Write for Your Life

People Die

2007-03-26T18:09:00.000-07:00

I really think being human is overrated.

Even when I can come to terms occasionally with the fact that humans aren't perfect and make mistakes, I still come hard up against the truth that humans are mortal. People die.

Sometimes, it's not too hard to let go of someone you love. When she's lived a full life, and she's ready to go, it's easier to tolerate her death. But when she's a 16 year old girl, stricken with a cancer she conquered once only to have it return again within a few months, it's much harder.

Why? What's the purpose? I want to believe in a heaven, a "better place", but I can't. It sounds too much like something we'd make up in order to not look into the abyss of eternity. A nice little story about being happy forevermore. I wish I could believe that it was true.

I don't know what happens after we die. Most of the time, I don't care; far more important is what's going on right now, today, this moment. What happens after this life is out of my control, and isn't really relevant to today, I tell myself. I found it easier to have faith in God once I stopped worrying about all those big questions like whether God existed or not, or what happened after we died. I don't know, and that's okay.

Except today. It's not okay today, because I heard that a friend's daughter is dying. Today, I can't celebrate her life, because it has been too short. I mourn for all that she will never do. I mourn for her little sister, left to find her way without her big sister. I especially mourn for her mother, watching a piece of her heart die.

I mourn, and shake my fist at God, and ask why? But there is no why, other than that core truth: People die. God doesn't stop that. God just walks along beside us saying, yeah, I know, it hurts. God weeps with us, but doesn't deny us our humanity.

Being human is overrated.

Heartbreaking

2007-03-20T14:39:00.000-07:00

I'm a sports fan. I have been my whole life, as long as I can remember. I have a long history of falling in love with teams, and so I have a long history of teams breaking my heart, as they always do at some point.

I remember the first team I fell in love with. It was the early '70's, and my dad had season tickets for the Austin Peay Governors' men's basketball team. My brother was deemed too young to go to the night games, so my mom stayed home with him, and my dad and I went to the games. Coach Lake Kelly was bringing a new excitement to old Memorial Gym; Austin Peay was putting together a competitive team in the Ohio Valley Conference for the first time in forever. I still remember the players: Mickey Fisher, Richard Jimmerson, Percy Howard, Danny Odum, and the incomparable, indescribable Fly Williams.

On Sundays, the team would go out to eat together at Three Brothers Pancake House, which was our usual family destination after church. My brother and I would look up at these titans in awe. As basketball teams go, they weren't really that tall, but they seemed gigantic to us. We listened to the games on the radio when we couldn't see them in person, and thrilled as they made the NCAA tournament for the first time. I'll never forget watching them beat Jacksonville in the tournament on TV, back in the days when teams like Austin Peay never appeared on TV. That they were blown out by Notre Dame in the next round didn't break my heart; the expected outcome only brings dull pain.

The Governors didn't break my heart on the court, they did it off the court. Fly Williams and Danny Odum were ruled ineligible over irregularities in their admission to Austin Peay. Richard Jimmerson fell in a construction accident over the summer, lucky to survive but ending his basketball days by shattering both legs. And Lake Kelly went off to Oral Roberts, to try and bring the magic spark there. The team fell apart, and I grew up and moved away. Austin Peay has had some memorable tournament moments since then, the highlight of which was defeating second-seeded Illinois one year, but I wasn't there, and they no longer had my heart.

There's a difference between being a fan of a team and giving a team your heart. As a fan, you're happy when they win, sad when they lose, and you go to a few games. When you give a team your heart, you're joyous when they win, devastated when they lose, and you know the middle name of every player on the team. It doesn't happen overnight. You have to watch a team build up and have them work your way into your heart slowly, one player, one game at a time. The Pittsburgh Pirates did that to me. I didn't particularly like the Pirates when I moved to Pittsburgh, and they were an awful, lousy team. But I liked baseball, and at least they were in the National League, so I went to the games. Watching a bad team means opens your heart to them; they're so bad, you can't find it in you to root against them (unless they're the Dodgers.) Then, they get a new coach, a good young player here and there, and you're watching them develop into something. You're hooked now; these are your players. You've seen their major league debuts, you watched them weather sophomore slumps, you've spotted the glimmer of hope.

The Pirates were on the cusp of coming through on that hope when I moved away, but they were still my team. I followed them from afar, and when they made the playoffs at the end of that season, I bought World Series tickets and plane tickets. I was going to see my team in the World Series! Then, the heartbreak: Francisco Cabrera rounding third, the throw too late, the Braves coming from behind to win Game 7 and claim the World Series berth. The Pirates haven't come that close since.

But I had moved on, and the Pirates faded from my heart. A new team captured me, even though they weren't a terrible team. They were actually a very good team, coming off a national championship. "We need season tickets for the Stanford women's basketball team," I told my husband, who knew very little about basketball and wasn't a fan. But he was game to try it, and we fell in love all over again with a new team. Every year in college basketball, there are careers ending and careers beginning; we were sad to see the seniors go, and thrilled at the new crop of freshman. Then came the class, the group of freshmen who were a level above previous years'. This group, this special group, was sure to take Stanford back to the national championship.

Kate Starbird. Jamila Wideman. Charmin Smith. Vanessa Nygaard. Kristin Folkl. A starting lineup, right there, from point guard Wideman to jump out of the gym Folkl. We didn't get to see them together all at once that first year; Folkl redshirted to play volleyball, and Nygaard injured her knee in the first exhibition game. But this class, backed up by a second strong class right behind them, did do special things. Their second year, Stanford went to the Final Four, and made it back their third year, both times falling short of the championship.

Then came their fourth year. Starbird was the Naismith player of the year. They had a deep, experienced, talented team. We just knew that this was the year. We held our breath as Stanford fought its way through the first four rounds, and finally they were back at the Final Four. They faced Old Dominion in the national semi-final, and at first, looked totally dominant. But ODU didn't make it that far by giving up, and they fought back, and had the lead late in the game. But still, we knew that this was the year. Charmin Smith stepped to the free throw line and sank both shots, tying the game and sending it to overtime.

Time running out in the overtime, Stanford trailing, the ball in the hands of Jamila Wideman at the top of the key, we still knew that they were going to win. Wideman was not a great three point shooter, but we had seen her hit that three pointer when it mattered most too many times to doubt her now. The shot flew, Clare Machanguana came down on her, but we knew no foul would be called in that situation. We didn't think it mattered; that shot was just going to go in, no doubt about it. When it hit the rim, and bounced off, we were in shock. It couldn't be. It just wasn't possible. Kate Starbird couldn't be done. Those seniors, that class, it couldn't be over without a national championship.

I've been a sports fan my whole life, and I've given my heart to teams, but nothing before and nothing since ever hurt as much as that loss. I had watched those girls grow up right in front of me; I couldn't stand it that their fabulous careers had ended in such painful disappointment. No team has ever wormed its way into my heart as deeply as that team, and I'm not sure I'll ever let a team do that again. Bart Giamatti said that baseball is designed to break your heart, but nothing in baseball compares to the pain of watching college seniors end their careers in bitter losses, as happens every March. The nature of the tournament means that most players finish with a loss, a sudden, unexpected awareness that it's all gone in an instant, there isn't next game or next year.

Now that's designed to break your heart.

Bookends

2006-04-07T20:04:00.000-07:00

In the fall, my mind starts turning to basketball. Baseball is still going on, but I'm looking ahead, obsessively checking the news for tidbits about women's college basketball. This past season, though, I wished I could avoid the news I found. In late September, Shawtinice Polk, star center for Arizona and certain WNBA draft pick, collapsed and died at 22.

So, the season began in sadness. Polky was an engaging young woman, and a fun player to watch. I had watched her since she was a freshman in the Pac-10, as teams struggled to stop this 6'5" woman from dominating the game. Then, suddenly, she was gone.

But the games go on, and the season was soon underway. There were new stories to follow, new exciting young players. Tournament time came around, and I was glued to my television set. The first weekend of tournament play is one of my favorite times of year. Teams you never heard of are upsetting higher seeds, and even when the upsets aren't happening, you're finally getting to see some teams and players that are never highlighted during the season.

One of the best stories in this year's tournment was Maggie Dixon. She was hired by Army less than two weeks before the beginning of practice, but coached her team to a Patriot League championship and a spot in the tournament. Coincidentally, her brother coached his men's team to a spot in the tournament as well, the first time that had been done.

Dixon's Army team got blown out in their first round game against perennial powerhouse Tennessee, but the game was interesting because of Dixon. She was one of the highlights of the tournament, despite her brief stay on the national stage.

The season ended, a champion was crowned, and basketball was done until next fall. Except that this season that began with a death, ended with a death. Maggie Dixon, only 28, collapsed and died.

Shawtinice Polk and Maggie Dixon, your stories ended much too soon.

Boiled Custard

2005-12-24T10:11:00.000-08:00

As was the custom in the South, I always called them Mrs. Nancy and Mr. Woody. They lived just down the road from my grandparents, but I always enjoyed visiting them more than my grandparents.

They had lost their only son to illness when he was only six years old, and had more or less adopted my father as a replacement. They were probably better parents for my father than his own parents. He was the oldest of six children, and his mother suffered from mental illness severe enough to require hospitalization a couple of times. Mrs. Nancy and Mr. Woody did what good parents can do for a child: open up a sense of possibility. I doubt my father would have gone to college were it not for their influence; none of his siblings did.

We’d usually visit my grandparents first, where my grandmother would be more interested in her Chihuahua than her grandchildren and my grandfather would either be gone fishing or watching television. We’d do our duty there, then go visit Mrs. Nancy and Mr. Woody.

Christmas time was the best time to visit. There’d be a warm fire in the fireplace, goodies to eat, and the drink that eggnog aspires to be: boiled custard. I’ve never encountered boiled custard outside of the South, but every Christmas, Mrs. Nancy would make wonderfully rich boiled custard. Like many Southern delights, it was tooth-achingly sweet. I’d sit on the hearth next to Mrs. Nancy’s chair and sip the boiled custard, and it was reward for having tolerated another trip to my grandparents.

Instead of the grossly overweight neurotic Chihuahua Granny had, Mrs. Nancy had a calm German shepherd named Ellie Mae. In the summertime when we’d visit, we’d have ice cream instead of boiled custard, and Ellie Mae would eat a bowl of ice cream with us. Sharing store-bought ice cream with a dog was fine, but Ellie Mae didn’t get any of the boiled custard. Making boiled custard was time-consuming and labor intensive; it had to be stirred constantly over a low heat until it reached the right consistency.

I was in college one of the last times we went over there at Christmas time and had boiled custard, before Mrs. Nancy grew too frail and forgetful to make it anymore. We were sitting around her kitchen table, and Mrs. Nancy was washing dishes, because she had cooked for Mr. Woody’s brothers and sisters that day. Seeing that she had too many dishes to fit in the drainer, I got up and grabbed a towel and started drying. She turned to me and said, “Oh, I was hoping you were going to do that, but I didn’t want to have to ask.” I felt like I had passed a test, a test of maturity.

Mrs. Nancy and Mr. Woody are both gone now, as are my grandparents. I haven’t spent a Christmas in the South in ten years. But this Christmas, as every Christmas, I’ll make a batch of boiled custard, and remember Mrs. Nancy. Sometimes, the best family is the family you choose.

Boiled Custard
(makes 3 quarts)

½ gallon whole milk
2 cups sugar
6 whole eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1½ tablespoons butter

Combine milk, sugar, and eggs in a 6 quart pan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture coats a spoon. Remove from heat, and stir in vanilla and butter. Strain through a small mesh sieve. Chill well.

The Cello, Part 2

2005-10-10T18:29:00.000-07:00

I did leave my cello out while my parents were visiting. I even picked it up and played with it while they were here. So, what happened?

Nothing. No comment, no reaction, no response of any kind.

Whatever.

I did start cello lessons the day after they left, and am discovering how hard it is to learn to hold the bow correctly. I'm trying to remember that I'm doing this for fun, not to satisfy my teacher, and that I'm in charge, but it's a struggle. I get frustrated because I know I'm not doing it right, and because my teacher is very particular about the mechanics. About half the time, I want to quit the teacher and just play, but that's just the frustration.

The teacher is not being negative, just particular. He was actually happy with the progress I had made last week. I know that if I can learn good mechanics, it will make everything easier later, but right now, it's a struggle.

As a perfectionist, my tendency is to not do something at all if I can't do it well. Kind of limiting, I realize, and really pointless in this situation. I'm learning to play the cello because I want to; there is no need to be great at it, or even good. I can be bad at it, and still enjoy making music from it, if I let myself.

So what if I don't do it right? Doing it right is not the point. It just feels like it is.

The Cello

2005-09-12T21:06:00.000-07:00

My Mom is coming for a visit next week.  I’m having a hard time resisting the strong urge to hide some things from her.  Not bad things, nor things I’m ashamed of.  Just things that reveal who I am.

Like the cello.  A couple of weeks ago, I rented a cello.  I’ve never played cello before in my life.  The only instrument I’ve ever played is piano, and I haven’t played piano very much in the last 25 years.  I rented a cello because I like the way the cello sounds, and for the past year, I’ve had this nagging thought at the back of my head that maybe I’d like to learn to play the cello.

In the past, I usually ignored those niggling little ideas like that, the ones that seem stupid and pointless and self-indulgent.  I don’t have time to learn the cello, I’m too busy.  What’s the point, anyway?  I’ll never be very good.  I’m never going to perform.  And I’d stick that dream in the drawer with all the other dreams, and lock it up tight.  Then I’d have another drink to forget it all.

I don’t drink anymore, so it’s harder to forget those silly little dreams.  That drawer of denied dreams got too full, and it exploded all over me.  The mid-life crisis may be a cliché, but waking up at 40 and realizing that you don’t know whose life you’re in is a pretty disorienting experience.

So now, I try to listen to those little dreams.  Okay, so even now it takes me a while, but a year is shorter than forever.  I rented a cello and I bought a couple of books and began to teach myself the cello.  Why am I teaching myself?  Because it took a couple of weeks for me to be willing to ask for help from a teacher.

Taking lessons from someone makes me feel vulnerable.  This little dream is fragile; it wouldn’t take much criticism for it to just curl up and die.  I grew up in an environment where fragile little dreams weren’t nurtured into being.  Instead, my mother told me all the reasons my dream was impractical, unattainable, and not really what I wanted, anyway.  I learned to hide those dreams.

While my instinctive reaction is to find some closet to tuck the cello away in when she comes to visit, I keep reminding myself that I’m a grown-up now.  I don’t need her to validate my dreams, and I don’t need anything from her to chase my dreams.   So, I’m going to leave the cello out.  I’m not sure I’ll be able to go so far as to actually pick it up and play it while she’s here, but just leaving it out will be a step forward into the light.

It’s so hard to turn loose of those old defenses.

No Doormat for Me, Thanks

2005-07-18T17:28:00.000-07:00

I was behind the backstop that day, earning a few bucks as the scorekeeper. I’d been doing it a couple of years, even though I wasn’t much older than the boys on the field. I wished I could have been out on the field instead of behind the backstop, but the recent court ruling requiring Little League to allow girls had come too late for me. So, I kept score; it paid better than babysitting, and was easier work. Usually.

One of the all-teams playing was from Hometown American, which had produced a state champion just a couple of years before. They were expected to handily win this district tournament, but weren’t having an easy time of it against the boys from the neighboring town. Even though I had scored for a different league, and had no connection to Hometown American, I had heard of the Hometown American’s coach’s reputation. He was a quick-tempered man, regularly giving the umpires a hard time. The closeness of the game wasn’t improving his mood, either.

The trouble began after an inning ended. Hometown American had been batting, and after the third out, I totaled up the inning summary and announced it over the PA system: “Hometown American scored 2 runs on 3 hits and no errors. After 3 innings, the score stands Hometown American 4, NeighborTown 3.”

The coach’s head snapped up at my announcement. “We scored 3 runs!” he shouted as he came down the line to the backstop. Soon, he was in my face; we were separated only by the chain-link of the backstop. He was an adult, a professor at the local university; I was a young teenaged girl. But I was never an easily intimidated teenaged girl.

I walked him through my scoresheet for the inning, showing him where all the runners had gone. He had been attempting to keep score himself, but he was also coaching third base. The thing about scoring a baseball game is, it requires a surprising amount of attention. If you try to do anything else while you score, it’s very easy to miss something. He had missed an out; a baserunner that had been put out on the basepaths, his scoresheet had scoring a run. It should have been obvious; after all, it takes three outs to end an inning, and he only showed two. If he was right, the inning would still be going on.

But he was in no mood to see the obvious, and besides, I probably seemed a better target than the umpire, who was another adult and a veteran ump. The coach kept yelling that I had missed a run, but I stood my ground. I didn’t yell back at him, but I knew I was right, and I wasn’t going to give them a run they didn’t score. The umpire had come over, and heard my explanation, and he backed me up. He was trying to calm the coach down; he kept saying, “She’s right, Jim.” Eventually, the coach had no choice but to back down and continue the game. He didn’t file a protest, because he knew there was no point; I had the official scoresheet, and it balanced; the number of hits plus runs plus outs for the inning equaled the number of batters who came up that inning. Hometown American did go on and win the game. The coach never acknowledged his error, but I still felt pretty good for having stood up to him.

That is, until later that evening. Mom had been at the field and had seen the whole thing. She had not been all that happy at seeing her teenaged daughter going toe-to-toe with a grown man. She had to admit that I was right, but didn’t think it was very ladylike for me to be arguing with the coach. I guess she thought I should have let the umpire handle it. I suspect that had it been my brother out there standing up to the coach, she would have been proud of him, but not so her daughter.

I never have been able to figure out how to balance my own self-respect with her idea of proper lady-like behavior. Looking back, I’m still proud for standing up for what I knew was right, but still disappointed that my mother wasn’t proud of me.

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat. -Rebecca West

Apple Jacks

2005-06-19T20:24:00.000-07:00

It was stupid. Part of me knew it then, but didn’t care. It was also dangerous, but that never occurred to me then. I thought I was in control. I thought I was choosing to get drunk. I could handle it.

We’d been skiing all day. It was my first attempt at skiing, and it hadn’t been all that much fun. Everybody else already knew how to ski, and nobody wanted to waste a rare day of skiing babysitting me on the bunny slope, so I’d been by myself. I took a lesson, then tried to make it down the icy slope without killing myself. I hated the tow rope, so I tackled the chair lift. Somehow or another, I made it off the lift without mishap, and started down.

There’s a reason skiing was rare among my friends; the snow conditions in the southern Appalachians weren’t very good. The weather warmed up too often, turning the runs to ice. Not exactly the best conditions for a beginner, and I struggled. When I lost control on an icy patch and collided with another skier, wiping him out, I was ready to give up. With his kind help, I made it down the rest of the slope without wreaking any more havoc, and headed to the lodge to wait for my friends.

So, by the time we made it back to the apartment, I was ready for a drink. When someone suggested Apple Jacks, I was game. He explained that Apple Jacks were a shot of apple brandy followed by a shot of Jack Daniels. I didn’t care, I just wanted to stop feeling like an idiot.

So, to stop feeling like an idiot, I made an idiot of myself. I tossed down the Apple Jacks, determined to keep pace with the guy who had suggested them. I was used to being able to keep up. I don’t know how many shots I drank, because I don’t remember anything until about 4 the next morning. That’s when I woke up, or came to. I was very confused. I wasn’t sure where I was or what had happened. I was on the couch, not in bed, and I was wearing my pajama top, but still had my jeans on.

The next morning, my friends told me what had happened. I drank so much so quickly that I passed out. After I lost consciousness, I started throwing up. Fortunately, my friends had been there to take care of me. I had thrown up on my shirt, so the girls had changed my shirt for me, and since I was passed out, they had decided to just let me sleep on the couch rather than try and get me to bed. The fact that I could easily have choked to death on my own vomit, as inevitably happens to some drunk college student every year, never really penetrated. I was, however, embarrassed that I hadn’t been able to hold my liquor, and I apologized to my friends and thanked them for taking care of me. Mostly I remember being relieved that I didn’t have the wicked hangover I deserved after that much alcohol; evidently throwing up had cleared enough of it from my system so that I felt fine.

The only thing I learned from the incident was to not try and keep up with Mr. Apple Jack. He could outdrink me. I felt bad about my friends having to take care of me, but I didn’t think it was any big deal. I didn’t think it was a sign that maybe there was something about my drinking that wasn’t okay. Didn’t all college students get drunk? Yes, technically, I could have died, but only if I’d been drinking alone, and if I’d been drinking alone, then I wouldn’t have been trying to keep up with anybody, and it wouldn’t have happened. And I didn’t die, didn’t even come close to dying. Don’t be so melodramatic. I was just having a good time. At least while I was conscious.

A Dog

2005-05-31T20:22:00.000-07:00

"I really want a dog."

I've been hearing that constant refrain from my daughter for the past several months. I wanted a dog, too. My husband was willing to tolerate a dog. But how to get a dog? Buy from a breeder? Go to the humane society? What kind of dog? Puppy or not?

Finally, last Friday, my daughter had the day off from school, and she and I went to the local humane society. I had gone on-line a few days before, and had identified a dog that I thought might work for us. She was a 4 year old black Lab mix, and was described as friendly and good with children, and only medium sized. I didn't tell my daughter about my research, I just let her look at the dogs and see what caught her eye, or her heart.

She looked at the puppies and the little dogs, then we went into the big dog area. There were some really loud barking dogs at the entrance, and that kind of intimidated my daughter. But we continued down the line of kennels, and eventually came to Chica. That's the dog my daughter was caught by. Chica was also the dog I had identified as a likely candidate. We went back in, and asked to meet Chica.

When Chica was brought into the dog run to meet us, she didn't immediately connect to us. She seem very stressed, and wanted out. She wouldn't look at us, and the whites of her eyes were very apparent. But after a few minutes, and a couple of doggie treats, she settled down, and began to connect. When she licked my daughter's face, I knew we were going to be okay. We went back in and did all the paperwork, gave them a credit card, and took Chica home.

Chica settled in pretty quickly in her new home, especially after I bought a crate later that evening. Everything seemed pretty easy; she didn't chew on anything, she followed me around, she'd come sit at my feet when I sat down. She was fairly calm for a Lab, the only challenge being that she would pull on the leash until she practically choked herself. She was smart, and learned commands quickly.

But then, on Saturday, she started to cough. Her appetite was a little off. By Sunday, she was coughing worse, and her appetite was way off. I called the humane society, and they said it was probably kennel cough, and as long as I could get her to eat, I could probably wait until Tuesday to take her to the vet, since Monday was Memorial Day. They gave me suggestions of things to try to tempt her to eat, and I was able to get her to eat a little bit.

But then on Monday morning, my mom instinct said, this is a sick dog. I called the animal hospital I had been planning to use, but they were closed. They gave a number for an emergency clinic, and I called them. They told me it sounded like kennel cough, and I should bring her in. I did, they examined her, found a mass in her abdomen that they weren't sure if it was a bladder or not, but gave me antibiotics and a cough suppressant for her, and said if she wasn't better the next day, I should take her to the vet.

The next day was today, and she wasn't any better. She woke me up at 4 am with her coughing, and she seemed even sicker than the day before. As soon as the vet opened, I called, and was given an appointment for 1:30. I gave Chica another dose of the antibiotic (her third), and worried. Every time I left the house this morning, I was afraid I'd come back to find her dead, that's how sick she seemed. But she didn't die, she was just miserable as she laid in her crate. All I could do was rub her head and coax her to drink a little water.

When I took her in this afternoon, her fever was higher than the day before, and it was clear we weren't dealing with a simple case of kennel cough. The vet today felt the same mass, and was sure it wasn't her bladder after I told her that Chica had relieved herself just a half hour earlier. She did an ultrasound, and found an abscess. She said it was probably related to the spay surgery Chica had just had 9 days earlier, when she came into the shelter. The abscess really needed to be opened up, but the problem was, Chica was too sick for surgery. We decided to leave her there overnight for IV fluids and antibiotics, and hope that would improve her enough for surgery. The vet also wanted to take some X-rays, because she was concerned that Chica may have developed pneumonia.

So I left Chica, and went home to meet my daughter's school bus. I explained where Chica was, and that she was very sick. My daughter asked me if she would get better, and I told her the truth: I didn't know.

A little later, the vet called. The X-rays had confirmed that Chica had pneumonia. That complicates things a great deal. Putting a dog with pneumonia under general anesthesia is risky; the vet said that you'd really want a ventilator around if you're going to do that, and that her animal hospital doesn't have a vent. She could refer us to a specialist who would have one, but it would be expensive and still far from risk-free. If the abscess ruptures, then that's really bad, so not doing surgery is probably not going to work, either.

So, our options are not great. Transport her to a specialist, have the operation, transport her back to our vet for post-op care, spend probably at least $4000, and still maybe she dies. Have our vet do the operation without a vent on hand, much riskier, and still probably $2000. Or put her to sleep. The contract with the humane society says that if an adopted dog incurs a major health problem within 30 days, they will take the dog back and refund the adoption fee ($90). It's not explicitly stated, but I would assume that they would then put her to sleep.

Rationally, I can't justify spending that kind of money on a mutt I've known less than a week. I could buy a purebred puppy with an impeccable pedigree for that kind of money. But that doesn't stop my heart from breaking.

Earliest Memories

2005-05-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

“What are your earliest memories?” the therapist asked.

I thought a moment, trying to separate out the real memories from the snapshot memories. As the oldest child, and with my father away in the army, my early childhood had been copiously documented.

“I have a vague memory of burning my arm on an electric heater, probably when I was three,” I replied.

“What do you remember about it? Do you remember the pain?” she queried.

“No, I don’t remember the pain. I can visualize the room, and I can see the heater, and I can remember the mark it left on my arm. Another early memory also involves getting hurt; I remember getting a splinter. When I was about three and a half, we lived in another state for a few months, and we had neighbors, unlike in our old home, where we lived out in the country. The neighbors next door had kids who were older than me, and I was in the yard playing. They had a tree in the back yard, and had put a 2x8 plank up into the tree, so you could walk up the plank to climb into the tree. I remember doing that, and getting a splinter in my left hand. I don’t remember the pain from that, either,” I recalled.

“Do you remember the other kids? How many were there? Were there any adults around?” she questioned.

“I know there were other kids and that they were older, but I don’t remember them at all. I don’t remember any adults there. I don’t know if my mom was out in the back yard or not. I don’t remember crying or going to her.”

“Any other early memories?”

“Another memory from that same few months in Texas is that I used to watch The Lone Ranger on television. I would come in from playing and turn on the TV. I can see our old television. I don’t really remember much about the room it was in, nor do I have a clear picture of the house we lived in then. I remember my bedroom, but that’s about it.”

“Did anybody watch TV with you?”

“No, my brother was only a year old; he was too young.”

“Do you notice anything those memories have in common?” the therapist prompted.

I contemplated the memories. Two had involved mild injury, which probably imprinted them on my brain, but not the third. Other than they had all occurred before I was four, I couldn’t see a common thread in all three of them. “Not really,” I answered. “Injury is the only thing that comes to mind, and the Lone Ranger memory doesn’t involve that.”

“What strikes me is that you’re alone in these memories. You don’t remember anybody else with any clarity. You know that there were other kids around in one of them, but you don’t remember the kids themselves. It suggests to me that you were probably pretty self-sufficient from a young age. Not necessarily lonely, but not needing other people a great deal.”

“Interesting. I see the same thing in my daughter, always have. She was the two year old telling me ‘Go away, Mommy, I’m busy!’ The child who is always happy to have a playdate, but seldom asks for them. She enjoys playing with other kids, but is pretty content to be alone. Lucky, since she’s an only child.”

“How did you feel when your two year old said ‘Go away, mommy!’”

“There was a moment of pain – she doesn’t need me! But that passed, and I was glad to have such an independent child. What’s harder is that when she’s so self-sufficient and self-contained, it’s hard to know what’s going on with her. There’s a wall there, and it’s been difficult for me not to want to batter it down sometimes. It doesn’t do any good; the more I push her to tell me what’s going on, the more she retreats.”

“Just like you did with your mother?”

“Yeah. My mother couldn’t let go, though. It was remembering the pain of my mother trying to batter down my wall that eventually made me stop doing it with my daughter. I could see myself locked in, I could tell I was doing to her what was done to me. I remember one time, I don’t even remember what I was trying to find out from her, but she was crying, I was frustrated, and I had tried every trick I had learned from my mother, to no avail, of course. I hated it; I hated that I had done those things, that I had tried to shame her into telling me, that I had gotten locked in and wouldn’t let go, that my sweet child was crying and I had caused it for no good reason, and I stopped. I just won’t go there anymore. I will not become my mother!”

“But can you feel some empathy, or at least sympathy, for your mother? Can you see how frustrating it was for her to have this self-contained child? How it might feel like rejection, make her feel inadequate?”

“Ouch. I don’t like feeling sympathy for my mother. I really don’t like feeling empathy for her. I don’t want to share anything with her.”

“Do you think she did the best she could with what she had?”

“Unfortunately, I do. It wasn’t what I wanted, not even what I needed, but it was all she had to offer.”

“So why do you keep blaming her for something she couldn’t do anything about?”

Ah, that is the question.

Kick Her When She's Down

2005-05-17T16:17:00.000-07:00

I thought about not answering the phone when I saw the number come up on Caller ID. I didn’t want to talk to my mom. But I thought it could be my husband, calling to make sure I was okay. He was still out there at my parents’ house, with our daughter, and I know he was worried about me.

He had reason to be worried about me. I was clinically depressed, had been fighting this depression unsuccessfully for 5 months. I was supposed to be back in Tennessee with our daughter, while he came back home to work, but then my meds stopped working again, and I began to crash.

Sending me back early, even though it meant I would be at home alone, seemed safer. In the best of situations, with much to distract us and all my wits around me, spending a week with my mother is a challenge. Spending a week with her when I was spiraling back down into the pit of a horrendous depression, out in the middle of nowhere where they lived, was probably more than I could handle.

So he put me on the plane, and stayed there so our daughter could have some time with her grandparents. And I wouldn’t totally be alone; I had friends who would check on me, and I made an appointment with both the therapist and the psychiatrist. But I knew he was worried.

I answered the phone. It wasn’t my husband; in fact, he and my daughter were out of the house, off playing miniature golf. It was my mother. She wanted to talk about my depression.

She didn’t understand. Why was I depressed? What had happened? “You’re a strong person, you’re not like Granny.” Granny, her mother-in-law, had twice been committed for depression. “You’re too strong to be depressed. It doesn’t make any sense.” She started getting angry. She demanded an explanation, but I didn’t have any to give her. Soon, it became clear to me what was really behind this harsh interrogation: she was afraid that I blamed her for my depression. Her best defense had always been a strong offense, so in her fear, she attacked.

I was devastated. I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, and I did as soon as I got off the phone. All the tears that had been dammed up inside me for the last few months came gushing out. I cried for all the times she had yelled at me, for all the times I had felt not enough, yet too much at the same time. I cried for letting her do it to me again.

This attack hurt more than the others. I was already wounded, and she kicked me when I was down. This wasn’t about some offense I had committed. I hadn’t gotten depressed to hurt her or embarrass her. I was suffering from an illness; that it was a mental illness didn’t make it my fault.

If this attack wasn’t really about me being a bad daughter, then maybe the others weren’t, either.

Treasures in Heaven

2005-05-05T14:53:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post, after many years away from church, I went back to church, though not to a Southern Baptist church. About 7 years ago, I started looking for a church, and found one I was comfortable in, an Episcopal church. I found there a Christianity that resonated with me, one that was more about the journey than the destination. Doubts were expected, not discouraged. And I found people who cared about me, who were there to help me during a very rough time in my life.

Then we moved to another state, and had to leave that church behind. We looked around a bit, and started attending another Episcopal church not far from our house. I really like the rector at the church, but am beginning to accept that the church itself is not where I’m supposed to be. I’m back to feeling like I don’t fit in. While not uniformly so, this generally of a more conservative, evangelical bent than our old church, and frankly, despite the evangelical feel, less friendly. We’ve been attending that church almost two years now, yet most Sundays, I can stand around during the coffee time and no one will speak to me other than to nod a hello. It’s not that we haven’t gotten involved, either; my husband sings in the choir, and I’m teaching Sunday school.

I can be difficult to get to know, I’ll admit. I’m a reserved person and an introvert. But while the lack of friendliness is an annoyance, what’s really convincing me that I don’t fit in here is not that. It’s that when I sit in Sunday school teacher meetings, what I hear doesn’t resonate with me.

An example. This Sunday, the lesson for the kids is the Prodigal Son. Our Sunday school director sent out email today to the teachers, as she does every Sunday, to let us know what’s going on this Sunday, anything we should be aware of, especially things that impact the time available to us. But this week, she included a little theology in her email.

She shared that she had always found this parable difficult to understand. She always related to the faithful son, who is unhappy that the father makes such a big deal when the black sheep son returns. Then she read the line where the father says Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. She then realized that while the ungodly might get saved and get into heaven at the last minute, they will have nothing, while the faithful will inherit everything.

I read that today, and it just hit me so wrong. For me, Christianity is not a competitive sport. Is there really score-keeping in heaven? This feels like a jealous, exclusionary Christianity, a “we’re better than them” mentality.

The parable of the Prodigal Son says something different to me. The faithful son stayed home and did his duty, and had a good life. He had a home, a family, friends, and plenty to eat. The lost son ended up in a hell on earth, living among the pigs. He had no food, no place to live, no friends or family. He was alone, separate.

I guess I’m just not a “build up treasures in heaven” kind of Christian. I think that faithful living is its own reward. When I remember to turn toward God, when I remember to stop trying to solve everything on my own and let God have room to work, my life goes a lot better. I don’t know what happens after I die, and I don’t really care. I care about trying to live my life today true to myself and true to God. What other people choose to do is their business; I don’t want to waste time worrying about whether I’ve got more “treasures in heaven” than they do.

I’m probably being too harsh on the Sunday school director, who really is a good woman. This is just the culmination of a series of things, all of which touch a nerve that’s still a little raw even after many years away from the conservative church I grew up in.

Wedding Stress

2005-05-02T15:21:00.000-07:00

She hated my answering machine. She suspected, and rightly so, that I used it as a barrier between us. With the wedding coming up, I was going to have to communicate with her more, and I wanted some degree of control over the interactions.

But she didn’t want to use it. Even today she doesn’t like to use my voicemail. There’s always a long pause before she finally says, “it’s your mother.” Back then, every time she’d call and get my machine, she’d just get a little more angry at me.

Her anger reached the boiling point early one morning about a month before the wedding. She called about 6 am that morning, and got my machine. That was too much. She hung up the phone without leaving a message, and called my fiancé’s apartment. He answered the phone, and admitted I was there. He handed me the phone, and she told me she didn’t have time to discuss it then, but that she would call me later that day and she’d better not get my machine.

I hung up the phone. I knew what was coming later that day. My stomach was in knots. I thought about my options. There was really no reason for me to tolerate the tongue-lashing that was coming. I was grown, living on my own, 500 miles away. I didn’t need financial support from my family. Maybe I should have let her get the answering machine that afternoon, make it clear that the balance of power had shifted.

But I didn’t. It was ugly, as I knew it would be. I took it, crying quietly. I never wanted her to know I was crying, and over the phone, I could hide it better. I didn’t talk much anyway during these tirades; it did no good. “Talking back” just fueled the fire of her rage.

This time, the threat to make me comply with her rules was to cancel the wedding. That was so tempting. Sure, I wanted to marry my boyfriend, but I didn’t care about the trappings of the wedding. It was going to be a simple wedding anyway. It was mostly going to be about family and our parents’ friends; there would only be a few of our friends there.

But canceling the wedding at this point, with the invitations already mailed, would be embarrassing. Eloping would have greatly disappointed my future mother-in-law. I suppose I could have moved the wedding to my fiancé’s home town, but then I would have had to explain to his family why we were moving the wedding at the last minute.

I didn’t want anybody to know that my mother treated me like that. I didn’t want to admit that at 25 and independent, I still turned into 15 around my mom. And as tempting a thought as it was, as much as I wanted to cut myself off from my parents right then, I wasn’t willing to walk away from my family.

So I complied. I didn’t spend the night at my boyfriend’s apartment. I was there to answer the phone. Another truce was achieved.

I did get married, exactly as planned. My father-in-law, an ordained but not practicing Methodist minister, performed the ceremony in my parents’ Baptist church. It was a simple, Southern wedding; no wedding dinner, just cake and punch, no dancing, just standing around and talking at the reception. I enjoyed my friends, and I was happy and relaxed. The blowup with my mom was not forgotten nor forgiven, but it wasn’t going to ruin the day; I’m a Southern woman, I can ignore things with the best of them.

I still look back and wondered whether I should have called her bluff, stood up to her back then. I don’t know what would have happened, and it seemed unfair to drag my sweet, gentle husband into that mess then. Besides, I thought then that it wouldn’t happen again, that my being married would change things. It did change things; my mother made it clear that I was now “his problem”, not hers. But the real problem is that my very different life is threatening to her, and that’s not going to change, and so it was inevitable that there would be more blowups.

Fortunately, I married a good guy, Southern enough to understand me, but not so Southern as to need or want to stay in the South. Three thousand miles is a good distance for me.

Witnessing

2005-04-25T07:51:00.000-07:00

The current religio-political climate makes me very uncomfortable. It brings into sharp relief the difference between who I am and how I was raised. The religion I was taught as a child is the same rule-based, fear-ridden brand that seems to be in ascendancy today. The intensity has been dialed up, and the persecution complex seems to be growing even as they gain more power. But it strikes me that as they've shifted focus to the political arena, there's less focus on evangelism. They aren't really trying to convert everybody else; they're just telling them what they can and can't do.

Back when I was a teenager, the Great Commission was a big deal. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, from Matthew 28:19, in the King James Bible, of course. While my parents were willing to use the Revised Standard Version, or even the New International Version, there were still people in the church who believed that the King James Version was the only true version. Sometimes I wondered if they thought Jesus spoke in King James English.

"Witnessing" was a big deal. One way of witnessing was "giving your testimony", telling how you came to be saved. Having been saved at 10 years old, I didn't exactly have the most dramatic testimony, so I never had to give my testimony to a group of people. I did do some other forms of witnessing though, like going door-to-door to invite people to church or to Vacation Bible School.

I also went on a mission trip with my parents and some other families from our church. This was after we moved from the very small, very rural church to a little bit bigger, little less rural (but still not city) church. We drove in caravan up to someplace in Michigan, I forget where. We camped out in a state park for a week while the men helped build a church and the women went out in the neighborhoods and held little mini Vacation Bible Schools.

But there were several things bothering me about the whole process, though its only been with the benefit of many years experience and hindsight that Ive been able to understand it. Back then, I just knew that witnessing was making me increasingly uncomfortable. Eventually, there came a point where I just couldnt go along anymore. One day, a bunch of people from our church were going to be handing out flyers at a local grocery store, and I just couldn't do it. I finally told my parents that I didn't want to do it, that I didn't feel comfortable doing it. I told them that I didn't like it when other people accosted me coming out of the grocery store wanting to give me flyers, so I didn't feel comfortable doing that to other people. I don't think they were really that comfortable with the whole idea, either, because they didn't try to change my mind.

Much later, long after I had left that church, I encountered Alcoholics Anonymous, and the idea of attraction rather than promotion, as stated in AA's 11^th tradition. Then I understood what had bothered me about witnessing. There are certainly similarities between witnessing as I saw practiced back then, and what goes on in AA meetings. AA meetings are full of testimonies, people telling how they were saved from alcoholism. And the 12^th step of AA's program tells us to carry the message to other alcoholics, which is similar to the Great Commission.

But the focus on attraction rather than promotion changes the whole tenor of the process. It's the difference between sharing what has worked for me, and telling you what will work for you. I can tell another alcoholic, "This is how I got sober"; I dont tell another alcoholic, "This is how you need to get sober". AA members dont go to bars and hand out flyers for AA meetings. We don't carry the message to other alcoholics by telling them they need to get sober. We show them a different way of life, and offer to help if they want it.

By contrast, the witnessing that I saw practiced assumed that we had the answers, that if other people weren't following our path, they needed to be saved. There was a somewhat grudging acceptance of other Christian denominations, but back then, at least, before the alliance over abortion, Catholics werent really regarded as Christian by many of the Southern Baptists I knew. The same people who would get annoyed at the Jehovah's Witnesses knocking at their door would go knocking on other doors without any sense of irony.

So, the presumption that "we're right, everybody else is wrong, and it's our job to save them" was one reason I was uncomfortable with the evangelism I saw. Another reason I was uncomfortable with it was that I had a hard time inviting people to attend a church that I was having difficulties agreeing with. This was in the 70s, when the fundamentalists were starting to take over the denomination. Inerrancy was becoming a big deal, and that was something I couldnt accept or agree with. I remember my pastor asking me if I knew how we could know the Bible was true and quoting John 1:1 as the answer: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. His point was, we knew the Bible was true, because the Bible told us the Bible was true. Theres a deep strain of anti-intellectualism in most of the southern, conservative churches I saw growing up, and I couldnt go along with it. "God said it; I believe it; that settles it."

A third problem I had was racism. Southern Baptists, as a denomination, do not have a good track record with racism. The denomination was formed in a split over slavery. Southern Baptists weren't out there promoting civil rights. And my church wasn't really very interested in witnessing to blacks. Not that the people in the church didnt think that blacks needed to be saved, but they didn't really want blacks worshipping with them. I remember a discussion one Sunday night about what our response should be if a black family came to church; one prominent member said that we should direct them to one of the black churches in the community, "where they'd feel more comfortable."

When I left home to go to college, I pretty much stopped going to church. The few times I did attend church over the next four years, it was a Presbyterian church. After college, I stopped going to church at all, except to keep the peace when I came to visit my parents. It took many years, and becoming a parent myself, to want to seek out a new church, one that I could be comfortable with. I researched, and talked with friends, and even prayed, and joined an Episcopal church, looking for a place to teach my daughter, and discovering a place where I could find my own long-dormant spirituality. And I get there, only to find that the fundamentalists are trying to take over that church, as well...

Born Again

2005-04-10T15:11:00.000-07:00

I grew up going to church. My family is Southern Baptist. We went to a small, country church. It was the church my dad had gone to growing up. There were a lot of people in that church whom I loved, and who loved me. Yet for all that, I never felt entirely comfortable and at home there

Every summer, there would be a revival. It would be hot and muggy, and some preacher from out of town would be brought in to preach fire and brimstone every night for a week. We'd sit in the pews, sweating and fanning ourselves with the paper fans advertising the funeral home. Then we'd stand for the invitation. If the week was getting on and not much was happening during the invitation, the preacher would really start to drag out the invitation. We'd sing a verse of the invitation song (Just As I Am was a standard), then the preacher would interrupt to preach a little bit more, try to persuade the sinner out there that they needed to step forward and be saved. Maybe he'd have us bow our heads and close our eyes, while the pianist played (this was a country church, no fancy organ here). You began to hope that someone would walk down the aisle, so that we could go home, because you couldn't really fan yourself while you were standing with your head bowed for the invitation. It wasn't polite.

Eventually, someone would give in and walk down the aisle. There were a few people you could generally count on to do so, even though they were already saved. You could always rededicate yourself, and some did, every year. I don't mean that as cynically as it sounds. I don't believe they walked down the aisle just to get us all off the hook. I believe they genuinely felt moved to do so. The whole setup is designed to make you feel moved to do so. A fiery sermon, with a heavy focus on sin, a prolonged altar call, a recognition of your sinful nature; the surprise is that there were only a few that did it every year.

I was not one of these. For one thing, my parents spoke with mild disdain for those people; we were "once saved, always saved" Baptists, after all! For another, I tend to be left cold by such manipulation.

I did walk down that aisle once. It was not during a revival, it was during a random Sunday in the spring when I was 10 years old. I have no memory of anything the preacher said that day. I doubt I was even listening. By then, I had learned the fine art of letting my mind wander while appearing to pay attention. Besides, that day, it didn't matter what the preacher said; I had already made a decision to walk down that aisle.

The decision had been made the week before. The previous Sunday night, I was in church as usual, and we had the usual Sunday night service. I don't remember anything about the service that night, except that when the invitation began, suddenly I felt an intense urge to walk down the aisle. I felt a chill down my spine, and blown away by the intensity of the feeling. I didn't walk down the aisle that night; I didn't do things on impulse much, even then, and I didn't understand what was going on with me.

I wasn't totally immune to manipulation, though. My big worry, as I rode in the car home, was that something would happen to me before I could get the courage to walk down that aisle. That staple "what would happen if you died tonight?" question of preachers working the altar call had had an impact on me. Finally, I decided I had to talk to someone about this, so I told my parents about my experience. They asked me a few questions, and suggested that I might want to go forward during the invitation the following Sunday. As for my fear about what might happen before then, the reassurance was "nothing's going to happen, youll be fine."

So the following Sunday, when the preacher issued the invitation, he had us bow our heads and close our eyes, and I stepped out of the pew and answered the call. Suddenly I realized that I was not alone; there was someone else marching down that aisle with me. My younger brother, having heard the conversations between me and my parents about accepting Christ as your savior, decided he was ready, too. We were subsequently baptized together a few weeks later.

Despite my conversion experience, I still didn't really agree with much of what I heard in that country Baptist church. Eventually, when I was on my own, I rejected the religion of my childhood, and even for a while rejected God. The tradition of the path I follow now doesn't focus on a dramatic conversion experience, and I understand and even agree with that lack of focus. But that doesn't deny that what I felt in that small country church one Sunday night wasn't real.

Birthday

2005-04-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

I put a stop to it the year I turned twelve. I remember my brother coming in the room…

“Ready for your birthday spanking?” he asked.

“No,” I replied, “I’m done with those.”

“Mom! Dad! She won’t let me give her a birthday spanking!” he yelled as he left the room.

I don’t know where the tradition of birthday spankings began. Our family had always done them, one smack for each year of the birthday, plus one to grow on. All I know is, I had no intention of letting anyone spank me, in jest or otherwise.

The rest of the family came into the room.

“What’s this about being done with birthday spankings?” my dad asked.

“I’m too old for them,” I answered.

“Too old! You’re never too old for birthday spankings! Are you getting too big for your britches?” Dad asked.

“No, I’m just don’t want birthday spankings anymore.”

“You’re always so sensitive and touchy,” my mom put in. “It’s just a birthday spanking, it’s no big deal.”

“I still don’t want one.”

“Can’t have a birthday party without a birthday spanking,” Mom said. “Do you want to skip the birthday party?”

“I don’t care, as along as I don’t have to get spanked.” I stuck to my position. It’s not like she was talking about a real party with friends, anyway. She was just talking about a cake from a mix and blowing out the candles with her and Dad and my younger brother.

“It’s not fair! I want to give her a birthday spanking!” my brother yelled, and tried to grab me. At twelve, I was already my full adult height, and my 9 year old brother had no chance of physically forcing me to do anything. I grabbed his hand when he tried to hit me and held him at arm’s length.

“Don’t fight her,” my mom told my brother. “If she’s too good to participate in family traditions, let her go.”

So I never had to endure another birthday spanking. I did get the cake, after all, and presents, so the only price I had to pay for my victory was the sense of feeling apart from my family, of being the one who didn’t fit in, was too sensitive. Given that I felt that way anyway, it was worth it.

March Madness

2005-03-28T21:16:00.000-08:00

I can remember standing outside the old gym, in the cold, with snowflakes falling from the sky. There was a long line of people waiting to get in. Fortunately, my family had season tickets, because there weren’t any tickets available to this game. The old gym only seated about 2000 people, a few hundred more if the fire marshal wasn’t looking.

This wasn’t big-time college basketball, and it was nothing like you’d see today when you’re watching March Madness. This was the early 70s at a small college in a small conference, which had always had a dreadful basketball team.

Until now. Now the basketball team was winning, and everybody in town wanted into Memorial Gymnasium to watch them. There were no plush seats in this gym; everybody sat on wooden bleachers that came almost right up to the court. Our seats were in the end, just to the right of the basket, in the second row. To this day, I like watching a basketball game from the end. I love watching the flow of the game as it’s coming towards me.

Why was this team suddenly winning? A couple of streetball players from New York City had been recruited to this sleepy little Southern town, and they were changing the way the game was played here. Their supporting cast were mostly local kids, who had never seen basketball played like this, for both good and bad. Think about what you’d get if you put a couple of street kids on the team from Hoosiers, and that’s sort of what it was like. It wasn’t exactly great fundamental basketball; it was wild and unpredictable. At the center of it all was Fly Williams, the wildest and most unpredictable of all.

If you’ve read Heaven is a Playground, by Rick Telander, you know a lot about Fly Williams. If you haven’t, you should; it’s a great basketball book. I didn’t read it myself until much later. Back then, I was a kid, mesmerized by what the Austin Peay Governors were doing.

I remember more than just Fly. I remember Danny Odom, another New York kid, much quieter than Fly. I remember Richard Jimmerson and Mickey Fisher, local kids that I had watched in high school. I remember Percy Howard, who would later go on to play football briefly for the Dallas Cowboys, briefly, but long enough to catch a touchdown pass in a Super Bowl. I remember Howard Jackson, whose college career was cut short when he shattered both ankles in a fall while working a summer job in construction. Lake Kelly, the head coach, took Jackson into his home to live while he recovered.

Leonard Hamilton was the assistant coach who brought Fly and Danny Odom to Peay (and yes, the cheer really was “Let’s Go, Peay”, and yes, Peay is pronounced like pee.) I remember his younger brother, Willie, who played one season for the local high school, but then it was determined that he was ineligible, that his transfer was not allowed.

I remember all those stories. That’s what college basketball is to me, stories. I learned to follow a team back then, going to games with my dad. I watched the players come, grow and develop, and leave. I read the sports section every day, following their exploits. I listened to away games on the radio; listening to a close basketball game on the radio is a heart-stopping experience. Basketball is still the easiest way for me to connect with my dad; we’re both passionate about it.

Over 30 years later, I still love to follow college basketball. Today I follow women’s college basketball more closely than men’s. I guess the smaller scale reminds me of those long ago days, when that old gym was rocking, and I was shouting myself hoarse, chanting “Let’s Go Peay!”

Today, my favorite team bears little resemblance to those long ago Governors, and not just because of gender. They play a tight, disciplined game; not much streetball in their game. But then, these kids aren’t on this team because their options are limited; these kids are at the other end of the spectrum from Fly. Their options are limitless. They’re playing basketball for an elite private college, being coached by a former Olympic coach. And their stories are still fascinating to me.

Go Cardinal! (and Let’s Go Peay, for old-time’s sake!)

Old Boyfriend

2005-03-26T16:32:00.000-08:00

Hey, you remember Old Boyfriend?

You mean The Guy Who Always Wore Shorts, Even in Freezing Weather?

No, not him, the Young Republican.

Oh, the one who managed to find about three ways to insult me within the first 10 minutes of meeting me.

Yeah, that’s the one. He still sends me email.

It’s been what, 20-something years since you broke up with him? It was our sophomore year of college, right?

Yeah, that’s right. But I’m on his email list, along with, like, 40 other people. He periodically sends out emails to his list, with his thoughts and opinions on politics and movie reviews. I suppose if I asked him to stop, he’d remove me, but I don’t think any of us asked to be on this list.

And occasionally, I respond to one of his emails. I did a few days ago, and we engaged in an extended political discussion. The whole time, there’s something niggling at the back of my head, that there’s something not quite right about our discussion, not quite healthy.

What do you mean?

Well, I was having a hard time figuring out what I mean by that, until I was writing about it this morning, and it hit me. Old Boyfriend fits the classic profile of an abuser in many ways. He was never physical with me; he’s not really a physical kind of guy. But he was emotionally abusive; I just couldn’t see it back then because it felt too normal to me.

Why do you think he fits the profile?

He was always very controlling and possessive. Remember the time he tried to call me at college one weekend and he couldn’t get in touch with me? He started tracking down the phone numbers of all my friends he could remember and calling them to find me. He was angry at me for not being available when he wanted to call me, and suspicious that I was seeing someone else.

He also made it clear that when we married, he expected that I would become a Republican and a Methodist. To this day, he still tells me that I’m not really a liberal, that I’m really a conservative, just confused.

If I had friends that weren’t also his friends, he’d make disparaging comments about them. One time I went out horseback riding with another girl from my church, and when OB found out about it, he made it clear that he didn’t think she was an appropriate friend.

And of course, he was rude to you when I introduced you to him.

That he was. I remember thinking, what does she see in this loser?

He could also be very charismatic. He’s intelligent, well-read, and can be really funny. The only problem with his humor is, there’s a real mean streak in it. It’s funny if it’s not directed at you.

He was exciting to be around, when he wasn’t being a jerk.

That’s like saying a lion is a cute kitty, when it’s not eating you.

Well, yeah. I did break up with him, remember?

Yeah, I remember. I remember his friend showing up at Our College at midnight after you broke up with OB, driving from over an hour away after OB called him and told him that you had broken up with him. He tracked you down to find out why.

That’s right; I remember that, now. But he was a good guy; OB may have wanted him to track me down and talk me out of breaking up, but that’s not what he did. We just talked, and I told him why I was breaking up with OB. I told him the story about calling all my friends trying to find me, and I told him about the notepad.

The notepad?

Yeah, OB sent me one of those cube-shaped notepad thingies, with several hundred pages, and on each page, he had written a little note to me at the top. My roommate thought it was romantic; I thought it was kind of creepy. So even then, I had some kind of idea that maybe this relationship wasn’t the best idea for me.

Another time when he couldn’t reach me by phone, he sent me a telegram, which I also thought was kind of weird. Of course, this was in the “olden days”, before email.

I always thought he liked getting in your head. Remember when his first marriage was breaking up? Didn’t he tell you something like he wished he had married you?

Yeah, that did mess with my head. What he said was, that one time he and his wife were out with me and my hubby, and Hubby and I were holding hands and generally acting in love, and he was jealous. I thought he was going to say that he was jealous because he and First Wife were not lovey-dovey, though they’d been married only slightly longer than us, but what he actually said was that he was jealous that I wasn’t holding hands with him. I was too shocked to react; it had been 10 years then since we had broken up.

That reminds me of another instance that happened not too long after I broke up with him. I was back in our hometown, and had gone out to a movie or dinner or something with a male friend, not as a date or anything, just because we had a good time doing stuff. I had driven over to my friend’s house and left my car there while we went out, and when I got back, there was a note on the windshield from OB, saying he hoped I enjoyed my date. That pissed me off. It probably should have frightened me, but I didn’t know enough to be frightened. This was before being killed by estranged boyfriends became the crime of the week.

No kidding. So, he was controlling, wanted to isolate from friends he didn’t pick, and stalked you afterwards. Anything more?

He never laid a hand on me, if that’s what you’re asking.

Do you think he ever hit his first wife?

I doubt it. He’s not really the physical type. I mean, he’s big, but he’s not particularly strong or athletic. He doesn’t try to dominate people physically; he intimidates verbally.

Why did his first marriage break up?

I don’t really know. I know what OB told me – that First Wife was cold and distant, and was very insecure – but I’ve never talked to First Wife about it. I’m unlikely to ever encounter her, and I’m not sure she’d want to talk to me, anyway. After what OB said about being jealous he wasn’t my husband, I have this worry that she might blame me for the break up. It’s a shame; Hubby and I liked her better than OB.

So why do you think you’re noticing all this now?

I’ve always had this thing about our interactions. I’ve never understood why they bugged me so much, when I don’t really care that much about OB. Not that I wish him ill, but if he stopped sending me emails, I wouldn’t do anything to maintain the relationship, I’d let it go without much thought. But when I get in email discussions with him, I invariably end up feeling uncomfortable. It wasn’t because I was attracted to him or anything, because I’m not. But there was something there.

I think it became clearer now because I’ve started to deal with the other abuse issues in my past. I couldn’t see what he did as abusive before, because it was too similar to the type of abuse I went through growing up. Like being told what I really thought or felt, being expected to fit in some mold that I didn’t fit in. OB still tells me I don’t really think or feel what I say I do, but now I’m becoming able to say sorry, but no, I really do think that, or feel that. I still let him intimidate me sometimes, though.

The other thing I’ve noticed about our email discussions is that occasionally he’ll just suddenly blow up. We were having a political discussion a few months ago, and I must have hit a nerve, because I got a pretty angry email from him. The next exchange was back to being perfectly civil, just like the angry email had never happened. I showed the exchange to Hubby, just to make sure I wasn’t crazy or over-reacting, and he was surprised by the tone of the one email in the exchange. Because of my history, I’m pretty sensitive to unexpected and unpredictable blowups; just another reason why this whole thing has been niggling at the back of my mind.

Looking back at all of it, and in light of what we know about abusers now, I guess I was lucky that he wasn’t physical, and that he doesn’t drink. Who knows what would have happened if we had married, with my anger and drinking and his controlling? Could have been a pretty volatile situation.

Guess his mom did you a favor when she told OB you weren’t good enough for him, huh?

Yeah; think I should send her a thank-you note?

Being Weird

2005-03-21T21:48:00.000-08:00

My 25^th high school reunion will be coming up this summer. I went back for my 20^th, but I doubt I’ll bother making a special effort to go to my 25^th. If it happens to fall when I’m taking my daughter back to spend time with her grandparents, maybe I’ll drop in.

It’s not because I harbor a lot of resentment about my high school years; I don’t. High school wasn’t bad; it was the first time I was able to assemble anything like a social group of people similar to me. Most of those people weren’t in my particular class, though; in fact, most of the people I hung out with were in the class ahead of mine. Senior year was a little lonely after they had all departed for college, but I was planning my escape to college then, anyway.

The reason I probably won’t bother is that I just don’t care that much. It was interesting to go to my 20 year reunion and see people, almost all of whom I hadn’t seen in 20 years, but it’s not as if I suddenly rekindled relationships with them. It was nice to see them, but we really don’t have that much in common. Just about all of the people who came to the reunion either still live in the town we grew up in, or live within a few hours drive. I live on the other side of the country.

There are reasons I live on the other side of the country, and not all of them are about keeping distance between me and my family. Despite the fact that my roots run deep in that part of the country, I never felt like a native plant. It’s a very strange feeling to go back there, to feel the longing for my roots, but to know that I don’t blossom there. I’m an exotic plant there, and I need other exotic plants around me to thrive.

I don’t know what made me different. My family has been in that little corner of Tennessee for over 200 years. I don’t think it was wanderlust or a need for adventure that pushed me away to college, and then out of the South for grad school. I think it was just a sense that I didn’t think and feel like the people around me, even though I loved them and they loved me. I just didn’t belong.

I’m glad I left, and I have no desire to move back. I still have lots of family there, and I love them, but I can’t live near them. I have friends who are still there, even other “exotic plant” friends. The pull to stay in the South is strong; the family ties there are hard to resist. One of my exotic plant friends from college tried to move to California a few years back. I recently talked with her, and she was moving back after five years, because California had never felt like home to her.

The South was always and never home for me. When I go back and walk the land where my parents live, where my grandparents lived, where their parents lived, I miss it. Part of me wishes I could go back there. After a few days there, though, I remember why I don’t live there anymore. After a few days, I can feel myself start to shut down, to hide, to close off. All my instincts start screaming, don’t let them see you! And my exotic bloom closes.

How did I manage to achieve escape velocity? How did I avoid the tractor beam pulling me back there? I had always felt weird and alone growing up, so going to a strange place where I didn’t know anybody and the culture was very different, as I did when I left the South, wasn’t that much different for me. I could handle being weird long enough to discover that in grad school, I was a little less weird than I had been in college, where I was a little less weird than I had been in high school. There were more people like me, and maybe just as important, more people even weirder than me! Compared to a lot of the people there, I was pretty damn normal.

There are people like me in the world, and there are places where there are even enough of us for me to form a social group and feel less alone. I had that in grad school, and I had that in California. I can’t tell yet where the partial pressure of people like me is high enough here or not. But I know how to tolerate being weird and alone for a while.

And I can even do it sober, now.

Terri Schiavo

2005-03-18T09:14:00.000-08:00

I'll confess, I haven't been following the Terri Schiavo case very closely. But then this morning, I'm listening to the news and finding out that Congress wants to get involved. Regardless of the merits of the arguments on either side, Congressional involvement seems like a very bad idea. That's a big, blunt instrument to use, which is certain to result in collateral damage.

So, I've spent some time researching this morning. I found a very good summary of the case at Abstract Appeal. I can't say I really understand why this case has become such a cause celebre; it's a very tragic situation, true, and it's unfortunate that Terri's parents and husband no longer agree on how to handle her situation, but it's not like there has been a rush to judgment here. It's been 15 years since Terri suffered her heart attack. Eight years passed before her husband petitioned to remove the feeding tube. There have been two trials on the matter since then. Both resulted in the judgment that there was no hope of recovery for Terri, that much of her cerebral cortex is simply gone.

Michael Schiavo, her husband, has been demonized in all this. He's been accused (on little credible evidence) of having beaten Terri and caused her heart attack. He's been accused of wanting to kill Terri so he could inherit the remainder of the money won in the medical malpractice suit, which claimed that doctors were negligent for not diagnosing bulimia, and that Terri's bulimia led to her heart attack. He's been accused of wanting Terri to die so he can get on with his life; he's supposedly started a new family with another woman. A lot of this strikes me as pretty unfair.

The Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation claims that only $50,000 remains of the million dollar settlement; sure seems like a lot of work and pain to go through to inherit only $50K. The beating accusations stem from a bone scan which purportedly show evidence of old trauma, but there was no contemporary evidence from paramedics or doctors who examined and treated Terri when she had her heart attack that indicted a beating had occurred. And it's not surprising that after 15 difficult years, a person might want to get on with his life.

I don't know what Terri Schiavo would have wanted. I don't think anyone does. I know that personally, I wouldn't want to be kept alive in her state. That's why I have an advance medical directive (aka "Living Will"). But I didn't when I was the age Terri Schiavo was at her heart attack. I doubt that many twentysomethings without kids have one.

Do you? It's not a guarantee that you won't be turned into the next Karen Ann Quinlan or Terri Schiavo, but it's an important document to make your desires known.

Busted

2005-03-16T15:50:00.000-08:00

Mom wasn't feeling well that Sunday, so she stayed home from church. But even when she was sick, she wasn't good at just doing nothing, so while the rest of us were gone, she decided to empty the trash cans.

When she came to my room, there were torn pieces of paper in my trash can, and she saw “Mom” written on one of them. I guess she just couldn't resist. We had a difficult relationship, and I had done all I could to shut her out of my life my whole adolescence. I’m sure she wondered what was really going on with me, beyond the surface that I let her see.

So she pieced together the puzzle that was my torn-up letter. Today, the advice is, “never send anything in email that you wouldn't want to read on the front page of the paper.” The advice I needed then, in those pre-email days, was “if you write a letter to your friend in college, don't tear it up and leave in your trash can for your mom to find.”

There were probably three or four things in that letter that I really didn't want her to know about. But the thing guaranteed to send my mother off the deep end was that I mentioned getting drunk. The legal drinking age back then had recently been raised to 19, but even had it been legal for me to be in possession of alcohol, drinking was a big no-no in our household. My parents didn't drink, and if anybody else in the extended family drank, they hid it well. Drinking was wrong, period.

There was a big scene, of course, or at least what passed for a big scene in our house. First, my mom called my dad back into their bedroom to discuss what she'd found, then I was summoned and confronted with the evidence. This was not a calm, reasoned discussion of why they thought drinking was wrong, nor was the legality of my action much of an issue. Drinking was wrong, period, and I was drinking, so what else was I doing? What drugs was I taking? Who was I sleeping with? How could I do this to them, and with Dad a deacon? How could I do this and then go sit in church on Sunday? Maybe I didn’t deserve to go to college. Maybe all I was good for was waiting tables.

I reacted the way I always did. I lied about what I thought I could get by with, and shut up about everything else. “The Silent Treatment”, my parents called it. There wasn't much point in doing anything else. Trying to defend myself would only make my mom angrier; “don't talk back to me!” I just went into survival mode; eventually, if I didn't give her anything new to feed on, she’d wind down. I admitted to no more drinking than had been revealed in that letter, though I had been drinking for close to two years by then. My goal was to get out of there with my ability to go away to college that fall intact; I had a couple of scholarships, which helped a lot, but didn't cover all my expenses.

And they were threatening not to help with college, were threatening to not let me go a hundred miles away to the college where I had the scholarships. I was only 5 months away from starting college, and getting some room to breathe, so I was going to do whatever it took to not lose that. So I quit drinking; I didn't drink for the next 5 months. Even though I had been able to hide it for two years, been able to walk in the house drunk and maintain enough control to not get caught, I couldn't risk it under their roof now.

It took me two years, but after two years of college and working in the summer and saving my money, I no longer needed their support for college. Never again would they be able to use money to threaten me.

They taught me to manage my money wisely. I graduated from college without any debt. I always paid my credit cards in full each month. I didn’t spend money that I didn’t have. Even today, the only money I owe to anyone is mortgage debt.

I didn’t ask them for help with the down payment, either.

Period

2005-03-12T20:04:00.000-08:00

She looked up from her desk to see her mother at the door of her classroom. A quick consultation with her teacher, and they were both motioning her over to the door.

“Let's go to the bathroom,” her mother whispered, holding a brown paper bag.

Once safely in the girls bathroom, her mother explained that while doing the laundry that morning, she had seen the blood on her daughter's panties. So, here she was, supplies in hand, to help her deal with her first period.

Her heart was in the right place, and unquestionably, showing up at school to take care of things before the blood was obvious to all was the right thing to do. But the daughter was mortified, of course. She was only 10; nobody else she knew had gotten her period yet. Now everybody was going to ask her why her mother had come to school and whisked her off to the bathroom.

Into the stall they went. Her mother handed her the belt, and showed her how to attach the bulky pad to the belt and put it on. It felt thick and huge and uncomfortable between her legs. How could everybody not notice she had this big thing on? But her mother thought a girl of ten was far too young to use a tampon, and science hadn’t yet produced the ultra-absorbent yet thin pads with adhesive to stick to your panties.

So, on went the belt, looking like a weird sort of garter belt. The pad rubbed against her skin when she walked. Her mother gave her a couple of extra pads, with instructions on how to replace the pad and what to do with the used pads. Ewww.

Her mother had had “the talk” with her a year earlier, when her breasts had started to bud, so this wasn't a total shock, but she still didn't quite know what to make of it. She was torn between wanting to go home with her mother and go to bed and hide in a book, and wanting to ignore the whole event and pretend nothing had happened. But going home from school wasn't an option unless she was really sick; school was regarded as too important to miss.

Back in the classroom, there were whispered questions. “Why was your mom here?” “What happened?” “Where'd you go?” She deflected the questions from the boys; she certainly wasn’t comfortable telling a boy she had gotten her period, plus she didn’t know if they would even know what it was! She did tell a couple of the girls, who were jealous yet grossed out at the same time. She was right; nobody else in her class had gotten her period, yet. She was the first.

Once again, she was different.

The Misfit

2005-03-07T18:52:00.000-08:00

Every morning, she looked at her face in the mirror. “Yes, those are definitely my mother’s eyes, and that is without question my father’s nose. I guess I’m really not adopted.” So why, then, did she feel adopted?

She didn’t think like her parents and her brother; she knew there was more to life than could be found in their small, rural corner of the South. Her parents had always lived there, as had her grandparents, and her great-grandparents, stretching back 200 years. But she didn’t belong there; it wasn’t really a home for her soul.

Her parents were puzzled by her, she could tell. “You’re just too sensitive.” “Why are you worried about that, that has nothing to do with you?” “You don’t really think that.”

School wasn’t any better. She didn’t fit in there, either. She was a tomboy and a bookworm, neither of which was likely to win her lots of friends. When she was younger, she mostly played with the boys, because their games were more interesting. But she matured early, and her mother discouraged her from playing with the boys so much once her breasts started showing.

Her soul found no refuge at church, either. The hellfire and damnation God of the South just convinced her further that she was somehow wrong, because she didn’t get it. There were too many things that didn’t make sense to her mind. When the preacher told her that we knew the Bible was true because the Bible told us it was true, she assumed that it was something in her that was flawed, because she couldn’t understand that reasoning. She learned to keep her mouth shut as much as possible, to parrot the answers her Sunday School teachers expected, and above all, not to ask questions.

She tried to go along, to fly under the radar, to hide her real thoughts and feelings. Every now and then, she couldn’t keep it all under wraps, and a stray dream would slip out from her tight control. Those moments were often devastating. Fragile, little dream balloons were shot down out of the sky by the flamethrower of her mother’s fear, raining down fiery debris on her. She emerged from those experiences determined to never let it happen again, and to go far away as soon as she could.

Fortunately, she was smart, and she could see a path out: education. Her parents valued education greatly, and she could see that getting a college degree was her ticket out. She didn’t have to marry somebody to leave home, she didn’t have to run away from home with no money and try to find a way to survive, she could get a college scholarship! Her parents would prefer for her to stay home and go to the local college “at least for the first couple of years, then transfer”, but if she could earn a scholarship from a college away from home, she could leave home sooner.

So she held it together, wishing there were someone she could talk with, someone around who really resonated with her soul. She survived with books and booze, numbing the pain that comes with being so out of sync with the world she found herself in. She dodged the land mines of her mother’s anger, and made it to safety: college.

She still didn’t trust, but now she had hope. She at last felt like her journey could begin; maybe somewhere there were other people like her.

The Stories We Don't Tell

2005-02-19T10:33:00.000-08:00

Every family has stories. Some are funny, some are embarrassing, some are inspiring. But every family also has other stories, the stories we don't tell. These are the ones we feel ashamed of, the ones we think are our fault, that happened because we are bad.

I have those stories. Mine are not as bad as some, worse than others

One of these stories took place when I was about 5 years old. I remember it mostly as a series of images, like looking through a photo album, though these aren't the kind of pictures that ever get put in the family album.

The first snapshot is of my and my younger brother. We're sitting at the kitchen table, eating lunch. Its an old kitchen in a old house. The flooring is cracking in places. Our mother is working in the background. You can see an old oven, a few cabinets, one small counter, and a sink.

The next image is that of my mom turning around. Her face is twisted with anger, and she's yelling. I don't know what provoked her; this image is a close-up of her face, and you can't see what's going on in the foreground. Maybe my brother was goofing around and knocked over his milk. I don't know; it's not in the picture.

In the next frame, my mother has snatched my brother out of his chair, and is holding him by the upper arm. In her other hand is a worn black belt, one my father no longer wears. It's folded in half, with the buckle and the other end in her hand, which is raised. The door to the back porch is in the background, with thin curtains covering the window, and the piece of wood nailed to the jamb that serves as door look is blocking the door from opening. My brother is crying and struggling. My moms face is still contorted with rage, and even in this still picture, you can see the fire in her eyes.

The final image is that of my brother on the floor. He had squirmed out of our mother's grip, and fell to the floor. There's blood on his face; the fall has knocked a tooth out. He's only three, so it's just a baby tooth, but there's still a lot of blood. My mother looks scared and a little sick; blood always makes her queasy.

The images stop there. I don't remember clearly what happened next; it's blended with images from the time my brother tipped over backwards in his chair, and was again on the floor of that kitchen with blood on his face.

The image that sticks with me, that's burned into my head, is not that of my brother on that floor with a bloody mouth. It's the close-up of my mothers face. That's the image I saw repeated, even after we got too big for her to hit us anymore. It's not an evil face. It's just the face of someone who has her own stories she doesn't tell.

They just don't get it

2005-02-18T16:07:00.000-08:00

I've been following the Larry Summers brouhaha on the Web, and I've read the transcript of his remarks, and I've read numerous commentaries on his remarks, and I have to say, most of the comments by men show that they just don't get it. This isn't about asking questions and being open to lots of possible answers. This is about the president of perhaps the most prestigious university in the US, under whose watch the number of women granted tenure has dropped, suggesting that women might not have the "necessities", to borrow a phrase from Al Campanis, to be top-notch scientists and engineers.

If you were a junior professor in the sciences at Harvard, and heard the president of your university suggest that you, by virtue of your gender, might not be able to succeed, how would you feel? Keep in mind that, to even get to that point, you've already earned an undergraduate degree in a field where most of your peers were not like you, and even fewer of your professors were. You've gone to graduate school, where you were probably an even smaller minority. You've lacked for role models and mentors, people who can show you that it can be done. Most of your professors don't know how to interact with you, because they only have two roles for women, mate or daughter; colleague isn't one of them And now, as you work toward tenure, you hear your president say that. Is it any wonder that you might consider whether you wanted to keep banging your head against that wall?

I'm not saying Larry Summers is misogynist. I'm not even saying he's overtly sexist. It's not the overt sexism that's the big problem any more. It's the more subtle discouragement. It's that everything around you says, "you don't really belong here." Add in your biological clock, a desire to have a family and a life outside of work, and it's no big surprise that women say "fuck it, I'm out of here, it's not worth it."

Yes, Larry, little girls will tend to turn anything you give them into a doll. Yes, there are differences between the sexes. But to look around today and think that socialization isn't still a major factor is to bury your head in the sand. As your daughters get older, you may come to see this yourself....

How to Build a Box

2005-02-18T12:18:00.000-08:00

As a parent, do you ever wish you could build a box to put your children in? This box would keep them safe, protect them from all harm, and not let them hurt themselves or be disappointed. It would act as armor against the world, and help you sleep at night.

To build a box for your child, you have to start very young. The early years are very dangerous years for you and your child. A young child is almost compelled to challenge boundaries, explore new things, and become more and more mobile, so it’s important that the box be put into place early. The child may resist the confines of the box and complain, but as a parent, you have many tools at your disposal for keeping the child in the box.

Fear is an important tool. If you can teach your child to be afraid of anything outside the box, the task of keeping the child in the box becomes easier. There are some many things in the world to fear: a car striking your child, a stranger stealing your child, or that strange family down the street. They aren’t like you; they might have drugs or guns in their house!

Shame is another tool you can use. You can use both direct shame for them, and indirect shame for you. Direct shame looks like “other people won’t like you if you do that.” Indirect shame involves letting them know that you’d look like a bad parent if you let them do that, or that you’d be embarrassed by them. Sometimes, you can get a two-fer, combining both direct and indirect shame in one. Complaining about what your child has chosen to wear to school is a good place to apply this double-shaming.

Anger is perhaps your most important tool, especially if you demonstrate that anger with a raised voice and a good smack on the bottom. Children are hard-wired to want to please their parents so their parents will love them, and anger reminds children that parental love isn’t really unconditional. Do tell them that you love them after you hit them; you don’t want to scar them for life, after all!

Do not let tears dissuade you from the task of keeping that box together. Of course children are going to resist being constrained. Do you want your child to be happy or safe?

If you build a really solid box around your child in his early years, you may find that you need to expand the box a little during the teen years, but don’t be fooled by rebellion into thinking the time for the box is past. The world outside the box is even more dangerous in the teen years, as driving, sex, and substance abuse all come into play. Recognize your child’s growth by enlarging the box enough so that they don’t explode out of it like the Incredible Hulk out of his alter ego’s clothes, but keep that box firmly in place.

As your child reaches adulthood, your ability to control the box is more limited. If you’ve done an effective job using your tools to keep your child in the box, your adult child will be content to stay in the box you’ve built. If he shows signs of wanting to break out of the box, well, you’ve still got your old standbys: fear, shame, and anger. You may not be able to push them quite as far as you did when he was young, but they still can be pretty effective in keeping your adult child safely constrained.

Do not try to use your box building skills on your grandchildren, no matter how great the temptation. It’s often easier for your children to see through what’s going on when their own children are involved, and if they realize the degree they’re still being constrained as adults by that childhood box, they might reject the whole box building concept, breaking out of the box you built and refusing to build a box for their own children. If you keep a light touch in maintaining the box, chances are your adult child will repeat the process to protect your grandchild.

The key is always balance. If your box is too tight, the child will feel the constraints too tightly, and probably try to break them. If your box is too big, the child will see too much of the world, and the danger here is two-fold. The first danger is that the box won’t protect them, because you’ve let danger into the box. The second is, the child might discover that there’s an exciting world out there, and living in it fully is worth a few risks. Once your child discovers that risk is possible, and the reward worth it, there is no going back. Your ability to protect them from all danger and disappointment is severely compromised, and you’ll be forced to let your child discover who he really is, whether you like that or not.

A well-built box, maintained with a light touch, should last you and your child a lifetime, and that lifetime should be a long, safe one. If you started early enough, your child will never know what he’s missing outside the box, and even if he discovers that, he’ll be too uncomfortable without his box to ever leave it.

Hello, world

2005-02-18T12:02:00.000-08:00

Hello, world.

That's always the first program I write in a new computer language, so it might as well be my first blog entry. I don't write code anymore, haven't since becoming a mom a few years back, but I haven't totally forgotten that part of my life.

Now I just write. I feel the need to get some stuff off my chest, and I need an outlet for that. Some of the stuff is intensely personal and painful for me, so I choose to share it anonymously. Read, don't read, comment, don't comment; it doesn't mattter. I just need to get this stuff out.

I'm sure it will be sporadic, and some things will be better edited and better written than others. Oh well.

Hello, world.