit the bright, shiny, celebratory model.... I hate how all this creates a spiral that just makes it worse and worse each year for anyone who has negative experiences or relationships which tie into the holidays."


Hear, hear.

And here's what'll really feel like a left turn to most people reading this: Some of us haven't got any particular reason for feeling separate from this particular holiday.  I have a perfectly good family.  A perfect one, no, but I have them and they- they don't really have me.   I never felt like I belonged, even in my own family, even though I love them and they love me.  So this day is not the celebration for me it is for everyone else.  I am not sure this makes me defective.  DIfferent, certainly.  But defective?  I'm just at a different place on the bell curve.  It's the way it's supposed to be for me.

And I think that's true for a lot of women out there.  We're just at a different place along the bell curve; we fit into one of the categories above, or some other one that makes us feel like saying,

Keep it.  It's just not for me. 

And keep this.  Pull it out and read it early every May, and keep it in mind as you go about your celebrations.  Thanks for understanding.  Or at least not making a big deal out of it if you don't.

Feeding the Rat -- Loneliness and Connection

Last night at a second grade parent meeting, the teacher talked about some of the changes in the children this spring.  The girls in particular, she said, were experiencing a shift.  In the Waldorf curriculum, teachers identify a developmental stage known as the Nine Year Change.  Simply put, this is the period when children begin to realize that they are individuals, distinct from their parents and friends.  The world is no longer a cozy dreamland.  They begin to sense their own mortality and their own isolation.

This recognition of the self as an individual is extremely painful for many.  As Sierra’s teacher put it, they begin to be aware of being outside of a group, and often they see themselves as being excluded where no exclusion exists.  “I’m over here, and you are all over there, and you’re leaving me out, and I don’t like it.”  Meanwhile, she said, the other children are saying, “No, we aren’t leaving you out; we want you to join us.  Come play with us.”  But, the child sees that she is on the outside, she is alone.

What kids of that age don’t yet realize, is that the exclusion comes from within.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that most of us never outgrow that Nine Year Change.  We find ways to cope with and, more often, to mask our feelings of exclusion, of isolation, of loneliness.  Yet, we rarely stare at the reality with acceptance.  We are all alone, and our aloneness connects us – or, it could, if we would let it.

Yet, rather than acknowledging that we are all standing outside that magic circle, we scramble to create a culture of inclusion, of belonging.  We pathologize our isolation.  What’s the first thing that is usually published in a profile of anyone who snaps into an action of mass violence?  “Well, he was always kind of a loner.  He kept to himself.”  We prize conformity.  We bend, twist, pluck, and repress ourselves into constructed groups and unions that may in part meet our need for belonging, but ultimately deepen our loneliness.

Listen to the voices in your head sometimes.  We all have them – the anxieties that we can’t name, the anger that wells up suddenly at seemingly trivial causes, the refusal to look behind our own dogma.  What are those voices saying?

“I’m over here.  Everybody else is over there.  I want to be over there, but they won’t let me in.  I’m not good enough, pretty enough, strong enough, smart enough.  I don’t make enough money.  I’m not fit enough.  I can’t talk to strangers.  I don’t know how to connect.  I don’t know how to connect.  I’ll always be alone.”

So, what do we do with those voices?  We fight them, we bury them, we hide from them.  We dress ourselves to fit in.  We diet.  We buy the “right” foods.  We scramble for more money, bigger cars, bigger TVs.  We lock ourselves into rules – politics, religion, cultural traditions.  We structure relationships within rigid boundaries that will “guarantee” that we are not excluded – if no one else is allowed in, we can’t be left out.  And we lash out at those who threaten the safety of our belonging.

I’m a veterinarian.  I grew up with horses – big animals with a strong flight response.  I learned as a child that you can’t fight a horse to make it do what you want.  The horse is too big, too strong, and you will always lose the tug-o-war.

Our individuality is a horse.  The harder we pull on the rope, the harder it pulls back.  The more we scramble for acceptance and certainty, the more we push others away, and the stronger the isolation grows.

My kids have a book called Three Samurai Cats.  This picture book is based on a Japanese tale of a warlord, a daimyo, whose palace is taken over by a giant rat.  The rat sets up camp in the hall of the palace, eats all of the daimyo’s food, terrorizes the servants, and generally trashes the place.

The daimyo goes to the local samurai training house and asks the master to send a samurai, a warrior, to rid his palace of the rat.  The first samurai, a big, strapping cat warrior, goes to the palace, confronts the rat, engages in battle, and gets his ass handed to him.  The daimyo returns to the palace, and tells the master he needs a stronger warrior, one who is better armed, more fully trained.  A second samurai goes to the palace. This warrior is even bigger than the first, with impressive armor and weapons.  He fights the rat even more fiercely.  And once again, the samurai is defeated by the laughing rat.

The poor daimyo has had it by this time.  But now the training house sends a third samurai.  Let’s just say that this particular samurai cat is less than impressive.  In the pictures, he looks like a hyperthyroid, elderly street cat with scraggly fur covering protruding bones, a notched ear, and a loincloth.  Hardly warrior material.

The daimyo is furious and humiliated.  The rat laughs openly and calls for more food.  The third samurai acknowledges the rat, watches the rice balls rolled out to the rat, and sits down on a mat to wait.  At this point, the daimyo can barely stand it.  When is this supposed warrior going to do something?  Why isn’t he even trying to fight the rat?  Is he just too old, too tired, too weak?

The rat eats every last grain of rice in the palace while the cat waits.

Eventually, the rat grows so rotund that his legs can no longer reach the ground.  The cat stretches, stands up, and rolls the rat out of the palace and down the hill.

Our isolation and the voices that arise from it are like the rat.  When we fight them, when we armor ourselves against exclusion with shields of labels, conformity, and arbitrary rules and spears of jealousy and anger, we get our asses handed to us.

What happens instead if we welcome the rat, hand it a comfortable seat in the corner, and give it a rice ball?  What if we say to those voices, “Yes, okay, I see you.  Sit over there for a while will you?  I’ll get to you when I have time, but right now I have parts of myself to share with someone over here.”?  What happens when we stop fighting the universal human truth – that we are all alone, and that it is that loneliness that unites us.

 

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.

11 Weeks

Note: It isn't often that I share poetry publicly, so please be gentle.  This emerged from a "failed" long run yesterday in which I wound up with an incapacitating IT band strain and had to quit two miles short of my goal.  But the events started me thinking about the effects of time, not just on our bodies, but how we see ourselves and our challenges.

 

 

The first two miles pound out in creaking joints and calves of jelly.

Gratitude for the gift of a red light, stretching at the signal with the feigned impatience

of a real athlete

The old woman in the body sheds the imagined decades with the miles, each stride kicking off the dust of time.

By the time I cross from the downtown realm of the elderly, my chronological age and I are one again.

Sweat drips between my breasts, on my right, the apartment where my virginity and I parted ways – two decades ago, now.  Woman grown, wife, mother, my head turns and I see the girl holding naked hands with her lover on the brown couch, afraid to ask,

“What does this mean?”

She never asked, and the question is gone, answer blown off in the miles behind.

Over the freeway, decades falling away into light steps that blow across the asphalt pass with the frail feathers of almond and cherry.

Mile four and nearly twenty again – twenty, but for the two undergraduates sprinting by, knees reaching nearly to their upright breasts, feet kissing the ground like fairy metronomes.

The audiobook plugged into my cortex speaks of shame, compassion, and messages.  I dig from my brain thoughts of love for the nymphs leaving me with the blowing pollen and for my own body – stronger in its scars than that of the girl who never asked and never received.

Loss doesn’t care if we risk.  But, reward won’t come uninvited. 

Six miles and only bicycles and shadowy cows spreckle the landscape.  The unwelcome tension of a bladder pushed, prodded, stretched, and squashed by three pregnancies knocks against the present mind.

Tap.  Tap.  A bush over there. 

Too scanty

Tap.  Tap.  Trees?

Not shielded from the path.

Time and body converge.  The twenty year old would have risked a rupture.  I weigh the balance.

The British voice from my phone notes my slowing pace.  Judgmental bastard.  The female voice would have understood.  Phone app gent doesn’t get it.  He could just whip it out at that olive tree over there, relieve that tapping tension, and be on his merry old way, no one the wiser.

“12.2 minutes per mile.  Average pace 11 minutes 4 seconds per mile.”

Plummy prick.  Leave me alone.

Spring sky sits empty, cloud-free and bird unburdened.  They rustle and whistle from the olive trees and long grasses, crossing over the audiobook’s words:

Shame

Resilience

Trap

Connection

Vulnerability

Trust

Can one feel shame about being ashamed?  The pressure beneath the belt of my waist-pack leads me off the path of philosophy and behind a clump of fallen branches and low-hanging trees.

Crouching knees, bare ass, and fears of wet socks trump the esoteric.

A car shoots past, then a male cyclist.

I pretend to tie my shoe and make myself invisible.  A grey haired woman on a bicycle looks my way a just long enough for the rays of judgment to scorch my hair and shoulders.  I think the tree above me is a fig – leaves not yet unfurled.

I pull my underwear and shorts about me as I stand – one smooth motion, I think.  Until the invisible key locks my right knee.

Lurch.  Stagger.  Adjust waistbands in time for the next bicycle wheel to crest the hill.  I flex my leg a few times.  Ten miles.  Okay, I’m on the Golden Gate Bridge, says the part of the brain tracking the marathon course map.  11 weeks.

I try to feel salt winds on my face but have to skip down onto the gravel shoulder as a car sails round the bend.

The 42 year old knee doesn’t like this game of chicken.  Tendons that had adjusted to the stretch and contract of an even pace are rebelling against the break, the squat, and the pavement chopped like toffee.

Mother shame, says the audiobook.  Caregiver shame.  Body image shame.

Is there shame in a middle-aged woman, slogging alone down a country road?

“Oh, that’s why you have such killer legs,” said a friend meeting me around the bend of a trail.

I have killer legs, I tell them, as the knee screams and the ankle whines in sympathy.  Not even 11 miles.

The knee doesn’t care.  We compromise.  You can walk to the next bend, I say.

I cheat, picking up the pace before the road curves away.  Small betrayals don’t go unnoticed.  Unkept promises return until fulfilled.

12 miles – Off the bridge, into Sea Cliff.  Rolling hills, says my mind to the flat fields and orchards around me.

Invisible gremlins are at work on my knee with an ice-pick.  Stop.

Can’t stop.  Not even half way.

Walk.

Walking.  A truck passes.  A minivan with pressed children’s faces.  An elderly sedan.

How stupid you look, trudging along the crumbled edge of the road – blatantly not running in your fluorescent gear and purple shoes.

That is the voice of shame – not from magazines or enemies, but from the imagined places where whispers of past follies hide.

Fingers twitch at the microphone of my headset.  So easy to call.  My husband would ride up, a knight upon a silver minivan.

Follow the road.  It’s the miles that count.

Pace: 17 minutes per mile.  Average pace: 12 minutes 24 seconds.

It’s the miles.  Just do the miles.  It doesn’t matter how fast.

The run shuffles off into the lurching jog of a zombie with places to go.  Half a mile, I tell myself.  I manage about 200 yards.

Breath floats in and out with the ease of the whispering dewy grasses.  Lungs and left leg could go for miles.

Sinister persists.  I am betrayed by the right.

13 miles

14

Walking now, I’ll run up the overpass, I think.

Four strides and a whimper.  Toy cars buzz below.  Downhill will be better.

Fire and ice shoot across my knee.  The wrinkled, square face of the balding man pedaling up the hill sees the weakness.  His gnarled legs push past me in silent disdain.

Fingers press the microphone. 

“I’m not going to make it the full way.  Can you get me at the AM/PM when you come through?”  Shadows hide behind the question.  Bibbed runners pass in my head, dreaded letters paint in ghost ink next to my name in the marathon lists

D

N

F

Did. Not. Finish.

Purple vetch laces the hillside at our feet.  Girls cluster like flowers blowing at the summit’s edge.  One looks at my clothes and laughs, “Did you run here?”

“Well.  Most of the way.  But my knee gave out.”

Something passes below the laugh.  “Oh.  I thought you were going to say ‘Just kidding.’ You really ran?”

We stand at the top of the spring world.  Knee flexes.  “Yes, but I overdid it a bit today.  I think the answer is not to be 42.”

They laugh as only 13 can, free of the imaginary ailments of middle age – aches, and rent, and taxes.

“She’s training for a marathon,” my daughter tells her friends.

Goats dance on a distant hill.  A toddler staggers with purpose among the purple.

“Today didn’t work, but I can do it.  I have 11 weeks.”

 

 

 

8th Grade Lessons

Since winter break dissolved into the new year, our lives have been very 8th-grade-centric.  With the start of basketball season started, and Saturdays have taken place in a gym in Fair Oaks.  Fiction writing, play practice, a snow trip, a dance, the yearbook, raffle ticket sales – events fly at us like confetti shot from a cannon with “The Final Year” emblazoned on the barrel.
Perhaps inevitably, I’ve spent an awful lot of time over the past two months with this class, beginning with teaching a couple of fiction lessons, culminating most recently in a field trip and carpools to various events.  I was supposed to help teach these adolescents how to write pretend lives, but instead they reminded me how to live.
This refresher course on loving, laughing, learning, and letting go has come at a good time for me, so I thought I’d pass it along.  Here you go – life lessons brought to you by the Davis Waldorf School eighth grade.
1.    Be yourself (Unless you can speak in a bad British accent; then do that.  Always)—Adolescents are magpies or sheep, mimics driven by imitation and peer pressure, right?  What if I showed you a group of teenagers who know that they come in all shapes and sizes, who know that one person’s quirk is also that person’s strength, who wear brightly colored skinny jeans, or vests and ties, who push the corners and seams of the dress code to find their own style?  What if I showed you teenaged boys waltzing together or holding hands with giant grins?  What if I showed you a quiet girl doing a Cockney accent in the back of a minivan on the way to a ball?
2.    If plan A won’t work, move to plan B, or, ditch the plan and grab a sled.  On the second morning of the snow trip, the planned sculpture contest unraveled as the perfect snow packing conditions of the day before shifted into crumbly powder.  The kids barely paused.  The teams of three flowed apart, grabbed shovels and began to “build snow caves.”  When this plan proved improbable due to a lack of snow depth and the aforementioned crumbling factor, the cave diggers became toboggan run designers.  When the run turned out to be more of a toboggan crawl, they shrugged, grabbed sleds, and headed up the mountain.
3.    Take the shot that counts.  From basketball to music, from tests to plays, these kids know that the score isn’t counted in practice, rehearsal, or study period.  They may miss a layup or free-throw in practice with a shrug or a grin, flub lines or goof off during dress rehearsal, but when it’s game time, they’ll make the 3-pointer or go down trying, and they’ll be encore-worthy perfect when the curtain goes up.
4.    Acknowledge the awkwardness.  A couple of weekends ago, we held a “fiction party” for the 8th grade at my house.  Even as I was buying pizza and chips, I had the maternal jitters.  “Do you think they’ll have fun, or is this just stupid,” I asked Caitlin more than once.  I worried that the kids would feel obligated to come, and that it would be a wasted Sunday afternoon for them.  Sure enough, as they arrived, our tiny kitchen filled with hovering teenagers.  My mind spun circles generating “fix-it” plans, but my internal writer said, “This is a fiction party; let’s see how the scene plays out.”
Finally, one girl gave a nervous giggle.  “Well, this is awkward.”
As anyone who knows this class could have predicted, this was the cue for everyone to laugh and grab pizza and soda.  Before long, the mood had shifted from freaky ‘what are we all doing here anyway’ awkwardness to a party.  (See below.)
5.    Life is a party.  If it isn’t, you’re probably doing it wrong.  I’ve yet to see a work day, school day, game, or event that this class didn’t turn into a party.  They spend a lot of time together; they know each other’s quirks; and every gathering is really just an excuse to enjoy that bond.  I’m reasonably certain you could line them up at the DMV and after about ten minutes, the lobby would look like a dance club.
6.    You don’t always have to like each other, but families support one another.  This class isn’t a class.  They are a family.  Like siblings, they bicker and badger, but they always, always have each other’s backs.  One weekend, the boys and girls basketball teams had games in close time proximity.  Many of the girls showed up early to support the boys, and the boys stuck around to cheer and advise the girls.  It was as though an entire coaching squad had manifested in one section of the bleachers.  No matter how annoying they find each other’s quirks, they cheered every play by every player.
During the final day of the basketball tournament, the girls battled for third place and lost.  They had given it everything they had – one girl even playing with a fever – but it wasn’t enough.  These are 13 and 14 year old girls.  They could have sulked, gone home to cry, and no one would have blamed them.  Instead, two hours later, the loudest voices from the stands came from those girls, chanting in unison and cheering their male classmates to the tournament championship.
7.    Sometimes common sense is overrated. You don’t know it won’t work unless you try.  Every adult standing on the hill cringed.  It was like one of those nightmares that happen in slow motion.  You know how it will end, but you can’t move fast enough to stop it. 
Two boys, one snow tube, one hill.  What could go wrong?  Well, nothing, unless, the boys in question decide that the best way down the hill is not the middle of the run; after all, that’s already been done, but rather along the edge of the hill, right where it tips into trees, bushes, and a mild precipice.  Yeah, that should work.
The run ended as any of the adults could have predicted.  I had just enough time to think, “At least we made them wear helmets” before the tube slid off the edge and two rather surprised teens became tangled in the bare branches of a tree.
This sort of experimentation may not seem like a great life lesson – or even conducive to long life – but I’ve watched those same boys transform cans of spray paint, an old bedstead, a saw, and raw energy into props for a spooky Halloween garden.  Hang around them long enough and you will hear “What if we…”  It’s hard not to wonder what could happen in the world if more people said those words and then followed through.
8.    Be a surprise.  They only think they know you.  We all carry our own surprises and inconsistencies, yet we cling to the notion that we “know” those close to us.  Watching this class, though, I’ve seen: the least athletic kid go for and make a layup in basketball; one of the most pop-culture-engaged kids express the most conservative views; quiet girls belt out songs that would make your average American Idol contestant green with envy; and my practical daughter don an evil grin along with a party dress, while wondering if she can confuse the boys.
9.    Stand up for what you believe.  No one else is going to do it for you.  Civics is embedded in the 8th grade curriculum, and this class has taken the lessons to heart.  Their teacher commented to me that he’s been able to get through more material with them in previous years, but this year they want to debate and discuss everything – and he’s glad to see them do it.
During the “fiction party” at our house, I imitated a fly on the wall, tucked behind a bookcase, while they discussed the occupation of one of the characters in the show we were screening.  (She’s a high-level courtesan.)  I weighed the merits of jumping in with some pompous adult wisdom, but decided to watch the debate unfold.  Several of the kids were morally shocked, others argued that there was nothing wrong with her profession within the social context of the series, and a couple of mildly misogynistic comments were shot down as quickly as they appeared.
In the end, my input wouldn’t have mattered.  It didn’t matter who was right or wrong; what mattered is that they could work out how to express and defend their opinions against the toughest audience in the world – their peers.
10.    You’re going to have to say goodbye.  Spend as much time together as possible.  The last times are piling up.  They’ve had their last snow trip together as a class; the curtain has come down on their last play; they’ve played their last basketball games together as teams.  There are still plenty of landmarks, big and small, to come over the next few months, but time is rolling them inexorably toward June.  These kids are tight, but after graduation, it won’t be the same.  They’ll move on to different Junior High and High School campuses for ninth grade.  They’ll form new bonds of friendship and conflict.  Time and distance will float them gradually apart.
Faced with separation, adults often prepare emotionally for the inevitable by clinging to the past, or, more commonly, by distancing ourselves in advance.  We seem sometimes to view wholehearted involvement in ephemeral relationships as a wasted investment.
This class of 2013 has shown something different in this last half of their final year together.  They are facing the end in their own way, with class, style, and a sense that they are “all in.”
The gym was being mopped, clusters of parents stood chatting while younger siblings practiced dribbling and half-hearted shots at a hoop far above their heads.  The trophy had been awarded, medals ringed the necks of the boys’ team, and the players hugged, mugged for photos, laughed, passed the trophy around, and basked – girls and boys alike – in being part of school history.  The boys won it, but for the girls, it seemed like their victory, too – the first championship trophy earned by a team from the school. 
Finally, a weary voice raised above the buzz.  We turned to see the senior referee with the microphone.  “We need to clear out the gym.”
It was time to go home.

 

 

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.

The Pause

“The Waiting Place…
…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or a No or waiting for their hair to grow.” –Dr Seuss, Oh the Places You’ll Go!

My kids’ school curriculum has pauses built into the day; the teachers talk about the rhythm of in-breathing and out-breathing.  The space between the notes makes the music.  Negative space balances the picture.  The key points of a dialogue lie between the words.

I know these things.  I know them, but I am not good with the pause, with the negative space, with waiting.  I come from a long line of mostly Anglo-Saxon over-achievers.  My method is less to serve by standing and waiting than it is to power through with a stiff upper lip or work around with cheery flexibility.

Sometimes the universe has other plans.

I recently hit not just a pause, but a full stop, in an interaction.  No work-around.  No fix.  Not even much closure.  Stopped.  Over.  Done.

Did I mention that I’m not comfortable with powerlessness?

Ok, I said to myself, this is obviously here for a reason, just like any other setback or stressor in my life.  It’s here to show me how strong I am, to test me.  We experience pain or loss in order to know who we are, right?  I don’t pause.  I reframe.  Friendships, jobs, house, car, article or book rejection – it isn’t a loss; it’s an opportunity.  There’s a phoenix tattooed on the back of my shoulder for a reason.  I am an optimist; we pull glory from the flames and ashes.

So, in the last month or two, I have pulled out all of the stops in my attempt to show the world exactly how strong I can be.  By “the world,” I mean myself, of course.  Volunteering at the school?  Absolutely.  What do you need?  I’m there.  A co-worker needs something edited?  Sure.  I’ll put my project aside and do that right now.  Half-marathon in the rain with a cold?  No problem.  Personal best time.  A magazine client needs a feature article with a less-than two week deadline that overlaps with a conference?  Piece of cake.  I’m their girl.  In the meantime, I’ll read articles on acceptance and fully experiencing the present. 

Just let me make the present as busy as possible.

Somewhere between the rainy half marathon and Thanksgiving, things started to break down a little.  The cold didn’t seem too bad, and it had mostly resolved by the week after Thanksgiving.  The cold sores that erupted around the time of my rush-article writing could perhaps have been a clue, a warning flag on the track, if you will.  The cough that kicked in the night before we needed to pack up the kids and car to head for Anaheim for a combined conference (me) and Disneyland (Mike and the kids) trip, should probably have told me to at least slow down.

I did slow down.  We only went to Disneyland for a couple of hours the evening that we arrived.  I only ran 2.5 miles on the treadmill the next morning.  Oh, and lifted some weights.  By midway through the conference, my cough was bad enough that I had to walk out of the middle of a talk on recurrent airway obstruction in horses – not ironic at all.  I backed off to two miles on the treadmill that morning.

By the time we were heading home, Mike wound up driving both halves of the trip since I couldn’t do anything without coughing until I was blind.  The holiday party for my job began two hours after we arrived home.  We went.

I went to work the next day, but I’d begun to recognize a problem.  I called my doctor’s office for an appointment, not because my chest hurt when I tried to breathe, or because I felt like crap.  No, I called because I couldn’t run, and it was interfering with my marathon training schedule.  Yes, somewhere in all of that rushing around the “waiting place,” I had registered for the San Francisco marathon in June.

I did take the weekend off.  Well, except for the few hours spent helping my boss edit a speech and running errands on Sunday, that is.

By yesterday (Monday), I was feeling “better,” but I decided to work from home, to rest.  That may have been the first intelligent choice I’ve made in weeks.  But, my body decided that it was too little, too late.  As I was chatting with a friend at the school between pick up times for Sierra and Aidan, it started.  The bright sunlight began to waver between the bare branches of the trees.  I looked toward the shaded buildings – circles shimmered on the yellow walls.  I rummaged through my purse, but naturally, my pills were in my other bag.

Migraine.  My body’s personal stop sign.

There is no multi-tasking through a migraine, at least not for me.  There is nothing but a dark room, a pillow, and the wait.  Waiting for sleep to come.  Waiting for the pain to go.  Waiting.

You can take medication to make the migraine go away sooner, to reduce the length of the inevitable hangover, but there is no escape.  I can’t busy my way out of a migraine.  I can’t read or write – light stabs through my retina and straight into my brain.  Music or books on tape are out.  Sound makes me want to vomit.  A migraine leaves me alone in the dark, with only my own thoughts for company.

Guess what.  That is where we really find ourselves.  Where we learn who we are, how strong we are.  We don’t learn what we can handle when we are rushing around, when we’re bursting with physical, mental, and emotional fitness.  We find ourselves in the broken places, in the dark, with our heads splitting open and leaking tears into our pillows.

Yes, I have articles to write, and marathon training to do.  But I also have healing to do.  The universe only has to whack me over the head so many times before I finally get it.  I’ll take today as a sick day, rest my body and mind, and embrace my time in the waiting place.  I won’t be here forever.  I have things to do.

 

Why I run

“May the wind be at your back,” a friend posted to my Facebook wall when I commented on my half-marathon for the weekend.  As I passed our kids’ school, somewhere around mile 9, in the pelting rain, the allusion to a song sung at the closing of each school year seemed cruelly ironic.

May troubles be less

And blessings be more

And nothing but happiness come to your door.

May you have luck wherever you go

Your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow.

May wind be at your back

And sun be overhead

May friends be at your side

Wherever you are led.

The wind, rather than being at my back, had been slapping me in the face with pelting rain for the past mile or two, so likewise, the sun was decidedly not overhead.  As for friends, well, my family was sick, and most folks with any sense were inside, probably with books, blankets, and hot chocolate.  But, as I passed the red walls of the schoolyard, and turned down a side-street and blessedly out of the wind, I realized that my blessings are indeed more, and that this run was reinforcing my awareness of them.

“You can’t run away from trouble.  There ain’t no place that far.” – Uncle Remus

You can’t run from your past – from your actions, choices, or emotions.  But, you can run to understand your past, and to understand that like each stride, every choice you’ve already made is done.  Yesterday’s race took me from downtown Davis onto the university campus, past the dorm I lived in my freshman year – where I had my first kiss, my first broken heart, my first D on a test, and where, years after my residence there, I would meet my husband at a party in my old room.

The girl who lived in that room is gone.  Her choices are made, her tests are taken.  She packed up her boxes at the end of the year and left the room to a full generation’s worth of new freshmen.  Yet, without her choices, without her pains, joys, and growth, the woman that I am would never have passed her dorm on a rainy Saturday 24 years later.

We ran past the apartments where I lived my junior and senior years of college.  In that apartment, I learned to co-exist in a group other than my family, I experienced rejection and acceptance, I lost my virginity, and gained confidence.  I don’t live there anymore.  I am not that young woman either.  She looked at the future and saw a blank slate of dreams and terrifying facelessness.  I see the faces of loved ones in every leaf and raindrop, and I know that reality and dreams are equally ephemeral.

We ran through Village Homes, where several friends live, past the lawn of the commons where the children of friends have had their 8^th grade graduation ceremonies.  My brain read the street signs, straight from Middle Earth, “Bombadil” “Oakenshield.”  I’ve never been able to stand Tolkien, but my husband and kids are Lord of the Rings fanatics.  But, even evenings spent watching the movies, or listening to my kids debate the finer points of the stories are, in a way, gone.  More are likely to come, as I am likely to take more strides on many more runs.  But, each footprint, each laugh, each argument lies behind us.

I run to get stronger.

Down a slope, up a hill.  Every mile I run is a mile I couldn’t have managed five years ago.  Every drive of my legs is a step further than I once thought I could take.

As a confirmed nerd, I never really connected physical fitness with mental or emotional strength.  After all, jocks are dumb, right?  Insensitive.  I’ll admit it; I bought the stereotypes for longer than I care to acknowledge. I married a former jock, who is quite literally a genius (and more sensitive than he would willingly admit.)  I’ve known plenty of fit, astute people.  But I didn’t get it.  Didn’t get that there could be a coordination between the body and the brain, or the heart.

Mens sana en corpore sano, said the Romans.  A sound mind in a sound body. 

When I run faster or farther than I have before, when I sprint a steeper hill, or run into a bitter north wind without walking, I remember that I can do more than I thought.  If I can run one mile, I can run two.

If I can face losing a pet, I can accept the loss of a friend.  If I can handle a tiff with my husband, I can take my children yelling “I hate you!”  If I can brave a run before dawn, I can call an intimidating source for an interview.  If I can run three miles in ten minutes less than I could a few years ago, I can meet my deadlines.  If I can lace up my running shoes and hit the pavement when my body wants to crawl back under the covers, I can create something beautiful even when my mind wants to crawl into a drink or a pint of ice cream. If I can cross the overpass above the freeway that sent me into panic attacks a year ago, I can handle professional scrutiny or brave sending my work out for rejection. If I can run past aching muscles, I can work, live, love, and laugh through an aching heart.

There’s no such thing as a bad run.

It may feel like I’m slogging through oatmeal.  I may have gotten cramps or a migraine two miles in and had to walk for the day.  I may not have met my goal for time or distance.  I may be bored.  I may hate every minute.  The endorphins may have gone to find another home that day.  But, even the “bad” runs, the off days, the days when I want to indulge my inner self (who is a 400 lb, borderline-alcoholic recluse with some serious control issues), even those runs make me stronger.  I didn’t stay on the couch.  I built some muscle fiber, some aerobic capacity, burned some calories, remodeled some bone, saw some trees, birds, and sky.  Not meeting my goal doesn’t negate the value of the run.

I may not like every experience of a given day, week, month, or year.  I may wish that any or all of it could be different, that the problems would magically resolve.  I don’t like loss, rejection, failure, chaos, or stress any more than I like sore muscles, blisters, stitches in my side, nausea, aching knees, or sciatica.  But, just as the latter things are the inevitable accompaniments to the benefits of running, the former pains go hand-in-hand with the joys of life.  Sore legs remind me that I am building muscle.  Sorrow, anger, and even regret remind me that I am building strength.

I run to feel better about myself.

Yep, I’m vain.  I am a stronger, braver, kinder, more patient person when I feel good about myself.  And, though it may be shallow, I feel better when I look better.  I read a gem online a while ago.  It was one of those pithy eCards on someone’s page.  “I don’t exercise to be healthy.  I exercise to look sexy as f—k. Naked.”

Yep, you’d better believe I repeat that one to myself when the running gets hard.  It may be lofty to exercise for one’s health, or mental balance, or as an example to one’s children, but when you hit that last couple of miles, and everything burns, and you really only want to either vomit or die – whichever the body is willing to do first – loftiness is of little use.  When things really get tough, the world narrows down to a very tight core.  We call it selfishness, and maybe it is.  But, it is the place of survival, a place of hardness and resolve.  In that place, yeah, you’d better believe it – I tell myself that I exercise to look sexy as f—k.  Naked.

If the base goals help us to get past the bottom, to come out again into the light and into a higher purpose, well, why not?  We are animals, and for survival we need food, water, air, and sex.  Philosophy comes once those needs are met.

Mount Everest

That is the answer to so many things in our house.  The translation is “because I can” or “because it’s there.”  I run because I can.  I have legs, and my legs are strong.  My health is good.  My joints are decent.  I run because I am blessed with a body that is capable of running – maybe not fast, maybe not beautifully, maybe not far.  I will never be an elite athlete, but I can.

I run to know who I am.

Ultimately, this is the answer, the one that is hard to explain when friends and family give me incredulous looks as I babble excitedly about signing up for a new race, or how I’m looking forward to my weekend long run.  They want to know why something uncomfortable, taxing, and that most folks regard as a chore is fun to me.

Here is my answer.  In each breath, in each stride, with each slap of my shoe on the ground, I am me.  I exist in that moment.  Every other stride, every other word, every other choice is behind me.  The things I fear, the things I hope for, the next stride haven’t happened yet.  I don’t know if I will finish the race. I don’t know if I will publish a book or an article.  I don’t know if my children will succeed.  I don’t know how I will live.  But, I know the stride that I take in that moment.  When I run, I am not accountable to anyone other than me. I can’t be anywhere other than in my body.  I can’t be anyone other than myself.

When I run, I know what I can do.  I know where I am.  When I run, I know myself.

 

 

 

Turning Mistakes

Sierra gets out of school 45 minutes before her older siblings.  Sometimes we wait at the school and play; sometimes she comes back to my office and draws, reads, or does math problems.  Yesterday, I had decided that we would wait at the school since I had work that could be done on my laptop and the weather was fairly nice.  The kid who frequently gripes that “there’s nothing to do at your work” was predictably disappointed that we were staying at the school.

“I wanted to work on my picture!” She waved a large piece of white paper partially decorated with bands of green and blue (presumably grass and sky.)

We stayed at the school, but instead of going to the playground, sat at the wide benches in the breezeway so that she could use one as a table.  Sierra unrolled her crayon case, pointing out the new “graphite pencils” and a couple of colored pencils that I may not have seen last time.  Sierra may be a butterfly most of the time, but art is serious business, and she treats her supplies with professional gravity.

On the first side of the paper, she filled in a house and a row of tulips standing sentinel.  “Are there clouds in Christmas,” she asked me as she pulled her black block crayon from its slot. 

“If you want,” I answered, not bothering to point out that there aren’t generally tulips in Christmas.  “The weather can be however you want.”

She decided that it was snowing, and that some of the snow was melting – the melting snowflakes were depicted by larger and partially open circles.  Once she’d finished the main picture, Sierra flipped the page over to practice writing.

“HIY” she drew in full-page, yellow block letters.  She looked up at me.  “H-I-Y, does that spell ‘hi’?”

“Well,” I paused.  I’ll admit it; I’m a sucker.  I hate disappointing my kids when they’re proud of something they’ve done.  But, we’ve never been fans of unearned praise or of letting mistakes slide by.  “Hi doesn’t have a Y at the end.”

“Oh. I thought it did.” Sierra giggled and pursed her lips, pulling out a blue crayon.

I tried not to cringe as she began to cross out the Y with broad strokes.  I hated seeing her “wreck” her work.  Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, I thought.  She was doing so well on the picture.  Sierra kept coloring, and slowly I noticed that the blue was keeping the inverted triangle shape of the Y.

“I’m making a blueberry ice cream cone,” she said, pulling out a brown crayon.  Carefully, she outlined a cone around the bottom of the triangle, cross-hatching the cone over the ice cream.  “With cherries because they’re yummy,” she added, drawing small red circles, each with a gracefully curving stem, one after the other, on the mound of blue.

“Do you like my picture, Mommy?” Sierra asked me as we walked toward the upper grades’ classrooms.

“I do.  I especially liked how you turned the Y into an ice cream cone instead of just crossing it out when you messed up.”

“Teacher told us that we can turn mess-ups into something beautiful.”

Sometimes it feels as though one mess-up has ruined the entire picture.  We want to crumple the page, throw it in the trash, and start over.  We want to obliterate the memory of the wrong letter, wrong word, wrong choice.  We’re embarrassed and ashamed that we “made a mistake.”

But, when we shred our mistakes, scribble them out, and turn away, we lose not only the opportunity to create something beautiful, but we eliminate the whole other side of the picture.  When we crumple our “mess-up” and throw it into the trash, we also lose the house and tulips, the gently falling snow with the beauty of the improbable blue sky and sun.

Sometimes when things go awry, we want to forget, to “move on,” to “get over it” as quickly as we can.  We call this healthy, this jettisoning of the “bad.”  But, it doesn’t work.  Our experiences, like our pictures, are too complex; they are mixtures of beauty and pain, light and shadow, triumph and failure.  When we ditch the part that hurts or shames us, we risk losing the lessons we have gained.

In When Things Fall Apart, Buddhist nun Pema Chodron writes of “the four maras,” saying “What we call obstacles are really the way the world and our entire experience teach us where we’re stuck.  What may be an arrow or a sword, we can actually experience as a flower.”

She goes on to talk about obstacles at “the outer level and at the inner level.”  You know the outer level – we all do.  It’s that sense of blame.  Who was wrong.  Who has hurt us.  Who gets in our way.  But, of the inner level, she says:

…perhaps nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion.  Perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched.  Maybe the only enemy is that we don’t like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast.  But, what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

Wait.  So, pain, loneliness, loss, disappointment – those won’t go away until I’ve learned what I need from them?  Crap.  I can’t just crumple up the picture, throw it away, and start a new one?

No.

Think about it.  Think of a recent loss, argument, accident.  Would you really jettison everything that led up to that point?  Do you really want to throw out the ‘good’ to get rid of the ‘bad?’  Can you even tell which parts are good and which are bad?

Maybe all of it has the potential to become something beautiful – even the ugly mess-ups.  Even the endings.  Even the failures.  Maybe we just need to choose a different crayon.

And add cherries. 

Reasons and Purpose

A particular hashtag has invaded my Twitter feed recently. #whyiwrite.  I’ve seen a number of reasons condensed to the pith of 140 or fewer characters and added my own to the jumble.  But, like most things, this philosophical potpourri didn’t so much give me answers as it made me question.

When one makes the leap into writing for public consumption, if that writing is honest, if it reveals something of the writer’s self, vulnerabilities, pains, joys, experiences, and questions, feedback is inevitable.  Some will laud, some will criticize, and many (MANY) will offer answers – what the writer should do, should have done, why she shouldn’t question herself, why she should be ashamed, proud, institutionalized, or hugged, why she is right, why she is wrong.

Here’s the thing.  I don’t write for answers, and my writing probably isn’t for the people who have them – or believe that they do.  I write to inform, sometimes.  I write to pay the bills, when I can.  I write to entertain, to provoke, to feel.  I write to bring joy, to share pain.  I write for the girls and women I have been.  I write toward the woman I hope to become.

I write to share memories and lessons I have learned.  I write the stories I see when I move through the day.  I write to connect myself to others – more deeply to those present in my life, to touch the memories of those who are gone from my life, to say the things I was never able to say aloud, and to find a link to those whose lives barely brush the edges of mine.

I write to keep the precious pieces of the things I have lost.  I write to inch closer to some sort of truth.  I write when I can’t paint the shadows and shades, when the patterns no longer make sense.  I write, not to provide or to find answers, but to wander down the paths of question.

I write to remind myself not to hide from loss or shame.  I write in the hope that maybe by sharing something of myself, I might help someone else feel that it’s okay to be self-revelatory, that reaching beyond our own bubbles is the only way through human loneliness.

We saw a play at the local high school the other night.  To quote my husband, Avenue Q is like Sesame Street on acid.  There is a strong disconnect between the bouncy kid-pop tunes and the questioning, angst-ridden, and often cynical lyrics.  But one thing stuck with me.  One character drifted throughout the play, tossing away the gifts of friendship and relationships in order to focus on finding his purpose.  Of course, it was only when he came back to the importance of those relationships that his purpose became apparent.

What is my purpose?

That question followed me through the play, and into the parking lot, and home to my bed.  On the surface, purpose is easy – family, friends, loved ones, etc…  But, of course, it isn’t easy at all.  Where are we headed?  What is most important?  What happens when our purpose hurts others?  Or ourselves?  Does our purpose in life shift and change as we grow, as our circumstances evolve?  How many parts does it have?  How many layers?

I still don’t have the answers – not even close.  But, I think that’s part of it.  I think for me, the questions are part of my purpose.  The answers are often irrelevant.  It’s the exploration, the digging that turns up the things I wasn’t even seeking.

And this is why I write – not to find or to give answers, but to create more questions.

What is your purpose?

Last Times and Letting Go -- Or, Parenting Perilously

Last weekend, my Facebook status read:

I've turned teenagers loose in my garage with spray paint and x-acto knives. #helicopterparentfail

This wasn’t an exaggeration.  Oh, and I also gave them a couple of saws and free range in my cluttered garage.  What could go wrong?  As it turns out – nothing.  No one stabbed themselves or anyone else.  No one mistook a thumb for a tree branch when sawing.  No one decided to explore the neighborhood art or chemical enhancement properties of spray paint.  They took the tools and the responsibility, threw in some creativity, and met and exceeded my expectations.  Of course, the threat that any amputated digits would not be packed in ice and rushed to the ER but rather placed in formalin jars and used in the class Halloween display might have added an extra layer of caution…

My oldest is in 8^th grade.  This is a year of last times and of letting go.  One of the unique side-effects of a small, K-8 private school is the evolution of a class as a living entity.  These kids aren’t shuffled from year to year between several classes and schools.  Yes, some students transfer out of the school and some transfer in, but over the years, the class develops its own personality and energy.  Kids, parents, and teachers learn each others’ strengths, weaknesses, and foibles.  As parents, we go from being asked to help in the classroom as they learn to read, cook, or knit to being asked to step back and let them develop their own projects and to let them travel for a week without us.

At our school, the magnificent (not an exaggeration; if you were dropped into the middle of it from the outside world, you would think you’d entered some utopian fantasy of a childhood Halloween) Halloween Festival divides the dramatic action into two parts.  Children in the lower grades are shepherded, with their parents, by “Angel guides” from room to room along a jack-o-lantern –lit “Protected Path.”  In each room, they watch a scene or vignette from a gentle story.  The rooms are decorated in gauze, twinkle lights, with soft, glowing colors and magical props.  Monsters and evil spirits do not enter this All Hallows Eve.

In the upper grades, Halloween takes on a different character.  Beginning in 5^th grade, students may pass – alone – through the “Perilous Path.”  Think of this as a combination haunted house and Disney ride.  There is a theme or a storyline, but the path is meant to be physically and mentally challenging.  This is a test of bravery and independence.  And here, the monsters, ghouls, and demons are the most frightening of creatures – adolescent humans.

The 8^th grade class puts on the Perilous Path, and this act is, in itself, a rite of passage.  Coming early in the school year, this is each class’s first real opportunity to make its mark upon the school as the top grade.  Of course, this isn’t accomplished without some heavy lifting (figurative and literal) on the part of the teacher and parents.  But, this is where the letting go, the sense of reeling out a line and letting the students run comes in. 

Hi.  My name is Christy and I am a control freak.

I generally don’t volunteer for projects that require input from other people.  Once I’m given a general concept – a theme or design – I like to do things my way.  And I typically only ask for help from people that I know will do those things my way.  Allowing the vision in my head to bend, to take on the ideas and flavors of other people, is not a natural condition.  Yet, once I stuck my hand in the air at the first parent meeting of the year for the new 8^th grade and volunteered to coordinate the Perilous Path, I realized that this was exactly what I was going to have to do.

Essays about the lessons of parenting are a dime-a-dozen.  And like most clichés, they are absolutely true.  In my 20s, I didn’t want kids.  I thought that becoming a parent would cause me to lose myself, that my world would become narrow.  I never guessed that having children would force me to become myself – to grow beyond the boundaries of my anxieties, to push me past my comfort zone daily, not just with my children but with other people.  And, it would teach me to let go.

I’m not good at letting go.  Of control, of people, of anything.  See previous posts.  But, this weekend reminded me once again, that the best things happen when I back off and let others do what they need to do in order to fulfill their visions. 

I watched in stunned and mildly stressed amazement as Friday and Saturday, other parents worked tirelessly to trouble-shoot, construct, and create.  They found ways to make my ideas work when I had no clue myself how to implement some of these things.  They took on various areas of the path and made them their own.

But the kids floored and humbled me.  I had written a rough “script,” that was based around plot elements or roles that they had brain-stormed.  Three boys want to “be seizuring?”  Okay, obviously a mass poisoning has taken place in that room.  Someone wants to be a zombie?  Great.  Zombies require no explanation.  They had a script, but I told them that as long as they stayed somewhat within the plot line (and appropriate) they could improvise.  And, improvise they did.

As we were in the countdown to set up, I was informed that a former corpse was no longer dead, the wounded man was now the zombie, and that the ex-zombie would now be dressed in military uniform and manning the check-in table.  I could sense other parents twitching a bit – “Are they going to know what they’re doing?”

They did.

For two hours, the 8^th grade kept up a frenetic level of dramatic energy, shifting and improvising throughout the night in response to the age and level of fear or disdain of the “mark” and in response to their own levels of boredom.  The boy who was supposed to fall dramatically across a doorway shifted to leaping out in a darkened corridor and at one point joined the “madman” on one part of the deck – the two kept up a demented and horrifying comedic descent into insanity.  Several of the poisoned victims got bored with seizuring quietly and either fell to the curse of madness or opted to leap from behind shelves and doors.

And, do you know what?  It worked.  This fluid, at times chaotic, approach to the plan produced a far better outcome than the tightest controls I could have enacted.

The “Serenity Prayer” is never a bad thing when one is facing peril. Whether the challenge is organizing an event, coping with relationships, or parenting, its lessons apply:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change

The courage to change the things I can

And the wisdom to know the difference.

That is my mantra for this year of last-times and letting go – “The wisdom to know the difference.”

 

The Naked Self

Listening to music sung by a friend this morning started me thinking about creativity.  As children, unless we’re squashed mentally and emotionally, creativity comes naturally.  It’s like running around naked.  Rocks are jewels, the world is a canvas, every rhyming word is fodder for a song, and shirts, pants, and underwear are optional.

Yet, as we grow older, fall from Eden, and find the shame in our nakedness, we also begin to clothe our creativity.  We cover it in structure, form, criticism, and conformity.  Think back through adulthood – when was the last time you (independent of a small child) broke out that cool box of 64 Crayolas?  You know, the one with the sharpener in the back.  When did you last make up a song to hum to yourself, even though you can’t carry a tune?  When did you last grab a pencil and paper and just scrawl whatever your hand wanted – words, pictures, doodles, obscene cartoons?

Creativity gets compartmentalized, assigned to art class, music lessons, writing seminars, or the theater.  In our adult world, we assume that creativity is given only to “artists.”  How often have you said, “I’m just not creative,” or “I wish I were a creative person so that I could do that.”?  I know I’ve heard it more times than I can count.  Yet, assuming that creativity is limited only to those we classify as artists or eccentrics is akin to deciding that only movie stars, nude models, and strippers have bodies.

I don’t think it is a coincidence, this simultaneous constriction and repression of our creative and physical selves.  Creativity is a nakedness of the soul.  We can filter how we present ourselves in our everyday lives, put on social costumes, but when we are truly creative, we can no longer hide the things that distinguish us from others.  When we create and share our creations, we are totally exposed – everything that we are is out there for the world to see and to judge.

That’s where the damage lies in this concealment and conformity that we impose upon our creative souls and upon our bodies.  We fear judgment and we clothe ourselves in it.  And, in doing so, we teach the next generation to loathe both their bodies and their individuality.  Think back – when have you heard these: “Put on some clothes; you’re too old to run around the house in your underwear.”  “That’s a pretty picture, but the sky is blue, not orange.” How many of us have been taught to color inside the lines, or grew up listening to the adults in our lives criticize their own bodies and those of others?

My own upbringing was wonderfully supportive of creativity.  I had more paints, crayons, and modeling clay than any 50 children could want.  Music lessons, journals, easels, you name it.  Comfort with one’s own body was another story.  Most of my ancestors hail from the British Isles.  When your spiritual ancestors are Knox and Calvin, appreciation of the human form isn’t exactly hard-wired into the familial structure.

As I reached adulthood, I made a few abortive attempts to become comfortable in my body, but those quickly fell victim to a combination of insecurity, fashion magazines, and motherhood.  I learned to clothe my body in ways that expressed whoever I was being at the time – to hide any bulges, knobby knees, to minimize my linebacker shoulders.  And, as I reached adulthood, as I fell into the roles of professional and mother, I put away my creativity.  Any outbursts of crafting were carefully and appropriately directed toward projects for the home or my children.  Grownups don’t draw and paint – unless they are artists.  They don’t play instruments – unless they are musicians.  They don’t write – unless they are authors.  Grownups don’t reveal their souls or their bodies.  They wrap themselves in convention, in small talk, in business suits, in politics, in book clubs.

In 2008, in the downslope of my 30s, I realized something.  I can’t be a grownup.  Covering up and burying the parts of myself that make me unique was killing me.  I broke out a journal.  I began to write and then to blog.  I got my easel and oil paints down from the attic. And, about the time I began this blog and first submitted essays for national consumption, I began to run.  I decided to enjoy my body.  To clothe it in ways that make me happy.  And the more I learned to appreciate my body and to become comfortable in it, the more my creative side thrived.

Self-revelation is terrifying and exhilarating.  And yet, I can’t help wondering if we make too big a deal about it.  What are we hiding, exactly?  When we refuse to paint because “I’m not artistic,” or we decline to sing along for fear that someone will hear us and judge, when we agonize in a dressing room and finally put that gorgeous bikini back on the rack, what are we saying about our humanity?  What are we telling ourselves and the world about our gifts, our potential?  And how much are we denying others permission to share of themselves?

One of my proudest moments as a mother came a couple of weeks ago.  I have a 13 year old daughter.  My family history is not rife with examples of secure, confident, healthy adolescence.  I had assumed anxiety, body issues, and insecurity to be part of the territory.  So, it was with great joy one evening during family banter that I heard these words come out of my daughter’s mouth.  “I like my body.”

I wanted to bronze that sentence and give it to her and to every other person on the planet as a gift.  When we like our bodies, when we like ourselves, when we like the creative impulses, the quirks, and the out-of-the-box-ness that make us unique, we are capable of greatness.

We all have the same number of chromosomes. And within those chromosomes we have an amazing array of unique genetic coding.  We are all alike, and we are all absolutely unique.

Nakedness, of body or of soul, takes tremendous courage.  And yet, perhaps, if more of us practiced revealing ourselves, sharing ourselves, less courage would be needed.

So, here you go, I’ll take the plunge.  Not perfect, not a celebrity, not an artist, not “special” – just human.

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.

 

Stitches in Time

As my fingers teased the threads from their multicolored rat’s nest, and wound them around the spools – plastic, Styrofoam, and wood – memories strung themselves along the strands…

Chubby, awkward fingers – mine – playing with empty wooden spools, stringing them on bits of yarn, rolling them along the floor and underfoot, stacking them into castles of imagination.

Patterns strewn across the table, fabric stacked on the futon-like bed where my sister and I were to sleep, checking the same bed for needles and pins before rolling out our sleeping bags.

Instructions issued around a mouthful of pins.  “Stand still, and I won’t prick you.”  Standing still was never possible, not in half-finished dresses, shorts, or tops masquerading as porcupines.

Spreading buttons across the table, feeling them bump and clink beneath the pads of my fingers, sifting them like erratic sand into piles of wonder.

Hours in fabric stores, wandering the aisles of notions, sliding between bolts of fabric, sighing at aching legs and dreams of ice cream.

“Tiny stitches.  Take tiny stitches.”  Patiently exasperated fingers, picking apart my rebellious work – stitches grown longer, no tail left to secure the end.  “Tiny, even stitches are stronger.”

Sewing badge tossed in the tray of my lime, plastic sewing box – defiantly unattached to the green sash.

Weakening arms, holding my son, my second child – on a couch in the wrong house.  “When can you take the sewing cabinet back with you?  I want you to have it.”  A toddler and an infant underfoot – what would I do with a faded, mid-century, laminate cabinet in my Craftsman house?

Knitting needles shaping squares and rectangles – something to do with yet another child at the breast.  A memory of buttons, perfect for this purse!  Pushing through cobwebs in the garage, climbing the detritus of cast-off stages of childrearing.  Pulling open a drawer – packed with tangles of thread and elastic; the plastic anchor buttons from my long-ago sailor suit.  A knotted handkerchief is bundled in the jumble of bits and pieces.  The handkerchief is heavy; it clicks and bubbles.  Knots untied reveal the missing pearl necklace.

Moving away from failure – smaller house, more compact life.  The sewing cabinet has to come inside.  Covered with a bright scarf, it becomes the “Nature Table” – layers of feathers, leaves, and pinecones mill about the surface.

“Why don’t you just use your sewing machine?”  “Too much trouble.”

Clothes too worn to donate.  Something of her Depression-induced frugality enters my bones.  A shirt with sentimental value becomes a pillow.  A silk top and old slacks, a purse.  Slowly patching together new from the fragments of the past.

Piles of clothing and fabric creep across the living room.  I run out of thread and turn to the cabinet.  No more pearls, but strands of silk, cotton, and nylon in hues beyond the rainbow. 

Cleaning out the shelves of the cabinet, slowly claiming ownership.  Faces and fashions of an increasingly distant past gleam from still glossy pages stuck with scraps of tweed and knits.  Pillbox hats and cap-sleeves enthrall my children.  “That’s in style again,” says the thirteen year old.  “The miniskirt freed women,” remarks the fifth grade boy.  “Sissy would like that dress; wouldn’t you?” asks the youngest.  We sit, cross-legged, pouring through the old Vogue fashion books, my memory teased by the albums of my childhood.  Finally, the tears come.

“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years” – attributed to Mark Twain

I didn’t want to learn to sew.  Along with cooking, cleaning, ironing, crocheting, and making babies, I relegated sewing to that pile of “Things you’re supposed to do if you’re a girl.”  But I was a girl of the ‘70’s, a child of feminism raised on the saying “Anything boys can do, girls can do better.”  Anything, obviously, did not include sewing.

I loved the outfits my mother and grandmother sewed, knitted, and crocheted for me as a child.  Even during the height of my pre-teen anti-domestic arts campaign, I adored the knickers my grandmother made for me one Christmas.  They were a gorgeous, rich russet brown sateen corduroy with brass buttons at the knees – hey, it was the early ‘80’s; what do you expect?

I even loved trips to the fabric store as a child (when they didn’t take too long).  I loved the endless rows of shimmering colors and textures, the glitter of buttons, the candy-like spools of thread. 

When I was small, before I determined that such things were a path to domestic servitude, I learned to piece together square fabric scraps, making endless quilts and small pillows.  As I got older, I progressed to dresses for the dolls in my dollhouse (muslin, of course.)

But, when Grandma wanted to teach me to use the sewing machine, and started espousing the economic and style benefits of making my own clothes, I put my foot down.   No way.  No how. 

I love food, so I had learned to cook – but, in true form, I became an adherent of the wing-it, recipes are only guidelines, throw in a little of this and a little of that culinary style espoused by the male members of my family.  No leveling the flour with the edge of a knife for me!  Cooking was an expression of creativity, not a job.

Life shifts.  I believed my grandmother hopelessly outdated when she spoke with concern about the difficulties of juggling career and children, when she said things like “children really need their mother.”  I believed she was being condescending when she praised my mother for “even though she works, she’s always at home when you kids are.”  I wasn’t going to have kids anyway, and even if I did, I certainly wasn’t going to compromise my career. 

Life shifts.  I married a man who negotiated me from my position of never having kids to agreeing to two (don’t ask about the third.)  I put down my paintbrushes and sketch pads sometime after school – too much trouble with work and a new child.  But, I began to find that mending the loose buttons and torn seams of life gave my fingers something to do.

My grandmother lived to see two of my three children.  She saw me ask for and receive my first sewing machine when Caitlin was a toddler.  The first Easter without her, my kids wore outfits that I made myself – with pain and swearing and many, many phone calls to my mother.

It is amazing how wise my grandmother became in the years approaching and since her death.  Cooking and sewing became for me, as they had been for her, art, expression, and necessity.  I’ve learned to make career shifts and compromise to balance family and work.  And, the sewing cabinet is finally in our living room.

I finally got around to organizing the drawers and making the cabinet my own this last weekend – roughly a decade since my grandmother’s death.  Time allows us to sort through conflict, guilt, and loss to make the memories our own. 

Making room in the bottom shelves for some of my own materials, I ran across stacks of Vogue fashion magazines – the kind with pattern numbers and fabric swatches.  The kids and I spent close to an hour, cross-legged on the carpet, pouring through one season after another.

As my sister and I had once been, my kids were willing helpers in the tasks of freeing the tangled threads and corralling scraps and bundles of trim and elastic into plastic bins, sorting safety pins and buttons into glass jars.  Watching Sierra earnestly wind separate bits of rickrack around individual strips of cardboard brought smiles and a tear or two.  Grandma was a true product of the Great Depression.  She never threw away anything that could be reused.  I found tails of thread that I would have tossed, neatly coiled around folded cardstock that had once been a card of snaps.  As I appliqué patches cut from an old top onto a pair of cut-off shorts made from tired jeans, I think that somewhere my Grandma is smiling.  And, possibly saying a little “I told you so.”  I wouldn’t put it past her.

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…

 

 

Failure and Success -- of a Man and a Mouse

Anyone who has ever visited Disneyland has probably read or heard the quote from Walt Disney that “It all started with a mouse.”  I’ll admit it, I was raised on a steady diet of Disney.  We took family trips to Disneyland; the Disney Channel was the first cable channel I remember.  My husband, who was raised in Anaheim, was even more immersed.  Yet, until this past weekend, I didn’t realize that the mouse would never have come into existence if his creator had not first failed.

Mike and I recently visited the Walt Disney Family Museum at the Presidio on an anniversary trip to San Francisco.  In the museum lobby, visitors are confronted with an impressive, and intimidating, array of awards – an entire case of Oscars, the French Legion d’Honneur, and a polyglot mosaic of certificates medals, and trophies.  By any fraction of these awards, the bearer would be judged a success.  However, as we entered the museum exhibits and wandered chronologically through the life of Walter Elias Disney, the thing that struck me over and over was not the mind-boggling success, but how often the man had failed.

We aren’t talking small, niggling failures.  His first animation company went bankrupt – the papers are posted in the exhibit.  In recorded interviews played near the exhibit, Walt says that when he arrived in California, he and his brother Roy (recently discharged from the VA Hospital) had more than brotherhood in common.  “We were both unemployed.  So we decided to start our own business.”  This second company, for which Walt and Roy encouraged friends from Missouri to relocate to California, flourished for a while – until some unfortunate business dealings with a distributor.  One letter from that distributor contained sentences like dagger thrusts.  The “gentleman” wrote that his company had seen no financial returns from any of the films Disney had sent them.  He then followed with the excoriating phrase “you should be heartily ashamed.”  Words to make most of us curl under the covers and hide, words to make us flee from that which we had failed.  Yet, Disney kept making films.  Ultimately, this distributor wrested away the rights to Disney’s main character, a rabbit named Oswald. 

Disney and his wife traveled back to the east coast in an attempt to retain the rights to Oswald.   On the train trip back to California, after their efforts had failed, he didn’t drink himself into a stupor, apparently didn’t moan to Lilly about his failures.  Instead, he started to think about mice.  Mice were “cute and could do anything” and until then had been supporting characters in animated work.  Walt began to sketch and soon developed a little guy he called Mortimer, a name his wife declared “terrible” and that was soon changed to …yes, you know.

Disney’s success may have started with Mickey, but it didn’t continue along a golden path from there.  There were other setbacks, other unscrupulous business colleagues, a union strike that bitterly divided the Disney studios, the second World War, films that were less than successful.

But the resonating theme of the museum was the extraordinary optimism of a man able to retain vision, ambition, and creativity in the face of failure and defeat.  That sort of optimism requires not naiveté, not simple-mindedness, not calculation, but raw courage.

We saw another offshoot of the Disney machine this weekend – the Disney/Pixar movie Brave.  For once, we saw a princess not only unwilling to submit to her fate, but one who chooses to change her fate herself. Merida recognizes the damage caused by her mistakes and, rather than waiting for someone to save her, works to right the wrongs herself.  In the end, she says of fate that it lies inside us, “you only have to be brave enough to look for it.”

Too often we see our failures and mistakes as negatives, as reasons to quit, as indications that we are “on the wrong path.”  We expect success to be golden and smooth, the soul-crushing patches to be magically edited out.  We envy the “luck” of those who appear to have achieved success easily or completely.  But, finding and fulfilling our destiny depends less upon luck than it does upon resilience and courage – and those are available to anyone.

Last Day Lessons

Today is the last day of school for my kids.  At the closing ceremonies today, Caitlin will stand with her class and sit down as an 8^th grader; Aidan will stand with his and take his seat as part of the new 5^th grade; Sierra will hand a red rose to her 8^th grade buddy, just as her buddy welcomed her at the beginning of the year, and will sit down as a second grader to watch “the buddies” leave the school the same way they entered in 1^st grade – under an arch of flowers.

There is a beautiful symmetry to the closing ceremonies, tradition and predictability.  The ceremony doesn’t so much provide false security and safety as it supports and embraces all that has been learned and all that is still unknown.

May troubles be less

And blessings be more,

And nothing but happiness come to your door.

And may you have luck

Wherever you go

Your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow.

 

May wind be at your back

And sun be overhead

May friends be at your side

Wherever you are led.

 

We sing this song at closing every year – parents, kids, faculty, and staff.  The words blend farewell, see-you-later, and I’ll-always-be-here.  And for all the well-wishing in the song, there remains a sense of journeying into the unknown where there will be troubles (hopefully less) mixed with the blessings (hopefully more), that the wind will blow and that friends will be needed. 

As the kids step away from school today, they won’t stop learning.  None of us will.  Yet, despite the work of teachers, parents, and peers, some lessons must be learned alone.  Here are some of the things I want (and try) to teach my kids, but that I know they have to learn on their own.

• Everything is a choice.  Every choice has a consequence.  Whether you do a thing or leave it undone, you will have to live with the result.
• Use your words.  When you speak from your heart, it has a greater impact than you can possibly realize.
• People who are “mean” are often hurting.  Sometimes if you can find their hurt, they can no longer hurt you.
• Someday you will be most grateful for the teacher you complain about most today.
• Don’t be so quick to brush off that kid who annoys the crap out of you.  You two may someday have more in common than you will with the person who is your “best friend” today.
• The “weirdoes” often become the most interesting adults.
• Everyone has pieces that connect – the punk and the cheerleader, the cowboy and the Goth, the bookworm and the skater – underneath the clothes, hair, and accessories, we have common stories, pains, and desires.  (The Breakfast Club should be mandatory viewing for all 14 year olds.)
• No one can fix your argument with your friend – no one but the two of you.
• Yes, you’re right.  You absolutely will not remember that homework assignment 20 years from now.  However, the discipline muscles that you trained in completing it well and on time will support you throughout your life.
• Yes, you’re right again.  It’s not fair.  Life is neither fair nor easy, but it’s that way for everyone.  So, do you think maybe that means it really is fair after all?
• When someone rejects you or says something cruel, they aren’t exposing your shortcomings, they are revealing their own insecurities or capacities.
• Sometimes you get the most out of the lessons or activities that “suck.”
• Yes, pushups really are important.
• You don’t know yet who you are or what you really like.  You won’t know for years, if ever.  So try everything and learn what you can from it before rejecting it.
• You are your only reliable mirror.  No one else can show you your true self.  Not your classmates, your teachers, your siblings, not even your dad and me.
• You don’t find yourself when you are doing the safe, easy things that you know well.  You find out who you are when things are hard, scary, or just plain crappy.
• The only feet you can stand on and still balance are your own.

Firebrand or Ditz? What's in a label?

Thirty-plus years ago, I had white-blonde hair and glasses.  Today I have platinum-blonde hair and glasses.  The similarities are unsettling, yet I have been many people in between.  Hair color isn’t a big deal.  These days, few of us – even women in our 40s – attempt to pretend that grey-free is “natural.”  Hair is just another element of style; something we change at our whim or to make a point.

When I posted a “poll” on Facebook yesterday, the question seemed frivolous, perhaps a touch narcissistic, but innocuous: Finally getting my hair done; should I stay red or go back to blonde?

 I began coloring my hair between the births of my two oldest children.  Pregnancy (or age) had darkened it to a weird non-color.  My hair was no longer blonde, but it wasn’t brown, red, or grey either.  It was just there.  I had always accepted that someday the blonde would give way to brunette.  Both of my parents, tow-heads as children, developed dark brown hair as adults.  I was willing to accept brunette as my fate, but not mousy.  With an infant already draining (I felt) the remnants of my identity, watching my hair fade into oblivion as well was unacceptable.  So, in a desperate leap for self-confidence, I started coloring my hair – a deep, rich, dramatic auburn.

I’ve been a redhead for the better part of a decade.  Because I have three children and a weird inhibition when it comes to making appointments, the shade has varied from mahogany to strawberry with some stops at brass.  But, red it has been.  Thanks to the complexion passed along by my Scottish ancestors, more people buy me as a redhead than they did as a (natural) blonde.  And I embraced my ginger identity.  A friend once told me, “You dye your hair to match your personality.”   But, what I never told anyone was that I was afraid I was dyeing my personality to match my hair.  Somewhere along the line, I began to link all of my “new” confidence, creativity, and fire to my hair.  Redhead was a costume, a role I was playing, and if I went back to blonde, it would mean a return to the shy, mousy, (in my mind) undesirable wimp that I had been. 

Most of us do this to some degree.  We like to think ourselves above stereotypes and labels, but the labels still lurk under the surface, even if they’re only visible to our subconscious.  There are obvious examples, of course.  Take a six-foot-plus, heavily muscled man.  Now give him tattoos, piercings, shave his head, and dress him in leather.  What happens when you meet him on the street in the evening?  Ok, now take the same guy, cover the ink with an ironed button-down tucked into a pressed pair of slacks.  Let his hair grow to business length.  Take away the piercings, except maybe one small hoop that just says ‘I’m individual enough to be hip.’  How do you react now? 

As soon as I left the beauty salon as a redhead, I noticed that people treated me differently.  Most of my life, those around me, even those dearly loved, treated me with an amused tolerance and protectiveness, bordering on patronization.  As a blonde, my idiosyncrasies weren’t quirky, they were ditzy.  I don’t blame anyone here; I’m absent minded to the point of literally being capable of putting my phone away in the fridge, and my thought patterns have rarely met a straight line they could walk.  Yet, folks who met me after I began dyeing my hair seemed to see a whole different person.  “Don’t mess with her,” I heard.  Casual friends and acquaintances would say admiring things about how confident I am, how I “always seem to have it together.”  And I embraced the new image.

Then, one response to my Facebook poll yesterday took me by surprise and made me wonder – how much do others label us, and how much do we embrace the first hint of a label and make it our own?  Like it or not, stereotypes are safe.  They give us an identity, and consequently, a script.  You don’t have to risk being real if you can hide behind a role.  But here’s the thing that I hadn’t realized.  We aren’t always good actors, and people may interpret our roles very differently than we do.  The remark that threw me was a casually sweet comment from a grade school classmate I haven’t seen in over 20 years.  “I will always remember you as the cute intelligent blonde…”  Thankfully, I was alone in my car when I read that, because what I did next shocked the hell out of me and would have been impossible to explain to anyone else.  I burst into tears.

My sister and I are six years apart.  I had already entered my gangly phase by the time she was a rosy-cheeked toddler.  She has a peaches-and-cream complexion with olive undertones.  I burn between my freckles and call it a tan.  She has long, thick hair that falls in ringlets down her back.  My hair was once referred to by an ex-boyfriend as “fluff.” (For the record, he was an otherwise nice guy, and that wasn’t why we broke up.)  As my sister and I have aged, I still consider her the more beautiful of the two of us, but the differences have grown less dramatic.  However, one trip to the grocery store set our labels in stone as far as I was concerned.  A woman stopped my mother and beamed down at my four-year-old sister.  “What an adorable little girl you have,” she said.  Then she looked at me with my pale, poker-straight hair, anemic-looking skin and coke-bottle glasses.  “And you must be the smart one.”

Well, there it was.  I was the smart one.  I had the report cards overflowing with A’s to prove it.  I sucked at sports and embraced my ineptitude.  Why practice?  I wasn’t athletic; I was the smart one.  As I entered junior high and high school, I watched other girls date and go to dances.  It seemed inevitable and appropriate that no guy would ask me out.  After all, I was the smart one.  And yes, I got great grades that enabled me to follow exactly the academic path I had set for myself, but never once did it occur to me to challenge that label.  It never once occurred to me that I might get better at sports if I actually did something other than read at recess.  It never occurred to me that for the boys to notice me, it would probably have helped if I’d talked to them.  It never occurred to me that to have fun in life, sometimes you have to take chances.  After all, I was the smart one, the shy one, the good girl, not the risk-taker.  I was the slightly ditzy, klutzy nerd who needed others to look after her because she was too quiet, too shy, not strong enough, and couldn’t get her nose out of a book long enough to take care of herself.

Anyone else see the problems with that paragraph?  Interestingly, I didn’t – until yesterday.  In spite of all of the work I’ve done on reaching beyond my comfort zone, embracing my self-confidence, my strength, and accepting myself, I’ve forgotten to do one thing.  I’ve forgotten that the girl that I was is still here, still inside me, and in rejecting and labeling her, I’m eliminating a part of myself.  You see, I am the blonde and the redhead, the shy one and the assertive one, the smart one and the sexy one, the geek and the athlete, the ditz and the capable woman.  I’m all of those things and a lot more that can’t be labeled.

A friend reminded me yesterday that even a rejection of labels is a way of labeling oneself.  He’s right. 

I can’t help wondering if perhaps the trick is not to toss out the people that we have been, discarding them like shed snake skins, but to bring them along with us as we grow, to nurture them, forgive them, and love them.

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 Pain We Choose

“I just wanted to thank you for making it so easy on me.”

“Huh?” Ok, so my response wasn’t the brightest, but in my defense, I’d been imitating a statue while trying to ignore both the buzzing in my right ear and the needles carving along my shoulder blade for about two hours.

Gus, the tattoo artist, explained.  “Most people move around a lot.  And complain about how much it’s hurting them.”

Nope.  The explanation didn’t help.  My response was still an internal ‘Huh?’  I pondered for a minute, and then said, “I don’t really get that.  I mean, they knew that they were having a tattoo done, right?  And that it involves needles?  I don’t understand.  Why complain about a pain that you chose?”

I could understand how someone’s concept of his or her own pain tolerance might not correspond to what is found in the face of actual pain.  I get the discrepancy between what we think we can handle and how pain manifests to us in the moment.  After all, we aren’t really wired to sit still and let a predator gnaw on us – even if the teeth are sterilized needles dripping ink instead of saliva.  Still, complaining about it seemed odd to me.  It’s not as if tattoo artists run around saying, “Don’t worry.  It doesn’t hurt.  It feels like fairies are tickling you with dandelion fluff.”  C’mon folks, there’s a reason that tattoos have come to symbolize “tough” in our society, despite the increasing number of middle-aged women such as myself sporting ink.  (My apologies to true aficionados of tattoo art.  I can’t help feeling a bit like a poser, a dilettante dabbling in something that feels just a little dangerous and daring.  But, that’s a discussion for another blog…)

Once I moved beyond the notion that it is insane to complain about the side effects of a completely elective event, I started thinking about pain, choices, and acceptance.

My own relationship with physical pain is probably a bit atypical for my background.  In modern society, members of my gender, generation, and education don’t run across a lot of opportunities for injury.  But pain and I are old friends.  No, don’t get the wrong idea here.  My parents were very non-physical (I think I was spanked about three times, pretty average for the ‘70s.), and my only experience with whips has been me holding them while riding or lunging a horse – no other humans anywhere near.  However, the combination of my own clumsiness (my most recent skinned knee happened within the last 12 months), my physicality (I don’t wait for someone big and strong or wearing gloves to move something for me), and 30+ years of working with horses means that I have ample experience with a variety of bruises, lacerations, sprains, strains, and fractures.  Add in an inclination toward migraines and having borne three children, and my response to physical pain tends to be, “Yep, it hurts, but it won’t hurt forever.”

Other pain is different, though.  I realize that like Gus’s other clients, I do sometimes struggle with accepting the pain of my choices.

Tara Brach’s book, Radical Acceptance, has taken up more or less permanent residence on my dresser – handy for me to open on the days when I only have the strength to sink onto my bed and think ‘What the hell am I doing?’ Brach talks about the relationship between pain (emotional or mental, and sometimes even physical) to our feelings of unworthiness.  Think about it.  How often does “This isn’t fair; I can’t believe this is happening to me” really mean “I can’t believe I got myself into this.  I suck.  I’m stupid, lazy, blind, etc…”?  In Radical Acceptance, Brach emphasizes that the way out of this death spiral, what she calls “the trance of unworthiness” is to completely accept our circumstances – where we are, what got us here – and to be compassionate with ourselves in those circumstances and around those choices.  Acceptance, by the way, is not the same as resignation or even as condoning.  For instance, we can accept that we have lied to ourselves or someone else or have done something else not compatible with our own ideals without giving ourselves permission to continue down that path.  Acceptance is neither rolling over and peeing in the face of the inevitable nor giving oneself an out.  Think of it as being one’s own best parent or teacher – clear sighted, loving, but giving firm guidance.  (That’s my best translation.  I recommend reading the book.)

Unfortunately, we aren’t programmed to accept.  The human animal, like most, is wired to hide, escape, or attack in the face of pain or danger.  Even when we have knowingly walked up to the threat and poked it in the nose with a stick, we have trouble accepting the reality.

Modern day risks are less likely to involve stealing a fish from a bear, and more likely to involve emotional, mental, or financial risk.  In other words, it is our sense of self and of self-worth that is most likely to be placed in danger.  We are uncomfortable with risk.  We live in a society that both lauds and demonizes the risk takers.  We make heroes of the highly successful – the bold capitalists, the extreme athletes, the flamboyant artists.  Yet, at the same time, those who step outside of the safe mold are often marginalized.  Why?  Because, their lack of conformity is a threat.  It shows us both what we can be, and what we stand to lose when the gamble fails.  Why else do we avoid eye contact with the panhandler on the corner?  Why do parents come unhinged when their teen comes home with a piercing, punk haircut, or tattoo (yes, I couldn’t resist.)?

We convince ourselves that if we do the “right” things, if we make the “safe” choices, that our lives will be free of pain.  We complain about the pain that we choose, because we are unwilling to accept that the choice was ours.

We have both more and less control over our lives than we would like to think.  The safe, conforming path is no guarantee of happiness, fulfillment, or safety.  However, things rarely “just happen” to us.  We often choose the circumstances that place us in the path of pain.  We frequently choose our pain. 

I first became aware of this tendency to complain about the consequences of our own choices years ago.  It was one of my first experiences with an elementary school event.  I was a shiny new mother, eager to volunteer, with starry-eyed visions of nurturing parents enhancing the educational community.  The glow faded rapidly as the margaritas and dissatisfaction started to flow (at 10:30 in the morning).  These mothers didn’t seem to be feeling the glow of contributing to the growth of the children they had chosen.  They sounded resigned, beaten down, tired, bitter, and frankly resentful.  It was clear that they had volunteered for the event because that was what “good mothers” do, but not because of any true desire on their parts. 

I was almost in tears by the time we headed home.  I remember telling my husband how I was afraid that I would someday resent my own children.  The toxic atmosphere felt as though it had leached into my bones.

Years later, I am one of the older, experienced mothers.  And, I’m now able to see both sides.  Yes, I do find myself volunteering for tasks simply because it seems that there is slack that needs to be taken up.  And yes, sometimes I’d rather be doing something else for myself.  The stars in my eyes cleared out long ago.  Yet, even as I ponder the rash on my arms from the bales of straw lifted at the school May Faire this weekend, I’ve learned to remind myself that this was my choice.  I chose the children, the school, and to say “yes” when asked to volunteer.  Each step along the path is one that I chose and that I need to own.

Most of the pains in my life – physical or non-physical – have stemmed from my choices.  The thing for me to remember, and the thing that helps me to accept and to say, “Yep, it hurts, but it won’t hurt forever” is that most of the time, I made those choices because something else accompanied the pain.  I’m no masochist.  Every choice has two sides – risk and benefit. 

We risk the pain of a failed relationship for the joy that it brings before.  We risk the loss of a job for the rewards that job brings while it exists.  We risk the fear of losing a child or the exhaustion, conflict, and tears of raising the child for the love and laughter the child brings into our lives.  We risk the pain of the tattoo needles for the beauty or symbolism of the art.

And on that note, here is my recent tattoo – a phoenix rising from the flames.  Can you guess what message I was sending to myself when I chose it?

Putting on Your Game Face

When things get tough or scary, it’s easy to forget what we are doing, and even why.  It’s pretty simple to say “Why bother?  This is just too hard,” and, in my case at least, then go eat something loaded with sugar, butter, flour, and chocolate.  It’s easier to turn on the TV, surf the internet, to read a book, or to just goof off than it is to really work at getting past the uncomfortable stuff.

I’ve said it before.  When I really need lessons, (ok, so that’s most of the time) all I have to do is look at my kids and their peers.

Last night was the school’s Spring Strings’ Concert.  In the Winter Concert, all grades (2-8) perform something.  The venue is larger, the focus is dispersed across the student body, and the pieces played are typically familiar and cozy. 

Everything grows in the spring: plants, kids, and musicianship. For the Spring Concert, the kids have to step up.  Only the strings players in grades 4-8 perform, the venue is smaller, the pieces are eclectic, and the 8^th graders perform their solos.  And, the audience is a bit more critical; parents and grandparents have learned to expect significant growth between winter and spring, and I think the kids realize it. 

Change and development occur under pressure, and it’s illustrative for me to watch how these kids respond to that pressure.  As anyone who’s read this blog should know by now, our school is not heavily populated with passive, docile, blindly obedient kids.  I don’t think it is a coincidence that a curriculum that emphasizes active, engaged learning is going to wind up with a population of active, curious, and questioning students. While these traits will probably benefit the kids in the long run, they make preparation for any sort of focused activity such as a play, concert, or game nerve-wracking for the adults involved.  Rehearsals and practices tend to involve a lot of talking, giggling, forgetting (of everything), and general goofing off.  For weeks.  You can almost measure the time until performance by the lines beneath the teacher or coach’s eyes and the set of his or her shoulders.

Yet, if you ask the kids how things are going, the response is typically, “Fine.”  Though, children who are a bit more sensitive to adult aura will generally add that they wish that their classmates would quit goofing around because it’s upsetting the teacher or coach – not because they think it will impact the performance.

The kids know something that the adults forget.  They know the difference between practice and the real thing.  They know that practice is for building the skills they need, for getting a little bit better each time, for failing, and doing it over.  They don’t express it in words, but I think that they know that when the chips are down: when the curtain pulls back, when the whistle blows, when the conductor lifts her bow – they will be ready. 

The kids have learned to play through the pains of learning.  While their approach can be maddening to watch, I can’t help but think that they may have it right.  They know the difference between the small, daily obstacles and failures, and the big moments where results count.  I’ve watched six years of plays, concerts, and games with this school, and I’ve noticed the same thing every time.  No matter how wound up and scattered they seem right before the performance starts, regardless of the running, shoving, joking, clowning around, as soon as they take their places on the field of battle, whether it be stage or court, something changes.

The kids put on their game faces.  The most distractable, goofy, chatterbox of a class clown will metamorphose as soon as he or she picks up a bow, takes a mark on stage, or gets in position for the tip off.  At the beginning of this year, we spent most of our Saturdays in a gymnasium in Fair Oaks, watching basketball.  During Friday’s concert, I recognized the expressions on several of the girls’ faces as they took up their instruments.  Even though their hands held bows instead of a ball, their expression said the same thing.  “Ok, it’s game-on.  I’m taking this to the net, and nothing is getting in my way.”

As adults, we sometimes lose track of the fact that one can have fun and even make mistakes while still holding an underlying seriousness of purpose.  We get so caught up in our small failures, that we forget how to put on our game faces when it really counts.  I wonder sometimes if this is an area where we need to quit trying to teach our children and instead to listen to them.  Does giving yourself an ulcer during preparations or berating yourself for moments of weakness or failure to make the right choice (every single time) really contribute to the end result?  Do stress and anxiety actually indicate greater meaning and purpose, or do they just prevent us from seeing the fun in the process?

I don’t know the answer, but I wonder.  What would happen if we learned to shrug off the smaller failures, to go play, and to come back with our game faces on, saying to ourselves, “This is what I’m going to do.  Nothing is going to get in my way.”

 

 

The Bone Pile and the IDS File

My weekday job involves writing and doing other communications work for an online veterinary community.  One of the longstanding features of this community is the Message Board area where veterinarians post questions, comments, or quandaries regarding cases, clients, life, and almost anything you can think of.  It’s sort of like a giant doctors’ rounds.

Two concepts that pop up in the Message Boards fairly often are ideas that cross over neatly into everyday life.

The Bone Pile -- (Spoiler alert: Do not read the following if you still operate under the belief that “doctors” possess superpowers.)

Whenever someone, often but not always a new graduate, posts about a case that went wrong and about their fear, horror, anxiety, and shame surrounding the case, almost inevitably, a more experienced veterinarian will chime in with this phrase.  “Every practitioner has a bone pile.”

It’s true. Medical practitioners -- whether veterinarians, dentists, or physicians -- are human.  And human beings make mistakes.  We make errors.  We have failures.  Sometimes we fail to communicate.  Sometimes we miss something.  Sometimes we forget something. Sometimes our skills prove to be insufficient.  Sometimes we fail to follow through.  Sometimes fate and physiology are not on our side.  Sometimes we just plain screw up.  These errors, failures, and losses stack one upon the other, forming the “bone pile” of the career.

In life, we all have our bone piles.  All of our failures, mistakes, cruelties, and inadequacies pile in the corners of our lives.  The cutting words spoken to a friend, the failure to listen to our children’s stories, the relationship that we blew entirely, the addictions, the jobs that we’ve lost, the financial setbacks, the burnt pie crusts.  The bone pile isn’t always stocked with T-rex femurs.  Some of the bones are tiny – wispy fish bones that poke and annoy, but are almost invisible.

Most of us don’t like to look at our bone piles.  We stack furniture in front of them, cover them with pretty clothes or expensive electronics, blur the outlines with food, drugs, sex, or alcohol, run from them into the next ill-considered job or relationship.  We call this “moving on.”  And, indeed, one can’t set up residence in the bone pile.  It’s a creepy, hard, and uncomfortable place that lacks the things we need in order to sustain us.  There is no love or nutrition in the bone pile.  It’s haunted by the ghosts of shame and failure.

But, to deny it, is to deny ourselves.

Here’s where medical practitioners do something right.  We speak of the bone pile almost fondly and return to it on occasion, but not with self-flagellation – with a purpose.  You see, doctors (of all stripes and spots) have learned that the purpose of the bone pile is education.  We perform necropsies on our mistakes – carefully dissecting away the layers to discover exactly what happened.  In hospitals, human physicians hold Morbidity and Mortality rounds, in which a case that produced an undesirable outcome is selected and presented in a peer group.  The purpose of these rounds isn’t to shame the doctor in charge.  It isn’t a public flogging.  The M and M is meant to highlight where mistakes occurred and ways of preventing those errors in the future.

We can’t “move on” from our failures or losses until we understand why they happened, and until we learn what we can do to keep the same pattern from repeating.  The bone pile will always grow – that’s the nature of human existence.  Yet, acknowledging the bone pile and its usefulness helps us to grow, to build our experience, and to move away from past errors.  Yes, so that we can make new ones!

If the inevitability of failure depresses you (it depresses all of us a bit, I think), then you may be glad to see the next tool.

The IDS File

The IDS file is usually mentioned in the same message threads that reference the bone pile.  New practitioners often have to be told about this tool, and sometimes experienced practitioners need a reminder to return to the IDS file periodically.  IDS stands for one simple principle: I Don’t Suck.

“I Don’t Suck” is a hard concept for most humans to grasp.  For veterinarians (and I suspect physicians) who tend to be goal-oriented perfectionists, the IDS concept is both incomprehensible and essential.  After all, if we tell ourselves that we are horrible, that we have failed, that we suck, that makes us good people, right?  Self-flagellation is virtuous, isn’t it?  After all, beating ourselves up over a mistake will keep us from making that same mistake again.

Uh, no.

It sounds good.  And we all do it.  We writhe in guilt over the case that went wrong – obsessing, losing sleep, researching until our eyeballs pop out of our heads like Boston Terriers with glaucoma.  We label ourselves – “I did it again.  I can’t be in relationships.  I should just die alone.”  “I can’t believe I said that to her.  I’m a horrible mother.”  The problem with the “I Suck” approach to our humanity is that it doesn’t prevent us from making mistakes, and it doesn’t make us any better in the areas where we’ve failed.  I’d argue that it makes us worse.

This is a hard story to tell.  A number of years ago, I was called out to castrate a horse.  Gelding is a common surgery, and I’d performed hundreds by that time.  The patient was a gorgeous, 6 year old, well-mannered stallion who was only being gelded because he was being moved to a stable that didn’t allow stallions and he wasn’t going to be used as a breeding animal anyway.  The surgery went well.  I never could pinpoint a moment where anything went wrong.  When he stood there was no bleeding beyond the typical few drips.  I watched him in his stall for about 20 minutes to be sure.  I wasn’t on call that night, and I’ll never know what happened exactly, but he began bleeding that evening.  I still don’t fully know the chain of events, but the upshot was that my patient wound up bleeding to death in the trailer on the way to the referral facility.

Realistically, I don’t know if I committed an error in surgery, if the horse did something later on that opened a clot, or if there was an error on the part of one of the other practitioners that saw him that evening.  I never will know.  But, this horse looms large in my bone pile.

Here’s what happened to me.  I excel at self-flagellation.  For months, I spent the drive to work wracked in nausea, my vision blurred so badly I could barely see the road.  I was terrified to do any surgeries.  At all.  The record lurked in my stack of files because I couldn’t face writing it.  I told myself that I could never geld another horse again.

None of this made me a better veterinarian.  Clinical acumen and anxiety-ridden paralysis don’t exactly go hand-in-hand.  Telling myself I sucked only got in the way of the confidence I needed to treat my other patients properly.

Fortunately for me, I had a boss who was more than willing to share the stories of his own bone pile, an office manager who had no intention of coddling me and booked surgeries for me (including geldings) just as she always had, and a technician who blessedly saw the shakes I tried so hard to hide and made certain that she could be there to assist me and who always had the phrase that got me through many a tough case, “I know you can do it.  I have great faith in you.”

And I had my IDS file.  It’s a literal file these days, still hanging in the rack in my home office.  Back then, my IDS file was a collection of cards, notes, and pictures from clients jammed into my cubby slot and briefcase.  Each of those cards said essentially the same thing: “Thank you for caring for our animal.  You are a wonderful veterinarian.  We are grateful for you.”

Human nature is a funny thing.  Even though I said that the story of the gelding disaster was hard to tell, those words were much easier to type than the messages of the IDS file.  We are much more comfortable with our failings than we are with our strengths.  Typing the phrase “you are a wonderful veterinarian” feels awkward and self-aggrandizing.  Even alone in my office in pre-dawn quiet, I feel embarrassed, as though I should duck my head and blush.  Yet, in this same office, I can glance around the room and see at least three mementos belonging to my IDS file.

In our everyday lives, the IDS file may be harder to compile.  I’m learning to build mine from bits and pieces.  Some of it lives in my email folders: kind or funny notes from friends, compliments on articles, thank yous from school or other organizations.  Some of it lives on my refrigerator, dresser, and bulletin boards in the form of art and gifts from my children.  Some of it lives in boxes of old letters (remember those?) and cards.  Some of it lives in the objects about me – my Alice in Wonderland teapot from my husband.  Some of it lives in my mind – in the memories of conversations, small triumphs, and unbelievable joys.  But, I’m learning, on the days when the bone pile seems unmanageably high, to go to the IDS file in whatever form is handy and to find the things that tell me that “I don’t suck” or to find the people who will let me know in their own ways that they “have great faith” in me.

Yes, our pains and failures have to be moved on from, but they must also be learned from.  And we need to learn from and embrace our triumphs and joys to the same degree.  Ultimately, we are the only ones who truly create both our bone piles and our IDS files, and it is up to us to decide how to use them.

What do my kids say?

I worry about what my kids say in public. 

Most parents reading that sentence are probably having one of two reactions.  The honest ones are thinking, “Oh, God, me too!” while those who prefer not to look too closely behind the curtains of their own lives are saying, “Well, then maybe you should raise them better and stop polluting their minds.”

It might come as a surprise to realize that I’m more closely aligning myself with the second set of parents here, but not in the ways you might think.  I don’t worry about the following things:

• Whether my kids have picked up swear words that they might pass along – They have
• Whether my kids will talk about the R rated movies they’ve seen – They will
• Whether they’ll pass along their knowledge of reproductive anatomy or physiology – Oh, well, at least they know the correct terminology.
• Whether they’ll out us for “always going to fast food restaurants for treats” – In my kids’ collective mind, more than once = “always”

I worry more about the value judgments they absorb from us, and how they convey those judgments to the rest of the world.  If there is one lesson in life that I would really like to give them, it is that every person has his own story.  The problem with this is that I also want them to understand that evil and malice do exist in the world and that it is the responsibility of every person to confront injustice.  Reconciling those two ideals becomes, for me, a giant, tangled, who-gave-the-ferret-the-yarn mess.

Mike and I are not perfect, and yeah, I do worry that our children might pick up something that slipped from our mouths in a moment of anger, irritation, irreverence, or sheer stupidity.  But, overall, I think of those things like viruses – something that may cause a transient infection but will be eradicated if the patient is generally healthy.  I believe that when parents try, most of the time, to live and speak the lives they want for their children, that is largely what the children will learn.  But, I worry about the hidden lessons, about the stories that my kids will take away that are right for our family but may not fit another household.

Here, let me give you three examples: two are moments when my children passed along things from our family – with different results, and one where another family’s values intruded on ours.

If you’ve read this blog for a while, then you probably realize that religion holds a somewhat tentative place in our house.  Mike is pretty opposed to organized religion, and while I was confirmed Catholic, I’ve fallen away from the Church whose teachings differ so drastically from my core values.  As a result, our kids have been raised with a pretty sketchy idea of theology.  My general message to them has been that I believe that all religions – throughout history and cultures – are ways of coming toward the same basic truths.  In this, we’ve tried to teach them to respect everyone’s religious beliefs.  Well, that hasn’t always worked.

Caitlin has considered herself a polytheist for several years.  She tends to favor the ancient Greek pantheon, but will consider the influence of the Egyptians.  She has no patience for the notion of one omnipotent and perfect deity.  She prefers the concept of a number of gods, flawed in human ways, and fulfilling different roles.  Since Caitlin is also typically opposed to sharing information with others except on a need to know basis, her beliefs haven’t generally been a problem.  A couple of years ago, however, she came home from school with one of those stories that made me wince.

Somehow she had wound up in a religious debate with a classmate in which she insisted that the Greek gods are real while the classmate, offended, said that the Greek pantheon were myth and that “there is no God but God.”  This was the point where things fractured a bit.  Caitlin, always ready for a good, speculative argument, demanded, “Well, what if the Greek gods are real and your God is imaginary?”

I’m still grateful not to have received an irate parent phone call on that one…

Incident number 2 took place in our car a year or so ago.  Aidan and two of his friends were riding in the back seat of our van while I was driving and trying not to listen to the 3^rd grade boy dialogue.  No one should have to listen to boys who somehow consider themselves out of earshot.   In my attempt to drown out the fart-jokes with internal white noise, I missed the beginning of the conversation.  My attention focused when I heard one of the boys say,

“That’s so gay!”

Aidan didn’t miss a beat.  “What’s wrong with that?”

“Huh?”  The conversation stopped.

“What’s wrong with being gay,” he asked.

Neither boy had an answer, other than a muttered “nothing,” so the world returned to methane-based humor.

My initial, and current, reaction was pride in my son.  I was proud of him for speaking out against a stereotype, and I was proud of him for breaking from the group to look at his own values.  Usually we worry that if one of his buddies said, “Hey, let’s go jump off that bridge,” Aidan would be the first one over the rail.

But, part of me wonders.  Where do we draw the line in speaking out for our beliefs?  Is it more right for my son to assert his value that no way of being should be used as an insult than it is for my daughter’s classmate to try to impose his belief in a single, omnipotent God on her, or her to impose her polytheism on him?  Part of me says, well, of course.  The one is speaking out against injustice while the other shows a disrespect for someone else’s religion.  But, is it ultimately the same thing?

Now, I happen to know the parents of both my son’s friends well, and I’m reasonably confident that none of them would be okay with their offspring using “gay” as a pejorative.  But what if one of those boys had belonged to a family who truly believed homosexuality to be a sin?  I would argue that Aidan was simply asking, “What is wrong with being gay?” and that his intent was to say that it’s not okay to use someone’s identity as a slur, but might not the hypothetical parent view the conversation as an attempt by my son to impose his beliefs on others?  I don’t know.

The third incident may explain some of this further.  While we generally try to provide a healthy balance of foods for our kids – we receive a weekly “farm box” from a local CSA program, we don’t stock fluorescent orange chips except as a special treat maybe twice a year, the bags of Halloween candy last longer than the twelve months between trick-or-treats, and a fruit or vegetable is mandatory in every lunch – Mike and I aren’t fanatic about every ingredient or product that crosses the kitchen threshold.  Sierra may have a whole-grain flour, nut, and raisin bar from Trader Joe’s with a glass of Kefir for breakfast but a Skippy peanut butter and Smuckers strawberry jam on white bread (with the crusts cut off) sandwich in her lunch.  (This week, these are her menu items of choice.)

Most of the time Sierra, like her siblings, packs her own lunch.  And for a first grader, I think she does a damn good job.  Her typical lunch involves the aforementioned sandwich (sometimes she mixes it up and has leftovers in a thermos jar), a pack of dried seaweed, a container of Pirate’s Booty, and a piece of fruit.  Nutrition-wise, I’d have to say, “not bad.”  She’s got her protein, her carbs, multiple vitamins and minerals, and nothing super-processed or with a lot of ingredients whose chemical structures were the stuff of my undergraduate nightmares.

You may have noticed that first graders are not into nuance.  Shade of grey tend to fall into two camps for the seven-year-old: black or white, good or bad, right or wrong, healthy or bad-for-you.

Knowing this, I shouldn’t have been surprised when Sierra came home a couple of months ago saying, “We need to buy a different kind of seaweed.”

Ok, not a comment I would have expected to hear in my former, non-kelp-purchasing, kid-free life.  But, what really threw me was the next line.

“M says that the kind of seaweed I bring in my lunch is bad for you.”

My first reaction was a series of three-letter acronyms for expletives.  Seriously?  Some kid had decided that our brand of seaweed is unhealthy?  What sort of freaky universe was this?  Could someone please choke that child with a Twinkie?

I’ll admit it – we did double check the sodium content (the only potential unhealthy thing I could think of).  It was fine.  As I type this, I feel like an idiot.  What kind of adult allows a 7 year old to influence her perception of how she feeds her children?

Well, we’re nearing the end of the school year, but M is still at it.  Last week, Sierra was visibly upset (since this child’s default expression is a huge grin, upset isn’t exactly hard to discern.)  Sure enough, “M still says that my lunches aren’t healthy.  Now he’s saying that my sandwich is bad for me.”

Aidan, from the back seat, made the noise beloved of pre-teen boys – that sort of cough, laugh, vocal fart that indicates a level of derision un-expressible by words.  “What the heck is wrong with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”  I have to give Aidan credit; he may rain a torrent of judgment down on Sierra, but other kids are not allowed to make his little sister feel bad.

“He says that the kind of bread we buy is bad.”

Ok, well, white bread criticism makes a bit more sense to me than seaweed-critique, but I was becoming annoyed.  Biting back a number of comments that would not endear me to the 1^st grade parent body, I dredged up, “Well, anything is bad for you in the wrong amount.  Even water can be bad for you if you drink too much of it.  The important thing is eating a reasonable amount of each kind of food.”

This is our default answer to junk food, why pizza is not a vegetable, whether soda=poison, and any other random nutritional question.

So here is my quandary.  M and his family obviously had nutritional right on their side in the white bread question.  Realistically there isn’t anything healthy about the sandwich bread Sierra eats.  (I’ve learned to pick nutritional battles because I fear that if my children decide that cannibalism is the only reasonable antidote to whole grains, I will be the first menu item.)  However, where is the line between M being informed about healthy foods, M educating his friends, and another family’s way of life trampling all over ours?

And where do my kids draw the line?  When does their belief in freedom of religion collide with someone else’s values?  And where does indignation over a slur become telling someone else how to live?

I don’t really know.  I haven’t answered these questions for myself yet.  And so, I do worry about what my kids pass along.

You Can (not) Be Replaced

“You can be replaced.” It was a catch-phrase of my college years.  A joke, tossed out when someone was being difficult, amusingly irritating, or just teasing.  It was a joke, until one day it wasn’t.  A response from a friend one evening struck deep.  In that moment, I felt that I had been replaced, and suddenly the joke wasn’t funny anymore. 

It’s been nearly 20 years, the friendship has been long-since repaired, and yet, I still don’t use that phrase. 

We call jealousy “the green-eyed monster” and portray it as a moral failing on the part of the one who exhibits it – equating jealousy with spite, vengeance, pettiness, and malice.  Sure, jealousy can make us act in those ways, but to link jealousy with “badness” shows a lack of compassion, toward others and toward ourselves.  The fact is, even the best, kindest, and most generous of us sometimes feels a hot flush when confronted by the apparent threat of someone we see as prettier, smarter, more talented, more loving, a closer friend, a dearer confidant, a better worker, etc. 

I recognize my own response to jealousy – stop me if this sounds familiar.  My arms and legs feel hot and heavy.  My chest closes up.  I feel a rush of anger and yes, hatred, toward the other person.  That anger is immediately followed by an overwhelming wave of guilt and self-loathing.  That’s when the voices start – again, let me know if you’ve heard these before.

“What kind of horrible person hates someone just for being a good friend?”

“Her house is prettier than yours; why can’t you get off your lazy ass and clean once in a while?”

“So, they hired him.  Deal with it.  You can’t do [fill in the blank professional task] anyway.”

“Well, of course they invited her and not you.  Look how pathetic you are.”

And round and round the circle goes.  Because the worse one feels about oneself, the more jealous one becomes of someone who might be “better” who might – and wait for it… Replace us.

Yep.  Jealousy, that thing we label as a moral failing, is rooted in something pretty basic, I think.  I know when I take out my jealousies and look them in the eye, I see one thing.  Fear.  I don’t really care if someone else has more money, talent, looks, brains, humor, or compassion than I do.  I care that I am not enough.  I am afraid that I can be replaced.  Maybe I’m not unique after all.  Maybe my uniqueness is a failing.  Maybe that rejection really did say something about me.  Maybe my kids really would rather have so-and-so as a mother.  Maybe my husband really would be better off with another wife.  Maybe the friendships that I see as close are really just sort of ‘meh’ to my friends.

Unfortunately the fears that drive jealousy are, like all fears, extraordinarily good at masquerading as something else.  The fear of being replaceable shows up as:

• Indignation – “How dare that slut flirt with my husband/boyfriend/partner that way!”
• Derision – “Please!  Doesn’t she really have anything better to do than bake all day?   What, did she lay the freaking eggs herself, too?  Must be nice.”
• Defensiveness – “He totally cherry-picked the research that backs up his point.  I can reference just as many articles that validate my opinion, and there aren’t any quacks on my side.”
• Anger at innocent bystanders – “Will you quit making that racket right now!  Your father and I are trying to have a peaceful conversation.  You’re giving me a headache.”

Do you recognize any of these?  I do.  Fear of being “left out” (translation: superfluous, unwanted, replaceable) runs so deep for me that I don’t always see it until I’ve stepped in a giant, steaming pile of my own bitchiness and insecurity.

I’m getting better about recognizing the fears that drive some of my behaviors.  That recognition isn’t always comfortable.  It’s a lot easier to be angry, indignant, tense, and controlling than it is to openly acknowledge one’s own feelings of inadequacy.  Some of the toughest conversations I’ve had in recent years have been the ones where I’ve found myself forced to make this apology (or something similar): “I’m sorry I’m being that way.  I’m jealous, and I’m so scared of being left out.  I’m afraid that you’ll realize how worthless I really am, and then I get all tense and weird, and then I hate myself even more.” 

Yet, weirdly, on the rare occasions where I’ve had to strip off all of the masks, the result hasn’t been rejection but a deepening of the relationship.

The reality is that none of us can be replaced, but we can all be augmented, and we need to be.  None of us can be everything to someone.  We can’t fill every role in another person’s life or on the job.  We each bring our own unique qualities to a relationship whether personal, familial, or professional.  Even when relationships end, the driving force isn’t usually replacement; it’s adjustment.  Something in that interaction no longer fit, or something else was needed.  The presence of someone else in a relationship (business or personal) speaks only to the needs of the other person, or organization, in that moment in time.  

When I began this post yesterday morning, it felt as though something was missing.  A conversation with a friend gave me the missing piece.  My friend pointed out that there is one circumstance under which we are all replaceable.  When we hide our true selves, and present a “generic, bland face” to the world, then, yes, we do become replaceable and are likely to be replaced.  Let’s face it – it’s a whole lot easier to replace those dishes you bought at Target or Ikea than the hand-thrown bowl you picked up at a craft fair.  The bowl may have irregularities and may not be glossy, but it called to you for a reason, and that reason was its uniqueness.

Here’s my goal for the next time I feel a surge of jealousy: I plan to say to myself, “Yep, I’m scared.  I feel threatened.  But, I’m still me.  I didn’t stop being the person I was five minutes ago.  I’m going to take a deep breath and trust that I’m fulfilling the roles that are right for me.”

How do you cope with your jealousies?  I’d like to know.  We each bring something unique to the table.  And no, you can not be replaced.

 

Just Let Go (of the plan)

My phone just sent me a reminder.  “Just let go,” it says to me every morning at 6:00.  Just let go.  I am a widely acknowledged control-freak, and some mornings I need that message more than others.

I ran across this photo yesterday morning on Facebook:

Obviously it’s pretty difficult and rather inefficient to go through life with no plan at all, but I think we program ourselves to believe that PLAN = SAFETY.  Our intellects know this not to be true.  We have a raft of sayings… “The best laid plans of mice and men…” “Life is what happens when you are making other plans.” And on, and on.  Yet, how often do we catch ourselves saying, “This isn’t how it was supposed to be.”

We treat our plans as though we were plugging ingredients into a recipe or numbers into a formula.  If I do A, B, and then C, I will get result Q.  Except sometimes, we don’t get result Q.  Sometimes the outcome is X or 42 or purple.

I’ve been working with a team on developing a student loan simulator designed to help give veterinary students and pre-vet students an idea of how their choices after graduation may affect their loan balances and repayment.  In the introductory text, we have a bunch of disclaimers to the effect that this simulator isn’t a way to predict your future, it’s just an illustration, etc.  And as I have worked on those sentences this week, part of me imagines the students who will be entering their numbers, their visions of their future, and hitting “Calculate.”  I’m willing to bet that they have plans.  Many of them probably have their future mapped out so clearly that they believe they know what path their lives will follow until they die.

I was one of those students.  Yet, at almost every turning point of my life, I have found myself saying, “This wasn’t in the plan.”  We were going to have two children, not three. I was going to own my own equine practice by now.  We were going to live in our old house until our grandchildren were grown.  I went to veterinary school because I would never be able to support myself as a writer.  And, the list goes on…

Yet – and this is the reason for the phone reminder – most of the best things in my life have come from letting go of the plan, from allowing my life to flow with only gentle guidance from myself.

I took a watercolor class taught by Caitlin’s teacher last night.  Rick Tan is not only a terrific teacher but an amazing artist in his own right.  Just check out his blog.  We were working with wet-on-wet watercolors in the method the students use in school.  This particular technique uses a lot of water, and as anyone who has swum or boated in open water knows, water doesn’t like human control.

In high school, I hated watercolors; the pigment never seemed to stay where I wanted it, so I moved on to oils where I could layer pigment and control my brushstrokes and even the thickness of the paint for texture.  The down side to oils is that they take forever to dry, so they aren’t very practical for a two week camping trip in a crowded car in the Pacific Northwest.  I took up watercolors as an adult in order to be able to paint on our vacations.  Very practical for a landscape painter.  Part of the plan.  Gradually, I learned to adapt my perfectionist tendency to work with the watercolors rather than against them, but I still used relatively little water so that I could maintain control.  This painting of the Awahnee hotel in Yosemite shows the detail of the leaves applied with a very dry brush.

Last night, Rick started by telling us that we were going to play with color for our first painting.  He had us begin “with a blob of yellow…”  Something seized up inside me for a moment.  All of the control voices started shouting at once.  “I’m a landscape painter.  I paint from life or photos.  I don’t do abstract.  I know how to paint.  I don’t need to experiment with color.”  I’ve had some practice with these voices lately and I’ve learned not to argue with them.  Instead, I left them to chatter in the back of my head and loaded my brush with yellow pigment.

As soon as my brush touched the meniscus of the film of water coating my paper, the yellow flowed from the bristles and began to tendril out along the page.  I moved my brush in swirls, back and forth, in S-shaped swoops.  I played with deepening color in some areas, and lifting it off in others.  As we added different pigments to the page, I could feel the layers of my emotions flowing with the color – swirling, blending, deepening in some areas, lightening and bouncing along in others.                             C. Corp-Minamiji,  original watercolor 2010

 

 

C. Corp-Minamiji,  original watercolor 2012

 The end result wasn’t what I’d envisioned when I first dipped my brush into the paint, and I think that’s a good thing.  A friend of mine fought with her brush strokes during the first piece, her struggles reminding me of my own watercolor battles in high school.  “I think most of the trick to watercolors is letting go of perfectionism,” I commented.  And as she relaxed into her second work, her painting shifted.

How often do we try so hard to cling to our concept of the way things are “supposed to be?”  How often do we say things to others in the hopes of forcing the response that we want?  And how often are we disappointed?  Yet, it seems, to me at least, that when we let go, let events, people, and feelings follow their own currents, that’s when the richness swirls in.

Try it: “Just let go.”

 

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.

Gift of the Small Things

I’ve managed to banish false modesty just far enough to admit that I am possessed of at least my fair share of creative gifts.  I can write, paint, draw (sometimes), cook, and sew.  However, at least two major creative arts lie outside my sphere.  I’ve long since come to terms with my lack of musical ability.  I appreciate music, I can play the notes on the page (on one instrument – the flute), but I lack the ear, voice, and vision to create from music.  As much as I regret my singing voice, I’ve learned to accept that in music, I get to be the audience.  Others create.  Photography, however, is another matter entirely.

Photography is a visual art.  It should be right up my alley.  Ah, yes, we’ll get back to the dreaded “should” in a bit.  Yet, as I’m sure readers of this blog have realized, while I can paint pictures with brush and with word, the simple act of framing the moment I see in a lens and pushing a button is beyond me.  No matter what I see with my eyes and appreciate with my heart about a scene, my photos rarely, if ever do it justice.  They never seem to penetrate the depths of the moment.  All of the elements are there, but something is missing.  In writing, one of the rules is “show, don’t tell.”  My photos tell.

Now, I have several friends and family members who are gifted photographers – some to the extent of professionalism.  But, one friend’s pictures make me downright jealous.  Her blog, Facebook page, and Twitter feed are filled with beautiful, arty photos that capture the joy and delicacy inherent in the details of a scene or the small moments of life.  “This is what life is supposed to be,” her photos say as they trace the sunset-colored veining of a dragonfly’s wing or tease the impish glee from a child’s glowing smile.

‘Well, crap,’ I think, looking at her latest posts. ‘We’re good friends; our kids play together; we live less than two miles from each other.  How come my life doesn’t look like that?”  As I scan through sparkling shots of kayaks on open water, cherubic faces of happy children, and glowing, velvet, layers of color, I think of my bathroom sink, smeared with streaks of my makeup and flecks of my husband’s beard.  I focus on the slime growing in the container that I’m pretending isn’t in the back of my refrigerator, the piles of laundry – clean and dirty – taking over my bedroom floor.  I hear two of my three cherubic children screaming at each other in the backyard and keep my ears peeled for the sounds of violence or the stray obscenity.

Now, I know Robyn well enough to know that her life isn’t completely captured in her photos either.  I know her well enough to know her own struggles, lapses, and untidinesses.  In fact, those are the things that I like best about her.  Her openness about not only the triumphs and joys, but also the frustrations and failures, of her own life make me more willing to be real myself.

Yesterday morning was one of those glorious spring days that isn’t pastel-perfect but is instead layered with the exact proportions of shadow and light to fill one’s heart with a sense of miracle.  I ran just over 2.5 miles of my 3 mile loop, allowing myself a cool-down walk through the nature trail at the back of our local park.   I thought of my iPhone in my pocket and contemplated taking pictures, but I had just been looking and some of Robyn’s photos and knew how much the inadequacies of my own pictures would frustrate me.  ‘I wish I were like her,’ I thought, resting my hand on the trunk of a tree and studying the contrast between the umber edges of the bark and its silvery surface.  I closed my eyes, letting the sun warm my back, as my hand rested against the solidity of the tree, and was reminded of the warmth and solidity of my husband.  I walked a few feet further, picked a sprig of rosemary from a bush bursting with purple flowers, and brought the sprig to my nose, thinking of Sierra bringing me rosemary bouquets.  The willow beneath which Aidan and I gathered branches last year for his shelter-project had filled out with delicate, green leaves.  I touched the petals of a rock-rose, and my mind walked through my parents’ garden.  Strands of horse-tail reminded me of long ago trail rides, and the brief moments of respite before remounting my unreliable, bucking, yet beloved mare.  Flowers popped from a tree, and I wanted to show them to Caitlin, far away from me on her own adventure this week.

As I passed through the tunnel beneath the road, I realized that I had been taking photos in my own way.  Capturing the pearls of white-flowered fairy rings nestling in the darker blades of grass, framing a twisted palm frond glowing in the sun against the black asphalt of the street, picking the highlights off of a stick, fallen onto the bark mulch beneath a redwood.  The gift of my friend’s photos, and the gift I found in myself, is the gift of the small moments.  When we pause to frame and snap those details, we are capturing the essence of our lives.  Think back to the biggest events of your life.  What do you remember, truly?  Do you really feel, deep within you, the entire event or day?  Or do you smell the scent of a grandmother’s perfume, or do you recall the feel of your lover’s cheek beneath your hand, or do you hear a laugh, carried on the wind?

Photo credit: Robyn Beaufoy, 2012

Vulnerability -- For the Long Term

Caitlin is traveling with friends this week, and the trip involves a flight.  If there is one phobia that I haven’t quite managed to shake, it’s flying.  I love to travel, but you don’t want to be the person stuck next to me in a plan – I gasp and grab the armrests a lot.  Suffice it to say that while I trust the family taking my daughter and I’m so grateful to them for providing her with this adventure, my maternal anxiety is in overdrive today.  Caitlin doesn’t know that.  I’m not a big fan of letting my neuroses impact my children’s experiences.  I was texting a friend last night about my struggles with letting my daughter “spread her wings” despite my personal discomfort.  “Seems like adulthood is all about doing the hard thing for the long-term benefit,” I commented.

For me, “the hard thing” usually involves letting go of control.  (See ‘fear of flying’ – above. I’d probably be fine if I were the pilot.)  I’ve come to realize, though, that most of the time, my desire to control the circumstances around me has less to do with fear of what those circumstances may produce than fear of what will be revealed about me in those circumstances.

I intermittently follow Brené Brown’s blog at www.ordinarycourage.com.  Brown is a research professor whose work focuses a lot on the value of vulnerability and the trap of its opposite, perfectionism.  In an article for CNN, Brown writes, “Perfectionism is a 20-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it's the thing that's really preventing us from being seen and taking flight.”

I don’t know about you, but I have spent most of my life listening to the voices in my head that give a running commentary about how any thought, word, action, or inaction of mine will be perceived by others – the voices that say “that’s not good enough.”  Yet, all of the cool things, the magical things that have happened in my life have come from allowing myself to be vulnerable, to take risks – including the risk of looking like a screw-up or of being rejected.  It is only when I manage to turn off those voices, that the real me gets a chance to spread her wings and be heard.  (There’s a reason I write with the doors shut.)

But, the hard part is that vulnerability isn’t always rewarded.  Sometimes you will lose something precious.  Sometimes you will be misunderstood.  Sometimes you will, in fact, be rejected for the person you are.  And, it’s hard to keep plugging forward in the face of those losses, to convince yourself that it’s better to risk rejection as yourself than to be accepted for someone that you aren’t.

My son is a perfectionist.  His teacher, my husband, and I have spent most of Aidan’s academic career working on convincing him to take risks with his work, and to accept that the occasional mistake doesn’t necessitate starting over or giving up entirely.  Yesterday morning’s “book report” kerfluffle was emblematic.  When I asked, “How did your book report go on Friday?” I hadn’t expected him to burst into tears and bury his face in his hands.  It turned out that when I had nixed his original idea for the report (which involved copying a section of the book word-for-word), he got stuck and couldn’t figure a way out, but was too ashamed to ask for help. 

Shame is the evil cousin of perfectionism.

Aidan didn’t see his original idea as plagiarism.  To him, the part of the book that he wanted to present had already been written, so it was obviously “right.”  He struggles with the concept of doing anything original or creative to showcase what he got from the book because he’s afraid that what he produces will be “wrong.”

The lesson that I hope someday to get Aidan to see, and the lesson that I hope Caitlin will continue to integrate, is that we are so much more real when we keep ourselves moving forward in the face of our imperfections – our humanity. 

One last anecdote on the beauty of vulnerability:

I’ve written before about my friend, the singer Vatrena King.  Vatrena has one of the most truly lovely voices I have ever heard, but more importantly, she possesses a quiet, generous soul and iron strength.  In December, she held a concert that she and her friend and manager, Poppy Peach, had been planning and working toward for months.  A week or two before the concert, I interviewed Vatrena for our local paper, and she told me the history of one of the songs she would perform.  “It Is Well With My Soul” was written in the 1800s by a gentleman who had lost his family under tragic circumstances, yet, in the face of that loss, he wrote a song of acceptance and strength.

As fate would have it, Vatrena was hit by a nasty respiratory virus on the day of the concert.  Now, we’ve all heard of diva singers cancelling concerts for the merest throat tickle “to preserve their voices” – or, more likely, to preserve their sense of self.  Vatrena, however, though she could barely speak, powered through her concert with joy and humor.  She even joked at one point that while she is normally a soprano, she was having fun seeing what life is like as a tenor.

No, Vatrena’s voice that night wasn’t up to its usual standard, but her performance showcased something far more beautiful – love.  Her love for her friends, family, and fans in the hall that night shone in every note she sang.  She was willing to risk the vulnerability of an imperfect performance in order to be real and to show her gratitude to the people she loves.  And, that vulnerability created something far more powerful than perfection ever could.  Listen:

 

Consistently Inconsistent

“But I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel.  It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them.”

“Yes,” said Harriet, “but I am one of them.  I disconcert myself very much.  I never know what I do feel.”

“I don’t think that matters, provided one doesn’t try to persuade one’s self into inappropriate feelings.”

--Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night

 

“Weird.” “Strange.”  “Inconsistent.” “Wishy-washy.” “Cold.” “Heartless.” “Hypocritical.”

How many of us have heard ourselves called these things, either by others, or by the voices rattling around the chambers of our own skulls?  Maybe we got lucky.  Maybe no one ever said the words.  But, I’m betting, most of us have heard the message loud and clear.  There is a certain way of being, a type of person you are supposed to be.  And you aren’t measuring up.  Perhaps the message didn’t come in name calling.  Perhaps it was more insidious.  “That isn’t like you.”  “I know you don’t really feel that way.”  “That’s so out of character for you.” 

Or, maybe the message wasn’t addressed directly to you, but you chose to accept it, to open the envelope, read it, and take it as yours anyway.  Perhaps it came in the form of a criticism of people ‘like’ you – people who eat meat, or shun gluten, or are divorced, or who have multiple children, or have chosen no children; people who home school, who invest in private schools, who send their children to public schools; people who love more than once, people who love differently from the speaker, people between relationships; people who are creative, people who are outgoing, people who are shy…The list of ways of being that we learn are not okay is nearly endless.

And pointless.

No one knows who you are.  Not always.  No one knows who I am.  Sometimes not even me.  Why?  Because, the person I am – the person you are – is an ever shifting tangle of feelings, traits, experiences, and inconsistencies.  Forget layers.  We are kaleidoscopes.  We are shifting fragments of color, light, and shadow.  Our patterns change with movement, with experience, and they change depending on who is holding us.

The person writing this blog right now is not the person who will be on the phone interviewing a source in an hour.  Nor is she the person who went to bed last night.

So, is there a core person in there somewhere?  Yes.  Of course.  I may be shaped by my experiences. Certain traits may leap to the fore depending on my company, the conversation, my level of physical well-being, and a host of other factors.  But, somewhere underneath, below the shifting patterns, I’m still there.

Sadly, most of us get to be pretty good at hiding the core person.  We’re social animals, and we mirror the cues of others for acceptance.  Give me about 15 minutes, and your accent will begin to creep into my voice.  Also, we live in a world that is remarkably intolerant of all things unique or inconsistent.  Have you ever lived in a subdivision with that house on the block?  You know, the one that was painted some color off of the earth-tone section of the wheel?  Or where the owners tinkered with their car in the driveway, even though everyone else on the block parked in the garage?  Do you remember that kid in school?  The one who never listened to the music everyone else was singing?  The one who talked about weird books and didn’t have a clue about the hottest TV shows?

Even societies that pride themselves on iconoclasm expect a certain level of conformity.  Try living in certain “liberal” communities as someone who eats meat, refuses to attempt to bake gluten-free anything, and lets the kids watch Die Hard as a Christmas movie.  No one will say it, not outright, but it is easy to get a sense that something about your way of being is not okay.

When it comes to feelings things get even more tricky.  How many of us try to talk ourselves into the things we should feel?  How often do we deny our own points of inconsistency – with society or with ourselves?  Okay, I’m coming out of the inconsistent closet here.  Feel free to add your own contradictions, quirks, foibles, etc. in the comments.  Please.

• I have devoted my adult life to the preservation of animal welfare, but I eat meat and believe in the humane slaughter of horses.
• I have three children whom I adore, feel passionate about child development, and have absolutely no interest in kids I don’t know.
• I don’t really find newborn babies adorable.
• I would be fine with kicking our TV to the curb, but I’m the first one to turn it on after the kids go to bed.
• I state a preference for being alone, yet I’m the one who usually suggests hosting a party.
• I’m inherently shy, but refuse to dress in a way that lets me fade into the background.
• I like to climb trees, dig in the dirt, and wear stilettos.
• I believe in a divine power, but chances are I won’t discuss it with you, nor am I comfortable hearing about your beliefs – most of the time.
• I hate Hallmark cards, but their commercials make me cry.
• I consider myself the equal of any man, almost any time, but I still like it when a guy makes me feel delicate.
• I’m big on balanced nutrition and seasonal produce, but I won’t take vitamin supplements and I think most “natural” remedies are for suckers.  However, I only buy ginger to offset nausea or motion sickness.

The list could go on for pages, and I’m sure anyone who knows me well can think of two or three or fifteen points to add to the list.  However, the point isn’t the individual paradoxes.  The point is learning to accept what we really do feel.  And perhaps, learning to be a bit more accepting of those things in others which strike us as “off.”

Introverts Among You

Today I’d like to tell you a story of four people, two girls and two women.  Like all stories, this one speaks of more than the characters or events around them.  But, it speaks quietly, and you’ll only hear it if you listen.

The first girl grew up in an era of Saturday morning cartoons, of city-sponsored sports leagues, and of herds of children roaming the suburban plains.  She was tall and usually thin for her age.  She wore coke bottle glasses and usually seemed to be looking somewhere else – somewhere that didn’t exist.  She was the girl who was always picked last in PE, for any sport, even though she wasn’t nearly the worst at some, and was even pretty good at things like floor hockey.  She enjoyed sleepovers with one or two friends, but at a slumber party, she would crawl deep into her sleeping bag with her pillow over her head, wishing for a light to read by, and praying that the ghost stories would stop.  Whenever the teacher assigned a group project, she would sit quietly, barely participating, even though her report card held more A’s than anyone else’s.  She didn’t hear her classmates make the wrong choices or assumptions.  She didn’t hear whether they had good ideas.  She couldn’t hear anything over the roaring in her own ears.

By all accounts, the red-haired woman was fearless.  Tall and athletic, she could handle just about any horse, and would go toe-to-toe with the most cantankerous rancher.  “She’s pretty tough.”  “You wouldn’t want to get in her way,” people said.  She organized educational seminars for horse owners, spoke to groups, and quickly became the public face for her clinic.

The second woman slunk into parties behind her husband, even though, in heels, she was several inches taller than he.  Often low cut, always form-fitting, never frumpy, her clothes didn’t match her demeanor.  You’d find her standing in a corner, clutching a drink, eyes watching the room, like a gazelle at a watering hole, waiting for someone to notice her.   Eventually she would peel away from the wall, smile, and find a group of one or two sympathetic souls where she would stand at the edge, waiting for someone to let her in.  She would talk and laugh with the others, maybe even share a story or two, but only in response to a direct question.  She never asked questions of anyone else.  She knew it made her look cold, like she didn’t care, but she didn’t want to pry, to ask something that might make it look like she wanted them to reveal too much.  She figured that if someone wanted her to know something, they would tell her.  After a couple of hours, she would grow quiet again, excuse herself to the bathroom, mention to her husband that it was getting late and maybe they should be leaving soon, or that she was so sorry but she was starting to get a headache.

The second girl is, like the first, tall and wiry, though more developed at the same age.  She has a solemn face that can light into a dimpled grin.  She was early to talk, and can wax eloquent on subjects that interest her, though the one word used by every teacher at the school is “quiet.”  Sometimes they add “responsible” and “kind” and “maybe a little shy.”  “She’s not like her brother, is she?” they ask.  No, she isn’t.  Her brother bounds through life, never meeting a stranger.  Social isolation, even to do homework alone in his room, is physically painful for him.  The girl, on the other hand, keeps her bedroom like a cave, door closed and curtains drawn.  She gets good grades, and will sometimes surprise her teachers and peers with her passion on certain subjects, but most of the time, she complains that the teacher never notices her, and that the other girls never include her.  She doesn’t try to join the groups or find areas of common interest.  She waits, at the edges of a group, waiting to be invited.  Outsiders are surprised when they see how fearless she is, climbing to the highest branches of a tree, or when they see her burly, outgoing brother defer to her instantly, or when, in a low voice, she rebukes or corrects a classmate and the other child listens.  Parents and teachers comment in amazed voices at her performance after she holds the stage in a class play.  They don’t see her as a performer, or as a leader.  Because she stays at the edges, they assume she is passive, a follower.  They don’t see the steel.

Maybe you’ve guessed it by now.  The first girl and the two women are me.  The second girl is my oldest daughter.  We are introverts.  Yes, even the red-headed veterinarian.  There are more of us out there.  In her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain writes that one third to one half of the population are introverts.  Yet, we live in a world that treats the introvert as an exception, an anomaly, or – most damaging – and oddball.

Cain does a far better job than I ever could of explaining the world of the introvert.  Her book is impeccably researched, readable, and filled with insights that brought me to tears more than once.  In fact, I probably could have met the needs of this blog post by simply typing – “Read this book.”  Unfortunately, though, the people most likely to read Quiet are the introverts.  And while it is a tremendous gift to read a book that helps you to understand that the things that you have always thought made you “not okay” are actually normal, introverts largely know who we are.  Introspection is in our nature, wired so deeply into us that an introvert will often look confused when someone remarks on their level of self-awareness.  Like most people, introverts tend to assume that there is nothing particularly different about our way of thinking.

This is where everyone needs to read Quiet.  While we may understand, intellectually, that everyone’s brain works differently, and that our experience may not be that of someone else, we live in a world that wants to whittle every peg until it fits in the same sized hole.

You would think that for an introvert, raising an introverted child would be the easiest thing in the world.  You’d be wrong. 

The girl with the glasses got contact lenses, grew up, found people to whom she could relate, and learned to put on the superhero costume of an outgoing expert in professional settings.  But, as a mother, she still sees the girl standing at the edges of the playground as a failure.  She wishes that the awkward adolescent with the pale blonde hair had figured out earlier that she was just as entitled to be a part of the group as anyone else.  She wishes that she had learned to fake enthusiasm, to master the code of “small talk”.  She feels that she would have escaped a lot of pain if she’d learned these things when she was younger.  She believes the message of her childhood and of the adult world, that to be quiet is to be passive, to prefer solitude is to be anti-social, to have a low tolerance for noise and crowds is to be shy.  She believes, in short, that there is something “wrong” with her.

She sees her daughter – bright, eloquent, confident, and fearless at home or with one or two friends – hover at the edges of her peer group, wandering off with a book while the rest of the class chats or plays basketball.  She sees this, and the little girl inside the woman cringes.  ‘Look what you’ve done,’ the voice in her head chides.  ‘She’s turning out just like you.  You have to help her come out of her shell.  You have to help her be more a part of the group.  If she’d just join in more, they’d see how amazing she is.’  And so, in the name of tough love, I have pushed my daughter to join clubs or teams.  Pushed her -- with the tight, angry voice that should tell me that this is about my fears and not about her at all – to sit with and practice with, and be a part of her basketball team rather than taking a few moments before the game to sit alone with her book.  I have brought home pamphlets for theater groups, pushed her into activities because, “You know you’ll enjoy it once you get there, and you can’t stay home all the time.”  Pushed her because I know that the real world eats introverts for lunch.

Fortunately, my daughter is far more stubborn and much less docile than I was as a child.  While I was a shy introvert, living in fear of making waves or disappointing anyone, or – heaven forbid! – being “bad,” she knows exactly who she is, and has no problem being that person.  What she does have a problem with, is people expecting her to be someone other than who she is.  She honestly does not understand why girls who chatter about makeup and clothes, who bounce and flirt, are considered “bright” or “leaders.”  She doesn’t see why the outgoing should get the prime roles in class plays even though they sometime have trouble memorizing their lines.  She doesn’t understand why they are picked as group leaders, or why when group assignments are made, she is always placed with the kids who have trouble focusing or who don’t care about the assignment.  In her head, thought is as important as action or words, and she doesn’t see why people should be expected to cluster in pods or all do the same thing.

She is right.  And she’s wrong – I may need to buy her a book on understanding extroverts.  At almost 13, she doesn’t understand that people can’t know your gifts if you never show them.  She doesn’t see that it is impossible for her teachers or peers to know the depth of her knowledge or enthusiasm if she never lets any of it out.

But, she has grasped something that it takes many introverts decades to realize.  She understands that she functions best alone or with one or two other people.  She knows that when large groups begin talking, particularly all at once, her brain shuts down – overwhelmed by the stimulation.  She already can verbalize the experience, common to introverts and unknown to most extroverts, of being drained by large groups, of feeling as though your energy is being sucked into the room and converted into all of that bubbling enthusiasm.  She knows that she needs to be alone sometimes, that her only way to be herself is to wander away with a book.  And she’s sick and tired of living in a world where the message is clear: ‘there’s something wrong with that.’

She loses by not making some adaptations to the social order of her class, yes.  But the world also loses by not accepting the gifts of introverts when offered. 

I have a bumper sticker, given by a friend who knows me well.  It says:

Introvert*

*insufficient energy for small talk

Most introverts have had the following experience.  (I used to think it was just me.)  We find ourselves in a conversation with someone who seems sympathetic.  We relax just enough.  The other person asks us a question that happens to be about something interesting to us.  We answer.  In depth.  In detail.  In lots of detail.  This is a thing to which we have devoted hours of thought and or research.  The other person looks interested, for a minute or two, but then we notice something.  We notice the eyes glazing over, the scanning of the room.  We see it coming.  Sure enough, the other person excuses him or herself and wanders away.

Both parties have lost.  The introvert has just received yet another message that his or her way of being is not okay.  And the extrovert has missed out on the insights and the opportunity for a deeper conversation.  Yet, this happens all the time: at schools, in the workplace, at parties.  We are living in a ten-second soundbite world that is not overly sympathetic to the documentary.  And we all lose.

Okay, I’ve taken up a lot of your time with this post, and the introvert in me is squirming at my self-indulgence, but if you are still here, this video is from a TED talk given by Susan Cain.  Listen.  There are introverts among you.  

Shakespeare *and* Love

“Shakespeare is boring.”  I’ve heard the declaration throughout my life – from the agonized cries of my classmates in high school English to my peers (and even husband!) as an adult.  Shakespeare is boring and hard to understand.  Shakespeare is for intellectual snobs.

I’ve never gotten that.  For me, Shakespeare wrote life – the entire range of human emotion and experience in gloriously shaded pictures of words.  The man is called “the Bard” for a reason.  He wrote language that sings, not to professors in dim lecture halls, not to the elite in paneled libraries, but to everyone.  This week, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the actor giving us a backstage tour of the theaters in Ashland mentioned that it is estimated that in Shakespeare’s time, some 80% of London’s population crossed the Thames to see his plays.  Can you imagine Hollywood’s glee if 80% of a city, any city, made their way into a theater for the latest blockbuster?

But movies, for all of their polish and effects, lack one element that pulses from the stage in a good production and binds the audience.  Love. 

It is possible – we do it every day – to be moved to laughter, tears, or thought by a movie – but, moviegoers will never feel the connection to the work and to the actors and to each other that comes from seeing a play performed.  In Shakespeare’s time, people packed into cities in ways that made Manhattan look like an example of suburban sprawl.  You could literally reach out your window and shake hands with the neighbor across the street.  Today we fence off quarter acre lots in order to have privacy from our neighbors.  We connect via boxes rather than face to face or hand to hand.  Our entertainment is computer-generated, polished, censored, rated, and scrubbed.  Sure, barring an extreme disaster, most residents of developed cities are unlikely to be felled by cholera, but we are often left trying to purchase connection, trying to fill an inner craving for which we lack the words.

I love Shakespeare, and I love my daughter’s 7^th grade class.  Still, I’ll admit, I had some misgivings about viewing Romeo and Juliet with a horde of 12 and 13 year olds, particularly when the viewing involved herding them back into cars for a 40 minute drive after they had suffered through the 7 hour, technology-deprived caravan from Davis to Oregon.  As we took our seats in a matinee theater packed with junior high and high school students, I looked at the playbill and saw that the running time was over three hours.  I regretted not bringing duct tape.

I was wrong.  The production, set in the haciendas of 1840s California newly under U.S. rule, had the audience from the first breaths.  Caitlin explained it best last night at dinner.  “I was sitting next to Collin, and I looked over and he was just like this.” She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and her mouth slightly agape.

Mike asked, “You mean because he was bored, or enthralled.”

“Enthralled.”

It didn’t hurt, of course, that these actors knew their audience.  I’ll admit it.  I love the bawdy parts of Shakespeare’s plays.  I love the raw sensuality of the double entendres that wink but are never coy.  I love the language that shows us just how prurient our modern notions of decorum are.  I love the sense, whether accurate or not, that there was a time when sex was considered as natural and complete a part of life as jealousy, anger, romantic love, or filial love.  For all of our modern fuss and bother about birth control, movie ratings, sexting, pornography, sexual orientation, etc., we have lost sight somewhere along the line of the fact that our minds and spirits are tied to our bodies, and that the enjoyment of the bodies is as important to our experience as the enlightenment of the mine.  Sorry, but it’s true.

But, “the play’s the thing.” (Yes, I’m mixing my quotational metaphors; deal with it.)  This production ramped up the bawd – in word, expression, and gesture – to so perfectly balance the equal power of the tragedy, that the audience of teens and preteens was left nearly breathless from laughter (and yes) a few tears.  For the parents, any brief hopes of the sort we experience when accidentally taking our young to a movie with more “adult” scenes than we would like, hopes that “maybe they won’t get it,” were quickly dashed.  Elizabethan language or not, there was no question that the kids “got it.”

Something happened in that theater, though.  Sure there were a few gasps and nudges and winks, but pretty soon, Benvolio, Mercutio, the Nurse, et al. had so caught the kids in the story, that the titillation of the forbidden gave way to honest enjoyment.  And the “grown ups” gave up decorum and laughed along with the kids.  And when Tybalt’s sword ran through Mercutio, we all gasped together.

Afterward, one of the boys – a kid who struggles with reading and language, and sometimes with the emotions not only of his peers but of himself – told me and one of the other chaperones, “I kind of almost cried.  When that guy, the funny one with the whip…” (Mercutio carried a bullwhip coiled at his hip.)

“Mercutio?” I asked.

“Yeah, he was funny.  I was sad when he died.  I really liked him.”

“It’s okay,” I said.  “I was right there with you.  I did cry. Mercutio and Benvolio have always been my favorite characters in Romeo and Juliet.”  He looked a little surprised – those were not the scenes that a grownup, a mom, was supposed to like.

That’s the thing about Shakespeare, and about theater in general.  It frees us from the “supposed tos” and gives us liberty to think, feel, and love.  Each of the plays that our group experience this week showed the range of lengths humans will go to in order to experience love – from the tragic (Romeo and Juliet) to the miraculous (the Chinese legend of The White Snake) to the madcap (the Marx Brothers vaudeville play Animal Crackers.)

And as we walked the sidewalks of downtown Ashland in the grey wind, rain, and snow, as we clustered in the wood-fired buildings of the farm, and as we drove from farm to theater and back, I watched my daughter and her classmates and saw the weird and wonderful ways in which they love.

Love is a loaded word for that age – a word of whispers and painful self-consciousness.  Love is a word they have almost outgrown telling their parents, and a word they are nowhere near ready to say to their peers.  But it’s there nonetheless. 

When a few of the boys emerged from the cars, after seven hours, speaking in British accents that they refused to lose over a four-day period and were not strangled, but were instead embraced, by their classmates, that was love.  As they raced each other, heedless of coolness and their usual social order, up and down the grassy hills on the farm, burning the pent up energy of that first long car ride, that was love.  Love showed in the off-beat, from the mixture of chagrin, irritation, and pleasure on the face of a kid hit in the face by a snowball from one of his classmates to the tattling for infractions such as climbing too high in a tree or the failure to brush teeth or wear jackets, to the silent and almost oblivious pairing off of introverts seeking a moment of solace from the mayhem.

There won’t be many more snowball fights for these kids as a group.  Next year will be their last together as a class.  There are only a few moments left before they begin to explore the more conventional definitions of love.  As parents, we only have a few breaths to go before we have to hold our breaths, wondering exactly how much of Shakespeare’s double entendres they truly understand and whether that understanding has a practical foundation.  The kids whose snow battles yesterday reminded me so much of their first snow trip together in second grade will soon find themselves increasingly bound by the constraints of society and expectation.  But, for now, they are more real in their connections to each other than many adults. 

We limit ourselves when we try to tidy the human experience.  Adult life is often constrained by definitions of love, friendship, sex, pain, and joy.  We use words that bind our emotions into tidy boxes – appropriate, inappropriate.  And, in doing so, we cut ourselves off from that connection with our humanity.  Shakespeare had it right – the human experience is a giant, sloppy mud pie of love, hatred, sexual tension, misunderstanding, laughter, and tears.  We can roll around in the language and emotion, laugh, cry, and get dirty, or we can stay clean and safe and watch life roll by on a silver screen.

Caraway Seeds and Room for Change

I like caraway seeds.

Today, on a break from work, in the midst of grabbing a much needed latte and trying to arrange a telephone interview with a veterinary idol for a magazine article, I dashed into Noah’s Bagels to grab a sandwich to take back to the office for lunch.  I’m trying to get back to my ideal weight, and so attempting some moderation food-wise, and the Avocado BLT on a Bagel Thin sounded good.  “What flavor bagel,” the clerk asked.  “Oh, an Everything Bagel,” I answered.  Everything is good, right?  More is better?

A couple of hours later, I opened my sandwich and grimaced.  I hadn’t realized that the Everything Bagel had caraway seeds. I hate caraway.  I’ve always hated caraway.  As I child, I had ongoing battles with rye bread and my grandmother’s sauerkraut.  Caraway seeds are icky.

I was hungry.  Stomach growling, holes being gnawed in the lining, hungry.  I bit into the sandwich and cringed at the familiar flavor.  Then something shifted.  As I took another bite, I let go of the past.  I became aware of the salt crystals on the chewy surface of the bagel, the licorice-like tang of the caraway seeds, the butter of the avocado.  I chewed, thought, rolled the thought around my tongue, and chewed some more. 

I like caraway seeds. 

In that moment of letting go, of relinquishing what I “know” about what I want and what I like, I freed myself to experience the sensation of tasting the caraway seed for the first time.  And suddenly, I possessed the potential to be a new me.

This isn’t about a seed, of course, or even about a bagel.

We think we know ourselves.  We believe that we know what drives us.  What we like, what we fear, what makes us who we are.

But what happens if we let go of all of that -- for a moment, in a conversation, during a meal, in a relationship?  What happens if we surrender our own history to the past?  What happens if we open ourselves to the possibility that we have grown, that we are no longer the person who feared a situation or hated a flavor?  What happens if we allow the moment to exist on its own without pre-conceptions?

Try it sometime.  It’s a rush.

The Parenting Plan -- An Open Letter to My Kids

Parenting, particularly other people’s parenting, is a weird landscape – sort of a swamp infested with landmines, alligators, and the occasional diamond.  Yet, somehow, we can’t stay away.  Parenting is a last uncharted territory – trodden by millions, yet pristine in its wilderness.  And no one has a map.  Maybe that’s the draw.  Perhaps that explains our fascination with everyone else’s parenting journey.  We either hope that they have a map and that we can follow in their footsteps, or that their missteps will validate our paths. 

This past week or so, I’ve passed a few signposts that caused me to question, check my compass, and ultimately set me back on course parenting-wise.

A friend posted this on Facebook:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An article was released discussing the “superiority” of French parenting.

NPR ran a piece on the next move of the so-called “helicopter parents” – parenting the workforce.

An acquaintance mentioned to me that she had chosen to have her children “to take care of me in my old age, but I don’t think that’s going to work out.”

We went to our school’s Open House.

We offered to pay Caitlin to foul at her basketball game.

I ran a half marathon.

 

I’m tempted here to jump into a defense of the “If you get a foul we’ll pay you $2,” strategy, because I know that out there somewhere is a parent waiting for me to step on that alligator, but we’ll get there.

Instead, I think much of this can best be explained by an open letter to my kids:

 

            Hey guys,

It’s Mom.  Yeah, the one who bugs you to:

• Clean your room
• Do your homework
• Play your cello
• Go outside and do something, anything
• Sort your laundry
• Make your lunch
• Make your breakfast

You know, the one who:

• Takes out splinters
• Snuggles you when you’ve had that kind of day, or when you just want to feel small enough to fit safely into someone’s lap
• Lets you hold my ear while you suck your thumb
• Always has ginger chews on long car rides
• Reads “The Monster at the End of the Book” in a Grover voice
• Climbs trees and skips – yes, in public

So, here’s the deal.  You owe us nothing.  Your father and I chose to bring you into this world, and we chose to repay our parents by giving you the best upbringing we could.  Our only wish for you is that you go out into the world as adults who do the best you can – for yourself and for others.

We will be here for you always.  And sometimes (you might already have noticed) being here for you means allowing you to screw up, fall down, and figure out a way to get back up again. Sometimes it means encouraging you to take chances or (yeah, I know you think it’s weird) even break the rules. Sometimes it means doing the things that we don’t want to do, the things that are hard for us or scare us, because we know that you are watching.  Yes, you help make us better people too.

Sometimes being there for you means challenging you to do more – to do better than what you thought your best was.  Sometimes it means making you rewrite that paragraph until you want to shove it down my throat.  Sometimes it means making you work the math problems until you want to stab Dad with the pencil. Trust me; it’s not fun for us either.  Until it works.

When I watch you guys cope with disappointment, figure out how to solve a problem or fix a broken toy or project on your own, or work out conflicts with each other or your friends, then it’s worth it – it’s worth all of the tears, the red-faced tantrums, the ‘I-hate-yous,’ and the empty place in my heart that comes from seeing one of you hurt, even for a second.

When you talk to us about the stuff that embarrasses, confuses, or hurts you, then it’s all worth it.

I know we can’t help sometimes.  Sometimes all we can do is watch you stumble around through a problem, watch you hurt, watch you feel lost and lonely, and all we have to offer is the cold solace of an insufficient hug.  I know you think at those times that we have no idea what you’re feeling, that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to be kids, that if we really loved you, we would fix everything that is hard for you.

I’m sorry.

I remember.  I remember the loneliness of adolescence.  I remember looking in the mirror and wondering whose face stared back at me.  I remember the lost feeling of my friends running off without me.  I remember losing my best friend – again, and again.  I remember that horrible sense that the entire world was staring at me and whispering behind my back.  I remember hating my parents and family for teasing me – laughing at me.  I remember promising myself that if I ever had kids, they would never have to go through any of that.

I remember.  But, there’s a secret that parents know, that we didn’t learn as kids.  We aren’t all-powerful.  We can’t fix everything.  And, even if we could, we shouldn’t.

Someday, you will get out into a world that holds far more pain than that of your buddies ditching you on the playground.  Someday, you will experience far more loss than a broken toy.  Someday, you will feel a failure far deeper than a bad grade on a test or homework assignment.  And, someday, Dad and I won’t be there to make it better.

Someday you’ll enter a world where you have to work with people you can’t stand.  You’ll have to sit for hours in meetings that make you so bored you want to run screaming around the room, tearing off your clothes.  Someday, someone you love will hurt you in a way that makes every nasty word either of your siblings ever said sound like a compliment.  Someday, you’ll face things so scary that going for the ball in a game or climbing a higher tree will seem like brushing your teeth.  Someday you’ll have to push your mind and body much further and harder than Mr. Wolfe’s mile run.

And, when that someday comes, you’ll be ready.  I know, you don’t think so now.  But, you didn’t think you could ever ride your bike without training wheels either.  Remember how you screamed at us?  How you flung your bike to the ground, shouting that it was stupid and so were we?  Remember how you begged us not to let go of the seat, not even for a second?  How long did that last?  A couple of days?  Now you speed to the end of the block and take your turns so fast that your inside pedal nearly scrapes the asphalt.

Someday you’ll call us to tell us about your new job, about how you got fired, about your girlfriend/boyfriend/engagement/divorce.  Someday you’ll call to say that you’re buying a house, or that our grandchild is struggling in school.  Someday you’ll tell us about the volunteer work you’re doing or your terrifying tax audit.  Someday, you’ll ask for a loan or for a night of babysitting.  And we’ll do our best to be there – our parents have been for us.  But, if we are too far away or unable to help you, you’ll be okay.  It’s all part of the master plan.

Now, about that homework…

Love always and forever, even (especially) when you hate me,

Mom

 

Winter Traditions -- Light and Song

In the Catholic faith, Advent encompasses the 4 weeks before Christmas.  A candle is lit each of the 4 Sundays; traditionally, there are 3 purple candles and 1 pink.  As a child in plaid jumper and navy knee socks, I was told that Advent was a solemn time of waiting, a time to repent and reflect (not quite as severe as Lent, but not party time, either).  The purple candles symbolized the sorrow of waiting; the pink candle, lit on the 3^rd Sunday represented the joy of the approach of the Christ child.  This all seemed to fit for me – Advent was a time to be good, because Santa knows, and there was definitely something purple in the waiting – waiting for Christmas baking, waiting for grandparents, waiting for Santa, waiting for snow, waiting for Christmas carols, waiting to decorate the tree, waiting to open presents.  Advent was definitely a time of waiting.

As I grew older, Advent came to seem less of a period of waiting, and more of a countdown from Thanksgiving.  Light the candle – 1 week closer.  Tick.  Next candle.  Tick.  Pink candle.  Tick.  Last candle, andohmigodIhaven’tdonemostofmyshoppingyet.  BOOM.

It wasn’t until my children started school (yes, this is one of those posts) that I began to understand the place of light in winter.  In the lower grades, the children make beautiful paper lanterns and attend a Lantern Walk to celebrate Martinmas.  As the fall air begins to bite, the line of lanterns woven through the dark is threaded with song. 

After Thanksgiving, in the first week of Advent, the school offers an Advent (or Winter) spiral to the children in the lower grades.  In a quiet room, a spiral of pine boughs is laid on the floor, punctuated with luminarias.  One at a time, the children enter the spiral, carrying a white candle in a red apple.  The child lights his or her candle from the pillar at the center of the spiral, then bends to light one of the candles along the spiral on the way out. 

This year, the Winter spiral was only offered for the children up through fourth grade.  As my son and his classmates each took their turn in the spiral, I could see why.  Something changed in their faces.  Unlike the few younger siblings that walked the spiral during this session, the fourth graders that exited the spiral were not the same as those who had entered.  While the younger children glowed with a round innocence even after their candles were extinguished, as the fourth graders blew out their candles at the mouth of the spiral, they blew out something else.  Fourth grade marks the transition from little kid to big.  The unquestioning faith of childhood has begun to fall by the wayside, shadows creep into the corners.

The first light of advent is the light of stones,

Stones that live in crystals in seashells and in bones

The second light of advent is the light of plants,

Plants that reach up to the sun, and in the breezes, dance

The third light of advent is the light of beasts,

The light of hope that we may see in greatest and in least

The fourth light of advent is the light of man,

The light of love, the light of thought, to give and to understand

This is the Advent verse my children recite at school.  To me, there is something deeper here, in this marking of points of nature, than just a lighting of candles to mark time.   The verse grounds the moment with the outside world.  It is easy in winter to experience a hibernation of the soul, to direct our thoughts and feelings inward, to protect ourselves from the outer darkness and to protect others from any darkness of ours that might ‘contaminate’ a season of joy.  Yet, as the kids light their candles with a verse, they are connected: to the stones, the plants, the beasts, and to each other.

Singing fills our house (and car, and yard, and grocery store) this time of year.  The English translation of the Swedish Santa Lucia song, the school Advent song, the dreidel song, “Channukah, Oh Channukah,” and a random assortment of Christmas carols (in English, German, French, and Spanish) float through our lives this time of year.  These winter songs have all been adopted by my children, regardless of festival or religion.

Light.  Song. 

The part of my brain that has studied other traditions, the part that remembers history books, or dusty lessons in comparative studies can trace the links between European pagan and modern Christian festivals without bursting any neurons.  However, it wasn’t until my children began coming home from school with songs and verses of light that the point of all of those Solstice candles connected with me on a visceral level.

Robyn Beaufoy, a good friend, wrote a piece in the school newsletter about Advent celebrations.  In this essay, she writes “Writer Annie B. Bond reminds us that ‘Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Christmas, Yule, Diwali, and the celebration of Buddha’s enlightenment all take place in December, the darkest time of the year.’ Despite these different leanings, our common searching for Light in the darkness of Winter unites us.”

When Caitlin was in 5^th grade, the mother of one of Aidan’s friends came in and talked to the class about Diwali, the Indian festival of lights.  As the class began their studies of world civilizations that year, they began to link the commonality of festivals.  In 3^rd grade, one of the other mothers had come into the classroom to teach the students about Channukah.  At the school, the 2^nd graders each year enact the Swedish festival of Santa Lucia.  The oldest girl in the class wears a crown of candles on her head, and the children distribute breads or cookies to everyone in the school – while carrying candles and singing, of course.

Winter has been especially dark the past few years.  When the economy began to flag, we first noticed the inadequacy of my paychecks in winter.  Within the last couple of years, we’ve been forced to tell the children, “Well, you know, Santa’s having a rough time, too.  There are an awful lot of kids out there who don’t have any toys at all, and he needs to take care of them.”  Two years ago, the last of my living grandparents, my maternal grandmother, passed away on Christmas Day. 

Yet, with each shadow, there is a spot of light.  Grandma lived a long and full life, yet her last years had been grey and shadowed with frailty and forgetfulness.  She was ready to move on.  Our economic challenges have forced the focus of Christmas away from elaborate lists and mountains of packages.  Though the bank account is not nearly so bleak this year, I have yet to begin or even fret about any Christmas shopping.  I’d rather inhale the Christmas tree and snuggle on the couch with my family.  There will be presents, but hopefully, they will bring joy, not stress.

Darkness comes.  In each of our lives, there are periods of long, black cold.  We all have our times of sorrowful or solemn waiting.  Rarely do we get to choose when that long Advent of the soul will strike.  But we have a choice.  We can approach these times with the joylessness of time marked, or we can hold moments of that darkness, be present in them, turn them over, and light a candle to move on.

The fourth light of advent is the light of man,

The light of love, the light of thought, to give and to understand

 

 

Good? Bad? But Never Indifferent: My Take on Modern Parenting

Maybe parenting has always been this hard, this fraught with judgment and dogma.  Maybe mothers in the caves of southern France said to one another, “Did you see her with her kid?  Doesn’t she know that you should never turn the sabertooth pelt fur-side against the skin?  Her baby is going to have such a rash…” Or, perhaps not.

Certainly there are literary and historical examples of poor parenting:  No one would give Medea mother-of-the year, and regardless of divine command, I’m not sure that a willingness to slaughter your kid based on the voices in your head is a great illustration of fatherhood.  But, most examples of ‘bad parenting’ from previous centuries and generations seemed to focus on the disastrous extremes.  Nowhere in the Little House books does anyone come up to Ma Ingalls and say, “Do you really want Laura playing with that pig’s bladder?  Little Johnny in the next town over did that last fall and you know how sick he was all winter!”

Yet, for my generation of parents, every choice – from brand of baby food (or homemade baby food) to when, how, or if to let children play – seems to have a rating system attached.  But, nobody seems to agree on the scale.  How are we measuring these things?  Do I get bonus points for letting Caitlin climb our tree in the front lawn, thus empowering her to take risks and improving her muscle tone, connection with nature, and sense of balance?  Or should I be reported to CPS and flogged in the public square for risking so much as one of her precious epithelial cells?  Am I a bad mother for allowing Aidan to possess a NERF arsenal that is the envy of the neighborhood boys, tacitly okaying the casual acceptance of violence pervasive in modern culture?  Or am I good for allowing him to accept and learn to regulate his natural aggression?  Will watching a documentary forever alter the biochemical functioning of Sierra’s brain, or will it give her a better insight into some aspect of our world?  Whose research should I believe?

Caitin in our tree 12/2010 w/ Sierra on the swing watching

And do I even care?

Obviously I care, or I wouldn’t be wasting the word-processor time.  But,(and go ahead and start lobbing stones for this) I don’t care as much about the implications of these studies, opinions and dogma to the children as I do about the scars each one leaves on the parents.  Ok, more specifically on the mothers.  What the hell are we doing to each other and allowing to be done to ourselves?  What weird line have we crossed when an intelligent, educated mother (and I heard this recently) agonizes over the morality of allowing her son to pick up a stick and say ‘Bang. Bang.’?

I hate to say this but I think this intensive maternal navel-gazing (and, to be honest, most of us ‘good mothers’ who nursed our children can’t even find our navels unless we’re wearing killer push-up bras) is at least in part a function of the unprecedented number of educated and career driven women in my generation.  What did society expect? 

I suspect that motherhood was less questioned in previous generations because it was simply something one did.  Like cooking, cleaning, (and a number of other life skills that seem to have been either lost or over-analyzed), parenting was just a part of life.  Parents fed, clothed, and housed their kids, provided them with the type and level of education that seemed appropriate, toys that matched the household budget, and went on with the rest of their lives.  If you had to make every loaf of bread from scratch, or wash all of your laundry by hand, your kids were going to either play outside and do their own thing or they would be pressed into service for chores.  Few households had the luxury of worrying about whether play was age-appropriate or ‘too risky.’  Parents were just glad to get the kids out from underfoot, and they certainly didn’t have time to make modeling dough by hand or to lead elaborate needle-felting projects.

Yet, my generation (particularly of women) is a bit different.  Many of us in the middle and upper-middle classes were raised by the first generation of more broadly educated women, the first women to truly have a shot at a life beyond kitchen, hearth, and child.  And we were raised with expectations.  C’mon, say it with me: “Anything boys can do, girls can do better!”  We were going to take over business, politics, and generally kick the patriarchy’s butt.  My generation (good old generation X) was the first where women equaled (and have now surpassed) the numbers of men in higher education.  We truly can do anything men can do.  But, we can also do the one thing men can’t do – carry a fetus, give birth, and lactate.  Oops.

Sooner or later (often later, and I think that, too is an issue contributing to our current parenting protocol obsession), many of us realized that there probably needed to be a next generation, and that our uteri were going to need to provide the early housing facilities.  And, so, we wound up with a generation of goal-oriented mothers trained to research, to interpret scientific papers, to absorb data like the fibers of the Brawny towels so lovingly advertised to our mothers, to achieve (and over-achieve).  And yet, the mothers of my generation and socio-economic class found that children had not evolved along with the ideals of our society.  Children still need to be fed, housed, and clothed, to learn to walk and talk, and to be educated and to be provided with playthings.

At that point, a generation of women with a veritable alphabet soup of letters after our names lost our collective minds.  Realizing that we would, in fact, be forced to compromise our career trajectory to one extent or another, we decided to channel all of our ambitions, energies, and training into something that humans have done for thousands of years.  But, we would do it better.

This brings me to the personal part of my rant.  No one who has read this blog can possibly doubt that I have some strong views on parenting.  Nor should they doubt that my views are more in line with those of my parents and grandparents than many of my peers.  I believe kids should play – with minimal adult supervision and interference.  I believe that children need scary stories with dark consequences for bad behavior.  I believe children need to learn that the stove really is hot by burning themselves while learning to cook.  I believe (and our house has proven) that a six-year old is capable of preparing his or her own breakfast and lunch.  I believe that a child who ignores instructions to ‘take a jacket’ and is subsequently cold will better remember the jacket next time than the child whose parent rushes back to school with the jacket.  I believe that kids need to deal with teasing, shunning, and name-calling on their own as much as possible and that these experiences (allowing exceptions for what I consider true bullying) make them stronger.  I believe that kids need to fall (physically or metaphorically) and that by doing so they learn to take risks and to pick themselves back up.  I believe that kids need unconditional snuggles and that they need to be corrected when they’ve screwed up.  I don’t believe ever in ‘letting a child win’ to ‘boost self-esteem.’  I don’t believe in empty praise.  I believe in giving kids more respect than that.  I believe in giving them the pride of earned praise.  I believe that the process is more important than the result; that the act of learning is more important than the grade. 

And I believe that kids need to learn to fight their own battles – the real, the pretend, the physical, and the verbal.  I let my kids have (pretend) guns and swords and give them rules that they need to follow to use those: you may not ‘shoot’ anyone who is unarmed or who doesn’t want to play.  You may not whack your sibling with a sword under any circumstances.  If an accidental whacking does occur, you must apologize.  Dragons live in your bedroom or the hallway, not in the kitchen, dining room or hallway.  No firing NERF guns in the house.  A gun, any gun, even a toy is to be pointed at the target or at the ground.

                                                            A well-armed Aidan. 12/2010

Do I believe in violence as a solution – generally no.  However, in self-defense, absolutely.  I have taken self-defense classes (many), my oldest daughter has, and I will insist that my son and youngest daughter do so.  Do I believe in war – generally no.  But I do recognize that while most wars are a useless waste of life and exploitation of our young, that some circumstances are so hideous that they can only be solved through force (the Nazi empire, for example).  Do I believe that humans are inherently aggressive?  Of course.  I fail to see how any person with half a brain can look at human history and say otherwise.  Humans are animals, and phenotypically, we are predators.  Do I believe that humans are also inherently cooperative, social, and capable of independent thought, kindness, and creativity?  Hell, yes.  Again, look at history, and look around.

Back to the personal.  My beliefs are my own.  You may notice that I have not cited a single study, article, or research paper in this piece.  That omission is deliberate.  For every study that substantiates a parenting or sociologic, or even physiologic theory, an opposing body of research can be found.  Statistics lie and all liars are statisticians – I plagiarize freely here, but the truism holds.  Parenting theories are just that – theory.  And they will be neither proven nor debunked until most of us are long gone. 

So, you don’t have to parent your kids my way, but don’t you dare demand that I parent my children your way.  Our classrooms, society, and species have enough room for many ways, and there’s probably a bit of truth everywhere.

Thanksgiving in the Great Hall

We’re dining at Hogwarts this Thanksgiving weekend. 

Ok, not really, but it’s pretty close.  My parents’ home has a large ‘great room’ with a vaulted ceiling and huge stone fireplace.  It’s normally the least used room in the house; big, and kind of echo-y.  It’s also the only room in which we could hope to seat 17 people around something resembling a single table.

Yep, 17.  We haven’t had this many family members gathered for a holiday in several years, and the logistics took some contemplation.  There’s been a generation shift in our family over the last decade or so, and the transition has been a bit uncertain. My parents are both only children, and so the holidays of my youth were a combined gathering of our core family unit and both sets of my grandparents with the occasional addition of the odd great-uncle, aunt or cousin.  But, since neither set of grandparents had any other children to work into the equation, their presence at holidays was a given.  We rotated major holidays between the three houses or occasionally a rented cabin or condominium.  The biggest logistical quandaries were who brings the turkey and who’s in charge of the Christmas tree.

Fifteen years ago, I married an only child, and the traditions continued essentially unchecked as our family, ameboa-like, absorbed my husband and mother-in-law into the matrix.  Then, roughly a decade ago, my sister met her now-husband, and things got more complicated.  Mike (yes, my sister and I married men with the same name – get over it.) has a brother and sister with spouses and children of their own, and a family with its own tradition of large, boisterous gatherings.  This was unsettling.  Suddenly, my sister’s presence at a family holiday was no longer guaranteed.  Granted, there were any number of childhood Christmases where I would gladly have sent her a few hundred miles in any direction if only I could find a box large enough or a jet pack, but as adults, we’ve reached that intimate, bickering symbiosis known only to two people with shared history of hair-pulling fights and sneaking in the cold dark to open Christmas stockings.  The first Christmas morning where my pre-dawn companion(s) in stocking reconnassaince was(were) not my sister but my children, was the first holiday where I felt the jolt of time.  I wasn’t the kid anymore.  I had moved up a rung on the generation ladder.  And, I didn’t like it.

During this same time period, the other end of the ladder shifted.  The grandparents, around whom our family memories of holiday foods and traditions center, were aging, fading, and dying.  When my maternal grandmother died – fittingly on Christmas Day – two years ago, the shift was complete.  Like it or not, each of us had stepped into the next role.  My children are now the children, not just generational hangers-on.  Santa comes for them, not for Steph and me; they put the olives on their fingers at Thanksgiving.  Mike and I are the parents; my mother-in-law and parents are the grandparents.  And, in this shift, our traditions have been tweaked and our core unit has shrunk. 

This Thanksgiving, however, through some cosmic serendipity, we have expanded again.  My brother-in-law’s siblings both had other Thanksgiving plans, and so, for the first time, his parents join our holiday.  The multi-cellular family organism has collected other matter as well.  My father’s cousin, his wife, and two sons arrived yesterday as we sat down to bowls of clam chowder.  After the required awkwardness of kids forced to join a table of half-strange adults, the bowls were cleared and the house pounded with laughter, shouting, and the clatter of billiard balls.

And Mom, who had called me no fewer than three times while I was in Texas on business wanting help with logistics and cooking (at one point, she was demanding a pecan pie) regardless of my geography or other commitments, said while stirring the gravy, “I’m enjoying this.  This is good.”  Her tone had about the same level of amazement as if the candles in the great room had actually started floating.  Our places have shifted over the years, and we’ve had to rearrange furniture and expectations, but the core magic of Thanksgiving remains unaltered: food, fun, and family.

Failure as Fertilizer

Your child is a failure.  My children are failures.  You are a failure.  I am a failure.

Ok, don’t start throwing things yet.  Our society vastly underrates the value of failure.  We all fail.  Most of us fail daily: at school, at work, in art, in the kitchen, at play, and in our relationships.  We are all failures.  We need our failures.

Just as Edison needed his myriad ways not to make a light-bulb in order to achieve success, we need our failures in order to learn.  We need our failures in order to learn what doesn’t work and by extension what does.  We need our failures in order to learn how to problem solve.  We need our failures in order to learn to adapt.  We need our failures in order to learn to persist.  We need our failures in order to grow.

Sunday was diorama drama day in our house.  As part of a 4^th grade book report, Aidan was making a diorama depicting the California Gold Rush.  His original plan had involved making a figure of a miner panning for gold out of modeling clay.  Now, while I did buy him some of the little pine trees (they were adorable; how could I resist?), we do not generally allow our kids to have pre-fab presentation kits.  You want to build something?  You find the materials and you build it.  You want an animal?  Make one – needle-felt it, sculpt it, whatever.  Do it yourself.

Aidan had drawn a miner with a pickaxe in the background, painted the riverbed, and figured out how to affix the trees.  Now he was ready for his figurine. 

Scene 1: Clay blob.  The modeling clay was too wobbly to support a kneeling figurine.

Scene 2: Wire skeleton.  He decided that his guy needed a skeleton.  So, Aidan went to the garage, found the reel of fencing wire, borrowed the wire cutters and got to work.  He bent the wire pieces into the shapes of kneeling legs, a torso, arms, and head.  He then pressed the clay muscle and bones onto the skeleton.

Scene 3: Tears.  Of the words parents hate to hear coming from a work area, “THIS IS STUPID!” has to top the list.  The miner (which I actually thought was much better than anything I could have done at that age) was not to scale.  He dwarfed the pine trees; ok, they looked like weeds.  Mike and I tried the “the trees are in the distance” approach, but Aidan wasn’t buying it. 

I take back my earlier statement.  Where school projects are concerned, there is another set of words that I dread even more than the above.  “Several (yes, my nine-year old talks like this) other people have turned in their dioramas already.  And they were PERFECT!  Mine looks HORRIBLE!” Hugging my son and growling under my breath, I told Aidan, “Well, I don’t think it’s bad, but it’s your project, so do what you need to to make it look the way you want” and went back to my office.

 

Scene 4: Facebook status update. 

A plaintive plea to other grade school parents: please, please don't do your child's projects for them. Don't even "help" substantially. Help them figure out how they want to do it. Let them struggle a bit. Help them problem solve, but don't do the construction. It isn't fair to those children whose "mean" parents feel that school projects are for children to do. My kid should not have to compare his work to that of 30, 40, or 50 year olds. Thank you. That is all.

Disclaimer: I haven’t seen the other “perfect” dioramas, so I have no idea what, if any, parental input they received.  However, I have seen plenty of school projects over the years that were not completed solely, primarily, or perhaps even in part by children.  As a parent, the clean-edged, polished display that is obviously beyond the capability of an elementary school child makes me grit my teeth.  It’s hard enough raising kids with perfectionist tendencies without knowing that they are comparing their efforts to work that was not done by their peers.

But, there is another aspect to parental project participation that makes me sad.  The children whose parents “help” by doing all or most of the cutting, gluing, design, etc. are losing out.  They are being denied the gift of failure.

We all need to screw up.  We need to plan something and watch it fall down or crumble to bits.  We need to make a figurine that isn’t to scale.  We need to put forth an effort that was less than our best and face the consequences – even if those consequences are a bad report or a failed grade.  We need the gift of our mistakes – they are the fertilizer of our lives.  (Don’t make me use the obvious excrement metaphor.)

How many of us have crossed the waters of adulthood without foundering?  Speaking personally, I have: been fired from my first professional job; lost a house; been laid-off another job, hurt and been hurt by the ones I love; and made more mistakes than I care to contemplate.  But, each failure has made me stronger, braver, more creative, and more loving. 

How have I been able to grow from my failures?  I have a memory of cross-country skiing with my family.  I must have been about ten years old – about Aidan’s age.  Descending hills on narrow skis that are longer than you are tall is tricky at any age, and given that I had trouble walking without falling down, my rear was no stranger to the snow.  Halfway down one hill, I took a particularly spectacular tumble.  I was on the steep edge of the hillside, legs twisted, skis pointed in opposite directions and one pole out of reach downhill. 

I was cold, wet, bruised of butt and of ego, and my legs ached.  In tears, I asked my parents to come pull me up.  They came and stood near me, but didn’t extend a hand.

“Help me up!”

My dad handed me my wayward pole.

“I can’t get up.  Help me.”

“You can do it yourself.  Get your skis straightened out and pointed across the hill.”

“I can’t do it.  I need help.”

“You’re big enough to do it yourself. You know how.”

“I can’t.  I’ll fall.”  I pushed myself halfway up and slid partway down the hill, skis still in a knot.

“You aren’t trying.  Get your skis straight and parallel.  Use your poles.”

“I need help.”

“Someday you’ll fall and we won’t be around to help you up.  You need to learn to do it yourself.”

 

Later, there was hot chocolate, and I’m sure that in my mind at the time, that was the only thing that redeemed my parents from utter cruelty.  But, as an adult, I don’t remember the hot cocoa.  I only remember the gift of that last sentence.  As a parent, I now know the struggles that my parents didn’t show me as they stood there.  I know how hard it was for them to let me try, and fail, and not rescue me.

I wrote a guest blog last week about “saving” others.  One of the points I made was that rescuing diminishes the rescued.  Every time we refuse to let someone fail or to dig themselves out of failure, we tell them that we believe them incompetent.

Sometimes I hear parents say that they don’t want their children to feel overwhelmed or bad about their mistakes.  I find myself sometimes arguing the opposite to teachers.  Please, please challenge my children.  Please push them.  Please call them on their sloppy work, on their failures.   Please tell them that they are better than that.  Please let them know that you believe that their best efforts, uneven edges and all, are the work you expect from them – and then let them know that you expect better next time.

Life doesn’t get easier as we get older.  The scary, frustrating, and challenging things that attack us from the outside and from within only get bigger and darker.  Like everything, overcoming adversity takes practice.  Facing failure is like the metaphor of the man lifting the calf every day from the moment of its birth.   Eventually, he is still able to lift the grown cow.  If we allow our children to cope in small ways with the frustrating and scary, perhaps, someday they will have the tools to lift the whole thing.

Circling back to school and teaching; this is the best description I have ever seen of the value of a teacher:

  

Wandering the Web

I'm guest-blogging about the trap of the "helper" today at my friend Steve McCready's site.  I've cross-posted to Steve's blog before, and it's well worth checking out his other posts while you're visiting.  He has some great insights and advice on relationships and mental/emotional well-being.

I'll be back in a while...

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.

Why Dragons Don't Make Good Pets

playgroundsMichaelmas was last week.  For a more in-depth review of this somewhat obscure holiday and its meaning in the Waldorf schools, check out this post from last year.  Short version: on (or near) September 29, the feast of St. Michael, Waldorf schools host a Michaelmas pageant which tells the story of St. George and the Dragon.  At our school for the past two years – and much to the disgust of my children – St. George has tamed rather than, slain the dragon.  I think that my children are disappointed in the dragon for failing to live up to their expectation.  They prefer epic battles and generally feel that evil shouldn’t just roll over like a remorseful puppy.

St Michael and the Dragon -- Aidan Minamiji, age 9

Now, I haven’t talked to any of the faculty about this, so I don’t have any idea why the dragon has had a change of heart or why St. George is suddenly imitating Caesar Milan, but I know that my kids, at least, view the shift as part of a larger adult conspiracy to protect children from that which is scary and violent, and they aren’t happy about it.  And, I can’t say that I blame them…

Like I said, I don’t know anything about the circumstances of the school play, but I do know that elsewhere, there seems to be a trend toward protecting our children from things that are violent, unsettling, complicated, frightening, challenging, or dangerous.   Yet, strangely, while we are dumbing down fairytales so that the step-sisters turn nice in the sequel (Don’t get me started on Cinderella II), complaining about “darkness” in young adult literature, and making playgrounds so safe that they are one step up from padded cells for challenge-value, kids spend huge amounts of time indoors, playing first-person shooter games.  Huh?

I would submit that much of this child-protective movement speaks more to the fears of adults than it does to the risk of frightening children.  We all have different methods of coping with the fears that live deepest within us.  Certain fears also seem to make some of the biggest dragons: relationship/rejection, children, and status/finance issues tend to be such huge triggers that we aren’t even aware of the weird ways in which we face these dragons until the fire has scorched our eyebrows.  Continuing with our dragon metaphor, these are some of the methods I see (and have used, myself):

• Human Sacrifice – In the story, the villagers are offering up a maiden to the dragon in hopes of appeasing it when St. George rides in to the rescue.  This always seemed like a self-defeating plot point to me.  Who really thinks that one skinny girl is going to fill an entire dragon?  At best, it seems like she’d just be an appetizer for the village main-course.  Yet, we do this same thing every day.  And usually, the humans we sacrifice are ourselves.  Do any of these sound familiar?
  • “I’m going to give up my yoga classes; they’re taking too much time away from my family.” Translation: My spouse/partner doesn’t like me spending evenings out, and I’m afraid I will lose him/her, but I don’t want to discuss it.
  • “I’d like to have dinner, but I need to go on my child’s class trip.  She isn’t ready to be away from home yet.”  Translation: I am terrified that something may happen to my child if I am not there.  I am terrified that he/she may be frightened or homesick and need me.  I am terrified that he/she won’t need me.
  • “I can’t make the soccer game this weekend.  We have a big project at work and I can’t take the time away.” Translation: I need to be perceived as indispensible to the project.  I’m also afraid that I may not actually be necessary every minute.
  • Pitchforks, Torches, Mob – Sometimes, we tell ourselves that we aren’t afraid of the dragon, that we are angry, and righteous (or at least justified) in our anger.  We rally the village, stir up the countryside, and attack the dragon.  Unfortunately, since the attack is generally chaotic, and often not directed at the real problem, it usually fails and everyone limps home with battle scars.  For real world examples, think of “flame wars” in internet chat rooms; snarky, passive-aggressive social media status posts, the clique gossip that should have stayed in high school but somehow managed to cling to the heels of adulthood for many of us; workplace alliances and backstabbing – the list goes on.  No one wins – except the dragon.
  • Dragon Whisperer – This may be the trickiest fear-related coping mechanism to understand, probably because it seems the most sane.  Instead of running from or battling our dragons, we take them home, and train them.  Unfortunately, we often simply wind up nurturing the dragon, and in the safety of our homes, and with unlimited food, it grows fat and becomes all too real.  This brings me to the title of this post Dragons Don’t Make Good Pets.  Often, in trying to manage our fears, to prevent the circumstances that we most dread, we create those very circumstances.  Again, anything here sound familiar?
    • We fear that our spouse will stray.  Do we discuss our fears?  Do we bring the hidden insecurities out into the light?  Often no, we manage schedules, micromanage emotional interactions, even monitor our partner’s communications.  Why?  Because some part of us thinks that we can control the dragon.  And if we have control, the thing we fear won’t happen.  Well, we’ve all seen this made-for-TV movie…
    • We fear that our children won’t succeed in life.  Again, control becomes the means of coping with the dragon.  We arrange activities, sports, tutoring, lessons.  We check homework, draft schedules, and micromanage until two things happen:
      • Our children have no ability to discipline themselves.
      • Any joy they may have once taken in the task has been destroyed.
      • (For the record, I’m currently undergoing a reformation on this point.  My daughter and I have a pact this year – as long as she gives her schoolwork her best effort, I will give staying off her back my best effort.  So far so good, by all reports, she is much more focused in class.)
• We fear that harm may come to our children.  They may be physically injured.  They may experience rejection.  They may get their hearts broken.  They may face failure.  Guess what?  They will.  This is one of the hardest dragons to face: the knowledge that we cannot protect our children from life.  Nor should we.  I cringe every time I hear an adult say that they don’t want children to feel “disappointed” or to be “frightened” or to risk getting hurt.  If our children do not face these risks and learn to handle the fairly small wounds of childhood, what kind of adults will they become?
• Being St. George – This is the most difficult and most lonely way of handling the dragon.  And ultimately, I believe, is the only way that will work.  Gather the light from within and without, let that light of honesty, acceptance, and self-worth shine through oneself, and with one’s own strength and sword, ride out to face the dragon – seeing the beast for what it is, and slaying it (or, at least banishing it back to its cave.)

 

 

 

Awareness -- Blog crossover week

The week is getting a bit crazy around here, so for today, I'm going to direct you to this excellent post by a good friend on AWARENESS.  Steve is a marriage and family therapist in Sacramento and has recently re-started his blog.  He's kicked it off with great posts, and this one has some particularly good insights.  If you want to look a bit more closely at yourself and your interactions with others, I recommend checking out what Steve has to say.

In the meantime, what does awareness mean to you?  How and when do you 'check out?'  Tune in?

After years in large animal medicine, I'm pretty aware of my physical surroundings -- sort of a survival trait.  But, if I'm uncomfortable or upset, I can lose entire conversations.  For me, awareness translates into understanding my own responses to a situation and helping myself to take action rather than to react.  How about you?