Insignificance

This past Friday, the 20th anniversary of the Challenger explosion, NPR's Morning Edition featured an interview with the brother of Ron McNair, the African-American astronaut killed in the tragedy. One part of it stuck with me, and keeps, well, sticking into me:

Mr. CARL MCNAIR: When he was nine years old, Ron, without my parents or myself knowing his whereabouts, decided to take a mile walk from our home [in South Carolina] down to the library, which was, of course, a public library, but not so public for blacks folks when you're talking about 1959. So as he was walking in there, all these folks were staring at him because they were white folk only. And they were looking at him, saying, you know, who is this Negro?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. MCNAIR: So he politely positioned himself in line to check out his books.
Well, this old librarian, she says, this library is not for coloreds. He said, well, I would like to check out these books. She says, young man, if you don't leave this library right now, I'm going to call the police.
So he just propped himself up on the counter and sat there and said, I'll wait.
So she called the police and subsequently called my mother. The police came down, two burly guys come and say, well, where's the disturbance? And she pointed to the little nine-year-old boy sitting up on the counter.
And he says, ma'am, what's the problem?
So my mother - she comes down there praying the whole way there: Lordy, Jesus, please don't let them put my child in jail. And my mother asks the librarian, what's the problem?
Well, he wanted to check out the books, and you know your son shouldn't be down here.
And the police officer said, why don't you just give the kid the books?
And my mother said, he'll take good care of them.
And reluctantly the librarian gave Ron the books. And my mother said, what do you say?
He said, thank you, ma'am.
(Soundbite of laughter)

What strikes me, what bowls me over, is not the librarian trying to deny young Ron the book. Nothing surprising there, not in South Carolina in 1959. The surprise is the cop, that nameless police officer, whose ordinary yet extraordinary action Carl McNair passes over without a pause. What was he doing, that cop? What was he thinking? "Why don't you just give the kid the books?" The black kid? In 1959? In South Carolina? With the civil rights movement heating up and white paranoia boiling over? Did his fellow police officer look at him in astonishment or confront him once they got back in the squad car, maybe call him an n-lover? Did he think about it, wonder about it later? Or was it, for him, just one insignificant moment in one insignificant day?

How many lives do I help make or break, during all the insignificant moments of my insignificant days?

Being Virtuous

I'm nearing the end of Day 5 of One Month Without Alcoholic Beverages. I'm feeling virtuous. And I'm feeling like a glass of nice white wine. But no, no, I'll stick with my hot cup of Bambu coffee substitute (when I'm virtuous, I'm really virtuous).

I used to be virtuous all the time. Then I got married. (It's really quite handy having a spouse to blame for things.) Most days Keith and I come home from work at the same time and we talk about our day over a glass of wine. Then over dinner, often another. And you know, sometimes after dinner you're watching a movie and you think, ooh, a little wine would be nice. . . and suddenly you're filling out that form in the doctor's office and you have to say how many "units" you drink each week and you look at the number and you think, good lord, who is this lush?

So who knows where this will lead. Maybe the month will become six months, or a year, or a lifetime. Maybe I'll become one of those "my body is a temple" purists who practices colonic irrigation, eats only raw foods, and drinks those wheatgrass juices that look like sludge from the bottom of the bayou. Or maybe I'll start being serious about the "omm" in yoga class, give up hair color and pedicures, and dress only in undyed organic cotton. Virtue is a slippery slope.

The horror! The horror!

Lately my dreams have been dominated by food and poop. I think I'm regressing to infancy. I blame menopause: It reduces a complex, sophisticated, multi-faceted woman to, well, to an animal, a very advanced animal, a bundle of physicalness. Hot flashes and inexplicable weight gain and hair loss and the absence of moisture and lubrication in areas that really need a bit of wetness--suddenly all of life is a matter of The Body.

Me? I'm more of a Mind Person. I wasn't one of those "in-touch-with-primal-earthiness" pregnant women. I just longed to have my body back under control. And sex--yes, the body's certainly there but if the mind's not, well, might as well forget it. Yoga and meditation and relaxation techniques, all those "release the mind" activities? Total failure. For me, this whole menopausal journey back into the body is like Marlow's journey up the Congo into the Heart of Darkness.

"The horror! The horror!"

More Guns

Still thinking about guns. Like everyone else in America, I guess.

When Keith and I had Owen, we didn't really talk about the whole issue of toy guns much. We were liberal parents. We were going to raise our child in a healthy environment, devoid of junk food and worthless tv and all racial and gender stereotypes. And of course, guns.

And then three things happened. Well, four, actually, as the first has to be that Owen turned three. Perhaps you haven't had much exposure to three-year-old boys. Hence you might not know that when a child with one x and one y chromosome turns three, he immediately starts shooting things and obsessing about heavy construction equipment. I don't know what male three-year-olds did before the advent of the musket and the internal combustion engine. Perhaps they began brandishing knives and obsessing about horse-drawn carts. Enormous carts with big ol' wooden wheels.

Second thing: Keith, little Owen, and I were in the coffee shop one morning. Keith and I were sipping our coffees and nibbling on our croissants, Owen quaffing his milk and staring at his banana bread. Then, with astounding speed, he lunged forward, bit his banana bread into the shape of a revolver, and proceeded to gun down every other customer in the coffee shop. Keith and I just watched in astonishment.

Third: It was hot. We live in Baton Rouge. It's almost always unbelievably, mind-numbingly, soul-destroyingly, body-disintegratingly hot. A couple of friend with kids around Owen's age were coming by for the afternoon. So I bought squirt guns. I didn't think about it, didn't plan it, didn't strategize or ponder or question it. It was hot. Damn hot. I bought squirt guns. And the kids had a marvellous time, squirting each other and themselves and their moms. A wonderful afternoon. Except then the moms and kids went home. And the squirt guns remained. And quickly, in a matter of a day or two, said squirt guns dried out and made their way indoors. Hmm. How do you explain to a 3-year-old that a squirt gun is fine and moral as long as it's filled with water and squirted outdoors on a hot afternoon, but not ok and utterly immoral when dry and indoors and accompanied with shouts of "bang, bang!"? Owen was confused and frankly, so was I.

Fourth: The hot squirt gun banana bread revolver summer coincided with the Discovery of Robin Hood. Ahh, such a glorious time. If you didn't grow up reading Robin Hood, if you didn't lie in bed dreaming about Robin Hood, if you didn't long to be Maid Marian and marry Robin Hood, oh, how can I explain the utter, absolute delight of introducing your myth-loving little boy to the wonders of Sherwood Forest, the village of Locksley, and the city of Nottingham? My Owen, blessed Owen, he leapt into my fantasy world like a heroic knight confronted with a marauding dragon and a damsel in distress. So how could I not give him a toy sword and shield? And logical liberal that I am, how could I not wonder why it was ok to give my son low-tech slaughter toys and at the same time insist that more advanced weaponry was forbidden?

The combination of these four happenings shredded our anti-toy gun parental stance. Soon, we had a veritable fantasy arsenal: not just swords and shields and squirt guns but also maces, Three Musketeer pistols cowboy guns, Davy Crockett rifles, Star Wars blasters and light sabers. (We did, however, draw the line at lifelike modern-style handguns and assault weaponry.) We became The Gun Family, the popular, preferred, go-to household for all the male children of all our liberal friends, the only place with weapons.

Interestingly, Owen rarely played with said weapons except when his little gun-loving buddies were visiting, and Hugh had no interest in the arsenal whatsoever. Owen has grown up into an animal rights activist with strong no-guns views. In contrast, Hugh is now a teenager who longs for a rifle, just as he longs to belong to a proper huntin'/ fishin'/ fundamentalist-chorus- singin' family. Soo, it's all a crap shoot (so to speak).

Maybe, then, the parenting practice we fell into by accident wasn't all that bad. That's what I tell myself anyway. Plus, once upon a time, a legion of little boys thought I was awesome.

I Don't Speak American

Like every other at least semi-sentient person in the United States this past week, I've been thinking a lot about guns. Once again a horrific mass shooting. Once again the debate over guns and "gun rights" heats up. It's a debate I opted out of long ago. I can't remember ever struggling with this issue. I came to political consciousness at age 13 and I was then and I have always remained a strong supporter of the strict regulation of hunting and sporting weapons, as well as a complete ban on private handguns and all assault-style weapons and ammunition. Clearly I am a European soul trapped in an American body--and so I've stopped participating in this ongoing American conversation. I just don't speak the language. And I don't want to.

I know that I am wrong. I know that in his superb address last week President Obama called on us to "broaden our moral imaginations"--and I think that means he's asking us to imagine ourselves on the other side, to try to see the world through another's eyes, and so to find common ground. He's right, I know that. And I know that's what my Christian faith demands as well. Jesus, I think it's safe to say, had a very broad moral imagination. But I do not want even to try to imagine being a person who would hear the news from Tucson and then would rush out to buy magazine clips that can fire 30 shots in a few seconds, the type the shooter used, just in case a miracle happens and the NRA allows them to be banned.

So, don't bother sending me phrase books or suggesting I try one of those immersion courses. Don't send me translations. I don't understand you. And I don't want to try to talk to you. I'll just go my way now. Sorry, no, no, I'm sorry. I can't help you. I don't speak American.

Something That Will Stay

So, in what is perhaps yet another sign of the onset of dementia, I am thinking about getting a tattoo. That I'm contemplating such a bizarre action is all, of course, Owen's fault. To say that Owen is into tattoos is to put it mildly. And he was home for six weeks for his Christmas break, which gave him lots of time to indoctrinate me. I'll admit I'm easily indoctrinated these days--the result, perhaps, of menopause or general aging, or maybe incipient insanity, or who knows, too much acupuncture or Sauvignon Blanc or my inability to exercise (still wearing post-foot surgery boot). Whatever the cause, I find myself becoming more and more amoeba-like, just a glop of protoplasm, slipping and slithering in and out of various shapes, no clear center, no fixed boundaries, no firmness of body or purpose or routine. So? A tattoo? slllliiiiippp, ssssllliiitherrr, ssssllllllimmmme, oh why not?

But just a little one. Just a teeny tiny tattoo. A hedgehog. A very English hedgehog. In memory of a delightful day at a hedgehog sanctuary in Devon when we lived in England and the boys were small and I was their Mum.

Owen's back at college in Oregon. He hopes to spend the summer up there as well. And probably all future summers. He'll be back next Christmas, but never again for several weeks--his lengthy break this year was an anomoly, an unexpected benefit of his fall semester internship. So, this was it, really. He'll be back for visits, but I doubt he'll ever live here, with us, with me, again.

Maybe I'll make it a great big hedgehog.

Zits

For all you menopausal sisters out there: One of my all-time favorite comic strips, "Zits," has been playing with the explosive combination of Menopausal Mom and Teenager Son. Here's the link to Dec. 27; check out Jan. 5 and 6 as well.

Caliban

I have scrapped my post-foot surgery crutches and am now clumping around in a giant boot. It is difficult to regard oneself as sexy and sophisticated when one must galumph along like Caliban. I feel like I should be eating raw flesh while bellowing and shaking my chains.

Rather like a teenaged boy, actually.

It's Complicated

Got my period again--twice in three months after two years of sterility. Weird. And it raises perplexing questions, like do I actually go out and restock supplies of maxi-pads and tampons, or do I continue making do with constant changes of pantiliners, on the assumption this can't go on? And do I keep taking my cancer-causing, heart attack-inducing, hot flash-relieving hormones or do I stop until I really don't have any more periods?

Who knew aging was so complicated?

Resolutions

Ahhh. A new year.

I wish. Actually, it's Aughhh! Another year! Shit.

I usually ignore the whole new year resolution thing, but last year, I thought, well, hey, it really is a good time to sit, contemplate, assess, and yes, resolve. So I sat. Contemplated. Assessed. And came up with my resolutions. 43 of them. The last one read, "Go easier on myself." And I wasn't even being ironic.