God on Trial

PBS aired this program last night on Masterpiece. I'm struck with the universal themes this revisits, another turn of the wheel on the questions of suffering, good, evil, and how a merciful God can permit it.

The scene is Auschwitz, a present-day memorial, visited by a tour group. As the guide takes them through, she tells them that as new prisoners were brought, others were killed to make room for them. There is a rumor that one such group put God on trial.

As the program begins we are taken to an Auschwitz sometime before the end of World War II. A cell block of men, stripped naked, are paraded before a (presumably) dr who is evaluating them. Some are grouped to the right, some to the left, all given numbers. Half of them will be killed, but they don't know which half.

Returned to their cell block, not knowing who is to die the next morning, they are interrupted when a group of new prisoners, still in the clothing they'd been taken in, still unshaven, are thrust into the barracks. The prisoner in charge of the inmates tells them bitterly that because of the 'efficiency' of the German rails, the prisoners have arrived a day early and will be sharing the already cramped quarters with them that night.

Bitter feelings are expressed toward God, which are denounced by one man, Kuhn, as 'blasphemy'. It's clear that this is personal for him, a macrocosm of his conflict with his son Mordechai who he feels has wandered far from the faith. The rabbi Schmidt states that there is precedent in struggle with God, citing Job and the story of Jacob who was renamed "Israel" after striving with God all night . He gives support to setting up a rabbinical court with himself as Court Father. A German who was a professor of law agrees to be Head of the court and Mordecai insists on being the Dayan, or the Questioner.

First they must come up with a charge, and they decide upon murder, and breach of Covenant: God made a Covenant with the Jewish people, that they were His Chosen People...that God's favor would be upon them and He would "smite" their enemies.

Kuhn insists that Jews have strayed from the teachings of the Torah, have drifted from God and what they are experiencing is the consequence of this. He cites ancient Jewish history when the Jews have 'forsaken' God and been punished; this is the reason for the situation they're in.

Mordechai calls one of the newcomers, a member of a tiny Polish village. He asks if this man's village loved God and stayed true to the Torah. In great sincerity the man said that they did: "In our poverty the Torah was the palace in which we lived in splendor." Yet the Nazis came, killed his mother before him, forced him and the other survivors to bury their dead; forced them to take the rings from their parents' bodies and give them to the Nazis.

Another witness is called who says that God's punishments are not surgical, frequently not proportionate, citing the Flood. He suggests their ordeal is a part of a purification, a sacrifice, where only the best are sacrificed. This brings comfort to the man who had buried his mother.

Another, a Jewish scholar who was among the newcomers, adds that God's actions are not personally directed...that the conditions they find themselves in are not God punishing them personally, that His movements are vast and impersonal in scope. "We may hate the surgeon's knife, the the surgeon's act is an act of love."

"What use is an impersonal god?" asks one. Another retorts, "God is to be of use to us, then?"

At one point the proceedings are interrupted as prison guards flood in and remove the newcomers. They are stripped of their clothing, forcibly shorn, given prison garb and returned to the cell.

The dynamic is very different now. While these man had had the clothes on their back, their spectacles and their fillings, there had still been an illusion they could cling to of some sort of self-determination. There was silence, and then one of the newcomers spoke up and said he would like the trial to continue to conclusion.

Why didn't God intervene on behalf of His people? One man answers that it is on account of God having given humans Free Will. In a rage one prisoner demands that another tell his story of when he was taken, what happened to him. At first the prisoner demurs, but when the angry man says he will tell it regardless, the prisoner says if anyone is to tell his story, it will be him.

He says the children, among them his three sons, the oldest seven, were put on a truck. As it was driving away he ran after it, shouting for it to stop, to give him his sons. The driver did stop, and asked who were his. He said he'd thought the soldier was going to give them to him, and so he identified them. And the soldier told him to choose one. The children heard this, all of them crying, begging him to choose them. Where was his choice? Where was his free will, he asks. (The Head of the Court asked him if he knows what became of his sons. He said that two of his sons were twins, and he'd heard they'd gone to Mengele. He took comfort in this, saying he'd heard that Mengele 'likes' twins...)

I've been sympathetic to the argument of free will. It makes a kind of sense to me that when people exercise their free will and choose evil that this may have consequences for others who do not have might on their side. And God, having resolved that we should have the freedom to choose, is unable to intervene without violating our free will.

However, an impassioned argument at the end gave me pause. This man took over the questioning and asked the scholar: When God delivered the Israelites from Egypt--why were they in Egypt. "There was a famine..." "and God sent the famine? And when God told Moses to tell the Pharaoh to release the Israelites, what happened when the Pharaoh did not? He turned water to blood! He brought plagues, frogs, locusts, mosquitos, rats, and then boils. Did he bring it on just the Pharaoh? No! He brought it upon the entire Egyptian population, leaders and slave alike, except the Israelites. And then what happened?" The scholar, speaking more softly now replied that God had sent an Angel of Death. "And who did this angel slay?" "The firstborn son of every Egyptian." "From the rulers down to the slaves, every firstborn child was slain. NOT the Pharaoh, but the children, infants!"

"And what happened when the Children of Israel left, following Moses? Did the Pharaoh let them go in peace?" "No, he sent an army after them." "And when Moses and his people had crossed the Red Sea, did God let the sea close behind them immediately? No! He waited until the soldiers were in the very middle of the sea in pursuit and then let the waters close over them and drown them all."

The man went on, example after example. God's people being used as God's instrument to punish, to drive prior inhabitants from their lands. Whom God demanded that no mercy be shown, and when Saul, one of Israel's kings did show mercy God punished him. God's punishment to David for his sin with Bathsheba, not to just take the child they had together, but to cause that child to suffer in pain for 7 days before dying.

Powerful examples of where God had intervened, surgically, and personally, contrasted with where He had not. Why then? Why not now? "God is not good!" this man bellowed, "He is only strong. When he told Abraham to kill his only child, Abraham should have told him 'NOOOOOOOOOOOO!' God should learn mercy and justice--from US. Do you know what was on the belt buckles of the men who rounded us up? 'Gott Mit Uns'! We were powerful, when God was on our side. Now He's on someone else's side. He's made a new Covenant--with someone else!"

The guards burst in to take those who were slated to die. They covered their heads, with their hands, to pray.

All the arguments about God's role in the world, in suffering, in evil--in the crucible of a Holocaust prison. All questions we've had too, in the crucible of our own suffering. We're gifted with the ability to reason, yet this seems beyond reason. I'm struck at how we go around and around turning this wheel, and yet how open-ended the Problem of Suffering remains.

Thank you, Mrs. Spit

XIII

Read history, thus learn how small a space

You may inhabit, nor inhabit long

In crowding Cosmos — in that confined place

Work boldly; build your flimsy barriers strong;

Turn round and round, make warm your nest; among

The other hunting beasts, keep heart and face, —

Not to betray the doomed and splendid race

You are so proud of, to which you belong.

For trouble comes to all of us: the rat

Has courage, in adversity, to fight;

But what a shining animal is man,

Who knows, when pain subsides, that is not that,

For worse than that must follow — yet can write

Music; can laugh; play tennis; even plan.

Edna St. Vincent Millet

Mrs. Spit may not realize what a rabbit-hole she sent me down when she mused to me about 'the Problem of Suffering.' She articulated a concept that I've experienced, but was never able to find words for. I feel as if I've suddenly been gifted with a new language, one that permits expression of emotion which isn't permitted by my native tongue.

In some sense this absolutely was a test - in the sense that a test is often, at some level, binary in nature. A test is the idea of choosing. And so when I ask "why her, and not me?", it is obviously a test in that I have to accept that I probably would have been a good mum, and she was, at least in the brief moment I saw her, a bad mum. And she had 2 children, and I have none. There is a test in the idea that she has, unjustly what I want.

And that leaves me with a few options. Perhaps it's my political science and philosophy, but I am reminded of the problem of pain, as CS Lewis put it. Pain leaves us in a place where we either have to accept there is no God, because there is pain, There is a God, but he doesn't care about us, and has left off active participation in the universe, and that's why there is pain, or that there is God and there is pain, and the reasons and explanations of how both exist defy my explanation--Mrs. Spit

Instantly I'm reminded of Schrodinger's cat, in Schrodinger's box, where the cat is either alive, or dead. The situation is binary in nature. But...there is that place--before we look, where he either is, or isn't, alive or dead.

I think it's beyond the power of the human mind to conceive. When I contemplate it and try to juxtapose the two, I get a sensation of two like poles of a magnet repelling each other.

It's the collision of 'what is' with 'what should be'. The fact of a Basic Need, denied. By 'basic' I mean inherent: something we are born into this world programmed to expect. Food, water, shelter, touch, intimacy. When these needs are denied, either by being withheld or simple absence, our need doesn't go away. What 'should be' is that humans' basic needs be met. 'What is' is frequently the barrier our needs hurl us against, again and again.

I've met this place, over and over again, in the most mundane of circumstances, to the most profound. How many among us have been stuck on hold on the phone, awaiting answer to a pressing question, loath to hang up and go to the back of the queue, but caught between: "they're never coming back--my call has been dropped" and "They're about to pick up any second and if I hang up now I'll miss it"? For me it can be excruciating to be in that place between.

This place appears in my dreams. I've dreamed about going to Sharon, my counselor, with something important to tell her, and there are people there. I am caught in the space between where it is unacceptable for me to speak intimately in the presence of these people--yet it is unacceptable to leave without sharing these thoughts with her. I've dreamed of being kept waiting in restaurants, where the wait becomes unacceptable yet leaving and finding another restaurant seems futile too. Maybe my turn is next and I'd be leaving just before I'd get what I was waiting for. Very trivial inconveniences in a world of profound losses and suffering--yet what's in common is the tension between a need (on), and the lack of its fulfillment (off).

And perhaps it is this tension, this very suffering that carries the transformative potential. Perhaps this is the place where light hits a lens, and emerges transformed from the other side. A kind of beauty in its splintering. This is where atoms transform into molecules, where the gap is bridged between the two.

It seems to me to be human is to experience this place as a consequence of living. The posts I've been writing about frustration in children are descriptions of this place. We've encountered it early, and often, from the breast that doesn't arrive when we want it, to the toy some other child has just walked away with, to squirming from the discomfort and boredom of being trapped in a long line, and so on.

It occurs to me, that this is the Place that's pivotal to our ability to move on in our development as human beings, to borrow a concept also first posed by Mrs. Spit. She proposed it, and I've been running with it ever since. The usual response to childish frustration is to punish it, patronize it, attempt to gratify it. We learned early that part of growing up is learning to manage the feelings that happen in our bodies when something blocks fulfillment of a heart's desire. Some of us learned that our expressions of pain inconvenienced people who matter, and we were considered to be maturing to the extent that we could keep unpleasant emotions to ourselves and not bother anyone with them.

We are most often left alone in that excruciating place, with no skills to cope with the painful feelings there.

And it occurs to me that this is the place we need someone to abide with us. This is what we need from other human beings, and when we receive it, we grow. We need someone there to model the transformative power of these overwhelming feelings. This is part of the very foundation of our Souls. Incident by incident, having someone to abide with us in that binary place lays down a solid Self from which we emerge and stand; from which we launch ourselves into the world. Without it we still develop and grow, but there is a core hollowness in those bricks that build our infrastructure. Most of us carry this hollowness inside.

Oftentimes people marvel at the Power of having someone abide with them when they are suffering loss, and pain: not trying to fix the pain, or minimize it, but just be there as Witness. It is powerful because it fills a deeper need than Doing ever could.

More Woo-woo

Firmly embedded in late 50's and early 60's traditional-values Americana, I developed my own Calvinistic conception of Belief.

The notion was tinged with intimations of moral character. Belief was an exercise in will power, an allegiance to an idea. In the United States the idea was God-and-country. You were a good, upright, moral human being to the extent that you hewed to Belief.

I thought I was the only person who had this experience: I have a Belief, but thoughts and doubts arise; believing that I am good to the extent that I Believe, I have to defend Belief from thoughts, ideas, doubts that might 'threaten' Belief. In fact, doubts and countering ideas/thoughts are a Sign of Sin and must be resisted. To the extent that I can resist them I am a good person.

I thought I was the only person who noticed that the stronger the resistance I mounted to any threats, the stronger they became. Belief became an act of Will Power: the ability to resist ("overcome") assaults to Belief. I prayed for forgiveness for my lapses in Belief; I prayed for strength to overcome this evil in myself (I attributed this evil to the concept of Original Sin.). I got good at screening my mind to prevent disturbing doubts and thoughts from getting through. It took an awful lot of energy, but that seemed like something I was Supposed to Do.

I assumed that other people were also involved in protecting their Belief, and I assumed they were better at it than me: why else would I keep having heretical thoughts? So I never thought to ask anyone what it was like inside of them.

As I inched away from the Christianity of my youth, the notion of Faith and Belief was reincarnated in other forms. Christianity was replaced by a Belief in positivity, which meant that "negative" thoughts caused negative outcomes. "Good" thoughts would invite positive experiences into my life, negative thoughts the opposite. The battle for control over my thoughts continued. I tried to screen out negative emotions (fear, anger, jealousy) before they would become negative thoughts.

Some form of this has persisted to this day. It often goes like this: I want something; it looks like I might get it and I'm glad; I feel fear that I might not get it; I feel fear that I feel fear and I try to screen it out, fearful that I'm poisoning the well. It's nearly reflexive, the default to putting up a shield to screen out negative thoughts--try to prevent one side of my mind from knowing what the other side is doing, I suppose.

Today I saw Belief from a completely new perspective. It was like Magic Eyes, staring at a random pattern on a page, and suddenly a hologram emerges--a 3-D experience springs from a two dimensional page.

I've been musing over the hierarchy of levels, a sort of spiral of development that Ken Wilbur talks about (A Theory of Everything). It makes sense to me that there are 'levels' that transcend themselves by combining and becoming something else, something greater. At the purely physical level this manifests as atoms becoming molecules becoming substance becoming object becoming system supporting something greater yet (yeah, yeah, I didn't include subatomic particles, but they're part of the assumption and have their place at the deconstructed end of atoms).

It occurs to me today that Belief is the bridge between atoms and molecules, molecules and substance, and so on. It's not about willpower at all--it's already there. When we 'believe', we're merely allowing ourselves to rest into that bedrock. Belief is what sustains us when we are between 'stages'.

The child who wants something he's denied is stuck in that moment, or atoms. It is not so much the object she craves, but the satisfaction that the object will bring. Desire torments him, and he longs for release. At that moment, she fully believes that this state will be permanent--she'll always suffer so. Perhaps on other levels he is reminded of other times when raw desire for nourishment, comfort, presence was denied or delayed. A child with a more sensitive temperament will likely suffer denial more acutely...a child who has a persistent temperament may be capable of wailing for an hour or longer. Atoms. The child is stuck in a moment and needs help, empathy, and understanding.

Molecules is the ability to sustain oneself through that stressful situation. Molecules is the ability to self-soothe--And Belief is the bridge between. The most basic lesson in Faith is the caring adult stepping in to provide, however imperfectly, the comfort the child had longed to get from the toy. The caring adult has the job of helping the child through the difficult moment, abiding with her in that moment (thank you, Mrs. Spit) and thereby teaching her that she can sustain herself when moments get hard. Belief is what connects fragments of a whole, to the Whole, and it is already there. We don't have to manufacture it, our willpower isn't needed to maintain it.

So now when I read, or hear, "Only Believe", it will have another meaning for me.

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Dang it! Blogger won't let me link "abiding" to Mrs. Spit's eloquent post. Please go see it here: http://mrsspitspouts.blogspot.com/2008/05/abide-with-me.html

Exerpts

August 20, 2006 Sunday 1240.

I’ve been waiting for this moment, where I could talk to myself for a while. Do some writing instead of transcribing, and that makes me realize what it was that made the entry so short on the night Gary took the boys golfing. I was transcribing [old diaries].

Gary took the boys to the “Dew” competition, a sort of extreme thrill-rider’s show. So I have some time, though sadly it’s not unlimited. Reality tells me I need to do the grocery shopping, but I’m trying to cut it close to when they’re expected home, so that I’ll have used most of this time doing something I really want to do and not squander it on chores.

So a few thoughts have come my way recently and I wanted to explore them a bit. Brief conceptions that seem to tie in with other concepts. The idea of the quantum mechanic world—that at the essences of our atoms is mostly empty space, and in that space the electrons are, or might be. (And that’s not even considering the nucleus, which itself is composed of smaller particles). It’s very strange to think then, that the atoms that make me are mostly empty space, and therefore I am too. And that makes me wonder about the interfaces at the atomic and subatomic level, blood vessels made of mostly empty space containing blood cells that are mostly empty space. Muscle interfacing with bone, yet distinct—at the level of empty space what does that look like? Organs clearly delineated, yet at the level of empty space what do the boundaries look like?

(The idea of the different states of matter. I am here, engaged in all three states, liquid, solid, and gas—thinking of the respiratory system here—that all states are simultaneously at play because each has a different freezing/melting point, and boiling/condensation point, or moving to a gasseous/solid state. So if my skin and bones were warmed enough, they would become liquid as the atoms and molecules accelerate, and if heated further would break their bonds and scatter apart as gas.)

When I think of the interfaces, I’m not able to reconcile this chaotic, probability-driven state with the macro level that I live at. Here at the macro level things seem solid, with distinct boundaries between one thing and another. At the sub-atomic the laws are very different. How do we get to here from there? That’s where I start having imaginings of micro worlds inside at these smaller scales—perhaps an atom IS a solar system with living beings living on the electrons and experiencing THEIR world as a macro-world? Or perhaps WE’RE on an electron compared to something at larger scales that make ours seem sub-atomic. What if we are all only on an electron orbiting a nucleus in a molecule that’s part of the leg of a chair?

I’ve had conceptions like these, even as a child. Perhaps that’s why it’s in us as humans to have our collective stories riddled with “little people’, and giants. A sort of collective acknowledgment of this nature of reality, showing up in stories. Including religion…people who have glimpsed the immensity of the implications that it may be chance our very foundational elements are built on would I think inspire a great awe, and probably fear. My guess is that god springs from this apprehension of the core of complete mystery, and that doesn’t seem to reconcile with the “normal-scale” reality and the nature of matter that we see around us. I’m thinking about a passage from James Clavell in his book Tai-pan, where he described something called “joss”, which he says is god, devil, luck all in one. He ascribes that to Chinese religion, which I have no way of knowing if that’s for real or not, but it seems that comes closer to describing god and sort of the true nature we’re built on, better than other godhead religions.

I think most people in this world are not independent in this world. I believe that most of their thoughts, emotions, loyalties are an unchallenged submission to the authority they grew up in. Like Linda once said, ‘living thru the super-ego’. I think it is so much a background part of them that they don’t perceive it, that they are behaving and thinking in rote ways, in order to ‘be good’. When someone goes to church, it can be from a heartfelt desire to know God, and a belief that this is the vehicle that will take you closer, or it can be in obedience to a long ago message from authority that says, “Good people go to church.” And they “feel guilty” if they don’t, and feel proud of feeling guilty.

It may have been through the church that I began to have these revelations. As I think of it now I get a strong affirmation of the sense that we are truly alone, and we decide. I realized at some point that there was a vast amount of room between a “you should” and the number of possibilities left uncovered by that should. I think it was re-reading [while transcribing my old diary] about my thoughts as Rick [high school sweetheart] and I progressed toward more and more heavy petting that illuminates this: I hadn’t realized there were so many decisions open to make beyond the prohibition on sexual intercourse. In my very private self I noticed, at church, that the prayers and rituals left me with an unpleasant feeling, which I tried to resolve by forcing my emotions to line up. There was the feeling that that was required of me, but this is on so subtle a level that no one actually says it. (This is a part of me I’ve never talked about with anyone else—the place where I meet my experience and decide what to do with it.) Yet I think I assumed that that’s what everyone did, that is the people who chose to be good, and that everyone in their private selves were doing that too. That’s where I see that I’m really alone, and alone can decide my course and behavior from that very powerful place…I don’t know why I wrote powerful. I think it was from a sense of inhabiting and settling deeply into my cells, and more importantly into the empty spaces within those cells. To have my actions grow from that kind of intimacy within myself, and perceiving that intimacy. Thought self and morality on a micro, or atomic/subatomic scale. Anyway, it makes me wonder if that place, that is a mystery inside all matter, and ultimately seems to be a place of pure possibility—a sort of nothing that all we are comes from…is a source of the feeling and impulse that gave rise to the notion of god. I’m reminded of some of my thoughts on anxiety and emotion, and the notion that we all feel anxiety, it’s the force inside our nervous systems that impels us to act, but different temperaments respond or react to it in different ways. Where someone driving a car sees someone on a bicycle, in a flash comes the awareness that the bicyclist has made a decision to be biking whereas my decision was to drive and that difference creates potential energy that’s experienced as anxiety, which in turn can be experienced as hostility toward the cyclist, or guilt for not being on a bicycle (which can also lead to hostility toward the bicyclist), or I suppose even into a positive feeling about the bicyclist. (I’m thinking that may be the same mechanism that gives rise to god: the tension inside when one experiences this emptiness at our core—the force that causes us to personify that empty place, and reverence it, and worship it.) I’m remembering going with my grandmother and my great-aunt Mil for a walk in our Marysville neighborhood and my best friend’s father rode by on a bicycle. They didn’t know that I knew him. I felt a tension increase in the atmosphere between us, me and my two relatives. One of them said, “Looks like he needs to be exercising (referring to his large stomach) and the other one said, “That doesn’t do anything for the stomach. It only works for the legs. It’s his stomach that needs working on.” So they were sharing a criticism of this man they’d never seen before. Something about this man riding by raised the tension, or anxiety level and needed to be discharged with those remarks. I think that potential can be harnessed by charismatic people and it’s the impulse behind mob behavior. The collective orgasm of discharge of potential energy/anxiety—very powerful and usually destructive. That’s why association can be such a liability—just reminding someone of something can be enough to raise their anxious tension that makes them prone to see a neutral act as negative and a provocation. (I wrote ‘preoccupation’ first…guess my mind wandered. I’d replaced it with ‘provocation’ after realizing my mistake, and then felt compelled by my standard of honesty to include it. I wonder if that’s too rigorous a standard. I find myself doing it when transcribing my old diaries too—to try to get them as true to the original as possible including grammatical errors. (I suppose it can be considered as a way to keep myself honest.)


So anyway, I just feel a disconnect inside when I consider juxtaposing a world that feels so solid, tangible, and real with the conception that it is at its core emptiness and probability. Where does one change into the other? When do the ‘laws’ that apply at one scale stop applying there and different scale laws then apply? I don’t see the connection between “there” and “here”.

But I sense that there is an analogous place to that in me emotionally, and cognitively. And I suppose that’s what accounted for my anxiety when I was writing those diaries earlier—the fear that a possibility that my motives might be less than pure causing me to accuse myself that they weren’t pure. Yet it didn’t feel right, but I wondered if even that doubt could be trusted, since I stood to benefit from it. Anyway, I get a glimpse of some relief from that anxiety when I consider accepting that at its core, anything is possible. It’s possible that my negative feelings toward my MIL are grounded in my own selfishness and immaturity. I have to acknowledge that possibility, as well as the possibility that I’ve been unjust in the ways I’ve regarded her. Just set it on the table as a possibility in a range of possibilities, and don’t feel compelled to assign it to myself just because I fear it might be true…at least wait til the other possibilities have also been considered.

I’ve been watching “The Up Series”—a series of films beginning in 1964 when a group of 14 children at the age of seven (essentially my age) were interviewed by the researcher, and then filmmaker of the project. He said it didn’t start out to be a series, it was only going to be a one time project, a sort of indictment of the class society in Britain. I don’t remember at what point he said it had become “A life work”. As I transcribe my diary and through it have access to the memories from myself at a certain age, and to a certain extent the experiences, as I read some of this stuff I’ve written and then never read later, the term “Life’s work” resonates with me. These individual diaries have already accreted quite a body, and I feel good thinking about it as a life’s work.

Back to the film. I’m surprised at how I’ve been captured by the series. The last one I had was the one that ends at age 42, so filmed in 1999. I went online and saw that 49-Up will be coming out in theaters in October. So I get to see another one before having to wait another 7 years for 56. Anyway, there is something very compelling to me about having before me a span of a middle-aged lifetime, with different stages in development portrayed. It seems to be in harmony with this whole “taking stock” thing I’m doing in closing in on my 50th birthday—transcribing my diaries, and now this series. I suppose part of it is the notion of a life caught on time-lapse photography and then replayed sped up.

A phrase that stands out to me in a parenting book: how can we keep our behavior from making things worse in a frustrating and angering situation with children? And I extend that to the notion of how can I not make a situation with Gary get worse. I think there’s probably something about the insight of living in my cells that might be helpful. It is definitely my reaction to something that he does or a manner that he has that takes it from bad to worse.

One other notion: the idea of an ideal being a very good thing, but if you follow it to its logical conclusion it can lead to some undesirable outcomes and demands. As in religion, when there’s a difference in opinion historically there’s often a schism, and with both sides sticking to the letter of their law, they are compelled to brand each other heretics and fight religious wars. The letter of the law says we can’t accept homosexuals and its ok to harm them; but a higher spirit teaches tolerance and respect for everyone. But most fundamentalist Christians feel that if they are going to be following Jesus and living Christian lives then they must take it to its logical conclusion and bar gays from clergy, enable people to refuse to rent to them—in other words consider it lawful to discriminate which opens the way to many mean-spirited acts. For example, what if gay people have children? What if the birth parent dies and the other’s rights to that child are trumped by “family”—blood relations who may be hostile to a gay parent. If you take an ideal down to it’s nitty gritty, and it’s details, in order to be able to stay with it, you have to do it down to the nth detail. And the nth detail doesn’t work. The nth detail is inhuman, unkind, self-righteous. So is there a way that a law or ideal applies on one scale, but when getting into details it does not?

Maybe there’s no unifying theory. Maybe there are different laws for different scales, and part of the randomness, probability, and ambiguity of that situation applies to the point where one set of laws apply and another do not.

Ok, I’ll get a little more transcribing in before I need to go run my errands. I was at a part that’s interesting to me.

Burning dollars

Nearly from the beginning my own psychological/spiritual awakening process has seemed in parallel with Scott's. The dream I took to Sharon, my counselor, the first time I'd seen her in 13 years had Scott, danger, and indecision at its core.

For years, even before having children I was fascinated with the neurological processes that result in the behavior we manifest. As I've mentioned before, having children has been an opportunity to see these descriptions come to life, and to see the rather deceptive facade that apparent behavior presents. Books that were very helpful in articulating my understanding were "Listening to Prozac" by Peter Kramer, "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime" by Mark Haddon, and any of the number of books by Temple Grandin.

Observing children, and their development, I see a stage where they have not yet developed a sort of internal narrative in which context to place the moment-by-moment events.

Suppose a child is waiting in line to get on a merry-go-round. This waiting has in itself been a trial for the child's immediate desire to be satisfied. He's been restless, fussy. Some might see that as a discipline problem. Some may see it as inadequate parenting. Some might understand that this little person hasn't yet learned how to manage the anxiety that desire can create. Some understand that some children have a higher tolerance to the anxiety such situations can cause.

So this child is about to get her turn, and then the gate is shut. The merry-go-round is full, and the child will need to wait longer yet. Here's an argument for schadenfreude being inborn. The child immediately ahead in line, the one who was last to go in may find pleasure in the first child's disappointment. The happy child on the ride might stick his tongue out at the other, perhaps every time the circle goes round. This might be nearly unbearable for the child left behind.

An older child, or more tolerant child may have a narrative in place. Waiting may still be difficult, but she has an internal narrative that understands the way the 'story' goes. Each moment is not eternal torment, but does indeed lead to a bigger reality of moving up in line and finally achieving the heart's desire. This narrative can sustain a waiting child so he is not stabbed so cruelly by the pain of frustration.

What I have noticed in Scott is that he doesn't yet have a sense of a bigger narrative in regards to school, and other situations. And this may be a result of his mind racing so quickly that he is unable to take in the features that would sketch in the outlines of the larger narrative so he can perceive it. So he is tortured by the jabs of the moment, the sounds of other children's voices, the hubbub around him. He is unable to contextualize it into a bigger story, and thus sublimate the discomforts. So he is at the mercy of every moment, and every distraction in it.

The extent to which he has controlled his behavior while being in a situation with little reward for him still impresses me. I see what it costs him to govern his behavior in class. I feel urgency for him, that while we have this window of his good will and innocence that we find a way for him to get some intrinsic reward from school. I've been extrinsically rewarding him with treats at the end of 'good' days at school. But ultimately he's going to need more than this to sustain his patience. His use of precious self-control is being squandered in just keeping him at baseline. It's like burning dollar bills for heat.

However, I feel that at this school, the adults he is with see beneath the mask of his adhd. I believe they see through to the person he is inside. They don't see him as Behavior Problem; and now that he has a diagnosis, they don't see him as his diagnosis. They see Him. I'm grateful for this.

I realize I need to slow my brain down too. I need to find a way to hold myself still long enough that I can also see the outlines of a larger narrative to place these events and these questions into. My son needs me to be providing the support of a more encompassing context, and I need it too.

Somehow that seems to involve slowing down something internally.

Something to talk about with Sharon tonight.

Why is it getting so hard to get to my appointment?

This is at least the third Wednesday in a row that it has been a struggle.

Three Wednesdays ago Scott was sick and my babysitter didn't come because he "didn't want to take a chance on missing any school". This resulted in my having to impose on Connor's friend's dad, with no notice at all, to come and take the boys to football practice, on his birthday. I felt so badly about that that I promised to take the boys for the next 2 weeks in a row. Yesterday was to be the final day of my atonement.

Last week I had to impose on the kindness of a neighbor at the last minute to get Scott's care covered when the babysitter in effect canceled again. That time I fired him.

I found a replacement, a girl who lives a couple miles from us to the west. She's also a junior in high school but doesn't have her driver's license yet. So the afternoon looked like this: I'd pick up Scott at 3:15, drive up our hill, home about 3:40, collect my stuff, feed the boys snacks, get Connor and his buddy started getting ready for football, drive over to pick up Jackie at around 4:15, bring her back to the house, show her where all the phone numbers and food and stuff was, leave by 4:30. Tight.

Connor wasn't upstairs when I came in with Scott (his bus drops him about 10 minutes before we arrive from Scott's school). I called out, and heard him say, "Hi, Mom" in a very quiet voice. I went downstairs immediately to see what was wrong. He said they had seen something awful. The bus had been stopped outside of one child's house, a friend of theirs, and the boy was getting off. Their driveway is across the street and his overjoyed yellow lab bounded up to greet him. Around a corner a truck sped and plowed into the dog, before the horrified eyes of all the children on the bus. Connor said, "She was killed instantly. That was good. But it split open her stomach..."

It struck me that it could have been Garrett hit. I absorbed the impact of that thought while tuning back in to Connor:

"I don't feel like going to football."

At first I protested, unsure if this justified missing a practice, thinking it might help clear their minds of that image. And I'm ashamed to say my strategic mind kicked in:

They don't go--I don't have to take them, drive out of the way to that school field and then across town at the heaviest traffic time of the day. That's Good.

That's two more kids for the babysitter. That's Bad.

They'd be amusement for themselves and not be any extra work for the babysitter. That's Good.

I told them I'd think about it while I went upstairs to call Maria, Garrett's mom and tell her how sorry I was. It was 10 minutes until 4. I wanted to leave to get the sitter about 4. First I called Gary, to see what he thought about the boys missing practice, and/or to notify him that he wouldn't need to pick them up from the field. Voice mail on the office phone. I left a message, coded "urgent." Called the cell. Left message with voice mail, coded "urgent." Called Maria.

She was shaken, yet strong. Had already moved the badly damaged dog off the road and was preparing to take a bucket down to sluice off the blood "so Garrett doesn't have to look at it as we drive off to football (his dad is one of the coaches)." (They're going anyway. Maybe I should make my two go.)

An image flashed for a moment of having to experience pulling your dead and maimed dog off the road, cover her up, to prepare to bury her later. I said, "I'm so sorry you had to do that."

To my dismay, I felt myself getting anxious. I'd caught the time out of the corner of my eye and realized mine was getting short. Yet, I could feel that this was not the moment to pull away from this conversation. It would be premature and just wrong. Then Scott started pestering me for a toy he was looking for. It even felt wrong to disengage from Maria long enough to tell him it was in the car. Then I glanced out the window and was reminded I'd left the van up on the road at the foot of our driveway in preparation for going to get Jackie. I also noticed a very unusual amount of traffic, so I wasn't comfortable about letting him to up to get it. He's getting impatient and louder, wanting an answer and I'm trying to be as present as possible for Maria and feeling more and more off balance: I wasn't doing anything well. I felt compelled to offer my services, even though I felt terribly hypocritical because I hoped the answer was "no". It was, in fact she offered to help me, by taking Connor to football!

We said goodbye, and I was free to go get Jackie. I asked Scott if he wanted to go. He did not. Since I only anticipated being gone about 10 minutes (queue up the "jaws" theme song) I let him stay.

My route to Jackie's takes me past Maria's house. The road was indeed wet. She must have taken the bucket of water down immediately after we talked. She would have had to carry it down a steep drive. To me there seemed to be plenty of visibility for a car coming around the curve just east of her house, the direction from which the truck had come. He must have been going really fast if he had been unable to stop.

Jackie's house is about another mile further, down one of the few side roads that goes down to a highway by the river. I'd expected her to be waiting in the driveway, but no one was there. I waited a moment, thinking she might be watching for me from the house, and then parked when she didn't come. Her house is up a drive that has an electronic gate across and there was no passage for a walker. So I called up the drive and was answered by two huge dogs, barking furiously. "Where are your people?" I knew they couldn't be there because those dogs could be heard for some distance. My head was ringing. It's 4:20. I decided to give her a little longer, just in case she'd thought I was picking her up at 4:30. I tried the cell, but there was no reception. I tried getting out of the car ("BARK BARK BARK") to find a pocket of connection and there was none. Turned on the news. Waited. Traffic problems all over town. A paving project on the highway below us. The latest emergency measure for the economy. Anticipation of the Debate. 4:27. I found a scrap of paper and wrote a note. Kept it neutral: "Hi, Jackie. It looks like I missed you. I waited a while, but then had to go." Name and phone number. Found a slot next to the number pad by the gate and put it there to be found. Sighing, back in car. Up pulls the school bus.

She got in and told me she was so sorry. Ordinarily the bus drops her at 3:50, but today they'd had to sit for 20 minutes down on the highway: big traffic jam. I remembered the repaving project, and then it made sense why all the traffic was on our road: frustrated drivers trying to bypass the clot. Maybe the man who had hit Garret's dog was one of those drivers, going too fast to make up the time.

Well, I had a babysitter again. But I wasn't out of it yet. When we got home I realized just how unrealistic it would have been to do what I had considered doing. I'd decided to not do the football run and I'd been thinking that maybe I could leave Connor and his friend with Scott for the interval before Gary could get home. Scott greeted me crying and furious. "They're being mean to me." What was I thinking? Two older boys and a younger brother? Conflagrations spring up between them with no notice. It happens so fast; a roll of an older kid's eyes, a disparaging tone, an insult slipped in sideways and they're off. Or, Scott deliberately pesters them to get a rise and it escalates. Each boy's own role in the conflict is invisible to him. It was a big mistake to have left the three of them together. This meant playing more catch-up, because within seconds of Scott embracing me for comfort he's kicked Connor as he was telling me about Scott's sins. So I had to send Scott to my bedroom to cool off. There was a time when Connor would have been driven, driven to retaliate. I'm glad to see he's at least grown past that. Now if he could just keep his tone respectful to Scott. I went in the room to talk with and comfort Scott, brought him out to tell the older kids in his presence that I expected them to treat Scott with respect and I expected Scott to do the same toward them.

Only then could I leave.

Sometimes it takes extraordinary energy to escape the gravitational field of home and kids. I wonder what next Wednesday will be like.

I did get there on time.

*************************************************************************************

Photo of Scott posted below

The Meeting

Monday at 2:30 was the IEP meeting for Scott. Individualized Education Program. Present were the school psychologist, the learning specialist, speech therapist, briefly an occupational therapist, Billy, Gary, and myself.

There will be another meeting, to actually come up with goals and a plan for implementation. For the life of me I can't think of how we filled an hour and a half, but we were talking, listening, discussing the entire duration.

I'd received calls ahead of time from the school psychologist requesting that I bring a letter of diagnosis of adhd from the pediatrician. We actually connected on the phone voice-to-voice on Thursday last week. I'd been feeling a bit exasperated because I had some errands to do and Scott had been waiting pretty patiently (teacher planning day, out of school) to go and buy a reward for having behaved well in class that week. (Yeah, I've stooped to bribery. Short term goals and fairly immediate rewards seem to be most effective with him.) I was exasperated because I'd just finished listening to a message from her that went on and on and on. Clearly a long-winded sort that takes a long time to articulate a thought. The gist of the call was the request to bring the letter of diagnosis.

I had one question that I thought could be answered succinctly. Do I have to have the letter physically in my hand on Monday, or can it be in process, in the mail? If I had to have it in hand, this was going to be one of the stops on the errand run, the doctor's office. Friday I was going to the coast for my annual book retreat to choose our next year's reading list, so if the letter was mandatory then Thursday was the only day I could get it.

So that made it worth tracking her down. While on the phone at the Trillium school office with a student worker I concluded that I didn't want the letter faxed to that office. It's a good idea to give students the work experience, but I just didn't have faith that the letter would end up where it was supposed to be. It took a bit of prying to find out which school the psychologist was at that particular day but I finally got a phone number.

She seemed surprised that I'd found her. She couldn't talk long, she said, because she was supposed to be in a classroom doing an observation of an autistic student. She then proceeded to launch into an incredibly roundabout way of saying the letter had to be in hand. My question was answered long before she was finished and I was trying to be as crisp as possible. As we were about to hang up I said that I hoped there would be a lot of tissues at the meeting.

Perhaps that's what opened the way for what came next, which made my (impatient) patience with her worthwhile. She said, "I want you to know that we have six of those meetings scheduled at the school that day, and we intentionally scheduled his for last so that we'd have a full amount of time, and more if necessary to really talk about him."

She told me that as a child she herself had been 'tied to my chair' with a length of jump-rope, she was so hyperactive. I gasped and she said she was nearly 50 and it was a less enlightened time. I told her I remembered that time too. She had specialized in adhd in her career as a psychologist, and wanted to tell me her story as a means of encouragement about Scott's prospects. I told her I appreciated that she would have empathy for him and she said, "Oh! He's an adorable kid."

So that was very kind.

I spent all day Monday preparing for the meeting. I'd had a sort of plan to cry all day so there wouldn't be anything left for the meeting and I could conduct myself with some dignity, but it turns out there was no need. I've crossed a line somewhere from dread of what is to acceptance of what is. I realized the meeting wasn't so much about them giving me bad news about my child; it was about figuring out a plan to get him what he needs.

So, the short story is:

1) We had a meeting
2) It was non-adversarial, I felt solidly that these people were on Scott's side and in agreement that the school system was not serving his needs.
3) With diagnostic letter in hand, supported by various tests and evaluations more services were going to be requested and probably secured.
4) We would meet again in 2 weeks to discuss a plan for implementation
5) Resources are very limited. Welcome to the struggle millions of parents before me have engaged and engage now.

That's the condensed version. The learning specialist asked if we planned to try medication. I said that I wanted to see how he did with the special services first. She then told us that at best she was going to be able to serve him 60 minutes per week. To people who have been-there-done-that maybe that's a huge amount of service, but to me roughly 15 minutes a day in a 7 hour day seems shockingly inadequate. I think she was telling us this to illustrate the impact we could expect from special ed: kind of like trying to turn an ocean cruiser by pushing against it with a canoe and a paddle. The reality of this didn't hit me until yesterday, after the meeting.

I think she may have taken some personal risk in bringing up medications and with as clear a tilt as she did. She said, "I'm not advocating for medications. I'm advocating for him. He should be enjoying school. He should be at the top of his class, he's so smart. He is so consumed with being tortured by his adhd he just can't take in what he needs to engage him."

Wow.

I'd independently come to a notion that he is not getting the bigger picture, the underlying theme of school. In the same way he didn't get the underlying theme of baseball, was just being hit in the face over and over, neither does he comprehend there's a kind of grand design of school. Most of the other children absorb that by osmosis, that they are participating in something. And it has an underlying structure and meaning for them where they can begin to take satisfaction in mastery within that structure. Scott does not have this. So his behavior is at odds with the other children and with the classroom. In addition he has a serious communication disorder which keeps him from understanding what people are telling him. It really must be torture for him to be at school. It holds none of that secondary pleasure for him. It's an exercise in will power to keep himself reined in.

In a one-on-one setting he does quite well. It seems the chances for getting that are microscopic in the public school system. (Oh, what $10 billion per month going to Iraq could do...) Homeschooling is, and always will be an option. I don't think I am the best teacher for him, and to afford a tutor I would probably have to work full time. And since I'm the primary caregiver, when would I work, and/or who would take care of Scott while I do it? So if I keep him home he's stuck with me as teacher.

I'm beginning to grasp that he may be more profoundly affected than I'd realized. I would not withhold insulin from a child with diabetes. If his well-being is dependent on replacing some chemicals that are missing in his nervous system, then it's somewhat urgent to start soon, before he's entrenched in a negative posture toward school. And set in maladaptive behaviors.

More to think about. Waiting for a call from his pediatrician.

Sigh. My poor little boy.

More babysitter woes

D didn't babysit last week on account of Scott being sick (frantic scrambling ensued). I called him yesterday to confirm about babysitting last night; since there had been a break in the routine I thought there was a risk that maybe he'd forget. I left a message.

The phone rang at ten til one. I was in another part of the house and so didn't pick up, but when I checked caller ID I saw that it was him. He didn't leave a message. Ten minutes later when he rang I picked up and he said he had a school project and wasn't going to be able to make it that night. This was 3 and a half hour's notice.

I spluttered. I told him there was no way I could possibly get a sitter so quickly; the kids I'd ordinarily use are in football (along with Connor which is why I needed D in the first place), and the others are in school, which means I wouldn't be able to try to make arrangements til very close to my departure time. He said he'd been trying to reach me all morning. (However, caller ID and phone records say those were his only calls)

I don't like situations where I have to insist that my will prevail, and I can't say I did it gracefully, but insist I did. So we agreed that he would come at our usual time. When I hung up I saw that I had a message. It was his mother, my dear friend. She said that D had been trying to reach me and he'd asked her to leave a message that a school project had suddenly come up and he wasn't going to be able to do it on Thurs since Fri was a school holiday, and she was sorry it was such short notice and that she hoped I got this message before I left.

Oh yeah. There's this delicate issue of my friendship with his mother, and now I'm gun-shy about what happened last month.

I emailed her and told her that I didn't think I'd be able to find another sitter and I was going to have to pay for my appointment when canceling on such short notice, and so I'd insisted and D had agreed he'd come. I asked her if she wanted me to keep her in the loop in these things, or if she'd rather I just handle them between D & me.

I went to pick up Scott at school. I got home about 3:45 and Connor's downstairs with his school friend: I'm the ride to football this week, on the way to my appointment. Connor said as I came in the door, "D called. He thinks he might not be able to babysit" What!!!

I toyed with the idea of not calling, thinking that would force him to honor his commitment. Then I thought that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. I called, but got his cell's voice mail. I called my neighbors to ask them if they could watch Scott (with 20 minute's notice) on an emergency basis because I thought my sitter was going to cancel. They are wonderful, gracious people, sort of a linchpin that our little group of homes revolves around, but I really hate to make this kind of frantic request. I called Gary to tell him of the change in plans and D called my cell. It was 4:15. I needed to leave at 4:30.

He said his mother had had to go into work and had the car, and so could I come and get him?

It would take me 10-15 minutes to get to his house to pick him up, the same coming back with him. It was right on the border of barely do-able, and I just did not want to be on that frantic edge. I hesitated while I tried to calculate it, then tried re-calculating (I think so poorly on my feet in rushed conditions) (otherwise maybe I'd have thought to ask if I could just bring Scott to his house). Then I just reached a point inside where I felt convinced this whole thing of having my friend's son babysit for me was a. very. bad. idea. I could not think through that conviction and so told him that I didn't think the whole babysitting thing was working and that he didn't need to babysit for me any more.

Then the second-guessing. For some reason this issue that had just happened seemed emblematic of the whole experience, and was why I felt so done with it. But was it fair to generalize this with the whole experience? Yeah, I'd been frantic last week too when he'd not come, but (even though even his mother was dubious at his stated reason of not wanting to get sick and take a chance on missing school--he's been an indifferent student) it was a legitimate cancellation. And, it was possible that he'd only just learned that his mother had had to take the car in to work, and he had tried to call at 3:45 when I could have more easily gone and gotten him (though, he called the home number and didn't call my cell until 4:15). Again, he said he'd been trying and trying to call me, but my caller ID's both cellular and home said he'd only called those 2 times.

So perhaps I was premature in giving up in disgust.

But ultimately, though I could have been more gracious about it, and I was telling him this in the heat of a compressed moment, I do think my instinct is correct: that it's just not a good idea for my friend's son to have this job.

Later, after my appointment I emailed my friend and told her what I'd done: I told her that I was afraid I'd been unfair to D. I told her that I just had an intuitive sense that the arrangement wasn't working out, and I still felt that way, even with some distance from the heat of the moment. I told her I thought D had overstated the degree to which he tried to get hold of me. I told her that I really hoped this wouldn't interfere in our friendship which I hold most dear.

I haven't heard from her yet.

And, I don't have a babysitter for Wednesdays, either.

Minutiae and tedium

A behind-the-scene look at what's behind the "Fine" when queried, "How was your day?"

Connor is in football, and has practice 3 nights a week. This continues until the end of October (unless they get to play in championship rounds). There aren't a lot of kids in our neighborhood participating and we're kind of in the hinterlands. Connor's school chum River lives even farther out than we do, so his dad and I arranged a driving schedule.

One of the practices is on Wednesday nights, which is the evening I see my counselor. To protect that time I agreed to take the boys on Tuesdays, James would take them on Wed, and we'd switch-off the Fridays. Since Connor would be away I would need someone to watch Scott, and so I set up the babysitting gig with D (of broken-skateboard fame. In fact, this job was the context that the issue of whether he was working off a debt or serving time came up.).

It seems simple, but in practice for 2 50-something parents new to the sport and the culture, juggling this and remembering just what we've agreed to requires some mental exertion. To add to the complexity, the practice schedules were different before school started than after school started; there were field rotations to not overuse the practice field, and their teams have yet a different field for practice on Fridays. I clutch at details the way I grab for groceries falling from a split bag.

Gary had bought tickets to see Alison Krause and Robert Plant on Tuesday night, the evening I'd ordinarily drive. He called James and arranged that we'd swap this week: I drive Wednesday and James drive Tuesday. James said fine, said he could even drive on Wednesday too if I'd like. Since driving them Wednesday meant facing the uncertainties of rush-hour traffic --because of course the practice and my appointment are at opposite ends of town-- I said maybe I'd consider that. But I thought it was doable--might make for a little suspense about making my appointment, but chances are it would be ok.

Tuesday Scott woke sick and didn't go to school. I decided to not go to the concert (there's a backstory to that, too, that I won't go into.). When Connor and River got off the schoolbus River wasn't feeling well either. He wasn't going to practice, so his dad came to get him and I drove Connor to practice. I forgot to ask him if maybe he could drive the next day after all, since Scott being sick might mean no babysitter. I called and left a message on his home phone asking if that might be possible.

Moving parts: will Scott need to stay home another day, or not? If he does, is he recovering-from-being-sick or actively-sick-sick? Will D be willing to babysit if he's still sick, or would his mother prefer that he not? Do I disclose that he is sick? Is River still sick? Did he go to school? Could James do the driving if River's not sick? Could Gary get off work in time to be home at my usual departure time if the babysitter couldn't come?

Scott woke up sick.

Trying to solve for the variable meant a lot of calls. Another call to James. Left message. Call to his cell. Left message. Call to Gary's office, left message: could he be home by 4:30? Call to Gary's cell. Left message. Call to D's mom: did she mind if Scott was sick when D babysat? She said she didn't mind, but was going to be talking to him at noon and she would ask him then. Several calls and messages hanging out there with several hours before I'd need to leave. Each shrouding an important piece of information that would guide my next steps:

If D can't babysit and James can't drive: fall-back on whether or not Gary can be home when I need to leave. If he could I could either take the boys myself on my way to my appointment, or he could take them but he'd have to take a sick Scott along for the ride.

If D CAN babysit, then all proceeds as normal. I take the boys to practice, Gary picks them up after work and brings them back here, D's here with Scott for the interim.

If D can't babysit and Gary can't be home I call James in on his offer to take the boys and I wait home with Scott, hoping Gary will get home in time for me to make at least part of my appointment.

If D can't babysit, Gary can't be home and James can't drive I take the boys to practice with Scott in the car, and I cancel my appointment.

I took Scott down to the video store to get him a movie. I checked messages upon return and no one had returned my calls. It's 2:30 and I'm starting to get nervous.

Call to James. Left message. Call to James' cell. Left message. Call to Gary's office. Left message. Call to Gary's cell. Left message. Call to M, who was very apologetic about having forgotten to call me back. D said he "didn't want to take a chance on missing any school", which was very surprising to her. So now I know at least one variable. No babysitter.

I notice I have an email. It's from Gary, saying he'd be home no later than 5:15. I usually leave for my appointment at 4:30, and the boys need to leave for practice by 4:30 too. I call him again. Leave message. Tell him I have no babysitter and that 5:15 is too late.

This calls to mind the issue of people's timesense. People who have a fairly reliable and measured sense of time passage always seem to find people with a Salvador Dali clock. And marry them. I've been disappointed by Gary's overestimating how much time he has and underestimating how long it takes to do something before. Relying on him being on time is not a safe bet.

Still no word from James. I've tried his phones a few times and didn't bother to leave messages. It's 3:30. The school bus arrives. River's with Connor. I ask River if his dad had said anything about taking them that night and he said, "I thought you were."

I'm actually starting to get teary. I left another message for Gary, telling him that he'd said he would take care of Scott next time he was sick. I told him I was calling in favors on the slack I'd cut him over the past 3 weeks: rafting trip one week, gone to Asia the next, working late on Monday night and gone for the concert on Tues and that asking him to be home by 4:30 didn't seem too much to ask.

At ten to four I got hold of James. He'd not heard any of my messages and so was flat-footed being pressed into service. I felt horrible when I realized I was asking him to go from 0 to 60 from a dead stop. So I hesitated. At this point I could still take the boys, IF Gary was home by 4:30. James lives at least 20 minutes west of us, so even getting to our house is a hike. He would need to leave now if he was going to be driving in order to get the boys to the field on time. Hesitation. Do I count on Gary getting home in time, or do I go with the sure bet? I placed my needs above James' and asked him to come. It's really difficult for me to ask a favor of someone when that favor is A. Real. Imposition. as this one was. I guess I wanted my appointment more than I wanted to avoid that shame.

About 10 minutes later Gary called. I told him James was coming and he wanted to know what I'd done that for. I told him it was too late to call back: James was already on his way. Gary arrived 3 minutes ahead of James, rendering James' favor a little unnecessary.

AND,

it was his birthday.

Shit.

School

I couldn't bring myself to write "daze" in the title, but that's exactly where I am: in a daze. Dazed and Confused.

Sick child this morning. Scott has a low grade temperature. So I expect to be interrupted at any time.

A dance analogy comes to mind--that the partners in dance need a certain amount of tension, or resistance between them. The resistance gives them something to work off of, enables responsiveness.

In a way, influencing another's behavior with words is a sort of dance. Influencing children with words requires more skill than I have some days. ( I should probably say my children.) Part of it is the material I have to work with.

Connor's elasticity, responsiveness, alertness yesterday had the consistency of wet clay. Working with him with his homework was like trying to turn a screw with a screwdriver made of putty. It was like trying to drive a nail made of clay with a hammer. He merely compressed and flattened, and wailed, "I can't do it! I'm stupid!"

This is his first year of middle school. All three of his teachers assign regular nightly homework, but there are a number of science projects he is required to do between now and the end of school's first trimester November 21. What he was working on last night was the development of a plan for accomplishing these projects. The basic structure of organization was laid out for him on a piece of paper: "By ________date, I will have read the first third of my book and written a paragraph summary." It's a metric to keep track of his progress: when he proposes to start the project, the date he projects to finish, how many points he will get for each project (he needs a total of 50). Basically he is developing the skill for how to plan long-range, organize and pace himself to keep the demands on him manageable. He's learning to think strategically. And he's not going willingly. To plot out how many weeks he has til the end of the trimester and figure out how to spread the demands evenly out over that period of time flummoxed him. Even transferring the dates we'd painfully worked out from the organizer to his planner book was beyond him. It was agonizing.

Scott's elasticity, responsiveness, alertness fluctuates. Rather than becoming a blob of clay that is too soft to respond to direction, he becomes so porous that you pass right through him. Maybe 'scattered' is the more apt word. It's like trying to grasp a lever to move an object, but you can't because your hand passes right through it. It's like trying to corral and contain one of those little twisters you sometimes see when the days are hot, a swirl of air carrying bits of debris.

Yesterday his teacher Billy told me we needed to talk. He said that he's "out of options"; if Scott doesn't have direct supervision he is up out of his chair, or he's in conflict with another child; he cannot stay on task. Generally he permits free movement in his classroom, but Scott's movement tends to agitate the atmosphere. He said he's never had a child who is so distractible, who is so unable to govern himself. He said he doesn't think it's willful defiance; he can't seem to help it. He feels that special education needs to be involved to a far greater degree, and clearly felt that I should strongly consider medication. I trust Billy, and I know that it would take a lot before he'd lean toward the recommendation. This time I managed to not cry there; I was able to keep it for the ride home.

So I'm back to considering whether or not a classroom is the appropriate environment for him. He just doesn't seem to have the basic skills that are needed to be able to learn in that setting. He really doesn't seem to 'get' what's going on around him and is out of step in the dance of school.

The implications of this impact my plans for leaving this marriage. If I need to bring him home for schooling it seems incompatible with moving forward on those plans.

Sitting here in my pajamas

...a break in the morning routine.

Scott's school hosted an 'annual' K-1-2 "Space Out" sleepover. I would have been there too, waking up on the floor, trying to feed children

except

Gary's gone this week ( last week too with less than a 36 hour layover in the port of home between absences).

I had planned to endure a sleepover at the school, but Gary-in-Asia changed the dynamic. I'm not quite ready to leave Connor alone all night. And, it being a school night, it would be an imposition to ask one of his friends' parents if he could spend the night. (The devil on my shoulder whispering: "Do it! Find Connor a place for the night and don't chaperone the sleepover! Come on, you know you want to.")

Scott adamantly said if I wasn't staying he wasn't either. Then squirmed in the throes of dilemma: he could spend the night at the school, very cool and desirable, without me, or he could be home with me and miss the sleepover.

Those kind of choices really do suck, though, and I should have been more sympathetic to the emotional storms that accompanied his working it out. I do hate when two desirable options are on opposite sides of a choice, and each is accompanied by something not-desired.

It probably was actually a good learning experience and practice. He spent days trying to come up with ways that he could have both the sleepover, and me there.

He chose to stay. So for the price of a potluck dinner (lasagna) I assembled yesterday, the effort to pack, and a drive over to the school, I get to sit here in my pajamas this morning. Where I can be for another two hours if I so choose. When it's pick-up time for Scott. His school only goes for half-days on Fridays.

So I got a break from the usual morning routine of waking a reluctant boy (which is a focused effort, spread over 15-or 20 minutes of time while I accomplish the mini-goals that facilitate the getting out of the door), dressing myself with an eye on the clock, then herding him to the car and making the drive down the hill (the road under construction last week and this week) to park near the school, wade through the crush of children (why do they always congregate in doorways and narrow passage-ways?) to deliver him to class. Drive home, and get here about now.

I don't mind getting a free pass on all that today one little bit.

Taking action

Around the time I was puzzling about the nature of defensiveness and the disagreement with my friend, Mercurious was posting about karma. He stated that while most people view karma in terms of lifetimes, and various lives, it is also referring to the ways we create our reality, moment by moment.

This was a real revelation for me.

He described that process by which we create our reality in terms of:

arising sensory impressions becoming

paired with associations and memories to become

a sensation of pleasant/unpleasant

which is immediately paired with either desire (for a pleasant sensation to continue) or repulsion (wanting to repel an unpleasant sensation) which becomes

volition and then

action.

He then grouped this sequence into two types of psychology, or karmic stages. Up to where sensation becomes desire/hatred is called 'resultant karma'--meaning results of all that has come before--memories, thoughts, associations. This is beyond the realm of moral judgment, it simply is. It's the shaping of perception and interpretation through the prism of that person's individual life history.

From the place of desire/hatred up through volition and action is the place of 'causal karma'--where action creates new "karmic outcomes".

The very exciting part of this is the notion that the element of choice can be introduced into this model, particularly at the 'gap' in the stage between recognizing pleasure/not-pleasure and it becoming desire/hatred. And this is where freedom from our habitual thoughts and actions can arise. He suggests meditation as the means by which to gain the awareness of that stage before a pleasant/unpleasant sensation turns to desire/hate. And with awareness comes the ability to choose.

I hope I didn't mangle Mercurious's excellent post too much in my summary, and I highly recommend you go to the post yourself because he explains it so much better than I do. The reason I included a summary here was to show it as a template that I put my own experience with my friend into to see what it would look like:

Talking to my friend, I mention that I’m satisfied that her son has worked off a debt he owed me. I feel a change in our atmosphere and she says something; I feel something more intensely

That is a form of sensory input that comes through my ears and eyes, and it is now being compared to memories and concepts I have stored.

She is not smiling;

In this case, immediately on receiving the sensory form, a basic sense of unpleasantness arises

Memories of other similar situations arise; memories of disapproval, memories of being surprised by unexpected negative emotions. An unpleasant feeling arises.

The unpleasantness is immediately joined by revulsion to push away this unpleasant feeling

I dislike my unpleasant feeling, I identify it with being disapproved of, of being unexpectedly hurt. I want it to go away.

Hating leads to volition, an intent to take action to dispel the negative feeling.

I resolve to talk

I follow through on my intent

I send an e-mail seeking to see if the feeling I’m having is real; seeking to find out if there’s a misunderstanding.

This is a karmic cycle where each of these steps is predisposing the next step. The next set of sensory forms, associations, hating, volition, and action take place, and they’re determined by the previous. On goes the karmic cycle.

Mercurious suggests that at the moment between my recognition of 'unpleasant' and my 'hatred' of what was unpleasant, I can introduce some 'space' into that gap. I can accept the existence of the unpleasant feeling and see it as merely a result of things that have gone before. Perhaps this is not a sensation which demands action. So, theoretically it was possible that I could let the feeling of unpleasantness in that moment with M pass, understanding that it’s a result of prior conditions within us both.

There is a curious feeling of vulnerability in the prospect of accepting a sensation as what-is, without being compelled to respond.

I guess the point of Mercurious's post is not that it is never appropriate to respond, but introducing that element of choice can mix things up a little, let us choose a path that's not merely a continuation of our past conditioning.

Defensiveness is a strange animal

The babysitting incident below was a relatively small one in the great scheme of things. I dealt with it with my friend, but I've continued to work it below the surface. Like the climatologist who learned that he could save himself the trouble of tramping about on wet cloudy mountains* by setting up a weather system in miniature in a lab, I am using the experience as an opportunity to gain insights on a larger Pattern.

A recurring theme in my life has been that people important to me have often not fulfilled their responsibilities and then refuse to be held accountable. To question their actions (or inactions) is to 'accuse' them, no matter how gently or neutrally I try to frame my questions. And then I'm punished with their anger and resentment. Not being able to pursue the matter to closure with them, I turned my scrutiny inward to see if I was at fault. Maybe something was wrong with how I'd perceived them. I usually gave others the benefit of the doubt.

I hate the specter of victimhood a statement like that implies, but it is true. As it is true that the same pattern shows up in all kinds of different places. From the mundane (calling Gary on having taken the trash out but having not re-lined the can so that I have to set down the armload of trash--I'd gathered up in a hurry because the baby's crying-- to take the liner that he's left folded up inside the lidded can, unfold it, line the can, pick up the trash I'd had to set down and put it in the can while listening to the crying get more urgent--to tell him that this was a real stumbling block and had cost me generated his anger toward me and added to the general resentment) to the larger life-affecting stuff, this has recurred.

I had thought the babysitting incident with my friend below was another variation on that pattern and I could gain some insight by studying it. Then I had some more insights that shook that assumption and I'm still thinking about that.

But it did give me an opportunity to meditate on the curious nature of defensiveness. I realized that when people are conflict-avoidant it is generally because anticipating the defensiveness it will raise in another person is daunting. And then to have one's own defensiveness triggered and so have mutual defensiveness is excruciatingly uncomfortable. To me it has felt like an electrified fence, a kind of repelling force field. Or like a feedback loop. Only with a twist, or a sting.

And it's funny how exquisitely tuned humans' defensiveness can be. My father said something to me once that was both painful and inexplicable. I had to mull it over for several days before I could bring myself to approach him about it. From the moment he answered the phone it was as if he could sense something was coming from me that would seem critical of his behavior--I could feel the alarms beginning to sound in him and I could feel the defensiveness. The electrical field of defensiveness seems to force ANY exchange into the mold of accusation--even if the purpose of that exchange is to seek understanding and connection. And it seems to arise instantaneously.

I wonder if there's a correlation between a person's tendency to become anxious and how readily they become defensive.

There really does seem to be a lot of it about though. It's so common it's the stuff of comedy shows and dramas--person a does something; person b is hurt but won't approach person a because person a "might get angry".

So I'm just curious.

-----------------------------------------------------------

* from Bill Bryson's book, A Short History of Nearly Everything: on page 161 he recounts the story of a British scientist C.T.R. Wilson who studied cloud formations at the top of Scottish mountain Ben Nevis. Looking for an easier way he built an artificial cloud chamber.

Exerpts, a story of Scott and another microcosm

This event happened about 18 months ago during the last month of Scott's kindergarten year (May 2006). This is the story as I recounted it to my cousin:


I've been on the front line of a very uncomfortable dynamic at the boys' school. It started the week just before memorial w/e when Scott came home weepy and said he'd hit his best friend Jack. That surprised me a lot; he'd just been at the boy's birthday party the weekend before and they'd gotten along so well. They've been pretty good buddies since school started and it just seemed odd.

Scott's not been as easily assimilated into a school model as Connor was in kindergarten.

So I haven’t been able to completely relax about him in school the way I was when Connor was at this stage. He’s one of these children that you’re never entirely sure if he’s ‘getting’ you. It’s like a language barrier, really, as if he’s not a native English speaker. His indexing is very different from ours, so what we’re thinking we’re telling him may not be what he’s taking in. It’s disconcerting and can be irritating. It also can be dangerous for him because adults assume he’s getting what they’re telling him and expect him to behave accordingly. There’s a difference in someone who doesn’t do as expected because he doesn’t understand what’s expected (and the adult knows it), vs someone who doesn’t do as expected when he does understand what’s expected. I think that Scott may be mistakenly classified sometimes in the latter group. If it was clear that English was his second language I think he’d be treated with a little more understanding. If he was in a smaller classroom (28 kids, 21 of whom are boys) a teacher would have a little longer to consider the subtleties. Actually his teachers have been pretty kind, kinder consistently than I am, I’m afraid. He’s been receiving speech therapy since he was 3 (delay issues and now intelligibility issues) and I went in for his annual meeting. Got the report I was expecting: doing well in his speech progress, not quite settling down the way many of the other kindergartners have at this stage. Easily distractable, impulsive.

This is probably a classic case where having a depressed mother directly impacts a child. Optimally I’d have kept him home another year to let some more maturity come into play. [I don’t know if I could have done it though, and stayed sane.] Optimally I’d have been a frequent and regular volunteer so I could keep my finger more surely on the pulse of his well being. [I don’t know if I could have done that and stayed sane. My need for this solitary time that they’ve been in school has been voracious and nearly insatiable. The thought of any obligations caused some real anxiety. It was a conscious choice I made to not volunteer this year.] I haven’t had to give what he probably needed most—some really focused attention during this first year of his academic life.

ANYway, he came home and told me he’d hit his best friend. This is the first time he’s done this. He was genuinely tearful. I e-mailed the teacher and cc’d the principal because I’d not heard from them. I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t hearing from them because this had been resolved satisfactorily between the kids in the classroom. The note I got back from Mr. S., the teacher, assured me that was the case. It had not risen to a level of seriousness requiring a principal’s intervention, or a need to contact me. So I was blindsided when I got a call from Jack’s father later that week saying that his son was saying that Scott had ‘punched him in the nose’ and the damage had been serious enough that he was ‘still bleeding’. Several days later. His father said they wanted to have a meeting at the school with the teacher and wanted to know if I could come. It may have been more imperative than that. I agreed to it and was there Tuesday morning. What was odd was that I thought we were just going to meet with the teacher, but Jack’s mother headed up the stairs to the principal’s office. The principal hadn’t known we were meeting and so it was an unexpected meeting for him, too. Jack and Scott were with us. The story was that Karol had picked up Jack after school and he had blood on his nose. I don’t know if it was dried blood or what. She said no one told her that something had happened. There must have been a hand-off between one adult and another; it seems odd that she feels she couldn’t get any information. I don’t know when it started bleeding profusely; it could have been that night, or maybe not even until over the holiday when they went to visit some friends. The point was, the principal expressed surprise; he said that ordinarily any incident that involves punching and a bloody nose would be dealt with immediately, in his office. He asked the school secretary if she’d dealt with a bloody nose that day, and she said she had not. There had been no crying, no upset that seems reasonable to expect if someone gets hurt to that extent. The teacher hadn’t known anything about it either. So apparently something happened that caused this boy’s nose to bleed—later, well after the incident—that no adult witnessed, and no one witnessed a kid being distraught, which you’d think would have been the case. Karol said tho that she’d talked with the pediatric nurse, and that the bleeding could only be accounted for by some trauma. She then proceeded to say that she has witnessed Scott on several occasions be aggressive with other children where it was unprovoked. Her case in point was when the kids were lining up to leave and Scott ran across the room and plowed into Jack, knocking him to the ground. She said, ‘if it looks like a duck’, in other words it was a slam dunk that Scott had done it, especially since Jack said he had. Then, there in the meeting, Scott said he had hit Jack in the nose.

Now I remember being a kid, and how ambiguous words are. “Hitting him in the nose” can mean anything from a vicious beating on down the continuum to having bumped him in the course of physical play. I think the word ‘hitting’ might mean different things to each of the adults in the room. Fortunately we have a principal who is aware of this ambiguity, and is also aware that children are not the most reliable of historians. Scott’s saying he did it was case-closed to Jack’s parents, but I can remember being a child and saying I’d done something because when people asked me, it seemed like they wanted me to say it, or because I thought it would be brave, or because I was confused and thought maybe I HAD done it, everyone else seemed so sure. And I think the principal is aware of this dynamic complicating the narratives of children, especially when adults start asking lots of questions.

So the way the principal handled it was to make clear that we can’t have hitting of any kind at school, and that both boys need to keep their hands to themselves.

I came in to the meeting with the guiding principal that Scott should not be hitting anybody. There was nothing to be defensive about. Furthermore I felt there was as much danger to Scott in the situation, (the danger of being or being labeled as a hitter) as there was to Jack. I saw it as a problem that was between ALL of us adults and that we were there to problem solve so both boys come out safe and successful. I was weepy a few times, this was really difficult. But it seemed the meeting ended with a sense of being conciliatory. The principal made a point that while Scott should by no means hit Jack, he felt it unlikely that he’d caused Jack’s nose to be so injured.

Except Jack has continued to come home and tell Karol that Scott’s been hitting him. I got a message from Karol about 2 weeks ago saying Jack said Scott had hit him in the forehead and chest. Then another message that Jack said Scott had shoved his finger up Jack’s nose and that he had a bloody nose. Each time I got a message from her I called the school to see if they could tell me what happened (that seemed prudent before speaking to her). Each time they said the boys had had great days, had played wonderfully well, and really like each other. They’ve been really watching these kids and were surprised when I told them Karol called me saying that Jack had said that Scott had abused him. I also spoke with the music teacher who said in her opinion these were boys who really liked and were drawn to each other, but didn’t necessarily bring out the best in each other. She said they had had an altercation over some crayons and Scott did hit him, but they were able to deal with it in class. She said that it’s by no means unilateral, that it’s a feature of their relationship and that Jack gives as much as he gets.

The school staff has continued to give me the feedback that they see no evidence that Scott is targeting Jack; that he is impulsive and a physical boy and so sometimes when he’s with other impulsive and physical boys that physical things happen. But they see no malicious intent. In the case of this latest bloody nose Scott had been no where near Jack when it broke out. His mother says (again) that Jack says that they had been underneath the table when Scott pushed a finger up his nose and that it didn’t start bleeding at first.

So, either the school staff is incredibly negligent and stupid in letting these incidents go by unobserved, or Scott is very cleverly planning these assaults to insure that he not get caught, or, maybe Jack's mother is giving too much credence to the narrative of a 6 year old. I’m not saying the boy is lying, because I think kids have such a confused view of the truth that the term doesn’t really apply to them. Who knows what may be influencing his story. I have no idea what kinds of questions mom’s asking him. Perhaps he’s perseverating on some event where Scott did hit him. Perhaps he’s seen just how excited adults get. Perhaps he and Scott bumped into each other during their play at school, maybe it even hurt, and in his mind that becomes “Scott hit me”. From what the school staff has observed, they’ve continued to play very happily together.

Well, I called her to suggest we keep talking, only maybe move our venue to e-mail where it’s a little less loaded. I just wanted her e-mail address, and it turns out she didn’t want to continue the conversation. She wanted an outlet for her anger, and she dumped it all over me. To her it’s a done deal that ‘your child is hurting my child and it’s because you’re lousy parents who don’t know how to discipline your kid’. It was as if I was personally responsible, as if I had hit Jack. She’s already sure that Scott will be attacking him next year, and she hopes we come up with a ‘discipline plan’ over the summer to keep that from happening. She told me I was ‘in denial’ about Scott. The whole exchange was a shock, because I’m not used to adults speaking to me this way. I took (I think) the higher road and did not make personal remarks about her, her parenting, or her child. This was precisely why I’d wanted to move the venue to e-mail, to avoid exchanges like this. This was not a conversation, she interrupted whenever I’d speak, and when I did have an insertion point and pointed out that none of what she’s been saying Jack is saying is consistent with what the school has been telling me, she just couldn’t hear that. It’s odd. If Scott came home telling me things like Jack’s telling her, I would be in contact with the school. If the school was telling me things that were at odds with what Scott was telling me, that would signal to me that I needed to be careful with how I questioned him, and sift the story very carefully to see what could be accounting for it.

It is so interesting the connections people make in their minds. I think this sort of unconscious ‘logic of the unreasoning’ is a common theme in humans and probably is at the root of many of the world’s conflicts. This thing with Karol is a case in point. It is not reasonable for her to be angry with me personally, but it seems logical to her. I have not hit her son. My son has not hit her son when they’ve been under my watch. If I were a day care operator and this was happening while the kids were in my care, it may be reasonable for her to be angry with me. If I had criticized or impugned her kid it would be reasonable for her to be angry with me. If the school were validating that Scott is a behavior problem who is hurtful to other children and I were refusing to acknowledge that, that would be ‘denial’. Children in conflict does not mean that adults have to be adversarial: I was and remain a good friend to a woman in St. Louis whose son did target Connor (and unlike this case with Jack, it was clearly obvious to everyone concerned—preschool teacher and director and his mother herself)--because of the simple fact that SHE wasn’t hurting Connor, and she was not directly responsible each time her child hit mine. Yet it appears to seem reasonable to Karol that I’m a legitimate recipient for her anger. Perhaps she understood the conciliatory tone at the meeting as a ‘promise’ that ‘it wouldn’t happen again’, and feels I’ve failed to honor the terms. I’m often surprised though at the leaps in associations people make, and then the strength of the emotions that result.

It’s sort of sad, because Jack’s one of the few people Scott wants to have for his birthday party, and it doesn’t sound too likely they’ll let him come. He wasn’t in school for the last 3 days (after the latest bloody nose), and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same logic of illogic applies: We’re to blame for Jack’s not getting to have his last 3 days of school. I have a feeling this may not be over, and there may be reverberations depending on whatever and however she talks about this to her friends. This school is a very small community, and since it’s a k-8 we’re going to know each other for a very long time.

Hopefully time will show her (and me) that Scott’s not mass murderer material.