The Particulars

My main motivation for agreeing to go on this trip was I thought it important to have some shared adventures with the boys. The lure of alone time has caused me to exempt myself from other trips. This time it felt important that I go with them. Additionally, given Scott's general disregard for his own self-preservation, it seemed necessary to have more than one adult.

Gary took Scott to school Friday morning, leaving around 8. This gave me an unexpected quiet-time bonus because Connor was in outdoor school--I didn't have to wait on his bus in order to have writing time. I did some writing, and decided to pack trip stuff for the boys and get some laundry done. Basically it took the rest of the day and evening; I was up early the next morning, moving constantly, to consolidate clothing, equipment, camping gear, food, ice chests. As I watched the pile grow my doubts also grew concerning how this could all be packed into an 8x13' raft and still leave room for 2 adults, 2 kids, and a 75# black lab.

At 2:00 I got a call from Connor's school: the sixth grade had returned from camp and he was waiting to be picked up. I considered letting him ride the school bus home, but ruled it out when I realized he'd have trouble getting all of his luggage on the bus and would probably lose something. Probably something needed for the raft trip.

"Raft trip! No, I don't want to go! I just got back. Our band needs to practice! For the talent show! We were going to practice every day this weekend! I don't want to go!!!" Entirely predictable it was...and so it began.

Gary had revised our original departure time on Saturday at around noon or 1 to 9:30. We actually made that goal; everything in the van and trailer. A problem had become apparent the night before, too late to get it fixed: left taillight out on the van; right blinker light out on the trailer. "Gary. That's really not optional. There will be a lot of traffic on the interstate and people need to be able to see you signal." "We'll just not make right turns."

The drive was beautiful, the only hitch being the gas fill-up at a truck stop that was mobbed and plugged by hungry hungry RV's and SUV's. People boxed in. It took a half hour to get gas. Once on the road again we traveled unhindered...until...we'd turned down a country road that seemed a straighter shot to our put-in (Twickenham. Twickenham!). Gary driving, since I don't do trailers. I'd suggested that we stop and Gary look at the map at the town of Fossil, since that's where several roads converged; each of which might be a possible route. Gary had rafted this stretch of the river before, and so knew that there were some ambiguities in the direction here. I was navigating from an atlas that shows the back roads in great detail (but not whether or not they were private!). Gary did not stop, and turned down the Shaniko-Fossil Hwy that had seemed to my eye to be the most direct route. So we were maybe a mile down this road when Gary started remarking at all the "cow poop" in the road. "Look at that! Where's all this coming from?" Presently the answer was revealed: blocking the road ahead of us was a cattle drive with at least 50 cows and calves trying to run every which way and horses and riders trying to keep them together and moving in the general direction we were going. So there we were, proceeding at cattle-drive pace, the buckaroos simultaneously trying to move them forward, bring strays into line, keep a path clear for cars. One shouted into the window of the car ahead of us, "If you hug the bumper of the car ahead of you, it'll make things easier," so Gary closed the distance between us too.

Surprisingly, the kids didn't see this as an impediment at all. They were completely thrilled. This was a high point, and they may still consider it a high point of the entire 3 days. We let them unclip from the seat belts and Scott put his head through the sun roof. He was delighted to see a calf nursing its mother, even as the mother walked slowly forward. Both boys kept squealing about how cute they were. Suddenly a rectum loomed at Gary's open window. His impulse was to smack the buttocks but I warned him that it might projectiley poop. After about 20 minutes we made our way to the head of the pack and were free to move at more speed. I saw that we reached a junction with Cottonwood Road that could take us to Twickenham. It was a dirt road, and I didn't see it before it was too late to slow down and take it. No matter. It appeared we could go just a short stretch forward to Pine Creek Road that would junction with Dry Hollow Road that would take us where we wanted to go.

The atlas doesn't distinguish between dirt and paved roads, and I'd thought maybe the road we'd join would be paved. So I was watching for a junction that never came, and presently we arrived...in Clarno--our take-out 33miles downriver from our put-in! So we turned around, found the Pine Creek (dirt) Road that was supposed to take us to put-in, and followed it to...a "private road" sign. It was unmistakably the road we wanted, but the sign was unequivocal: "NO Trespassing". So we continued further, back toward Fossil and yet another spur road that would go to Twickenham. We had just passed it ("Private Road, No Trespassing"), were baffled, and saw, up ahead...the same cattle drive! We'd gone counter-clockwise in a large circle and now were meeting them again on the Shaniko-Fossil Hwy. We asked the cowboys about the roads and were told: "Nope. Can't get there from here. You've got to take the hwy back into Fossil, then take the Hwy 19 to the first right at the top of the grade, just short of the rest area, and that's your road to Twickenham." Then they asked Gary if he would mind going into the pond after a stray calf. The riders were wearing chaps and didn't want to wade into it. So Gary, bless his heart, went in after it, snapping the strap on his worn out sandal, nearly falling in. Of course, the kids were delighted. Our camera was inaccessible so the rancher snapped a couple pictures. Gave me the name of their ranch and said I could find them on the web and email them; they'd send a picture. And they still wouldn't let us take one of the private roads.

Back to Fossil we drove where Gary wanted to call Donna. She was coordinating shuttling our car from put-in to take-out so it would be waiting for us when we were finished. We were so late he was afraid she'd think we weren't coming after all. My cell phone didn't work, so we pulled in to a pay phone outside of a ma & pa general store. A bargain at .10, but no bargain at all since it didn't work either. I tried the door of the grocery as the boys danced the full-bladder waltz ("please, Mom, I have to go to the bathroom!" "Can I just do it here?"). Locked. Gary saw a bank down the street where he thought I could go in and use their phone: "They probably even know her." It was closed, so I went across the street to a restaurant that looked open. I asked if any of them knew Donna and they turned and pointed at her in a booth. She was very pleasant; we were lucky to run in to her since she was on the road most of the time. (And the boys finally got to use a bathroom.)

It was 5:00 when we pulled into the put-in parking area. Incredible. It's really only about a 3 hour journey from Portland and we'd even left when we expected to. We'd thought to be on the river by 3 at the latest. We'd endured Scott's, "are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet?" since about hour 2, and we'd kept answering, "almost almost almost" because we thought we were "almost" there. So his patience resources were already stretched, and we still had to unload the car and load the boat.

Gary went to look at the steep rocky road down to the river while I filled in the registration form. When he came back I looked hard at him: "This says it's mandatory to have a human waste disposal system". "Well, I found a bucket, but I couldn't find a lid." "A bucket? Gary...this is starting to not seem very well-thought-out". I walked down to the boys and dog, to keep any of them from getting run over when he brought the van & trailer down.

Well, he was right; he did get the camping gear all into the boat. We had to jettison the camping table, but that was about all. The boys, dog, and I were squeezed into the small bow area. I'd expected the dog would eagerly embrace this adventure, but he had to be bodily forced into the raft where he laid, trembling, taking up all the room on the bench, and panting miserably. It was 7:00 pm as we pushed off, but I was heartened by the fact that the sun was still reasonably high in the sky. And the river was running high and swift, so we covered river miles quickly. The kids' patience was rewarded by the first of the class II rapids where one of the standing waves splashed them thoroughly. It was nearing dark as we drifted past campsite after campsite--all taken. Finally we found a little forlorn place, not one of the choicer spots because the bank was steep for toting our camping stuff, but we were glad to find it. It was totally dark by the time the tent was up (it was about 8:45 when we got off the river), and we made a cold meal on snack food.

I awakened frequently in the night and realized next morning it was because my personal air mattress had deflated. There was some peculiarity about the valve and it kept releasing air. It still wasn't too bad a sleep. (I contemplated giving that mattress to Connor next night. He probably wouldn't notice the difference.) We needed to get some mileage to make up for the late start the day before, yet it seemed to take forever to cook and eat breakfast and clean it up. The boys lost interest in the site shortly after breakfast and we had a lot of toothpaste to get back into the tube. The boys went down to the river, with Scott protesting when I insisted he wear a life vest. Gary charged Connor with watching Scott, and I objected. As Scott cannot be trusted with his own safety, neither is Connor mature enough to assume responsibility for the safety of a younger, hyperactive child. So my attention was divided between packing and monitoring the boys. We had to have been the last party putting in that day, which seemed ominous in terms of choosing campsites that night.

The float down to the second of the class II rapids was slower than the day before. The river widened, and the water seemed flatter. Gary had more rowing to do. The rapids is called Burnt Ranch after a homestead there that burned. There was a beach just upstream , and we got out to look at it. Because the water was running high it was necessary; the current there flows directly into a steep rock cliff. Scott was already in a foul mood, prohibited from throwing rocks in the water because of the people fishing.

Honest to God, I swore I wasn't taking another of these trips until such time that they are old enough that I can be saying more than, "Stop that", "no", "keep your voice down," "QUIT", "put your life vest on, NOW", "get out of the water", "no"... Similarly I don't want to take another of these trips until they are old enough that I can relax my radar a little.

It's interesting about Gary. Despite nearly 20 years together this is only the second time I've rafted with him. He has a high degree of confidence in his skill that I don't entirely trust. I've had a great deal of experience in mountaineering and back-country skiing with him, and I totally trust his ability to navigate. He has a real gift for being able to look at a topo map and easily locate where we are and where we need to go. His translation skills from features around us to lines on the map and vice versa are impressive. He has an amazing memory for landmarks that he's only seen in the abstract and does not get disoriented. In the rafting context the circumstances of getting such a ridiculously late start, the toilet requirement and lights on the trailer/van being finessed, missing some signs that clearly said he needed to be in another lane and then having to suddenly switch did not lend to a feeling of solid faith on my part. The raft had leaks in the thwarts under the benches which were deflating; there were at least two leaks in the bottom. We needed to bail nearly continuously. All this made it difficult to suspend my disbelief that hyper-vigilance was necessary to compensate for glaring weaknesses in the fail-safe mechanism.

Other than getting the camera wet and so putting it out of commission for the rest of the trip, Gary had no problem maneuvering the rapid. And we proceeded to float through some amazing scenery. Unfortunately, scenery is not enough stimulation for the boys. I didn't have the heart to tell them that this was the last real rapid for the rest of the 33 mile or so journey. We were maybe 10 miles into the trip.

I'd hoped we'd get off the river with plenty of daylight left to set up our camp. The boaters who'd floated by as we packed up that morning had long since encamped themselves along a number of available sites on public land. Whenever we'd spot a promising looking place we'd find a raft or tent already set up. There was a place at the tail end of a long beach that we probably could have made work, but there was a huge party just a little upstream of us with dogs that were barking hysterically. Decided we'd look a little further. Thought we'd found a spot. The current was moving swiftly there and began to sweep us below it, despite Gary's forceful rowing. We were drawn into some weeds. The boys jumped out to hang on the perimeter line and realized it was deep enough there they couldn't touch bottom. Gary kept pulling the oars and I jumped out of the bow with the tie line. Managed to find my footing and haul the raft upstream and out of the willows. In the meantime the boys had gotten behind the oarlocks, completely in Gary's way. I lost sight of them for a moment, and then to my gratification heard Connor say, "Hold on. I don't want you to get lost" to Scott. Maybe he loves him after all.

But we didn't love the site. It was too muddy and plain unsuitable, so to the boys' (loud) dismay got back on the river. Now they were cold, for having been in the river, and were complaining about that. They saw no connection between the fact that they'd insisted on being able to go in the water and their resulting discomfort. Their dry clothes were locked away in dry bags and there was nothing to do but tolerate it. Which they didn't do gladly. Downstream, river right, we could see the river bend, and we could see what looked like a flat area on a small bluff above the water. It looked like it wouldn't be too far to cart the camping stuff up, and it was a pretty spectacular spot. It looked too good to be true, someone had to have taken it, but there didn't appear to be a boat beached in front of it or any tent shapes.

Well, it was too good to be true. We saw the fence just upstream of the flat. It was private land. This was a real let-down for the boys, but then one of them spotted a small beach on river left. We were already being carried past it, but Gary pulled hard and we managed to slip in.

It was a camp, a small site, probably only known to locals. It wasn't scrupulously clean, the way the BLM camps were. It was at the mouth of a natural dry canyon that we could have hiked into had we more time. I did walk back a little way looking for a screening bush and found a toilet paper grave. Most of it decomposed and long dried out. Not quite like finding a fresh batch, but still. I suppose it's positive that whoever used this camp had had a designated toilet.

The whole canyon was a graveyard, I picked up lots of teeny-tiny bleached-white bones; little vertebrae, ribs, forearm bones. It was interesting to look at the surfaces and the bumps, or processes, where tendons are anchored, the articulating surfaces for the joints. The mammalian skeleton is a basic template, with various adaptations for whatever family an organism happens to belong. They were such beautiful little bones, miniaturized and corresponding to our own.

So we had a camp. I had reservations because of the toilet paper grave up-canyon and a fire-ring that had some sort of rusty metal within, but the boys were ecstatic. They were just glad to stop and get into dry clothing. This time we did have the daylight in setting up our tent and bedding, stove and 'kitchen'.

I also wasn't crazy about being across the river from a ranch. The fields were unnaturally green and we could see the irrigation equipment. At least they didn't have the pump running. Next morning we had a number of halloos from rafters drifting by and a few remarked admiringly on our camp. So I looked at it with new eyes...yeah, it had its charms. Private and quiet, for one.

There really wasn't any rush in getting packed up since we'd only jam-up at the take out as other rafters arrived. In fact, it made sense to let the others go ahead. One raft with a couple of kids about Connor's age went by and the oarsman commented on our camp. Made a joke about the packing job we were doing. "We're the Beverly Hillbillies" I said. Ten or so yards downstream he asked if we were missing our bilge-pump. He'd spotted one in a little open spot against the shore. Gak! At the rate we took on water we couldn't do without that. A quick glance in our boat confirmed it must be ours, so I ran along the bank to get it from one of the boys who'd jumped out. I thanked them, and said, "We really are the Beverly Hillbillies."

The principle that it's always a good idea to be pleasant with strangers was borne out a couple hours later. We'd kind of drifted in tandem with them and this other guy who was sitting perched up high on a raft he was rowing solo. I'd noticed him because it seemed he was reading a book (it was the river guide book). Gary and I were talking, and suddenly he said, "Gary?" We stared at him, without recognition and he said, "Adam". Adam! He's the architect who'd drawn the plans for the remodel of our old house, the first one I'd owned. (We'd added an upper floor and enlarged the kitchen). I hadn't seen him since...sadly, a funeral within a few days of 9-11. So it turns out the rafters who'd rescued our pump were his brother and nephew, and a guy close by in an inflatable kayak was cousin to a mutual friend of ours. Cousin was the father of the other boy. Sure would have been awkward had the encounter with his brother been of a different nature. So that was a nice surprise. I was anxious about Scott, though, who was thoroughly sick of the trip and was loudly meow-ing "The Star Spangled Banner" to Connor's great annoyance. It made it very difficult to hear sometimes. Then he got into a fixation where he wanted to kiss me, over, and over. I finally said no more, and then it became his mission to get 'just one more."

We got caught up some with Adam, and then parted when they decided to stop for lunch.

It was a very long, slow stretch of river, and we were very ready when we saw the landmark for the take-out--the Clarno bridge. The take-out is extremely small--only about two rafts can fit on the little ramp at a time. Not being a rafter myself, I still gathered that there's some sort of "code" that you don't keep other rafters waiting, so there was a frantic flurry of activity to get out, unpack, clear the way. Gary brought the van and trailer down, and for a while I tied the dog to it. My attention was always distracted by Scott--Scott-in-a-parking-lot. And then rafters behind us began arriving. This kicked our pace into hyperdrive--got the boys in the van and commenced to depart-- all with that feeling of disorganization and possibly something important forgotten. Gary put it into gear and we began to pull away, just as a dog began to squeal. Gary slammed on the brakes and I leaped out, fully expecting to see a dog crushed under our wheels. Another possible scenario was that we'd forgotten to untie our dog from the trailer and had been dragging him. Neither was true (whew!). A woman had tied her own dog which objected to being left and had chosen the moment we began to drive forward to howl piercingly.

An uneventful drive home to a huge job unpacking, cleaning up, and putting away.

The best part for the boys?

The cattle drive.

Reflections from the raft trip

The John Day River is America's longest free-flowing river--no dams whatsoever. Its origin is in Eastern Oregon in the Strawberry Mountain Range. It drains 8,100 square miles of land, and it's source is mainly snow melt. So it's cold.

It was flowing high and swiftly. The section we ran is really more of a float than a run, with two class II rapids.

More on the particulars of the trip later, perhaps. I'm thinking about Scott right now, and the implications of his behavior on this trip for more aggressive rivers.

Late last year after his IEP meeting I made the decision to try medication with him. He's on the lowest dosage of a ritalin-type drug. And it has helped his self-control and focus; I would put him in the camp of children for whom ritalin is a benefit. I generally don't give him medication on weekends, and didn't think it would be necessary for this trip. In the last frantic minutes before departure I'd decided to bring it along as a just -in -case, but got distracted by something else and forgot to get it.

Gary was right--he could fit camping gear for 2 nights for 4 people (sans camping table) + 75# dog in an 8' x 13' raft, but it wasn't pretty. It wasn't roomy either, and there was a lot of slack time in a small space with two children who could care less about scenery, one of them with ADHD.

I could really see a marked difference in Scott without medication. He seemed much younger, even in speech tones--more like a 5 year-old than a nearly 8 yr-old. His self-control deteriorated markedly. This would cause behavior that inflamed Connor, who had just returned from a week-long outdoor school. That trip had been a disappointment, and he was bitterly disappointed by the prospect of another. He really seems to be a homebody type, and he'd looked forward to "band practice" with his friends for the school talent show in two weeks.

So, small confined space, lots of slack time, child with ADHD, and child with negatively predisposed attitude.

My cousin once sent me a link to Scott Noelle's website Enjoyparenting.com; the title explains it. I was impressed enough by the essay she called out that I got on his 'parenting thought-for-a-day' emailing list. His essays are generally short, but speak very much to the heart of things that are dear to mine.

A few days before we left he'd sent a thought about unconditionality which shed a whole different light on the subject. Frankly before reading his essay I'd considered the idea of 'unconditional love' as a kind of 'Should'--a bar to clear, a standard to reach. It was something I felt I failed at whenever I'd feel irritated at my children's behavior. I'd been under the impression that unconditional love means NOT being upset at some kind of immature behavior that causes me grief or extra work. Here is Noelle's definition that turned that belief around:

Unconditionality is a state of mind in which you are willing to allow well-being into your experience... NO MATTER WHAT

I suddenly realized that I had preconditions for my own sense of well-being that had been hiding in plain sight. Well-being was conditioned upon either the presence or absence of certain sensations within my body. Certain elements tell me whether or not my inner state is, say, irritable. Generally I called well-being absence of such elements. Therefore if I felt those sensations I believed I was unhappy. So I was entitled to be unhappy because the preconditions for unhappiness were being satisfied. Now I understand that those feelings, ANY feelings can be part of my soul's general condition--yet not a determinant of my well-being. That's what unconditionality means. I can be unhappy, angry, irritable, whatever, and still have well-being too. This is an amazing insight for me. I don't have to be unhappy because I'm unhappy!

And this muscle received a real work-out on the trip. I hope it gets stronger; right now it aches a bit. It did get me through many uncomfortable moments--knowing I could hate how I felt sometimes and still be ok.

I need to find a way to be a more effective mother of a child with ADHD. It is so easy to react to the behaviors on their surface apparency, and from within my own frame of reference. My own inner condition does not give rise to hyperactivity, and I assume that his inner condition is the same as mine. Therefore when he behaves the way he does, I think it must be perverse, because I experience in terms of my own inner universe. It occurs to me that perhaps within his frame of reference, his internal thresholds, he feels a much different kind of baseline. In his world, in his internal feeling environment, his behavior makes perfect sense. If I felt the same way in my world as he does in his, I would be behaving similarly. I'd probably have an extra engine fueling my behavior too, which is resentment from always being reprimanded and the focus of much negative feed-back from others. We all start our self-control marathons at zero, but children like him start saddled with a backpack full of bricks. They look just like us, so we can't understand the extra load they're under. Why can't they keep up?

This trip often took him far beyond his endurance. Even to an older child like Connor it seemed endless and boring, the long stretches it took to unload the boat to set up a camp, and then to break down and re-pack next morning.

On Sunday we pulled off the river to a BLM camp, just for a break. I wandered off to find some juniper thick enough to give me some, uh, privacy, and when I headed back toward the river Scott was howling as he was walking up the little trail. He'd wanted to stay down by the river and play; Gary had wanted to walk up to the camp. Scott can absolutely not be left alone on a river bank, especially with the level of impulsivity he was showing. I happened to be feeling generous and so said I'd go back down by the river with him. Where we'd beached the riverbed dropped steeply, so I suggested we walk over to a shallow little area with some willows and a shallow sub-channel. He could pick up mud and drop it to his heart's content and was quite happy there. Unbidden, he said that inside, he feels like he doesn't have "any control, and it scares me". I told him it is very powerful that he could tell the difference between knowing he is in control, and knowing when he isn't. I told him that my job is to find a way to be more patient. (And shortly thereafter became impatient with him when he found a little frog and could not stop picking it up--I was afraid it would get hurt, and to him it was irresistible.)

The delusion is that I require compliant behavior from him; when I don't get it I'm entitled to irritation. All the preconditions for irritation are met and none for well-being. I see that if his failure of self-control is the spoke in the wheel, my own failure of self-control and empathy is the empty space between. His failure is more obvious and so it's easy to lash out at him. It's easy to miss my co-failure.

We need to find ways to keep a family conversation going that doesn't single him out as peculiar (already Connor, in one of his own lapses of self-control, has used the fact of the ADHD against Scott), but promotes empathy and understanding.

He is not defiant. But the latency period between asking/requiring something of him and compliance is often much longer than I'm accustomed to. This could be life threatening on a raft trip. Immediate response is sometimes required in an unexpected situation. The urgent tone of voice that says: "Act-now!" that is usually sufficient to change someone's trajectory is not sufficient for Scott. At least when he's unmedicated. He was not in imminent physical danger on this trip--that's the nature of a leisurely float. Still, even seemingly benign circumstances can be deceiving. I realized this on a stretch where we'd allowed the boys to hang onto the perimeter rope on the raft and drift along beside it in the river. It was cold enough that they didn't do that for very long, and instead laid on the tubes with legs dangling. I saw willows ahead and realized this was shallow water and ordered them to pull their legs in. Connor complied immediately. I had to pull Scott into the boat. I realized how easily a leg trapped between rocks and boat could lever him over the side, to be ground under as the boat passed. It's a full loaded raft--and we would not be able to lift it off of him.

If a slow river was to be a trial before a more adventurous float, then we need another trial of a slow run with him medicated. If he is as slow to respond to verbal direction while medicated as he is without, then he just can't go on trickier runs.

"Severed" (TKvid2u)

My dear friend's husband Tony made this video and entered it in the Seattle short films contest. I hope he wins, and I hope he makes more.

Gary's job fell yesterday to the economic downturn and the 'restructuring' response by his company.

We've known since February that some kind of reconfiguring was in the works. I'd hoped it wouldn't be him, since his little group was making quite a bit of profit. They've decided that his job can be absorbed into the function of the factories that contract with them and so his coordination skills aren't necessary.

In the meantime we've refinanced the house to finance the building of the garage, and ground is supposed to be broken on June 1st.

Nothing like an element of suspense.

He'd planned a raft trip down a 40 mile stretch of the John Day River over the holiday. Other than the gas it takes to drive down and back, any restaurants we stop at on the road, and paying someone to drive the shuttle, it's not going to cost much and so he wants to go ahead with it. I've been non-committal, and I'm still tempted to let him take the boys and go without me. Particularly since my alone times at home have just been terminated along with his job.

Take a look at this raft, here. The two boys sat on the forward bench. Gary sat in the middle to row, and I sat on the back directly on the raft so I could jump out and push, if necessary. Does it look to you like there is room for camping gear for 2 nights (2 folding camp table/benches--one to cook on--coleman stove, pots and other cookgear, ice chest, food, tent, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, extra clothing, and a 75 lb DOG?

I might have to go along just to see.

How the world looks (part 2 of 2)

It may be more meaningful to read the post immediately below before reading this one.

I awaken, making the transition from sleep. My eyes open and I get reacquainted with the details of the room around and do a quick evaluation as to whether or not this is a school day—which background level of tension is called for?

It’s Mother’s Day. My whole being inside groans. Mother’s Day means Darlene. Mother’s Day means a long car trip since Gary has a restaurant in North Portland in mind. She lives on the west side. The restaurant Gary has in mind does not take reservations. It’s a tiny place that’s really kind of a take-out for bicyclists. He wants us to show up there at 11:00, on Mother’s Day, without reservations. I ask him if he remembers last year. Last year we picked her up and drove over to Elmer’s, to find a crowd spilling out into the parking lot and at least a 90 minute wait. We piled back into the car. Gary had failed to pack the stepstool his mother had used to get in the van, so she couldn’t get into the back seat. I surrendered mine. We drove to an I-HOP and were greeted by a similar crowd and wait. First, though, we had to drive through a maze of parking lots that led to a dead end, and wind our way back. Then we had to cross a busy street against a flow of edgy drivers, all looking for a place to take Mom. We may have checked out one more restaurant before she suggested a place that she likes for lunch. A little Italian restaurant, which we were able to walk right into and sit down. I told Gary he must have enjoyed last year’s scenario so much that he wanted to reprise it.

Darlene and I have a troubled history and I won’t go into it now. Suffice it to say that there is a nails-on-a-blackboard feeling that I have in her presence. Therefore I don’t like being around her. Whenever I do have to be around her I sense the prospect as a looming shadow, or a weight in my heart. Suffice it to say that long ago I resolved that she is the mother of my husband, grandmother of my children, and I will treat her with respect and courtesy befitting that. I don’t have to do more.

Thus there has been a tension that I’ve been aware of: that of the ideal (which is that there is mutual love and pleasure in each other’s company so that we drop by each other’s houses, we see each other often, invite her on family outings, to dinner), and the reality. This requires a certain amount of decision about how much effort to extend and fill that gap—the gap between love-and-pleasure-motivated frequent contact, and dutiful (infrequent) contact. To me it’s seemed glaring, and I’ve felt that a responsibility rested on me to close it. How far do I need to go to act ‘as if’—as if our contact is motivated by pleasure. As if the intrinsic emotional infrastructure is there that provides that motive force? I see now how troubled I have been by my reluctance; wondering if it means I'm stingy, selfish.

We arrive at her house. She walks through her attached garage to meet us. She has a sling on her right arm because last week she fell back on it and broke one of the forearm bones adjacent to her wrist. It’s still splinted; she’s supposed to have it casted this week. Gary’s clearing a space for her in one of the back captain’s chairs. She said she needs the stepstool. I tell Gary she needs it. She tells me that she’ll get it, and then says, “unless you want to”. She gives me detailed directions where to find it. When I return with the stool I hear the tail end of something Gary says, “Debora knows how to do it”.

“Debora knows how to do what?”

Gary: “Trust me.”

Feeling the prick of annoyance of having my question unanswered, but Darlene provides it. There is cat hair on her black sling and she wants me to clean it with a lint brush. I put out my hand to take it but have to wait while she shows me there is an arrow on it that points the direction to brush. I’m a frequent flier with lint brushes at home with two copious shedders, so I’m surprised that the brush doesn’t seem to pick up much—it just sort of smooths the hairs so they point in a uniform direction. She’s telling me that I can do it harder without hurting her. I pause to look at the brush; it’s two-sided. I wonder if maybe the other side has a finer nap in order to pick up more efficiently. As I start to verify this with my fingers she takes it from me and says, “Debora, you do it…” I am anticipating detailed instructions on how to brush with the arrow down, that I need to do it this way, and I anticipate it will be endless, and a waste of time, because I already know how to do it. I wasn’t hesitating because I didn’t know how. I’m reminded of my days in home health care when I’d ask an elderly person what the major cross streets were near their home and they’d give me a rambling set of instructions that I had to wait patiently through—sometimes still without getting the cross-streets! My kids are beginning to get a bit restless in the van. I raised my voice to preempt her, in theory to save her from having to waste her time giving me instructions, but mainly to spare me from having to listen to her and speed the process a bit. In the meantime she raises hers to preempt me and momentarily I feel that red flash of anger. That pulse is beneath our relationship, and I actually wondered if it was about to surface.

She just wanted to demonstrate how firmly I could apply the brush. And I felt a little ashamed because what she’d wanted was reasonable and I’d been ready to flare because of an assumption that wasn’t true. And it was only later that I realized that in demonstrating to me how to do it, she was doing it herself!

I brush. I put the stool down in position for her to climb in. I pull the seatbelt out for her so she can latch it with her left arm. I close her door. I take the stool and load it in the back.

She talks only to me on the trip over to the restaurant. She tends to do this in groups, cut one person out of the crowd and talk to them about something that the others aren’t a part of. The subject is her arm, the already multiple visits to the cast clinic. I’m preoccupied at my own chagrin at having nearly snapped at her. I’m thinking about it, wondering what set me off. I’m sorry because it was just barely on this side of disrespect. I decide an apology is in order, even while unsure. Wouldn’t an apology just call attention to the edge in my tone? Is it possible she hadn’t heard it? It still feels like an elephant in the room to me. I feel the weight. My memory brings the scenario back and I see that she may have misunderstood me. She took the brush from me while I was trying to verify a hypothesis. I see that it was somewhat disrespectful of her to have done this; I see that it is valid to want to preempt an unnecessary explanation. Still, my tone had bordered on rude and it seems appropriate to make it right.

We arrive at the restaurant to a crowd spilling out on the sidewalk. We disembark from the van and mill with the mill-ers while Gary checks the likelihood of getting a seat. I use this opportunity to put my hand on her shoulder and say that I’m sorry for the tone that I used when I was going to brush the cat hair off her sling. She smiles beautifically, saying, “Oh, Debora, don’t even think about it. Don’t be worried about it. I didn’t even notice. I don’t even notice things like that.”

A very gracious acceptance of my apology. Why do I feel so creepy? Why do I now feel an added heaviness on my heart that’s now two-pronged: my near flare-up, and my apology? I nod and smile to accept her acceptance, but I'm aware something inside me feels tight and uncomfortable as she assures me again that I shouldn’t worry. Upon further reflection I see that it's the asymmetry of her response that troubles me. I wasn't worried; I wasn't upset. Frankly the apology was more about me than her--more to make whole again my sense of personal integrity. Her response was appropriate to someone who seemed to be feeling tortured. Furthermore, the 'I don't even notice things like that' implies a certain belief that she's 'above' those concerns (and I'm not).

Gary comes back shortly to say it’s not going to work and we should get back in the van. I fetch the stool for her. Place it on the ground so she can climb in to her seat. I pull out the seatbelt for her so she can latch it. I close her door and stow the stool in back. I get back in. We drive, down into the heart of the little St. Johns neighborhood. There is a restaurant there which had anticipated the gentrification of this formerly working-class neighborhood. For the longest time St. Johns was flavored like the late 50’s and early 60’s and resisted the modern world. Some people who’d owned an extremely popular restaurant in a trendy district of town had sold the former and opened a new one in St. Johns. It’s generally a place with crowds milling on the sidewalks, and I’m thinking we’ll probably be turned away there too, if that’s Gary’s destination. “Does it look crowded?” asks Gary, even though he can see it as well as I, perhaps even better since it’s on the driver’s side of the road. I’m a little surprised to see there aren’t people on the sidewalk, but I can’t really see if people are standing inside. He’s showing no signs of stopping anyway, as he cruises into the downtown proper looking for another café that recently opened. Stopped at a stoplight, he wants me to get out and go see if they offer brunch. I get out as the light changes and wave them on. I go inside to a rather dark space with all the tables except two taken. I see they do have a limited sort of brunch menu, and the man there says he can put the two tables together. I walk out onto the sidewalk and presently Gary walks around the corner with a questioning look. I said, “They do have brunch and they’re putting a couple of tables together for us.” He said, “Do you think the John Street Café is better?”

It actually is the better of the restaurants in terms of the setting and atmosphere. However it was classic bird in hand worth 2 in the bush dilemma. To extricate ourselves from this cafe would have involved some effort—me to go in and say thanks anyway (because I’d thought the guy was putting together two tables for us), Gary back to the van, me back to the van, drive again because Darlene can’t walk that far, and then maybe by then the John St Café would be more crowded—the classic leave-one-situation-to-go-to-a-‘better’-only-to-find-the-spaces-taken-so-go-back-to-what-
-you-just-left-only-to-find-it’s-filled-up-while-you-were-gone. So I was feeling the scarcity anxiety, I think and the fear-of-being-foolish. Still, I kind of thought that breakfast with Darlene was going to be breakfast with Darlene regardless of where we went; I didn’t really want to pick up the responsibility for coming up with the best thing since this was mainly Gary’s gig anyway, and so I thought, let’s just stay here and get it over with. So I said we should stay where we were. Then went inside to wait while he got his mom and the boys. And then it turned out they hadn’t even put the tables together yet, and as I waited I was aware that there was still time to say thanks anyway and stop them from getting out of the car and try the other one. I decided this situation is a consequence of Gary's style of leaving to go to a restaurant at peak time on a peak day, and I didn’t want to take on rescuing it. The two tables together were pushed into a wall which was kind of weird too, because it meant we were oriented with one on each long end and three of us on one side facing the wall. Darlene took one of the end seats and I was beside her. So it turned out that it was mainly me and Darlene with her talking to me and the other 3 left out. And since I was sitting beside her I was the taking care of her-er.

Funny, the vestige of that fear of ironic timing thing—the imperative to choose correctly, right now; the certainty that whatever I’d pick would be wrong anyway. No matter what I picked I should have picked something else. It appeared that this was going to be the case. The coffee wasn’t very good, and it was a long wait before the food came. Scott got restless and so I took him for two rounds of the block. The relative quiet allowed me to feel the weight of the two interactions with her that troubled me. I also felt the weight of the feeling that I’d chosen poorly again. I'm aware of the presence of these forces. I realize that unpleasant as they are, there isn't the added twist of wondering what they mean about me. I also notice that it lowers the stakes tremendously in making choices. If I no longer need to defend against being a Person That I'm Not Supposed To Be (in this case someone who makes choices that end up with the least attractive outcomes) the situation is no longer charged. It honestly doesn't matter. The food arrived and it was delicious. I saw Darlene trying to push through her sausage with her fork in her left hand and asked if she needed some help to cut it up. She said she thought she could just cut it with her fork, so I turned and cut Scott’s food. As I turned to mine she said that hers was more difficult than she thought and could I cut up hers too? It was French toast, made from bread that had a fairly firm crust. She finally said she’d just use her hands to eat it and dip it into the syrup.

We finished and left. I fetched the stool for her to climb in. I pulled out the seatbelt for her to latch, and I closed her door. I stowed the stool in back.

Gary decided he’d drop me and the boys off at home and take his mother on home.

Yeah, the whole thing was kind of an exercise in discomfort, and I’m left with lingering discomfort. I have a tendency to assign the discomfort to me; assume it means I have failed in some way…or that something was wanted from me that I wasn’t providing, but ‘should’ be. I see that this is fear-driven...again I fear this is evidence in the Trial of Who I Am or Am Not Supposed To Be. And feeling uncomfortable about that. The hole of seeing that something is needed, and my offering to fill it would be gladly received, and that it’s obvious that there it is, key and lock, need and me, and so I SHOULD offer, and I don’t. It's a tension that I feel and so think the other person feels too—the elephant in the room. I tend to ‘blame’ it on my reluctance and worry about what that means about me, and so the pressure to relent and offer in order to prove something to myself. I see that I believe that the discomfort is my ‘conscience’ telling me to do it, that it is the right thing. I see that the voice I'd thought was my Conscience is really a tyrant. She's a tyrant in protective mode. She wants me to be the best person I can be, and doesn't believe I can do it if left to my own devices. She fears that the resistance in me is motivated by the characteristics of--yes, The Person That I'm Not Supposed To Be. She fears the resistance is 'evidence'. But that pushes up against my resistance. And so it goes. Somewhere in there comes that feeling that I’m somehow responsible for the whole situation and that I have to make ‘just the right’ choices. Or be a screw-up forever. The Person That I'm Not Supposed To Be.

We arrived at the house. I face a choice of how far to go to bridge the gap between ideal and reality. In a world motivated by love and good will I'd ask her inside. In the world motivated by love and good will I would get out and ask her if she wants to ride in the front seat for the rest of the journey home. I would get the footstool for her to facilitate this. Or, if she chose to remain in the back seat, I'd have her slider door open so that she's accessible for farewell hugs and kisses. I feel the pressure that this is the right thing to do. Instead, I stand in my own opened doorway, where I can see her and she me, and bid her a happy mother's day and goodbye. Pressured by Gary, Connor approaches opened front door, leans in and says goodbye. In the ideal world, the sliding door would be open and he'd reach in to hug her, and he'd want to. How far should I go to make the gap between ideal and reality less glaring?I feel the tension of this. I see that there are still unpleasant feelings. But I see that the unpleasant feelings are not totally mine. They belong to the field that is created between this woman and me. My actions and impulses have been motivated from the fear of what this means. I see now that there are certain people in whose presence certain feelings are a feature, an artifact. They are not my total responsibility, and I do not need to over-compensate for them.

Gary gets in to drive off so I close the passenger door. As the van pulls away I again call, "Happy Mother's Day" through the open window.

And I'm left to feel a bit hung over for the rest of the day. Being with her has me exposed to so many choices about what I choose to do for her; how far I go, and feeling exposed to a pressure that says it should be more. I write. I think. I reflect. I see that transformation doesn't mean I'm no longer subject to such feelings. The difference that makes the difference is in no longer worrying what it means, that it means something awful about me. That's funny, it seems like such a small adjustment. Yet shedding it sheds the entire Trial dynamic. And I'm free to choose from other motivations than trying to prove to myself that I'm not the worst that I've feared.

"First there is no mountain then there is no mountain then there is..."

How the world looked...(Part 1 of 2)

I awaken, making the transition from sleep. My eyes open and I get reacquainted with the details of the room around and do a quick evaluation as to whether or not this is a school day—which background level of tension is called for?

It’s Mother’s Day. My whole being inside groans. Mother’s Day means Darlene. Mother’s Day means a long car trip since Gary has a restaurant in North Portland in mind. She lives on the west side. The restaurant Gary has in mind does not take reservations. It’s a tiny place that’s really kind of a take-out for bicyclists. He wants us to show up there at 11:00, on Mother’s Day, without reservations. I ask him if he remembers last year. Last year we picked her up and drove over to Elmer’s, to find a crowd spilling out into the parking lot and at least a 90 minute wait. We piled back into the car. Gary had failed to pack the stepstool his mother had used to get in the van, so she couldn’t get into the back seat. I surrendered mine. We drove to an I-HOP and were greeted by a similar crowd and wait. First, though, we had to drive through a maze of parking lots that led to a dead end, and wind our way back. Then we had to cross a busy street against a flow of edgy drivers, all looking for a place to take Mom. We may have checked out one more restaurant before she suggested a place that she likes for lunch. A little Italian restaurant, which we were able to walk right into and sit down. I told Gary he must have enjoyed last year’s scenario so much that he wanted to reprise it.

Darlene and I have a troubled history and I won’t go into it now. Suffice it to say that there is a nails-on-a-blackboard feeling that I have in her presence. Therefore I don’t like being around her. Whenever I do have to be around her I sense the prospect as a looming shadow, or a weight in my heart. Suffice it to say that long ago I resolved that she is the mother of my husband, grandmother of my children, and I will treat her with respect and courtesy befitting that. I don’t have to do more.

Thus there has been a tension that I’ve been aware of: that of the ideal (which is that there is mutual love and pleasure in each other’s company so that we drop by each other’s houses, we see each other often, invite her on family outings, to dinner), and the reality. This requires a certain amount of decision about how much effort to extend and fill that gap—the gap between love-and-pleasure-motivated frequent contact, and dutiful (infrequent) contact. To me it’s seemed glaring, and I’ve felt that a responsibility rested on me to close it. How far do I need to go to act ‘as if’—as if our contact is motivated by pleasure. As if the intrinsic emotional infrastructure is there that provides that motive force?

We arrive at her house. She walks through her attached garage to meet us. She has a sling on her right arm because last week she fell back on it and broke one of the forearm bones adjacent to her wrist. It’s still splinted; she’s supposed to have it casted this week. Gary’s clearing a space for her in one of the back captain’s chairs. She said she needs the stepstool. I tell Gary she needs it. She tells me that she’ll get it, and then says, “unless you want to”. She gives me detailed directions where to find it. When I return with the stool I hear the tail end of something Gary says, “Debora knows how to do it”.

“Debora knows how to do what?”

Gary: “Trust me.”

Feeling the prick of annoyance of having my question unanswered, but Darlene provides it. There is cat hair on her black sling and she wants me to clean it with a lint brush. I put out my hand to take it but have to wait while she shows me there is an arrow on it that points the direction to brush. I’m a frequent flier with lint brushes at home with two copious shedders, so I’m surprised that the brush doesn’t seem to pick up much—it just sort of smooths the hairs so they point in a uniform direction. She’s telling me that I can do it harder without hurting her. I pause to look at the brush; it’s two-sided. I wonder if maybe the other side has a finer nap in order to pick up more efficiently. As I start to verify this with my fingers she takes it from me and says, “Debora, you do it…” I am anticipating detailed instructions on how to brush with the arrow down, that I need to do it this way, and I anticipate it will be endless, and a waste of time, because I already know how to do it. I wasn’t hesitating because I didn’t know how. I’m reminded of my days in home health care when I’d ask an elderly person what the major cross streets were near their home and they’d give me a rambling set of instructions that I had to wait patiently through—sometimes still without getting the cross-streets! My kids are beginning to get a bit restless in the van. I raised my voice to preempt her, in theory to save her from having to waste her time giving me instructions, but mainly to spare me from having to listen to her and speed the process a bit. In the meantime she raises hers to preempt me and momentarily I feel that red flash of anger. That pulse is beneath our relationship, and I actually wondered if it was about to surface.

She just wanted to demonstrate how firmly I could apply the brush. And I felt a little ashamed because what she’d wanted was reasonable and I’d been ready to flare because of an assumption that wasn’t true. And it was only later that I realized that in demonstrating to me how to do it, she was doing it herself!

I brush. I put the stool down in position for her to climb in. I pull the seatbelt out for her so she can latch it with her left arm. I close her door. I take the stool and load it in the back.

She talks only to me on the trip over to the restaurant. She tends to do this in groups, cut one person out of the crowd and talk to them about something that the others aren’t a part of. The subject is her arm, the already multiple visits to the cast clinic. I’m preoccupied at my own chagrin at having nearly snapped at her. I’m thinking about it, wondering what set me off. I’m sorry because it was just barely on this side of disrespect. I decide an apology is in order, even while unsure. Wouldn’t an apology just call attention to the edge in my tone? Is it possible she hadn’t heard it? It still feels like an elephant in the room to me.

We arrive at the restaurant to a crowd spilling out on the sidewalk. We disembark from the van and mill with the mill-ers while Gary checks the likelihood of getting a seat. I use this opportunity to put my hand on her shoulder and say that I’m sorry for the tone that I used when I was going to brush the cat hair off her sling. She smiles beautifically, saying, “Oh, Debora, don’t even think about it. Don’t be worried about it. I didn’t even notice. I don’t even notice things like that.”

A very gracious acceptance of my apology. Why do I feel so creepy? Why do I now feel an added heaviness on my heart that’s now two-pronged: my near flare-up, and my apology? I nod and smile to accept her acceptance, but something inside me feels tight and uncomfortable as she assures me again that I shouldn’t worry.

Gary comes back shortly to say it’s not going to work and we should get back in the van. I fetch the stool for her. Place it on the ground so she can climb in to her seat. I pull out the seatbelt for her so she can latch it. I close her door and stow the stool in back. I get back in. We drive, down into the heart of the little St. Johns neighborhood. There is a restaurant there which had anticipated the gentrification of this formerly working-class neighborhood. For the longest time St. Johns was flavored like the late 50’s and early 60’s and resisted the modern world. Some people who’d owned an extremely popular restaurant in a trendy district of town had sold the former and opened a new one in St. Johns. It’s generally a place with crowds milling on the sidewalks, and I’m thinking we’ll probably be turned away there too, if that’s Gary’s destination. “Does it look crowded?” asks Gary, even though he can see it as well as I, perhaps even better since it’s on the driver’s side of the road. I’m a little surprised to see there aren’t people on the sidewalk, but I can’t really see if people are standing inside. He’s showing no signs of stopping anyway, as he cruises into the downtown proper looking for another café that recently opened. Stopped at a stoplight, he wants me to get out and go see if they offer brunch. I get out as the light changes and wave them on. I go inside to a rather dark space with all the tables except two taken. I see they do have a limited sort of brunch menu, and the man there says he can put the two tables together. I walk out onto the sidewalk and presently Gary walks around the corner with a questioning look. I said, “They do have brunch and they’re putting a couple of tables together for us.” He said, “Do you think the John Street Café is better?”

It actually is the better of the restaurants in terms of the setting and atmosphere. However it was classic bird in hand worth 2 in the bush dilemma. To extricate ourselves from this cafe would have involved some effort—me to go in and say thanks anyway (because I’d thought the guy was putting together two tables for us), Gary back to the van, me back to the van, drive again because Darlene can’t walk that far, and then maybe by then the John St Café would be more crowded—the classic leave-one-situation-to-go-to-a-‘better’-only-to-find-the-spaces-taken-so-go-back-to-what-
-you-just-left-only-to-find-it’s-filled-up-while-you-were-gone. So I was feeling the scarcity anxiety, I think and the fear-of-being-foolish. Still, I kind of thought that breakfast with Darlene was going to be breakfast with Darlene regardless of where we went; I didn’t really want to pick up the responsibility for coming up with the best thing since this was mainly Gary’s gig anyway, and so I thought, let’s just stay here and get it over with. So I said we should stay where we were. Then went inside to wait while he got his mom and the boys. And then it turned out they hadn’t even put the tables together yet, and as I waited I was aware that there was still time to say thanks anyway and stop them from getting out of the car and try the other one. I decided this situation is a consequence of Gary's style of leaving to go to a restaurant at peak time on a peak day, and I didn’t want to take on rescuing it. The two tables together were pushed into a wall which was kind of weird too, because it meant we were oriented with one on each long end and three of us on one side facing the wall. Darlene took one of the end seats and I was beside her. So it turned out that it was mainly me and Darlene with her talking to me and the other 3 left out. And since I was sitting beside her I was the taking care of her-er.

Funny, the vestige of that fear of ironic timing thing—the imperative to choose correctly, right now; the certainty that whatever I’d pick would be wrong anyway. No matter what I picked I should have picked something else. It appeared that this was going to be the case. The coffee wasn’t very good, and it was a long wait before the food came. Scott got restless and so I took him for two rounds of the block. The relative quiet allowed me to feel the weight of the two interactions with her that troubled me. I also felt the weight of the feeling that I’d chosen poorly again. The food arrived and it was delicious. I saw Darlene trying to push through her sausage with her fork in her left hand and asked if she needed some help to cut it up. She said she thought she could just cut it with her fork, so I turned and cut Scott’s food. As I turned to mine she said that hers was more difficult than she thought and could I cut up hers too? It was French toast, made from bread that had a fairly firm crust. She finally said she’d just use her hands to eat it and dip it into the syrup.

We finished and left. I fetched the stool for her to climb in. I pulled out the seatbelt for her to latch, and I closed her door. I stowed the stool in back.

Gary decided he’d drop me and the boys off at home and take his mother on home.

Yeah, the whole thing was kind of an exercise in discomfort, and I’m left with lingering discomfort. I have a tendency to assign the discomfort to me; assume it means I have failed in some way…or that something was wanted from me that I wasn’t providing, but ‘should’ be. And feeling uncomfortable about that. The hole of seeing that something is needed, and my offering to fill it would be gladly received, and that it’s obvious that there it is, key and lock, need and me, and so I SHOULD offer, and I don’t. It's a tension that I feel and so think the other person feels too—the elephant in the room. I tend to ‘blame’ it on my reluctance and worry about what that means about me, and so the pressure to relent and offer in order to prove something to myself. I see that I believe that the discomfort is my ‘conscience’ telling me to do it, that it is the right thing. But that pushes up against my resistance. And so it goes. Somewhere in there comes that feeling that I’m somehow responsible for the whole situation and that I have to make ‘just the right’ choices. Or be a screw-up forever.

We arrived at the house. I face a choice of how far to go to bridge the gap between ideal and reality. In a world motivated by love and good will I'd ask her inside. In the world motivated by love and good will I would get out and ask her if she wants to ride in the front seat for the rest of the journey home. I would get the footstool for her to facilitate this. Or, if she chose to remain in the back seat, I'd have her slider door open so that she's accessible for farewell hugs and kisses. I feel the pressure that this is the right thing to do. Instead, I stand in my own opened doorway, where I can see her and she me, and bid her a happy mother's day and goodbye. Pressured by Gary, Connor approaches opened front door, leans in and says goodbye. In the ideal world, the sliding door would be open and he'd reach in to hug her, and he'd want to. How far should I go to make the gap between ideal and reality less glaring?

Gary gets in to drive off so I close the passenger door. As the van pulls away I again call, "Happy Mother's Day" through the open window.

And I'm left to feel a bit hung over for the rest of the day. Being with her has me exposed to so many choices about what I choose to do for her; how far I go, and feeling exposed to a pressure that says it should be more.

Culmination of sorts

There is a Person That I'm Not Supposed To Be.

She is selfish.
She uses convenient rationalizations to avoid responsibility.
She keeps me from taking the action I need, and therefore could kill me.
She insists on thinking thoughts that I shouldn't think.
She's fat.
She's too sensitive.
She holds grudges.
She's weak.
She cares too much what others think of her.
She can't think on her feet, and so often fails when a witty come-back is called for.
She's too serious.
She's too literal-minded and rigid.
She doesn't have any self-discipline.
She can't get started.
She's pathetic.
Her timing is off.
She's paralyzed by fear and can't function.
She's spiteful.
She's delusional.
She forgets important bits of information at important times.
She misses important signs.
She makes lame excuses.
She's lazy.
She takes advantage of other people.

And that's all just for starters.

I suppose This Person That I'm Not Supposed To Be is someone I internalized through acculturation.

I suppose this is who the Jungians call The Shadow.


My life has been lived on the run from her. I've had a belief that there is someone inside me who is craven, and given half a chance will ruin everything I want. So I must outwit her. I must do what I can to prevent her from entering my consciousness. I must drown her out with 'positive affirmations.' I must drown her out with prayer. I must try to not get "too attached" to things I want, because the second I get "too attached"--the second I'm aware I'm attached-- I can't have the thing I want. I must put up a screen of white-noise, a sort of low level agitation, to mask her. This dynamic is the origin of the Trial, in which I am continually accused (by myself) of being her. The trouble is, that any evidence I come up with in my own defense is merely proof that I am rationalizing, and therefore am who I am not supposed to be.

Of course, forbidding myself to BE her, or insisting I be her opposite has only magnetized her to me more tightly. Such is the nature of prohibition.

So many of the feelings that encountered in the act of living become fraught. They become evidence of my guilt. It's not just the emotions I feel, but what they mean about me. They become evidence in the Trial. If what I want is in conflict with what someone else wants, it must mean that I am selfish, and therefore The Person That I'm Not Supposed To Be. It is impossible to think through a construct like this, and leaves a Shadow of Doubt as a sort of taint. Maybe I am who I'm not supposed to be. That very dynamic has been what has contracted the walls of the labyrinth around me, like a Chinese finger trap.

What an interesting journey this has been, to unwind this labyrinth. I hesitate to commit myself to saying, it is unwound. Perhaps this is merely a pause before another go-round. I'd like to hope though, that I am standing on the rim of the canyon I've just wound myself up out of, blinking in the sunlight, and contemplating a life without that dynamic. From now on my experience is just my experience, not evidence for the prosecution.