I am not the sort of person who would throw away a novel.
I generally save and savor books forever. Supposing I could imagine not wanting to keep a book, the worst I can imagine doing is sending it on to a second-hand store.
However, when I finished a novel the other day and closed the back cover, I found myself doing just that. I reached down and set it in the wastebasket. Where it belonged.
I'm not sure where this book came from. It was just there, in my stack of unread books, so I gave it a try.
It wasn't the language--although there were a few words I would never use, unless for some reason it was important for me to repeat someone else who used them. It wasn't the two or three gratuitous sex scenes, although I generally disapprove of those being thrown in just for titilatory purposes. Well, it was partly those things that made me think that my religious second-hand store would not appreciate the donation of that particular novel.
But, what really made me set the thing in the trash was that I could not think of any value anyone could ever get from reading it.
There was a plot and three sub-plots, sort of. The plot seemed to be to get a rascal appointed to be the vice president of the United States. The subplots had to do with his pending divorces and on-the-side romances, a conflict in a third-world country--boringly handled, and a serial killer on the loose. None of these plots was satisfactorily resolved at the end of the book.
Oh, the VP was appointed, all right, but the whole book had been about how vacuous his sense of morality was, so there was little point in it. He abandons his long-term wife and family. He lies to the president about his affair, but the president, in the end, helps him with all this. He uproots one woman and transplants her across the country, only to never see her again because he is already carrying on with the next one. Depressing, really. And the author's point didn't seem to be about how disturbing it is to have our elected officials act like idiots. It seemed to be to portray this sort of irresponsible instant gratification as normal, desirable, even.
The main characters, the fictional president and his wife, were portrayed as robots, not human beings. The president, with a pathetic name I would not call anyone over four months old, spent the whole book handling about twenty situations a minute with perfection. His wife was supposedly the head of the CIA. As if THAT would ever happen! There was no human emotion in either one of them.
The purpose of the book really seemed to be for the middle-aged author to expound his worldview that women are only in the workplace to have sex with their bosses, and it isn't ever really sexual harassment, because the women invite it. All the women in the book looked like Barbie dolls and behaved this way. All the business trips involved the mistake of a suite with an interior sliding door between the rooms being booked instead of two rooms, and all of the women could be found on the other side of the doors in towels or bathrobes, having just showered in preparation for their bosses to summon them.
Women accosted the president in order to thrust his hands--against his will, of course--into their bosoms.
Most exasperating, I really believe this author believed he was treating his female characters fairly because he made them all "smart," "successful," and "gorgeous."
I just can't see how a book like that is going to help anybody. This story had nothing uplifting about it. There was no human struggle
against evil, just a wholesale adopting of it. There was no character
development, just characters with no character. There was no humor,
nothing to learn, no reflection of real life. You feel nothing for anyone at all or anything that happens. With the exception of disgust.
It wasn't even well-written, with some clever plot twist or any degree of craft. There just weren't any more pages.
At the end of the book was a very pompous page or two about how you could TRY to contact the author (assuming, of course), that you were a rabid fan, but it would be better to contact this person for this and that person for that. If you wanted him to speak, you could send your money here. If you thought you saw an error, don't bother to tell him.
For a minute, I thought of contacting him to tell him what a waste of time his writing was, but decided not to waste my time.
Amazingly, this guy seems to have about forty other books out there, presumably just like this. Thinking about the money he might have made makes me want to weep. And when I think about how little effort it takes to read something really worthwhile--something human and uplifting, something with a story or based on at least plausible circumstances, it seems amazing the he has been published and paid and read.
We can do better than that.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Monday, August 27, 2012
What Hike?
Saturday morning, my husband proposed an "easy hike."
(You may think you already know where this is going, but you may be surprised, as I was.)
I agreed. He had a particular one in mind. He said he had been on it before. "In fact," he said, "it's where we had our first date."
We got the morning play-date and lunch behind us, then headed to a nearby canyon. When we got there, we were stopped by an official who told us we could drive no further, but could wait for a shuttle to take us to the campsite where the hike trail started.
"I don't remember any of this," I said.
"We could drive all the way then," he explained.
We waited for the shuttle, which gave us a bumpy ride a few miles higher up the canyon, then set off on a trail. Nothing looked terribly familiar to me. Of course, our first date was sixteen years ago, and there were abundant wildflowers all over the place then. And, I only had eyes for Paul.
Paul was talking about a lake, and how we had taken "this hike" on our first date.
I didn't remember anything about a hike. What I remember about that first date was the wildflowers, madly swatting away hoards of mosquitoes, and trying to find a place to set down our picnic. "That explains a lot!" I said.
Paul asked, "What do you mean?"
"I don't think you said the word, 'hike' then. I think you only said 'picnic.' That you thought we were taking a hike explains why you kept ignoring me when I said, 'How about here?' when we came to this clearing, or 'How about there?' I thought we were just going on a picnic. If I'd known it was a hike, I wouldn't have kept asking you to put the picnic basket down."
My older daughter was amused by this. She may be anticipating her own awkward dates in the future.
We crossed a couple of small streams, walking on carefully-placed rocks. The baby clutched at his sisters and shrieked and giggled as he crossed. He also theorized aloud that barbecue sauce would make a good "cow re-pellet" and gave us a brief anatomy lesson about his lungs being right behind his "nibbles." He is our usual entertainment committee on hikes. Last year, when we were hiking in Yosemite, he amused everyone around us by singing, "I like to move it, move it!" nonstop at the top of those lungs as he walked.
We passed a few clearings, and a huge cloven rock. We walked over a very large, slippery, granite boulder or two.
"I don't think we made it this far, back then," I observed.
"No, the mosquitoes were too thick," Paul agreed. We had soon turned around and gone down to a park in the city for our picnic. We had each received one mosquito bite a piece, right on the left elbow. Our identical mosquito bites are what had told us we were meant for each other.
A good while after the trail steepened and three of the kids had grabbed walking sticks, I observed to Paul, "I wouldn't call this an 'easy hike'." Although I was handling it fine. It just seemed too steep to be so classified.
"No," he agreed, thumbing through a pamphlet he was holding. "It says 'moderately steep'."
I stared at him. He had said the words, "easy hike" in the morning, which was why I had let our teen-aged daughter wear flip-flops. I don't know how she hiked this moderately steep, rocky trail in them, but, bless her heart, she did not complain.
I hadn't noticed a couple and their young son sitting out nearby where we had this exchange, but the woman spoke up to agree that it was definitely not an easy hike. She was overweight, sweating, and panting. "All the information I could find on it said, 'easy,'" she complained. "I thought it would be good for our little boy." That was interesting, because Paul had said, "easy," too. I came to find out that he had apparently read the same information as the woman and had received the pamphlet at the campsite.
The little boy held up four fingers to tell us how old he was.
The trail continued to steepen, and, while I made it fine because I am used to working out a lot harder than that every day, I wondered whether the woman we had met would. My older daughter and I stood at the top of the trail when we were done, watching the little kids scamper out onto rocks in the small, peaceful lake and Paul take pictures of them.
I turned around, and the woman was right behind me. "You made it!" I congratulated her.
She was still sweating and panting and just gave me a weak smile.
As my family started to head back down, Paul mentioned that he had not ever seen that lake before. "I thought you had taken this hike before."
He said he guessed not all the way. All the way back down, I marveled about our sixteen-year misunderstanding. Paul can be full of surprises, and any marriage is fraught with culture shock, just because the spouses grow up in different families. The more different the culture of your spouse's family than that of your family, the greater the culture shock, I guess. He's taught me how to say, "peony," and I've tried to teach him to say, "laurel."
But to find out sixteen years later that our first date was a hike, not just a picnic, blows my mind.
(You may think you already know where this is going, but you may be surprised, as I was.)
I agreed. He had a particular one in mind. He said he had been on it before. "In fact," he said, "it's where we had our first date."
We got the morning play-date and lunch behind us, then headed to a nearby canyon. When we got there, we were stopped by an official who told us we could drive no further, but could wait for a shuttle to take us to the campsite where the hike trail started.
"I don't remember any of this," I said.
"We could drive all the way then," he explained.
We waited for the shuttle, which gave us a bumpy ride a few miles higher up the canyon, then set off on a trail. Nothing looked terribly familiar to me. Of course, our first date was sixteen years ago, and there were abundant wildflowers all over the place then. And, I only had eyes for Paul.
Paul was talking about a lake, and how we had taken "this hike" on our first date.
I didn't remember anything about a hike. What I remember about that first date was the wildflowers, madly swatting away hoards of mosquitoes, and trying to find a place to set down our picnic. "That explains a lot!" I said.
Paul asked, "What do you mean?"
"I don't think you said the word, 'hike' then. I think you only said 'picnic.' That you thought we were taking a hike explains why you kept ignoring me when I said, 'How about here?' when we came to this clearing, or 'How about there?' I thought we were just going on a picnic. If I'd known it was a hike, I wouldn't have kept asking you to put the picnic basket down."
My older daughter was amused by this. She may be anticipating her own awkward dates in the future.
We crossed a couple of small streams, walking on carefully-placed rocks. The baby clutched at his sisters and shrieked and giggled as he crossed. He also theorized aloud that barbecue sauce would make a good "cow re-pellet" and gave us a brief anatomy lesson about his lungs being right behind his "nibbles." He is our usual entertainment committee on hikes. Last year, when we were hiking in Yosemite, he amused everyone around us by singing, "I like to move it, move it!" nonstop at the top of those lungs as he walked.
We passed a few clearings, and a huge cloven rock. We walked over a very large, slippery, granite boulder or two.
"I don't think we made it this far, back then," I observed.
"No, the mosquitoes were too thick," Paul agreed. We had soon turned around and gone down to a park in the city for our picnic. We had each received one mosquito bite a piece, right on the left elbow. Our identical mosquito bites are what had told us we were meant for each other.
A good while after the trail steepened and three of the kids had grabbed walking sticks, I observed to Paul, "I wouldn't call this an 'easy hike'." Although I was handling it fine. It just seemed too steep to be so classified.
"No," he agreed, thumbing through a pamphlet he was holding. "It says 'moderately steep'."
I stared at him. He had said the words, "easy hike" in the morning, which was why I had let our teen-aged daughter wear flip-flops. I don't know how she hiked this moderately steep, rocky trail in them, but, bless her heart, she did not complain.
I hadn't noticed a couple and their young son sitting out nearby where we had this exchange, but the woman spoke up to agree that it was definitely not an easy hike. She was overweight, sweating, and panting. "All the information I could find on it said, 'easy,'" she complained. "I thought it would be good for our little boy." That was interesting, because Paul had said, "easy," too. I came to find out that he had apparently read the same information as the woman and had received the pamphlet at the campsite.
The little boy held up four fingers to tell us how old he was.
The trail continued to steepen, and, while I made it fine because I am used to working out a lot harder than that every day, I wondered whether the woman we had met would. My older daughter and I stood at the top of the trail when we were done, watching the little kids scamper out onto rocks in the small, peaceful lake and Paul take pictures of them.
I turned around, and the woman was right behind me. "You made it!" I congratulated her.
She was still sweating and panting and just gave me a weak smile.
As my family started to head back down, Paul mentioned that he had not ever seen that lake before. "I thought you had taken this hike before."
He said he guessed not all the way. All the way back down, I marveled about our sixteen-year misunderstanding. Paul can be full of surprises, and any marriage is fraught with culture shock, just because the spouses grow up in different families. The more different the culture of your spouse's family than that of your family, the greater the culture shock, I guess. He's taught me how to say, "peony," and I've tried to teach him to say, "laurel."
But to find out sixteen years later that our first date was a hike, not just a picnic, blows my mind.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
The First Day
Some mothers can't wait for school to start in the fall. I dread it.
I try to manage my anxiety, stress, and dread to the point that I'm in denial. This year, I decided at the end of the day, I am just going to go ahead and accept that I hate that first day back.
This year, I have more children in public school than I have ever had before. For each stressful aspect of the first day of school, take that and multiply it by five, and you'll be able to imagine where I am at.
There's the practical aspect of getting ready for it. Does everyone have shoes? Enough clothes? A backpack? Even though I am careful to purchase clothing for my children on clearance year-round, the financial outlay at the beginning of school is high. You can think that you have picked up plenty of every kind of supply that there could possibly be, but when those lists from each classroom come out, there are always surprises. That one-and-a-half-inch binder you have? It's not going to work. It has to be a two-inch binder. And white.
Regular folders? A child who comes only up to your belly button will laugh you to scorn. It has to be a fourteen-inch-wrap-around-twelve-pocket-foldover-with-removable-pencil-box-opens-cans-super-duper-fifty-dollar folder. Green.
And something about buying my little boy a flash drive blows my mind. To date, I, some forty years older than he is, have never yet owned a flash drive.
There's the emotional aspect. Thank heavens all of my children got the teachers I was praying they would get. Still, there are emotion-filled stories about what the teachers said they would have to do and who else is on the class list. The bully isn't there, you show your daughter. "Oh, but this kid," she says, pointing to the list, "is just as bad." Just as bad--even though you never heard his name before and the bully's name came up daily.
Trying to get your easily distracted child to glance in the direction of his teacher at the meet-and-greet was going to take a full-fledged intervention. Forget him actually making eye contact with her or saying hello.
It's bad enough to separate from your children and wonder all day how they are faring. The stories at the end of that first day drain every ounce of emotional energy you may have stored up. "Emma's in my first three classes, but I don't get to have lunch with her. Kate ate lunch with me, but she's the only person I know who has my lunch, and she was looking over her shoulder the whole time for her real friends. I only have one class with Olivia, but it's PE, so it's not like we'll get to talk much. Oliver is in first and fourth, but I have to actually sit by him in fourth, and that teacher said that we are stuck for the whole year. I heard about this teacher--he's a nightmare."
Are you times-ing this by five?
There's the worrying. Is so-and-so going to listen to his teacher? Are the boys going to hold hands crossing the street?
Then there are the homework rules. Imagine five semi-traumatized children telling you in a half-hour span all the things their teachers said about how they will have to do their homework. Looks like I might as well throw a going-away party for my computer. It doesn't sound like I will get to touch it again until June. Listening to them, I feel this little mouse in me roar up into the size of a lion. "How dare they assume you can use my computer for all your homework?" I want to ask. "What do you mean, Mr. Intransigent is only going to post your math homework online?" But, none of this is the children's fault, so I do my best to keep my thoughts and words in.
I do, however, fantasize exploding in emails.
And all the paperwork. All those "open disclosure" forms written front and back in 8-point font for me to read and sign, whether or not I agree with them! All those "Tell Me about Your Child" sheets! My sister pooh-poohs my distress. "I just copy them without the child's name and then fill it in later," she says. As all my children are not identical, though (and neither are their teacher's forms), that's not going to work for me. I do my best to fill them out. What is so-and-so's favorite movie? What color is somebody-else saying is his favorite this week? But why does the teacher need to know which bedroom window is theirs, and why are there questions about whether I feed them breakfast or provide ample supervision after school? Don't they trust me to handle my time with my children adequately, just as I trust them to handle the in-school hours? How do they think they got tall and strong enough to come to their school in the first place?
When I've thought the main after-school furor has ended, then all the afterthought comments start, and continue at the rate of one per 2.8 minutes: "Ms. Nguyen says she needs you to send her your email address." "Ms. Music says we should really think about buying my own violin." "Sarah said I should try out for her club."
This year was particularly bad. Not only was I supposed to be dealing with all of these children's raw emotions and insecurities, I had enough of my own. I'd made the mistake of scheduling my own test-of-my-life and starting to study for it. While trying to go over some sample questions for my test, I was interrupted ten times in ten minutes. I put my books away, thinking, "It was their first day of school, and they need me." I went out into the living room to read the newspaper and just BE THERE for them.
No one came into the room. No one.
Twenty minutes later, I went back to my books. The interruptions resumed immediately.
My kids' teachers are the bosses of them, but, somehow, I feel bossed around, too, by their rules and expectations. Times five.
By bedtime, I was in a cold sweat, trying not to retort, "I don't care!" to everything they said. I faintly remembered through all this how I used to regurgitate every detail of my life to my patient mother, and she had more children than I have. I will never know how she did it. I was tempted to lock myself away, and probably should have.
I finally got them all to bed and slogged around the house through my piles of guilt. Once the house was quiet, I remembered how I had thought the afternoon would go. Lots of listening and hugs, reassurances and good advice, complete with the smell of fresh-baked cookies in the air.
Yeah, right. That would be the afternoon they spent with the mom they don't have.
I guess I've got more studying to do than I thought. It is, after all, just the first day.
I try to manage my anxiety, stress, and dread to the point that I'm in denial. This year, I decided at the end of the day, I am just going to go ahead and accept that I hate that first day back.
This year, I have more children in public school than I have ever had before. For each stressful aspect of the first day of school, take that and multiply it by five, and you'll be able to imagine where I am at.
There's the practical aspect of getting ready for it. Does everyone have shoes? Enough clothes? A backpack? Even though I am careful to purchase clothing for my children on clearance year-round, the financial outlay at the beginning of school is high. You can think that you have picked up plenty of every kind of supply that there could possibly be, but when those lists from each classroom come out, there are always surprises. That one-and-a-half-inch binder you have? It's not going to work. It has to be a two-inch binder. And white.
Regular folders? A child who comes only up to your belly button will laugh you to scorn. It has to be a fourteen-inch-wrap-around-twelve-pocket-foldover-with-removable-pencil-box-opens-cans-super-duper-fifty-dollar folder. Green.
And something about buying my little boy a flash drive blows my mind. To date, I, some forty years older than he is, have never yet owned a flash drive.
There's the emotional aspect. Thank heavens all of my children got the teachers I was praying they would get. Still, there are emotion-filled stories about what the teachers said they would have to do and who else is on the class list. The bully isn't there, you show your daughter. "Oh, but this kid," she says, pointing to the list, "is just as bad." Just as bad--even though you never heard his name before and the bully's name came up daily.
Trying to get your easily distracted child to glance in the direction of his teacher at the meet-and-greet was going to take a full-fledged intervention. Forget him actually making eye contact with her or saying hello.
It's bad enough to separate from your children and wonder all day how they are faring. The stories at the end of that first day drain every ounce of emotional energy you may have stored up. "Emma's in my first three classes, but I don't get to have lunch with her. Kate ate lunch with me, but she's the only person I know who has my lunch, and she was looking over her shoulder the whole time for her real friends. I only have one class with Olivia, but it's PE, so it's not like we'll get to talk much. Oliver is in first and fourth, but I have to actually sit by him in fourth, and that teacher said that we are stuck for the whole year. I heard about this teacher--he's a nightmare."
Are you times-ing this by five?
There's the worrying. Is so-and-so going to listen to his teacher? Are the boys going to hold hands crossing the street?
Then there are the homework rules. Imagine five semi-traumatized children telling you in a half-hour span all the things their teachers said about how they will have to do their homework. Looks like I might as well throw a going-away party for my computer. It doesn't sound like I will get to touch it again until June. Listening to them, I feel this little mouse in me roar up into the size of a lion. "How dare they assume you can use my computer for all your homework?" I want to ask. "What do you mean, Mr. Intransigent is only going to post your math homework online?" But, none of this is the children's fault, so I do my best to keep my thoughts and words in.
I do, however, fantasize exploding in emails.
And all the paperwork. All those "open disclosure" forms written front and back in 8-point font for me to read and sign, whether or not I agree with them! All those "Tell Me about Your Child" sheets! My sister pooh-poohs my distress. "I just copy them without the child's name and then fill it in later," she says. As all my children are not identical, though (and neither are their teacher's forms), that's not going to work for me. I do my best to fill them out. What is so-and-so's favorite movie? What color is somebody-else saying is his favorite this week? But why does the teacher need to know which bedroom window is theirs, and why are there questions about whether I feed them breakfast or provide ample supervision after school? Don't they trust me to handle my time with my children adequately, just as I trust them to handle the in-school hours? How do they think they got tall and strong enough to come to their school in the first place?
When I've thought the main after-school furor has ended, then all the afterthought comments start, and continue at the rate of one per 2.8 minutes: "Ms. Nguyen says she needs you to send her your email address." "Ms. Music says we should really think about buying my own violin." "Sarah said I should try out for her club."
This year was particularly bad. Not only was I supposed to be dealing with all of these children's raw emotions and insecurities, I had enough of my own. I'd made the mistake of scheduling my own test-of-my-life and starting to study for it. While trying to go over some sample questions for my test, I was interrupted ten times in ten minutes. I put my books away, thinking, "It was their first day of school, and they need me." I went out into the living room to read the newspaper and just BE THERE for them.
No one came into the room. No one.
Twenty minutes later, I went back to my books. The interruptions resumed immediately.
My kids' teachers are the bosses of them, but, somehow, I feel bossed around, too, by their rules and expectations. Times five.
By bedtime, I was in a cold sweat, trying not to retort, "I don't care!" to everything they said. I faintly remembered through all this how I used to regurgitate every detail of my life to my patient mother, and she had more children than I have. I will never know how she did it. I was tempted to lock myself away, and probably should have.
I finally got them all to bed and slogged around the house through my piles of guilt. Once the house was quiet, I remembered how I had thought the afternoon would go. Lots of listening and hugs, reassurances and good advice, complete with the smell of fresh-baked cookies in the air.
Yeah, right. That would be the afternoon they spent with the mom they don't have.
I guess I've got more studying to do than I thought. It is, after all, just the first day.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Legitimate What?
There's a lot of talk today about something called, "legitimate rape," so I've been trying to wrap my head around it.
It sounds like one of those oxymorons, like jumbo shrimp or living death.
Since rape is illegal, in all cases, I don't see how it could ever be "legitimate" in any case.
I'm just going to come out and say that, rather than being an oxymoronic term, "legitimate rape" is just a moronic term.
In addition, I'll offer my own definition of rape. If she (or he) doesn't want to, or isn't old or able enough to give consent, it's rape. Any form of force, and it's rape. And anyone who gets a "yes" using power, threats, coercion, bribes, fear, authority, or manipulation to get their way with someone is guilty, too. Period.
It's true that there are plenty of [people] who don't get it. You know what kind of [people] I mean. [People] who don't view women as people, as intelligent individuals capable of knowing their own minds. Who think women are only here on earth to be used by them.
Like the guy who kept saying to me, "You're so cute--why won't you go out with me?" He was completely missing the part of his brain that would have told him that I would have to think he was cute to want to go out with him.
Or the coworker who asked me out over and over, only to receive clearer and clearer refusals. Actually, the first one: "No, thanks," should have been clear enough. Finally, I said, "Look. I don't want to go out with you. How can I be clearer?"
"That's pretty clear," he said. "I just keep hoping you'll change your mind."
Because, of course! I can't know what I really mean or really want. In their minds, it's just not possible for anyone to NOT want one of these Neanderthals.
Or the guy who got in trouble for harassing me, only to plead later, "I don't understand why we can't be friends!"
"Because I admire my friends," I said. He didn't get it.
And don't get me started on the superhero ability someone thinks women's bodies have of "shutting down" conception as an act of will. I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that every time I tried to get my husband pregnant, it backfired.
It would be wonderful if we could just decide whether or not to get pregnant. I did choose to have each of my seven children--and would again, but just think--if this was something women could control mentally, there would be no need at all for contraception, adoption, infertility treatment, or probably several other terms that are a necessary part of the world we live in.
In my opinion, there's already no room for moronic terms, and no room in positions of power for those who coin them.
It sounds like one of those oxymorons, like jumbo shrimp or living death.
Since rape is illegal, in all cases, I don't see how it could ever be "legitimate" in any case.
I'm just going to come out and say that, rather than being an oxymoronic term, "legitimate rape" is just a moronic term.
In addition, I'll offer my own definition of rape. If she (or he) doesn't want to, or isn't old or able enough to give consent, it's rape. Any form of force, and it's rape. And anyone who gets a "yes" using power, threats, coercion, bribes, fear, authority, or manipulation to get their way with someone is guilty, too. Period.
It's true that there are plenty of [people] who don't get it. You know what kind of [people] I mean. [People] who don't view women as people, as intelligent individuals capable of knowing their own minds. Who think women are only here on earth to be used by them.
Like the guy who kept saying to me, "You're so cute--why won't you go out with me?" He was completely missing the part of his brain that would have told him that I would have to think he was cute to want to go out with him.
Or the coworker who asked me out over and over, only to receive clearer and clearer refusals. Actually, the first one: "No, thanks," should have been clear enough. Finally, I said, "Look. I don't want to go out with you. How can I be clearer?"
"That's pretty clear," he said. "I just keep hoping you'll change your mind."
Because, of course! I can't know what I really mean or really want. In their minds, it's just not possible for anyone to NOT want one of these Neanderthals.
Or the guy who got in trouble for harassing me, only to plead later, "I don't understand why we can't be friends!"
"Because I admire my friends," I said. He didn't get it.
And don't get me started on the superhero ability someone thinks women's bodies have of "shutting down" conception as an act of will. I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that every time I tried to get my husband pregnant, it backfired.
It would be wonderful if we could just decide whether or not to get pregnant. I did choose to have each of my seven children--and would again, but just think--if this was something women could control mentally, there would be no need at all for contraception, adoption, infertility treatment, or probably several other terms that are a necessary part of the world we live in.
In my opinion, there's already no room for moronic terms, and no room in positions of power for those who coin them.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Waiting, but Not for the Bus
Most mornings, I pass a man waiting on a bus bench.
I don't know what he is waiting for, but I don't think it's the bus.
He has a blanket over him. He has his coat on. (Yeah, it's August.) He has a huge backpack propped up on the bench next to him. And a garbage bag. A shopping cart stands nearby.
I come by sometime between five and six a.m., so my guess is that he's been there all night. I don't get a real good look at him, because a) I'm just driving by and b) it's dark. But I've seen him enough times that I have a pretty good idea of the scene.
Sometimes, I want to stop and ask him what he's waiting for.
I mean, obviously, he's homeless. He's picked that bus bench to "live on." He probably doesn't think he's waiting for anything.
But I think he is.
I don't know what his problems are, or what led him to this place--in my city and in his life. I can only make assumptions. I can only guess. So I know I could be totally wrong.
But my mind whirls as I pass him. What would that be like, to wait at a bus stop night after night after night, protecting oneself from the elements and whatever else might be out there, waiting for a bus that you never take? Or waiting for a different bus, maybe--one that never comes.
Because I'm sure, time after time, the bus does come. And he probably ignores it, averts his eyes, whatever. And doesn't get on.
And the bus driver is probably used to him being there and not getting on.
Or, maybe, he does get on, but then he comes back.
But I do want to ask him, "What exactly are you waiting for? What do you think will happen if you keep sitting here?" I wonder if he thinks something will happen that will change his life, or if someone will rescue him. Does he think anything will change his life if he doesn't change something? Is he just waiting to die? I wonder if he has acclimated to the situation enough that he feels content with it, thinks he's fine. Maybe he gets by with pan-handling.
I learned years ago from my job that there are two kinds of people in the world. I know that's simplistic, but hear me out. There are the people who drift through life as though they are on a little raft in a stream and just wait to see what happens to them. They think of life just as the stuff that happens and have no real idea of what will happen next. Then there are the people who realize that they can make the things happen to them that they want to have happen and can prevent other things from happening. Not totally, of course, but to a large extent. These are the people who paint their raft another color, or find oars so they can steer it, or jump off it and swim to shore and have a whole different life. Or tidy up the raft and make it exactly the way they want it to be.
I've had people tell me that they couldn't job search, or keep a job, or finish working on their GED, or attend a workshop, because one day, something happened to them. "I got pregnant," they will say, as though they have no idea what caused that nor that they can manage their lives around that. Like catching pneumonia. I mean, what did they have to do with that? It just happened. It was fate, their destiny.
"So, now you need that job even more," I point out, and they blink at me.
I wonder if the man on the bench is that kind of person. I wonder if he ever thinks about getting on the bus and going somewhere else, or walking down the street and applying for a job, or finding a way to clean up, or going to church.
Maybe I should talk to him and get his story and thoughts.
I think we have all been like that to some extent at some point in our lives. I remember about three times where I was really stuck and had to make a dramatic change in order to stop spinning in circles. No, it wasn't easy. But I was getting sick to my stomach from the spinning. You know what I mean?
Sometimes, it's taken me years to be ready to change something I need to change. It depends on what I'm thinking, what my fears are.
I wonder that he isn't sick already from the spinning. Personally, I think I'd last about an hour in his situation. I hope I would do something else by then. I wonder if he thinks he can't?
I was once told in a seminar that they control elephants by chaining one foot to a stake when they are young so that the elephant learns it can only go as far as the length of the chain. Then they can take the chain off its foot, because the elephant will still think it can only go that far. I don't know if that is true, but it makes a good point.
Often, the chains that keep us back are only in our minds. Really.
We could get on the bus, and go somewhere else.
I don't know what he is waiting for, but I don't think it's the bus.
He has a blanket over him. He has his coat on. (Yeah, it's August.) He has a huge backpack propped up on the bench next to him. And a garbage bag. A shopping cart stands nearby.
I come by sometime between five and six a.m., so my guess is that he's been there all night. I don't get a real good look at him, because a) I'm just driving by and b) it's dark. But I've seen him enough times that I have a pretty good idea of the scene.
Sometimes, I want to stop and ask him what he's waiting for.
I mean, obviously, he's homeless. He's picked that bus bench to "live on." He probably doesn't think he's waiting for anything.
But I think he is.
I don't know what his problems are, or what led him to this place--in my city and in his life. I can only make assumptions. I can only guess. So I know I could be totally wrong.
But my mind whirls as I pass him. What would that be like, to wait at a bus stop night after night after night, protecting oneself from the elements and whatever else might be out there, waiting for a bus that you never take? Or waiting for a different bus, maybe--one that never comes.
Because I'm sure, time after time, the bus does come. And he probably ignores it, averts his eyes, whatever. And doesn't get on.
And the bus driver is probably used to him being there and not getting on.
Or, maybe, he does get on, but then he comes back.
But I do want to ask him, "What exactly are you waiting for? What do you think will happen if you keep sitting here?" I wonder if he thinks something will happen that will change his life, or if someone will rescue him. Does he think anything will change his life if he doesn't change something? Is he just waiting to die? I wonder if he has acclimated to the situation enough that he feels content with it, thinks he's fine. Maybe he gets by with pan-handling.
I learned years ago from my job that there are two kinds of people in the world. I know that's simplistic, but hear me out. There are the people who drift through life as though they are on a little raft in a stream and just wait to see what happens to them. They think of life just as the stuff that happens and have no real idea of what will happen next. Then there are the people who realize that they can make the things happen to them that they want to have happen and can prevent other things from happening. Not totally, of course, but to a large extent. These are the people who paint their raft another color, or find oars so they can steer it, or jump off it and swim to shore and have a whole different life. Or tidy up the raft and make it exactly the way they want it to be.
I've had people tell me that they couldn't job search, or keep a job, or finish working on their GED, or attend a workshop, because one day, something happened to them. "I got pregnant," they will say, as though they have no idea what caused that nor that they can manage their lives around that. Like catching pneumonia. I mean, what did they have to do with that? It just happened. It was fate, their destiny.
"So, now you need that job even more," I point out, and they blink at me.
I wonder if the man on the bench is that kind of person. I wonder if he ever thinks about getting on the bus and going somewhere else, or walking down the street and applying for a job, or finding a way to clean up, or going to church.
Maybe I should talk to him and get his story and thoughts.
I think we have all been like that to some extent at some point in our lives. I remember about three times where I was really stuck and had to make a dramatic change in order to stop spinning in circles. No, it wasn't easy. But I was getting sick to my stomach from the spinning. You know what I mean?
Sometimes, it's taken me years to be ready to change something I need to change. It depends on what I'm thinking, what my fears are.
I wonder that he isn't sick already from the spinning. Personally, I think I'd last about an hour in his situation. I hope I would do something else by then. I wonder if he thinks he can't?
I was once told in a seminar that they control elephants by chaining one foot to a stake when they are young so that the elephant learns it can only go as far as the length of the chain. Then they can take the chain off its foot, because the elephant will still think it can only go that far. I don't know if that is true, but it makes a good point.
Often, the chains that keep us back are only in our minds. Really.
We could get on the bus, and go somewhere else.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
A Call of Inspiration, or Desperation?
My friend told me that she has lived in her new ward for two weeks, and she's already been called to head up one of the major organizations. Besides being stunned, she is laughing. This is because she is supposed to choose some counselors.
"I'm still identifying people by their vehicles," she said. "I guess Sister Little White Sports Car looks nice. And maybe Brother Blue Truck's wife."
She asked her bishop for help. He asked her to pray.
"Can't he even give me a list of names?" she said.
"You'd have to have pictures of their vehicles beside their names," I pointed out.
She laughed some more. One thing this friend is really good at is laughing. "I think maybe I'll pass on Sister Crotch Rocket, though," she said.
"What?"
"That's what I call motorcycles." While I took that in, she added, "I guess I should stop now."
It is descriptive. "Those girls are going to be so lucky," I said.
She wasn't so sure. She told me her bishop had had to ask her some pretty basic questions about her beliefs and practices before he extended this inspired call to her, because he doesn't know her.
I remember when I was called, at age twenty-one, to the same calling in my ward. My bishopric told me at that time, "We didn't pray about it or anything. You're just the obvious choice." I was going through a very rough time and could have punched them.
"I practiced saying no," my friend told me. She demonstrated her polite "No, thank you" for me three times. "And then when they asked me, I was so surprised, I just said, 'That would be great.'"
"You will be great," I assured her.
We are told that we are not supposed to turn down church callings. The main reason for this is that they are supposed to be inspired. Her bishop assured her that her calling was inspired. Mine had basically said mine wasn't. Either way, a calling is an opportunity to serve as a member of the functioning body of the church, and service always has its rewards.
There's the reward of growth. I don't think I've ever had a calling that didn't help me to grow in some way, even if just in patience with other people.
There's the reward of developing our talents.
And there's the reward of serving others, which always brings back blessings to ourselves, fourfold, sooner or later.
At any rate, I'm pulling for my friend. When they ask her ward over the pulpit to support Sister Little White Sports Car and Sister Blue Truck in their callings, I hope everyone will raise their hands.
"I'm still identifying people by their vehicles," she said. "I guess Sister Little White Sports Car looks nice. And maybe Brother Blue Truck's wife."
She asked her bishop for help. He asked her to pray.
"Can't he even give me a list of names?" she said.
"You'd have to have pictures of their vehicles beside their names," I pointed out.
She laughed some more. One thing this friend is really good at is laughing. "I think maybe I'll pass on Sister Crotch Rocket, though," she said.
"What?"
"That's what I call motorcycles." While I took that in, she added, "I guess I should stop now."
It is descriptive. "Those girls are going to be so lucky," I said.
She wasn't so sure. She told me her bishop had had to ask her some pretty basic questions about her beliefs and practices before he extended this inspired call to her, because he doesn't know her.
I remember when I was called, at age twenty-one, to the same calling in my ward. My bishopric told me at that time, "We didn't pray about it or anything. You're just the obvious choice." I was going through a very rough time and could have punched them.
"I practiced saying no," my friend told me. She demonstrated her polite "No, thank you" for me three times. "And then when they asked me, I was so surprised, I just said, 'That would be great.'"
"You will be great," I assured her.
We are told that we are not supposed to turn down church callings. The main reason for this is that they are supposed to be inspired. Her bishop assured her that her calling was inspired. Mine had basically said mine wasn't. Either way, a calling is an opportunity to serve as a member of the functioning body of the church, and service always has its rewards.
There's the reward of growth. I don't think I've ever had a calling that didn't help me to grow in some way, even if just in patience with other people.
There's the reward of developing our talents.
And there's the reward of serving others, which always brings back blessings to ourselves, fourfold, sooner or later.
At any rate, I'm pulling for my friend. When they ask her ward over the pulpit to support Sister Little White Sports Car and Sister Blue Truck in their callings, I hope everyone will raise their hands.
Monday, August 13, 2012
A Normal Life
It's one thing to promise yourself that your child with a disability will lead a normal life--that you won't treat him or her any differently than you would without the disability.
It's another to send that child off to wilderness camp for six days.
Will his glasses break, or get lost? What if he forgets to take his medicine, or, worse, loses it? What if something happens to him that, if it happened to a child without the disability, would be bad enough--but, if it happened to him, would be chilling?
You try very hard not to think of him lost, or facing a bear, or kidnapped, without being able to even see.
Maybe, with him, the risks are just too great, you think.
And then you remember your promise, back when he was two weeks old and you could control everything.
What, exactly, did you mean?
Did you mean just that you would let him go to school, but not camp? That he would walk, but not swim or hike?
Of course you didn't mean those things. So, you weigh the risks of bringing it up with him. On the one hand, without his disability, you wouldn't bring it up. On the other, you know that a good parent coaches children on how to avoid calamity, what to do in an emergency, and how to prevent problems.
So, you hesitatingly ask, what's your plan, son, for keeping your glasses safe when you're in the lake? Because his glasses aren't just glasses, you see. They are the only lenses his eyes have. They are actually, in his case, a prosthetic device. Other kids don't worry about losing the natural lenses inside their eyeballs in the lake. Or someone stepping on them when they are left on the sand on a towel.
Like the responsible kid he is, he has a plan already. And he tells it to you. It's a good one. So, you nod and smile. You want to hug him, and then never let go. But you find yourself treating him like the adult he is becoming. Because he just earned it.
And you let him go camping.
And you pray.
And hug him when he gets back. With his glasses. Just like you knew he would.
It's another to send that child off to wilderness camp for six days.
Will his glasses break, or get lost? What if he forgets to take his medicine, or, worse, loses it? What if something happens to him that, if it happened to a child without the disability, would be bad enough--but, if it happened to him, would be chilling?
You try very hard not to think of him lost, or facing a bear, or kidnapped, without being able to even see.
Maybe, with him, the risks are just too great, you think.
And then you remember your promise, back when he was two weeks old and you could control everything.
What, exactly, did you mean?
Did you mean just that you would let him go to school, but not camp? That he would walk, but not swim or hike?
Of course you didn't mean those things. So, you weigh the risks of bringing it up with him. On the one hand, without his disability, you wouldn't bring it up. On the other, you know that a good parent coaches children on how to avoid calamity, what to do in an emergency, and how to prevent problems.
So, you hesitatingly ask, what's your plan, son, for keeping your glasses safe when you're in the lake? Because his glasses aren't just glasses, you see. They are the only lenses his eyes have. They are actually, in his case, a prosthetic device. Other kids don't worry about losing the natural lenses inside their eyeballs in the lake. Or someone stepping on them when they are left on the sand on a towel.
Like the responsible kid he is, he has a plan already. And he tells it to you. It's a good one. So, you nod and smile. You want to hug him, and then never let go. But you find yourself treating him like the adult he is becoming. Because he just earned it.
And you let him go camping.
And you pray.
And hug him when he gets back. With his glasses. Just like you knew he would.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
I Open at the Close
It's a good thing my kids have my husband, Paul, as a parent, or they'd never have any fun.
We gave one of our children a Harry Potter birthday party. It couldn't have been more precious.
Actually, it could have. But I said NO!
It started out with the simple statement, "I want to have a Harry Potter party."
One child suggested we could do "Pin the Scar on Harry" as a game. That was cute, I thought, but how would we get the materials? My artistic son volunteered to make that game. I said fine.
We bought HP cups, plates, napkins, and invitations. We picked up HP glasses and bookmarks for the goody bags. A son put the first movie up on the TV screen so I could imitate Harry's original invitation to Hogwart's--green ink and all--on the envelopes. The birthday child and I went around to deliver the invitations. He had drawn a scar on a piece of tape that he had stuck to his forehead. And he brought his owl puppet.
The owl carried the invitations in its beak. When the doors to the unsuspecting muggle homes were opened, the owl screeched and tossed the invitations on the floor. If the invited party was lucky enough to be present at that moment, it sent her/him scrambling.
Honestly, I thought that was cute enough.
I had no idea what was to follow.
Another day, my husband and I went shopping. He picked up a clear plastic, openable ball.
"What's that for?" I asked.
"It's a prophecy for the scavenger hunt."
"Scavenger hunt!" I said in shock, imagining thirteen children running all over the neighborhood collecting dozens of items that we would have to a) buy, and b) do things to.
"It's okay," he said, grabbing a ball-shaped cake pan.
"What's that for?"
"The Snitch cake."
"Oh, that's cute," I said, doubtfully, as he started reading cans of edible spray paint.
He pondered over several kinds of circle things, finally settling on some large styrofoam rings, then tested some dowels for their strength. Quidditch hoops, of course.
"We're playing Quidditch?" I asked. "How will we teach the kids to fly?"
Most sports games seem complicated to me, but Quidditch seems unnecessarily complicated, and the complications seem pointless. I did my best to be patient as we stood in an aisle in a craft store while my husband explained Beaters, Bludgers, Quaffles, Seekers, Chasers, and Keepers to me. "I'll run around holding the Snitch," he assured me.
We rejected four kinds of silver paper as not filmy but not sturdy enough. My feet started to hurt. I'd had my own beating, bludgeoning, seeking, chasing, and keeping that morning on my ten-mile run.
"We need poster board," he said.
"What for?"
"The 'Pin the Scar on Harry' game," he reminded me, picking up several more than one sheet.
"You think he'll make that many mistakes?"
"No. These are for the Platform 9-3/4 sign and the Hogwart's crest."
I should have known.
We headed off to yet another store. I found out there was also going to be a jelly bean tasting contest. And tie-coloring. "We can use that old purple witch's hat for the sorting."
"Wait a minute," I said. "This party is only an hour-and-a-half long. We can't reenact all eight movies."
So, a clerk at the craft store got to see marriage in action as I pointed out that he would be leaving for work before the end of the party, and I didn't want to be stuck with six more activities to complete after he left. And he watched as Paul graciously agreed to scale back his ideas in order to have the ties colored before the children arrived and were sorted.
I loped along behind as Paul hunted at four stores for a ball that could serve as the Snitch, only to find out that it also needed to be painted gold and needed to somehow have wings attached.
"We need gold and silver spray paint?" I asked, incredulously. "You already got gold paint."
"That's edible. That's just for the cake," he reminded me.
I'm not sure what we spent more of that day--dollars or hours--hunting for all this stuff. I was completely exhausted. To be honest, just the thought of cleaning up the house and yard for a party exhausted me. Every plan for the actual party added one more level of exhaustion. To Paul, the cleanup was a minor detail that could be accomplished with the wave of a wand. His focus was to search the Internet for two hours each night looking up more and more ideas.
I think Paul and my artistic son both secretly wished this was their own birthday party, but they both refocused their envy into an enormous drive to make it the best HP party ever for little brother.
Over the next couple of weeks, my kitchen became full of chocolate frogs and chocolate-dipped pretzel wands. It became the factory for manufacturing a basilisk fang, a golden egg, a prophecy, the sorcerer's stone, and Salazar Slytherin's locket. Cups held water for paint--gold paint, silver paint, red paint for bricks.
There were still surprises. I opened the downstairs refrigerator to find a case of red cream soda. "What's this?" I asked.
"It's for the butter beer." This party has allowed Paul to perfect an offhanded, you-should-already-know-this tone.
Butter beer. I confess, I didn't read any of the HP books and only saw three or four movies.
What else!??? I wanted to both scream and not ask.
When I got up from a Sunday nap to find my husband researching how to make a scary, foamy liquid to go inside the clear plastic ball, I almost snapped. I grabbed my notebook and called a private meeting. Paul balked. "We agreed on a meeting to figure out what activities we would be doing and how long we would run each one," I reminded him.
"I had that meeting last night," he informed me. "You were too busy."
"You can't have a meeting with me without me," I said.
"I made a list and left it up on the computer."
"When on earth have I had time to be at the computer this weekend?"
"Look. Here it is," he said, switching windows.
The list read, "Sorting. Bean-tasting. Scavenger Hunt. Quidditch." THAT was supposedly our meeting.
"See?" he said. "Four activities, besides presents and cake." Because presents and cake are just an after-thought at a birthday party.
"You forgot 'Pin the Scar.'"
He added it.
"I need to talk this through and write it all down before I go off on a trip to the end of my rope and don't come back until it's over," I explained. "I need it all contained on one page and tied down to earth with time frames so that I can handle it. I'm not planning to say no to everything--I just need to breathe."
We both took deep breaths and talked about the order and the time frames. I wrote it all down in my notebook.
"I don't want it to be like a police whistle and everyone has to stop having fun because of a schedule," he said.
"I understand. And I don't want to be running forty-five minutes late when you leave for work," I said.
I used my best social worker skills to acknowledge that both his visionary skills and my practicality skills were useful to give the party shape and balance, and that by working together, we could make this party work from all angles. It was my best shot.
But the party seemed to continue to privately and secretly grow, behind doors, when I was asleep or at work. I would just discover things that had not been run by me--for example, that Paul was sanding real wood wands for prizes.
Just last night, a child came up to me and said that he "needed" to finish a list of all the spells to go into the goody bags.
"Is your room clean?" I asked.
Paul thought he would be up all night decorating the cake I had baked. But the cake I had baked would not work for a Golden Snitch cake. It fell apart. You see, I'm used to baking cakes for regular parties--parties where the cake doesn't have to balance on an arc or have wings or fly. So he had to start over from scratch. I helped him get it baked and then encouraged him to frost it in the morning, because it would need time to cool. I also successfully suggested that he didn't need to find the white food coloring to make sure the frosting was not off-white (from the vanilla) before he spray-painted it gold.
He listened, and then spent the morning smoothing and smoothing and smoothing frosting over the hemispheres of the orange cake while I washed walls, arranged furniture, and set up for the party. He had already told me that he still needed to make grooves in the cake and paint it gold. As time ran out and my stress built, I thought if he kept smoothing the icing much longer, I might grab that can of spray paint and complete the grooves AND spray both him and the cake in one fell swoop.
Then, he announced that it needed to have words on it.
"Really?" Each revelation appeared in my mind like another hurdle to cross, and I had no idea how. Paul had ideas how, but not always the time to do them.
"I'm tempted to print it out on paper and just stick it on," he said. I agreed that sounded better than piping five words on in frosting. It was almost time for the party. He typed up the words and printed them out. I cut them out of the paper.
"It needs to be gold," he said. We asked our children to find a gold crayon. They couldn't. Paul discarded the original words and spray-painted the rest of the paper gold, then left it to dry.
"Please don't run that through my printer," I begged. "I'll pen them myself." I used my ancient calligraphy skills to do just that on some of the gold-sprayed paper, then cut the phrase out and stuck it on the gold-painted, grooved, smoothed, rebaked Snitch cake. Paul stuck the wings in, after running for reinforcing sticks to tape to the silvery wings that were too floppy.
Four of us dove for our cameras.
As the party started, I saw the value in all the many little details that had been realized. I placed chocolate frogs on the table and let one leap up onto the edge of the cake plate. We put frogs and wands in the goody bags. We ran through the activities faster than I had thought we would, and I admitted it was a good thing there were so many.
With Paul's hurried instructions, I filmed him running around with the Snitch ball in the sunshine, being chased by my birthday child. The silver Quidditch hoops looked nice stuck in the lawn. The cake was amazing. The children had fun. One little girl announced that her ambition in life is to attend the real Hogwart's.
My back ached. I had missed my run this morning. But it was a good party.
Paul was the visionary planner. I was the practical timekeeper. We tried to have patience with each other's strengths. We tried to have patience with each other's weaknesses. We are not the same, and that's good. I open where he closes; he opens where I close.
We made a child who is magical, and we made a magical birthday party for that child.
And I hope to heaven that I really made a movie of Paul running around with the Golden Snitch, because I want to remember that image forever, and that though I tried to capture it, it still flew.
We gave one of our children a Harry Potter birthday party. It couldn't have been more precious.
Actually, it could have. But I said NO!
It started out with the simple statement, "I want to have a Harry Potter party."
One child suggested we could do "Pin the Scar on Harry" as a game. That was cute, I thought, but how would we get the materials? My artistic son volunteered to make that game. I said fine.
We bought HP cups, plates, napkins, and invitations. We picked up HP glasses and bookmarks for the goody bags. A son put the first movie up on the TV screen so I could imitate Harry's original invitation to Hogwart's--green ink and all--on the envelopes. The birthday child and I went around to deliver the invitations. He had drawn a scar on a piece of tape that he had stuck to his forehead. And he brought his owl puppet.
The owl carried the invitations in its beak. When the doors to the unsuspecting muggle homes were opened, the owl screeched and tossed the invitations on the floor. If the invited party was lucky enough to be present at that moment, it sent her/him scrambling.
Honestly, I thought that was cute enough.
I had no idea what was to follow.
Another day, my husband and I went shopping. He picked up a clear plastic, openable ball.
"What's that for?" I asked.
"It's a prophecy for the scavenger hunt."
"Scavenger hunt!" I said in shock, imagining thirteen children running all over the neighborhood collecting dozens of items that we would have to a) buy, and b) do things to.
"It's okay," he said, grabbing a ball-shaped cake pan.
"What's that for?"
"The Snitch cake."
"Oh, that's cute," I said, doubtfully, as he started reading cans of edible spray paint.
He pondered over several kinds of circle things, finally settling on some large styrofoam rings, then tested some dowels for their strength. Quidditch hoops, of course.
"We're playing Quidditch?" I asked. "How will we teach the kids to fly?"
Most sports games seem complicated to me, but Quidditch seems unnecessarily complicated, and the complications seem pointless. I did my best to be patient as we stood in an aisle in a craft store while my husband explained Beaters, Bludgers, Quaffles, Seekers, Chasers, and Keepers to me. "I'll run around holding the Snitch," he assured me.
We rejected four kinds of silver paper as not filmy but not sturdy enough. My feet started to hurt. I'd had my own beating, bludgeoning, seeking, chasing, and keeping that morning on my ten-mile run.
"We need poster board," he said.
"What for?"
"The 'Pin the Scar on Harry' game," he reminded me, picking up several more than one sheet.
"You think he'll make that many mistakes?"
"No. These are for the Platform 9-3/4 sign and the Hogwart's crest."
I should have known.
We headed off to yet another store. I found out there was also going to be a jelly bean tasting contest. And tie-coloring. "We can use that old purple witch's hat for the sorting."
"Wait a minute," I said. "This party is only an hour-and-a-half long. We can't reenact all eight movies."
So, a clerk at the craft store got to see marriage in action as I pointed out that he would be leaving for work before the end of the party, and I didn't want to be stuck with six more activities to complete after he left. And he watched as Paul graciously agreed to scale back his ideas in order to have the ties colored before the children arrived and were sorted.
I loped along behind as Paul hunted at four stores for a ball that could serve as the Snitch, only to find out that it also needed to be painted gold and needed to somehow have wings attached.
"We need gold and silver spray paint?" I asked, incredulously. "You already got gold paint."
"That's edible. That's just for the cake," he reminded me.
I'm not sure what we spent more of that day--dollars or hours--hunting for all this stuff. I was completely exhausted. To be honest, just the thought of cleaning up the house and yard for a party exhausted me. Every plan for the actual party added one more level of exhaustion. To Paul, the cleanup was a minor detail that could be accomplished with the wave of a wand. His focus was to search the Internet for two hours each night looking up more and more ideas.
I think Paul and my artistic son both secretly wished this was their own birthday party, but they both refocused their envy into an enormous drive to make it the best HP party ever for little brother.
Over the next couple of weeks, my kitchen became full of chocolate frogs and chocolate-dipped pretzel wands. It became the factory for manufacturing a basilisk fang, a golden egg, a prophecy, the sorcerer's stone, and Salazar Slytherin's locket. Cups held water for paint--gold paint, silver paint, red paint for bricks.
There were still surprises. I opened the downstairs refrigerator to find a case of red cream soda. "What's this?" I asked.
"It's for the butter beer." This party has allowed Paul to perfect an offhanded, you-should-already-know-this tone.
Butter beer. I confess, I didn't read any of the HP books and only saw three or four movies.
What else!??? I wanted to both scream and not ask.
When I got up from a Sunday nap to find my husband researching how to make a scary, foamy liquid to go inside the clear plastic ball, I almost snapped. I grabbed my notebook and called a private meeting. Paul balked. "We agreed on a meeting to figure out what activities we would be doing and how long we would run each one," I reminded him.
"I had that meeting last night," he informed me. "You were too busy."
"You can't have a meeting with me without me," I said.
"I made a list and left it up on the computer."
"When on earth have I had time to be at the computer this weekend?"
"Look. Here it is," he said, switching windows.
The list read, "Sorting. Bean-tasting. Scavenger Hunt. Quidditch." THAT was supposedly our meeting.
"See?" he said. "Four activities, besides presents and cake." Because presents and cake are just an after-thought at a birthday party.
"You forgot 'Pin the Scar.'"
He added it.
"I need to talk this through and write it all down before I go off on a trip to the end of my rope and don't come back until it's over," I explained. "I need it all contained on one page and tied down to earth with time frames so that I can handle it. I'm not planning to say no to everything--I just need to breathe."
We both took deep breaths and talked about the order and the time frames. I wrote it all down in my notebook.
"I don't want it to be like a police whistle and everyone has to stop having fun because of a schedule," he said.
"I understand. And I don't want to be running forty-five minutes late when you leave for work," I said.
I used my best social worker skills to acknowledge that both his visionary skills and my practicality skills were useful to give the party shape and balance, and that by working together, we could make this party work from all angles. It was my best shot.
But the party seemed to continue to privately and secretly grow, behind doors, when I was asleep or at work. I would just discover things that had not been run by me--for example, that Paul was sanding real wood wands for prizes.
Just last night, a child came up to me and said that he "needed" to finish a list of all the spells to go into the goody bags.
"Is your room clean?" I asked.
Paul thought he would be up all night decorating the cake I had baked. But the cake I had baked would not work for a Golden Snitch cake. It fell apart. You see, I'm used to baking cakes for regular parties--parties where the cake doesn't have to balance on an arc or have wings or fly. So he had to start over from scratch. I helped him get it baked and then encouraged him to frost it in the morning, because it would need time to cool. I also successfully suggested that he didn't need to find the white food coloring to make sure the frosting was not off-white (from the vanilla) before he spray-painted it gold.
He listened, and then spent the morning smoothing and smoothing and smoothing frosting over the hemispheres of the orange cake while I washed walls, arranged furniture, and set up for the party. He had already told me that he still needed to make grooves in the cake and paint it gold. As time ran out and my stress built, I thought if he kept smoothing the icing much longer, I might grab that can of spray paint and complete the grooves AND spray both him and the cake in one fell swoop.
Then, he announced that it needed to have words on it.
"Really?" Each revelation appeared in my mind like another hurdle to cross, and I had no idea how. Paul had ideas how, but not always the time to do them.
"I'm tempted to print it out on paper and just stick it on," he said. I agreed that sounded better than piping five words on in frosting. It was almost time for the party. He typed up the words and printed them out. I cut them out of the paper.
"It needs to be gold," he said. We asked our children to find a gold crayon. They couldn't. Paul discarded the original words and spray-painted the rest of the paper gold, then left it to dry.
"Please don't run that through my printer," I begged. "I'll pen them myself." I used my ancient calligraphy skills to do just that on some of the gold-sprayed paper, then cut the phrase out and stuck it on the gold-painted, grooved, smoothed, rebaked Snitch cake. Paul stuck the wings in, after running for reinforcing sticks to tape to the silvery wings that were too floppy.
Four of us dove for our cameras.
As the party started, I saw the value in all the many little details that had been realized. I placed chocolate frogs on the table and let one leap up onto the edge of the cake plate. We put frogs and wands in the goody bags. We ran through the activities faster than I had thought we would, and I admitted it was a good thing there were so many.
With Paul's hurried instructions, I filmed him running around with the Snitch ball in the sunshine, being chased by my birthday child. The silver Quidditch hoops looked nice stuck in the lawn. The cake was amazing. The children had fun. One little girl announced that her ambition in life is to attend the real Hogwart's.
My back ached. I had missed my run this morning. But it was a good party.
Paul was the visionary planner. I was the practical timekeeper. We tried to have patience with each other's strengths. We tried to have patience with each other's weaknesses. We are not the same, and that's good. I open where he closes; he opens where I close.
We made a child who is magical, and we made a magical birthday party for that child.
And I hope to heaven that I really made a movie of Paul running around with the Golden Snitch, because I want to remember that image forever, and that though I tried to capture it, it still flew.
Monday, August 6, 2012
Stepping Lighter
Yesterday, I read a newspaper article entitled, "Mental side a big factor for athletes." It caught my eye because I've been thinking about revealing some of the mental games I do to keep myself going when I'm exercising.
It's not always easy when you are already sweating like a horse and your ankles hurt and you know you have thirty-seven minutes left. IF, you don't quit early.
The article actually turned out not to be about that. It was about what makes Olympic athletes "choke" during an event and mess up, instead of doing it perfectly, like they have one thousand and one other times, which is why they--and not I--were selected to be in the Olympics in the first place.
I never choke. I never do anything really tricky, just laborious. So, the article really wasn't about what I thought it would be about at all. But that doesn't have to stop me from blogging my thoughts about the mental side being a big factor.
I would never be in the Olympics, because, for one thing, my event would be called the "Old Lady Crawl," and it would be more boring to watch than golf.
It's even boring to DO, which is why I have to play mental games.
I would also never be in the Olympics, because I don't like to be watched when I'm exercising. I used to see a ninety-nine-year-old woman who curled her burgundy-dyed hair and put on full makeup and a velour gym suit in order to walk very slowly on the treadmill, her large old-lady purse banging against her hip as she went.
That is not me.
All I do with my hair before I hit the gym is clip it up out of my eyes. I don't need sweat dripping in them. I never put on makeup--that would be ridiculous. After rolling out of bed, I just swish some mouthwash so that I'm not other-than-visually offensive, put on my plain old exercise clothes, and dash out the door.
And then I sweat. Hard. By the time I'm done, I really hope no one is looking at me at all.
Apparently, that is not always the case.
This morning, shortly after I stepped up onto the treadmill for my run, the man on the right of me, whom I had barely noticed was there, came around to stand on the treadmill to the left of me. That seemed odd, so I looked at him. He was an older man, probably in his late sixties or seventies. I don't remember ever having seen him before. "Don't you usually work out on that machine up there?" he asked, shrugging off in another direction.
"Yes," I said, "but on Saturdays I run."
He kept looking at me, so I explained further. "Sometimes when you're on vacation, running is the only thing you can do, so I like to keep up my running skills."
He kept looking.
"One time on vacation, I ran, and I couldn't walk the next day, so I decided to run once a week." Why was I telling this man all of that? I stopped myself before I told him that I had to run on Saturdays, because I'm such a slow runner that that is the only day I have time enough to do any significant mileage. It was, after all, none of his business.
"Well, you really know how to work that machine," he said.
I laughed. "I don't want to be fat," I said. And I almost said that that was really all there was to it. But then I realized that wasn't true. My vanity may have gotten me started, but it really has become about my health.
"I want to be fit. I have little kids that I have to stay around for."
"You're my hero!" he burst out.
I laughed again.
"When I wake up in the mornings, and I don't feel like coming to the gym, I tell myself, 'No, that lady is there every single day.' You're my motivation."
I thanked him warmly, and he left.
Next time I see him, I will try to notice him. I will remember my manners and ask his name. And I will tell him that I needed his comment as much as he needs my example. Not to get me up in the morning--I've mastered getting to the gym without having to battle myself. But knowing that I could be an influence for good on someone, even while doing my most mundane routines, helps me to keep going in other ways.
Isn't it great that we can all help each other?
I try to be someone influential. I am happy to see that people are reading this blog in Russia, China, India, France, Germany, Indonesia, and other countries. I have no idea who they are, but I am happy to think that my reaching out with what I have to give could be appreciated widely.
My heart was warmed by his comments. The next mile or so was really easy to run.
That's what we're all here for, I think--to make each other's step a little lighter.
It's not always easy when you are already sweating like a horse and your ankles hurt and you know you have thirty-seven minutes left. IF, you don't quit early.
The article actually turned out not to be about that. It was about what makes Olympic athletes "choke" during an event and mess up, instead of doing it perfectly, like they have one thousand and one other times, which is why they--and not I--were selected to be in the Olympics in the first place.
I never choke. I never do anything really tricky, just laborious. So, the article really wasn't about what I thought it would be about at all. But that doesn't have to stop me from blogging my thoughts about the mental side being a big factor.
I would never be in the Olympics, because, for one thing, my event would be called the "Old Lady Crawl," and it would be more boring to watch than golf.
It's even boring to DO, which is why I have to play mental games.
I would also never be in the Olympics, because I don't like to be watched when I'm exercising. I used to see a ninety-nine-year-old woman who curled her burgundy-dyed hair and put on full makeup and a velour gym suit in order to walk very slowly on the treadmill, her large old-lady purse banging against her hip as she went.
That is not me.
All I do with my hair before I hit the gym is clip it up out of my eyes. I don't need sweat dripping in them. I never put on makeup--that would be ridiculous. After rolling out of bed, I just swish some mouthwash so that I'm not other-than-visually offensive, put on my plain old exercise clothes, and dash out the door.
And then I sweat. Hard. By the time I'm done, I really hope no one is looking at me at all.
Apparently, that is not always the case.
This morning, shortly after I stepped up onto the treadmill for my run, the man on the right of me, whom I had barely noticed was there, came around to stand on the treadmill to the left of me. That seemed odd, so I looked at him. He was an older man, probably in his late sixties or seventies. I don't remember ever having seen him before. "Don't you usually work out on that machine up there?" he asked, shrugging off in another direction.
"Yes," I said, "but on Saturdays I run."
He kept looking at me, so I explained further. "Sometimes when you're on vacation, running is the only thing you can do, so I like to keep up my running skills."
He kept looking.
"One time on vacation, I ran, and I couldn't walk the next day, so I decided to run once a week." Why was I telling this man all of that? I stopped myself before I told him that I had to run on Saturdays, because I'm such a slow runner that that is the only day I have time enough to do any significant mileage. It was, after all, none of his business.
"Well, you really know how to work that machine," he said.
I laughed. "I don't want to be fat," I said. And I almost said that that was really all there was to it. But then I realized that wasn't true. My vanity may have gotten me started, but it really has become about my health.
"I want to be fit. I have little kids that I have to stay around for."
"You're my hero!" he burst out.
I laughed again.
"When I wake up in the mornings, and I don't feel like coming to the gym, I tell myself, 'No, that lady is there every single day.' You're my motivation."
I thanked him warmly, and he left.
Next time I see him, I will try to notice him. I will remember my manners and ask his name. And I will tell him that I needed his comment as much as he needs my example. Not to get me up in the morning--I've mastered getting to the gym without having to battle myself. But knowing that I could be an influence for good on someone, even while doing my most mundane routines, helps me to keep going in other ways.
Isn't it great that we can all help each other?
I try to be someone influential. I am happy to see that people are reading this blog in Russia, China, India, France, Germany, Indonesia, and other countries. I have no idea who they are, but I am happy to think that my reaching out with what I have to give could be appreciated widely.
My heart was warmed by his comments. The next mile or so was really easy to run.
That's what we're all here for, I think--to make each other's step a little lighter.
Friday, August 3, 2012
Some Battery Is Low
Over the weekend, my cell phone died. I knew it was going to happen, because the battery icon was blinking at me all day.
I'm not a huge cell phone user, but I do get an occasional call or text. I felt sad and lonely with my cell phone dying. Can you relate?
I looked through my lunch bag to find my charger, because I sometimes take it to work with me--when I think it is going to die on a work day. It wasn't there. I looked through my other lunch bag. (I take my breakfast with me to work, too.) Getting concerned, I looked through my projects bag. Sometimes, I've stuck my charger in there.
I came up empty, struck out all three times.
I searched through my purse--even taking everything out of it and looking thoroughly. (And then putting only two-thirds of what I'd taken out back and throwing the rest away.)
So, my phone died.
I consoled myself by telling myself that my charger must be at work--in one of the drawers that I put those bags in.
I tried to put it out of my mind.
But I had a party to go to, and I like to have my cell phone handy when I am away from home, in case one of the kids needs me. To further complicate matters, my usual baby-sitter was unavailable, and a kid less used to tending was tending, increasing my anxiety over not having my phone in good order.
Said kid actually called me three times, but my phone kept dying on him, so I had to call back on my cousin's land line. (Finding it was a bit tricky. His house is immaculate, but the old phone with a cord wasn't in the same place it was thirty years ago. Funny, that. Sigh. I'm old.)
Several times after the phone finally completely died, I thought about my charger wistfully. Which drawer would it be in? (When I was thinking positively.) Did it fall out of my bag somewhere, and is it lost forever? (When I was thinking negatively.) Should I call my son and ask him where I could get a new one?
I thought these things so often and with enough melancholy that it took me back mentally to the time when my wedding rings were lost. They were lost for so long that I had two dreams that they had been found. Joyfully, I held them in my hand, remembering their exact weight and feel, before sliding them onto my naked finger.
Then, I woke up, and the rings were still lost. Dreams like that are so ouchy.
I know a charger does not compare to a wedding ring, but I don't like my things to be lost. And I cannot stand the thought that they are lost forever and I will never see them again. Not to mention the inconvenience.
My rings were found in a miraculous way, shortly after the death of my mother. My house had been searched several times. Wastebaskets had been gone through. Drawers had been dumped. All I could remember about the night I had lost them after work was that I had put them down somewhere not very safe--a table or buffet, not their usual place--and told myself to put them down somewhere better.
Oh, they'll turn up, I thought, too carelessly, ignoring the warning.
I didn't see them again for over two months.
Where could they be? I often wondered. And, rings are so small--they could be anywhere. It was a hopeless feeling.
When my rings disappeared, I had a one-and-a-half-year-old who loved to imitate me sweeping the floor. And throwing things into the wastebaskets, of course. I had looked through all the wastebaskets at the time, but the darkest thought haunting me was that my precious rings were in a landfill somewhere.
Two months and two dreams later, I had finally given up and ordered them remade through my insurance. That was a sad decision, but better than going ringless the rest of my life.
I had just received the approval letter from the insurance company in the mail when I went to my bedroom and rummaged through my most-used drawer to see if maybe I had some change in there for the swimming pool locker for my son's birthday party.
I saw some rings and wondered whose they could be. We had been talking a lot about rings in my family as we prepared to divide up my mother's belongings. Did I mention she had just died, days before? My siblings and I had discussed her wedding rings, and a ruby ring my grandmother had owned which had come into her possession. But, whose were these?
Then, I SCREAMED! I mean I really SSSSSSSSSSCCCCCCRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMED!
They were my rings. My very own rings! In my very own drawer! That I get into every single day! That I had searched, looking for my rings, at least four times! Even though I knew I had not left them there, because I would not have thought that they would not be safe in there, and that was the only coherent memory I had about the day I lost my rings! Because that's what you do when something is lost! You look in places you know it will not be! Just in case!
I had not left them there. I had not found them there during my four searches. But, they were there. My rings.
I don't know how Mom pulled it off, but I'm grateful to her.
So.
Monday morning came, and I went to work, really looking forward to finding my charger in one of my drawers.
I looked in the drawer I was sure it would be in. It wasn't there. I looked in another drawer. Not there. I looked in the first drawer again. Not there. A third drawer. Not there. I looked on my desk. Under it.
I sat down, defeated.
Had it fallen out of one of my bags and gotten lost forever? Should I call my son and find out how to replace it?
I got busy with my work and came home at the end of the day.
This was a good four days after I realized that my battery was going to die and I would need to locate my charger.
Four. Days.
I went to the place at home where I keep my cell phone charger and pulled it out of the container.
Then plugged in my phone. My phone took a big sigh of relief, like a fish that has finally been put back into the water.
I went into the kitchen. "Never mind about the charger," I said to my husband. "I found it." Like it was no big deal at all.
"Where was it?" he asked.
"Where I keep it."
Yeah. No miracle this time, I'm sure. Just stupidity.
I'm not a huge cell phone user, but I do get an occasional call or text. I felt sad and lonely with my cell phone dying. Can you relate?
I looked through my lunch bag to find my charger, because I sometimes take it to work with me--when I think it is going to die on a work day. It wasn't there. I looked through my other lunch bag. (I take my breakfast with me to work, too.) Getting concerned, I looked through my projects bag. Sometimes, I've stuck my charger in there.
I came up empty, struck out all three times.
I searched through my purse--even taking everything out of it and looking thoroughly. (And then putting only two-thirds of what I'd taken out back and throwing the rest away.)
So, my phone died.
I consoled myself by telling myself that my charger must be at work--in one of the drawers that I put those bags in.
I tried to put it out of my mind.
But I had a party to go to, and I like to have my cell phone handy when I am away from home, in case one of the kids needs me. To further complicate matters, my usual baby-sitter was unavailable, and a kid less used to tending was tending, increasing my anxiety over not having my phone in good order.
Said kid actually called me three times, but my phone kept dying on him, so I had to call back on my cousin's land line. (Finding it was a bit tricky. His house is immaculate, but the old phone with a cord wasn't in the same place it was thirty years ago. Funny, that. Sigh. I'm old.)
Several times after the phone finally completely died, I thought about my charger wistfully. Which drawer would it be in? (When I was thinking positively.) Did it fall out of my bag somewhere, and is it lost forever? (When I was thinking negatively.) Should I call my son and ask him where I could get a new one?
I thought these things so often and with enough melancholy that it took me back mentally to the time when my wedding rings were lost. They were lost for so long that I had two dreams that they had been found. Joyfully, I held them in my hand, remembering their exact weight and feel, before sliding them onto my naked finger.
Then, I woke up, and the rings were still lost. Dreams like that are so ouchy.
I know a charger does not compare to a wedding ring, but I don't like my things to be lost. And I cannot stand the thought that they are lost forever and I will never see them again. Not to mention the inconvenience.
My rings were found in a miraculous way, shortly after the death of my mother. My house had been searched several times. Wastebaskets had been gone through. Drawers had been dumped. All I could remember about the night I had lost them after work was that I had put them down somewhere not very safe--a table or buffet, not their usual place--and told myself to put them down somewhere better.
Oh, they'll turn up, I thought, too carelessly, ignoring the warning.
I didn't see them again for over two months.
Where could they be? I often wondered. And, rings are so small--they could be anywhere. It was a hopeless feeling.
When my rings disappeared, I had a one-and-a-half-year-old who loved to imitate me sweeping the floor. And throwing things into the wastebaskets, of course. I had looked through all the wastebaskets at the time, but the darkest thought haunting me was that my precious rings were in a landfill somewhere.
Two months and two dreams later, I had finally given up and ordered them remade through my insurance. That was a sad decision, but better than going ringless the rest of my life.
I had just received the approval letter from the insurance company in the mail when I went to my bedroom and rummaged through my most-used drawer to see if maybe I had some change in there for the swimming pool locker for my son's birthday party.
I saw some rings and wondered whose they could be. We had been talking a lot about rings in my family as we prepared to divide up my mother's belongings. Did I mention she had just died, days before? My siblings and I had discussed her wedding rings, and a ruby ring my grandmother had owned which had come into her possession. But, whose were these?
Then, I SCREAMED! I mean I really SSSSSSSSSSCCCCCCRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMED!
They were my rings. My very own rings! In my very own drawer! That I get into every single day! That I had searched, looking for my rings, at least four times! Even though I knew I had not left them there, because I would not have thought that they would not be safe in there, and that was the only coherent memory I had about the day I lost my rings! Because that's what you do when something is lost! You look in places you know it will not be! Just in case!
I had not left them there. I had not found them there during my four searches. But, they were there. My rings.
I don't know how Mom pulled it off, but I'm grateful to her.
So.
Monday morning came, and I went to work, really looking forward to finding my charger in one of my drawers.
I looked in the drawer I was sure it would be in. It wasn't there. I looked in another drawer. Not there. I looked in the first drawer again. Not there. A third drawer. Not there. I looked on my desk. Under it.
I sat down, defeated.
Had it fallen out of one of my bags and gotten lost forever? Should I call my son and find out how to replace it?
I got busy with my work and came home at the end of the day.
This was a good four days after I realized that my battery was going to die and I would need to locate my charger.
Four. Days.
I went to the place at home where I keep my cell phone charger and pulled it out of the container.
Then plugged in my phone. My phone took a big sigh of relief, like a fish that has finally been put back into the water.
I went into the kitchen. "Never mind about the charger," I said to my husband. "I found it." Like it was no big deal at all.
"Where was it?" he asked.
"Where I keep it."
Yeah. No miracle this time, I'm sure. Just stupidity.
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