Today is Connor's 11th birthday.
His big gift was "Guitar Hero" for the Wii, which was his present last year. I can hear the strains of 'Slow Ride' from downstairs, and figure I'll probably be drafted into a 'guitar' battle before much time has passed. I actually did try it (to "Slow Ride", the easiest of the pieces) and felt almost as if I was pulled into a dance, or an amusement park ride. I felt like a rock star!
Today was also a day that Gary got a basal cell lesion excised from his cheek. He was gone a few hours this morning and came home sporting a rather bulky bandage on his face. By the time we were going to a local pizza party for a small family celebration Gary was fading a little, tuckered.
We met his mother there.
We had our meal and Connor opened his gift from her (he'd already wheedled us into letting him open his from us earlier in the day.) She realized when his gifts were open that she'd forgotten to take his picture. So she shot one and was getting into position to take one with Gary and Connor.
Gary said, "No pictures." (He tends to be self-conscious about blemishes on his face; asked me to be the one who went to the counter to do the ordering and such.) She said, "why not?" He said, "I don't want to be in any pictures." She said, "I'm going to shoot it from this side and your bandage won't even be in it." He said, "I just don't want to be in a picture."
She said, "It isn't for you. It's for me." She said, "Tough tarts." And, she took the picture. I could not believe it. She really believed that the fact that she wasn't going to give him the photo trumped his wish to not have a picture taken of him. I'll bet she doesn't believe there was anything at all wrong in what she did.
I suppose this sheds some light in what I've recently realized about Gary and differentiation.
Excuse me, I've got a guitar to play...
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
First day of the first week...
...of the first month of the summer break. (12 weeks of bliss for them, something less for me)
Connor has a friend over. Scott wants to join in. Actually, the older boys are fairly tolerant of him, but I sense this is fragile and could deteriorate. It's a climate I find it hard to let down in to do some exploratory writing and Deep Thinking.
I can't really blame Connor. I think I was less tolerant of my sister who was 2 1/2 years younger than me.
The four year spread is a bit of a gulf, though, especially since Scott is a young 6.99, and Connor's an average 10.999999. When Scott has friends over they tend to gravitate toward Connor (which doesn't particularly thrill Connor) and Scott ends up odd-one-out. As someone who can't think much beyond the planning and coordinating of the next meal, coordinating complementary play dates seems like a daunting mental exercise.
In fact, my mind is blank before the enormity of it all.
Hopefully I'll find some sea legs soon so I can string a couple of consecutive thoughts together.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Enough time has passed since writing that last sentence to give me doubt if I ever will again.
Hopefully this gets better.
Connor has a friend over. Scott wants to join in. Actually, the older boys are fairly tolerant of him, but I sense this is fragile and could deteriorate. It's a climate I find it hard to let down in to do some exploratory writing and Deep Thinking.
I can't really blame Connor. I think I was less tolerant of my sister who was 2 1/2 years younger than me.
The four year spread is a bit of a gulf, though, especially since Scott is a young 6.99, and Connor's an average 10.999999. When Scott has friends over they tend to gravitate toward Connor (which doesn't particularly thrill Connor) and Scott ends up odd-one-out. As someone who can't think much beyond the planning and coordinating of the next meal, coordinating complementary play dates seems like a daunting mental exercise.
In fact, my mind is blank before the enormity of it all.
Hopefully I'll find some sea legs soon so I can string a couple of consecutive thoughts together.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Enough time has passed since writing that last sentence to give me doubt if I ever will again.
Hopefully this gets better.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
a$$-kicking
Be nice now.
I was a driver for the OMSI field trip.
And I hated it. (Good things that came from it: A new invention. A "Loud-o-meter" which can be mounted from the ceilings of mini-vans in dvd position--yeah, just make softwear that an existing dvd can run. It could be instant feedback for 4 kids in the back of a van, an objective visual measure of just how loud too loud is. It's a benefit to the kids as well as the adults, protecting them from being unfairly disciplined if their noise level is in fact below a certain threshold but the adult's has shifted so even a whisper is too loud. Although I will admit that fairness to the kids is not what motivates me here. In fact, as I took refuge in my fantasy of such a device while the waves of sound crashed over me like a rogue sneaker from the ocean, my thoughts imagined darker things that went far beyond visual feedback. How about electrical shocks? Mmmmm, yelps, then silence......) (I've had other inventive ideas while driving children around in vans. I still don't understand why it isn't standard equipment to have a soundproof window that can descend at the touch of a button between the driver's row and the region behind. Why not tender neck massagers that automatically appear when the window goes down. Oh, but that's extreme. What's really necessary are little fur-covered cuffs that would anchor little arms and legs to seats so they can't beat each other up when they realize their screeches are impotent. Those could appear concurrent with the window's descent.)
Oh yeah. Let's see, high points of OMSI trip. There had to be a theme. Teacher Billy passed out a scavenger hunt list of things they were to accomplish while there; things like draw or write about a chemistry experiment they did, or a physics experiment...the name of a dinosaur from Oregon, discoveries they had made. (I hate scavenger hunts.) My group (The Cinnamon Pterodactyls") fragmented nearly immediately: two second grade girls and the Scott/Felix duo. The girls had nothing in common with the boys and never wanted to be doing the same thing at the same time. The boys, as is customary, started off well, but degenerated toward the end into competitions that were fiercely important to them, ludicrous to me. There were several incarnations of this scenario: in the 'earthquake house' where they can push buttons to experience a 5.8 scale earthquake, or a 6.8. All to the tune of Carole King's song "I Feel the Earth Move". Felix wants to push 5.8. Scott wants to push 6.8. I want them to leave and move on to the next thing--I'd already abandoned the scavenger hunt. Both of them have dug in so whoever is the last one to touch the button has 'won'. So neither of them want to move away from the button because that means the other one will get to touch it last. I want to knock their heads together and when I finally have to put my hands on them physically to remove them from the house it's with a conscious effort to not close my hand beyond neutral pressure.
But this is all beside the point. The main point is the questions that arose from my arse-whuppin' yesterday from my cuz. What was the seat of my angst about putting my needs ahead of others? That was kind of the crux of the dilemma both about attending the moving up ceremony and driving (or not) for the field trip.
Is it because I believe I'm not entitled to meet my own needs and because I fear the opinions of others that I even had to think about it? Where is my opinion about my own honorability entwined or entangled with that of others (or, to complicate it even further, with my perception of others' opinions?)?
In the case of the ceremony, though I joked and kind of implied that I went to Felix's dad for 'permission' to not attend, it was actually more nuanced than that. Having not been part of the school last year what wasn't clear to me was the weight the culture of this classroom gives to such rituals. Is this ceremony about giving respect to change and honoring the accomplishment of these young students and thus is something I should seriously consider suspending my personal comfort to add my presence to? Is this something that overall is of benefit to the classroom culture and to Scott? Martin's response told me that indeed, this is that sort of event--not that he was telling me I should attend, but his decision to postpone his other plans told me there was something here to respect. It wasn't the answer I wanted, but it seemed expedient to bow to it, setting aside all consideration of "adequate" parenting.
Driving for the field trip was a more difficult matter because it's about finding that balance between contributing adequately to a community and sponging off the group.
A few weeks ago our NPR station had its quarterly fundraiser. As part of their attempt to awaken the conscience, they used "The Pizza Analogy": A group goes out for pizza regularly. Occasionally someone doesn't have money and the group absorbs that person's expenses. Ideally in a situation of goodwill in that community this situation of short-term inequity works out in the long run--eventually he/she too will carry someone at another time who happens to be short of a little change. But what happens if someone always takes, never contributes? (We wouldn't want to be that person, would we?)
In the classroom I don't think a field trip has ever had to be canceled because there weren't enough drivers. At least this hasn't happened since Scott & I joined the school community in January. I've noticed that the sign-up lists often remain blank until the very day of the trip, and then someone always comes forward. I think of the age-old story of the grasshopper and the ants, the workers and the players. The grasshopper might be vindicated for his playing when the winter comes because 'something comes through' just as he 'knew it would'. But generally the 'something has come through' because some ant had stepped up and done his job. I suppose the story of Mary and Martha and the dinner where Jesus was the guest of honor is a version of the grasshopper/ant story.
I'm still trying to negotiate where that line is where I can rely on the collective work of the community to carry me for a while, and where I need to be a contributer. I think some people deal with that tension by always contributing and never taking...some seem to feel no shame at all in always receiving. It seems there's an act of trust required from everybody to make it all work harmoniously--when giving to give wholeheartedly, when receiving to receive wholeheartedly, and to trust that all are doing their best and it will indeed be evened out in the end.
The 'shame' part was my estimation of myself in trying to get out of driving without having to be asked and without having to face in myself the question of whether it was honorable to say no this time. That involved the skulking behavior in the classroom, avoiding Billy's eye, keeping distance between him and me in an effort to avoid the question.
Still, how much of that is based on my own judgment of what's honorable ("I should be giving Billy a clear, proactive answer") and what I judge his judgment of me is. Part of this is based on a fear that he can see that I am not being my best self in trying to avoid committing myself.
In the end, is it really possible to separate one's self-estimation from that of the judgment of others? Because as I try to dissect this, there seems to be no level where I can separate them...my feeling shame about trying to not deal directly with this request is connected with a sense of how the Other judges it. No matter how deep I go, there does seem to be a reciprocal relationship in matters of honor between Self and Other that I'm not sure can be separated entirely.
I guess I'm going to have to think about it some more.
**********************************************************************************
Returned briefly to update:
Had the stakes been higher I might have leaned more toward outright refusal. I wasn't going to get a full day at home alone anyway. Wednesday ordinarily is a volunteer day with me at the various schools from around 11 all the way until 3 or else driving between. I was going to have to fetch Connor from his friend's house somewhere in there too, so it's not like I was passing on a full-monty-alone day. Had it been a full-monty-alone day I'd be giving up, I may have been more willing to endure whatever it took to preserve it.
I was a driver for the OMSI field trip.
And I hated it. (Good things that came from it: A new invention. A "Loud-o-meter" which can be mounted from the ceilings of mini-vans in dvd position--yeah, just make softwear that an existing dvd can run. It could be instant feedback for 4 kids in the back of a van, an objective visual measure
Oh yeah. Let's see, high points of OMSI trip. There had to be a theme. Teacher Billy passed out a scavenger hunt list of things they were to accomplish while there; things like draw or write about a chemistry experiment they did, or a physics experiment...the name of a dinosaur from Oregon, discoveries they had made. (I hate scavenger hunts.) My group (The Cinnamon Pterodactyls") fragmented nearly immediately: two second grade girls and the Scott/Felix duo. The girls had nothing in common with the boys and never wanted to be doing the same thing at the same time. The boys, as is customary, started off well, but degenerated toward the end into competitions that were fiercely important to them, ludicrous to me. There were several incarnations of this scenario: in the 'earthquake house' where they can push buttons to experience a 5.8 scale earthquake, or a 6.8. All to the tune of Carole King's song "I Feel the Earth Move". Felix wants to push 5.8. Scott wants to push 6.8. I want them to leave and move on to the next thing--I'd already abandoned the scavenger hunt. Both of them have dug in so whoever is the last one to touch the button has 'won'. So neither of them want to move away from the button because that means the other one will get to touch it last. I want to knock their heads together and when I finally have to put my hands on them physically to remove them from the house it's with a conscious effort to not close my hand beyond neutral pressure.
But this is all beside the point. The main point is the questions that arose from my arse-whuppin' yesterday from my cuz. What was the seat of my angst about putting my needs ahead of others? That was kind of the crux of the dilemma both about attending the moving up ceremony and driving (or not) for the field trip.
Is it because I believe I'm not entitled to meet my own needs and because I fear the opinions of others that I even had to think about it? Where is my opinion about my own honorability entwined or entangled with that of others (or, to complicate it even further, with my perception of others' opinions?)?
In the case of the ceremony, though I joked and kind of implied that I went to Felix's dad for 'permission' to not attend, it was actually more nuanced than that. Having not been part of the school last year what wasn't clear to me was the weight the culture of this classroom gives to such rituals. Is this ceremony about giving respect to change and honoring the accomplishment of these young students and thus is something I should seriously consider suspending my personal comfort to add my presence to? Is this something that overall is of benefit to the classroom culture and to Scott? Martin's response told me that indeed, this is that sort of event--not that he was telling me I should attend, but his decision to postpone his other plans told me there was something here to respect. It wasn't the answer I wanted, but it seemed expedient to bow to it, setting aside all consideration of "adequate" parenting.
Driving for the field trip was a more difficult matter because it's about finding that balance between contributing adequately to a community and sponging off the group.
A few weeks ago our NPR station had its quarterly fundraiser. As part of their attempt to awaken the conscience, they used "The Pizza Analogy": A group goes out for pizza regularly. Occasionally someone doesn't have money and the group absorbs that person's expenses. Ideally in a situation of goodwill in that community this situation of short-term inequity works out in the long run--eventually he/she too will carry someone at another time who happens to be short of a little change. But what happens if someone always takes, never contributes? (We wouldn't want to be that person, would we?)
In the classroom I don't think a field trip has ever had to be canceled because there weren't enough drivers. At least this hasn't happened since Scott & I joined the school community in January. I've noticed that the sign-up lists often remain blank until the very day of the trip, and then someone always comes forward. I think of the age-old story of the grasshopper and the ants, the workers and the players. The grasshopper might be vindicated for his playing when the winter comes because 'something comes through' just as he 'knew it would'. But generally the 'something has come through' because some ant had stepped up and done his job. I suppose the story of Mary and Martha and the dinner where Jesus was the guest of honor is a version of the grasshopper/ant story.
I'm still trying to negotiate where that line is where I can rely on the collective work of the community to carry me for a while, and where I need to be a contributer. I think some people deal with that tension by always contributing and never taking...some seem to feel no shame at all in always receiving. It seems there's an act of trust required from everybody to make it all work harmoniously--when giving to give wholeheartedly, when receiving to receive wholeheartedly, and to trust that all are doing their best and it will indeed be evened out in the end.
The 'shame' part was my estimation of myself in trying to get out of driving without having to be asked and without having to face in myself the question of whether it was honorable to say no this time. That involved the skulking behavior in the classroom, avoiding Billy's eye, keeping distance between him and me in an effort to avoid the question.
Still, how much of that is based on my own judgment of what's honorable ("I should be giving Billy a clear, proactive answer") and what I judge his judgment of me is. Part of this is based on a fear that he can see that I am not being my best self in trying to avoid committing myself.
In the end, is it really possible to separate one's self-estimation from that of the judgment of others? Because as I try to dissect this, there seems to be no level where I can separate them...my feeling shame about trying to not deal directly with this request is connected with a sense of how the Other judges it. No matter how deep I go, there does seem to be a reciprocal relationship in matters of honor between Self and Other that I'm not sure can be separated entirely.
I guess I'm going to have to think about it some more.
**********************************************************************************
Returned briefly to update:
Had the stakes been higher I might have leaned more toward outright refusal. I wasn't going to get a full day at home alone anyway. Wednesday ordinarily is a volunteer day with me at the various schools from around 11 all the way until 3 or else driving between. I was going to have to fetch Connor from his friend's house somewhere in there too, so it's not like I was passing on a full-monty-alone day. Had it been a full-monty-alone day I'd be giving up, I may have been more willing to endure whatever it took to preserve it.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
I forgot to say yesterday...
...that I think it would have been less uncomfortable to have gone ahead and dragged my belly through the mud.
There's a field trip to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry tomorrow, Wednesday. Connor will be out of school, but will be spending Tuesday night with a friend. Wednesday thus will be My Last Day Alone.
With Monday's experience fresh, would it really be intolerable to scrape belly and find a way to avoid being asked to be a driver?
Let's see, I can have a quiet morning at home blogging peacefully or writing in my diary, OR I can drive a vanload of shouting 5--7 year olds through heavily trafficked streets, jockey for a parking space, shepherd the minions through a busy parking lot and then keep track of them in a space crawling with people. The price for option number 1, the shame of avoiding the teacher's eyes, keeping space between us from closing, and slinking out the door before he can talk to me.
I hate these kinds of choices!
There's a field trip to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry tomorrow, Wednesday. Connor will be out of school, but will be spending Tuesday night with a friend. Wednesday thus will be My Last Day Alone.
With Monday's experience fresh, would it really be intolerable to scrape belly and find a way to avoid being asked to be a driver?
Let's see, I can have a quiet morning at home blogging peacefully or writing in my diary, OR I can drive a vanload of shouting 5--7 year olds through heavily trafficked streets, jockey for a parking space, shepherd the minions through a busy parking lot and then keep track of them in a space crawling with people. The price for option number 1, the shame of avoiding the teacher's eyes, keeping space between us from closing, and slinking out the door before he can talk to me.
I hate these kinds of choices!
Monday, June 9, 2008
More Self Pity
Felix's dad gave me a level look: "Good mom" he said without a trace of irony.
But he's wrong. With the attitude I had I shouldn't have shown up. I was a very Very Bad Mom.
A better attitude would have gotten me through:
The interminable readings of the 5 children who had published their own works: too-soft reading voices, losing their place, not able to read their own writing, trailing off and starting over. Around me a cacophony of cell phones playing, smaller children's spontaneous spoutings, feet drumming on chairs and floors. Scott's in my lap trying to plaster my face with wet kisses, perpetually sliding down my thighs and needing to be hiked up; kicking my shins as he squirms. The lap dance of the wiggles. And this is in the first 10 minutes. Then Billy passes out graduation hats for the actual moving up ceremony. So now I'm trying to avoid being poked in the eye with the corner of cardboard.
There are 20 kids in the class. 19 were there...one of them out with a bout of chicken pox. Each child had to have something nice said about them. There were 5 kindergartners, then 5 first graders, 10 second graders. Once the younger kids were given their certificates they were at the edge of their attention spans and there were 10 more kids to go.
One of the kindergartners lost it first and the teacher requested one of the parents take him outside. Scott immediately wanted to go too. So I put on my coat to go out and help the parents.
Fortunately it was a wide sidewalk because it's a busy street and they were bursting with pent-up energy. (They'd had to walk a substantial number of blocks to get there, so it's hard to know where that came from.) The store takes up nearly the entire block, and one side is bounded by a street that isn't obviously a street. It looks more like a driveway, or an alleyway, but I noted a stop sign. So I was uneasy when the children would hurtle themselves in that direction. I stationed myself by a doorway and told them that this was their boundary--to not go beyond that. Then I had to enforce it. Setting a boundary, of course inspires children to flirt with it and ultimately I feel a bit foolish at having to get literal about defending it. Here's where I reveal myself as pitbull parent. Of course they managed to get excessive enough outside to be disruptive inside, bending over and pretending to send jets of fart at each other. So back inside we had to go, to 'sit quietly on the couches at the back of the store'. Where they proceeded to torment each other to tears.
So, the ceremony dragged on an eternal half hour after the attention spans stretched, and broke, for the younger kids.
To complete the indignity of surrendering one of my very final days to myself, Gary got home from Asia yesterday and took today off. He wants to 'talk', and I want to be left alone to blog and recover.
If I had a better attitude I'd deserve a medal. If I had a better attitude I'd be happy with a medal. I'd rather have a mojito.
But he's wrong. With the attitude I had I shouldn't have shown up. I was a very Very Bad Mom.
A better attitude would have gotten me through:
The interminable readings of the 5 children who had published their own works: too-soft reading voices, losing their place, not able to read their own writing, trailing off and starting over. Around me a cacophony of cell phones playing, smaller children's spontaneous spoutings, feet drumming on chairs and floors. Scott's in my lap trying to plaster my face with wet kisses, perpetually sliding down my thighs and needing to be hiked up; kicking my shins as he squirms. The lap dance of the wiggles. And this is in the first 10 minutes. Then Billy passes out graduation hats for the actual moving up ceremony. So now I'm trying to avoid being poked in the eye with the corner of cardboard.
There are 20 kids in the class. 19 were there...one of them out with a bout of chicken pox. Each child had to have something nice said about them. There were 5 kindergartners, then 5 first graders, 10 second graders. Once the younger kids were given their certificates they were at the edge of their attention spans and there were 10 more kids to go.
One of the kindergartners lost it first and the teacher requested one of the parents take him outside. Scott immediately wanted to go too. So I put on my coat to go out and help the parents.
Fortunately it was a wide sidewalk because it's a busy street and they were bursting with pent-up energy. (They'd had to walk a substantial number of blocks to get there, so it's hard to know where that came from.) The store takes up nearly the entire block, and one side is bounded by a street that isn't obviously a street. It looks more like a driveway, or an alleyway, but I noted a stop sign. So I was uneasy when the children would hurtle themselves in that direction. I stationed myself by a doorway and told them that this was their boundary--to not go beyond that. Then I had to enforce it. Setting a boundary, of course inspires children to flirt with it and ultimately I feel a bit foolish at having to get literal about defending it. Here's where I reveal myself as pitbull parent. Of course they managed to get excessive enough outside to be disruptive inside, bending over and pretending to send jets of fart at each other. So back inside we had to go, to 'sit quietly on the couches at the back of the store'. Where they proceeded to torment each other to tears.
So, the ceremony dragged on an eternal half hour after the attention spans stretched, and broke, for the younger kids.
To complete the indignity of surrendering one of my very final days to myself, Gary got home from Asia yesterday and took today off. He wants to 'talk', and I want to be left alone to blog and recover.
If I had a better attitude I'd deserve a medal. If I had a better attitude I'd be happy with a medal. I'd rather have a mojito.
Self Pity
Life, is about to change. It's called Summer Vacation. Connor's last day is tomorrow. Scott's Friday.
Sorrow. For someone who is horribly selfish(cherishes) her time to herself, this is like facing famine. Miles to go before I sleep...
And the schools are trying to whittle the ends off of even these last few days.
Connor's teacher had some sort of 'award' ceremony on Friday. Hoping to be excused I asked Connor if he wanted me to attend. "Yeah, sure" he said off-handedly. Then, "Sure", as an afterthought.
The day was foreshortened anyway since Scott only has half days on Fridays, and there was going to be a potluck afterward and I had to make a dish. So that made it easier to surrender some time to go over to Connor's school for the 'award' only to find that I was a half hour early (Damn! Now I know it said 10:00 on the homework assignment.). I trudged back to the car. At least I'd thought to bring the i-pod and I was listening to an interesting interview with George Lakoff, author of "The Political Mind" (and an extremely long sub-title. The subtitles seem to keep getting longer and longer and longer). Caught in that odd crack between; by the time I'd drive home it would be time to turn around and head back.
I was one of 2 parents who attended that. Good mom.
So then Trillium school is having a 'moving up' ceremony today, Monday. It's at a beastly inconvenient time, 10:30 to 11:45--meaning an hour and a half to hang around if I stay in the area, or drive home for an hour before driving back. It's also a publishing party, held at a local women's bookstore. I'd figured it wasn't essential for me to go since 'moving up' implied to me that the 2nd graders who were 'graduating' to another room were the focus. Still, I couldn't dismiss it entirely, that nagging voice of conscience. So I called one of the parents, hoping for absolution.
Trillium school seems to attract a certain type. Free spirited kids, free-spirited parents. A prevalence of piercings, tattoos that you don't usually see around a school. The person I chose to absolve me of my responsibility is Felix's dad.
I've paused, for quite a little while, wasting precious battery time, because I've just realized that it appears I'm about to admit that because Felix's dad is heavily tattooed that he would have been the one to help me feel ok about skipping the 'ceremony'. Is that really what it is? I don't feel ok about that.
I called him, trying to gauge the temperature of this thing. Is this something that's kind of a big deal, part of the culture of the classroom that gives it more weight than what's apparent? He answered, "Well, no, it's not really mandatory so much...but I know that Felix would really dig it if I was there. I was going to go to Seattle, but then this thing kind of got sprung on me on Friday and I realized there weren't any trains that would get me back on time...so I had to change my plans. Especially since I don't have Felix on Mondays..."
Awwwww, well the bar is definitely a lot lower now for me to crawl under to skip this. I'd be scraping my belly through the mud. Felix's dad is definitely a far better dad than I am a mom. Hopefully he will keep my guilty secret.
So here I am in a wifi place, with a soggy scone and lousy coffee and no electrical outlets for my dwindling battery, in fact it just went into red. And I have an hour to go.
Waaaaaaaah.
Sorrow. For someone who is horribly selfish(cherishes) her time to herself, this is like facing famine. Miles to go before I sleep...
And the schools are trying to whittle the ends off of even these last few days.
Connor's teacher had some sort of 'award' ceremony on Friday. Hoping to be excused I asked Connor if he wanted me to attend. "Yeah, sure" he said off-handedly. Then, "Sure", as an afterthought.
The day was foreshortened anyway since Scott only has half days on Fridays, and there was going to be a potluck afterward and I had to make a dish. So that made it easier to surrender some time to go over to Connor's school for the 'award' only to find that I was a half hour early (Damn! Now I know it said 10:00 on the homework assignment.). I trudged back to the car. At least I'd thought to bring the i-pod and I was listening to an interesting interview with George Lakoff, author of "The Political Mind" (and an extremely long sub-title. The subtitles seem to keep getting longer and longer and longer). Caught in that odd crack between; by the time I'd drive home it would be time to turn around and head back.
I was one of 2 parents who attended that. Good mom.
So then Trillium school is having a 'moving up' ceremony today, Monday. It's at a beastly inconvenient time, 10:30 to 11:45--meaning an hour and a half to hang around if I stay in the area, or drive home for an hour before driving back. It's also a publishing party, held at a local women's bookstore. I'd figured it wasn't essential for me to go since 'moving up' implied to me that the 2nd graders who were 'graduating' to another room were the focus. Still, I couldn't dismiss it entirely, that nagging voice of conscience. So I called one of the parents, hoping for absolution.
Trillium school seems to attract a certain type. Free spirited kids, free-spirited parents. A prevalence of piercings, tattoos that you don't usually see around a school. The person I chose to absolve me of my responsibility is Felix's dad.
I've paused, for quite a little while, wasting precious battery time, because I've just realized that it appears I'm about to admit that because Felix's dad is heavily tattooed that he would have been the one to help me feel ok about skipping the 'ceremony'. Is that really what it is? I don't feel ok about that.
I called him, trying to gauge the temperature of this thing. Is this something that's kind of a big deal, part of the culture of the classroom that gives it more weight than what's apparent? He answered, "Well, no, it's not really mandatory so much...but I know that Felix would really dig it if I was there. I was going to go to Seattle, but then this thing kind of got sprung on me on Friday and I realized there weren't any trains that would get me back on time...so I had to change my plans. Especially since I don't have Felix on Mondays..."
Awwwww, well the bar is definitely a lot lower now for me to crawl under to skip this. I'd be scraping my belly through the mud. Felix's dad is definitely a far better dad than I am a mom. Hopefully he will keep my guilty secret.
So here I am in a wifi place, with a soggy scone and lousy coffee and no electrical outlets for my dwindling battery, in fact it just went into red. And I have an hour to go.
Waaaaaaaah.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
language
I'm six, and we just moved to Tempe, Arizona. It's June, with a few weeks left in the school year, so my parents enrolled me in Mrs. Miller's first grade class at Rural School.
I'm coloring at my desk, and a child has been called on. The teacher told me to stop coloring, saying, "We need to listen to x speak, not to your coloring." I thought she meant that I was coloring too loudly, and that I should be quieter. So I tried coloring more softly. A few minutes later the teacher swooped down and took my crayons away, and I was left humiliated and publicly disciplined.
If she's still alive and still remembers the incident she probably sees my behavior as an act of defiance and insubordination. I realized that then too, that she saw me as disobedient. I also knew then that she had misunderstood me, just as I had misunderstood her. But I had to wear the crown of shame: there wasn't an avenue for me to explain to her that she had made a mistake, just as I had.
Language is the medium through which humans interact and participate with one another. It is the means through which we take in what the Other has to offer. It's our means of expression, and our means of receiving.
When I was a child I believed I was stupid. I remember gazing in a mirror at age seven and singing my own version of "If I Only Had a Brain" from "The Wizard of Oz" (my favorite movie): "I already have a brain, I already have a heart...if I only was smart."
I couldn't understand math, and I often had misunderstandings with people like the story above.
I've noticed with Scott that he seems to not understand what is expected from him in school...not just from the teacher, but from his peers. He's been receiving speech and language services since before he turned 3. Speech delay and articulation were the identified issues. At his IEP meeting in April the speech therapist said that goals for intelligibility had largely been met, but there was an area he wanted to investigate further, his language skills, the ability to receive and communicate meaning.
I think elsewhere in this blog I've mentioned that Scott's classroom behavior has been problematic. It was what I'd hoped would be resolved by moving him to a school and classroom that was more flexible and age-appropriate in its expectations of 5 and 6 year old behavior. I was dismayed to realize that this was not something that a friendlier venue would resolve and his behavior continued to be a problem. I was glad to see that the adults around him didn't dismiss his behavior as a moral-character/defiance issue but looked deeper and understood its roots seemed to be in his not engaging with either the culture of classroom or the material. Hence the language evaluation by the speech therapist. I got the results Tuesday.
And I'm stunned.
First, there's an irony in that his classroom demeanor has improved a great deal over the past month. Disruption is occurring in isolated incidents now rather than defining his days. I suppose that's largely a function of settling into this new and different setting and finding a comfort level with the teacher.
The irony is that from the results of the testing, it looks like his skills at language are so low that he must be taking in very little to engage him within this format. He's like a member of a litter who is feeding beside his littermates, but he lacks an enzyme that allows him to digest, or to absorb what he has digested. So while the other children gain 'weight', a large amount of knowledge is passing through and out of him without being usable--he's just not assimilating it.
He scored in the 2nd percentile for overall language skills for his age group.
I feel...so sad for him. How he is able to spend 6 hours a day in a setting that is providing him with so little to meaningfully engage him without totally acting out and misbehaving is beyond me. I suppose it's a measure of how nurturing this environment really is and how accepting it is of diverse learning styles...but it's also a measure of his own ability to adapt himself and sustain himself even when there's not a lot to interest him that's interesting the majority of children around him. He's finding something to keep himself calm and largely centered, but he's not getting the really nutrient-rich content. It's right there, but there's something wrong in his 'up-take mechanism' and that's keeping him from accessing the rich stuff.
So now I have all of these questions to consider.
Is the AD/HD that Scott has been diagnosed with a symptom of his language issues, or is it a cause? If it's a cause, it makes a case for using medication; if it's a symptom it's less clear whether medication is indicated. But that depends on whether the language problem is a disability/impairment, or if it's an issue of maturation of the areas of the brain where language develops. If it's an issue of maturation, would medicating be akin to trying to hurry the final maturation of a butterfly's wings by blowing on them?
I'm keeping Scott at this school for at least another year because he will continue to be in Billy's classroom through 2nd grade. If he needs medication he shall have it, and to determine if he needs it I will use the following benchmarks: his learning, and his self esteem. If he is making gains in his learning at an appropriate pace and his self-regard remains high I think we'll hold off on medication. I think his teacher will be a good partner for me in assessing this.
To reference my own story again, I thought I was stupid when I was a kid. I managed to bump along as a fairly average student, and then one day I started to understand things. It was nearly that dramatic. All at once complex concepts were in my grasp. It happened in 7th grade, around the time I turned 12. It was noticeable enough that I was moved to an accelerated classroom.
I'm coloring at my desk, and a child has been called on. The teacher told me to stop coloring, saying, "We need to listen to x speak, not to your coloring." I thought she meant that I was coloring too loudly, and that I should be quieter. So I tried coloring more softly. A few minutes later the teacher swooped down and took my crayons away, and I was left humiliated and publicly disciplined.
If she's still alive and still remembers the incident she probably sees my behavior as an act of defiance and insubordination. I realized that then too, that she saw me as disobedient. I also knew then that she had misunderstood me, just as I had misunderstood her. But I had to wear the crown of shame: there wasn't an avenue for me to explain to her that she had made a mistake, just as I had.
Language is the medium through which humans interact and participate with one another. It is the means through which we take in what the Other has to offer. It's our means of expression, and our means of receiving.
When I was a child I believed I was stupid. I remember gazing in a mirror at age seven and singing my own version of "If I Only Had a Brain" from "The Wizard of Oz" (my favorite movie): "I already have a brain, I already have a heart...if I only was smart."
I couldn't understand math, and I often had misunderstandings with people like the story above.
I've noticed with Scott that he seems to not understand what is expected from him in school...not just from the teacher, but from his peers. He's been receiving speech and language services since before he turned 3. Speech delay and articulation were the identified issues. At his IEP meeting in April the speech therapist said that goals for intelligibility had largely been met, but there was an area he wanted to investigate further, his language skills, the ability to receive and communicate meaning.
I think elsewhere in this blog I've mentioned that Scott's classroom behavior has been problematic. It was what I'd hoped would be resolved by moving him to a school and classroom that was more flexible and age-appropriate in its expectations of 5 and 6 year old behavior. I was dismayed to realize that this was not something that a friendlier venue would resolve and his behavior continued to be a problem. I was glad to see that the adults around him didn't dismiss his behavior as a moral-character/defiance issue but looked deeper and understood its roots seemed to be in his not engaging with either the culture of classroom or the material. Hence the language evaluation by the speech therapist. I got the results Tuesday.
And I'm stunned.
First, there's an irony in that his classroom demeanor has improved a great deal over the past month. Disruption is occurring in isolated incidents now rather than defining his days. I suppose that's largely a function of settling into this new and different setting and finding a comfort level with the teacher.
The irony is that from the results of the testing, it looks like his skills at language are so low that he must be taking in very little to engage him within this format. He's like a member of a litter who is feeding beside his littermates, but he lacks an enzyme that allows him to digest, or to absorb what he has digested. So while the other children gain 'weight', a large amount of knowledge is passing through and out of him without being usable--he's just not assimilating it.
He scored in the 2nd percentile for overall language skills for his age group.
I feel...so sad for him. How he is able to spend 6 hours a day in a setting that is providing him with so little to meaningfully engage him without totally acting out and misbehaving is beyond me. I suppose it's a measure of how nurturing this environment really is and how accepting it is of diverse learning styles...but it's also a measure of his own ability to adapt himself and sustain himself even when there's not a lot to interest him that's interesting the majority of children around him. He's finding something to keep himself calm and largely centered, but he's not getting the really nutrient-rich content. It's right there, but there's something wrong in his 'up-take mechanism' and that's keeping him from accessing the rich stuff.
So now I have all of these questions to consider.
Is the AD/HD that Scott has been diagnosed with a symptom of his language issues, or is it a cause? If it's a cause, it makes a case for using medication; if it's a symptom it's less clear whether medication is indicated. But that depends on whether the language problem is a disability/impairment, or if it's an issue of maturation of the areas of the brain where language develops. If it's an issue of maturation, would medicating be akin to trying to hurry the final maturation of a butterfly's wings by blowing on them?
I'm keeping Scott at this school for at least another year because he will continue to be in Billy's classroom through 2nd grade. If he needs medication he shall have it, and to determine if he needs it I will use the following benchmarks: his learning, and his self esteem. If he is making gains in his learning at an appropriate pace and his self-regard remains high I think we'll hold off on medication. I think his teacher will be a good partner for me in assessing this.
To reference my own story again, I thought I was stupid when I was a kid. I managed to bump along as a fairly average student, and then one day I started to understand things. It was nearly that dramatic. All at once complex concepts were in my grasp. It happened in 7th grade, around the time I turned 12. It was noticeable enough that I was moved to an accelerated classroom.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Depressing
When I answered the question about kindness for the book tour last week, I told the story of women who had reached out to me after my miscarriage. The fall-out from that was to to pull out that diary to read.
Gary left on Friday for a business trip; Connor had a 2 night campout with his school. After some hesitation I took a gamble and gave in to Scott's pleas to have his buddy Felix spend the night Saturday.
{It could go either very well, with the two of them thoroughly occupying each other, or it could be a nightmare with my presence required moment-by-moment to negotiate their differences. Felix is a very complex child. He has an unfortunate combination of middle-aged seriousness and age-appropriate egocentrism. It can make him a bit of a prig; when children push back there's a world of hurt feelings to disappear into. And he feels things so strongly.
What was arguing for favorable conditions is that Connor would be away. When Connor gets self-righteous in his big brother way on Scott, Felix is known to pile on. Scott feels ganged up on and the ensuing fireworks are wearying.
The gamble paid off. When it's just Scott and Felix, Scott is quite flexible and Felix largely gets to pursue his vision of How Things Should Be unchallenged.}
While they played well I could occupy myself with my project. The year I was turning 50 what had been a vague idea turned into action: transcribe my diaries from age 14 to present. It was only later that I realized that this was a 'taking stock' project. I'd been working in sequence and had gone from the summer of 1971 through fall of 1980 when I decided to read from the period of my miscarriage. So I jumped out of sequence in the transcribing.
The miscarriage took place in a context, and the context was the deep unhappiness of the marriage I was in. It was 4 years old then, and I was thinking about divorce. In reading my writing from that period, I see that I could be writing it today. In other words, there has been no movement since then, 12 years later.
What's really odd is how thoroughly I'd forgotten I'd written that stuff. I suppose what accounts for that is that we signed up for a couples relationship class (PAIRS) that went for 5 months. It was an effort to enhance, or save our relationship. In the meantime I got pregnant again, with Connor.
I was looking at a type of blindness in my "Fish In the Sea" post. There's the blindness of undifferentiation, the blindness of not knowing what we don't know. And now I see there's also the blindness of distraction, and/or forgetting. Things must have improved with the PAIRS course, or I had reason to believe they were improving. In the meantime pregnancy and then early parenthood shook me from my moorings and in the context of my 'new normal' I didn't recognize the Same Old Problems. Or I didn't experience them the same way. Two years after Connor was born we moved to St. Louis, another distraction.
So when I read this old journal, I see that we've been walking in circles for the past 12 years emotionally. This feels like a dull ache.
Putting myself in my sons' place, I have an inkling what it would feel like to read this...the questions I might have about my very existence to know the 'field' between the male and female poles that created me.
Like fish in the sea.
Gary left on Friday for a business trip; Connor had a 2 night campout with his school. After some hesitation I took a gamble and gave in to Scott's pleas to have his buddy Felix spend the night Saturday.
{It could go either very well, with the two of them thoroughly occupying each other, or it could be a nightmare with my presence required moment-by-moment to negotiate their differences. Felix is a very complex child. He has an unfortunate combination of middle-aged seriousness and age-appropriate egocentrism. It can make him a bit of a prig; when children push back there's a world of hurt feelings to disappear into. And he feels things so strongly.
What was arguing for favorable conditions is that Connor would be away. When Connor gets self-righteous in his big brother way on Scott, Felix is known to pile on. Scott feels ganged up on and the ensuing fireworks are wearying.
The gamble paid off. When it's just Scott and Felix, Scott is quite flexible and Felix largely gets to pursue his vision of How Things Should Be unchallenged.}
While they played well I could occupy myself with my project. The year I was turning 50 what had been a vague idea turned into action: transcribe my diaries from age 14 to present. It was only later that I realized that this was a 'taking stock' project. I'd been working in sequence and had gone from the summer of 1971 through fall of 1980 when I decided to read from the period of my miscarriage. So I jumped out of sequence in the transcribing.
The miscarriage took place in a context, and the context was the deep unhappiness of the marriage I was in. It was 4 years old then, and I was thinking about divorce. In reading my writing from that period, I see that I could be writing it today. In other words, there has been no movement since then, 12 years later.
What's really odd is how thoroughly I'd forgotten I'd written that stuff. I suppose what accounts for that is that we signed up for a couples relationship class (PAIRS) that went for 5 months. It was an effort to enhance, or save our relationship. In the meantime I got pregnant again, with Connor.
I was looking at a type of blindness in my "Fish In the Sea" post. There's the blindness of undifferentiation, the blindness of not knowing what we don't know. And now I see there's also the blindness of distraction, and/or forgetting. Things must have improved with the PAIRS course, or I had reason to believe they were improving. In the meantime pregnancy and then early parenthood shook me from my moorings and in the context of my 'new normal' I didn't recognize the Same Old Problems. Or I didn't experience them the same way. Two years after Connor was born we moved to St. Louis, another distraction.
So when I read this old journal, I see that we've been walking in circles for the past 12 years emotionally. This feels like a dull ache.
Putting myself in my sons' place, I have an inkling what it would feel like to read this...the questions I might have about my very existence to know the 'field' between the male and female poles that created me.
Like fish in the sea.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Like Fish In the Sea
I'm thinking about development right now: brain development, personal skills development, idea development, Self development.
I'm surprised at the number of different areas the concept of 'the fish in the sea (being the last to discover water)' applies.
When I went looking for the phrase, 'the last to discover water' it was to give attribution to an idea that was animating my new understanding that Gary is not able to differentiate my thoughts from his, or his from mine. I found the attribution in Nathan Collier's blog. (Warning, I didn't check the veracity of his attribution!)
I read a little of his blog: Actually, fish would be the last creatures to discover water, simply because they know nothing else. They know no other reality so there’s nothing to compare it to.
And then a little more: So, too, we are the last to discover our assumptions about reality because we are so immersed in them. We need someone with a different perspective, a different world view, to point out the things we take for granted, those things we see as “givens” or “unquestioned norms,”...
And then: We do not understand what we do not know. We cannot comprehend “unknown unknowns.”
Finally: How do you uncover your blind spots?
So, to paraphrase a US ex-Secretary of Defense, sometimes we don't know that we don't know something! Furthermore, thinking we know something, prevents us from knowing it. (!)
It seems the task of the human brain is to make sense of the world. And one of the ways it does this is by making associations--as a short-hand way of dealing with an overwhelming amount of information.
A danger of this can be blind spots--an assumption that we already know all we need to know about something. I suppose this is the origin and perpetuation of prejudice. (Connor's teacher and I were talking yesterday about a topic that seems to have no bearing, except it is an example of this type of disordered thinking: Connor fancies himself to be a daredevil. His teacher compared him to Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin. I said, "yeah, and look what happened to him"--and I was then reminded of the horrific consequence of his death: mutilations of stingrays. To some humans, the death of a well-known documentarian equated a license to kill the type of animal that had been the agent of his death. Where on earth is the sense in that? Then I'm reminded of the collateral effect of 9/11--the backlash against not only Muslims, but anyone who resembled Muslims, even if only the most superficially.)
Clearly the brain has another task, and that is to discriminate and distinguish between associations.
I'm reminded of a parable told within the story of "Zorba the Greek" by Nikos Kazantzakis. Someone is over-eager for the metamorphosis of a butterfly to be completed. It has emerged from its chrysalis and slowly the wings are unfolding. Impatient, the observer tries to hurry the process by blowing his warm breath on the wings. To his horror this results in deformity--the wet wings stick to each other in clumps. Unable to differentiate from each other, they are useless and the poor creature dies.
Perhaps prejudice, and anxiety cause assumptions and associations to fuse, and the ability to discriminate between the subtleties of different ideas is lost, along with the ability to be fully functionally human.
**************************************************************************************
I give up! Something very weird is happening with the text-sizing and I can't seem to fix it. I'm sorry about that, but it looks like I'm going to have to let it stand.
I'm surprised at the number of different areas the concept of 'the fish in the sea (being the last to discover water)' applies.
When I went looking for the phrase, 'the last to discover water' it was to give attribution to an idea that was animating my new understanding that Gary is not able to differentiate my thoughts from his, or his from mine. I found the attribution in Nathan Collier's blog. (Warning, I didn't check the veracity of his attribution!)
I read a little of his blog: Actually, fish would be the last creatures to discover water, simply because they know nothing else. They know no other reality so there’s nothing to compare it to.
And then a little more: So, too, we are the last to discover our assumptions about reality because we are so immersed in them. We need someone with a different perspective, a different world view, to point out the things we take for granted, those things we see as “givens” or “unquestioned norms,”...
And then: We do not understand what we do not know. We cannot comprehend “unknown unknowns.”
Finally: How do you uncover your blind spots?
So, to paraphrase a US ex-Secretary of Defense, sometimes we don't know that we don't know something! Furthermore, thinking we know something, prevents us from knowing it. (!)
It seems the task of the human brain is to make sense of the world. And one of the ways it does this is by making associations--as a short-hand way of dealing with an overwhelming amount of information.
A danger of this can be blind spots--an assumption that we already know all we need to know about something. I suppose this is the origin and perpetuation of prejudice. (Connor's teacher and I were talking yesterday about a topic that seems to have no bearing, except it is an example of this type of disordered thinking: Connor fancies himself to be a daredevil. His teacher compared him to Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin. I said, "yeah, and look what happened to him"--and I was then reminded of the horrific consequence of his death: mutilations of stingrays. To some humans, the death of a well-known documentarian equated a license to kill the type of animal that had been the agent of his death. Where on earth is the sense in that? Then I'm reminded of the collateral effect of 9/11--the backlash against not only Muslims, but anyone who resembled Muslims, even if only the most superficially.)
Clearly the brain has another task, and that is to discriminate and distinguish between associations.
I'm reminded of a parable told within the story of "Zorba the Greek" by Nikos Kazantzakis. Someone is over-eager for the metamorphosis of a butterfly to be completed. It has emerged from its chrysalis and slowly the wings are unfolding. Impatient, the observer tries to hurry the process by blowing his warm breath on the wings. To his horror this results in deformity--the wet wings stick to each other in clumps. Unable to differentiate from each other, they are useless and the poor creature dies.
Perhaps prejudice, and anxiety cause assumptions and associations to fuse, and the ability to discriminate between the subtleties of different ideas is lost, along with the ability to be fully functionally human.
**************************************************************************************
I give up! Something very weird is happening with the text-sizing and I can't seem to fix it. I'm sorry about that, but it looks like I'm going to have to let it stand.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
My stop on the Barren Bitches "Water for Elephants" book tour
This is my first time participating in a blogger book discussion. Mel(issa), of Stirrup Queens and Sperm Court Palace Jesters has organized 11 of these prior to this one. Thanks for letting me join in.
The book, obviously, is Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen. I hope my first attempt is a worthy one, although I've already flopped in one important obligation of participants: I failed to come up with any questions. The way this works is that after reading each of the readers sends a list of questions about the book to Mel. She then compiles them and gives this compilation back to the participants to choose 3 to answer in their blog.
I belong to a reading group in real life. We choose our books over a marathon weekend at the beach once a year. At that time we also divide up our obligations for hosting and facilitating (I'm facilitating Kiran Desai's Inheritance of Loss next month). The discussions are usually pretty free-form, and I'm not used to the study questions that you can sometimes find at the end of books. I'm also one of those people who can walk around with a head full of ideas that instantly disappear when someone asks me a question about them.
With these lame qualifiers I'll launch:
Something that struck me about this book in particular was the rich, descriptive way the author handled Jacob as an elderly man. His frustration was so apparent, his physical manifestation so perfectly described, that of all of the elements of this book Jacob the Elderly is what stays with me. You had the sense that Jacob didn't foresee his latter years being the way they were, and his almost "ride off into the sunset" ending perhaps what he had envisaged for his end. Do you think about what's at the end of the road someday? When you think about it, what do you see for yourself?
Children mentioned--
The future is hazy and shrouded in mystery. Step by step the mystery is revealed. We humans deal with the same themes with infinite variation: childhood, coming-of-age, marriage, children (perhaps), loss of our parents, our own deaths. The open question of how something will be can make me anxious; I particularly wondered what the conclusions of chapters called "Adding-a-New-Baby-to-the-Family", "Toilet Training", "Starting School" would look like. Suspense is not necessarily a comfortable state for me (Heck, I just want to know if the outcomes will validate my choices in the end.), but the alternative is 'Just Shoot Me and Get It Over With', so I live with the suspense. In terms of The (My) Last Chapter I wonder if I'll face my end with peace, grace, and dignity. The optimal will be that there's a good match with my own personal readiness to surrender rather than a life dragging on after I'm ripe to depart, or having it ripped away before my children are self-sufficient. I'd like to have a few people who will miss my company around to see me off and celebrate a life that's hopefully been well-lived. This actually segues into the next question, except I want to comment on how easily I seem to take for granted the possibility of a peaceful death. I wonder if circumstances to hope realistically for a peaceful death will continue in the part of the world I live in...there are so many in the world who would dearly love to take that for granted and cannot.
On page 109, old Jacob complains about how his family keeps secrets from him: "And those are just the things I know about. There are a host of others they don't mention because they don't want to upset me. I've caught wind of several, but when I ask questions, they clam right up. Mustn't upset Grandpa, you know... Why? That's what I want to know. I hate this bizarre policy of protective exclusion, because it effectively writes me off the page. If I don't know about what's going on in their lives, how am I supposed to insert myself in the conversation?... I've decided it's not about me at all. It's a protective mechanism for them, a way of buffering themselves against my future death..." Reading this, I could see myself in both Jacob & in his family members, both in respect to our infertility situation and other matters. Whose viewpoint do you relate to most in this passage and why?
I want to take a slightly different path than this question asks, and it relates to the one above about The End. To me there seems to be an inconsistency between Jacob's life as a young man, his passionate love for Marlena and Rosie, and his final days with his family dutifully 'doing the right thing' by him, but with little emotional connection. Somehow a man who led the life we've been shown with such a deep bond with his wife seems like someone who would not feel so isolated within his family. It seems that love would have been a unifying force in the family with him as the nucleus in old age. I suppose what might account for this was that he was never free to tell the story of Rosie with authentic detail--so perhaps this is a cautionary tale that withholding the truth isolates a person from the comforts of emotional intimacy. To the point where he would be so impoverished in his family that he would choose to run away and join the circus at age 90.
Originally forced to share quarters, Kinko (Walter) seems to have an intense dislike for Jacob. One day, Jacob helps Kinko's dog Queenie and Kinko becomes his friend because of this small act of kindness. Has someone performed a simple act of kindness that changed your feelings toward them? How did this small act affect you? Can just a small and simple thing have a profound effect?
Pregnancy loss mentioned:
I miscarried my first pregnancy in 1996, when I was 39. It was a terrible shock, and I was devastated. I had told everybody about the pregnancy, and for a while it was exceedingly painful because I kept running into people I then had to tell about the loss. The unexpected gift I received was the kindness of the many women who I'd known for years and never knew that they too had had miscarriages. My loss was a reminder of their own pain, and they braved it to offer comfort and the wisdom of their experience to me. We cried together, and the offering of their pain to ease mine is an experience I'll always be grateful for.
I'd like to also say a few of my impressions of how I responded to this book. It was an engaging enough story. However there are some stories that inspire me to look inside of myself, or to look more thoughtfully at people and events around me...this story did not seem to open those doors. Hence my inability to come up with any questions. There were places where I had to force myself to continue; I had trouble with the brutality of the times. I dreaded reading passages of cruelty to Rosie and the other animals. Would I recommend the book? I think I'd tell someone who asked that it was a decent read with some nice moments, but there was some compelling note underneath that I look for to feel fully satisfied with a story, and I just didn't find it here.
Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at http://stirrup-queens.blogspot.com/. You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: The Empty Picture Frame by Jenna Nadeau (with author participation because she's a blogger!)
The book, obviously, is Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen. I hope my first attempt is a worthy one, although I've already flopped in one important obligation of participants: I failed to come up with any questions. The way this works is that after reading each of the readers sends a list of questions about the book to Mel. She then compiles them and gives this compilation back to the participants to choose 3 to answer in their blog.
I belong to a reading group in real life. We choose our books over a marathon weekend at the beach once a year. At that time we also divide up our obligations for hosting and facilitating (I'm facilitating Kiran Desai's Inheritance of Loss next month). The discussions are usually pretty free-form, and I'm not used to the study questions that you can sometimes find at the end of books. I'm also one of those people who can walk around with a head full of ideas that instantly disappear when someone asks me a question about them.
With these lame qualifiers I'll launch:
Something that struck me about this book in particular was the rich, descriptive way the author handled Jacob as an elderly man. His frustration was so apparent, his physical manifestation so perfectly described, that of all of the elements of this book Jacob the Elderly is what stays with me. You had the sense that Jacob didn't foresee his latter years being the way they were, and his almost "ride off into the sunset" ending perhaps what he had envisaged for his end. Do you think about what's at the end of the road someday? When you think about it, what do you see for yourself?
Children mentioned--
The future is hazy and shrouded in mystery. Step by step the mystery is revealed. We humans deal with the same themes with infinite variation: childhood, coming-of-age, marriage, children (perhaps), loss of our parents, our own deaths. The open question of how something will be can make me anxious; I particularly wondered what the conclusions of chapters called "Adding-a-New-Baby-to-the-Family", "Toilet Training", "Starting School" would look like. Suspense is not necessarily a comfortable state for me (Heck, I just want to know if the outcomes will validate my choices in the end.), but the alternative is 'Just Shoot Me and Get It Over With', so I live with the suspense. In terms of The (My) Last Chapter I wonder if I'll face my end with peace, grace, and dignity. The optimal will be that there's a good match with my own personal readiness to surrender rather than a life dragging on after I'm ripe to depart, or having it ripped away before my children are self-sufficient. I'd like to have a few people who will miss my company around to see me off and celebrate a life that's hopefully been well-lived. This actually segues into the next question, except I want to comment on how easily I seem to take for granted the possibility of a peaceful death. I wonder if circumstances to hope realistically for a peaceful death will continue in the part of the world I live in...there are so many in the world who would dearly love to take that for granted and cannot.
On page 109, old Jacob complains about how his family keeps secrets from him: "And those are just the things I know about. There are a host of others they don't mention because they don't want to upset me. I've caught wind of several, but when I ask questions, they clam right up. Mustn't upset Grandpa, you know... Why? That's what I want to know. I hate this bizarre policy of protective exclusion, because it effectively writes me off the page. If I don't know about what's going on in their lives, how am I supposed to insert myself in the conversation?... I've decided it's not about me at all. It's a protective mechanism for them, a way of buffering themselves against my future death..." Reading this, I could see myself in both Jacob & in his family members, both in respect to our infertility situation and other matters. Whose viewpoint do you relate to most in this passage and why?
I want to take a slightly different path than this question asks, and it relates to the one above about The End. To me there seems to be an inconsistency between Jacob's life as a young man, his passionate love for Marlena and Rosie, and his final days with his family dutifully 'doing the right thing' by him, but with little emotional connection. Somehow a man who led the life we've been shown with such a deep bond with his wife seems like someone who would not feel so isolated within his family. It seems that love would have been a unifying force in the family with him as the nucleus in old age. I suppose what might account for this was that he was never free to tell the story of Rosie with authentic detail--so perhaps this is a cautionary tale that withholding the truth isolates a person from the comforts of emotional intimacy. To the point where he would be so impoverished in his family that he would choose to run away and join the circus at age 90.
Originally forced to share quarters, Kinko (Walter) seems to have an intense dislike for Jacob. One day, Jacob helps Kinko's dog Queenie and Kinko becomes his friend because of this small act of kindness. Has someone performed a simple act of kindness that changed your feelings toward them? How did this small act affect you? Can just a small and simple thing have a profound effect?
Pregnancy loss mentioned:
I miscarried my first pregnancy in 1996, when I was 39. It was a terrible shock, and I was devastated. I had told everybody about the pregnancy, and for a while it was exceedingly painful because I kept running into people I then had to tell about the loss. The unexpected gift I received was the kindness of the many women who I'd known for years and never knew that they too had had miscarriages. My loss was a reminder of their own pain, and they braved it to offer comfort and the wisdom of their experience to me. We cried together, and the offering of their pain to ease mine is an experience I'll always be grateful for.
I'd like to also say a few of my impressions of how I responded to this book. It was an engaging enough story. However there are some stories that inspire me to look inside of myself, or to look more thoughtfully at people and events around me...this story did not seem to open those doors. Hence my inability to come up with any questions. There were places where I had to force myself to continue; I had trouble with the brutality of the times. I dreaded reading passages of cruelty to Rosie and the other animals. Would I recommend the book? I think I'd tell someone who asked that it was a decent read with some nice moments, but there was some compelling note underneath that I look for to feel fully satisfied with a story, and I just didn't find it here.
Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at http://stirrup-queens.blogspot.com/. You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: The Empty Picture Frame by Jenna Nadeau (with author participation because she's a blogger!)
Friday, May 23, 2008
Choices (long, sorry)
I've reached a conclusion that the fundamental instability between Gary and me is not fixable, because it is not available to Gary's awareness. He is simply not aware that he expects my vantage to be one and the same as his. It's very unlikely he will: as was famously said, "the fish will be the last to discover water" (Marshall McLuhan). It's hiding in plain sight. When I point it out to him his eyes glaze; he has no idea what I mean.
Therefore, the fruits of this set of conditions are very unlikely to change. These include being held responsible for knowing what's in his mind (and being punished when I fail), continued backlog of unresolved conflict, passive-aggression.
At best the field between us is polite or friendly in a distant way. It is not an atmosphere of mutual genuine warm regard and good will. And it degenerates quickly and sometimes unexpectedly.
Sadly, the boys have not known much else.
Now that I understand the anatomy of our dynamic better, I see how it's likely to continue to affect them. Already I've seen Gary answer for one of them when I say, "Do you want some dressing on your salad?" Gary will answer, "Yes, lots!" (Then is resentful when I point out that it was one of the children whose preference I asked, not his) Gary already assumes his preferences are also the kids', and when they object exacerbates the situation by either insisting on his choice or implying that there is something wrong with them for wanting something different. He wants them to want what he wants, in the same way Gary's mother wants him to want what she wants. He does not see how this undermines his own authority in their eyes. If the pattern stays unchanged this probably won't improve as they approach adolescence.
What is best for them? If part of their developmental task is to individuate from us, their parents, is it not confusing to live in an environment where one of the parents is NOT individuated and appears to condemn movement in that direction?
Of course, he is going to be in their lives: If we split I can't imagine that he would want anything but shared custody. But there are many ways to approach this.
Most important I think is that the boys not change their address. I've heard of solutions where parents keep their house and rotate back and forth as custody agreements dictate, rather than the children doing the moving. Unfortunately, this is complicated a little by the fact that the boys are now in two different schools (although I still have hope that maybe at some point Scott will return to our neighborhood school. He'll stay at Trillium for second grade, next year, though.)
So with that as a basic assumption there are various ways to accomplish this. One way would be to just make a few adjustments to our current living situation. Not much would have to change at all. He works long hours, and so our overlap time within the house is pretty minimal already. We just delineate it a little more: figure out how we'd do a conventional custody and just arrange to be gone when the other is here. An advantage to this is that I would continue to be the full time caregiver for the boys so we wouldn't need to utilize before/after-school care. This could continue to be my full time job and I would not need to seek outside employment. Furthermore, the perceived transition is less jarring to the boys.
My question about that is whether or not it's best to put daylight between the perennial conflict of my need to differentiate and his to remain undifferentiated. It's often a fraught process anyway for children to differentiate themselves from their parents : during ages 2 and 3 when the developmental need was particularly acute I remember thinking that adolescence must be like this. I had this confirmed from many quarters by people who specialize in child development: it's the task for the children to separate themselves from their parents, and it often isn't pretty. Will their task be more confusing if I don't physically separate myself from their father?
So perhaps it's better for their father and I to not share a house--at least living in it simultaneously.
There are a couple ways to do this. I could rent a room from someone during the days I don't have custody. He would have to manage his own child care arrangements. He would also need to make arrangements to sleep somewhere else on days when I have custody. I would need to return to my profession or something that pays a living wage. I don't know if it would need to be full time. So there would be childcare needs on days when I have custody too, depending on what kind of hours I have. This of course, would be far more noticeable for the boys.
If we are both renting part-time somewhere else that's a good chunk of change evaporated each month. It's a shame to think of, when one considers that it could be going to upgrade the house we have. Perhaps the solution is to buy a small place, a little house, or condominium and own that together. So at least we are creating some value and investment, though it still fragments the resources that could have gone into the house we have.
Another question about co-owning two places is the level of cooperation it would require. Will it be possible for us to cooperate amicably to the extent that would be required? And what if one of us wants to remarry? I don't foresee that for myself--I can't imagine wanting that after a marriage lingering for 16 years and then failing. (Actually, it's probably more accurate to say it's been failing for 16 years.) I can see him seeking someone else to mirror him: in general men do have a tendency to mate fairly quickly after a break-up (remembering a statistic: the only population more depressed than divorced men is married women!) I suppose if one of us was to find another partner we'd then have to work out some kind of buy-out arrangement.
The traditional divorce would be the most disruptive. A lot of my assets are tied up in this house and I don't think it would be smart of me to walk away from them outright. Though the house has probably appreciated some in value since we bought it three years ago, it is not enough that we could expect to buy two other places in the boys' school district with the proceeds of a sale.
Of course another consideration is to just continue to be married and go on with status quo with the understanding that I am living with a spouse who is not able to be a full partner. Though my vows didn't state this specifically, 'sickness-and-health' is implicitly part of what I agreed to. The problem with that is, it doesn't look like the resentment and passive aggression is going to get better. Even though I understand better where it's coming from, I can't seem to just ignore or disregard it when he puts me down. There's not much pleasure in living in an atmosphere where at any moment he may remember he dislikes me and treat me accordingly.
Two Days Later:
Update: I read Doug' post, "Bruises" and realized the congruency of my situation. The stones Gary throws are labeled: "Couldn't you have figured that out yourself?" "It's OBVIOUS!" "I would have thought you could have seen that." "This stone is for what I was mad about the other day." "This stone is for the fact that I resent you...for some reason I don't remember."
Throwing stones is a serious matter, and Doug's post was a reminder that it's not good to minimize the effects. That said, when I consider the intricacies of separating--coming up with a value for and dividing our assets, our retirement, furnishing another household (and therefore reducing the resources available for our boys' future education)-- it sure seems like it would be a whole lot simpler if I was just not bothered by his behavior. In fact I'm aware that it could be seen that I'm preparing to do a whole lot of boat-rocking when it would just be simpler for me to shave off my corners and fit in this round hole. I'm the obstruction; if I would just give everything would be all right
Another update is that I took Scott to the pediatrician for his ADD evaluation. The check-list I filled out matches Billy's, the teacher's almost exactly--Scott meets nine out of nine of the criteria for attention disorder, and 5 out of nine for hyperactivity. The dr spent a long time with me. She said that a lot of the issues wouldn't even exist in a simpler societal structure--that school is where the behavioral symptoms manifest, since it is language-based, and requires a special kind of attending that is difficult for these kids; a lot of issues disappear once formal education is complete. The key is to get them through the school system "with their self esteem intact". It's when self-esteem is affected that the secondary problems emerge: social problems, drug abuse. She recommended medication; said that other non-drug interventions don't have a good track record for effectiveness.
So I have a lot of thinking and research to do in this area in considering what will be the best for Scott. He has been learning and showing growth in reading...math concepts more questionable. Still, as a first grader, the academic demands aren't yet too rigorous...will symptoms worsen as more is expected of him?
And, if the structure of school is the genesis of the behavioral symptoms we see in children with ADD, maybe it is ludicrous to send him to school. The fall-back of poor-man's private school, homeschooling, is a possibility, but not if I'm trying to earn a living wage. Physical therapists' hours are the traditional 9 to 5... Fortunately the school Scott is in now is probably the most understanding and kind environment for a child with ADD as can be found in the public school system. But it still relies on means of passing knowledge that require a level of focus that is not Scott's strength; and I've seen adverse behavior created when too much is asked of him: that's why I moved him from the more traditional school.
It just now occurs to me to think of this decision-making process as a slow-cooked meal--slow, moist heat softening the gristly tendons and connective tissue, and melding various flavors into something harmonious. Hopefully.
I guess the key is to keep forefront what is most important, and an eye open to decisions that will best meet those needs.
Therefore, the fruits of this set of conditions are very unlikely to change. These include being held responsible for knowing what's in his mind (and being punished when I fail), continued backlog of unresolved conflict, passive-aggression.
At best the field between us is polite or friendly in a distant way. It is not an atmosphere of mutual genuine warm regard and good will. And it degenerates quickly and sometimes unexpectedly.
Sadly, the boys have not known much else.
Now that I understand the anatomy of our dynamic better, I see how it's likely to continue to affect them. Already I've seen Gary answer for one of them when I say, "Do you want some dressing on your salad?" Gary will answer, "Yes, lots!" (Then is resentful when I point out that it was one of the children whose preference I asked, not his) Gary already assumes his preferences are also the kids', and when they object exacerbates the situation by either insisting on his choice or implying that there is something wrong with them for wanting something different. He wants them to want what he wants, in the same way Gary's mother wants him to want what she wants. He does not see how this undermines his own authority in their eyes. If the pattern stays unchanged this probably won't improve as they approach adolescence.
What is best for them? If part of their developmental task is to individuate from us, their parents, is it not confusing to live in an environment where one of the parents is NOT individuated and appears to condemn movement in that direction?
Of course, he is going to be in their lives: If we split I can't imagine that he would want anything but shared custody. But there are many ways to approach this.
Most important I think is that the boys not change their address. I've heard of solutions where parents keep their house and rotate back and forth as custody agreements dictate, rather than the children doing the moving. Unfortunately, this is complicated a little by the fact that the boys are now in two different schools (although I still have hope that maybe at some point Scott will return to our neighborhood school. He'll stay at Trillium for second grade, next year, though.)
So with that as a basic assumption there are various ways to accomplish this. One way would be to just make a few adjustments to our current living situation. Not much would have to change at all. He works long hours, and so our overlap time within the house is pretty minimal already. We just delineate it a little more: figure out how we'd do a conventional custody and just arrange to be gone when the other is here. An advantage to this is that I would continue to be the full time caregiver for the boys so we wouldn't need to utilize before/after-school care. This could continue to be my full time job and I would not need to seek outside employment. Furthermore, the perceived transition is less jarring to the boys.
My question about that is whether or not it's best to put daylight between the perennial conflict of my need to differentiate and his to remain undifferentiated. It's often a fraught process anyway for children to differentiate themselves from their parents : during ages 2 and 3 when the developmental need was particularly acute I remember thinking that adolescence must be like this. I had this confirmed from many quarters by people who specialize in child development: it's the task for the children to separate themselves from their parents, and it often isn't pretty. Will their task be more confusing if I don't physically separate myself from their father?
So perhaps it's better for their father and I to not share a house--at least living in it simultaneously.
There are a couple ways to do this. I could rent a room from someone during the days I don't have custody. He would have to manage his own child care arrangements. He would also need to make arrangements to sleep somewhere else on days when I have custody. I would need to return to my profession or something that pays a living wage. I don't know if it would need to be full time. So there would be childcare needs on days when I have custody too, depending on what kind of hours I have. This of course, would be far more noticeable for the boys.
If we are both renting part-time somewhere else that's a good chunk of change evaporated each month. It's a shame to think of, when one considers that it could be going to upgrade the house we have. Perhaps the solution is to buy a small place, a little house, or condominium and own that together. So at least we are creating some value and investment, though it still fragments the resources that could have gone into the house we have.
Another question about co-owning two places is the level of cooperation it would require. Will it be possible for us to cooperate amicably to the extent that would be required? And what if one of us wants to remarry? I don't foresee that for myself--I can't imagine wanting that after a marriage lingering for 16 years and then failing. (Actually, it's probably more accurate to say it's been failing for 16 years.) I can see him seeking someone else to mirror him: in general men do have a tendency to mate fairly quickly after a break-up (remembering a statistic: the only population more depressed than divorced men is married women!) I suppose if one of us was to find another partner we'd then have to work out some kind of buy-out arrangement.
The traditional divorce would be the most disruptive. A lot of my assets are tied up in this house and I don't think it would be smart of me to walk away from them outright. Though the house has probably appreciated some in value since we bought it three years ago, it is not enough that we could expect to buy two other places in the boys' school district with the proceeds of a sale.
Of course another consideration is to just continue to be married and go on with status quo with the understanding that I am living with a spouse who is not able to be a full partner. Though my vows didn't state this specifically, 'sickness-and-health' is implicitly part of what I agreed to. The problem with that is, it doesn't look like the resentment and passive aggression is going to get better. Even though I understand better where it's coming from, I can't seem to just ignore or disregard it when he puts me down. There's not much pleasure in living in an atmosphere where at any moment he may remember he dislikes me and treat me accordingly.
Two Days Later:
Update: I read Doug' post, "Bruises" and realized the congruency of my situation. The stones Gary throws are labeled: "Couldn't you have figured that out yourself?" "It's OBVIOUS!" "I would have thought you could have seen that." "This stone is for what I was mad about the other day." "This stone is for the fact that I resent you...for some reason I don't remember."
Throwing stones is a serious matter, and Doug's post was a reminder that it's not good to minimize the effects. That said, when I consider the intricacies of separating--coming up with a value for and dividing our assets, our retirement, furnishing another household (and therefore reducing the resources available for our boys' future education)-- it sure seems like it would be a whole lot simpler if I was just not bothered by his behavior. In fact I'm aware that it could be seen that I'm preparing to do a whole lot of boat-rocking when it would just be simpler for me to shave off my corners and fit in this round hole. I'm the obstruction; if I would just give everything would be all right
Another update is that I took Scott to the pediatrician for his ADD evaluation. The check-list I filled out matches Billy's, the teacher's almost exactly--Scott meets nine out of nine of the criteria for attention disorder, and 5 out of nine for hyperactivity. The dr spent a long time with me. She said that a lot of the issues wouldn't even exist in a simpler societal structure--that school is where the behavioral symptoms manifest, since it is language-based, and requires a special kind of attending that is difficult for these kids; a lot of issues disappear once formal education is complete. The key is to get them through the school system "with their self esteem intact". It's when self-esteem is affected that the secondary problems emerge: social problems, drug abuse. She recommended medication; said that other non-drug interventions don't have a good track record for effectiveness.
So I have a lot of thinking and research to do in this area in considering what will be the best for Scott. He has been learning and showing growth in reading...math concepts more questionable. Still, as a first grader, the academic demands aren't yet too rigorous...will symptoms worsen as more is expected of him?
And, if the structure of school is the genesis of the behavioral symptoms we see in children with ADD, maybe it is ludicrous to send him to school. The fall-back of poor-man's private school, homeschooling, is a possibility, but not if I'm trying to earn a living wage. Physical therapists' hours are the traditional 9 to 5... Fortunately the school Scott is in now is probably the most understanding and kind environment for a child with ADD as can be found in the public school system. But it still relies on means of passing knowledge that require a level of focus that is not Scott's strength; and I've seen adverse behavior created when too much is asked of him: that's why I moved him from the more traditional school.
It just now occurs to me to think of this decision-making process as a slow-cooked meal--slow, moist heat softening the gristly tendons and connective tissue, and melding various flavors into something harmonious. Hopefully.
I guess the key is to keep forefront what is most important, and an eye open to decisions that will best meet those needs.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
I understand now
The concept of differentiation has led me to an understanding of the connection between undifferentiation and narcissism.
In psychological terms one who is psychologically undifferentiated is unable to distinguish his/her perspective from somebody else's. People are not separate beings, but Objects. If I am an Object in my husband's world, then I am a part of him, the way a hand is a part of a body. If his conception of me is indistinguishable from his self-concept, and then I differ, it is as shocking and mutinous to him as if his leg suddenly folded under him or his hand allowed a cup of water to drop into his lap.
As I was considering this conceptualization with Sharon she mentioned the possibility that he had suffered some sort of 'narcissistic injury'. I was intrigued enough by the term that I googled it and found a wealth of information. Among the low-lying fruit was this article that I found most useful: "Narcissistic Pathology of Everyday Life: The Denial of Remorse and Gratitude" by Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D and Stanley Lependorf, Ph. D. It's about the mundane ways that narcissistic behavior manifests.
In its most benign manifestation, the narcissist has created a False Self as a defense against perceived vulnerabilities and flaws. Frequently this False Self has some grandiosity. The narcissist then demands that those around him/her serve as a mirror (Object) that reflects only this grandiose self-image back to the narcissist. People around serve to protect the fragile ego of the narcissist.
As a child, to the extent that I participated in reflecting back only what the narcissist wanted to see, I was a "good" child ('good' in the moral sense). My behavior was a barometer of how 'good' a parent my parents were. Misbehavior on my part reflected badly on them, and the heat that released was part of the intensity of the punishment I received.
I can't speak for others' experience, but my childhood seemed to be firmly embedded in a stream of narcissists demanding their False Selves be gratified. I think quasi-religious Americana which is rife with authoritarianism is a breeding ground for this. In a sense this seems to be institutionalized--there are stories all around us of not being able to 'contradict our elders', even when we know our elders are flaming wrong about something. To disagree becomes conflated with disrespect. For myself, I became hypersensitive to the possibility of offending others, so that I had a 'spidey sense' that tingled when I was aware that something I might say could seem to imply criticism of another.
I grew up in a bind. If what I observed contradicted the reflection the narcissistic adults around me demanded, I could not tell the Truth. Yet it was demanded of me that I not tell lies. Furthermore, I was dependent on these people who had absolute power over me. I was also expected to be an independent agent, even while it was demanded that I be a 'good' Object.
Frankly, that is why I wrote. The bind was painful--writing gave me a space where I could be myself and tell the Truth, as well as help me sort out the contradictions. Mainly though it was an expression of my angst--if my thoughts were critical of others I instantly blamed myself and thought there was something wrong with my vision of the world: I was selfish, I was narcissistic. ...Most important of all, I wrote to alleviate my suffering.
Mercurious had a wonderful post summarizing the Buddhist Path. The Second Noble Truth is about the causes of suffering: karma, cause-and-effect. Raised to be a good mirror I attracted a lot of men who were narcissistic. They adored me until my needs asserted themselves and then they left. It seemed perverse, but predictable: if I loved them back they left. It was baffling to me then, but perfectly clear now. It's also clear that though eventually I was able to sidestep that dynamic, I would not see the signs that the man I married was not able to distinguish me from him.
There were signs. He is not particularly grandiose, but his mother's ego has loomed over us. Early on I noticed that he seemed hamstrung by a need to not offend her and that protecting her fragile feelings seemed to take precedence over protecting the integrity of our relationship. I attributed this to some unworthiness in me--that I was childish, possessive, insecure.
So basically the work I've done for all these years has been to get me to here. To this understanding that I was tied up in knots in service to others' False Selves. I understand this now, and I think I'm just starting to grasp the implications of what it might be like to proceed without undercutting my every move by questioning my motives.
I wonder where I'll go from here.
In psychological terms one who is psychologically undifferentiated is unable to distinguish his/her perspective from somebody else's. People are not separate beings, but Objects. If I am an Object in my husband's world, then I am a part of him, the way a hand is a part of a body. If his conception of me is indistinguishable from his self-concept, and then I differ, it is as shocking and mutinous to him as if his leg suddenly folded under him or his hand allowed a cup of water to drop into his lap.
As I was considering this conceptualization with Sharon she mentioned the possibility that he had suffered some sort of 'narcissistic injury'. I was intrigued enough by the term that I googled it and found a wealth of information. Among the low-lying fruit was this article that I found most useful: "Narcissistic Pathology of Everyday Life: The Denial of Remorse and Gratitude" by Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D and Stanley Lependorf, Ph. D. It's about the mundane ways that narcissistic behavior manifests.
In its most benign manifestation, the narcissist has created a False Self as a defense against perceived vulnerabilities and flaws. Frequently this False Self has some grandiosity. The narcissist then demands that those around him/her serve as a mirror (Object) that reflects only this grandiose self-image back to the narcissist. People around serve to protect the fragile ego of the narcissist.
As a child, to the extent that I participated in reflecting back only what the narcissist wanted to see, I was a "good" child ('good' in the moral sense). My behavior was a barometer of how 'good' a parent my parents were. Misbehavior on my part reflected badly on them, and the heat that released was part of the intensity of the punishment I received.
I can't speak for others' experience, but my childhood seemed to be firmly embedded in a stream of narcissists demanding their False Selves be gratified. I think quasi-religious Americana which is rife with authoritarianism is a breeding ground for this. In a sense this seems to be institutionalized--there are stories all around us of not being able to 'contradict our elders', even when we know our elders are flaming wrong about something. To disagree becomes conflated with disrespect. For myself, I became hypersensitive to the possibility of offending others, so that I had a 'spidey sense' that tingled when I was aware that something I might say could seem to imply criticism of another.
I grew up in a bind. If what I observed contradicted the reflection the narcissistic adults around me demanded, I could not tell the Truth. Yet it was demanded of me that I not tell lies. Furthermore, I was dependent on these people who had absolute power over me. I was also expected to be an independent agent, even while it was demanded that I be a 'good' Object.
Frankly, that is why I wrote. The bind was painful--writing gave me a space where I could be myself and tell the Truth, as well as help me sort out the contradictions. Mainly though it was an expression of my angst--if my thoughts were critical of others I instantly blamed myself and thought there was something wrong with my vision of the world: I was selfish, I was narcissistic. ...Most important of all, I wrote to alleviate my suffering.
Mercurious had a wonderful post summarizing the Buddhist Path. The Second Noble Truth is about the causes of suffering: karma, cause-and-effect. Raised to be a good mirror I attracted a lot of men who were narcissistic. They adored me until my needs asserted themselves and then they left. It seemed perverse, but predictable: if I loved them back they left. It was baffling to me then, but perfectly clear now. It's also clear that though eventually I was able to sidestep that dynamic, I would not see the signs that the man I married was not able to distinguish me from him.
There were signs. He is not particularly grandiose, but his mother's ego has loomed over us. Early on I noticed that he seemed hamstrung by a need to not offend her and that protecting her fragile feelings seemed to take precedence over protecting the integrity of our relationship. I attributed this to some unworthiness in me--that I was childish, possessive, insecure.
So basically the work I've done for all these years has been to get me to here. To this understanding that I was tied up in knots in service to others' False Selves. I understand this now, and I think I'm just starting to grasp the implications of what it might be like to proceed without undercutting my every move by questioning my motives.
I wonder where I'll go from here.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Where things stand
James Hillman's essay has shaken loose a number of insights, mainly on the theme of differentiation.
I've realized this for a long time, but I get it more deeply now that the seat of the fissure between Gary and me is the fact of conflict.
After years of a similar pattern to our struggles I realized that part of what really twisted inside me about them was that they often rose when he held me responsible for something that I could not have known, unless my brain had been sitting behind his eyes. More and more it became clear that in his dealings with me he was fully expecting that my perspective was indistinguishable from his. A minor manifestation of this might be the two of us trying to maneuver a long table through a doorway:
Gary: "Move the end to the right...to the RIGHT! ...the right!!!!" Me, having moved the 'end' to the 'right', totally puzzled and stung by his tone. Then it turns out he means his right, and by 'end' he means the upper end, and by 'move', he means tip. I've pointed out to him before that because he can see something from his vantage, it looks different from mine, and more precise language rather than increased volume might get better results. I can tell by the acoustics that he doesn't 'get' this, that he really feels I had all the information I needed and if I didn't it was on account of stupidity (mine).
I see now that this is just one mundane example of a common thread that is pervasive in our marriage--he really believes that what he sees is what I see too. And when I differ to him it feels like a betrayal--as if I realized my eye had been 'telling' me the tree was green, but it really is red.
The fact of any conflict at all between us, and in this sense I define 'conflict' as a divergence in how we perceive a shared event, is offensive to him. Because if I were indistinguishable from him, then there would be no conflict.
So this is why we haven't been able to get a handle on even the basics of conflict management: we're not supposed to have conflict in the first place. Therefore attempts to resolve conflict, beginning with acknowledging the presence of conflict has already offended him and he is coming from a place of resentment--which creates more conflict.
This explains the curious spiral nature of the issues between us, where conflict A happens, I name it, he a) dismisses b) diminishes c) criticizes my response, and then conflict A is still unresolved and now there's conflict A1 to deal with too. Eventually we may come to a sort of resolution, but the cost has been that he harbors resentment toward me and feels I've brow-beaten him into 'admitting' he's 'wrong'.
I've not correctly apprehended the nature of this very basic problem. I have assumed that he is a rational person and tried to point out to him that essentially he's expecting me to read his mind and this isn't a reasonable expectation. I've been baffled by the fact that he doesn't seem to see this, and the basic problem recurs in a different form, at all levels of our relationship. I've wondered if it is me who is expecting too much, if I've made an error in my reasoning somewhere, or if I'm 'too sensitive' and therefore susceptible to his tone--in other words I've wondered if I'm at fault.
To consider that this is an issue of differentiation makes a lot of things clear.
What I understand about Theory of Mind comes to mind here. I hope I don't offend in mentioning it, because I know that many parents of autistic children dislike it intensely. But I think it applies in this case to a person with a typical neurology--it certainly explains what I've been experiencing. To illustrate Theory of Mind a child is shown a film of Millie who has taken a bar of chocolate out of a drawer, eats some, puts it back in the drawer, and leaves the room. A few moments later in the film Millie's mom removes the same chocolate, uses it in cooking, and puts it away in a different drawer. The child watching the film is asked which drawer Millie will look in to find the chocolate when she comes back. An immature child will think that Millie will look in the drawer that he saw the mother put the chocolate in, not realizing that Millie is carrying a different construct in her head based on her experience. In essence, Gary is not distinguishing his perspective from that of Millie--he expects Millie's behavior to be based on his perspective. Furthermore, he doesn't see that he's not separating his perspective from hers.
This would account for the sense of dead space between us, where I just don't feel I've connected when I try to explain to him that I couldn't possibly have known what he meant about something.
This is a big problem. It's a primary source of conflict in our relationship; it's a primary obstacle to being able to clean up after a conflict. It's a source of resentment from him toward me. It's the source of often poisoned air between us. It's like living on a fault line and at any moment a gap will open underfoot to fall into. It's difficult to anticipate the next time he will expect my perspective to be identical to his so I can compensate for it in advance. He is blind to it, so it is unrealistic to expect him to adjust his behavior.
The big question is, how is this affecting the boys? Is living in this zone ultimately more harmful to them than the trauma of a parental separation/divorce?
I've realized this for a long time, but I get it more deeply now that the seat of the fissure between Gary and me is the fact of conflict.
After years of a similar pattern to our struggles I realized that part of what really twisted inside me about them was that they often rose when he held me responsible for something that I could not have known, unless my brain had been sitting behind his eyes. More and more it became clear that in his dealings with me he was fully expecting that my perspective was indistinguishable from his. A minor manifestation of this might be the two of us trying to maneuver a long table through a doorway:
Gary: "Move the end to the right...to the RIGHT! ...the right!!!!" Me, having moved the 'end' to the 'right', totally puzzled and stung by his tone. Then it turns out he means his right, and by 'end' he means the upper end, and by 'move', he means tip. I've pointed out to him before that because he can see something from his vantage, it looks different from mine, and more precise language rather than increased volume might get better results. I can tell by the acoustics that he doesn't 'get' this, that he really feels I had all the information I needed and if I didn't it was on account of stupidity (mine).
I see now that this is just one mundane example of a common thread that is pervasive in our marriage--he really believes that what he sees is what I see too. And when I differ to him it feels like a betrayal--as if I realized my eye had been 'telling' me the tree was green, but it really is red.
The fact of any conflict at all between us, and in this sense I define 'conflict' as a divergence in how we perceive a shared event, is offensive to him. Because if I were indistinguishable from him, then there would be no conflict.
So this is why we haven't been able to get a handle on even the basics of conflict management: we're not supposed to have conflict in the first place. Therefore attempts to resolve conflict, beginning with acknowledging the presence of conflict has already offended him and he is coming from a place of resentment--which creates more conflict.
This explains the curious spiral nature of the issues between us, where conflict A happens, I name it, he a) dismisses b) diminishes c) criticizes my response, and then conflict A is still unresolved and now there's conflict A1 to deal with too. Eventually we may come to a sort of resolution, but the cost has been that he harbors resentment toward me and feels I've brow-beaten him into 'admitting' he's 'wrong'.
I've not correctly apprehended the nature of this very basic problem. I have assumed that he is a rational person and tried to point out to him that essentially he's expecting me to read his mind and this isn't a reasonable expectation. I've been baffled by the fact that he doesn't seem to see this, and the basic problem recurs in a different form, at all levels of our relationship. I've wondered if it is me who is expecting too much, if I've made an error in my reasoning somewhere, or if I'm 'too sensitive' and therefore susceptible to his tone--in other words I've wondered if I'm at fault.
To consider that this is an issue of differentiation makes a lot of things clear.
What I understand about Theory of Mind comes to mind here. I hope I don't offend in mentioning it, because I know that many parents of autistic children dislike it intensely. But I think it applies in this case to a person with a typical neurology--it certainly explains what I've been experiencing. To illustrate Theory of Mind a child is shown a film of Millie who has taken a bar of chocolate out of a drawer, eats some, puts it back in the drawer, and leaves the room. A few moments later in the film Millie's mom removes the same chocolate, uses it in cooking, and puts it away in a different drawer. The child watching the film is asked which drawer Millie will look in to find the chocolate when she comes back. An immature child will think that Millie will look in the drawer that he saw the mother put the chocolate in, not realizing that Millie is carrying a different construct in her head based on her experience. In essence, Gary is not distinguishing his perspective from that of Millie--he expects Millie's behavior to be based on his perspective. Furthermore, he doesn't see that he's not separating his perspective from hers.
This would account for the sense of dead space between us, where I just don't feel I've connected when I try to explain to him that I couldn't possibly have known what he meant about something.
This is a big problem. It's a primary source of conflict in our relationship; it's a primary obstacle to being able to clean up after a conflict. It's a source of resentment from him toward me. It's the source of often poisoned air between us. It's like living on a fault line and at any moment a gap will open underfoot to fall into. It's difficult to anticipate the next time he will expect my perspective to be identical to his so I can compensate for it in advance. He is blind to it, so it is unrealistic to expect him to adjust his behavior.
The big question is, how is this affecting the boys? Is living in this zone ultimately more harmful to them than the trauma of a parental separation/divorce?
Monday, May 12, 2008
Overheard
At the beach with the 2 K-2 classes. Down on the sand, Scott has joined me after playing in the dunes with some children. Felix approaches, a solemn look on his face: "Scott I talked to my dad. You know what you said about not wanting to be my friend any more? Well, it's just an 'empty threat'. It's an empty threat and you will want to be my friend, and we'll be playing together again soon. Do you understand that Scott? It was just an empty threat." He paused, waiting for Scott to acknowledge the error of his ways. Scott spun around a piece of driftwood, spinning, skipping, oblivious. "An empty threat" Felix repeated gravely. "It means nothing."
I reflect that Felix is on the right track. I see that his problem is that he is unable to leave it at this. He hangs around anxiously, wanting immediate fruit for the seed he has planted. I see that it is very important to him that Scott see things his way, and he's waiting for confirmation of this. I feel sympathy for his inability to leave it. He's too invested.
I'm watching to see if any of this is sinking into Scott, but it doesn't appear to be. Felix could be reciting a rhyme, or speaking another language. A pause, then, "Well, if you don't want to be my friend any more then I won't ride home with you in your car." A few beats more, then "Well, maybe I will ride home in your car." The two of them ran off toward the dunes leaving me bemused.
Later that night s'mores have been made and consumed, stories the kids made up themselves told around the fire. It's getting dark and as kids do everywhere, they're revving up. There's a vigorous game of chase with obscure rules going on around the building where we've gathered. One adult has called to the children that they need to start settling down. They're running clockwise around the building, so I go counter-clockwise to intercept Scott and tell him it's time to go get ready for bed. I encounter Felix and his crumpled face first, and realize with sinking heart he's crying. Of course it has something to do with Scott. Felix wails, "I was chasing Scott, and I knocked him down--and I hurt him--and he said I did it on purpose!!!!!" Scott's nowhere to be seen: "Where's Scott?" "He lied to me!!! He's lying to me!!!! He said I did it on purpose!" At this moment his father appears and I leave them, trying to find Scott. Behind me I hear, "Scott was threatening me! He always threatens me!" As I rounded a corner I could see Scott standing with another little boy under the tree, holding up an elbow with a spot of blood on it. Behind I hear someone's query to Felix and his answer: "Oh, I just had some trouble with Scott."
Scott's furious. "Look what he did! I told him to go one way and he went another and knocked me down. He wasn't following the rules! He did it on purpose." Fortunately Felix's dad has pulled him out of earshot for their own little heart-to-heart otherwise we'd be in for an earsplitting "yesyoudid/noIdidn't" howling match. Each throwing gasoline on the other's flame.
These are the very tricky issues to negotiate. Children this age don't have a working understanding yet that another mind behind another set of eyes comprehends shared events very differently. It's so delicate to try to differentiate between one's experience of outside events, and one's perception of that experience. To a child they are one and the same: I'm hurt, therefore the one closest associated maliciously caused it. There is no way that Felix can comprehend that to Scott his turning right when Scott had told him to turn left, resulting in knocking Scott down it's obvious that he, Felix, acted on purpose. It is so clear in Felix's mind that he didn't intend harm that he can only feel Scott is lying if Scott accuses him of this. In this way a single misunderstanding compounds and then compounds upon itself again.
However, they played wonderfully well the next day and seemed to enjoy their ride home in the car together. (A lesson for parents in differentiating their relationships with each other from their kids')
I reflect that Felix is on the right track. I see that his problem is that he is unable to leave it at this. He hangs around anxiously, wanting immediate fruit for the seed he has planted. I see that it is very important to him that Scott see things his way, and he's waiting for confirmation of this. I feel sympathy for his inability to leave it. He's too invested.
I'm watching to see if any of this is sinking into Scott, but it doesn't appear to be. Felix could be reciting a rhyme, or speaking another language. A pause, then, "Well, if you don't want to be my friend any more then I won't ride home with you in your car." A few beats more, then "Well, maybe I will ride home in your car." The two of them ran off toward the dunes leaving me bemused.
Later that night s'mores have been made and consumed, stories the kids made up themselves told around the fire. It's getting dark and as kids do everywhere, they're revving up. There's a vigorous game of chase with obscure rules going on around the building where we've gathered. One adult has called to the children that they need to start settling down. They're running clockwise around the building, so I go counter-clockwise to intercept Scott and tell him it's time to go get ready for bed. I encounter Felix and his crumpled face first, and realize with sinking heart he's crying. Of course it has something to do with Scott. Felix wails, "I was chasing Scott, and I knocked him down--and I hurt him--and he said I did it on purpose!!!!!" Scott's nowhere to be seen: "Where's Scott?" "He lied to me!!! He's lying to me!!!! He said I did it on purpose!" At this moment his father appears and I leave them, trying to find Scott. Behind me I hear, "Scott was threatening me! He always threatens me!" As I rounded a corner I could see Scott standing with another little boy under the tree, holding up an elbow with a spot of blood on it. Behind I hear someone's query to Felix and his answer: "Oh, I just had some trouble with Scott."
Scott's furious. "Look what he did! I told him to go one way and he went another and knocked me down. He wasn't following the rules! He did it on purpose." Fortunately Felix's dad has pulled him out of earshot for their own little heart-to-heart otherwise we'd be in for an earsplitting "yesyoudid/noIdidn't" howling match. Each throwing gasoline on the other's flame.
These are the very tricky issues to negotiate. Children this age don't have a working understanding yet that another mind behind another set of eyes comprehends shared events very differently. It's so delicate to try to differentiate between one's experience of outside events, and one's perception of that experience. To a child they are one and the same: I'm hurt, therefore the one closest associated maliciously caused it. There is no way that Felix can comprehend that to Scott his turning right when Scott had told him to turn left, resulting in knocking Scott down it's obvious that he, Felix, acted on purpose. It is so clear in Felix's mind that he didn't intend harm that he can only feel Scott is lying if Scott accuses him of this. In this way a single misunderstanding compounds and then compounds upon itself again.
However, they played wonderfully well the next day and seemed to enjoy their ride home in the car together. (A lesson for parents in differentiating their relationships with each other from their kids')
Saturday, May 10, 2008
The Trauma--reproductive revelations--Pt 2: Scott (Or, more good talks gone bad)
I took a more lackadaisical approach to talking to Scott about the particulars of reproduction. A few months ago I started to worry a little about it, wondering if he was a victim of typical second-child neglect. This manifests in the photo albums empty of the second child’s baby pictures, less alacrity in setting up playdates, and less vigilance as far as schoolyard justice goes.
It seems like it’s worked out, sort of. I managed avoid the temptation to maneuver him into asking The Question just so I could answer it. Perhaps if I’d left Connor to his own devices he’d have also been nearly 7 before it would have occurred to him to ask.
With Scott, it happened very naturally. We have a book I got back when Connor had a passion for all things human body. Scott’s recently rediscovered it and we’ve been re-reading it.
The book starts out with a circle that represents the globe (I have it here in front of me and just noticed that it is the eastern hemisphere represented, from Africa to Australia. Nary an American continent to be found.) Beneath the globe it says: “Every human being on earth starts life the same way.” On the adjacent page is another circle, the exact same size as the globe, and this represents a single cell—a fertilized egg. Below: “You started life as a tiny cell—a dot so small it can only be seen under a microscope.” Scrolled across the top of the two pages is a progression of images from unfertilized egg being approached by sperm, to penetration and the formation of one cell, through the myriad cell divisions that form a developing embryo, to the fetus awaiting birth.
Scott enjoyed dwelling on this page. I seized the opportunity to introduce the concept of ‘seeds’; his father’s seed joining with mine to create the fruit that eventually was him. He seemed taken with the idea for a while and kept talking about “When I was a seed”.
Sometimes we’d get bogged down in some technical questions whose subtleties I wasn’t sure how to parse for him: “I weighed zero pounds when I was a seed”. He doesn’t have fractions down yet.
The trouble started last night when he was talking about being a seed and how he’d seen Connor when he was inside me. I explained that he wasn’t inside at the same time as Connor (although it just now occurs to me, I guess in the technical sense, ‘he’ really was—lying in wait in an ovary somewhere. Shit; I might have saved some heartbreak had I had the presence of mind to realize that. Damn my oh so literal mind.). His brow furrowed and he zeroed in on this new concept: “How old was I when Connor was zero?” “Well, you didn’t exist then.” “What????” “You weren’t around yet.”
“WHAT”
To my dismay he began to sob. “I was a seed? I was a SEED?? It’s not fair!”
“But Scott, we ALL started as seeds. I was a seed. Your Dad was a seed. Grandma and Grandpa were seeds. Billy was a seed.” But he was inconsolable.
“When I was a seed, I was cold, and I was hungry, and I was all alone, AND I NEVER WANT THAT TO HAPPEN AGAIN!!!!!! “No, Dear, that will never happen to you again” (in this life). By now he was in my arms, sobbing and hiccuping against my chest.
Perhaps I’m projecting, but I think that maybe his 6 year old mind was contemplating, for the first time, a concept that is too much for even the adult mind: the concept of our own non-existence.
Nice Job, Mom.
Today I tried a different tack. I explained to him that zero is in the middle, and to one side of it is positive numbers, and to the other, negative. So that when he was zero Connor was positive 4. And when Connor was zero, he was negative 4. He seemed to brighten at this, so I continued: “…and when I was zero, Connor was negative 40, and when I was zero, you were negative 44. When my mom was zero, I was negative 21.” To my surprise, he brightened up considerably. The notion of continuity must be soooo important…
So whoever gave us the concept of ‘zero’, and invented negative numbers did me and my little boy a big favor today.
It seems like it’s worked out, sort of. I managed avoid the temptation to maneuver him into asking The Question just so I could answer it. Perhaps if I’d left Connor to his own devices he’d have also been nearly 7 before it would have occurred to him to ask.
With Scott, it happened very naturally. We have a book I got back when Connor had a passion for all things human body. Scott’s recently rediscovered it and we’ve been re-reading it.
The book starts out with a circle that represents the globe (I have it here in front of me and just noticed that it is the eastern hemisphere represented, from Africa to Australia. Nary an American continent to be found.) Beneath the globe it says: “Every human being on earth starts life the same way.” On the adjacent page is another circle, the exact same size as the globe, and this represents a single cell—a fertilized egg. Below: “You started life as a tiny cell—a dot so small it can only be seen under a microscope.” Scrolled across the top of the two pages is a progression of images from unfertilized egg being approached by sperm, to penetration and the formation of one cell, through the myriad cell divisions that form a developing embryo, to the fetus awaiting birth.
Scott enjoyed dwelling on this page. I seized the opportunity to introduce the concept of ‘seeds’; his father’s seed joining with mine to create the fruit that eventually was him. He seemed taken with the idea for a while and kept talking about “When I was a seed”.
Sometimes we’d get bogged down in some technical questions whose subtleties I wasn’t sure how to parse for him: “I weighed zero pounds when I was a seed”. He doesn’t have fractions down yet.
The trouble started last night when he was talking about being a seed and how he’d seen Connor when he was inside me. I explained that he wasn’t inside at the same time as Connor (although it just now occurs to me, I guess in the technical sense, ‘he’ really was—lying in wait in an ovary somewhere. Shit; I might have saved some heartbreak had I had the presence of mind to realize that. Damn my oh so literal mind.). His brow furrowed and he zeroed in on this new concept: “How old was I when Connor was zero?” “Well, you didn’t exist then.” “What????” “You weren’t around yet.”
“WHAT”
To my dismay he began to sob. “I was a seed? I was a SEED?? It’s not fair!”
“But Scott, we ALL started as seeds. I was a seed. Your Dad was a seed. Grandma and Grandpa were seeds. Billy was a seed.” But he was inconsolable.
“When I was a seed, I was cold, and I was hungry, and I was all alone, AND I NEVER WANT THAT TO HAPPEN AGAIN!!!!!! “No, Dear, that will never happen to you again” (in this life). By now he was in my arms, sobbing and hiccuping against my chest.
Perhaps I’m projecting, but I think that maybe his 6 year old mind was contemplating, for the first time, a concept that is too much for even the adult mind: the concept of our own non-existence.
Nice Job, Mom.
Today I tried a different tack. I explained to him that zero is in the middle, and to one side of it is positive numbers, and to the other, negative. So that when he was zero Connor was positive 4. And when Connor was zero, he was negative 4. He seemed to brighten at this, so I continued: “…and when I was zero, Connor was negative 40, and when I was zero, you were negative 44. When my mom was zero, I was negative 21.” To my surprise, he brightened up considerably. The notion of continuity must be soooo important…
So whoever gave us the concept of ‘zero’, and invented negative numbers did me and my little boy a big favor today.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Something to get through
I've agreed to drive and (gulp) chaperone a group of kindergarten thru second graders on a camping trip to the beach.
The positive side is we'll be sleeping in yurts. This should be a huge improvement over 2 years ago when against my better judgment I took Scott on a campout with his then pre-school class. I took a tent on that one. We got rained out so badly that all of the campsites flooded. Any place that held a tent was underwater. While a number of families bailed and high-tailed it back to Portland Scott and I stuck it out. I pulled the seats out of the van (put them in the tent) and we slept in the van.
The bad news is I won't be in the yurt by myself. It sleeps 8. If I'm lucky maybe there'll be another adult, and 6 children as opposed to me against 7. I wistfully imagined myself in a yurt with girls playing Barbies, but since I'm chaperoning a son that's probably not to be. I'll be in the yurt with the yells, the sides billowing, the fart sounds. Note to self: earplugs! I can stand anything for one night. Yes? ????
So, we leave tomorrow at 9. We meet for lunch (maybe) at the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Then on to Nehalem Bay campground.
We should be back sometime in the early afternoon Friday. But I may be too traumatized to write for a while.
Pray for me.
The positive side is we'll be sleeping in yurts. This should be a huge improvement over 2 years ago when against my better judgment I took Scott on a campout with his then pre-school class. I took a tent on that one. We got rained out so badly that all of the campsites flooded. Any place that held a tent was underwater. While a number of families bailed and high-tailed it back to Portland Scott and I stuck it out. I pulled the seats out of the van (put them in the tent) and we slept in the van.
The bad news is I won't be in the yurt by myself. It sleeps 8. If I'm lucky maybe there'll be another adult, and 6 children as opposed to me against 7. I wistfully imagined myself in a yurt with girls playing Barbies, but since I'm chaperoning a son that's probably not to be. I'll be in the yurt with the yells, the sides billowing, the fart sounds. Note to self: earplugs! I can stand anything for one night. Yes? ????
So, we leave tomorrow at 9. We meet for lunch (maybe) at the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Then on to Nehalem Bay campground.
We should be back sometime in the early afternoon Friday. But I may be too traumatized to write for a while.
Pray for me.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Mother's Day
I hate occasions where it is mandatory to feel certain sentiments. I hate mandatory sentiment. I hate tokens of sentiments being elevated to the level of authentic experience.
I hate 'Hallmark Holidays'.
I wonder if this...sentiment...is going to be cause for regret someday.
The cynical and rebellious part in me feels that Mother's Day, Grandparent's Day, Father's Day, and yes, "Everybody-Under-the-Sun-That-You-Ever-Have-Occasion-to-Encounter's Day" (Christmas) are 'made-up' holidays that are examples of the emperor's new clothes. Everyone gives them allegiance because, well, everyone gives them allegiance.
As a mother myself now, I'm not a purely unbiased party. But I still think I could do without it.
I wonder if I'd feel differently if we lived far enough away that it wasn't a 'shared occasion' with my mother in law. We did have 5 mother's days away, though, when we lived in St. Louis. I was indifferent there too, come to think of it.
Gary wanted to take a boys' ski trip. When the MD weekend appeared to be the one that was fine with me. Maybe we'd get to escape a stressful mandatory brunch in a restaurant (Scott and Connor both get restless in restaurants that aren't fast-food franchises. An overcrowded over-busy Mother's Day promises long delays and for food that doesn't delight them.). The boys are not comfortable with Gary's mother and generally she wants only to talk to Gary about things that aren't of interest to them--lots of detail about neighbors they've never met and issues that don't concern them. Since we've returned to Portland and proximity to her this is a once a year event I'm just as glad to be done with. The thought of getting to skip it this year was a pleasant one.
But it's not to be. Gary's big on form, and satisfying these social shoulds. So he's going to be cutting his trip short because he can't miss mother's day. The other night at dinner he said he would be home. I said, "You know, you really don't have to do that" (although I'm aware that it's not really for me, but his mother, that he's doing it). Connor's ears pricked up: "You don't like Mother's Day? How could a mother not like Mother's Day?" I said, "I don't like any situation where you're supposed to feel a certain way, or act like you feel a certain way--meaning enrich the greeting cards and flower and chocolate companies. I don't like any situation that implies that you're selfish or heartless if you don't want to participate."
Yesterday Connor came down with a rash at school, and I was on the way down the hill with him to the doctor's when a mother's day ad came on the radio. I wasn't even listening, but he said, "I see what you mean about Mother's Day, Mom. They do lay on the guilt." We talked some more, me with an uneasy feeling that I might just be giving him permission to never observe Mother's Day for me. And am I prepared for that? It is the logical conclusion of my honest judgment of it as one of those arbitrary social-consensus type 'made-up' affairs that I can't put my heart into. Will I regret this? Will I be 90 in a nursing home someday watching my fellow residents being taken out in their corsages and hats while I'm left with standard nursing-home grub? Would it be hypocritical to say, "I for one do appreciate a bit of heart-felt appreciation", or does that amount to: "I think it's stupid, but I'll be hurt if you don't do it for me anyway?"
I decided to let my words stand and take whatever consequences come.
But I have to acknowledge a terrible, quiet place inside of me, an awareness. My awareness is that there's A Glow In the Woods, a terrible, sacred place for women, Mothers, to gather. Mothers who have lost their children. The Abyss is in them, and they live with It constantly. They give comfort to each other in this Place, and my heart aches so for them. It makes me quake, and tremble.
I hate 'Hallmark Holidays'.
I wonder if this...sentiment...is going to be cause for regret someday.
The cynical and rebellious part in me feels that Mother's Day, Grandparent's Day, Father's Day, and yes, "Everybody-Under-the-Sun-That-You-Ever-Have-Occasion-to-Encounter's Day" (Christmas) are 'made-up' holidays that are examples of the emperor's new clothes. Everyone gives them allegiance because, well, everyone gives them allegiance.
As a mother myself now, I'm not a purely unbiased party. But I still think I could do without it.
I wonder if I'd feel differently if we lived far enough away that it wasn't a 'shared occasion' with my mother in law. We did have 5 mother's days away, though, when we lived in St. Louis. I was indifferent there too, come to think of it.
Gary wanted to take a boys' ski trip. When the MD weekend appeared to be the one that was fine with me. Maybe we'd get to escape a stressful mandatory brunch in a restaurant (Scott and Connor both get restless in restaurants that aren't fast-food franchises. An overcrowded over-busy Mother's Day promises long delays and for food that doesn't delight them.). The boys are not comfortable with Gary's mother and generally she wants only to talk to Gary about things that aren't of interest to them--lots of detail about neighbors they've never met and issues that don't concern them. Since we've returned to Portland and proximity to her this is a once a year event I'm just as glad to be done with. The thought of getting to skip it this year was a pleasant one.
But it's not to be. Gary's big on form, and satisfying these social shoulds. So he's going to be cutting his trip short because he can't miss mother's day. The other night at dinner he said he would be home. I said, "You know, you really don't have to do that" (although I'm aware that it's not really for me, but his mother, that he's doing it). Connor's ears pricked up: "You don't like Mother's Day? How could a mother not like Mother's Day?" I said, "I don't like any situation where you're supposed to feel a certain way, or act like you feel a certain way--meaning enrich the greeting cards and flower and chocolate companies. I don't like any situation that implies that you're selfish or heartless if you don't want to participate."
Yesterday Connor came down with a rash at school, and I was on the way down the hill with him to the doctor's when a mother's day ad came on the radio. I wasn't even listening, but he said, "I see what you mean about Mother's Day, Mom. They do lay on the guilt." We talked some more, me with an uneasy feeling that I might just be giving him permission to never observe Mother's Day for me. And am I prepared for that? It is the logical conclusion of my honest judgment of it as one of those arbitrary social-consensus type 'made-up' affairs that I can't put my heart into. Will I regret this? Will I be 90 in a nursing home someday watching my fellow residents being taken out in their corsages and hats while I'm left with standard nursing-home grub? Would it be hypocritical to say, "I for one do appreciate a bit of heart-felt appreciation", or does that amount to: "I think it's stupid, but I'll be hurt if you don't do it for me anyway?"
I decided to let my words stand and take whatever consequences come.
But I have to acknowledge a terrible, quiet place inside of me, an awareness. My awareness is that there's A Glow In the Woods, a terrible, sacred place for women, Mothers, to gather. Mothers who have lost their children. The Abyss is in them, and they live with It constantly. They give comfort to each other in this Place, and my heart aches so for them. It makes me quake, and tremble.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Very moving and inspirational
I wouldn't be surprised if you have seen this already. It's 18 minutes long, but is so riveting the time passes quickly. Highly recommended.
Jill Bolte Taylor is a neuroanatomist who had a stroke. She remembers the details and recounts them here along with the insights she gained from the experience.
I remember once Sharon talking about the dichotomy of the brain: on one hand "cagey and strategic", on the other capable of experiencing one-ness and expansion. I was reminded of this when I saw this video. Enjoy
Jill Bolte Taylor is a neuroanatomist who had a stroke. She remembers the details and recounts them here along with the insights she gained from the experience.
I remember once Sharon talking about the dichotomy of the brain: on one hand "cagey and strategic", on the other capable of experiencing one-ness and expansion. I was reminded of this when I saw this video. Enjoy
Sunday, May 4, 2008
The Trauma: Reproductive Revelations Pt. 1: Connor
I was 13 years old before I pieced together the puzzle I first noticed when someone explained (in hushed tones) what the word scrawled on the fence meant. Since she was only 7 too I just assumed this was a concoction of the worst she could imagine. Before then it had never occurred to me where someone might put things. I put it out of my mind for years.
At 10 my mother dutifully followed the recommended disclosure path using a Disney “How Do I Tell My Daughter” kit complete with pink-boxed sanitary pads and belt, and a book called, “It’s Wonderful Being a Girl”. (I think all mothers of 10 year old girls had one of these kits hidden in their closet. My friends and I discussed them at length long before they were actually produced.) I was satisfied with this partial information for several years until The Question finally dawned on me: “How does the male sperm get inside the woman to fertilize the egg?” Maybe there was some credence to what the girl had said to explain what was on the alley wall after all?
Not only did I get confirmation from a girlfriend in one of our intimate spend-the-night talks, but there was a name for it too: “sexual intercourse”.
Some years later I read an article in a magazine called “Born Knowing”. This woman said that basically fresh from the womb she started telling her child about the actions that had resulted in her birth.
It seemed like a good idea. From my own experience of figuring it out on my own to myriad TV sit-com scenarios I could see that there was a major two-way discomfort in having ‘The Talk" that was alienating. Maybe having the facts out on the table as a given would foster open talk without the wrenching embarrassment.
However a little more time and reading tempered my enthusiasm. One must take care to not read too much into children’s questions and overwhelm them with more information than they were asking for.
I didn’t start at birth with Connor. It was during my pregnancy with Scott that I saw the opportunity to start to ‘tell’ him.
I’ll admit that while I tried to restrain myself I did kind of tip the playing field so he would ask how the sperm got to the egg before he might have been inclined to on his own. He did take the news calmly though, and I was glad to have it over with.
A couple days later he said, “Mommy, when Clea and I get married I will put my penis in her vagina and we’ll have babies.” Uh oh. Clea’s the CAT. She had been 10 when Connor entered the world, and hadn’t forgiven me for it yet. I didn’t like the image that came to mind… As calmly as I could I said, “Well, Connor, humans don’t usually mate with animals.” He said, “So then I’ll have to marry YOU and we’ll have babies.” I said, “Mothers and their sons usually don’t marry”. To my horror he became agitated and heartbroken: “Well, then how am I going to find a woman! How am I going to find a woman!” Sobbing, he concluded: “I won’t be able to find someone to marry so I’ll just have to marry myself!”
OMG, what had I done? This clearly had not gone at all well. Belatedly my mind showed me shades of the future: Connor divulging the information I’d given him to his pre-school friends and furious phone calls from parents. Exploring scenarios to try to proactively prevent this, in my mind’s eye I saw myself confusing him further: “WHY can’t I talk about this with my friends at school?” (“Is there something WRONG with it?”) Another frightful image: what if he suggested trying it with one of his friends? The worst though was that he was clearly suffering from this taste of the fruit of knowledge, and it was all my fault.
I’m the worst mom ever.
At least he didn't try anything with the 14 year old cat. What an undignified memory to have to carry in her declining years.
At 10 my mother dutifully followed the recommended disclosure path using a Disney “How Do I Tell My Daughter” kit complete with pink-boxed sanitary pads and belt, and a book called, “It’s Wonderful Being a Girl”. (I think all mothers of 10 year old girls had one of these kits hidden in their closet. My friends and I discussed them at length long before they were actually produced.) I was satisfied with this partial information for several years until The Question finally dawned on me: “How does the male sperm get inside the woman to fertilize the egg?” Maybe there was some credence to what the girl had said to explain what was on the alley wall after all?
Not only did I get confirmation from a girlfriend in one of our intimate spend-the-night talks, but there was a name for it too: “sexual intercourse”.
Some years later I read an article in a magazine called “Born Knowing”. This woman said that basically fresh from the womb she started telling her child about the actions that had resulted in her birth.
It seemed like a good idea. From my own experience of figuring it out on my own to myriad TV sit-com scenarios I could see that there was a major two-way discomfort in having ‘The Talk" that was alienating. Maybe having the facts out on the table as a given would foster open talk without the wrenching embarrassment.
However a little more time and reading tempered my enthusiasm. One must take care to not read too much into children’s questions and overwhelm them with more information than they were asking for.
I didn’t start at birth with Connor. It was during my pregnancy with Scott that I saw the opportunity to start to ‘tell’ him.
I’ll admit that while I tried to restrain myself I did kind of tip the playing field so he would ask how the sperm got to the egg before he might have been inclined to on his own. He did take the news calmly though, and I was glad to have it over with.
A couple days later he said, “Mommy, when Clea and I get married I will put my penis in her vagina and we’ll have babies.” Uh oh. Clea’s the CAT. She had been 10 when Connor entered the world, and hadn’t forgiven me for it yet. I didn’t like the image that came to mind… As calmly as I could I said, “Well, Connor, humans don’t usually mate with animals.” He said, “So then I’ll have to marry YOU and we’ll have babies.” I said, “Mothers and their sons usually don’t marry”. To my horror he became agitated and heartbroken: “Well, then how am I going to find a woman! How am I going to find a woman!” Sobbing, he concluded: “I won’t be able to find someone to marry so I’ll just have to marry myself!”
OMG, what had I done? This clearly had not gone at all well. Belatedly my mind showed me shades of the future: Connor divulging the information I’d given him to his pre-school friends and furious phone calls from parents. Exploring scenarios to try to proactively prevent this, in my mind’s eye I saw myself confusing him further: “WHY can’t I talk about this with my friends at school?” (“Is there something WRONG with it?”) Another frightful image: what if he suggested trying it with one of his friends? The worst though was that he was clearly suffering from this taste of the fruit of knowledge, and it was all my fault.
I’m the worst mom ever.
At least he didn't try anything with the 14 year old cat. What an undignified memory to have to carry in her declining years.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Split seconds
We paused to regroup. We had hit a rapid that had spilled each of us in succession. One of us tipped over first and while our leader and teacher Jim was attempting to assist we got swept into a larger, more complicated rapid that dumped most of the rest of us. Jim flipped too, and unusually, for him, was unable to roll upright again. Five of us were out of our kayaks in swollen Eagle Creek, each attempting to extricate ourselves. Some of us ended up on one bank, some on the other.
At least we were able to retrieve our boats, paddles, and we were unhurt, if a little shaken. We shouted to each other for a while across the roar of the current. Jim must have been on my side of the creek, because I remember a line strung across. He must have tied it off at our end and then ferried it across in his kayak. I think that Ruby used it to cross, and then Jim called back to me to see if I wanted to use the line or if I thought I could paddle across on my own. For some reason I felt confident and my voice must have convinced him because he nodded and I threw him my end. Now the only way across was by my own skills.
The tricky part is crossing the ‘eddy fence’, the wall that divides the slack water by the bank from the swift-moving main current. The technical skills required are to keep the nose of the boat pointed upstream at a distant point on the opposite shore, then balance and timing to paddle madly when punching the current. The laws of fluid dynamics and force vectors will take you neatly across if you can balance all the forces, and remember to lean downstream. It’s like not-thinking of a white elephant. When the current strikes and you feel your body start to tip downriver, the tendency is to overcompensate and lean upstream, which then presents the deck of your kayak as a lever to catch the force of the current and you’ll flip right over. I got knocked—I leaned upstream, I flipped. Bye bye.
Away I went. I caught a glimpse as I went underwater of my companions beginning to run downstream to follow. I tried to roll, but I’d not yet even rolled in a flat pool, let alone in combat conditions. I came out of the boat and tried to get in defensive position: sitting, almost, hips and knees flexed, heels thrust forward to fend off rocks. I must have lost my paddle; I’d tried to hang onto my boat but got separated sometime back when I was trying to swim into an eddy where I could gain the bank. But the current was too strong. A logjam presented itself—a split-second decision, I ducked underwater and was washed through. Later Jim told me, “I had a real bad feeling when I saw you being swept toward those logs.”
Shortly after that I made it out of the creek and onto shore. We were all in disarray again. I located my paddle, or maybe someone else had fished it out. Got my various pieces together, but other members were still in trouble.
Pat and I were given the job of sitting up on a rocky overlook. I can’t remember for what. Maybe to see if some lost equipment would come washing down; maybe waiting to for some upstream friends. Alone, we talked for a bit, edging closer until we were in each other’s arms kissing experimentally. In dry suits that functioned in this case as chastity belts, there was no easy way in or out we joked. Before we could get to the point where it made sense to start thinking about ripping them off we saw our companions walking on the bank below and so returned to the business of getting to the end point of this misbegotten journey.
It was indeed misbegotten. We were all former kayaking students of Jim’s. Patrick and Ruby had been in an earlier class, so they were a little more experienced than Charlie and me. It was November, there had been some good rains, and this creek was really too much for our skill level, and it was too much for Jim to be trying to take care of all of us by himself.
Still, we were at a stretch that looked fairly straightforward, and that maybe we had a chance to finish and get to the take-out where the truck was waiting. On each side of the creek was private property and Jim was loathe to have to go find a hostile property owner and beg permission to use his road to come and get the rest of us.
So we reassembled and started again. But again the elevation dropped and the banks narrowed and the current accelerated. I tried to pull out at an eddy and got swept into the low limb of a tree. I was pinned there, my head above the water, but not far. I began to moan.
It seems like it was only seconds before the others were around me. They had gotten out of their boats and were standing next to me using the limb my boat was pinned against for support. Charlie used some line to tie my boat to the tree. Once it was secured, Jim said, “OK, Debora, it’s time to come out of your boat.” Oddly, it was hard to leave—it was a moment with its own stability and making a move had some risks I didn’t want to think about. I exited and surfaced in time to see the current catch my boat. The nose point caught briefly on the limb and as the tail swung it may have hit a rock or another obstacle. Whatever force carried by how many cubic feet per second were flowing that day was concentrated on the cockpit and it folded like a piece of paper... Because Charlie had tied it off it wasn’t swept downstream.
At this point it became preferable to Jim to humble himself before a property-owner than to try our luck again. Four of us hung out on the bank watching my boat unfold while he went to take his chances with an owner. Later we rode out in his truck.
Later still it occurred to me how easily things could have gone in very different ways. Just for me alone the log-jam could have been a life-ender, had there been another log beneath the surface where I ducked. The force of current could have pinned me underwater and I would have been powerless to overcome it. No one would have been able to get to me on time and they may not have been able to do anything even if they had. Suppose I hadn’t exited the boat before the current bent it? At any number of places in the whole adventure the outcome could have been shunted down a different path—an arm stuck out at a place where there was a tight fit and small tolerances, a boat hitting a rock at a certain angle and bouncing to a certain position. It seems an incredible amount of luck kept us all intact.
I think the river became a sort of crucible for me—an object lesson in the role of split-second decisions in the face of random chance and chaotic input. I never felt I had my skills down to a point where I could trust them to put me in the best position to be lucky. My worst fear was that fear would cause me to hesitate just a beat too long before taking a necessary action, or that I would try to think too much and miss a crucial moment.
I’ve often thought of the river as a metaphor. I tend to be anxious when I can’t see too far ahead, and I’m not sure if I’ll have what it takes to make it through a tight spot. Then I fear that this anxiety will keep me from having the looseness and flexibility a tight spot might require.
I have been seeing the river in my dreams, lately; turning blind corners where I can hear a roaring but can’t see, or I’m perched above a drop where I can see that it’s like threading a needle, and I need to know that I can make the right moves where and when necessary.
I’ve had some nice experiences with luck where my mind shut off and without knowing beforehand I made the right responses with the right timing. My problem is not knowing ahead of time I can do this.
At least we were able to retrieve our boats, paddles, and we were unhurt, if a little shaken. We shouted to each other for a while across the roar of the current. Jim must have been on my side of the creek, because I remember a line strung across. He must have tied it off at our end and then ferried it across in his kayak. I think that Ruby used it to cross, and then Jim called back to me to see if I wanted to use the line or if I thought I could paddle across on my own. For some reason I felt confident and my voice must have convinced him because he nodded and I threw him my end. Now the only way across was by my own skills.
The tricky part is crossing the ‘eddy fence’, the wall that divides the slack water by the bank from the swift-moving main current. The technical skills required are to keep the nose of the boat pointed upstream at a distant point on the opposite shore, then balance and timing to paddle madly when punching the current. The laws of fluid dynamics and force vectors will take you neatly across if you can balance all the forces, and remember to lean downstream. It’s like not-thinking of a white elephant. When the current strikes and you feel your body start to tip downriver, the tendency is to overcompensate and lean upstream, which then presents the deck of your kayak as a lever to catch the force of the current and you’ll flip right over. I got knocked—I leaned upstream, I flipped. Bye bye.
Away I went. I caught a glimpse as I went underwater of my companions beginning to run downstream to follow. I tried to roll, but I’d not yet even rolled in a flat pool, let alone in combat conditions. I came out of the boat and tried to get in defensive position: sitting, almost, hips and knees flexed, heels thrust forward to fend off rocks. I must have lost my paddle; I’d tried to hang onto my boat but got separated sometime back when I was trying to swim into an eddy where I could gain the bank. But the current was too strong. A logjam presented itself—a split-second decision, I ducked underwater and was washed through. Later Jim told me, “I had a real bad feeling when I saw you being swept toward those logs.”
Shortly after that I made it out of the creek and onto shore. We were all in disarray again. I located my paddle, or maybe someone else had fished it out. Got my various pieces together, but other members were still in trouble.
Pat and I were given the job of sitting up on a rocky overlook. I can’t remember for what. Maybe to see if some lost equipment would come washing down; maybe waiting to for some upstream friends. Alone, we talked for a bit, edging closer until we were in each other’s arms kissing experimentally. In dry suits that functioned in this case as chastity belts, there was no easy way in or out we joked. Before we could get to the point where it made sense to start thinking about ripping them off we saw our companions walking on the bank below and so returned to the business of getting to the end point of this misbegotten journey.
It was indeed misbegotten. We were all former kayaking students of Jim’s. Patrick and Ruby had been in an earlier class, so they were a little more experienced than Charlie and me. It was November, there had been some good rains, and this creek was really too much for our skill level, and it was too much for Jim to be trying to take care of all of us by himself.
Still, we were at a stretch that looked fairly straightforward, and that maybe we had a chance to finish and get to the take-out where the truck was waiting. On each side of the creek was private property and Jim was loathe to have to go find a hostile property owner and beg permission to use his road to come and get the rest of us.
So we reassembled and started again. But again the elevation dropped and the banks narrowed and the current accelerated. I tried to pull out at an eddy and got swept into the low limb of a tree. I was pinned there, my head above the water, but not far. I began to moan.
It seems like it was only seconds before the others were around me. They had gotten out of their boats and were standing next to me using the limb my boat was pinned against for support. Charlie used some line to tie my boat to the tree. Once it was secured, Jim said, “OK, Debora, it’s time to come out of your boat.” Oddly, it was hard to leave—it was a moment with its own stability and making a move had some risks I didn’t want to think about. I exited and surfaced in time to see the current catch my boat. The nose point caught briefly on the limb and as the tail swung it may have hit a rock or another obstacle. Whatever force carried by how many cubic feet per second were flowing that day was concentrated on the cockpit and it folded like a piece of paper... Because Charlie had tied it off it wasn’t swept downstream.
At this point it became preferable to Jim to humble himself before a property-owner than to try our luck again. Four of us hung out on the bank watching my boat unfold while he went to take his chances with an owner. Later we rode out in his truck.
Later still it occurred to me how easily things could have gone in very different ways. Just for me alone the log-jam could have been a life-ender, had there been another log beneath the surface where I ducked. The force of current could have pinned me underwater and I would have been powerless to overcome it. No one would have been able to get to me on time and they may not have been able to do anything even if they had. Suppose I hadn’t exited the boat before the current bent it? At any number of places in the whole adventure the outcome could have been shunted down a different path—an arm stuck out at a place where there was a tight fit and small tolerances, a boat hitting a rock at a certain angle and bouncing to a certain position. It seems an incredible amount of luck kept us all intact.
I think the river became a sort of crucible for me—an object lesson in the role of split-second decisions in the face of random chance and chaotic input. I never felt I had my skills down to a point where I could trust them to put me in the best position to be lucky. My worst fear was that fear would cause me to hesitate just a beat too long before taking a necessary action, or that I would try to think too much and miss a crucial moment.
I’ve often thought of the river as a metaphor. I tend to be anxious when I can’t see too far ahead, and I’m not sure if I’ll have what it takes to make it through a tight spot. Then I fear that this anxiety will keep me from having the looseness and flexibility a tight spot might require.
I have been seeing the river in my dreams, lately; turning blind corners where I can hear a roaring but can’t see, or I’m perched above a drop where I can see that it’s like threading a needle, and I need to know that I can make the right moves where and when necessary.
I’ve had some nice experiences with luck where my mind shut off and without knowing beforehand I made the right responses with the right timing. My problem is not knowing ahead of time I can do this.
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