The Little I Can Do

In order to avoid living like an actual grownup, I have made a compromise with myself about working. I have to do it, because we need the money, but I do not have to have a Real Job because my husband (who is an actual adult) has one that comes with magnificent health insurance for which I am eternally grateful. I have cobbled together a somewhat bizarre set of jobs based on my equally improbably skill set: I do legal consulting for another attorney, I do super secret work for a website, and I am the “backup hospitality provider” for the church down the street. The latter means that I mostly cater funeral receptions (since people stubbornly refuse to die on a schedule) and the real hospitality person is most likely to be unavailable for funerals because they tend to be short-notice affairs. It is a standard joke in my family that I should have a business card that says, beneath my name in copperplate, “Lawyer, Writer, Funeral Caterer.” All that’s missing, really, is “rodeo clown.”

I was asked to do the catering work because I was known to be a “foodie,” and I do love the planning, the shopping for the ripest fruit and the freshest baguettes, and the slicing, peeling, and simmering in the church’s giant kitchen. What I didn’t know I would love so much is the sense of giving something real and comforting to families that are grieving. I remember the funerals of my mother’s family, after which the ladies from the temple would “make a lunch” that was extravagant and redolent of noodle kugel and love. When a child in my son’s class died, years ago, it was the luncheon after the service that held the family in its arms after a grueling period of “keeping it together.” It was a time when the facade could drop, and where they could sink into the comfort of family and friends, with church ladies bustling around with casseroles and lemonade that were the tangible form of sympathy, empathy and faith in eventual healing.

When I have rallied the church ladies to donate cookies and time, and laid the tables with white cloths, and covered them with the best food I can make, it is not just work but real spiritual sustenance to look out across a room in which people are finding some respite from a terrible time. It isn’t a “fix,” the beloved is still gone, but it is a chance to celebrate a life and share memories in a safe, warm place. My hope is that it gives mourners something to take with them, something that may be obscured by the unbearable pain of loss for many months, but which may blossom again in memory after the worst pain has subsided.

Until now, all of the receptions I have catered followed services for elderly people. Obviously, the fact that the loss involved someone in their 80s or 90s does nothing to mitigate the loss; those people were all somebody’s father, somebody’s grandma, somebody’s brother. It does mean, though, that the death followed a long life, a life in which families were raised, there were silver and gold wedding anniversaries, and in most cases, there were peaceful retirements rich with grandchildren, travel and volunteering like raisins studding a scone.

Yesterday I got the call asking me if I could do a reception for the funeral of a young man killed in an accident. I didn’t recognize the family name at first, and then I remembered. Last summer, as I stood at the stainless steel counter of the church kitchen cutting up cantaloupes, working in the relative cool of the evening, a woman came in wearing a nurse’s uniform. She was in charge of the jewelry sale the church puts on every year during a local Folk Festival, and had come in after work to put price tags on the contributed necklaces, bracelets and earrings. She introduced herself to me and we talked.  I told her I was “really a writer” but did the catering work on the side because I loved it. She told me her older son was a writer, too. We talked about her sons, who sounded quite delightful, and I told her that I hoped my boy would turn out to be as productive and community-minded as hers had proven to be. This Saturday’s  funeral is for her oldest son, the writer of whom she had spoken so proudly.

I dreaded calling her to make arrangements; I knew that it wasn’t about me, and that it was no time to project my own love and fear about my own child onto her real and present loss. I still didn’t want to call. When I finally made myself dial, she came to the phone sounding exhausted, and subdued. “I remember you,” she said, “we talked about our boys.” I asked her questions about what kind of food she’d like, and she spoke of her son in the present tense. “He likes food from Oasis” she told me, and I said that I was sure I could get the local middle eastern restaurant to sell us humus, pita and kabobs. “He likes coffee, but with real cream. He doesn’t like the powdered stuff.” Together, we worked out a motley assortment of food that her son loved (loves) including the middle eastern food, potato samosas, trail mix and carrot cake. She asked if we could have, maybe, a casserole for older folks coming in from out-of-town who might not be comfortable with grape leaves and hashwi. I assured her that we could. It was not a menu I would ever have planned, but it was, for her, a representation of her child. It was the food he liked best, to celebrate his brutally truncated life.

I can’t decide, today, whether I love or hate this job. Coming so close to the death of someone else’s  son has pierced me to the core. I think about my own son, and I know that when her own lost boy was 13, she imagined, as I do, the unfolding of a long, rich life that would stretch out long past the end of her own. She never saw this coming. I want to fix it, I want to make it a different world in which this never happened. I want to fix it, and I can’t. All I can do is order the trays of food from Oasis, e-mail the stalwart church ladies asking them for carrot cakes and help with the reception, and make sure that the celebration of this boy’s life will ease a terrible day.

At the end of our conversation, this mother said to me “I’m so glad we talked about our boys. I feel like you know him.” I can’t fix anything, but I can pour my sorrow, and sadness and hope for her sustaining faith into every carrot I peel, and every plate I set carefully on white linen. Sometimes, there isn’t anything else I can do.

Could a Monkey with a Computer Compose Beethoven’s Fifth?

A friend sent me a link yesterday to an article about a Man named David Copes, who has created artificial intelligence software that composes music. So far, so good. The issue is that Cope’s software composes music that is, in some cases, virtually indistinguishable from the work of a human composer. Music in which the software derived Bach’s rules to produce music in the style of Bach, for example, has fooled an audience unable to distinguish “real” Bach from music composed by the program.

This really ticked people off.

Cope, who began his project because he genuinely wanted to create beautiful music, takes the view that there is no inherent superiority in music or writing created by a human artist rather than a computer. (Apparently,  in addition to composing music, software can be created to replicate Shakespearean sonnets, among other things).

In his view, all music — and, really, any creative pursuit — is largely based on previously created works. Call it standing on the shoulders of giants; call it plagiarism. Everything we create is just a product of recombination.

Despite being lambasted by many in the artistic and scientific community, Cope continues to use his software for the purpose he originally envisioned: working with it to compose original works that he hopes will move and enchant listeners as traditional compositions have done for centuries. In response to criticism that a machine can’t possibly create art that speaks to the receiver in the same way as Rilke or Rachmaninov, he answers that humans do not create art from some magical hollow tree of the soul; they assemble and build from what came before, consciously or not. The finished product may be a breathtaking assemblage, but it is always, always based on and related to every sound the artist has ever heard, every word she has ever read, and all of the other art she has observed.

[Cope] is now convinced that, in many ways, machines can be more creative than people. They’re able to introduce random notions and reassemble old elements in new ways, without any of the hang-ups or preconceptions of humanity.

“We are so damned biased, even those of us who spend all our lives attempting not to be biased. Just the mere fact that when we like the taste of something, we tend to eat it more than we should. We have our physical body telling us things, and we can’t intellectually govern it the way we’d like to,” he says.

In other words, humans are more robotic than machines. “The question,” Cope says, “isn’t whether computers have a soul, but whether humans have a soul.”

I am happy for Mr. Cope, in a we-are-all-humans-let’s-embrace-humanity kind of way, and I agree with him that the art that we see does not spring whole from the head and heart of an artist, but is made up of bits and pieces of everything the creator has ever heard, seen or experienced. Sometimes it’s very clear – Vivaldi did write a lot of very similar works in the process of growing and refining his composition, and it is nearly impossible to write anything without the influence of everything you have ever read. It may be true that “there is nothing new under the sun,” and I’m okay with that.

I admit, though, to a sense of loss, and to feeling foolish for believing that I have found, in art, the messages of artistic souls yearning to be heard. When I read a short story that stuns me with its beauty, am I really just reading a sliced and diced version of all of the Carver, James and Elliott that the writer read in the past? If I sit listening to Vaughan Williams “Variations on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” and watching the falling snow, am I moved by nothing more than Vaughan Williams regurgitation of Tallises regurgitation of some other music he had in his subconscious? Are the artists that I love really nothing more than masterful assemblers of the flotsam and jetsam of life, giving me not a unique expression of their visions, but a skillful packaging job? Do they really have less soul than computer software?!

There is also, of course, the question of whether a person like me should bother to write. I have long believed that I was telling stories that were unique to my experience, and filtering them through some spiritual lense that was as unique to me as a snowflake or a fingerprint. I knew I had influences, of course, but now I wonder whether I am actually creating or inventing anything new and useful, or merely shining a light on what was already there, relying on ideas, turns of phrase and syntax that are already filed in my mind (and, possibly, in yours). If I delight myself because I have  found the perfect phrase, am I just a deluded idiot who is channeling something I heard on the bus, or read in a poetry anthology years ago? If it is true, as Cope claims, that I am “more robotic than a machine” by virtue of my inability to master my biases and impulses, that I may, in fact, have no soul, yearning or otherwise, what’s the point?

Here’s what I think, what I can accept and live with. All artists are building on the sights, sounds and experiences of the natural world, and the art of their predecessors or contemporaries. The assembly of those influences is, perhaps, the art – there is a voice, there is a desire to communicate, to create an emotional response or make a statement, but the creative act involves our own (non-artificial) intelligence, and yes, or souls. It isn’t important to me, really, that a painting, a poem or a string quartet was imagined in some hermetically sealed artistic vacuum; it matters that the artist used and built on the world around him to make something new and unique in its evocative powers. If a computer can do it too, I can live with that, and who knows; I might come to love music composed by artificial intelligence as much as I love Brahms and Monk. I will never, however, believe that it has more soul, or that it has been wrought to form that beautiful, filamentary bond that exists between an artist and her audience.

Image Credit: http://www.thequillguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/monkey_typing_jonk.jpg

Far Away Places, With Strange-Sounding Names….

Right off the bat I will admit that I should just stop reading “Town & Country,” even though it’s a free subscription, and even if it is the only thing in my magazine basket besides “The New Yorker” and “Tricycle” when I am in the mood for fluff. Yesterday, taking a luxurious afternoon reading break, I flipped past the pages and pages and pages of ads for jewelry and designer bags, and arrived at a piece written by the magazine’s editor, about vacationing in Marrakech, Morocco. Momentarily, looking at the pictures, I was lost in a travel fantasy – flying into the Casablanca airport, drinking mint tea and resting during the blazing heat of the day, and emerging when it was cooler to shop the souks, sample street food, and watch people. We would end the evening having dinner at the home of the concierge’s mother (he would, of course, have been taken with us and wanted to show us the “real” Morocco) who would heap upon us tagines, piles of cous cous, bisteya, chicken with green olives, pastries and every other Moroccan dish known to mankind. We would communicate with lots of smiles and a mix of my bad French and their bad English; at the end of the evening we would walk back to our modest hotel full of new friends and different foods and that wonderful sense that a window has been opened and life looks fresh and filled with possibility.

This was not the dream of Ms. Fiori, author of the “Town & Country” piece. She was writing about the most famous luxury hotel in Marrakech, which had fallen on hard times, been renovated and reopened since her earlier visits. She was pleased to note that Marrakech had been cleaned up; fewer pesky beggars and urchins accosted her on the street, and there were new luxury boutiques in which one could shop, because most of the items sold in the souks were junk. She steered us towards indulgence in spa treatments, and dinning either in the hotel’s restaurant or two other fine dining establishments in town, cautioning that street food should be avoided. It seemed to me that her greatest wish was to be transported from her luxurious home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and whisked via pneumatic tube into a faintly Morocco-scented version of her regular life – clean, well-appointed, comfortable and safe. Like an old friend who complained that she could not find any “regular” food during her honeymoon trip to Greece, she wanted no challenges or changes, only a warmer, brighter venue for her customary American life.

I have taken that trip, although not, alas, to Morocco. My husband’s previous employer sent its top salesman on a trip every year, and we were dispatched twice to Puerto Rico, twice to Hawaii, and to Atlantis, St. John and Mexico. I grew up taking trips planned by my mother, who was a fabulous creator of experience and opportunity. In the days before the internet, she consulted books and magazines, wrote letters on thin, blue airmail stationary, and set up itineraries that took us off the beaten path in a manner well suited to a family with two children and a modest budget. In Assisi we stayed at a convent hostelry where we ate at long, communal tables, made friends with fellow travelers, and walked with them through the cool of the evening, finding the gelataria she had read about somewhere. In England, where we spent the most time, we made real friends, and spent one Sunday in a real, thatch-roofed cottage eating steak and kidney pie which required that my brother and I identify the chunks of kidney and hide them under a scrum of pie crust. It was never luxurious or insular, sometimes we were uncomfortable or found ourselves picking at bread because the only offering was whole, tiny fish, but it was wonderful. It was what I thought everyone did when they traveled.

On the company trips, however, we were generally ferried from the airport to a resort of some sort by air-conditioned bus, passing by palm trees, glimpses of the waiting ocean, and, in some cases, the neighborhoods where people lived in grinding, abject poverty. It was difficult for me to relax in the crystal-chandeliered lobby of a resort hotel while processing images of small, thin children chasing chickens in the dirt outside their ramshackle houses. I thought they must hate us, coming in with our fancy clothes and designer sunglasses, and I imagined that many of them had family members who made their living working at the resort, serving our drinks, washing our bed linens, and cleaning leaves out of the pools in the mornings. I found that separation painful, and in the places where it was most stark, I had a surreal sense of being not in that sunny, beachy place, but apart from it as surely as if I had stayed home and looked at pictures from someone else’s trip. The people, the humanity of a place were an essential part of my bearings, and as long as we were alien to one another, the life-changing magic of travel remained elusive.

The idea, on those trips, was that we would spend our three or four days in splendid isolation, lying on the beach or by the pool, dining “on the reservation” as my husband and I dubbed each resort property, and drinking…a lot. For most of our companions, this was really a great vacation; there was some golf, sometimes, and in Maui we all went to a luau, but mostly it was about sunning, drinking “on the boss,” eating expensive food, and venturing into town, if possible, only to shop for souvenirs or to find other places to drink. There was usually a sunset “booze cruise” which I found somewhat horrifying, having grown up sailng with my father, who taught us that no one should ever be drunk, or even careless and sober on a boat. Although we love the ocean, and the beach, we are not people who “lay out” in the sun, and we are not big drinkers. We were not enthralled to eat in expensive continental or Asian restaurants when we were in Mexico or Puerto Rico. Our goal, on every trip, was to find out how to get “off the reservation,” and to spend as much time as possible away from the crested robes and complimentary cocktails, and find the neighborhoods and restaurants and churches and schools that could tell us the story of a place.

We were still, clearly, tourists, and we didn’t kid ourselves that the disenfranchised locals in Mexico and Puerto Rico were going to ask us in for a pineapple soda, but we had experiences we could never have had at home. On our first trip to Puerto Rico we rented a car and spent a day in Old San Juan, looking at the miraculous colors and ironwork on the buildings, eating real Puerto Rican food in a crowded lunch spot, and happening on a square filled with pigeons and old ladies. In St. John we took the boat to St. Thomas and found a restaurant owned by Tina Turner fanatics who had covered the walls with her pictures, played only her music, and served Rob a whole fish with a look of stark terror on its face that rendered it inedible. He shared my pastels, instead. In Mexico we spent several enchanted hours in the center of the nearest town, eating at an open-air restaurant on the beach were local families were enjoying their Sunday rituals; after darkness fell, we were caught up in a street parade with costumes, horses, and be-sashed beauty queens. On the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, we got a little lost in the sleepy and unprepossessing “town,” and decided on a whim to climb a steep hill that led up to the ruins of an old fort. At the top, sweaty and exhausted, we discovered a perfect little jewel box of a hotel, very clean and low-key, with a restaurant that served us local specialties as we looked out over a vast swathe of ocean.

I do not mean to be ungrateful to Rob’s very generous former employer, who undoubtedly believed that a few days of sun and relaxation in a beautiful place was a lovely reward, indeed. the times we remember, though, the things that let us know that we were in a different place, are the things we discovered by leaving the safety and comfort of the reservation. Those discoveries, and the moments we spent getting to know our fellow travelers, are the things we still talk about, laugh about and dream about. And when we dream of going back to Maui, or to Pleya del Carmen, or to the Caribbean, and we do, we always talk about staying in a bed & breakfast or a funky little hotel near the center of town, checking out the local schedule for concerts, pageants and other happenings, and eating handmade tortillas, jerk chicken or plate lunches until we need a long walk along the beach to burn it all off. No boutiques, no continental menus, no spas, no tennis courts, no casinos, no insulation other than common sense and respect for our status as visitors. We will eat the street food, we will buy fresh fruit and exotic soda at the grocery store, we will try to read the local paper, catch a Sunday service, and soak up the glorious strangeness of a different place while trying, at every opportunity, to make connections based on the glorious familiarity of other human beings.

“Town & Country” will probably never find a place for our stories of stumbling into the wrong neighborhood, or confronting the shocking specter of a dead and accusatory fish to the strains of “What’s Love Got To Do With It?”, and that’s okay. Our travel dreams have nothing to do with aspiration, and everything to do with inspiration.

Selective Intelligence: A Dirty Little Secret

When I was in the second grade, my teacher was an Old School Virago named Mrs. Rolph. I remember nothing about her actual, physical self except that I think she had reddish-brown hair and wore cat-eye glasses. She seemed very tall to me, kind of looming, and in that way that children have of knowing, I could tell very early that she was not my biggest fan. I was eccentric, an early reader, a kid who spent recess re-enacting stories about scrappy English orphans with her best friend rather than engaging in a wholesome, American activity like jumping rope or playing Four Square.

Although she grudgingly cast me as The Magic R (the lead) in the class play about phonics because I was the only person who could remember the lines, her grudging and expedient extension of credit ended there. First she told my parents I was dyslexic because I reversed lower case “p”s and “q”s when printing. A visit to a small battery of medical professionals resulted in the diagnosis that I was not dyslexic; I was a seven-year-old. Next, she informed my parents (both teachers)  that I should “stop writing about imaginary things and write about real things, like dolphins.” Needless to say, they were more than happy to tell her that they were pleased and proud to have a child with an imagination, and that as long as I was following directions (like “write one paragraph”) they saw no reason to prefer non-fiction. Being nothing if not resourceful, Mrs. Rolph began directing us to “write a paragraph about something you read in a library book about something factual, not something made up.”

So, from my earliest memories, I resisted reading or writing about facts. Later, when math evolved past what I could figure out using my fingers, I also resisted abstraction. Maybe I didn’t resist them, exactly, it wasn’t as if I consciously thought “I would really prefer to be reading a novel.” It was more like “my brain is slowly filling with smoke, it’s reaching the level of my eyes, I can’t see the paragraph I just read seven times anymore, I know it was something about how Columbus raised money for his ships, but I still don’t remember what it said….” Out of necessity, I became adept at the “skim and pick.” In order to do well on worksheets for Social Studies about something like Trapping Routes During the French & Indian War or to fill in those reading comprehension things on standardized tests, I would read the question and go back and find the correct answers. I was smart, I was a fast reader, and it worked every time. (Unless, of course, one has some petty fixation on the actual reading and/or comprehension of the material in question).

I struggled with math, chemistry and physics, although I was fine with biology which often involved things like plants and animals which I could actually see, and about which I had warm and fuzzy feelings. I had trouble with much of history because there never seemed to be any women in it, and because much of it seemed to be about various men fighting over land or abstract ideas, with a never-ending series of wars and treaties; it never made sense to me that anyone cared that much about who got the tip of Panama in order to control the booming hat factory economy, and I was saved only by my good memory and my old friend skim and pick. Law school was almost entirely enshrouded in brain fog, with clarity only during torts, which involved really interesting stories about peoples’ dentists dropping teeth into their lungs, and criminal law which involved…crimes. Mostly, the three years  involved reading cases written in small print about things like “passing the seisin” and “the rule against perpetuities,” which I had to read seven times, highlight and copy almost word-for-word into a series of notebooks just for the purpose of being sure I had actually read the words. Comprehension was a whole other issue.

The thing is, it never changed, and I find myself as an adult of reasonable intelligence who simply cannot fathom certain material. It is not (entirely) a matter of disinterest, and it is absolutely not a matter of willful know-nothingism, a characteristic that I particularly abhor. There are simply, honestly and truly things that seem to resist going into my brain like sleeping bags fight re-entry into their improbably small storage bags. I can approach the stuff, mean well, put on my reading glasses, sit in a hard-backed chair with good light, and when I try to stuff it into my brain it seems suddenly too big, too floppy, and too cumbersome to be compacted into the right configuration.

I also have great difficulty with any kind of rhetorical, theoretical, hypothetical, or otherwise “not real” argument. There are folks, and I know lots of them, who take great delight in arguing for the sake of sharpening their brains. They seem to thrive on a good back and forth about something like whether people are basically “good,” whether there is proof of God, or what is “real.” Often, because I seem smart, they assume that I will share their delight in these un-resolvable intellectual tennis matches. In fact, I find myself feeling stupid and unsophisticated because I am not an abstract thinker, and because my responses to questions of faith, humanity and reality are not sophistry to me, but matters of deep personal importance. It is no fun when someone says to me “but how do you know God exists?” and all I can say is that “if She does, proving her existence to you is probably the least of her concerns.” It makes my head hurt. It makes me feel stupid. It makes me feel concrete and muleish.

This happens with books, often.  I was completely stumped by attempts to read Godel, Escher, Bach, The Periodic Table of the Elements and The Dancing Wu Li Masters. I have also been felled by various academic tomes on subjects ranging from semiotics to genetics, and I have a terrible time with philosophy, which makes me break out in hives as I start muttering to myself about the fact that I do. not. care. how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. If there were a description of the angels’ physical appearance, their feelings about dancing, their clothes or how they came to the pin, I might be able to stick with it, but this kind of back story is generally absent. Anything that is based on a notion along the lines of “if everybody did ____” is problematic for me unless and until everybody actually does whatever it is, in which case I’m intrigued.

Like sugar-coating on pills, a fictional treatment, really great writing, or a “human angle” can make it possible for me to ingest pretty much anything and actually understand it. Give me a book recounting the details of Reconstruction after the Civil War and I am lost; put it into a story about a Southern family trying to adjust to the new order of things and I am enthralled. I can read five stories about the situation in Somalia without full comprehension, and then see the whole history and all of the related issues snap into sharp focus after reading one beautifully written story about the country’s troubled President in the Sunday Times magazine. I came to understand at least the basic concept of Schrödinger’s Cat because a character in a mystery novel was a physicist,  and the author created a parallel between the disappearance of The Dead Guy and Schrödinger’s classic paradox.

I have no answers, here, and I make no excuses. If I could wave a wand and transform myself into someone who could drink deeply from the wells of military history, Property Law, quantum physics and Nietzsche and come out refreshed, I would do it. I would be able to refute the trickle down economic theory with panache, explain why the snowstorms do not mean that Global Warming is bad science, discuss the benefits of diplomatic relations with North Korea, and understand the rules of curling. I would not withdraw from arguments and discussions saying that I “just didn’t know enough to make a good case.” I would be intellectually invulnerable; I’d have a veritable arsenal of facts, abstractions, and I wouldn’t be afraid to use them. Dilettantes and poseurs would quake in my magnificent presence.

Until such time as the wand arrives, I will simply continue to be a mostly smart person with a dirty little secret, trying to distract everyone with my native wit and charm. People will give me books that I know I won’t read, I will put them beside my bed for a month, shuffle them out of sight, read a review on amazon.com and move on. I will, when I am tired, read the “Style” section of the Times before I read the front page. I hope the wand is pink, and sparkly….

Image Credit: http://captainbitts.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/geb.jpg

Miss Understood Draws Fire

I can’t tell you how many times I have read about an actress, a politician or an athlete whining about how their comments or activities were “misconstrued,” and how shocked they were, and thought to myself “what did they expect?” Smugly and self-righteously I sat in my house and thought about how, if one is a public figure, subject to the opinions and attacks of every Tom, Dick and Harry populating this earth, one ought reasonably to anticipate that not everyone will love them, understand them or agree with them. It was, I thought, simply the trade-off they made for “fame and fortune and all that goes with it.”

Then it happened to me.

I have had skirmishes on this blog; I made myself unpopular with fans of King’s of Leon front man Caleb Followill when I lambasted him for making disparaging remarks about “mom jean” wearing women, and I had a regrettable disagreement with one friend over the comments on another post, and, in yet another, managed to offend someone else’s taste in music. When a piece I had written was published on Salon.com, ridiculous comments and arguments erupted over my jokey aside that I could refer to certain things as “Jew Food” but non-Jews didn’t enjoy the privilege. I didn’t enjoy any of those flare-ups, but I could dismiss the Followill fans on the basis of their illiterate nastiness, I could apologize to my friends and trust that they knew me well enough to cut me some slack, and I had no problem seeing that the Salon regulars were simply spoiling for a fight about something, to the point where they would draw swords over an irrelevant sentence in a recipe for noodles and fried cabbage.

Yesterday, on Open Salon where I also post, I ran a piece about bullying that I had posted here in the fall of 2009. The gist of it is that while schools need to take active steps to protect vulnerable kids from bullies, I see the “bullying rubric” in our District being applied to situations where no actual bullying is involved. I also see it being used by folks smart enough to know that invoking “bullying” leads to the punishment of the alleged bully, sometimes without a real examination of the facts and personalities involved. The piece was selected as an “Editor’s Pick,” meaning that it was on the “front page” of Open Salon for about 24 hours. This is a very prominent spot, there are 10,000 plus members of Open Salon, and so the piece was very, very public.

What followed was what can only be called a shit storm. (Sorry, mom). I anticipated the argument that bullying is so destructive and so odious that it’s okay if corrective measures are so strict that they catch some innocent kids in the crossfire. I don’t agree with that argument, but I saw it coming, and I got it in the comments. What I didn’t expect were the folks who interpreted into my writing all kinds of things that I never thought or wrote, all of them very ugly. I was criticized by more than one person who believed that I supported the bullying of children who behave oddly, including (by very tenuous  extension) children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. I explained in response, over and over and over again that I had not meant that, that I earn most of my income representing people with autism spectrum disorders before the Social Security Administration. I was told that I shouldn’t be doing that job because I clearly didn’t understand autism spectrum disorders or their symptoms. I said that I had, myself, been bullied from elementary school through high school, to no avail. I was accused of supporting bullying, wanting people to go after the weak and eccentric, being insensitive, and everything except actually being Hitler. No answer that I gave was effective; it was like yelling into a canyon. I felt misunderstood, and actually I started to wonder whether the cruel, bully-supporting person they saw was not, in fact…me.

Just when I was starting to feel okay about it all, to understand that if you bring up a controversial topic you risk controversy (and I do understand that) one of my most unhappy and acerbic commenters wrote a post of his own, characterizing my piece as an “apologia for bullying” and demanding that I apologize. I think he also wanted me to pull the post. He was also apparently obsessed with the fact that I am a lawyer, although I mentioned it only in the comments when I was trying to explain my professional reasons for understanding autism spectrum disorders.In fact, I am no longer a member of the bar, and practice law only on a consulting basis because I hated practicing law. How ironic to have that be the focus of his attack. If only, I kept thinking, if only I could just explain…..

It was surreal, reading this lengthy tirade about me as if I were the absolute, total, irredeemable scum of the earth. A puppy killer, an autistic child-hater, probably an eater of infants. The idea that someone was so angered by my words that he would do such a thing was more than a little scary, particularly since I had tried so very hard to explain myself and “fix things.” It made me discouraged, and sick and exhausted, and it made me think that no matter how careful I was, someone was going to pick apart everything I wrote and turn it into something completely different.

So it happened to me. I published something controversial in a public forum, and although I am no movie star, I have now had the experience of being judged and criticized and misconstrued, and quite possibly even hated by people who know nothing about the real me. There is no “fixing” it as if I were a small child with a boo boo; I could be revealed as the successor to Mother Theresa and they’d still hate me. Everybody doesn’t love me, and everybody won’t. If I push buttons, intentionally or not, the folks I have sent into orbit will not care that I am a nice girl, that I take bugs outside to avoid killing them, or that I’m good to my parents.

I can write that, I can “get” it, but it’s going to take some time for me to accept it as an ordinary part of life. I am, and have always been conflict avoidant, and my natural response to any argument that can’t be worked out with a little patience and compassion is to stick my fingers in my ears and chant “lalalalalalala.” Then, of course, I’m hurt, and then, of course, I whine and cry. This is the whining, by the way.

I drew that fire, and I’ll draw it again if I keep pushing for a bigger audience. I get that. I’ve learned a lot of things in the past 24 hours, about people, and arguments, and discourse, civil and otherwise. In the final analysis I think I’ll grow from this, thicker skinned and more realistic, if nothing else. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.

True Colors?

Since I was twelve or thirteen, I have been taking quizzes to find out who I really am. When I started, these questionnaires often appeared across from ads for “Love’s Fresh Lemon,” and promised to tell me whether I was “Date Bait or Total Turnoff” based on answers about my clothing, after school activities, and ability to wait until a boy called me. Lying on my flowery bedspread, I admitted to the glossy paper that I was a member of Chess Club, that I owned no “cool peasant blouses,” or “perfectly broken-in jeans,” and that I sometimes called boys I liked. I knew my answers paved the road to Total Turnoff land, but I clung to the possibility that my choices were not as blatantly nerdish as they seemed. I imagined a Personality Scientist somewhere who wrote the tests based on reams of data corresponding to each answer on the quiz. Maybe there was a high correlation between playing chess and being “Date Bait,” no matter what anybody said at school.

During college and the dating years, I was reeled in by quizzes with names like “What is Your Seduction Style?” that required data about everything from the color, cut and pattern of my underwear to my favorite vacation spot – Cancun, the French Riviera, Nantucket or Aspen. Needless to say, “a cottage in northern Michigan with your parents” was not among the choices. As I matured, secure in my ability to get a date, and even a husband (who is happy to be seduced in any style), I gravitated towards tests like “What is Your Fragrance Personality” and “What Your Favorite Breakfast Food Reveals About You.” As always, these beautifully illustrated lists of inquiring paragraphs and lettered choices promised to resolve my longstanding identity crisis based on the answers to a few, simple questions. It was therapy without the Kleenex.

In addition to magazines tests, I have recently discovered the world of the Internet quiz. Sites such as emode.com and ivillage.com tease me with the chance to discover what colors suit me best, what city reflects my personality, which character I resemble from “Friends,” what career would be most fulfilling, and whether or not I am a good friend. Not content with mere fluff anymore, I have learned my I.Q. (okay), my E.Q. (pretty good), my Stress Index (stratospheric), my Spending Style (irresponsible), and my Diet Downfalls (many).

Every time I pick up a pen or set my hand on a mouse for a round of quiz taking, I secretly hope that I am on the verge of discovering the Truth after years of spent trapped in the life of an impostor. I list my choices, fascinated to learn that I am a Romantic dresser who prefers woody fragrances, and should be living in Seattle and working as a taxidermist. With the gentle guidance of the Personality Scientist, I will finally be able to plan meals, choose sandals and pick a time for parent-teacher conferences, confident in the knowledge that every choice reflects my real personality.

The path to self-discovery, however, is not easy. A recent magazine quiz asks the following questions. For a romantic evening with my “spouse or significant other,” do I prefer: a) dinner by the fireside at a cozy, country inn, b) sushi and drinks at an exciting, new nightspot in town, or c) cuddling at home with pizza and a video? None of the answers is correct. If my husband and I drove to an inn in the country, ate dinner and drove home it would take at least eight hours, and we would exhaust our babysitting budget for 2004. Rob  hates sushi, and if I have a drink I fall immediately into a deep and peaceful slumber. If we stayed home and watched a movie, the romance would be severely hampered by our ringing phone, the kid nagging us for more Axe & Abercrombie, our dogs begging for crusts and our pizza-induced acid reflux.

After a long pause, I chose the sushi option. The cozy inn in the country and the roaring fire might be seen as clichés. Choosing an evening at home, although closest to the truth, seems to label me as dull and narrow-minded. As I circled “b” on the page, I considered the fact that my inaccurate choice might totally destroy the validity of the test results created by the Personality Scientist. What if “sushi” choosers are charismatic daredevils who love to surf at dawn off Maui, and have multiple piercings? By lying, I risked getting a result that was not a true reflection of my personality, but of a cooler, better one. I may briefly enjoy tallying my points and reading that I am a “hip, happening mom who hasn’t lost her groove,” but I will know that if I had answered truthfully on question number 16, I would have discovered that I was “more Betty Crocker than bedroom bombshell.”

The truth though, is complex. Some days I am pretty hip, and some days I am Betty Crocker. As I grow older and more comfortable with myself, I more frequently ignore the Magic Quiz Answer when it doesn’t suit me. I’ll admit that I really was a “Total Turnoff,” in the eighth grade, and that my seduction style at age twenty-three genuinely was “too shy to try.” These days, though, I know that my preference for blue over yellow doesn’t really mean that I’m “a confident, enthusiastic leader.” It just means I really like blue. People who actually know me will attest that I am rarely “enthusiastic,” never “confident,” and a “leader” only under extreme duress. Perhaps some day I will meet a Personality Scientist on a plane, or see one explaining the basis of her work on “Oprah,” and I will come to understand why my preference for cheese over chocolate as a snack food means that I should be living in Utah. Until then, I will continue to take quizzes and search for my True Self. With a grain of salt and a bite of sushi.

Nature, red in tooth and claw

I love our animals with all of my heart, even as one dog climbs into the open dishwasher in search of some un-rinsed molecule of Bolognese, and a cat is in the living room manicuring her claws on the couch. I grew up with dogs, and then adopted a series of cats beginning with Emily, who lived a clandestine life in my Boston dorm room until my father picked me up at the end of the school year. When we moved into this house, Rob went on a business trip and I went to the Humane Society intending only to adopt the sad-eyed beauty I had seen in the newspaper; somehow, by the time he called to check in on things at home, I had adopted not only Maisy, but the hyperactive beagle-terrier mix we fell in love with as he jumped several feet into the air over and over again. I couldn’t leave him there. The next time he traveled I adopted a cat named Max (after which, I assure you we had a Come to Jesus about my activities when he was away from the house).

Two years later, Rob called me from a trail ride in the woods of Northern Michigan to tell me that they had found a beautiful, stray cat on the trail who appeared to be ownerless and starving. Would I, he asked guilelessly, mind if he brought her home as a Sweetest Day gift for me? So then we had four. Before the ink was dry on the calendar for the spaying appointment, the new cat, Sophie, found a fellow in the neighborhood and was pregnant. Well, or she might have been pregnant when she came to us; we’ll never know. A week after the Fourth of July she gave birth to four kittens in our basement, two of whom are now our Teddy and Stripey. We lived, henceforth, in a house full of furry creatures who slept in our beds, required walks and vets and futile attempts at training, and who we all love ridiculously and sentimentally. When Max died of cancer two years ago, our holistic, “visiting” vet gave me the syringe of chemicals that would send him on his way to relief. She said I would know when it was time. I did, and he died on my lap in his house, my tears falling on his beautiful grey-blue fur.

I tend to anthropomorphize these creatures, now five, who are so much a part of my life. I think of them as characters from Rabbit Hill, Watership Down, or Nana, the dog who cares for the Darling children in Peter Pan. I believe that I have a spiritual connection with Teddy, who comes when I call, answers when I speak, and seems also to be able to communicate with the ghosts in this very old house, standing on his hind legs on the post at the foot of the stairs, looking into space and waving his forefeet as if conducting a symphony orchestra. When I am sick and I crawl into bed, they come to me; Charlie under the covers by one hip, Teddy on the other side, Stripey astride my blanketed stomach, Sophie perched nervously at the foot of the bed and Maisy in her armchair, watching over me. It is easy, during those cozy moments when I hear a round of gentle animal breaths and feel their warmth against mine, that we are all friends, and that they love me.

They are, however, animals. Every one of them. The dogs are fond of eating used tissues, and we reflexively elevate trash receptacles during the cold and flu season to save ourselves from the necessity of harvesting a carpet of shredded Puffs. They also eat out of the litter box, steal food left unattended, and tip over the trash. Worse still, they kill things when they have the opportunity, because that is precisely what they were born to do. The outdoor cats deposit chipmunks, baby mice and other lifeless miscellany on the porch for our enjoyment, and in the days before Maisy was old and deaf, she once escaped and brought us a freshly-slaughtered squirrel. Since I have no other friends in my life who enjoy stalking, chasing and killing, it is always a shock to be reminded that I am not living in a Disney movie, and that even if I were Snow White, and the forest creatures were helping me with my chores, you can be damned sure that half of them would have killed and eaten the other half before I had made the second bed.

Last night, we stepped into the cold night after hearing cat screams, and saw Teddy literally locked in combat with Enemy Cat, another male who lives around here somewhere. They rolled together, screaming terrible screams, and there was no way to gloss over or sentimentalize the fact that Teddy really wanted to kill that cat. My cuddly, pink-nosed baby was a descendant of lions and this fight was somehow hard wired into his nature in ways I didn’t understand. Rob separated the combatants, and brought me a bloody-nosed Teddy, a string of blood and spit hanging from the corner of his mouth, a gash on his face. The once pink nose was red, and he sneezed and gasped furiously, trying to clear his nose and breathe through his mouth. Rob held him, and I did my best to clean him off, assess the damage, and decide whether it was vet-worthy or something that would heal on its own. Spent and conserving energy, Teddy made it to our bed and slept for hours, waking only occasionally to sneeze out the irritating blood that prevented him from breathing in his usual fashion. The other cats seemed to have received some sort of vestigial jungle memo; they came with a few feet of him and retreated, though he did not so much as raise his head to wither them with a slit-eyed gaze.

Teddy is on the mend; there is no structural damage to his face, and he has eaten and drunk, albeit cautiously, accustoming himself to new “work-arounds” as humans do when they have a broken tooth or a sprained wrist. He is docile today, staying close to me and seeming to want nothing more than rest and comfort.

For all I know, though, his interest in me stems from the fact that I am statistically likelier than other family members to be seated or lying down, thus providing a Warm Body. I love him, I love all of them, but surely they don’t “love” me back. I feed them, I pet them, I am kind to them, but whatever bond they feel, regardless of their domesticated state, is something I do not understand. I cannot be shocked when they hunt, or kill or fight, because they are not part of the touring cast of Bambi; they are real, live animals, with big cats and wolves in the bloodline.Years ago, my brother and I loved a cartoon in which a dog contemplated its adoring owners, with a thought bubble that says “I wonder if they taste like chicken.” Maybe they do wonder; how would I ever know?

I think, at best, that we are companions for our household animals, part of a recognized pack. Not their parents, not their friends, necessarily, but some sort of alpha creature that is in charge of food and water and the opening of doors. If I can remember this, and be a little more realistic in my interpretation of their behavior, there will be nothing shocking about the fact that they behave…like animals. If we accept them for what they are, no matter how much we train them or pamper them or carry them around in purses (and no, I do not), the best we really have is a sort of truce in which they will do as we ask of them because they want to please us, but that there is a primordial switch we cannot and should not want to turn off, even if it would sanitize things and prevent, uhm, bestiality.

Perhaps we should be honored that such magnificent and independent wild things consent to live among us and follow (most of) our rules. We should be flattered that they allow us to love them and cuddle them and impute upon them our ridiculous imaginings about their emotions. I’m off to hang out with Teddy now; I’ll probably stroke him and sing to him, and he’ll probably let me.

Joy : To My Valentines

Dear Nichols Boys,

As daddy already knows, when I was 30, after years of boyfriends who came to me practically ablaze with red flags, and many turns in a bridesmaid’s dress, my younger brother announced his engagement. I was, of course, happy for him, but I was also humiliated, desperate, and ready to resign myself to a life alone. In the darkest parts of my mind I began to create myths: marriage was ridiculous and mostly ended in divorce, babies were over-sentimentalized and people who wanted to talk about their kids all the time were annoying, it was all a conspiracy to make single people feel isolated and highlight their failure in stark relief. I built a plaster model of myself which I inhabited like the tiny creature at the heart of a giant conch shell. Outside was work and beautiful clothes and flippancy elevated to an art form. Inside was the saddest, tenderest and most vulnerable heart, protected from harm but still dying from lack of nourishment. (I know this is all literary and metaphorical, guys, but that’s how I write. Hang on, because the parts about you are coming up soon).

Then, in the unlikely form of my Pitney Bowes postage meter salesman, came a man who could see past the brittle front I had constructed, and love me. You, Rob, were surpassingly kind, and smart, and funny, and indulgent and, well, handsome. You fit me. The differences in political perspective created a not unpleasant heat in the course of debate, and your lack of dramatic temperament made a space for me to carry on like Sarah Bernhardt safe in the knowledge that you would stick around. You lacked the arch, self-important air of the men I had loved before, and gradually it became okay for me to relax, to let the plaster crumble, and to admit that I quite liked some music and books that were neither artsy nor ironic, and that I liked babies, and puppies, and sentimental commercials, and old houses in the country.

I read The Hunt for Red October because you loved it, waiting eagerly in my office for the next time you came in so that I could dazzle you with my new-found understanding of cavitation devices. You brought me a pink Azalea on Valentine’s day and told me you loved me. You saved me from myself, and gave me back to myself, which is a terrible, dysfunctional description, and yet as true as true can be.  There have been obstacles, there are still obstacles, ranging from the mundane to the fairly hideous, but I never doubt that you love me, or that you will try to understand and to make things work. I think we both know that we have something good, and that even at that times when it would be so easy to slip into one’s own head and shut out the ridiculous, exhausting, incomprehensible position of the other, we always find that elusive scraping of resolve that makes us engage again, and turn ourselves back to the work of marriage and parenthood. Thank you, more than I can say, for giving me the space to grow gentle and happy, and for the immense safety of your patience and goodness. Thank you, also, for going along with my beliefs that I am a great writer, that I am the next Jeopardy champ, that whoever I am complaining about is wrong and I am right, and for being so very good to my parents. Thank you for being, always, the bigger man not only literally, but figuratively.

Also, thank you for my other valentine – that’s you, Sam – the baby who we called “Smellen” when you were the size of a pea, because you were destined to be either Sam or Helen. You were, of course,  Sam, and there has never been a purer joy in my life than loving you. (And yes, I know that you are mortified by this, but some day, when I am singing with the choir angelical, you will be glad that you read it). There is no room for anything cynical or detached in my feelings about you, who have grown from a wiggling pink lump into a tall thirteen year old, all cracking voice, buzz cut and Axe body spray. I never thought I would be anybody’s mother, believe it or not, but it turns out that I have never loved a job more, or felt better suited. (You may, of course, have a differing opinion about my job performance, in which case I ask you to keep it to yourself until I am done here).

I was so worried that you would be like me, all nerves and self-doubt, but you got the best of everybody, including daddy’s complete and total lack of neurosis. You are cheerful, confident, good with people, and even when a hormonal storm blows through and you pronounce us guilty of “ruining everything,” you are sunny and loving again within half an hour. I love it that you still call me “mumma,” that you shovelled us out last week when daddy was away and we had a blizzard, and that you are, like your father, incredibly kind and gentle with younger children, animals and your grandparents. You are a good sport, a good companion, and a gifted interpreter of all things involving cords and wires and motherboards and RAM. You are nice to girls, even when they like you “that way” and you don’t like them “that way.” I love you so much it makes my heart hurt, and I promise that I will never say that out loud, particularly in front of other people. It is, nevertheless, true.

In celebration of the love-fest that is Valentine’s Day, I am going to make you both a blistering hot Thai curry, and lead up to it with immoderate quantities of chocolate and appropriate expressions of my feelings. (I have to keep this PG, Mr. Nichols). I love you, I love you, I love you both, and even on the most awful days, the mere fact that you are both on this earth and in my house is a miracle to me. You bring me joy.

Best love,

Mumma

Image Credit: http://secretmemoirsofahornyhousewife.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/heart-2.jpg

As it Turns Out, I Still Need a Mother.

When you called yesterday, you made such a reasonable request. It seemed, you said, that I was trying to “teach you moderation” when you just needed to vent. You pointed out that, of course, you knew there were two sides to every story, and that there was nothing to be gained by looking for slights. Who, after all, had taught me those things?!

I want you to know that I don’t mean to do it. I want to tell you that I talk to myself in calm moments, and I say: “there are people who have mothers who are actually ‘bad,’ and you don’t. You have a wonderful mother. You may lose her any day. Her health isn’t good. When you talk to her, when you’re with her, be patient, be a good listener, don’t withhold anything. You’ll be sorry if you keep doing that.” I always really mean it.

Your poor health and your age (yours and dad’s)  have changed death from something distant and unknown to something that might possibly be in my kitchen making a sandwich right this minute. The congestive heart failure, the kidney failure, the dialysis, the transplant, the fall down the stairs, the months in the rehab facility, the days you feel too sick to make our lunch dates…these things accumulate in my mind and terrify me. I handled each one, calmly and helpfully in public, and with exhaustion and tears at home, but what will I do when you die?

What will I do without you?

And if I feel that way, and I most certainly do, what is that makes me shut you out and treat you as if you were a person of compromised intellect? You call to tell me something you are worried about, something about old friends, family members, people on the news, and I become instantly smug, patronizing, opaque. I tell you to stop watching the news coverage of Haiti, because you can’t do anything and it’s depressing. I tell you not to be so quick to assume that the vet isn’t telling you the whole story about the dog’s arthritis. I tell you not to assume the worst about the behavior of family members. You tell me that today’s music sounds like “baby, baby, wa, wa, wa,” and I get hot under the collar, defending it as if I were an executive at Sony. You say it might be smart to organize Sam’s binder every day, and I roll my eyes and tell you that I know that. Worst of all, you tell me stories about your history and your family that I should be taking in and holding close, and I hold back the questions, the sounds of interest and assent that every story-teller craves.

As if you are a child, and I am not only your mother but your not very compassionate or imaginative mother, I dispatch to you from my great heights the things you should know so that you can Calm Down. As I do it, I think “why are you doing that? Can’t you see she just needs to talk? You wouldn’t treat anybody else like this? What is the matter with you?” The thing is, I don’t know how to back out of it once I start.

Your best friend is dead. You don’t have the rich network of friends you had when you were working, and dad really doesn’t like to talk about “personal” stuff any more than most men his age. (Or any age). Plus, you don’t want to worry him, and if you tell him a family member has made you feel bad, he gets mad at them, and wants to Do Something long after you are past it. You need somebody to talk to. You need not to be rushed, managed, schooled, patronized or tolerated, you need a sympathetic ear. I am telling you now that I understand that, I really do. There is just some kind of curtain that closes when I start talking to you. Not always, but often.

You really are, and always have been a good mother, half of a set of good parents. I always felt loved, supported, and challenged in the best ways possible. You were a good teacher, a good administrator, a great friend, a wonderful cook, a good wife, and incredibly smart and articulate. Sometimes I felt that you had already been everywhere I was going, and done it better – it was  your world, and I was just your daughter, a less confident, less vibrant shadow. That wasn’t your fault; it was just the way you were. Everybody loved you, and everybody loved dad, and our life was filled with dinner parties, books, generosity, music, trips to Europe, trips to Maine, and very few shadows. I know now, as a wife and a mother with bills and stress and perpetual busy-ness that you did a remarkable job, an enviable job. You were the best kind of example I could have had.

Why is it, then,  that I can’t seem to give, graciously, the only think you really need from me now? I have no problem driving you to the doctor, running your laundry up and down the stairs, making meals for dad to put in the oven, or helping with your holiday decorating. What stops me from what should be the easiest thing of all, just sitting and talking to you without impatience, without judging what you think in ways that I would never judge anyone else in my life.  I am fine when you need a little “managing,” when you need help getting down a steep set of steps, or when you need me to drive right up to the door and get you.  I am not a good friend when you need to talk. The other day you said “genetic” instead of “generic,” and I corrected you. It was a mistake, you were exhausted and adjusting to new medications. You have an English degree from Wellesley College, and I found it necessary to set you straight. I am ashamed of myself.

It’s complicated, this thing between us, and I am trying to figure it out so that I can stop “managing” you and start just loving you and being your friend. There is a competitive thing that’s always been there, that I suspect is often there between a mother and a daughter. I need to establish that I know a thing or two, and that I am not just your daughter, but a worthy person in my own right. Even as I know that you want that for me, just as I want it for my own child, I erect straw men to fight with and declare my victory. Never, ever a sweet or satisfying one. I don’t know how to stop feeling this way. Did you ever felt this way about your own mother, with whom you were so close? I feel monstrous, selfish, ridiculous. If I asked you for help with it, I know that you would help me. I think, maybe, I’m asking.

Also, finally, I am terrified that you are leaving me. Maybe in some subterranean lump of cerebral flesh I am holding you at arm’s length so that the loss will not be so great. I was, after all, the child who cried when you and dad were out to dinner and I heard a siren, convinced that the call was coming to tell us that you had been killed. I have been fearing your death, and dad’s, my whole life, tied to the track with the train coming at me, unable to reach any kind of rapprochement with the reality that it is inevitable, that I will handle it, that I will go on knowing that I had wonderful parents who live on in every good thing about me. When you lose a word, when you forget what day we planned lunch, it is as if an unseen hand takes me firmly under the chin and turns my head so that I must look at what has changed, what is lost, what terrifies me. Like a child, like your child, I panic and fight back at the idea that my mother is taking back her love and protection.

So I am asking, will you help me with this? Can you see past the bitchiness, the smug superiority, the patronizing need to “handle” you, and understand that I am just frightened? Can you help me find some kind of balance between trying to make everything better, and accepting that we are in a new place for both of us, where it is not always clear what “better” might be?

Can you be my mother, for every minute we have left? Clearly, I need one.

Photo Credit:

Mary Cassatt Mother and Child: http://images.art.com/images/PRODUCTS/large/10032000/10032604.jpg

Anger

[Note: this is another post moving from the other blog to this one. I am not, at present, particularly angry with anyone other than the inventor of the child safety cap.]

In my family of origin there were four people. Two “had tempers” and two were “martyr lip biters.” I fell into the latter category, and have spent much of my life genuinely astonished by displays of anger. I could not, did not, understand, for example, how people could say terrible, painful, accusatory and (frequently) inaccurate things and later say that they had not meant those things because they had “said them in anger.” As far as I was concerned, if you said a thing it was said and could not be un-said, unless one was actually clinically incapacitated at the time of speaking. (in which case it still can’t be un-said, but you have to forgive the person). It was also true when I was growing up that we had a fairly genteel household. There was no rough and tumble pummeling or screaming between siblings; it just wasn’t permitted. My brother could ignore this ban and pitch a fit if he was angry enough, but I couldn’t cross the line. I became a sulker, a stewer, a planner of elaborate plots in which I would die, and then everyone would be sorry that they hadn’t allowed to smack my little brother when he cheated at Battleship and then lied about it.

The flip side of being a lip-biting martyr is that, of course, you do get angry, you just don’t express it. I have long been a physical catalouge of unexpressed anger – tooth grinding, tension headaches, stress-related rashes, and the odd panic attack. Ironically, if you asked five people who know me well (excluding my husband, who really does know me well) they would tell you that I am very calm, that I “take things in stride” and “handle things well.” The truth of the matter is, that until recently, I was “handling”things by suppressing and internalizing them to the point where I was literally, physically falling apart.

I can get angry now, I’ve been working on it. I can almost express it, although I tend to get stuck in the realm of the passive-aggressive. Its tricky to go from St. Annie of Perpetual Calmness to a person who sometimes raises her voice, swears, or snipes. No one likes it much, it causes disruption, and its easier all around if I remain calm and smoothe things over. (Its really not terribly attractive behavior to yell and swear, but sometimes it is natural and human). I am now able to understand that I can argue back with someone who loves me, and that they still love me, even if I disagree with them. I can talk politics with my husband, who is a member of the Other Party, and we will still be married and agree on most other things most of the time. I can spar with my mother (a member of the Tribe of Temper) and then go out to lunch with her and adore cute babies as if nothing happened. It is a freeing thing, this ability to express anger when I feel it, and I am confident that my natural reserve and compassion will prevent me from becoming abusive or excessive in that expression. It still takes a great deal to make me angry, and I really can’t imagine devolving into a person who could commit acts of Road Rage, or hurl invectives at my child.

At this moment, I am angry at a friend, and working to sort it out in my head so that I can express my feelings without doing harm. It is one thing to raise my voice in the heat of an argument or to rise when I am baited, and quite another to be the sole angry party when one is feeling wronged and the other person is intentionally or negligently oblivious. If a tree falls in a forest and only I know that it was carelessly cut by someone and that it fell on my foot and broke it in two places, does it make a case for legitimate anger on my part when the guy with the axe walks around as if there was no problem?

I have to drive this train, if I want it to go anywhere, and I am not on ground as firm as that I travel with my family. (The ground, perhaps, being weakened by the staggering weight of that horrifying metaphor). I can feel my heart pound at the injustice I perceive, I can predict the itchy skin, the headache or the extraordinary fatigue that will result from tamping this down as if my feelings and reactions were ridiculous. But what if I’m wrong? What if I’m crazy, what if I’m over-dramatizing? What if this is a circumstance that nine out of ten other people would accept as “business as usual?” How does one ever know that she is justified in anger, short of a blatant injury like theft, dishonesty or unfaithfulness? When am I allowed to be angry? Who gives me permission?

I do not want to be one of those women who burns with righteous indignation because my child doesn’t get the lead in the school play, or writes to advice columnists when family members refuse to pay their share for an anniversary dinner. There is a line between projecting one’s own standards onto the world and being angry when those standards are not met, and being legitimately unhappy about being treated with disrespect or unkindness. I am so accustomed to believing that I am wrong all the time that I automatically question my anger and challenge myself to make a case, to prove that its acceptable for me to feel what I feel. I give myself tests: would Amy feel the same in this situation? Would Beth? If so, then its okay to be mad. If not, then I need to suck it up.

I guess I had always imagined that by the time I was somebody’s mother, I’d have all of this stuff down. Apparently there are growing pains into middle age, or wherever I am, and they are just as painful and confusing as they were when I was twelve and outgrowing my elementary school friends, or twenty two and pining for unavailable men. I’ll think, I’ll write, I’ll medidate, and I’ll talk to people who provide sound counsel. (Well, honestly, I’ll also eat chocolate and watch “House” re-runs,  and fantasize the horrific humiliation of my tormentor). Then I’ll either find a way to express the anger that is threatening my equilibrium and peace, or I’ll acknowledge that I just don’t have it in me to stand up for myself and the kind of treatment I deserve as a human being. I think maybe I’ll just go buy the chocolate now.

Photo Credit:

Jack: http://www.thunderwolf.org/what_i_am/anger.jpg