Five months after the stroke that left him wobbly, our dog Buster has passed away. It happened yesterday evening at the veterinarian's office, not the setting we wanted but the only one available to us, and it was very peaceful. Buster rested his head on John's lap on the drive to the veterinarian's office, and, once there, he cuddled on John like a puppy again. John held him as he slipped away. Buster hadn't been shown that degree of affection and openness for years. I stayed behind with our sensitive little boy, who tearfully told Buster goodbye as John carried him to the car. I was struck with how easily and gracefully he accepted this, and I also noticed that while snuggled in John's arms, he suddenly looked young again, not like the gray-muzzled, cloudy-eyed dog he'd become.
As those of you who have known us through the years understand, our relationship with Buster has always been a little turbulent. He was a very headstrong puppy who peed and pooped wherever he damn well pleased, not because he didn't understand the basic tenets of housebreaking, but because he didn't want to deal with the hassle of waiting to go out. His housebreaking period lasted eight long years. In addition, he was perhaps the world's only aggressive basset hound. He bit me on the mouth many years ago, something that mostly scarred me internally, leaving me incapable of trusting him again in the way that a person wants to trust her dog. (I wrote extensively about this in September, which you can find in the archives if you'd like.) With Buster, one always got sweet-and-sour together, perhaps a reminder of life's essentially complex nature.
Throughout the years, people have advised us to find a new home for him. It was clear to us, though, that there was no such fairytale home in which Buster would thrive. People advised us, then, to euthanize him. He was violent. There was something wrong with his brain. It never seemed acceptable to us, though, to kill a dog for being who he was. We learned tricks around his aggression - it's not like he was roaming our house all Cujo style, blood dripping from his canine teeth, anyway - and eventually we settled into an acceptance of him. To him, this was proof of our love, and with our acceptance of Buster's fundamental disposition, he relaxed into a more peaceful being.
The main gift I received from Buster was learning how to love without expectations, which is to love unconditionally. It is easy to love one another when we are compatible and matched well. It's not so easy to love - really love without demands of improvement - when our relationship is more tenuous and complex. He steadfastly refused to be a different dog than he was at his core, and through my gradual acceptance of his fundamental nature, he became more peaceful and adaptive. If ever there were a Big Life Lesson this was it: in releasing our expectations and demands, we allow those we love the freedom to just be, and with this, our notions of love can expand. Sometimes love is not all pink hearts popping around our heads as we rush across a meadow to embrace: sometimes love can be found in the quiet acceptance of another. This was the nature of the love I had for Buster. He didn't want the popping pink hearts. Love to Buster was quiet acceptance.
So much time has been spent drawing attention to Buster's flaws that I thought it would be nice to share some of our interesting and funny stories.
* When Buster was a puppy, I was taking him to meet my parents for the first time and I accidentally locked myself out of the car on California Avenue when checking for a flat tire. As John was on his way with the spare keys, Buster sat in the driver's seat with one of his big fat paws pressed continuously on the horn. I kept motioning for him to stop - like, how the heck would he understand what I meant? - and pedestrians stared at us and burst out laughing when they saw the basset with his paw on the horn.
* When Buster was around two or three, we had a little weekend off with friends at a nature retreat in Michigan and we took the dogs along. One day, John and I took a canoe out on the lake and, for some reason, this really agitated Buster, who stood at the end of the pier, barking his sea lion's bray. Finally, there was a splash and a commotion: Buster had dived into the lake and was swimming toward us. I can still see his little head just barely above the surface of the water, like some deep sea creature. Now basset hounds aren't exactly, you know, water spaniels or anything, so seeing him with his big ol' paws and floppy ears aiming towards us was quite remarkable. John was afraid that we'd upset the canoe if he tried to pick him up, so we rowed back to the shore, an eye on Buster the whole time. He swam into some nearby reeds and just as I was insisting that John dive in and find him, the reeds parted, Buster shook himself off, and trotted toward the sand, where he finally plopped down. He was like the canine version of James Bond at that point and really deserved some kind of cocktail. We were all in awe.
* Last, Buster delivering the whoop-ass was not exactly a shocking story, but it was especially handy a few years ago when a misguided burglar decided that our bungalow must surely hold some very rare treasures. As we were upstairs sleeping, said burglar removed our back door - with a blow torch, 'cause he was fierce like that - and commenced to unplugging our i-Book, the very one that had my then in-progress novel and a lot of other work on it. His near-fatal mistake, though, was deciding, "Hey, I've got the computer, what else should I get?" and going into the living room, a.k.a., Buster's domain, to try to steal some more. We were ever so gently roused from our slumber by the sound of the Buster going, well, batshit crazy and the always reassuring sounds of foreign footsteps beating a hasty retreat across the floor. John bolted downstairs as the burglar was taking off through the back door, our computer in his bag. John and Buster were in hot pursuit, and they caught up with the burglar in the alley. He swung a hammer at John - happily, he didn't have good aim - and threatened, "I'm going to hurt your dog." Even in that moment, John had to laugh because Buster had the man by the pants and was jumping up to get a better grip, growling. His long-suppressed aggressive nature was finally getting a chance to be expressed and damn it, he was going to savor every moment. John grabbed the bag away from the burglar who then ran off and hid somewhere. A few moments later, the burglar rode his bike out from the side of a garage, taking off like a bat out of hell, away from the barefoot hippie-looking dude in the pajamas and that crazy basset hound who threw it down all ghetto-style. The police, who arrived within minutes, were deeply impressed and occasionally when walking Buster, a police car would pass, giving us a friendly little honk and wave. He was much admired for his valor.
There are many more stories, more quotidian but no less telling. Buster was a unique soul and I am so grateful that he was in our lives for thirteen years. I would have loved for it to be longer but Buster left as he lived: on his own terms. There is a lot to learn from that.
We love you, Buster. Thanks for everything.
Shalom, everyone.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Heart like a wheel...
Well, it is clear that this Facebook thing has re-aquainted me with some friends from my past, which has caused me to be haunted many times in recent weeks by the Ghosts of Boyfriends Past. They smell suspiciously like cheap beer. They come visiting, not spooky and threatening, but alternately vivid and hazy, smile- and groan-inducing. They were activists, artists, potheads, whack jobs, geniuses, and nurturers. Somewhere along the line things fizzled out, someone stopped returning calls, there was a heated argument with no apology or one of us did something (drank excessively, read the other's journal, had mean-spirited, jealous friends) that proved unacceptable and so we parted ways, with barely a whimper sometimes or, other times, with so much emotion the whole sky seemed painted an angry red.
My gallery of college ex-boyfriends (the descriptor boyfriend used only in the loosest way at times) was a diverse assortment, like a box of chocolates (I don't know if it's possible to read this without hearing that idiotic Forrest Gump drawl, so my apologies), but unlike a box of chocolates, there was no key anywhere as to what I was getting except for a few hunches. You know how you can pick up a chocolate from a sampler box and be certain that it is a caramel because it looks like one and feels like one but you bite into it and you're all disappointed because it was actually nougat masquerading itself as a caramel? Or you avoid that last chocolate because it you are certain it has that icky cherry liquor stuff inside but then you take a tentative bite and it's actually a truffle and you are pleasantly surprised and you are kicking yourself for tasting all those less satisfying ones first? Dating in college, as a (fairly) sheltered suburban girl with limited life experience was a bit like reaching blindly into a chocolate sampler box and hoping for the best. For the most part, I did alright for myself, though there were a few of those squishy cherry liquor ones along the way.
Forgotten vendor dude
Freshman year was pretty much of a wash except for a few tipsy and random make-out sessions. I was way too nervous and scattered to be a-huntin' for a boyfriend. I did have one that summer, though, a guy whose name I forgot long ago, who was a vendor with me at Cubs games. In retrospect, I'm pretty certain that he was insane. He was convinced that someone was spying on him most of the time and he would occasionally blurt out loud threats to invisible (but to him) undercover agents. He had wealthy parents, brown curly hair and long eyelashes, and he smoked. I'm not sure if what he smoked was always tobacco in nature. I'm also not sure how things ended, but I'm fairly certain that it was weird. Everyone has someone from her past that she instantly winces when recollecting, and he is my wince.
Be-mulleted Loverboy
Things picked up considerably my sophomore year. I met BL at a party. Okay, it was a kegger. He had long brown hair and bangs. Okay, it was a mullet. Follicle crimes aside (and, really, pretty much everyone had some version of a mullet in those days, so stop your damn snickering), BL was dreamy.
He had bright blue, sweetly sad eyes, played guitar and told me that I reminded him of a Peruvian woman who danced the samba on his tender heart, so, really, how could I resist? He had the whole wounded rebel thing down pat and I was chomping at the bit to break out of the confines of my very cloistered, boring dorm life. He was my very temporary ticket out.
That fall, we had a wonderfully whirlwind couple of dates. We clutched hands at the café, his other hand on my knee, and we gazed into one another's eyes (yes, we really did that, so fraught were we with emotional intensity) and he protected me against the wind as he showed me his favorite hidden away spot, hazy to me today, off campus. I don't think we talked much, I can't recall a single conversation, but we looked at each other longingly, like actors in a movie, which, in a way, was oddly appropriate. He was a great kisser. Unbeknownst to me, I was in the early stages of pneumonia, so I was thin and pale, all clavicle and wrist bones, the perfect frail counterpoint to his brooding persona. We had a few dates before Thanksgiving, during which time, The English Beat's Melt With You played over and over in my head, but, upon returning from break, BL vanished from my life, leaving nothing but a tattered old sweater behind. I left unreturned messages, I figured out ways to run into him on campus - covertly getting access to his schedule - until it was clear that he was already an apparition in my life. He was cold and distant, his eyes now ice cold blue lakes. I'm not sure what happened there. He was my first college affair, and I think my heart received a tiny fissure with that, but I moved on surprisingly quickly. (The next year, a roommate and friend tearfully informed me that she was dating BL all clandestinely - I'm sure he lived off the fumes of that doomed Romeo and Juliet storyline for days - but he ended up ditching her in a similar fashion. Served her right! And that BL was no good, but it is fairly likely that he contracted pneumonia through me, so na na.)
Brando Boy
Next one out of the gate a few months later was BB, and pretty soon that little dalliance with BL seemed like child's play compared with the hot-and-cold romance I had with BB, who had the Wounded Rebel archetype absolutely perfected. To BL's Lord Byron, he was James Dean with a good dash of Brando. To an idealistic nineteen-year-old, of course, this was a irresistible combination. He was a couple of years older, very good looking, clever, cool, and hopelessly emotionally crippled. Ooh la la! Where do I sign up?
He drove the bus that picked up all the jackasses in my dorm, and every day, we lined up with our passes in their little blue ID cases and he nodded distractedly as he quickly scanned over them. My roommate Dana and I had been on the bus together a few months earlier when he was being trained, and as he walked on with the obese driver who commenced to barking orders at him within seconds, she raised an eyebrow at me and nudged me with her shoulder. He was very cute.
In the spring, I was sitting out on the front steps in front of Neismith Hall enjoying the first warm day and he stopped the bus right in front of me and opened the door. No one was getting on or off. He asked me if I was waiting for the bus and I told him no, I was just enjoying the beautiful day. My heart was racing. He asked me if I knew Olivia De Havilland, the actress who played Melanie in Gone With The Wind. I told him that I did. Gone With The Wind was my mother's favorite movie, though I found it dreadful. He told me that I looked just like her, and I must have scrunched up my face in displeasure - she was the sweet but plain one to Scarlett's volatile knockout - so he smiled and matter-of-factly said, "She was, by far, the most beautiful actress in Hollywood." And with that, the door of the bus shut and he drove off. Wha'?!
The next few months presented a prolonged cat-and-mouse game between us, and as many times as he didn't call or showed up to a party I'd invited him to with a date (!!), we had marathon conversations at Perkins over coffee (which I hated, still do, but I thought made me look mature) and blissful strolls through campus, arm-in-arm after an all-nighter. I never felt more vulnerable, with good reason. We had a very romantic last few days before I had to go home for the summer: we went to see bands, got drunk and silly together, he stared at me constantly. BB paced the hallway compulsively smoking with teary eyes as I packed the last of my bags to go home for the summer, and he held me in the parking lot as my friend Sarah waited for me in her car. Again, Melt With You played through my head and I was in a dreamland the whole drive back to Chicago. It struck me that all the clichés I'd always heard about love were actually true: I felt like I was walking on a cloud.
Well, that cloud must've actually been a helium balloon because BB stuck a needle in it over the summer and I came crashing to the ground. He was distant on the phone, rude, caustic (although he made sure that he was warm other times just to add to the layers of self-delusion). When I came back to school in the fall - my hopes high and clearly unrealistic - he gave me the cold shoulder. The superficial moral of the story: if you're really crazy for a guy, don't go home for break. He pretty much wrapped my heart with explosives and detonated it.
Activist Man
I had been friends with AM for a year or so before we started dating, and by dating I mean he would call me when he was in town. AM was a Native American activist, like a real live associate of Leonard Peltier, and he was all long black hair and intensity: when he came to visit me at my dorm, people overtly gawked at him, their synapses snapping at the sight of an adult male wearing something besides a sweatshirt with a football team emblazoned on it. He wore tie-dyes and Malcolm X t-shirts instead. He traveled for months at a time, following the Dead, crashing with friends in Berkeley, going to the Rainbow Gathering. AM was a great friend and my introduction to counterculture and activism in many ways.
About a year after we met, not long after BB served me my barely-beating heart on a platter ("Here ya go!"), we started fooling around with no strings attached. He would leave town, come back, call me up, and if I wasn't dating anyone at the time, we would fool around again. It was actually very nice to be with someone and without all that drama. He was absolutely not the kind of guy who would make a commitment, and I was happily not seeking one. He would come back into town periodically with pretty, sweet women with dreadlocks, diaphanous dresses and West Coast accents, and they always seemed to have an understanding. I was still very wounded by BB, and AM provided intimacy and connection without any baggage.
True story: I went to the Rainbow Gathering in '90 or so and I was looking for BB there, who went by his Rainbow Family name, Cinnamon. Yes, really. I wasn't sure if he was there or not, but it was something he did go to. I was walking down a path and asking a Rainbow person if she knew of Cinnamon, the tall, Native American from Kansas. She didn't, but suddenly, another women appeared, pushing her way through the shrubbery, and she was all like, "Cinnamon? I know him, dude!" Anyway, she did know him, but, alas, he wasn't there that year.
Average Joe
After the emotional wreckage of my sophomore year, AJ offered me stability, predictability and...sssssnooore. Whoa. Sorry, I must have drifted off there. Anyway, a friend of mine thought we'd make a good match and while I was sort of "meh" about him when we met, he wore down my indifference with a Cub Scout-like determination. He had a mustache that was a little Hitler-esque (strikes one and two - one for the 'stashe to begin with, and two for the look of it), he was in the Army Reserves (strike three), to pay for college (which neutralized the previous strike) and a band (could be a strike or a bonus, depending on a careful analysis of the specific situation and how many people I could get on any given guest list). AJ was a stick in the mud and totally not my type, but we dated for a year, which was - by about eight months - my longest relationship at that point. Again, after BL and BB, I needed someone who didn't set me alight with passion, and, well, AJ was it. Our parting was like our union: desultory and unmemorable.
Strummer Man
After AJ, I dated a little bit of eye candy, a guitar-strumming boy with long blond hair and a persistently dazed expression, more at home on Venice beach than the meadows of the Heartland. There are people you meet in life where you say, "Well, he's not a great communicator but he's very scientific," or "He sort of lacks common sense but he's highly creative." Truly, with SM there was no "but" to offset his apparently fully-rounded, low-wattage brain power. He was one hundred percent stupid. He was also sweet and a little slobbery, and he definitely was impressed by me, sort of like my personal yellow lab puppy. He made sure that I got home safely after I ate too many pot brownies at a party and started hallucinating, so much that when I eventually threw up in the parking lot, I saw myself as a fire-breathing dragon. The night after that escapade, he felt so connected to me, that he sang to me his self-penned little love song, accompanying himself on guitar. I had to pinch myself to keep from bursting out in laughter as it was, undoubtedly, the most inane song I'd ever heard. All I wanted was to laugh with a friend about it, but then I realized that we were dating so it was no longer funny. I broke up with him in the most cold-hearted way I could muster because he wasn't taking any hints, which made me feel sort of evil, but I could not be with someone who could write ridiculous lyrics and sing them without an ounce of irony.
There were others, of course, but these are the ones for this day. The crazy vendor, lover boy, Brando-esque heartbreaker, radical activist, regular guy and sweet-but-stupid dude. Quite a strange assortment, eh?
Shalom, everyone.
My gallery of college ex-boyfriends (the descriptor boyfriend used only in the loosest way at times) was a diverse assortment, like a box of chocolates (I don't know if it's possible to read this without hearing that idiotic Forrest Gump drawl, so my apologies), but unlike a box of chocolates, there was no key anywhere as to what I was getting except for a few hunches. You know how you can pick up a chocolate from a sampler box and be certain that it is a caramel because it looks like one and feels like one but you bite into it and you're all disappointed because it was actually nougat masquerading itself as a caramel? Or you avoid that last chocolate because it you are certain it has that icky cherry liquor stuff inside but then you take a tentative bite and it's actually a truffle and you are pleasantly surprised and you are kicking yourself for tasting all those less satisfying ones first? Dating in college, as a (fairly) sheltered suburban girl with limited life experience was a bit like reaching blindly into a chocolate sampler box and hoping for the best. For the most part, I did alright for myself, though there were a few of those squishy cherry liquor ones along the way.
Forgotten vendor dude
Freshman year was pretty much of a wash except for a few tipsy and random make-out sessions. I was way too nervous and scattered to be a-huntin' for a boyfriend. I did have one that summer, though, a guy whose name I forgot long ago, who was a vendor with me at Cubs games. In retrospect, I'm pretty certain that he was insane. He was convinced that someone was spying on him most of the time and he would occasionally blurt out loud threats to invisible (but to him) undercover agents. He had wealthy parents, brown curly hair and long eyelashes, and he smoked. I'm not sure if what he smoked was always tobacco in nature. I'm also not sure how things ended, but I'm fairly certain that it was weird. Everyone has someone from her past that she instantly winces when recollecting, and he is my wince.
Be-mulleted Loverboy
Things picked up considerably my sophomore year. I met BL at a party. Okay, it was a kegger. He had long brown hair and bangs. Okay, it was a mullet. Follicle crimes aside (and, really, pretty much everyone had some version of a mullet in those days, so stop your damn snickering), BL was dreamy.
He had bright blue, sweetly sad eyes, played guitar and told me that I reminded him of a Peruvian woman who danced the samba on his tender heart, so, really, how could I resist? He had the whole wounded rebel thing down pat and I was chomping at the bit to break out of the confines of my very cloistered, boring dorm life. He was my very temporary ticket out.
That fall, we had a wonderfully whirlwind couple of dates. We clutched hands at the café, his other hand on my knee, and we gazed into one another's eyes (yes, we really did that, so fraught were we with emotional intensity) and he protected me against the wind as he showed me his favorite hidden away spot, hazy to me today, off campus. I don't think we talked much, I can't recall a single conversation, but we looked at each other longingly, like actors in a movie, which, in a way, was oddly appropriate. He was a great kisser. Unbeknownst to me, I was in the early stages of pneumonia, so I was thin and pale, all clavicle and wrist bones, the perfect frail counterpoint to his brooding persona. We had a few dates before Thanksgiving, during which time, The English Beat's Melt With You played over and over in my head, but, upon returning from break, BL vanished from my life, leaving nothing but a tattered old sweater behind. I left unreturned messages, I figured out ways to run into him on campus - covertly getting access to his schedule - until it was clear that he was already an apparition in my life. He was cold and distant, his eyes now ice cold blue lakes. I'm not sure what happened there. He was my first college affair, and I think my heart received a tiny fissure with that, but I moved on surprisingly quickly. (The next year, a roommate and friend tearfully informed me that she was dating BL all clandestinely - I'm sure he lived off the fumes of that doomed Romeo and Juliet storyline for days - but he ended up ditching her in a similar fashion. Served her right! And that BL was no good, but it is fairly likely that he contracted pneumonia through me, so na na.)
Brando Boy
Next one out of the gate a few months later was BB, and pretty soon that little dalliance with BL seemed like child's play compared with the hot-and-cold romance I had with BB, who had the Wounded Rebel archetype absolutely perfected. To BL's Lord Byron, he was James Dean with a good dash of Brando. To an idealistic nineteen-year-old, of course, this was a irresistible combination. He was a couple of years older, very good looking, clever, cool, and hopelessly emotionally crippled. Ooh la la! Where do I sign up?
He drove the bus that picked up all the jackasses in my dorm, and every day, we lined up with our passes in their little blue ID cases and he nodded distractedly as he quickly scanned over them. My roommate Dana and I had been on the bus together a few months earlier when he was being trained, and as he walked on with the obese driver who commenced to barking orders at him within seconds, she raised an eyebrow at me and nudged me with her shoulder. He was very cute.
In the spring, I was sitting out on the front steps in front of Neismith Hall enjoying the first warm day and he stopped the bus right in front of me and opened the door. No one was getting on or off. He asked me if I was waiting for the bus and I told him no, I was just enjoying the beautiful day. My heart was racing. He asked me if I knew Olivia De Havilland, the actress who played Melanie in Gone With The Wind. I told him that I did. Gone With The Wind was my mother's favorite movie, though I found it dreadful. He told me that I looked just like her, and I must have scrunched up my face in displeasure - she was the sweet but plain one to Scarlett's volatile knockout - so he smiled and matter-of-factly said, "She was, by far, the most beautiful actress in Hollywood." And with that, the door of the bus shut and he drove off. Wha'?!
The next few months presented a prolonged cat-and-mouse game between us, and as many times as he didn't call or showed up to a party I'd invited him to with a date (!!), we had marathon conversations at Perkins over coffee (which I hated, still do, but I thought made me look mature) and blissful strolls through campus, arm-in-arm after an all-nighter. I never felt more vulnerable, with good reason. We had a very romantic last few days before I had to go home for the summer: we went to see bands, got drunk and silly together, he stared at me constantly. BB paced the hallway compulsively smoking with teary eyes as I packed the last of my bags to go home for the summer, and he held me in the parking lot as my friend Sarah waited for me in her car. Again, Melt With You played through my head and I was in a dreamland the whole drive back to Chicago. It struck me that all the clichés I'd always heard about love were actually true: I felt like I was walking on a cloud.
Well, that cloud must've actually been a helium balloon because BB stuck a needle in it over the summer and I came crashing to the ground. He was distant on the phone, rude, caustic (although he made sure that he was warm other times just to add to the layers of self-delusion). When I came back to school in the fall - my hopes high and clearly unrealistic - he gave me the cold shoulder. The superficial moral of the story: if you're really crazy for a guy, don't go home for break. He pretty much wrapped my heart with explosives and detonated it.
Activist Man
I had been friends with AM for a year or so before we started dating, and by dating I mean he would call me when he was in town. AM was a Native American activist, like a real live associate of Leonard Peltier, and he was all long black hair and intensity: when he came to visit me at my dorm, people overtly gawked at him, their synapses snapping at the sight of an adult male wearing something besides a sweatshirt with a football team emblazoned on it. He wore tie-dyes and Malcolm X t-shirts instead. He traveled for months at a time, following the Dead, crashing with friends in Berkeley, going to the Rainbow Gathering. AM was a great friend and my introduction to counterculture and activism in many ways.
About a year after we met, not long after BB served me my barely-beating heart on a platter ("Here ya go!"), we started fooling around with no strings attached. He would leave town, come back, call me up, and if I wasn't dating anyone at the time, we would fool around again. It was actually very nice to be with someone and without all that drama. He was absolutely not the kind of guy who would make a commitment, and I was happily not seeking one. He would come back into town periodically with pretty, sweet women with dreadlocks, diaphanous dresses and West Coast accents, and they always seemed to have an understanding. I was still very wounded by BB, and AM provided intimacy and connection without any baggage.
True story: I went to the Rainbow Gathering in '90 or so and I was looking for BB there, who went by his Rainbow Family name, Cinnamon. Yes, really. I wasn't sure if he was there or not, but it was something he did go to. I was walking down a path and asking a Rainbow person if she knew of Cinnamon, the tall, Native American from Kansas. She didn't, but suddenly, another women appeared, pushing her way through the shrubbery, and she was all like, "Cinnamon? I know him, dude!" Anyway, she did know him, but, alas, he wasn't there that year.
Average Joe
After the emotional wreckage of my sophomore year, AJ offered me stability, predictability and...sssssnooore. Whoa. Sorry, I must have drifted off there. Anyway, a friend of mine thought we'd make a good match and while I was sort of "meh" about him when we met, he wore down my indifference with a Cub Scout-like determination. He had a mustache that was a little Hitler-esque (strikes one and two - one for the 'stashe to begin with, and two for the look of it), he was in the Army Reserves (strike three), to pay for college (which neutralized the previous strike) and a band (could be a strike or a bonus, depending on a careful analysis of the specific situation and how many people I could get on any given guest list). AJ was a stick in the mud and totally not my type, but we dated for a year, which was - by about eight months - my longest relationship at that point. Again, after BL and BB, I needed someone who didn't set me alight with passion, and, well, AJ was it. Our parting was like our union: desultory and unmemorable.
Strummer Man
After AJ, I dated a little bit of eye candy, a guitar-strumming boy with long blond hair and a persistently dazed expression, more at home on Venice beach than the meadows of the Heartland. There are people you meet in life where you say, "Well, he's not a great communicator but he's very scientific," or "He sort of lacks common sense but he's highly creative." Truly, with SM there was no "but" to offset his apparently fully-rounded, low-wattage brain power. He was one hundred percent stupid. He was also sweet and a little slobbery, and he definitely was impressed by me, sort of like my personal yellow lab puppy. He made sure that I got home safely after I ate too many pot brownies at a party and started hallucinating, so much that when I eventually threw up in the parking lot, I saw myself as a fire-breathing dragon. The night after that escapade, he felt so connected to me, that he sang to me his self-penned little love song, accompanying himself on guitar. I had to pinch myself to keep from bursting out in laughter as it was, undoubtedly, the most inane song I'd ever heard. All I wanted was to laugh with a friend about it, but then I realized that we were dating so it was no longer funny. I broke up with him in the most cold-hearted way I could muster because he wasn't taking any hints, which made me feel sort of evil, but I could not be with someone who could write ridiculous lyrics and sing them without an ounce of irony.
There were others, of course, but these are the ones for this day. The crazy vendor, lover boy, Brando-esque heartbreaker, radical activist, regular guy and sweet-but-stupid dude. Quite a strange assortment, eh?
Shalom, everyone.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Sick day...
My son stayed home yesterday after informing me that while he wasn't sick, his "nose [was] nauseated" and demonstrating the sort of hacking cough that was guaranteed to make me the target of many side-eyed looks of consternation. When it had already been established that mama's l'il mucus machine would be cooling his heels at home, my husband commented that when he was a caveboy in the Paleozoic era, children didn't miss school for a simple cold. He grew up in a rural community, so pretty much the only thing that would keep one home would be an unfortunate run-in with a rusty farm implement, but even then, you were expected to dress whatever remained of your pulverized limb and get your pansy ass to school. The culture of sick has certainly changed.
So my son stayed home today and watched an episode of The Jetson's, worked on his flying saucer (it now has upgrades, including a balcony) and drew many, many pictures of spaceships. He was happy, but I'm afraid that I'm not very good at being a nursemaid. I've had enough experience with this now to know that the day always starts out with me being all loving and maternal, but somewhere around the sixth, "Mom! I want a drink!" I start to get a little teeth-grind-y. By the eighth or ninth imperious demand, I organize little union for myself all Norma Rae-style and go on strike. "Get. It. Yourself. You. Can. Walk." I will respond sotto voce through clenched teeth. And he will because the mamas-not-foolin' vibe is undeniable. Anyway, we survived the day and his little nauseated nose appears to have found some relief.
Whenever my son is sick, I inevitably reflect back on my sick days as a child. I believe that I picked up some of my less nurturing traits from my mother, who viewed an unwell child with suspicion and a bit of resentment. There was always a "Just what are you trying to pull?" type of tone behind her interactions with us when my brother or I were sick and I think this has some residual influence on me as a mother today. I wish I were more nurturing sometimes. I have a friend who has three daughters and she never seems irritated by being a mother, never seems distracted or anything less than available to her children. I admire her a lot - her selflessness, the strong pulse of the mothering instinct in her - but I do not envy her. I would be completely depleted as the mother of more than one. My essential selfishness is a weakness of my character, quite clearly, but it is an honest assessment. It is not quite the same thing as stinginess: I simply don't have anything more to give than I already do but what I do have to give is given freely and with joy. (The rest of what I have in me has always been earmarked for various creative projects - now that is what I am adept at nurturing and it nourishes me right back.)
Despite my limitations as a mother and a human being, I am determined to do my best and keep growing, even when my little guy asks for yet another snack. Deep breaths are always at my disposal.
Shalom, everyone.
So my son stayed home today and watched an episode of The Jetson's, worked on his flying saucer (it now has upgrades, including a balcony) and drew many, many pictures of spaceships. He was happy, but I'm afraid that I'm not very good at being a nursemaid. I've had enough experience with this now to know that the day always starts out with me being all loving and maternal, but somewhere around the sixth, "Mom! I want a drink!" I start to get a little teeth-grind-y. By the eighth or ninth imperious demand, I organize little union for myself all Norma Rae-style and go on strike. "Get. It. Yourself. You. Can. Walk." I will respond sotto voce through clenched teeth. And he will because the mamas-not-foolin' vibe is undeniable. Anyway, we survived the day and his little nauseated nose appears to have found some relief.
Whenever my son is sick, I inevitably reflect back on my sick days as a child. I believe that I picked up some of my less nurturing traits from my mother, who viewed an unwell child with suspicion and a bit of resentment. There was always a "Just what are you trying to pull?" type of tone behind her interactions with us when my brother or I were sick and I think this has some residual influence on me as a mother today. I wish I were more nurturing sometimes. I have a friend who has three daughters and she never seems irritated by being a mother, never seems distracted or anything less than available to her children. I admire her a lot - her selflessness, the strong pulse of the mothering instinct in her - but I do not envy her. I would be completely depleted as the mother of more than one. My essential selfishness is a weakness of my character, quite clearly, but it is an honest assessment. It is not quite the same thing as stinginess: I simply don't have anything more to give than I already do but what I do have to give is given freely and with joy. (The rest of what I have in me has always been earmarked for various creative projects - now that is what I am adept at nurturing and it nourishes me right back.)
Despite my limitations as a mother and a human being, I am determined to do my best and keep growing, even when my little guy asks for yet another snack. Deep breaths are always at my disposal.
Shalom, everyone.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Blizzard baby: a birth post...
This was something I wrote a year ago on my birthday and seeing as I'm a little behind on everything to make a proper post this week, I'm going to bring you one from the archives today. I'm looking outside right now and there is little snow to be seen, brown grass is actually poking up between the little bit there is, and I find myself longing for an intense snowstorm of the kind we haven't seen for a while here in Chicago. I'm not a huge fan of winter, but there's something about bearing down and surviving something staggering together that makes us grow as people, forcing us to call upon our resilience. Anyway, here it is from last year. And I hope you have a great week!
I was born during one of Chicago's most historic snowfalls, the winter of 1967. I occasionally see footage from this period, old, black-and-white, grainy films, and I cannot believe that I have been alive so long as to come from an old, black-and-white, grainy time. The footage is always quaint, with the snow piled improbably high and bundled up city dwellers struggling mightily to make their way from Point A to Point B, crossing streets with toddler-like grace; footage of taxis hopelessly stuck in walls of impenetrably dense snow. From January 26 through February fifth, 36 1/2 inches of snow fell - this is north of my navel, just so you know - like a gaping hole tore in the sky where all the year's snowfall is stored and it all came gushing out at once.
The stories from this time are thrilling to hear as this is the sort of stuff that Chicago's brawny bruiser of a reputation is built on. In my own family, the snowfall resulted in my mother and I being socked into the hospital for two solid weeks: the city was at a standstill in its battle with the snow, and, clearly, was the punch-drunk underdog, clinging for dear life onto the ropes. Public transportation wasn't running and people couldn't drive. There was looting going on, people were desperate and frightened and paranoid. Somehow, though, one day my grandfather managed to get down to Michael Reese Hospital - it took hours but he was determined - and he was able to identify me, his third grandchild, in the nursery behind the glass, one blizzard baby among dozens of others. My grandmother used this bit of family lore as evidence that my grandfather and I always had a special bond.
I have often wondered how the circumstances of our births, those very few first hours and weeks, work to help shape the people we are to become. My husband and son were both born in the late spring, the time of shoots and flowers and no more blasted snow, and they are much more naturally optimistic people, constitutionally perhaps, than this child of winter. With my son, there were certain circumstances of his birth that made his debut challenging, but as soon as we could, we got him outdoors in the sun and gentle breezes. As soon as I could, every day I took him outdoors, trying to erase any trace of hospitals and medical equipment from his spirit, and that was how he spent his time, pressed up against me in his Bjorn, or, later, on a blanket, with his little fingers grabbing clumps of grass. For those of us who are late fall and winter babies in climates such as the one in which I live, the weeks and months following our births are not quite as welcoming and idyllic. Maybe the cold and unyielding conditions we are born into predispose us to being more familiar with the dark side of life, less full of sunny optimism. Maybe there is no affect at all. (I have a theory that this is why Californians have the reputation of being ditsy and naive: they only know one basic season, and that is mild. They don't have that familiarity with the darkness of winter. My good friend in San Francisco - who grew up in Kansas - has assured me that native Californians are absolutely disengaged from reality.)
On my birthday Sunday, we spent our day at O'Hare International Airport. My mother was flying to Texas to visit my aunt and needs a little help these days getting to the right gate. She missed her flight a couple of years back because she got disoriented, so now we make sure that she is brought directly to the gate. I was able to get passes for my son and I to go with her there from the ticket counter.
At first, I was resentful that my mother booked a flight for my birthday, knowing that I would be the one taking her and spending hours at the airport. It has been two years since we flew anywhere, and so it was an adventure for my son, who, after immersing himself in everything pre-Cambrian, has blasted forward like out of a slingshot into all things space. He got to watch taxiing airplanes and those preparing to land, luggage trucks and the guy with the directional thingamabobs. He had a veggie burger and fries at Johnny Rockets: what more could a six-year-old boy possibly want? (Actually, his own flying saucer, but he's going to have to wait on that one or a trip of his own to New Mexico so he can explore dinosaur remains at Ghost Ranch and evidence of extraterrestrials at Roswell: yes, my child is weird.) Seeing my son so thrilled with his day, and my mother genuinely appreciative, helped to turn my attitude around. I actually enjoyed my time at the airport very much.
Maybe I am moving beyond the circumstances of my birth to a brighter, warmer place. It certainly feels like something has been internally shifting for a while now. I will always remember the winter that has helped to shape me, though, and the isolation and bracing cold on my cheeks. I am glad to have the strength that comes from a birth in a blizzard.
Shalom, everyone.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Inauguration Day...
In some ways, inauguration day was notable for its ordinariness. I had my breakfast smoothie, predictably bleary-eyed after another night with too little sleep. [It had a frozen banana, three soaked dates, a tablespoon of ground flax seeds, a dash of cinnamon, and orange juice: my signature breakfast.] My son, a kindergartner, was tormenting the cat with his overly demonstrative affection toward her and my husband was doing the dishes he’d intended to do the night before. As I said, just another ordinary day.
But wasn’t the day a little brighter, a little warmer on inauguration day? Or was that just my imagination? Despite my late night, didn’t I have a little more of a spring in my step, a lightness in my being? Did I really hear birds singing in Chicago in January?
We have been waiting for this moment for eight long years: for George Bush and Dick Cheney to be escorted to Air Force One as they took their leave of office and that airplane lifted them away, off to Texas or Wyoming or wherever the hell they came from, so long as it was no longer in the White House. The world heaved a collective sigh of relief. We had become like actors in a bad horror movie, where the monster keeps returning to wreak more havoc, then, suddenly, we peeked between our trembling fingers and they were gone and we couldn’t believe it. It was for real, this time: the monsters had left the building.
That morning, my son and I watched the inauguration as it unfolded, seeing block after block filled up with jubilant supporters. My son brushed his teeth as commentators remarked on how well Jimmy and Rosalind Carter looked, discussed how he has redefined the role of former president. We watched as the motorcade make its slow, symbolic journey and the hordes of spectators were cheering. I flashed back to a different inauguration, nine years prior, when my husband and I stood out on the streets with thousands: holding signs, screaming, furious. It was one of the coldest, most miserable days in my memory, and it helps to be reminded that I am from Chicago, my skin toughened by our brutal winters. Inauguration day in 2000 couldn’t have been more appropriate: it was raining, very cold and with dark, foreboding clouds overhead, the picture of gloom. It was a perfect day for such an occasion, actually. On this most recent inaugural day, though, it was sunny. I whooped and hollered with joy this time, tears streaming down my face as I tried to explain to my son that grown ups sometimes cry when we’re really, really happy. I could not explain how our tear ducts can release both tears of sadness and tears of joy but it is somehow in our wiring. He shrugged and giggled, buoyed as always by his mother’s silliness.
My husband stopped home for lunch and to watch Barack Obama’s speech, and we ate leftover rosemary potato pizza around the television, not something that we would normally do. I rushed after the speech to get my son ready for his afternoon kindergarten class, squished his shoes in his backpack, filled his water bottle, then rushed him out the door. For not the first or the last time, I’m sure, I was a little overly enthusiastic for the other moms, who tend to regard me with a mixture of curiosity and fear. Is it my red kitty cat hat with ears? The fact that I don’t drive an SUV? Is it just something that emanates from me, much the same way it did when I was in junior high and so desperately wanted to fit in the with popular kids? The difference now is that I don’t care about that, though I do wonder if they possess some sort of ability to sense instantly that I am not one of them.
After dropping off my son, I went to the spa and was lucky enough to meet three of my mama friends there. This phenomenal spa in Chicago was offering a free day to enjoy the hot tub, eucalyptus steam room, sauna and relaxation center. We were breathless and radiant with a sort of feverish relief: Bush was out of office. We dissected President Obama’s – I’m still in shock that I get to put those two words together - speech and reveled in one another’s company, continuing our conversation from the hot tub to the steam room to the relaxation area. We were politely shushed by staff twice, one we could just barely make out through the haze of the steam room vapors, and I found myself wishing that we could telepathically communicate because we just had so much to say and so much unbridled enthusiasm. There was another woman in the hot tub, there to celebrate the inauguration and her birthday, who remarked, “You are not like the other moms in my neighborhood,” and I had to laugh. No, we’re not like the other moms. Two of us are colorfully tattooed, one has blue hair, but more than that, it is how we unapologetically dig into life. We speak honestly about our highs and lows, our rage at the injustices of the world, our reveling in the beauty of it: I think this is our common denominator. We are very powerful women together, if I must say so myself.
On the ride home, I saw men out on the sidewalk on North Avenue in the Austin neighborhood embracing. The first time I didn’t think much about it, but then I passed another two men hugging and I thought to myself, “Well, that is strange. You don’t see men hugging in Austin. Handshaking, yes, fist-bumping, yes, but never hugging.” It was then that I remembered the inauguration. It was an exceptional day. I told my son earlier that it was one of the most important days of my lifetime. And when I went to pick him up from school that afternoon, it seemed like the other moms might have been a little warmer to me than usual. Or was that just my imagination?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Shalom, everyone.
But wasn’t the day a little brighter, a little warmer on inauguration day? Or was that just my imagination? Despite my late night, didn’t I have a little more of a spring in my step, a lightness in my being? Did I really hear birds singing in Chicago in January?
We have been waiting for this moment for eight long years: for George Bush and Dick Cheney to be escorted to Air Force One as they took their leave of office and that airplane lifted them away, off to Texas or Wyoming or wherever the hell they came from, so long as it was no longer in the White House. The world heaved a collective sigh of relief. We had become like actors in a bad horror movie, where the monster keeps returning to wreak more havoc, then, suddenly, we peeked between our trembling fingers and they were gone and we couldn’t believe it. It was for real, this time: the monsters had left the building.
That morning, my son and I watched the inauguration as it unfolded, seeing block after block filled up with jubilant supporters. My son brushed his teeth as commentators remarked on how well Jimmy and Rosalind Carter looked, discussed how he has redefined the role of former president. We watched as the motorcade make its slow, symbolic journey and the hordes of spectators were cheering. I flashed back to a different inauguration, nine years prior, when my husband and I stood out on the streets with thousands: holding signs, screaming, furious. It was one of the coldest, most miserable days in my memory, and it helps to be reminded that I am from Chicago, my skin toughened by our brutal winters. Inauguration day in 2000 couldn’t have been more appropriate: it was raining, very cold and with dark, foreboding clouds overhead, the picture of gloom. It was a perfect day for such an occasion, actually. On this most recent inaugural day, though, it was sunny. I whooped and hollered with joy this time, tears streaming down my face as I tried to explain to my son that grown ups sometimes cry when we’re really, really happy. I could not explain how our tear ducts can release both tears of sadness and tears of joy but it is somehow in our wiring. He shrugged and giggled, buoyed as always by his mother’s silliness.
My husband stopped home for lunch and to watch Barack Obama’s speech, and we ate leftover rosemary potato pizza around the television, not something that we would normally do. I rushed after the speech to get my son ready for his afternoon kindergarten class, squished his shoes in his backpack, filled his water bottle, then rushed him out the door. For not the first or the last time, I’m sure, I was a little overly enthusiastic for the other moms, who tend to regard me with a mixture of curiosity and fear. Is it my red kitty cat hat with ears? The fact that I don’t drive an SUV? Is it just something that emanates from me, much the same way it did when I was in junior high and so desperately wanted to fit in the with popular kids? The difference now is that I don’t care about that, though I do wonder if they possess some sort of ability to sense instantly that I am not one of them.
After dropping off my son, I went to the spa and was lucky enough to meet three of my mama friends there. This phenomenal spa in Chicago was offering a free day to enjoy the hot tub, eucalyptus steam room, sauna and relaxation center. We were breathless and radiant with a sort of feverish relief: Bush was out of office. We dissected President Obama’s – I’m still in shock that I get to put those two words together - speech and reveled in one another’s company, continuing our conversation from the hot tub to the steam room to the relaxation area. We were politely shushed by staff twice, one we could just barely make out through the haze of the steam room vapors, and I found myself wishing that we could telepathically communicate because we just had so much to say and so much unbridled enthusiasm. There was another woman in the hot tub, there to celebrate the inauguration and her birthday, who remarked, “You are not like the other moms in my neighborhood,” and I had to laugh. No, we’re not like the other moms. Two of us are colorfully tattooed, one has blue hair, but more than that, it is how we unapologetically dig into life. We speak honestly about our highs and lows, our rage at the injustices of the world, our reveling in the beauty of it: I think this is our common denominator. We are very powerful women together, if I must say so myself.
On the ride home, I saw men out on the sidewalk on North Avenue in the Austin neighborhood embracing. The first time I didn’t think much about it, but then I passed another two men hugging and I thought to myself, “Well, that is strange. You don’t see men hugging in Austin. Handshaking, yes, fist-bumping, yes, but never hugging.” It was then that I remembered the inauguration. It was an exceptional day. I told my son earlier that it was one of the most important days of my lifetime. And when I went to pick him up from school that afternoon, it seemed like the other moms might have been a little warmer to me than usual. Or was that just my imagination?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Shalom, everyone.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Bush Is OUTTA Here! Cookies (a recipe)...
I made these the afternoon of President Obama’s inauguration, when I was scrounging around the kitchen, looking for the odds and ends to make something sweet. I had oatmeal but no chocolate chips or raisins, so oatmeal cookies were out. I had baking chocolate but not quite everything I needed to make brownies. I remembered a cookie I’d had some years back from a long-disappeared dog-eared cookbook, a delicious cookie one with orange juice concentrate and dried coconut.
The BIOH cookies are not baked, which would make them especially nice in the summer, and there is a lot of potential for add-ins (see below). Consider this recipe a template to modify to your tastes and available ingredients, but I rather like it as is: moist, dense and nutritious. It’s the perfect cookie for saying good riddance to something ugly and savoring the sweet reward that comes from a renewed sense of optimism.
These measurements are approximate. Adjust liquids and dry ingredients as is necessary to make a dough that binds together.
1 cup quick rolled oats, ground in the blender
1 1/2 Tablespoons baking cocoa (unsweetened)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
dash of salt
Mix together in a medium-sized bowl with clean hands or a spoon.
2 Tablespoons smooth peanut butter, room temperature, smooshed around in a measuring cup
Add orange juice a little at a time until incorporated with the peanut butter. Add enough to equal 1/2 cup. (I haven’t tried this with defrosted orange juice concentrate, but that might be better.)
1/2 cup agave nectar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Add the agave and vanilla to the peanut butter mixture. Mix until blended together.
Pour this into the oat mix and mix until incorporated.
1/2 cup or more rolled oats (unground)
Add this to the mix until it is nice and mashed together. It should be thick and one big blob (like Dick Cheney, but that’s all my lovely cookies and Dick have in common) at this point.
With a cookie scooper or a tablespoon, measure out rounded cookies onto the tray of your choice. It helps to wet your scooping devise to minimize sticking as often as you need to do so. Refrigerate until cool, an hour or more. Enjoy!
Possible add-ins: Dried cherries (reconstituted and drained or as is), chocolate chips, mashed bananas, whole hemp seeds, whole flax seeds, sesame seeds, dried coconut (balled cookies would be good rolled in this), almond butter in place of peanut butter, carob powder in place of cocoa, etc. Also, play with the shape: you can make these round and roll ‘em in slivered toasted almonds for your next quick energy booster.
The BIOH cookies are not baked, which would make them especially nice in the summer, and there is a lot of potential for add-ins (see below). Consider this recipe a template to modify to your tastes and available ingredients, but I rather like it as is: moist, dense and nutritious. It’s the perfect cookie for saying good riddance to something ugly and savoring the sweet reward that comes from a renewed sense of optimism.
These measurements are approximate. Adjust liquids and dry ingredients as is necessary to make a dough that binds together.
1 cup quick rolled oats, ground in the blender
1 1/2 Tablespoons baking cocoa (unsweetened)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
dash of salt
Mix together in a medium-sized bowl with clean hands or a spoon.
2 Tablespoons smooth peanut butter, room temperature, smooshed around in a measuring cup
Add orange juice a little at a time until incorporated with the peanut butter. Add enough to equal 1/2 cup. (I haven’t tried this with defrosted orange juice concentrate, but that might be better.)
1/2 cup agave nectar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Add the agave and vanilla to the peanut butter mixture. Mix until blended together.
Pour this into the oat mix and mix until incorporated.
1/2 cup or more rolled oats (unground)
Add this to the mix until it is nice and mashed together. It should be thick and one big blob (like Dick Cheney, but that’s all my lovely cookies and Dick have in common) at this point.
With a cookie scooper or a tablespoon, measure out rounded cookies onto the tray of your choice. It helps to wet your scooping devise to minimize sticking as often as you need to do so. Refrigerate until cool, an hour or more. Enjoy!
Possible add-ins: Dried cherries (reconstituted and drained or as is), chocolate chips, mashed bananas, whole hemp seeds, whole flax seeds, sesame seeds, dried coconut (balled cookies would be good rolled in this), almond butter in place of peanut butter, carob powder in place of cocoa, etc. Also, play with the shape: you can make these round and roll ‘em in slivered toasted almonds for your next quick energy booster.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
St. Francis of the ants...
On Thursday, I picked up my son from school and, as is customary, asked him how his day had been. "It was...okay," he said, sounding a little less cheerful than usual. I asked him what happened. "Well, Jack said that he won't be my friend anymore because he was trying to stomp on an ant and I stopped him."
Apparently a wayward and hearty ant found his way into my son's class that afternoon and made a home for himself under the couch. Despite the decibel levels, overexposure to Hello, Kitty backpacks and having to endure the daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, I would say that that is one smart and fortunate ant to have found Ms. Roberts' kindergarten classroom. It is a tundra out here in Chicagoville: I'd hang out under a couch too if the other option was to burrow underground.
"So what happened?" I asked him. "I rescued the ant anyway and now he's safe." And Jack? "Jack said that he would still talk to me about aliens and spaceships, so we're still friends."
This might have been the first time I know of that my son was asked to put aside his convictions to maintain a friendship. This ant incident was no small thing as Jack happens to be my son's favorite classroom friend at the moment. Of course, I am very proud of his decision.
I think that it is very courageous for our boys to go down the path of nonviolence, something that in general our larger culture gives lip service to supporting but repeatedly fails to reinforce. From toy guns and war play to the notion that "boys will be boys" and everything that implies, those who actively swim against the popular current, whether by nature or nurture or both, often find themselves swimming and swimming, unable to find land upon which they can catch their breath. Every year, I realize, there will be more pressure on my son to "fit in," to squash that ant or just get out of the way when someone else does. But, for now, my six-year-old chose the path of civil disobedience, of Gandhian nonviolence, and he put his warm little body between the other boy and the ant. What happens next time? Or next year? Or the year after that? When will he decide that those lowly ants aren't worth the social risk?
As I wrote recently, I've become reacquainted with a lot of my old friends through Facebook. These are a lot of my crazy old college buddies, the ones who encouraged me to grow out my armpit hair and wear a tank top around Kansas with pride because, as a Semite, my pits were the most impressively filled out; these were friends who went to protests with me, plotted with me to circumvent any damn thing that vexed us. What I found is that everything my parents and their friends told me was just a phase - my vegetarianism (now veganism), my feminism, my far-left leaning politics - was not just a phase: it was here to stay and it only got more so as time went on. Now in many ways, we become more nuanced as we age: that is only natural as we get more exposed to different people and different views. It's not only natural, it shows growth and depth. Nuance, however, does not necessarily mean that one abandons her views: it helps buff off the sharp edges, that's all. Many of the fantastically leftist older people I know have assured me that they only get more left of center as they age.
Still, despite my outspokenness, I can't help but think about how many times I have bitten my tongue in order to avoid conflict, given my tacit approval of something I disagreed with because I didn't want to be That Person yet again. It can be exhausting to reject so many of our cultural values, to be honest, so I try to spend the majority of my time modeling what I do want to make manifest rather than protesting. This isn't to say that that I have become meek and complicit but that sometimes I have looked at that symbolic ant, shrugged, and said, "Go ahead. I just want to live my life. Do what you want." Sometimes I am tired of being the token vegan, the token feminist, out there in the decidedly omnivorous, misogynistic mainstream culture. This is why anything counter-cultural is so much more appealing to me, always has been. Still, there have been times that I've turned a blind eye to something I've disagreed with just to make my life a little easier. I'm not proud of this.
When will my son's essential goodness, his core convictions of compassion, start to erode a little in order to blend in more seamlessly in this world? It kills me a little to think of that gradual wearing away of his innocence. This is not to say that my son is an angel, but he really doesn't understand intentional meanness. Isn't that sane of him? The mama bear protector in me, though, worries that he is going to be targeted by bullies down the road and wishes he would toughen up just a little. He is still so tender, which is not exactly a quality that's encouraged in boys by society, and something that the meaner children pick up on like heat-seeking missiles.
How do we create real boys - complex, sensitive, multifaceted and courageous - for this world? How do we protect ourselves without eroding our values? I have no definite answers, but I will say this for now: I am proud that my son speaks up for the ants.
Shalom, everyone.
Apparently a wayward and hearty ant found his way into my son's class that afternoon and made a home for himself under the couch. Despite the decibel levels, overexposure to Hello, Kitty backpacks and having to endure the daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, I would say that that is one smart and fortunate ant to have found Ms. Roberts' kindergarten classroom. It is a tundra out here in Chicagoville: I'd hang out under a couch too if the other option was to burrow underground.
"So what happened?" I asked him. "I rescued the ant anyway and now he's safe." And Jack? "Jack said that he would still talk to me about aliens and spaceships, so we're still friends."
This might have been the first time I know of that my son was asked to put aside his convictions to maintain a friendship. This ant incident was no small thing as Jack happens to be my son's favorite classroom friend at the moment. Of course, I am very proud of his decision.
I think that it is very courageous for our boys to go down the path of nonviolence, something that in general our larger culture gives lip service to supporting but repeatedly fails to reinforce. From toy guns and war play to the notion that "boys will be boys" and everything that implies, those who actively swim against the popular current, whether by nature or nurture or both, often find themselves swimming and swimming, unable to find land upon which they can catch their breath. Every year, I realize, there will be more pressure on my son to "fit in," to squash that ant or just get out of the way when someone else does. But, for now, my six-year-old chose the path of civil disobedience, of Gandhian nonviolence, and he put his warm little body between the other boy and the ant. What happens next time? Or next year? Or the year after that? When will he decide that those lowly ants aren't worth the social risk?
As I wrote recently, I've become reacquainted with a lot of my old friends through Facebook. These are a lot of my crazy old college buddies, the ones who encouraged me to grow out my armpit hair and wear a tank top around Kansas with pride because, as a Semite, my pits were the most impressively filled out; these were friends who went to protests with me, plotted with me to circumvent any damn thing that vexed us. What I found is that everything my parents and their friends told me was just a phase - my vegetarianism (now veganism), my feminism, my far-left leaning politics - was not just a phase: it was here to stay and it only got more so as time went on. Now in many ways, we become more nuanced as we age: that is only natural as we get more exposed to different people and different views. It's not only natural, it shows growth and depth. Nuance, however, does not necessarily mean that one abandons her views: it helps buff off the sharp edges, that's all. Many of the fantastically leftist older people I know have assured me that they only get more left of center as they age.
Still, despite my outspokenness, I can't help but think about how many times I have bitten my tongue in order to avoid conflict, given my tacit approval of something I disagreed with because I didn't want to be That Person yet again. It can be exhausting to reject so many of our cultural values, to be honest, so I try to spend the majority of my time modeling what I do want to make manifest rather than protesting. This isn't to say that that I have become meek and complicit but that sometimes I have looked at that symbolic ant, shrugged, and said, "Go ahead. I just want to live my life. Do what you want." Sometimes I am tired of being the token vegan, the token feminist, out there in the decidedly omnivorous, misogynistic mainstream culture. This is why anything counter-cultural is so much more appealing to me, always has been. Still, there have been times that I've turned a blind eye to something I've disagreed with just to make my life a little easier. I'm not proud of this.
When will my son's essential goodness, his core convictions of compassion, start to erode a little in order to blend in more seamlessly in this world? It kills me a little to think of that gradual wearing away of his innocence. This is not to say that my son is an angel, but he really doesn't understand intentional meanness. Isn't that sane of him? The mama bear protector in me, though, worries that he is going to be targeted by bullies down the road and wishes he would toughen up just a little. He is still so tender, which is not exactly a quality that's encouraged in boys by society, and something that the meaner children pick up on like heat-seeking missiles.
How do we create real boys - complex, sensitive, multifaceted and courageous - for this world? How do we protect ourselves without eroding our values? I have no definite answers, but I will say this for now: I am proud that my son speaks up for the ants.
Shalom, everyone.
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