boyshit

I can't leave them alone for a minute. This includes the supposed adult.

SO, Saturday before last Gary took the boys backpacking. I might have gone on that trip, but I'd agreed to close the dojo at nights while the owners were away. I welcomedmade the best of the alone time.

It came at a price.

Connor burst in early Sunday afternoon. The (damn) dog got the first (effusive) greeting, and he'd barely said hello to chopped-liver me before he's asking if he can have "a thingy". "What's a 'thingy?'" "Dad?" Silence and sheepish grins. "Well?"

He wants a Pl.ayboy magazine.

He wants us to buy it for him. "Dad said to ask you."

I glare at Gary. "You let it go this far? You didn't just say no and stop this thing from the outset?"

In reply, Gary goes into the office and digs out the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. When it came in the spring I'd looked through it and decided it wasn't appropriate for a (then) 11 year old. It's not the coy nudity (in this issue some of the swimsuits are painted on), it's the blatant intent to be provocative. I'd bypassed Connor and gave it to Gary asking him what he thought of it. It languished in his office until last Sunday. Various pictures are now torn out and taped to Connor's bedroom walls.

The question isn't whether or not he can have Playb.oy magazine. It's the discussion of why not. He's already anticipating my saying no. And he already has his own idea of the nature of my objection. I want him to really hear me, rather than have my thoughts pressed into the mold of some stereotype and dismissed. Of course I have no control over what he does with my words. But it's a good exercise in coming to my own sense of internal clarity about it.

Part of that is to have a better sense of what this means to him. Although he's 12 and I suppose it should be obvious that it's about seeking the visual sexual experience I still wonder if that's too simple. When I question I get the 'well, duh' look from him. I'm trying to probe the origins of this conversation between him and Gary for clues. (And where was Scott while this talk was taking place?)

Connor is awaiting my "answer".

One thing I'm considering is substituting some sort of book of photographic art; something with less focus on self-gratification. My friend Doug is an artist with a reverential approach to the human body. His portfolio of figure studies is very beautiful. That could be a good place to start.

My cousin guest-blogged on my other cousin (her big sister)'s site a week or so ago about boys this age and their rising hormones. It was a very funny post and involved "sticky socks". I worry wonder if I might have some in my near future.

And in the meantime a curveball has been thrown from the Scott end of things:

For reasons that will become obvious I'm only going to address the kids involved by letters.

Today after swim class I was going to take Scott to pick up a friend. The boy's dad and I had prearranged a hand-off so J could come home with us to spend the night. Scott was thrilled. As we climbed in the car to head to the rendezvous he asked a question I was only half-listening to (I have got to quit doing that). Something about putting 'junk' in a mailbox being against the law. I assured him that it was indeed against the law and he kept talking as I zoned out until my attention was arrested by him saying something about 'kicking me out'. I wondered if he'd done something to get in trouble and it was only now surfacing, so I said, "You got kicked out of what?" "The Teenaged Bad-Boy's Club! Because Z said I had to put junk in a mailbox to be in the club and I said, 'NO!'--and you know what? I'm GLAD they kicked me out of their club! I don't want to be in that club! I don't want to put junk in a mailbox! It's not right to put trash in a mailbox!"

Well. Here was another reminder of how Scott processes events and information. While I am clueless, things slip in to his consciousness where he works and works them. I have no idea until something like this emerges, fully assembled. This had to have happened some time ago, and only now it's revealed. And I was so pleased. This seemed like such a leap in Self formation. I told him very strong people know what they want to do and can stay true to it under threat. I remarked that this would serve him well, the ability to withstand being bullied into something he doesn't want to do. I told him I couldn't wait to tell his father, and Scott said, "and I can't wait to tell J." Z is a mutual friend of Scott and J's, and like many threesomes, the alliances shift.

It seemed like a normal commute with 2 boys in the car. Excited to see each other for the first time in weeks they spoke loudly, getting louder as sometimes their words would collide and they'd vie to be heard. When they got deafening I tuned in for a moment and realized Scott was telling J about Z. "I was so mad at him I wanted to kill him." J: "But then you would go to jail. Z would go to jail too." (I wonder if they were discussing the trash-in-mailbox story.) Scott: "Z says there's no such thing as jail for children, but there is. It's called, "Juvenile". He says there's no such thing as "Juvenile" but he's wrong." J: "One of my favorite books is called {excavator can't remember } . And there's a children's prison in there and it's really bad." Scott jumped on top of those words to say Z had threatened to kick him out of the Teenage Badboys Club.

Then J said, "Z told me that if I sucked his penis he'd let me be the leader of the Badboy's club. And so I did, then he didn't let me."

Holy.

Shit.

Did I just hear that? Or did I just think I heard it?

But then J again said, "He lied to me. I sucked his penis and then he didn't let me be the leader."

Spoken very matter-of-factly. His main concern was that Z had broken the agreement. He could just as well have said, "Z promised me I'd be the leader of the club if I did 10 push-ups and then he broke his promise."

Scott said, "That's really gay."

J: "What's gay?"

S: "When one guy sucks another's...you know; or sucks his balls."

J: "Welllll, uh"

Clearly he'd had no sense of stigma about his broken transaction with Z, and now I worried that Scott might unwittingly be planting the seed for that: the tree of knowledge, the conclusion of being naked and ashamed. (Believe me, it was bad enough hearing those words come out of Scott's mouth, which I attribute to him having an older brother. It's a three-fold-bad: (1) planting a seed of shame for J, (2) defining 'gay' in such knowing terms, (3) using 'gay' as a pejorative. Oh man, we've got a lot to talk about...). I decided to involve myself in the conversation to point out that children often experiment and it doesn't mean they are 'gay' (then as I said that I realized I was stumbling into the sticky area of seeming to imply something wrong with being gay). The boys didn't notice my attempt; they kept on talking, and so I asked casually, "Hey, J, did you ever tell your mom and dad about that?" "No" he said. That "no" told me he had a sense that this would be different from telling mom and dad that Z had made him do 10 push-ups.


I'm just driving home from a park and a bomb lands in my lap. I have to decide what to do about this, and it's a whole can of worms.

The first worm is the topic of childhood sexuality. Even among 'enlightened' parents it's not a neutral subject. Z, by the way, is a younger child than either Scott or J, but he is definitely an alpha kid. He's extremely competitive and he plays to win. So it doesn't surprise me that he would use dominating tactics, but the possibility that this has bled into the sexual realm is worrisome.

Still, should childhood sexuality be so loaded? It's treated very differently from other realms of child relating. Generally adults give kids freedom to work through other issues on their own, but sexuality seems to be in a category by itself. If J had said that Z had told him he had to do the pushups in order to be the leader of the club, I wouldn't feel any responsibility to say something to the parents. What, really, is different about sexuality?

Those sort of abstract questions I can ponder on my own. I don't think they make a difference in the course of action I see before me:

First, I don't have any sense that J was saying other than the truth. It just came out so innocently, so devoid of overlay that it rings true. And this is why I feel protective of him; if handled poorly it could cause some confusion that could be very difficult to undo--given the fraught relationship our culture has with sex.

Second, a 7 year old boy allegedly used a sexual act as a condition of giving another boy privilege of membership. Maybe Z didn't understand this as a sexual act the way adults do. It's easy to read exploitative intent into it. Still, he had to have gotten the idea from somewhere. I don't know that young children independently come up with an idea of having someone suck their penis, let alone make it a condition for something. It seems more likely he got this from an outside source. His parents need to be aware of this in case the source was exploitive. Another child? An adult, teenager?

J's parents need to know, so they can guide the way he may come to regard this. Though the incident seems devoid of any connotations for him now, a seed has been planted and when our culture teaches him more, he will need a way to help him process it. Scott's response is a case in point. I certainly need to find a way to learn more about the lens through which Scott is looking at the world.

Trying to maintain clarity of intent in discussing this with the boys' parents, now that is going to be a challenge.

Summer so far...

This summer two friends have gifted me private writing space: my dear friend K gave me the gift of membership to the Writer's Dojo, and my dear friend Joyce has allowed me to use her home in Central Oregon. I'm in beautiful Bend, having arrived last night, and I'll be here til Sunday evening. This is the longest stretch of time I've had alone since the birth of my kids--4 nights. Gary's not-working made it possible to leave them. So, thank you, K, Joyce, and Gary.

I also can look forward to another month of full membership at the Dojo. The owner is going to be away for about 10 days later this month. I've agreed to close it up at night, and for that he's converted my reduced membership to full.


The windows and siding were torn off the west side of our house at the end of May. A big hole was dug in early June. The foundation pour was mid-month, and now they're backfilling with gravel, and I suppose the mountains of dirt we've had since the hole was dug.

This has been a hugely attractive nuisance to boys. Once the dirt piles compacted I breathed a little easier, but for a while I had visions of kids buried in their own graves by slides they set off.

Boys finished school in mid-June with Connor tasting the adulation of a rock star. For their school talent show his band played an instrumental version of "An AC-DC song" (they couldn't announce the title: "Highway to Hell"). Connor was the drummer. Perhaps it was because they were nearly last after an interminable 2 hours (the goofy skits and inaudible knock-knock jokes become tedious after a while--thank God I'd had the sense to buy Scott a challenging Transformer toy to occupy himself), but they were rewarded with a great show of enthusiasm. As Connor, flushed with joy, said later, "Before we went on I was going, 'why are we doing this?' but now I know!"

The sound is poor on this video. If you want you can skip to the end where Connor pounds out an ending flourish and raises his sticks in triumph.




Brief aside about Scott here. Rewinding a few days before the talent show, he said something about having new friends. We were walking out to the car after I'd picked him up from school and I was half-listening. I said, "You have new friends? Who are they?" He said, irritably, "Felix, Levi, Ivon!" I said, "But Scott, they're not NEW friends; you've known them for over a year, and Felix longer." I then realized (strike forehead with hand) that he was talking about new in contrast with old--the Skyline friends he realized he was going to see when he went to Connor's talent show. He said, "My old friends might be mad when I tell them I have new friends. But I'm not going to lie to them." He astounds me. He'd been working this issue for some time by himself, before revealing just the tip of the iceberg. I'd had no idea.

School was out a week and then it was time for the Birthday Party Cycle. The boys' birthdays are exactly 3 weeks apart. Connor's came first and he had a slumber party attended by 6 kids. I'd been delusional when I thought at 12 they may have settled some and this would be a quieter party. Instead, they were as active as 5 year olds, only in bigger bodies; jet propelled by the hysteria of pre-puberty.

Didn't I say the construction site was an attractive nuisance? Note the mud on the feet, most of which found its way into the house. No matter how many times they were admonished to "take off your shoes" there was always someone who forgot.


I got to miss some of it though. I'd signed up for a course in bodywork.
An old friend of mine told me about this work, known as Biovalent Systems. She does it exclusively now, and is quietly passionate about it. Talking with her had awakened an interest in things physical therapy that I'd thought was dead. For the longest time the prospect of returning to my profession filled me with vague dread and carried a whiff of soul death. This had complicated any contemplation of leaving this marriage.

I'd expressed an interest in the course to its teacher, then when Gary lost his job wondered if I should reconsider. After some uncomfortable last-minute vacillation I decided to go ahead with it.

In this case, there was definitely a sensation of approaching a door, and having it open further. What was exciting was the sense that what she was saying about the workings of the body in a physical realm seemed metaphoric to the psychological process I've been chronicling here. It's very cool when concepts seem to apply across systems. Maybe there really is some kind of universal organizing principle. I've been inspired to open some of my old anatomy and physiology texts and brush up on my fundamental understandings. The trouble is that everything I relearn seems attached to another thread that when tugged pulls up way more than I can digest. Asking a question about some basic cellular structure or function only yields information that I need a whole other level of expertise to understand the answer.

The biggest mystery though is figuring out how to reconcile my nature, which is private and introverted, with the natures of my sons who are already chafing under the weight of lots of unstructured time. I'm embarrassed that this is such a conundrum for me--balancing their need to find a way to fill their own time with my responsibility to help them do it. Especially when my natural inclination is to wish they had 'off' switches so I could hang them up in the closet for the summer. I'm not proud of that. This shouldn't be so hard, trying to figure out how to be with them in a satisfying way--satisfactory to them, and to me. And having an audience in Gary merely increases the stage fright.

Still, they've found a way to amuse themselves with the materials at hand.

8 years ago, right now; Scott's birth story

It was July 9, 10:50 pm, and I was in hard labor.

Scott was due July 3rd. I was 44 years old, not 4 months away from my 45th birthday.

We were in St. Louis. The weather, which had stayed unseasonably, reasonably cool, had turned hot and muggy on July 4th.

My parents, who'd I'd requested not come to visit to meet the new baby and help out until at least July 17th had ignored me and come on the 3rd. Every few hours they'd ask if I felt "any 'activity' yet?" I'm convinced this delayed my labor.

At my July 3rd OB appointment the dr. said my dilation was 1 cm. This is what it had been the week before when she'd stripped my membranes. The baby was high, nowhere near engaging the cervix. This was the same condition when Connor was at 40 weeks, 1 cm dilation and nowhere near the cervix. In 1997 Connor was delivered via c-section after 15 hours of labor.

On July 9, the OB who'd been supportive of a vbac delivery, in a birthing tub, was beginning to waver. New research had been published that indicated that women attempting a vbac who were induced were much more likely to rupture their uteruses during delivery. Her face was expressionless when she said she wanted me to go to the hospital for a nonstress test. I saw her in the morning, went in for the nonstress test early in the afternoon, and saw the OB again that afternoon. She did an ultrasound in her office and said that I had enough amniotic fluid, barely. She laid her cards on the table. She wanted to schedule a c-section immediately, first thing next morning. She'd "lost enthusiasm" for my having a v-bac. There would be no tub birth. She said conditions weren't "favorable." I wanted another week to wait. She said she was going to be away in a week, and "there are certain things you don't hand off. You don't hand off a 44 year old woman who's had a prior c-section who is 2 weeks late with a baby who hasn't dropped." I compromised by asking for 2 more days.

I went home and cried, then called and scheduled the c-section for 2 days later. I whispered inwardly, "Scott, if you want to come the usual way, you're going to have to give us a sign." I was sick to death of my parents being there and begged them to go visit my brother in Ohio. I made arrangements for Connor's care during the birth. They wanted to take him with them to my brother's, but I really wanted him to be in St. Louis. He couldn't be at the surgery, but I wanted him to be able to bond after Scott's birth as soon as possible. I also wanted a week with Just. Us. Me, Gary, Connor, and Scott. I anticipated that there might be some difficulty introducing a new baby in a home where Connor had been an only child, and I wanted to do this without the complication and scrutiny of other people in the house. This was why I'd asked my parents to wait to come.

I'll admit I'd heard a rumor that Evening Primrose Oil gel-caps, inserted as a vaginal suppository, could bring on labor. I inserted 2.

My parents were going to leave the next morning. Exhausted and discouraged I took Connor to bed to nurse to sleep.

Suddenly I felt a huge, painful shift inside. I called, "Gary! Something's happening!" Connor said, "Did I do it?"

I went downstairs to the bathroom thinking my water may have broken, but there wasn't anything. But by the time I got back upstairs the contractions were so intense I couldn't talk. We called the doula, who offered to come over, but I was able to gasp to Gary that no, she should meet us at the hospital instead.

It was incredibly hot outside, at 11:00. It should never be that hot at night anywhere. It was at least 90 degrees and the humidity was probably that high. I thought I was suffocating as I inched my way down our outside steps clinging to the railing for support. Our neighbors across the street were out on their front porch and called cheerfully, "Oh, is it time?" I couldn't answer, but it was pretty obvious.

As Gary drove toward the Barnes Jewish Hospital I felt every pothole and bump in the road. But the air conditioning was working better than I ever remembered, and that was a joy. When we pulled in to the hospital driveway he began to steer toward the parking structure and I snapped, "No! There's no way I can make it across the sky bridge. You've got to park right out in front. I see a wheelchair right there." So he parked in the no-parking zone and ran for the wheelchair. He had trouble getting it to me because he'd forgotten to remove the brakes. I sat down and waited while he got the suitcase. After a moment I opened my eyes and saw that he was trying to pull the straps out of their hidden pockets to convert it into a backpack he could wear. "No! We don't have time for that! You've got to take me in there right now!" So he pushed me through the hospital lobby as I moaned with the contractions, into the elevator, and on up to the third floor where maternity triage was. He pushed me to their desk and said, "My wife's having a baby", to which they replied, "Well, she's just going to have to wait because we don't have a room clean!" So there I was, parked directly in front of the station desk as they worked, moaning with each contraction while they tried to go on with their business as if I wasn't there. One of the physicians on duty brought paperwork that signed away our right to sue if anything went wrong, and they finally took me to a room. There was a table that was a mile high and they wanted me to climb up on it. It was like climbing a mountain, but eventually I managed to get up there. They got their stethoscopes and couldn't find the fetal heartbeat. They went for more sensitive instruments. At that moment I was convinced Scott was dead. And since they didn't bother to tell me when they located the heartbeat I remained convinced of this. Then when they did a cursory examination I heard them talking to each other, saying, "she's ruptured." What they didn't clarify was that it was the membranes that had ruptured, not my uterus. But the story my partly deranged mind took from this was that my uterus had ruptured and I'd lost Scott. And a kind of fatalism took over as I wondered when they'd bring the crash cart and put me under the general anesthesia.

Eventually that misunderstanding was cleared up. Clearly the nurses must have had a bad night because they seemed to assume I was being a drama queen and even asked if I'd moan more quietly. I thought to tell them that there were going to be two doulas coming and was asked, "What do you need two of them for?" I explained that one of them had not had vbac experience and so was coming with the other in order to get it. The nurse asked if I wanted an epidural "because you sure sound like you need one." Gary asked, "when are we going to take her to the delivery room" and they said, "we have to check her first. She might not even be dilated." Gary said disgustedly, "She's dilated!" At which point the doulas arrived and instantly I felt calmer. The dr. on call finally checked my cervix and discovered that I'd dilated to 8 cm and they decided they'd better hurry to get me to the delivery room. They ran the bed down the hall, periodically asking me to be more quiet. This was about an hour and a half after I felt the big shift inside at home.

(An amusing parting shot from the most cynical of the nurses was when she checked the records while they were getting ready to take me to delivery. "Hey!" she barked, "She's scheduled for a c-section on Thursday!" I guess the considerate thing to have done would have been to reel it all back in and wait for my surgery on Thursday.)

Scott's birth took 2 hours and 10 minutes, start to finish. There was no time for an epidural if I'd wanted one (though I wished I'd had one for the stitching afterward). There was no time for an episiotomy, or for the birthing tub. They say second babies come faster, but that was amazing. If I was to have had another, it would have had to be a home birth, otherwise it would be born in the car.

I'm grateful that I got to close out my reproductive career with a normal vaginal birth.

Happy 8th birthday, dear Scott.

Some thoughts about being the at-home spouse

Someone I know is out of work, and has been for some time. His wife has a business she started before the economic downturn.

Their roles are reversed now with him home with children /house, and her full-time-plus at the business.

He's discovered that taking care of young children involves much more than what meets the eye, or can be explained in a few words. Trying to describe a day with young children is like trying to identify the hydrogen and oxygen atoms making up the wave that's swamping you. He's also experiencing the kind of helpless outrage where his accomplishments are largely invisible to his spouse. This involves digesting the irony of his wife coming home expecting dinner, and then needing a walk to de-stress from her day at work, leaving him with clean-up. When he worked full time he'd come home to a house where dinner had not been started and there were still breakfast dishes in the sink. Her reply if asked was that taking care of children involved more than meets the eye. And because he brought home an income doesn't exempt him from helping out around the house. So he'd clean up the kitchen and fix dinner.

This introduces a kaleidoscope of perspectives to me. As an at-home spouse I've often been painfully aware of how inadequate words are to describe a day with children in a way that conveys the experience. I'm aware that what a wage-earner sees as a neutral starting place represents hours of effort to an at-home spouse. It's as if the income-producer is starting a race at a starting line without realizing that the at-home partner has been running long before even getting to 'start'. In my case my spouse is a man, the income-producing part of our partnership for 10 of our 17 married years. And I have often felt that the line of division of labor has been de facto drawn through 'inside the house' and 'outside the house'. Thus, whether he's home or not, what's 'inside the house' is my responsibility.

So when my friend's wife had the at-home role, I was sympathetic to the expectation that once home the income-producer should also help out.

Now that he's home, though, her perspective seems to have shifted. As someone who's at a business for 10, 12 hours a day she feels entitled to come home to a meal, take a walk afterwards while leaving the dishes, and is critical of stuff left undone in the house. And I realize she felt as fully identified with the perspective of the parent at-home as she does now the parent-at-work.

I've often found myself in an awkward position when talking with my female friends who are the wage earners and their husbands are at home with children. I suppose it's a version of the so-called "Mommy wars" between women who work outside the home and women who parent full time. I feel my own experience become paler when they describe coming home from a full day of work to have children thrust upon them by an exasperated spouse who then disappears. They longingly muse that they would love to be the ones home with their children.

The working spouse works all day, and we'll assume the job is demanding. When they come home and are expected to pitch in they may feel that they've left one job only to have another thrust on them when they get home. "When do I get my break?" they may ask, and I can certainly understand the sentiment.

I think that's when the next logical step seems to be to compare jobs, whose is 'harder'. The working spouse is not exactly on a luxury vacation when out of the house. Isn't it unfair to expect them to do things at home too? Isn't it a luxury to be able to stay home with the children?

As the parent at home who had years of a late-working husband, I can testify to longing for another adult in the house, especially at the famously poisonous 'dinner-time'. I can testify to the anticipation of some relief when he'd arrive, and increasing resentment when he didn't. And when he'd say, "When do I get my break?" I'd not really know what to say. Just as I'd feel uneasy when my female wage-earner friends would say that it's not a picnic to come home to child care responsibilities after putting in their day.

So, thinking of my friend who now has perspectives from both sides, I see how reasonable each is--the at-home parent who needs relief, the earning spouse who needs a break. Yet they seem mutually contradictory.

It occurs to me that there's another way of dividing the pie. For parents the primary job is nurturing and raising children to be good people. That's a 24 hour job. And since we don't live on air an income is needed, which is a means to an end--providing infrastructure for the nurturing and raising of children. If the parents cut an agreement that there will be one wage earner, then the person who goes outside is putting his/her childcare into the currency of income-earning. The spouse at home pulls a double shift in caring for the children and making the home a stable base of operations to launch from. When income earner returns, there is still child-care to be done, whatever remains of the 24 hours. At that time the earner resumes his/her direct childcare role, and the at-homer continues that role, but there are now two adults instead of one.

One would like to hope that further division of labor would be determined by love and good will. At-home spouse doesn't find her/himself struggling in the kitchen to get dinner on while a wailing toddler clings to his/her leg as another one yells from a different part of the house and wage-earner sits obliviously reading the paper. No, Wage-earner sees that there is a struggle going on and because s/he loves his/her spouse, doesn't like to see him/her suffer and offers assistance out of a sense of fairness and love. It is also expedient, because it simplifies the job of getting dinner finished and on the table, to remove at least one ball from the myriad the spouse is juggling.

So to consider raising children as a 24 hour work-day, where one partner puts in part of their time outside of the home, and then resumes it upon return, while the other pulls up the slack when the money-maker is away and continues when he/she returns seems to iron out some of the misconceptions. Wage-earner's responsibilities don't end with the paycheck, and At-home's responsibilities don't end when Wage-earner returns. Thinking of it only in terms of the 8 hour day lends itself to unhelpful constructions like, "she gets to be home with the kids on his dime, and then she expects him to help," and "...at least you're dealing with adults all day while I'm dealing with kids," "my job is harder than yours, therefore I'm entitled to xyz..." It lends itself to a more realistic division of labor than, "What's outside the house is mine, and what's inside the house is yours--oops! Kid spilled an entire bottle of milk? That's yours, and I'm going to read the paper after my hard day at work."

It's surprising how vulnerable I've felt to the charge that I've been some kind of freeloader these 10 years. I suppose it's a testament to a culture that only sees value in terms of money earned.

Trusting your gut

At the Writer's Dojo:

Martha Beck has a book called The Four Day Win: End Your Diet War and Achieve Thinner Peace. One of the big take-aways for me was the notion that people so often fail at dieting because they haven't built the foundation beneath that then supports "doing what we know: 'move more, eat less.' " She said that most people come to dieting without having done adequate preparation; she outlines the series of stages that must be completed to be successful. All are necessary. The first of these is a 'pre-contemplative' stage, where there is no intention, maybe intentionally no intention, of change. The next of these is considering change. The third is preparation, and it's not until the 4th stage that action (dieting and exercise) is taken. Her point is that most people come at dietary changes directly from "pre-contemplation" directly into stage 4, without going through the others between. Therefore there is no foundation under the action plan and is ultimately unsustainable. It's called "Will Power." You're treading water, baby.

Of course, her book is about diet, but it's really about transformation.

I don't think I'm imagining there was an explosion of the "Self-help" genre of books in the 80's, 90's and beyond, and I was an eager consumer. It seems a very common exhortation was to "trust your gut".

This was problematic for me; it seemed I couldn't even do that right. The outcome was anxious 'listening' to inner sensations, wondering which voice among the clamor was my "True Gut." "Is this it? Is this it?" All the voices had about the same amplitude, and nothing seemed to distinguish itself as the True Voice. As someone who started with a baseline of performance anxiety, the pressure to be able to "find my true voice" merely worsened the sensation of paralysis and fear. I've spent years feeling jerked around by my "Gut". It's prompted me into the wrong lines in grocery stores, premature choices, and reinforcement that Someone Is Trying to Kill Me.

My dear friend and I were talking this afternoon about our troublesome guts when it suddenly came to me. "Trusting Your Gut" is an advanced living skill; it takes some preparation, some "training" to get there. A certain foundation has to be built first, to support that trust.

This week I noticed to what extent fear influences my decisions. I see how fear-based many of my actions are--fear that I won't get my needs met. The tension about getting into the right line in the grocery store (for example) is based on the fear that picking the slow line means I'm not a successful person: if I was successful, surely my Gut would have steered me somewhere else.

The noise of fear has to be calmed before Trusting Your Gut is a reliable course. Calming fear is the stage that must be mastered first.

My Dojo Patron, K, sent me True Love/A Practice for Awakening the Heart by Thich Nhat Hanh. On page 50 I read,

Buddhist meditation is based on the principle of nonduality. This means that if we are mindfulness, if we are love, we are also ignorance, we are also suffering, and there is no need to suppress anything at all.

When the seed of anger manifests on the level of our conscious mind, our immediate awareness, it is because the seed of anger is in the depths of our consciousness, and then we begin to suffer. Our immediate awareness is something like our living room. The task of the meditator is not to chase away or to suppress the energy of anger that is there but rather to invite another energy that will be able to care for the anger.

You can use the method of mindful breathing to make the seed of this other energy grow inside you. It will then manifest in the form of energy, and this energy will embrace your energy of anger like a mother taking a baby in her arms. Then there is only tenderness, there is no fighting with, or discriminating against, the pain. The purpose of the practice of mindful breathing is to help to give birth to this precious energy called mindfulness and to keep it alive.
pages 50-51 (Thank you, K)

I am reminded that the most basic of skills develops in infancy--the ability to self-soothe. Each time a loving presence responds with comfort the baby learns that suffering can be transformed into love and joy. The Way is being shown to the other side of suffering, as well as the confidence that there is a Way. Trust is another name for this confidence.

This is the calming of fear. And the precursor to trusting your gut, with confidence.

The Gift, part 2, and Facing shame--or, a post about Nothing

It's just short of 9:00, and I've come in to a beautiful space that is perfectly quiet.

This is the post I intended to write yesterday. I was going to write about being in the Writer's Dojo, and my perfect gratitude toward K.

Well, I guess this isn't the post I intended to write yesterday either. I took a big detour to get here, and thought I'd write about the trip.

In a way, this blog reminds me of an episode of Seinfeld's TV show, the one where he asserted that his show was about "Nothing". "Nothing" has been a problematic place for me, because where most people I know really see nothing, I experience a whole lot of 'Somethings'. This post is about that.



I think I'm going to let my diary entry speak for itself:

6/1/09
Mon Way too Fucking Late, after 10:30

God. Damn. It.

On top of irritated I feel a little awkward too, but I lost some precious time waiting for someone to open up the dojo. No one was available the first time I called; there was no sign in the door, second time I called Jeff answered and may still be in New York for all I know; said Jewell, his SIL was supposed to have opened. I’d gotten here early anyway, and so sat around for about an hour, having forgotten a book to read and my battery nearly dead in the laptop so I couldn’t write while sitting in the car. And here I have a check ready to be filled out to them, and I’m having some doubts. This happened last week too and I thought it was just a one time thing with Jeff gone to New York (I’d thought it was just the weekend) and I could understand that his wife, single-parenting, might have gotten behind.

But, we have an agreement. They’ve agreed they’re open at 10, which is bad enough for me because I’m really ready to write by nine. So I’m pissed about the amount of unproductive time—the time just wasted—precious, precious alone time.

So I remembered Jewell as having been really chatty the time I was here before, and she was going to let me in “in just a few seconds” after I talked to Jeff (“Sorry about that”). She came in a long 5 minutes. We talked a little as she let me in; she knows about Gary’s being laid off, but I had it in my mind that I’d lost time already and didn’t want to waste more in any more chatter than necessary. So I didn’t linger in the foyer. I was just sort of focused on getting over here to write and so thanked Jewell and kind of assumed she was leaving too, and so said, “Good-bye”. She kind of laughed a little and said, “Bye”, back, and then I realized that I may have been a bit brusque, and even dismissive. Like I was dismissing her. That’s the awkward part.

I was going to gripe a bit about wasting time writing about this, as well as sending a message to Jeffrey to tell him that I had found it difficult to wait this morning and I’d appreciate their keeping their hours. (So I feel like I’ve taken care of that.)

Hi, Jeff,

Are you still in New York?

To clear the air, it was difficult to wait past the agreed-on opening time this morning. My solitary/writing time is dear to me and I want to make the most of it when the kids are in school, especially since this is their last 2 weeks. Ordinarily I'd be writing by 9, and I've conceded that hour because I really do like the dojo's atmosphere. Of course, that's not your problem and I've accepted the dojo hours as part of the terms of use. I do think it's fair to ask that I be able to count on knowing when you're open.

The prompt 10:00 opening won't be as much of an issue once school is out, since I'll no longer be taking my child to school over on this side. But I'd like to make the most of this coming next 2 weeks to get as much uninterrupted writing in as possible, since I'm facing famine. A friend has gifted me the money for a full membership for June, with enough left over to pay most of the reduced membership for July. Probably the bulk of the month of June's use of that full membership will be in this first 2 weeks. And I sure don't want to be spending the front end waiting outside, because my back end is finite: I must leave by 3:00 or earlier to pick up my children.

About last week, I didn't have a problem with Rachel opening a little later. I understand that when 'single-parenting' it can be difficult to anticipate the extra time a toddler needs--I know that by experience.

Anyway, I did feel tense this morning, and I imagine you sensed that in our phone call. It seemed like a good idea to call it out, acknowledge it, and move on. No hard feelings on this end...

Debora

PS--I put the check for this month's full and next month's partial membership in the drawer.

1209

I started to write a blog post about that; I’d had this sense inside that in dealing with the tensions and the ways it can complicate relationships with others there might be something. One of those universally experienced-but-hiding-in-plain-sight experiences of the tension I felt while waiting, knowing I felt angry as time slipped away, the awkwardness of speaking (finally) with Jeffrey in a civil tone and while wondering if that was being passive aggressive—yet not really accepting his apology. It’s not that his apology was flip or anything, but neither did it recognize that it must have been difficult. He did allow that Rachel said it had happened last week too, and said, “Sorry” again. I just said, “OK”—by way of acknowledging his apology, but not being quite of a mind to absolve him. When I’d consider seeing him in the future, there was this feeling of possible elephant-in-a-roomish-ness: The sense that the difficulty really hadn’t been cleaned up, and possibly swept under a rug. That without my absolution, we really weren’t resolved—a sense that sense of incompletion would hang between us.

And more subtly, there was a sort of haunting feeling that this awareness of elephant-in-room was because of a flaw in me. Shouldn’t I have prepared for the possibility they might be late, since they were last week? Was I too quick to assume that last week was a special case (Jeff in New York, Rachel single-parenting a toddler) and it wouldn’t happen again today? Was I being too anal-retentive to expect that someone be here at or before the published hours time? Wasn’t I foolish to have forgotten my book? Shouldn’t I have prepared by having the AC adapter for the car in the car to charge my computer’s battery which has a shorter and shorter life? I think all of this would have been what contributed to an elephant-in-room feel maybe a year ago.

I wasn't afraid of it this time.

I didn't feel fear but I definitely felt tense. I stayed true to that feeling and didn’t precipitately and inauthentically resolve that tension with Jeff by telling him it was ok. I tolerated the tension and allowed it to stand. As I did with Jewell when she arrived and said she was sorry. A consequence of it was that I was so focused on getting to work that I may have prematurely cut short the usual social niceties period.

I would have worried about that too. And I do still wonder if I should discharge having possibly passed some of my tension on to her by going down and telling her I hadn’t meant to ‘dismiss’ her. Her laugh when I did had seemed like an acknowledgment of receiving something from me, and an attempt to soften it. I think part of the trickiness about that is that whole issue of shame. I suppose, in an over-simplified way of thinking, there was ‘shame’ in her having been so late and keeping me waiting. (And, potentially, shame in me for having not brought the resources to cope better with a possible waiting period as I’d experienced last week) (shame in me for being ‘nit-picky’ about wanting them here at 10, at the LATEST) If shame is present, it seems the cultural nicety is to discharge it by absolving it, however falsely. Being polite to someone is to absolve them from shame by absorbing the effects of their actions into one self and not letting on that something they’ve done has cost you. Betrayal of knowledge-of-shame is cause for acute embarrassment for both parties. I leaked, perhaps, awareness-of-shame when I dismissed Jewell. My clue is her small laugh when she answered, “Bye Bye”. My inclination is to go see her before leaving and say, “Oops—I made a mistake in saying goodbye to you, perhaps when you hadn’t been planning to leave yet. I was just focused on my work and assumed you were leaving too.”

What’s problematic is this then obliquely acknowledges shame.

[Much of my life, I’ve been ashamed when I notice someone else’s shame. I’ve tried to keep it from my awareness, because to even admit it to myself has seemed like something to be ashamed of. Of course, then I’m magnetized to it and it seems to be an elephant in a room. Then I’m left wondering if I have cause for shame because this has become a “bigger deal than necessary” (“I don’t even notice these things!”) (“Just forget about it!”) (“Get over it!”) When the elephant is in the room then I feel it grow because I feel like I’m lying in not acknowledging it. In fact, it seems to keep growing to me, because the bigger it gets, the more draining it is to deny. And a lot of people will just insist that there’s nothing there, and what’s wrong with me for seeing/feeling it? (“Too sensitive”)]

Breaking that chain of thought, because Jeff just came in with his daughter. Well, he looked me straight in the eyes, thanked me for my email, said it was “Awesome”, and showed me the code for the building so I can come in at nine. WOW. He said that communication is very important to him and he really appreciated my frankness. {As I re-read this and relive the moment I just remembered that my cousin hosts "Perfect Moment Mondays." Well, that was mine.}

So, here I worked through a process, saw it all the way through, and didn’t get hung up in the awkward feelings/elephant in room stage—and even got a bit of a reward. DAMN!

Now, to Jewell in just a few.

I went and finished a blog post about K giving me the gift. I’d meant it to be just an introduction to a larger post about…posting. How I’d wanted to be writing about anything but feeling frustrated at having to wait outside the dojo. Then realized that in the nothing was a whole lot of something that might be some of that ‘stuff’ that’s common in human experience but never talked about. Something people think and don’t say, which I think is a goldmine for writing topics. I got bogged down in writing the preliminaries and realized I’d need to break it down into two parts.

Back to Jewell. I’ve resolved, fully, and completely, with no residuals, with Jeff. Do I need to with Jewell, or is the nature of whatever may have happened between us so ethereal it should instead be let alone?

In light of the ‘shame’ thing I was exploring above, in acknowledging my own ‘shame’ in possibly being rude do I merely highlight her shame for having come so late? (And is that really her shame? Did circumstances make it LOOK like her shame, and make her wear the consequences in terms of my briskness with her?) And does this lead to the awkwardness of a situation where she denies the shame, and that’s my cue to deny it too because it’s a breach that I brought it up and reminded her of it, and so I have some shame about that? And then we get into that cycle of compounding awkwardness?

That reminds me of Mother's Day, with Darlene. I mischaracterized her intentions when she took the lint brush from me and felt some shame about that, as well as the shame of having revealed what I was ready to believe about her. So I felt some tension surrounding that. I’d decided to resolve it by acknowledging my ‘shame’ or responsibility in the thing, if for nothing else than my own sense of integrity. The complication is, that in doing this I reveal several things: the fact that I thought it was a reasonable possibility that she was about to give me a lengthy tutorial on using the brush—that is, she’s a person who would do that…that she’d received some of the tension I’d discharged and all it implies, the underlying negative tension between us—that there was some shame in her that had caused me to reveal impatience. The possibility that she deserves some impatience, which is a heavy shame too.

What was clear was that in bringing it up she wanted to deny it, all of it. Including the possibility that she even noticed it…the possibility that she might not be ‘above’ being petty in noticing (assuming that noticing attention being called to someone’s shame is petty).

What a weird dance we do to avoid shame.

In the case of Darlene, I experienced the sound one hand clapping. In the case of Jeffrey, it was two hands, connecting solidly and ringingly together. I solidly feel the difference, and exult in it.

Now, part of the problem of going and owning this to Jewell is that there’s another ‘shame’ implied: my ‘goodbye’ did feel like a dismissal, and a barely polite one to her, and that she ‘meekly’ left. If I say, “You know what? I may have said goodbye before you were ready to leave,” it implies that if she left when she wasn’t ready, then she WAS being dismissed and meekly complying…another kind of acknowledgment of shame.

I was just inspired to do a little online research about Face, and face-saving. This is really interesting stuff, and for whatever reason I’ve always been very susceptible to it. It certainly seems that 'shame', embarrassment, and 'losing Face' are all part of the human condition with each culture having its own vocabulary, ritual, and dance surrounding the experience.

K, look what's come of your gift already! A great start to June for me. Thank you again.

The Gift, part 1, or a Confession

This post is dedicated to my dear friend K.

She's an online friend, from at least 5 years back, when we both posted on a parenting-after-40 bulletin board. I've noticed that she's always kept her name private online, so for now I'll address her as K. After corresponding on the boards for a while we took our friendship out of the public forum and began emailing each other privately.

She, my counselor, and my cousin are the trio that encouraged me to think of myself as a writer and to expand beyond private diary musings. My cousin introduced me to blogging and encouraged me to create one; it was K who asked if I had one, saying she'd enjoy reading it.

It's been a pleasure for me to write it.

Last month Sharon was going to be away and miss one of our sessions. I decided to use the time anyway and look into an alternative place to go. I remembered a place that had opened a year ago, The Writer's Dojo. Through Gary I have a bit of an obscure connection to it. Jewel is a woman contracted by Nike to teach Mandarin to the traveling employees, which once-upon-a-time included him. Her husband has a martial arts studio in North Portland. His brother created the Writer's Dojo in a separate building on the property. I decided to look into it. I bought a limited-use membership which entitled me to 4 visits, then a $10 fee per visit.

Ten days ago Gary lost his job, and today construction is to start on our house, building a garage. In 2 weeks the kids are out of school.

Upon return from the misadventure I found a message from K telling me she'd sent a check to cover full, unlimited-use membership for the month of June. She said I'd need it, with Gary home full-time, the construction chaos, and the looming kids-at-home-all-day.

Something inside me goes quiet and still whenever I think of that. I don't know what to call it, but gratitude is a start. What an amazing, loving gift.

That, is Something.

I started looking for K's check in the mail last Tuesday. I didn't find it Wednesday, either, or Thurs. I attributed it to the Monday holiday, but was aware it was taking a while, since she'd indicated she'd hurried a bit to get it into the mail ahead of the three-day-weekend. Thursday afternoon Connor came home from school, asking me if I still had his progress-note envelope. Periodically he brings it home for my signature to prove I've been reading his progress notes. I'd found it loose in his pack with a bunch of other papers and asked him if I was supposed to sign it. He said no, and I put it into recycling. Now he said he needed it. Signed.

So I took a bench in to our pantry and sat down before the bins, sifting through. I found a lot of junk mail, some discards from Gary's office ...and, an envelope addressed to me with K on the return address. It was post-marked May 23rd. Gary still swears he never touched it, and I can only guess that it had gotten stuck somehow on the bottom of some of the junk mail he tossed. I never did find Connor's envelope, but I'm glad I went to look for it. I thought of telling K the story, but then decided against it because I'd seem so irresponsible.

Not only had she gifted me a full membership for June, there was enough there to pay most of a reduced membership for July.

Gary and I have a joint account in a credit union I was planning on depositing the funds into, but it's on the side of town where I don't usually go. And now Gary doesn't either. I'd had an idea that maybe I'd get over there on the weekend, and decided to not carry the check with me.

I knew I would be using the Dojo Monday, which would be June 1, the day the membership is due. A branch of our bank that has our funds for day-to-day operations is just down the street from the Dojo, so I thought I'd just deposit it there and write a check on that account. I was in the neighborhood yesterday grocery shopping and stopped by that branch. I walked up to the machine and reached into my wallet for the check...and it wasn't there. Someone else had walked up behind to use the machine, so I went back to my car to mount a search. Went through all the cards and pockets in my wallet. Looked in the body of my purse. Searched my memory. I could see myself in memory having removed her check from the envelope, folded it into quarters, and slipping it into my wallet. Where has my wallet been? Could the check have fallen out into something else (didn't want to think of it falling out NOT into something else)? When I'd driven for the field trip Tuesday to the pool I'd had my wallet in my swim bag--could it be there? Uh, oh, no. I hadn't had the check by then; it was still sojourning in recycle.

What about my computer bag then? Could it be in there? Most likely not; I'd used it Wednesday and hadn't held the check in my hand until Thursday.

Oh shit oh shit.

I pictured myself emailing K, in shame, to tell her she should put a stop on the check. Telling her I was so sorry. Glad I hadn't told her about the recycling episode, because this would really seal my fate of being a screw-up in her eyes.

Then it occurred to me. Maybe I hadn't removed it from the envelope at all. Maybe I'd started to and only thought I remembered it. Maybe I'd put it in the window in the hallway where I keep my sunglasses, grocery store coupons...kind of a mini staging-area for departures. I thought I had a memory of myself, now, doing just that: starting to remove it from the envelope to put in my wallet, deciding against it until I knew I would be going by that bank, putting it, in the envelope, on the sill.

More lighthearted, I went and did the grocery shopping. Looked eagerly on the window sill upon arriving home, and it wasn't there. Crestfallen, I asked Gary if he'd seen it. Maybe it had blown off the sill onto the floor and he'd picked it up and put it in a more secure location? He said, "I haven't touched it. I've never touched it."

Just in case, I checked the swim suit bag. I checked the computer bag. More randomly than anything else I opened a small drawer on a small chest where I keep my computer next to my writing chair. There it was! My memory, better late than never, helpfully supplied the image of myself deciding that the window sill was too vulnerable to cross-breezes, removing it from there and putting it in this little drawer.

Needless to say I deposited it that evening, and wrote a check of my own on it for the Dojo membership, where it resides now, in the Dojo drawer.

Heart-felt thank-you, K. And love.

P.S. K really should keep a blog, herself. She's a wonderful writer.

The Particulars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The best part for the boys?

The cattle drive.

Reflections from the raft trip

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Severed" (TKvid2u)

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

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

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

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

Nothing like an element of suspense.

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

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

I might have to go along just to see.