The Scoop

So apparently I haven't made a blog entry in these two weeks. What the heck happened? I'm pretty sure yesterday I made that last post, and then I woke up this morning, and it's two weeks later. Sheesh!

My life has recently gotten quite a bit more complicated, what with adding an extra yoga class and a few other things to my regular weekly schedule. But I'm so happy. The new yoga class (the first of which was Wednesday) was a beautiful experience for me, one that I've been revisiting all week. I have a whole post written in my mind about it. Is it okay to blog about a yoga class if the teacher reads your blog (hi, Tamie!)?

I finally finished reading The Poisonwood Bible. Wow. Wow! Read it. Stop reading this, hop on your bike, ride to the local library or used book store, pick up a copy, and start reading it. In fact, walk to the library, so you can walk home with your nose in the book. You won't be sorry. And the world will be a better place. Because for every person who reads that book, the world gets a little better. It's that amazing. I'm not telling you anything about it, so the suspense will kill you until you absolutely have to read it. So there.

I'll tell ya. I've identified with a lot of literary characters, but none in my life so much as with Adah Price in that book. Granted, she is a metaphor for something much larger than one teenage girl or me, but I still think it's okay to identify with her. Toward the end of the book, every time she spoke up, I'd have to put it down and catch my breath, overwhelmed with some new self-revelation. I have a whole post written in my mind about that too.

Hmmm, what else is going on? Well, my wonderful husband is brewing me a pot of Yorkshire Gold with local honey and milk (which I hope will cure me of the effects of having been awake since 4:30 this morning). My cat is rubbing against my feet and gurgling with affection (or annoyance at my refusal to stop typing and feed him—affection and annoyance sound the same in his dialect of Meow). And I like beer now. (Thanks for the peer pressure, Jon and Tamie!) And it's going to reach the mid-40s today, which means that a long walk is in my future. There is a family of bald eagles living on Winona Lake, and I'm going to go look for them. Oo oo, and I'm getting my hair cut at noon. I looooove to have my hair touched, so haircuts are like candy for me. Well. Actually, they're like old tawny Port and toasted almonds. I don't like candy.


Update: I saw one! A big, beautiful male bald eagle, swooping through the air above my head. He alighted on a chunk of ice floating about 50 feet away from the shore and rested a spell. Then, he flew away.

Sail On, Silver Girl

My grandmother died two years ago today, at 9 o'clock in the evening. Two hours before that, I'd talked to her. She said she was okay, but tired, and was about to eat dinner—grilled cheese and tomato soup, which her friend was bringing to her—and that she'd talk to me the next day, after she'd rested. She was recovering from surgery on her carotid artery, three days before, and the death of her husband of 49 years, nine weeks before. She fell asleep on her sofa with her friend at her side, had a massive heart attack, and was gone. She was 68.

Grandmom is the author of my most, maybe only, cherished childhood memory. Twice a year for about five years, starting when I was seven, she took me into downtown Philadelphia for a day. We went to museums, historic sites, old department stores with marble floors and crystal chandeliers, Christmas plays, parades, parks. We'd take the train into the city (!!!!!!!!), and Grandpop would meet us for dinner at a fancy-pants restaurant. I always got to order from the adult menu, and my little sister never got to come. We held hands and walked down the street singing songs. One time, I struck up a round of "The Twelve Days of Christmas," and by the twelfth day a horde of people was following us down the street, singing along. I didn't know all the words, but someone in the crowd did, and I learned them that day and never forgot. For two days a year, I was just a happy, curious little girl, a special little girl. Grandmom used two whole vacation days a year, just to spend them with me.

I firmly believe that I would not have made it to adulthood with half my sanity if I couldn't cling to that memory.

According to a newspaper clipping I found in her office, my grandmom was the first female officer in the Civil Air Patrol. She was awarded a full scholarship to Oxford University to study English literature and was engaged to a British nobleman named Richard, who gave her a gold ID bracelet that says "Thelma & Dick," which I now possess. As legend has it, in 1957 she visited him in England, and he took her to Liverpool to see the Quarrymen play (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). But she forewent college and jilted Richard for my grandfather (which is understandable, based on pictures I've seen of Grandpop at that time).

them

the topper from

their wedding cake

Together, they helped to organize Woodstock, where Grandmom earned the enduring nickname "The Maharani of Kumquat." I don't know how. Evidently, Gracie Slick was an insufferable prima donna, Janis Joplin was a riot, and Jimi Hendrix was way too stoned to be any fun at all.

some of the loot—their tickets, the Life Magazine special edition,

a bumper sticker, and two of the hand-screened "Festival" signs that they

helped to hang along the last 20 miles of highway 17B

a page from the Life Magazine—this woman's dress is possibly the most gorgeous dress I've ever seen. No, seriously.

them, bottom center,

with their "spirit-family"

the shirt she's wearing in the picture

They also attended the first Newport Jazz Festival. In 1974, they won $40,000 in the Pennsylvania lottery. With it, they flew to Great Britain, bought a motorcycle, and rode around, doing whatever felt good and sleeping on the roadside, until the money ran out. It took six weeks. Then, they sold the motorcycle for money to fly home. Grandmom could put six bullets through the dead center of a target with a revolver at 150 feet. She could fly a plane, stand on her head, skydive, sail a boat, drive a race car, and tap out 50 words per minute in Morse code. She wore a bomber jacket and leather pants regularly, and she went to the office in a power suit and pumps every day until she died. She was so badass.

Grandmom and Grandpop didn't want a funeral. So on a drizzling spring afternoon, we took their ashes to Van Sant Airport, a quaint grass strip for private and vintage aircraft in Upper Bucks County. We blended them together and sent them up with my aunt in a banana-colored '47 Piper Cub. She released them over the Delaware River, and they slid down into the river together and drifted out to the ocean they loved so well. My aunt and I were there for them. My sister and husband were there for me. And there were no other witnesses.

Grandmom was proud of me, never yelled at me, and made me feel special. She called me Tootsie. I haven't really mourned her death, because I've been afraid that I would loose the parts of me that she put there. Even though grilled cheese and tomato soup is one of my favorite meals, I stopped making it two years ago, because it was her last meal, and if I ate it, she was really gone.

But today, that's what I made for lunch. I didn't even think of it; I just came home and started to cook. It was so good. I really miss my grandmom.

This was her favorite song. It's one of mine, too. My heart sings it always, for everyone I love. Today, for her.

You Should Be Proud of Me!

But I don't want to talk about why. I know, I hate when people are cryptic too! Please, please don't be mad at me.

I just did something really, really scary, something that I've been paralyzed with fear against doing since I was a teenager but something that, I think, needed to be done. And I did it. And here I am, alive and kicking. It didn't kill me! And I'm going to do it again next week, and it probably won't kill me then either!

Is it okay that I don't want to talk about it in public like this? It's just that, a little part of me feels like celebrating, and when I want to celebrate, I want to do it with friends. Can you celebrate with me without knowing why we're jumping up and down?

Yay for me!

Girl

I first read "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid when I was 14 years old. I used it for the competitive poetry and prose reading I did when I was in high school. It's meaning to me has morphed as I've aged, and it pierces a new part of me with each life stage that I enter.

Girl
by Jamaica Kincaid

Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don't walk barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you take them off; when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn't have gum on it, because that way it won't hold up well after a wash; soak salt fish overnight before you cook it; is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?; always eat your food in such a way that it won't turn someone else's stomach; on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming; don't sing benna in Sunday school; you mustn't speak to wharbfflies will follow you; but I don't sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school; this is how to sew on a button; this is how to make a button-hole for the button you have just sewed on; this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming; this is how you iron your father's khaki shirt so that it doesn't have a crease; this is how you iron your father's khaki pants so that they don't have a crease; this is how you grow okra—far from the house, because okra tree harbors red ants; when you are growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes your throat itch when you are eating it; this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to someone you don't like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don't like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely; this is how you set a table for tea; this is how you set a table for dinner; this is how you set a table for dinner with an important guest; this is how you set a table for lunch; this is how you set a table for breakfast; this is how to behave in the presence of men who don't know you very well, and this way they won't recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming; be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own spit; don't squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know; don't pick people's flowers—you might catch something; don't throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all; this is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukona; this is how to make pepper pot; this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child; this is how to catch a fish; this is how to throw back a fish you don't like, and that way something bad won't fall on you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man; and if this doesn't work there are other ways, and if they don't work don't feel too bad about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn't fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it's fresh; but what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread?

On Being a Mom (Some Day)

I think about childbirth, motherhood, and parenting a lot. I read about them a lot. I daydream about them a lot. I talk about them a lot. I worry about them a lot.

No, I have no children of my own. But I was one. And being a kid, an exceptionally sensitive, perceptive, intuitive serial foster kid who was subjected to about 20 different sets of parenting strategies and values (one set of parents saying "Do this thing! It's great!" and the next set of parents saying "Why the heck are you doing that thing? It's dumb!"), I think, gives me enough perspective to say something on the matter. I've seen it done well, and I've seen it done not so well.

For the past six years, I've taken part in raising the three sons of a single mom who lives in my town. When I met them, her marriage was newly separated and the family had, two weeks previously, moved several states to the north of Daddy. They were 5, 3, and 10 months old, and they needed a nanny, and I needed money. Over these six years, I've dressed hundreds of owies and broken up dozens of brother fights. I've done 3-am 104-degree fevers, a monsters-under-my-bed all-night whine-a-thon (that lasted 4 months), mysterious rashes, three-brother, germ-sharing pukefests, evenings of soccer-basketball-swimming-choir-practice hell, and the three-year-old-with-a-crushed-skull-Medivaced-to-children's-hospital birthday-party nightmare. (Not one of mine, and the kid is fine today. Incidentally, never, ever rent a moon bounce. Ever.) I know how to oversee tooth brushing, vegetable eating, medicine taking, piano practicing, reading, napping, and bubble bathing. I've been pooped on, peed on, snotted on, bled on, barfed on, coughed on, sneezed on, splashed on, spilled on, and drawn on (and most of these on the way out the door in the morning). I've had moments of extraordinary grace and patience, and I've lost it and had to apologize. I love them all. They're incredible kids. Yes, I know that being a nanny is not the same as being a mom. But it's kind of like being an aunt. So bring it on, parenthood.

I hate when I comment on my experience with kids and all the moms and grandmas in the room exchange knowing, patronizing looks and roll their eyes. I may be young and I may be childless, but I am anything but green. The people who raised me have taught me very well what not to do. Here are a few of the many good things that my surrogate kids have taught me.

Early bedtime is totally, totally doable. And worth the struggle. Well-rested children are pleasant, happy children. There is no reason for a 6-year-old to be awake at 10 pm.

Kids do not need sugar or fast food. Furthermore, parents are not bound by any law of physics, biology, or society to buy cookies or happy meals. During the period of a child's life when eating habits are formed, a parent has complete control over what that child eats. No, once in a while will not kill a child. But "once in a while" means every few months, not every Wednesday and Saturday. There is no reason for a 6-year-old to be obese.

There is a huge, major, massive difference between discipline and punishment. All children need discipline, and if you do it well, they will respect and love you. No child needs to be punished, and punishment will make a child lose respect for you and herself.

There is no such thing as a bad child. There is no reason to cut a child down or dominate him. Tell a child he is bad, and he will take you up on it. Tell a child she is good, and she will prove it. Let me say it again, because this is really important: there is no such thing as a bad child.

We should be honest with kids. We shouldn't try to shelter them from what goes on in the world. There is bad stuff out there. Shouldn't kids learn about it right away, while adults are still around the help them process it? I read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl for the first time when I was 8. And it did me a world of good to learn early about evil. If we aren't open about the bad, scary, painful stuff, what comfort is it to a child when we say "Don't worry, it'll be okay"?

A lot of adults lie to kids in order to manipulate and control them. This is never okay. Kids know when we're lying, and it really hurts them. When I learned that Santa Claus wasn't real, I decided that God must not be real either. After all, they're both men you can't see who give you stuff. Makes perfect sense, right? Lying to kids makes them lose faith.

We aren't perfect, and kids really get that. They can and will forgive us. We should be authentic with children, all the time.

***

I can't wait to give birth. Yeah, you heard me. No, it is not just because I've never done it. Yes, I know it hurts. But I won't be doing it on my back, strapped to a fetal monitor in a cold, brightly lit room with people barking orders at me and strangers touching intimate parts of my body. And I know that will make it better. I want to know what it feels like for a human being to grow inside and then emerge from my body, swollen ankles and all. I want to know what it is to share so intense and elemental an experience with my female community. I actually want to feel the sort of agony that sires the ecstasy of clasping my new child to my breasts.

One of my favorite literary genres is the birth story. I love the stories of normal, natural births, when women trust their bodies to do what they are designed to do, shunning the interference of modern health "care" and allowing their astonishing, vigorous, radiant bodies to guide their babies into the world with peace, dignity, primordial strength, and ethereal wisdom. I love to hear of women who give birth with the people who love them at their sides in the intimacy and warmth of their homes.

I know this may sound quixotic and radical. I also know that the modern definition of "normal" birth as told by men and the media, as an emergency, an inconvenience, an accident waiting to happen, a crisis, an illness, disgusting, frightening, dangerous, is purely and simply wrong. Women are disempowered, abused, lied to, and violated if they attempt to take control of their bodies and birth experiences. (I know many women who say they've had wonderful experiences giving birth in conventional medical circumstances. I wonder if any of those women went into the hospitals empowered, telling the doctors and nurses how the birth would be handled, and then didn't back down. Because empowered women are often mocked, punished, threatened, and ignored by hospital staff who think they know what birth should be and don't want to be told otherwise. This is one of my favorite blogs. Read this post and the following five if you need some convincing.) How disappointing and wrong it is that, as advanced as we supposedly are, low-risk women are statistically safer giving birth in their living rooms than in a hospital.

Why is it this way? Well, I guess I know why it's this way. This is still a men's world. Men still run the show, and the women in the club are there on men's terms. But birth can't be more external to the realm of men, and rather than trusting us and listening to us as we scream and cry and rage to bring forth life, the medical community has attempted to fix us, quiet us down, control us. We may have come a long way, baby, but the way is longer still.

Can you tell that I am very passionate about the treatment of pregnant women by the medical community?

***

I read an article in the most recent Christianity Today yesterday about how Christian parents place way too much stock in their role in their children's lives. The article explained that children are autonomous human beings and cannot be programmed by the even-handed application of the "perfect" child-rearing techniques to be precisely what their parents want them to be. Children grow up to be healthy, functional, faithful adults apart from parental influence, and they grow up to be messy, struggling, fearful adults apart from parental influence. And all the time, I was thinking People need to be told this?

But they do. I know this is easy for me to say because I'm not a mom, but maybe that's exactly why I should say it: Moms, your kids will survive you and will love you despite (and even because of) your lack of perfection. Their maker looks after them, and they will be who they will be, and your mistakes will not debilitate them. Your victories will not ensure their victories. I don't know how many moms I know whose primary emotions with regard to their children are guilt and shame. This shouldn't be. They experience so much anxiety because their children's lives are not flawless and peachy, and it breaks my heart. These are amazing moms, kind moms, moms who love their kids so much, who give so much, whose arms and hearts are open, who live each day in the desert so that their kids can swim in the deep. Moms who don't know how far their love goes and so seem to think it doesn't go very far. (Please, please believe me, it goes a long, long way.) Moms whose kids seem to hate them and so think they've done something to deserve that contempt. Human moms who are exhausted and need space and so feel inadequate. But good moms all. I wish I could offer encouragement to the moms in my life. I wouldn't mind having any one of you as my mom! I know what truly bad parenting looks like. Even as flawed as my own mother is, she loves me and did her best, and I know that and understand and love her too, and I am a functional adult despite her mistakes. I hope I can remember to give myself some grace when I'm a mom, to let my children go and be who they are, not to blame myself for their struggles or credit myself with their triumphs. To remember that we're all human beings, sisters, brothers, and we survive because of and despite each other. I don't know how hard that is yet.

***

Here are the lyrics of a song that John Lennon wrote in honor of his mother. She abandoned him to the care of his aunt Mimi, who raised him, and then reentered his life when he was a teenager. She was killed by a drunk driver when John was 18. John's practice of transcendental meditation brought him into touch with his feelings about his mother, and "Julia" is an intimate tribute to those revelations.

Half of what I say is meaningless

But I say it just to reach you,

Julia

Julia, Julia, ocean child, calls me

So I sing a song of love, Julia

Julia, seashell eyes, windy smile, calls me

So I sing a song of love, Julia

Her hair of floating sky is shimmering, glimmering,

In the sun

Julia, Julia, morning moon, touch me

So I sing a song of love, Julia

When I cannot sing my heart

I can only speak my mind, Julia

Julia, sleeping sand, silent cloud, touch me

So I sing a song of love, Julia

Calls me

So I sing a song of love for Julia, Julia, Julia

Advice of the Day

Ever wonder about the difference between its and it's or what happens when a cow eats a rancid casserole?

Wonder no more.

'Bout to Make the Most Out of a Toaster

Even we serious people can be pros at amusing ourselves. This was one of my favorite songs in high school. (Yes, I know I'm a total dork.) Anyone remember it? This video is great! Why the heck didn't I think of this???

Nope. It's not profound. Don't look for hidden meanings; you won't find any. It's fun, fluffy, and oh-so-absurd. Boysenberry jam. Yum.