So Hugh went to prom last night.
What a disappointment.
You know, I try very hard not to live through my children (it helps immensely that they're both boys--most of the time, quite frankly, there's a certain "ick" factor, which I'm sure is sexist but hey, teenaged boys are icky much of the time). The point is, I do try to establish boundaries, to make clear to them and me and everyone else that I have my life and they have theirs. . . .
Still. Prom.
I didn't go to prom. We didn't have prom. In my Dutch immigrant Calvinist corner of the world, drinking in moderation was fine and smoking was practically required for adult males, but dancing, card-playing, and movie-going belonged to the traditional trifecta of forbidden, sinful activities. (Actually, there was a fourth Sin: Freemasonry, but since no one in the Midwest knew what that was, it didn't impinge on our lives.) Now, by the 1970s, when I was in high school, both the movie-going and card-playing prohibitions had largely lapsed; my grandmother, in her 60s, discovered Shirley Temple movies on the local tv station's Saturday morning programming and again and again, she said plaintively, "I just don't understand; why were we told these were so Bad?" I imagine it was television that made the ban on movie-going utterly nonsensical. I don't know what happened to the card-playing; I just know by the time I came around, my parents played pinochle every week with several couples from church. Not poker, mind you, but cards nonetheless.
That left Dancing on the Forbidden list. We were allowed the occasional square-dance, but that was it. Certainly no Prom. Insread,we had the Junior-Senior Banquet and the Awards Banquet and Senior Night. "What did you do at all these banquets?" asked a puzzled Hugh. "Umm. We ate. They gave out awards. Like I got the Freshman Latin Award and the Sophomore American Lit. Award. And people sang. Sometimes there was a play." He stares at me. "Mom. That's pathetic."
Really? Maybe. I dunno. Hugh tells me that after the dances at his school, used condoms litter the floor; I think of those poor girls pressured into having sex in public and I am grateful that all I ever had to do was sit at a table and clap for the Senior Quartet. Still. Prom. I alwas felt like I'd missed something, some quintessential American teenager experience. I mean, we banquet-going Calvinists hoped for dates, and we got nice dresses, and the guys brought corsages. But it wasn't Prom and we knew it. Not like in the movies and on tv. Not Like In Normal America.
So, yeah, pitiful as it is, as the boys got older, I did think, "Prom! Cool!" Owen, however, refused to stay on script. I hinted, wheedled, and cajoled. I offered bribes. I tried guilting him into it. But no. Owen and his buddy Angela went to the Salvation Army surplus store together and bought Anti-Prom clothes for the dance and then decided WTF? and went to the movies instead.
But now it's Hugh's year. While Owen has always swum in the undercurrent, Hugh floats in the mainstream. He's definitely a Prom rather than an Anti-Prom kind of guy. And off he went, boutanniere in his lapel and corsage in hand. To my confusion and consternation, however, somewhere along the last three decades Prom has ceased to mean, well, PROM. Prom, for example, no longer requires that the the guys rent tuxes. No pink ruffled shirts. Not even a bow tie, let alone one of those adorable little vests. Proms no longer have Themes. No Underwater Enchantments. No Oriental Evenings. No Rockin' Back to the Fifties. Not even a Rod Stewart's Tonight's the Night. Parents do not gather to take pictures of the glamorous duo. Bashful couples do not sit together at a fancy restaurant before the dance, nor is there a post-prom lakeside party. Nope, once the dance was over, Hugh and his buddies drove to the 24-hour Coffee Call, while the girls wandered off to Waffle House.
Beware living on or through one's children. That road leads, inexorably, to the Waffle House. . . tho' I have to admit, I'm rather partial to their Pigs-In-A -Blanket breakfast plate. And those chocolate chip waffles with the whipped cream. They do a pretty good cinnamon roll too. . . . Come to think of it, maybe those girls were on to something, a crucial life lesson, the Moral to the Story, even: Dance with the guys and then dump them for grits and bacon and pancakes. One must make one's own Romance. And it's best when covered in whipped cream.
Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Monday, March 12, 2012
Oh what can it mean?
Is it possible to be driven stark raving mad by music? To be launched into lunacy by a lyric?
I think the Monkees are driving me insane. Or, more precisely, Davy Jones. Or, to be anally accurate, just this chorus: "Cheer up, sleepy Jean! Oh, what can it mean? To a daydream believer and a Homecoming Queen." That's all I know. Just those 17 words, sung in an English accent to a jaunty melody, repeated non-stop in my head, all my waking hours, since Davy died on February 29. It's 12 days later. I am experiencing a pop music version of Chinese water torture. No, no, that's where they drip water on you slowly, right? This isn't a slow drip. This is nonstop sleepy Jean and the Homecoming Queen. I don't even know what the damn song is about, for pete's sake.
Davy Jones was my first media-induced love. I was 6, and like all my classmates, I watched The Monkees on Channel 5 after school. I can still sing the entire Monkees theme song. But then, I can still sing all the lyrics to The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family theme songs. I'd feel ashamed, except I know from careful objective surveys of my demographic (i.e. late-night song fests with friends when we're slightly drunk), that every white middle-class American woman my age can do the same.
But before Greg, Peter, Bobby, Marcia, Jan, and Cindy, before Keith, Laurie, Danny, the little kid who no one ever remembers (they did change the actor after the first year), and Tracy, there were the Monkees. Like every girl in the first grade of Western Suburbs Christian School, I picked a favorite Monkee, the man I would marry if I could. That was the question: Which Monkee would you marry? Mind you, we were 6. We were too young to know there are other things one can do with men besides marry them. And although it was 1966, we lived in the white bread western suburbs of Chicago: "The '60s" were still emphatically confined to the city.
And yet. . . I do remember the utter anarchic joy of that goofy theme song--"'cos we're the young generation, and we've got something to say--hey hey we're the Monkees!"--with the four of them on the tv screen jumping and laughing. Did I know the word "liberation" at age 6? I'm not sure, but even if I didn't know the label for what I was feeling, there is no doubt that I felt it, watching the antics (not a word I often have use for, but The Monkees' episodes really rather defined the term) of four silly guys, the sense of possibility, of boundaries crashing, of something going on. And the complete, total, absolute confidence that this something had nothing whatsoever to do with my parents.
Of course, it's more than slightly embarrassing to have one's experience of the '60s summed up by the Monkees rather than the Beatles or the Stones. But such was the sad fate of those of us born in the very twilight of the baby boom. The 60s weren't really ours. They belonged to older siblings, or to our young aunts and uncles. We got the trickle-down 60s: the Monkees, the fringed suede jacket I wore in fifth grade, the Cowsills, the black-light poster I won as a prize for selling magazines to raise money for the school development fund in the 7th grade: "I do my thing and you do your thing and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful."
So back in first grade, my best friend Wendy chose Mickey, and I selected Davy, but since I was only 6, I never actually owned a Monkees record. My mother would never have spent money on such a thing and I didn't have any independent income. Or a record player. So my Monkees occurred entirely on tv, which explains why I know only one chorus of a Davy Jones song. And if that damn song doesn't get out of my head soon, I am going to go utterly, absolutely, friggin' insane.
Rest in peace, Davy Jones. And hey, Sleepy Jean, Homecoming Queen, y'all hush up, now.
Oh what can it mean. . . for a daydream believah and a AUGHHHHH.
I think the Monkees are driving me insane. Or, more precisely, Davy Jones. Or, to be anally accurate, just this chorus: "Cheer up, sleepy Jean! Oh, what can it mean? To a daydream believer and a Homecoming Queen." That's all I know. Just those 17 words, sung in an English accent to a jaunty melody, repeated non-stop in my head, all my waking hours, since Davy died on February 29. It's 12 days later. I am experiencing a pop music version of Chinese water torture. No, no, that's where they drip water on you slowly, right? This isn't a slow drip. This is nonstop sleepy Jean and the Homecoming Queen. I don't even know what the damn song is about, for pete's sake.
Davy Jones was my first media-induced love. I was 6, and like all my classmates, I watched The Monkees on Channel 5 after school. I can still sing the entire Monkees theme song. But then, I can still sing all the lyrics to The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family theme songs. I'd feel ashamed, except I know from careful objective surveys of my demographic (i.e. late-night song fests with friends when we're slightly drunk), that every white middle-class American woman my age can do the same.
But before Greg, Peter, Bobby, Marcia, Jan, and Cindy, before Keith, Laurie, Danny, the little kid who no one ever remembers (they did change the actor after the first year), and Tracy, there were the Monkees. Like every girl in the first grade of Western Suburbs Christian School, I picked a favorite Monkee, the man I would marry if I could. That was the question: Which Monkee would you marry? Mind you, we were 6. We were too young to know there are other things one can do with men besides marry them. And although it was 1966, we lived in the white bread western suburbs of Chicago: "The '60s" were still emphatically confined to the city.
And yet. . . I do remember the utter anarchic joy of that goofy theme song--"'cos we're the young generation, and we've got something to say--hey hey we're the Monkees!"--with the four of them on the tv screen jumping and laughing. Did I know the word "liberation" at age 6? I'm not sure, but even if I didn't know the label for what I was feeling, there is no doubt that I felt it, watching the antics (not a word I often have use for, but The Monkees' episodes really rather defined the term) of four silly guys, the sense of possibility, of boundaries crashing, of something going on. And the complete, total, absolute confidence that this something had nothing whatsoever to do with my parents.
Of course, it's more than slightly embarrassing to have one's experience of the '60s summed up by the Monkees rather than the Beatles or the Stones. But such was the sad fate of those of us born in the very twilight of the baby boom. The 60s weren't really ours. They belonged to older siblings, or to our young aunts and uncles. We got the trickle-down 60s: the Monkees, the fringed suede jacket I wore in fifth grade, the Cowsills, the black-light poster I won as a prize for selling magazines to raise money for the school development fund in the 7th grade: "I do my thing and you do your thing and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful."
So back in first grade, my best friend Wendy chose Mickey, and I selected Davy, but since I was only 6, I never actually owned a Monkees record. My mother would never have spent money on such a thing and I didn't have any independent income. Or a record player. So my Monkees occurred entirely on tv, which explains why I know only one chorus of a Davy Jones song. And if that damn song doesn't get out of my head soon, I am going to go utterly, absolutely, friggin' insane.
Rest in peace, Davy Jones. And hey, Sleepy Jean, Homecoming Queen, y'all hush up, now.
Oh what can it mean. . . for a daydream believah and a AUGHHHHH.
Friday, June 24, 2011
On a Cliff's Edge
Today three dozen undergraduates and I climbed through torrential rain, gale-force winds, and a steady slamming stream of tiny hail stones to a prehistoric fort perched on a cliff's edge at the very end of the civilized world. Just another typical day in the life of a typical European history professor. Sort of.
It's a good life, all in all. The pay is crummy but the perks are splendid. At least if you like fierce winds and dramatic rain and the icy cold that slices through your skin and settles deep within your bones. Which I do. Always have. It's weather with integrity, sharp-edged, clearcut, purposeful, direct. Not like the miasmic heat of the Deep South, the humidity that envelops you, the heat that first lures you in--"shush now," it whispers, "just slow down, have a rest, why don't you put your feet up and have a nice cold drink?"--and then warmly smiles as you slowly suffocate.
After I made my way down from the cliffs, I sat on the bus, my jeans completely soaked, icy cold against my skin. And just like a certain smell can suddenly catapult you into a memory so vivid, so present, that the lines of time and space collapse, so this physical sensation sent me spinning into Mrs. Wolterstorff's third grade classroom. Eight years old, just in from recess, the windows all fogged up, water beneath my desk puddling up as the snow embedded in my corduroys slowly thawed, the cold and clammy cotton firmly stuck to my thighs, my feet little blocks of ice within wet socks. This is not, actually, a happy memory. I was an extraordinarily grumpy child, and I sat there on my plastic seat, my hands so cold they burned, even my underpants soaked from the snow, and I glowered at Mrs. Wolterstorff. How in the world, thought my indignant eight-year-old self, can I be expected to concentrate on homophones and homonyms while my butt itches and prickles as it thaws?
I imagine many of my students, Deep Southerners born and bred, were asking themselves something along those lines today. But, the thing is, integrity is not comfortable. It cuts and chills and makes your butt prickle. Still, it's rather bracing when you're perched on a cliff's edge at the end of the civilized world.
It's a good life, all in all. The pay is crummy but the perks are splendid. At least if you like fierce winds and dramatic rain and the icy cold that slices through your skin and settles deep within your bones. Which I do. Always have. It's weather with integrity, sharp-edged, clearcut, purposeful, direct. Not like the miasmic heat of the Deep South, the humidity that envelops you, the heat that first lures you in--"shush now," it whispers, "just slow down, have a rest, why don't you put your feet up and have a nice cold drink?"--and then warmly smiles as you slowly suffocate.
After I made my way down from the cliffs, I sat on the bus, my jeans completely soaked, icy cold against my skin. And just like a certain smell can suddenly catapult you into a memory so vivid, so present, that the lines of time and space collapse, so this physical sensation sent me spinning into Mrs. Wolterstorff's third grade classroom. Eight years old, just in from recess, the windows all fogged up, water beneath my desk puddling up as the snow embedded in my corduroys slowly thawed, the cold and clammy cotton firmly stuck to my thighs, my feet little blocks of ice within wet socks. This is not, actually, a happy memory. I was an extraordinarily grumpy child, and I sat there on my plastic seat, my hands so cold they burned, even my underpants soaked from the snow, and I glowered at Mrs. Wolterstorff. How in the world, thought my indignant eight-year-old self, can I be expected to concentrate on homophones and homonyms while my butt itches and prickles as it thaws?
I imagine many of my students, Deep Southerners born and bred, were asking themselves something along those lines today. But, the thing is, integrity is not comfortable. It cuts and chills and makes your butt prickle. Still, it's rather bracing when you're perched on a cliff's edge at the end of the civilized world.
Monday, May 30, 2011
I Cleaned the Garage
Memorial Day.
I spent it cleaning the garage. I figured that on the scale of things one can do on this holiday designed to honor those who have died in the service of their country, garage-cleaning weighed better than shopping for a pair of black skinny jeans or curling up on the couch reading The Cookbook Collector (great novel by Allegra Goodman, by the way). Cleaning the garage seemed less self-indulgent, more, you know, disciplined, active, results-oriented, military. Particularly when one is cleaning the garage in south Louisiana, where the temperature by 10 am was 90 degrees.
Still, somehow, it did occur to me that sorting through old paint cans and tossing out broken badminton rackets was not quite what our national leaders had in mind when they created this holiday.
Although, actually, it's not all that clear what they did have in mind. For one thing, it's not clear who "they" were. According to some accounts, Memorial Day (originally called Decoration Day) started when Southern ladies began decorating the graves of Confederates soldiers with flowers. We do know for sure for sure that in 1868 General John Logan issued General Order No. 11, a command to decorate the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers buried in Arlington Cemetery, that by 1890 all northern states had recognized Decoration Day as a holiday to honor those who died in the Civil War, and that southern states refused to acknowledge the day until after WWI, when it became a day to honor the dead in all American wars. Now, think about what you have just learned, or perhaps already knew--although if you did know all that, geez louise, what kind of history nerd are you? I'm the ultimate history nerd, a history professor for pete's sake, and I had to Google that info. Anyone who just knows that kind of stuff needs to have sex more often. Really.
So where was I? Right. General Logan, Confederate-loving ladies placing flowers on Johnny Rebs' graves, and the Point of It All. Am I the only one who thinks it a bit strange that the origins of this holiday-- now officially a day to recognize and honor American military personnel, and particularly those who have died in combat to defend the United States-- rests in part or wholly in the South and in efforts to commemorate those who fought to destroy that Union of States that is the United States?
But, history aside, how is one properly to observe Memorial Day? When I was a small child, we'd always pile in the station wagon and head into the city to the cemetery, where we'd stand at my grandfather's grave for a few solemn moments--he was a Dutch immigrant, a garbage man rather than a soldier, but I guess Memorial Day made for a convenient duty visit--before careening out to look for evidence of gypsies in the grave yard: beer cans stacked high, plastic flowers, fried chicken bones. And then it was off to Uncle Bud's or to the Deckers for good-hearted badminton games and Auntie Theresa's Sloppy Joes and grilled hotdogs and hamburgers and barbecued chicken and pototo salad and cole slaw and potato chips and brownies and popsicles, and the inevitable awful ride home, sticky all over, tired beyond belief, with an upset tummy. I don't recall any mention, ever, of the Fallen, or the Ultimate Sacrifice, or Those who Died so that We Might Live in Freedom.
I got more of that in high school, because I was in Band. Every year the Timothy Band marched in the Elmhurst Memorial Day parade. As I recall, we did a really spiffy, crowd-pleasing, marching version of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," and then we'd end up in the central park where we'd stand, sweltering in our woolen black uniforms, sweat trickling down our backs, feet aching, desperate to be released, while some local dignitary dithered on about Patriotic Duty, and the smell of grilled chicken wafted through the air and babies screamed and kids shouted.
Still, I guess the point is that we did Something Special. We stepped out of our routines and in so doing, we said, "This Is Important." Maybe we weren't too sure what "this" was. Still, we celebrated it the way humans do--by downing tools, by eating til we were sick, by letting go and laughing lots and grabbing on to what makes life livable.
And today, I cleaned the garage. And I think, maybe, I kind of missed the Point of It All.
I spent it cleaning the garage. I figured that on the scale of things one can do on this holiday designed to honor those who have died in the service of their country, garage-cleaning weighed better than shopping for a pair of black skinny jeans or curling up on the couch reading The Cookbook Collector (great novel by Allegra Goodman, by the way). Cleaning the garage seemed less self-indulgent, more, you know, disciplined, active, results-oriented, military. Particularly when one is cleaning the garage in south Louisiana, where the temperature by 10 am was 90 degrees.
Still, somehow, it did occur to me that sorting through old paint cans and tossing out broken badminton rackets was not quite what our national leaders had in mind when they created this holiday.
Although, actually, it's not all that clear what they did have in mind. For one thing, it's not clear who "they" were. According to some accounts, Memorial Day (originally called Decoration Day) started when Southern ladies began decorating the graves of Confederates soldiers with flowers. We do know for sure for sure that in 1868 General John Logan issued General Order No. 11, a command to decorate the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers buried in Arlington Cemetery, that by 1890 all northern states had recognized Decoration Day as a holiday to honor those who died in the Civil War, and that southern states refused to acknowledge the day until after WWI, when it became a day to honor the dead in all American wars. Now, think about what you have just learned, or perhaps already knew--although if you did know all that, geez louise, what kind of history nerd are you? I'm the ultimate history nerd, a history professor for pete's sake, and I had to Google that info. Anyone who just knows that kind of stuff needs to have sex more often. Really.
So where was I? Right. General Logan, Confederate-loving ladies placing flowers on Johnny Rebs' graves, and the Point of It All. Am I the only one who thinks it a bit strange that the origins of this holiday-- now officially a day to recognize and honor American military personnel, and particularly those who have died in combat to defend the United States-- rests in part or wholly in the South and in efforts to commemorate those who fought to destroy that Union of States that is the United States?
But, history aside, how is one properly to observe Memorial Day? When I was a small child, we'd always pile in the station wagon and head into the city to the cemetery, where we'd stand at my grandfather's grave for a few solemn moments--he was a Dutch immigrant, a garbage man rather than a soldier, but I guess Memorial Day made for a convenient duty visit--before careening out to look for evidence of gypsies in the grave yard: beer cans stacked high, plastic flowers, fried chicken bones. And then it was off to Uncle Bud's or to the Deckers for good-hearted badminton games and Auntie Theresa's Sloppy Joes and grilled hotdogs and hamburgers and barbecued chicken and pototo salad and cole slaw and potato chips and brownies and popsicles, and the inevitable awful ride home, sticky all over, tired beyond belief, with an upset tummy. I don't recall any mention, ever, of the Fallen, or the Ultimate Sacrifice, or Those who Died so that We Might Live in Freedom.
I got more of that in high school, because I was in Band. Every year the Timothy Band marched in the Elmhurst Memorial Day parade. As I recall, we did a really spiffy, crowd-pleasing, marching version of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," and then we'd end up in the central park where we'd stand, sweltering in our woolen black uniforms, sweat trickling down our backs, feet aching, desperate to be released, while some local dignitary dithered on about Patriotic Duty, and the smell of grilled chicken wafted through the air and babies screamed and kids shouted.
Still, I guess the point is that we did Something Special. We stepped out of our routines and in so doing, we said, "This Is Important." Maybe we weren't too sure what "this" was. Still, we celebrated it the way humans do--by downing tools, by eating til we were sick, by letting go and laughing lots and grabbing on to what makes life livable.
And today, I cleaned the garage. And I think, maybe, I kind of missed the Point of It All.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Just fine
I spent the last week in Chicago.
This is Not Good. It's akin to a recovering alcoholic taking a wine tour of southern France, or an addict deciding to vacation in an opium den.
I live my life in Baton Rouge and I am fine. I made my peace long ago. It's the Deep South and it's suburban and it's damned hot and it's provincial and parochial and politically primeval. . . but it's fine.
Until I go back to Chicago. And then it's. . . not fine. Because suddenly there I am, once again. Me. The Me who fits, who belongs, who gets it, who can explain it; the Me-in-embryo who stared out of the windows of our family station wagon during our tri-annual visits from the western suburbs into The City and thought, "I'm going to make this mine" And I did.
And then I lost it.
But I'm fine. I've made my peace. I have a great life. Keith and I enjoy satisfying jobs and the support of good friends in a very livable city. I bike to work along a lake filled with egrets and gigantic turtles and squabbling ducks. I while away the hours in an excellent local coffee shop. We live in, and can afford, an amazing house in a charming, tree-lined, historic neighborhood. We enjoy world-class drama, courtesy of LSU. We have a decent public radio station. A good airport. Easy access to New Orleans. A regenerating downtown. An . . . a . . .
Shit.
Chicago, it is not.
I'm fine.
But who wants to be fine? Just fine? I want to laugh so hard that I pee. I want the el. And the Cubs. And the ferocious wind off the lake. Brick bungalows. Plump parkas and deep dish pizza and hotdogs without the blasphemy of ketchup. Hispanic groceries jumbled against Korean take-outs and Serbian Cultural Centers and Polish bakeries. The flat Chicago aaaaccent. The breathtaking beauty of skyscrapers' reflections in the Chicago River. The startling combination of the accelerated metropolitan pace with genuine midwestern friendliness: "Hey, you OK?" And mostly, that adrenalin rush, that sense of yes, that smooth slipping into a place I always wanted and I always knew was mine.
But I'm home now. In Baton Rouge. It's fine. I'm fine. Just fine.
This is Not Good. It's akin to a recovering alcoholic taking a wine tour of southern France, or an addict deciding to vacation in an opium den.
I live my life in Baton Rouge and I am fine. I made my peace long ago. It's the Deep South and it's suburban and it's damned hot and it's provincial and parochial and politically primeval. . . but it's fine.
Until I go back to Chicago. And then it's. . . not fine. Because suddenly there I am, once again. Me. The Me who fits, who belongs, who gets it, who can explain it; the Me-in-embryo who stared out of the windows of our family station wagon during our tri-annual visits from the western suburbs into The City and thought, "I'm going to make this mine" And I did.
And then I lost it.
But I'm fine. I've made my peace. I have a great life. Keith and I enjoy satisfying jobs and the support of good friends in a very livable city. I bike to work along a lake filled with egrets and gigantic turtles and squabbling ducks. I while away the hours in an excellent local coffee shop. We live in, and can afford, an amazing house in a charming, tree-lined, historic neighborhood. We enjoy world-class drama, courtesy of LSU. We have a decent public radio station. A good airport. Easy access to New Orleans. A regenerating downtown. An . . . a . . .
Shit.
Chicago, it is not.
I'm fine.
But who wants to be fine? Just fine? I want to laugh so hard that I pee. I want the el. And the Cubs. And the ferocious wind off the lake. Brick bungalows. Plump parkas and deep dish pizza and hotdogs without the blasphemy of ketchup. Hispanic groceries jumbled against Korean take-outs and Serbian Cultural Centers and Polish bakeries. The flat Chicago aaaaccent. The breathtaking beauty of skyscrapers' reflections in the Chicago River. The startling combination of the accelerated metropolitan pace with genuine midwestern friendliness: "Hey, you OK?" And mostly, that adrenalin rush, that sense of yes, that smooth slipping into a place I always wanted and I always knew was mine.
But I'm home now. In Baton Rouge. It's fine. I'm fine. Just fine.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Sabbath
When I remember, I tune into WGN at 9:00 pm. The wonders of cable tv: I sit in my south Louisiana living room and watch the local Chicago news. It tickles me every time. (I'm a simple soul, obviously.)
This past Wednesday, Keith was on the couch as well, so we both had a good chuckle when one of Chicagoland's ace reporters told us that because Easter is late this year, Lent is longer than usual: 46 rather than 40 days. Ummm. If Easter is late, so is Ash Wednesday and there are always 46 days between: 40 days of Lenten observance and the six Sundays which are Feast Days, and therefore not part of Lent. But you knew that already.
Sundays are Feast Days.
Gosh. Not quite the way I was raised. Certainly the Christian Reformed Church regarded Sundays as special but its interpretation and enforcement of that specialness translated not into festivity but rather into tedium: two lengthy somber church services (no children's sermons or any such levity), compulsory afternoon naps (required for everyone, adult and child; we took "Day of Rest" literally), and a variety of bizarre prohibitions. These prohibitions varied by family. My family was on the liberal end--unlike many in our church, we could watch tv and do homework on Sundays. But the list of what we could not do was still lengthy. Most importantly, we could not earn money (I still remember the face of the "Hickory Farms" manager at the mall when she asked my 15-year-old self if I could work on Sunday in an emergency and I replied, in utter and absolute sincerity, "Well, yes, but I couldn't accept payment for it."). But we could also not spend money (no shopping, no movie-going, no dining out), do housework or laundry or yardwork (not a much resented prohibition, actually), or join in any neighborhood activities (definitely no Little League or any kind of organized sports). More confusingly, we could not play catch or ride bikes or jump rope but it was ok to play inside with paper dolls or stuffed animals or board games or even consumerist secular fashion-obsessed Barbie and Ken. In other families, the prohibitions were similarly odd: one friend could not use scissors.
Things got really bizarre, however, during summer vacations. There we'd be, at the cottage--no air conditioning, sweltering heat, the lake glistening before us. But swimming on Sunday was forbidden. Unless, that is, the temperatures rose above 90 degrees. Then we could swim; evidently heat wiped out the sin. So we'd cluster, sweaty and forlorn, around the outside thermometer, desperately willing the mercury to climb. My friend Cindy had a different Sunday swimming rule. No matter what the temperature, they could swim out to the floating deck and lie down there. But no splashing or jumping or overt enjoyment. Just, you know, sober reverent holy swimming.
Slowly, gradually, the prohibitions lifted. My mom began buying the Sunday paper at the White Hen Pantry (but not from the White Hen just down the block from the church, in case a church member saw her). We stopped going to the cottage and started taking hotel vacations that required us to use restaurants on Sundays. I went off to college and--even tho' it was Calvin College, where the library was closed on Sundays and where we all got up and went to church, even without our parents' presence, and then went back to the dorms and took naps--we quickly grew used to Sunday laundry stints and pancake suppers out at the IHOP. By the time I graduated, even my grandmother was ok with buying a nice dinner out at a nice restaurant after church. God seemed ok with it too.
But, you know, it's a slippery slope. We're a church-going family, but the rest of Sunday is just like the rest of the week: hectic, disheveled, crammed with the detritus of daily living. No rest, nothing special, nothing sacred.
Still no Feast.
This past Wednesday, Keith was on the couch as well, so we both had a good chuckle when one of Chicagoland's ace reporters told us that because Easter is late this year, Lent is longer than usual: 46 rather than 40 days. Ummm. If Easter is late, so is Ash Wednesday and there are always 46 days between: 40 days of Lenten observance and the six Sundays which are Feast Days, and therefore not part of Lent. But you knew that already.
Sundays are Feast Days.
Gosh. Not quite the way I was raised. Certainly the Christian Reformed Church regarded Sundays as special but its interpretation and enforcement of that specialness translated not into festivity but rather into tedium: two lengthy somber church services (no children's sermons or any such levity), compulsory afternoon naps (required for everyone, adult and child; we took "Day of Rest" literally), and a variety of bizarre prohibitions. These prohibitions varied by family. My family was on the liberal end--unlike many in our church, we could watch tv and do homework on Sundays. But the list of what we could not do was still lengthy. Most importantly, we could not earn money (I still remember the face of the "Hickory Farms" manager at the mall when she asked my 15-year-old self if I could work on Sunday in an emergency and I replied, in utter and absolute sincerity, "Well, yes, but I couldn't accept payment for it."). But we could also not spend money (no shopping, no movie-going, no dining out), do housework or laundry or yardwork (not a much resented prohibition, actually), or join in any neighborhood activities (definitely no Little League or any kind of organized sports). More confusingly, we could not play catch or ride bikes or jump rope but it was ok to play inside with paper dolls or stuffed animals or board games or even consumerist secular fashion-obsessed Barbie and Ken. In other families, the prohibitions were similarly odd: one friend could not use scissors.
Things got really bizarre, however, during summer vacations. There we'd be, at the cottage--no air conditioning, sweltering heat, the lake glistening before us. But swimming on Sunday was forbidden. Unless, that is, the temperatures rose above 90 degrees. Then we could swim; evidently heat wiped out the sin. So we'd cluster, sweaty and forlorn, around the outside thermometer, desperately willing the mercury to climb. My friend Cindy had a different Sunday swimming rule. No matter what the temperature, they could swim out to the floating deck and lie down there. But no splashing or jumping or overt enjoyment. Just, you know, sober reverent holy swimming.
Slowly, gradually, the prohibitions lifted. My mom began buying the Sunday paper at the White Hen Pantry (but not from the White Hen just down the block from the church, in case a church member saw her). We stopped going to the cottage and started taking hotel vacations that required us to use restaurants on Sundays. I went off to college and--even tho' it was Calvin College, where the library was closed on Sundays and where we all got up and went to church, even without our parents' presence, and then went back to the dorms and took naps--we quickly grew used to Sunday laundry stints and pancake suppers out at the IHOP. By the time I graduated, even my grandmother was ok with buying a nice dinner out at a nice restaurant after church. God seemed ok with it too.
But, you know, it's a slippery slope. We're a church-going family, but the rest of Sunday is just like the rest of the week: hectic, disheveled, crammed with the detritus of daily living. No rest, nothing special, nothing sacred.
Still no Feast.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Calvinettes
On Wednesday I colored my roots. On Thursday a box of clothes and a new pair of boots from J.Jill arrived by FedEx. On Friday I got a manicure,today a hair cut. On Monday I am having my teeth whitened.
Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that I can't get the Calvinette motto out of my head:
Grace is deceitful and beauty is vain,
but a woman that feareth Jehovah,
she shall be praised. (Proverbs something: something)
Yes, Calvinette. I was a Calvinette. In the Dutch Calvinist immigrant sub-culture in which I was raised, one could not be a Brownie or Girl Scout or Indian Princess. One might get tainted by the secular world. So instead we had our own uniformed sex-segregated child movements: Cadets and Calvinettes. It seemed so normal then. It was only when I grew up and realized there were no Lutherettes or Loyolaettes or Wesleyettes that I first thought maybe we were all a bit odd.
One progressed up the Calvinette ranks from Gleaner to Reaper to Something to Sower (what would come between sowing and reaping--Waterer? Weeder? Fertilizerer?) by earning badges in skills and achievements ranging from Bicycle Repair or Water Safety to Reformation Heroes and (my personal favorite) Old Testament Women.
Apart from the Bicycle Repair badge, little that could be described as "feminist" appeared in Calvinettes. Certainly conformity rather than competition structured our troop. There was no sense, really, in mimicking my brothers' quest for as many Cadet badges as possible. In Calvinettes, our counselors (mothers dragooned into service for a year) made sure we all earned enough points to move up the ranks in step with our age group. We learned to sew and to embroider (or at least we were supposed to. . . I failed miserably but got promoted to Reaper all the same); we had lessons in how to sit down properly after singing the hymn in church (you smooth your skirt as you are sitting; you do not sit and then half-hop up and pull out the wrinkles); and best of all, once we hit 8th grade, we no longer had crafts and Bible study under the watchful eyes of the mothers but instead "Charm Course," in which two single women in their late teens taught us such important life skills as how to perk up limp hair with a lemon rinse and where to sit in the front seat when on a first date (in the middle). Even at 13 I thought it somewhat ironic to recite "Grace is deceitful and beauty is vain" and then to spend the next two hours learning how to apply blush and lip stick. (Yes, I was the sort of 13-year-old who knew what "ironic" meant.) Still, anything was an improvement over embroidery; moreover, by age 13, a regular-church-going child is already an expert in negotiating ambiguities, inconsistencies, and contradictions. The Bible was full of them; the adults at church, even more so.
Here I am, an aged Calvinette, with my painted nails, my new clothes, my about-to-be-white teeth, and my freshly colored and cut hair (not in the least bit limp or in need of a lemon rinse). Grace is deceitful and beauty is vain. They do, however, make life a bit more livable. I don't think Jehovah minds, really.
Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that I can't get the Calvinette motto out of my head:
Grace is deceitful and beauty is vain,
but a woman that feareth Jehovah,
she shall be praised. (Proverbs something: something)
Yes, Calvinette. I was a Calvinette. In the Dutch Calvinist immigrant sub-culture in which I was raised, one could not be a Brownie or Girl Scout or Indian Princess. One might get tainted by the secular world. So instead we had our own uniformed sex-segregated child movements: Cadets and Calvinettes. It seemed so normal then. It was only when I grew up and realized there were no Lutherettes or Loyolaettes or Wesleyettes that I first thought maybe we were all a bit odd.
One progressed up the Calvinette ranks from Gleaner to Reaper to Something to Sower (what would come between sowing and reaping--Waterer? Weeder? Fertilizerer?) by earning badges in skills and achievements ranging from Bicycle Repair or Water Safety to Reformation Heroes and (my personal favorite) Old Testament Women.
Apart from the Bicycle Repair badge, little that could be described as "feminist" appeared in Calvinettes. Certainly conformity rather than competition structured our troop. There was no sense, really, in mimicking my brothers' quest for as many Cadet badges as possible. In Calvinettes, our counselors (mothers dragooned into service for a year) made sure we all earned enough points to move up the ranks in step with our age group. We learned to sew and to embroider (or at least we were supposed to. . . I failed miserably but got promoted to Reaper all the same); we had lessons in how to sit down properly after singing the hymn in church (you smooth your skirt as you are sitting; you do not sit and then half-hop up and pull out the wrinkles); and best of all, once we hit 8th grade, we no longer had crafts and Bible study under the watchful eyes of the mothers but instead "Charm Course," in which two single women in their late teens taught us such important life skills as how to perk up limp hair with a lemon rinse and where to sit in the front seat when on a first date (in the middle). Even at 13 I thought it somewhat ironic to recite "Grace is deceitful and beauty is vain" and then to spend the next two hours learning how to apply blush and lip stick. (Yes, I was the sort of 13-year-old who knew what "ironic" meant.) Still, anything was an improvement over embroidery; moreover, by age 13, a regular-church-going child is already an expert in negotiating ambiguities, inconsistencies, and contradictions. The Bible was full of them; the adults at church, even more so.
Here I am, an aged Calvinette, with my painted nails, my new clothes, my about-to-be-white teeth, and my freshly colored and cut hair (not in the least bit limp or in need of a lemon rinse). Grace is deceitful and beauty is vain. They do, however, make life a bit more livable. I don't think Jehovah minds, really.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
"And there were in the same country. . . "
So, we've become Gleeks. ("Gleeks," oh unknowing folks, are followers of "Glee," the stylized humorous-satirical-musical drama about a totally unreal, utterly mesmerizing high school.) You know you're a Gleek when you choose the Christmas episode of "Glee" over "A Charlie Brown Christmas."
I do feel guilty though. I'm not sure one can actually truly really deeply celebrate Christmas without "A Charlie Brown Christmas."
Yes, yes, I do know one can purchase the dvd and watch it any ol' time, even in July, but that's no good whatsoever. One must watch it on tv at the proper time, as determined by The Network. It's like, well, not really, but just sort of, a bit, kind of like (I'm not trying to be blasphemous here, just you know, metaphorical), one doesn't just eat a cracker and drink some grape juice in the kitchen and declare it Holy Communion.
"A Charlie Brown Christmas" debuted in 1965, when I was 5. I watched it. I've watched it almost every December since. My mom hated tv, but even she loved "A Charlie Brown Christmas." After all, it gets Christmas right: Linus quotes Luke 2; there's no Kris Kringle or puppet elves or animated red-nosed reindeer accompanied by damaged toys. And there's that fantastic jazz score and there's Snoopy, truly one of the 20th century's most brilliant fictional characters.
Oh damn. Fuck "Glee." I should have watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas." One should never mess with Truth. Or Snoopy.
I do feel guilty though. I'm not sure one can actually truly really deeply celebrate Christmas without "A Charlie Brown Christmas."
Yes, yes, I do know one can purchase the dvd and watch it any ol' time, even in July, but that's no good whatsoever. One must watch it on tv at the proper time, as determined by The Network. It's like, well, not really, but just sort of, a bit, kind of like (I'm not trying to be blasphemous here, just you know, metaphorical), one doesn't just eat a cracker and drink some grape juice in the kitchen and declare it Holy Communion.
"A Charlie Brown Christmas" debuted in 1965, when I was 5. I watched it. I've watched it almost every December since. My mom hated tv, but even she loved "A Charlie Brown Christmas." After all, it gets Christmas right: Linus quotes Luke 2; there's no Kris Kringle or puppet elves or animated red-nosed reindeer accompanied by damaged toys. And there's that fantastic jazz score and there's Snoopy, truly one of the 20th century's most brilliant fictional characters.
Oh damn. Fuck "Glee." I should have watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas." One should never mess with Truth. Or Snoopy.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Post-Girdlehood
I've been thinking about girdles. As one does.
Throughout most of my childhood, Mom wore a girdle for dress-up occasions, which pretty much meant weekends--Saturday night out to dinner with Dad, Sunday morning and evening to church. I was asleep when they returned late on Saturday nights so missed the de-girdling, but the Sunday process remains indelibly carved into my memory. Despite a myriad of Sunday dinner tasks demanding her attention, Mom would clomp upstairs in her high heels and she'd be hollering as she went, "I just have to get out of this girdle!" A little bit later we'd hear the shout of relief and downstairs Mom would trot as her hands massaged her stomach and hips.
I identified in many ways with my mother. She was a woman; I'd become one too. That was clear. Strangely, however, I understood implicitly and absolutely that I would never pass into the realm of girdledom. I don't recall ever thinking about it consciously, certainly not ever asking about it. I just knew: Mom and her friends wore girdles. I and my friends would not. This was A Fact.
Except it turns out that it wasn't. Isn't. Because now there are "body shapers." I thought I was living in the post-girdle world, but post-girdlehood was an illusion.
Kind of like the day of Obama's inauguration, when I thought that a majority of Americans were genuinely, truly embracing his vision of a globally aware, environmentally concerned, social democratic society. An illusion.
Guess I'd better just hike up the girdle--excuse me--body shaper. But someday, someday, change is gonna come.
Throughout most of my childhood, Mom wore a girdle for dress-up occasions, which pretty much meant weekends--Saturday night out to dinner with Dad, Sunday morning and evening to church. I was asleep when they returned late on Saturday nights so missed the de-girdling, but the Sunday process remains indelibly carved into my memory. Despite a myriad of Sunday dinner tasks demanding her attention, Mom would clomp upstairs in her high heels and she'd be hollering as she went, "I just have to get out of this girdle!" A little bit later we'd hear the shout of relief and downstairs Mom would trot as her hands massaged her stomach and hips.
I identified in many ways with my mother. She was a woman; I'd become one too. That was clear. Strangely, however, I understood implicitly and absolutely that I would never pass into the realm of girdledom. I don't recall ever thinking about it consciously, certainly not ever asking about it. I just knew: Mom and her friends wore girdles. I and my friends would not. This was A Fact.
Except it turns out that it wasn't. Isn't. Because now there are "body shapers." I thought I was living in the post-girdle world, but post-girdlehood was an illusion.
Kind of like the day of Obama's inauguration, when I thought that a majority of Americans were genuinely, truly embracing his vision of a globally aware, environmentally concerned, social democratic society. An illusion.
Guess I'd better just hike up the girdle--excuse me--body shaper. But someday, someday, change is gonna come.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
The Potter and the Clay
I'm about to become a pot-smoking cat-killer.
The pot-smoking is fairly straightforward. My headaches get ever worse, which I really didn't think was possible, as they seemed pretty damned bad before. I have exhausted all the legal options and I have depleted my admittedly fairly scanty emotional and spiritual resources. That leaves medicinal marijuana.
Of course, it's not actually all that straightforward. I live in Louisiana, where pot in all its forms, medicinal or not, is illegal. And I've never smoked pot. I've never smoked anything, in fact (the result of growing up in a household of cigarette smokers--it was truly vile: one of my most vivid childhood memories is my disgust at having to wash dishes because my dad and brothers would stub out their dinnertime cigarettes on the plates. . . those crumpled butts, squished down into leftover puddles of ketchup and meatloaf grease. . . and then there was the horror of car rides in the winter, all the windows rolled up, the cigarette smoke swirling around my head like a thick woolen scarf). So, I don't know how to smoke. And I don't know how to get pot, other than to ask certain of my sons' friends, which of course I cannot do. Good lord. Can you imagine: "Hey dude, tell your mom I got a new supply in and it's really sweet"--??
But I will surmount these problems and I will score some medicinal marijuana and I will, at last, find relief from the pain. And I will live a happy and successful and productive life.
Except for the cat-killing.
I wrote in a previous post about our peeing cat. All cats pee, of course, but this one pees on the sofas and beds. Constantly. And I just can't take it anymore. I have tried everything. Really. Truly. I'm a historian. I research for a living. I have researched peeing cats. I do not believe in discarding animals because they are inconvenient, but. . . this is beyond "convenience." As Laurie, my very wise nail lady said to me on Saturday morning as she clipped away at my cuticles, "We're talking about your home here." And my home reeks of cat piss. But the cat has no claws and couldn't survive outside and is not exactly adoptable. Who wants an incontinent indoor kitty?
But if I have my cat "put down," aka killed, I will also become a liar of the worst kind. Because Cleaning Sarah, who has cleaned our house, babysat our kids, petsit our dogs and cats, and basically been a solid part of our family life for 20 years, will never speak to me again if she knows what I've done. So I will have to lie. A really Big Lie. One I will have to think about, concoct and then sustain for years to come. It will be like a Victorian novel. It will go on and on and on.
So the Scripture text in church this morning was the famous passage from Jeremiah about God sending the prophet to watch the potter at the wheel and saying, "Look, go tell Israel [or is it Judah?], you've all really fucked up and I'm going to throw you back on the wheel and start all over." (Yes, the "fucked up" is in the original Hebrew. . . OK, not really, but you know it's what God wanted to say except He/She/They knew there'd be all those kids listening in.) And I'm sitting there in the pew and I'm thinking, "Oh geez. I'm 50 and I've got a headache and do I really need to be reminded that I more and more resemble a lumpy, squishy, lopsided pile of clay?" And then there's this continual reshaping, this constantly-on-the-wheel thing, round and round and round and round. . . . I mean, no wonder I have headaches. But I gotta say, the shapes this funky cosmic Potter comes up with--well, they are surprising, to say the least. I truly never expected to be a middle-aged, weed-toking, cat-killing, cleaning-woman-deceiver. I mean, couldn't I be a nice, graceful salad bowl? Or perhaps a butter dish with pleasing lines? Or even a gravy boat?
The pot-smoking is fairly straightforward. My headaches get ever worse, which I really didn't think was possible, as they seemed pretty damned bad before. I have exhausted all the legal options and I have depleted my admittedly fairly scanty emotional and spiritual resources. That leaves medicinal marijuana.
Of course, it's not actually all that straightforward. I live in Louisiana, where pot in all its forms, medicinal or not, is illegal. And I've never smoked pot. I've never smoked anything, in fact (the result of growing up in a household of cigarette smokers--it was truly vile: one of my most vivid childhood memories is my disgust at having to wash dishes because my dad and brothers would stub out their dinnertime cigarettes on the plates. . . those crumpled butts, squished down into leftover puddles of ketchup and meatloaf grease. . . and then there was the horror of car rides in the winter, all the windows rolled up, the cigarette smoke swirling around my head like a thick woolen scarf). So, I don't know how to smoke. And I don't know how to get pot, other than to ask certain of my sons' friends, which of course I cannot do. Good lord. Can you imagine: "Hey dude, tell your mom I got a new supply in and it's really sweet"--??
But I will surmount these problems and I will score some medicinal marijuana and I will, at last, find relief from the pain. And I will live a happy and successful and productive life.
Except for the cat-killing.
I wrote in a previous post about our peeing cat. All cats pee, of course, but this one pees on the sofas and beds. Constantly. And I just can't take it anymore. I have tried everything. Really. Truly. I'm a historian. I research for a living. I have researched peeing cats. I do not believe in discarding animals because they are inconvenient, but. . . this is beyond "convenience." As Laurie, my very wise nail lady said to me on Saturday morning as she clipped away at my cuticles, "We're talking about your home here." And my home reeks of cat piss. But the cat has no claws and couldn't survive outside and is not exactly adoptable. Who wants an incontinent indoor kitty?
But if I have my cat "put down," aka killed, I will also become a liar of the worst kind. Because Cleaning Sarah, who has cleaned our house, babysat our kids, petsit our dogs and cats, and basically been a solid part of our family life for 20 years, will never speak to me again if she knows what I've done. So I will have to lie. A really Big Lie. One I will have to think about, concoct and then sustain for years to come. It will be like a Victorian novel. It will go on and on and on.
So the Scripture text in church this morning was the famous passage from Jeremiah about God sending the prophet to watch the potter at the wheel and saying, "Look, go tell Israel [or is it Judah?], you've all really fucked up and I'm going to throw you back on the wheel and start all over." (Yes, the "fucked up" is in the original Hebrew. . . OK, not really, but you know it's what God wanted to say except He/She/They knew there'd be all those kids listening in.) And I'm sitting there in the pew and I'm thinking, "Oh geez. I'm 50 and I've got a headache and do I really need to be reminded that I more and more resemble a lumpy, squishy, lopsided pile of clay?" And then there's this continual reshaping, this constantly-on-the-wheel thing, round and round and round and round. . . . I mean, no wonder I have headaches. But I gotta say, the shapes this funky cosmic Potter comes up with--well, they are surprising, to say the least. I truly never expected to be a middle-aged, weed-toking, cat-killing, cleaning-woman-deceiver. I mean, couldn't I be a nice, graceful salad bowl? Or perhaps a butter dish with pleasing lines? Or even a gravy boat?
Monday, August 9, 2010
Normal Dreams
I was normal until I started therapy. Or at least, I thought I was normal; I perceived myself as normal and in the end, really, isn't our perception of reality the only reality we actually know?
When I dream--night dreams, not ambition-type dreams--the drama almost always unfolds within the house in which I grew up, the house into which we moved just after I turned 4 and that my mother sold when I was 25. The rules of time and space fall apart in dreams-- my teenaged brothers, my mother in her late 30s, my vicious junior-high classmates, baby Owen, toddler Hugh, the current Keith, now-dead colleagues, and friends from England and Poland all move in and out, but they do so, usually, in my childhood bedroom or the den with the shag carpet and faux leather sofa or the rarely used "front room" with its white couch and breakable knick-knacks or the massive front yard with its gravel driveway descending down a hill made treacherous by Chicago winters.
It always made sense to me that my dreamscapes were those of my childhood--obviously, it would have been different had I been an army brat, say, or a corporate kid who moved every year or so, but I wasn't, and given that "home" still tends to call up this very specific half-wood, half-brick, five-bedroomed, 3 1/2 baths suburban split-level, well, why shouldn't it be the setting of my subconscious? That just seemed, yes, normal. Until I happened to mention to my therapist (my former therapist, I should say, one in a long line of therapists, counsellors, psychologists, social workers, pastors, nuns, and caring professionals, all of whom meant well, a few of whom actually did well) that my dreams almost always occur within the confines of the house in which I grew up.
Gosh. Bingo. Paydirt. The treasure map unearthed. You'd have thought I confessed I fantasized about murdering my mother and having sex with my dad. No, you'd have thought I confessed I actually did kill off mom and fuck my father. The therapist could barely remain seated. Perched on the edge of her chair, positively vibrating excitement, she informed me in her thick German accent (yes, she really did have a German accent) that no, no, most people (normal people, that is) did not dream regularly about their childhood home and that the fact that I did so clearly indicated the presence of "unresolved conflicts about my upbringing."
Well, of course I have unresolved conflicts about my upbringing. Who doesn't? Surely it's, umm, yes, not normal to have no unresolved childhood conflicts? Geez. Had this woman never read Philip Larkin?
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you up with the faults they had
And add some extra just for you.
But they were fucked-up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats. . .
So I reject the whole childhood house dream=unresolved family conflict thesis. Given the fuckeduppedness of family life in general, if the thesis were true, we'd all be dreaming constantly of our family home. And evidently we all don't. Evidently only not-normal me.
Actually, tho', that house has featured far less in my dreams of late. Ever since this past May, when Hugh and I visited the house with my mother. We were just driving by the old neighborhood, me and mom pointing out the skating lake and the Heckman's old house and the corner where all the accidents occurred. But then there was our house on the hill. "Looks empty, doesn't it?" says Mom. "There's a For Sale sign," Hugh points out. So of course we park and begin to snoop around the yard and peer into the windows--activities that bring out the somewhat alarmed occupant and her toddler daughter. Yet we're able to convince her our intentions are honorable and soon we're having a tour of the entire house. There are the inevitable changes: All the carpet has been ripped out. My bedroom has disappeared, swallowed up in an expansion of the master suite. My parents' bathroom now features a black toilet and sink. A much-used tv area has replaced the pristine and uncomfortable front room. There are surprising continuities: The back yard remains enormous. the kids' bathroom is untouched--same tile, same sinks, same tub and toilet. But overall is a sense of shabbiness, of a house worn down and worn out. The wood is cracking, the bricks could use some nipping and tucking, water-stains mark the ceilings, pits and pock marks dot the cement porch.
Maybe the house will fill up my dreams again. Or maybe that visit shattered some residual tie. Goodness, maybe it even resolved some childhood conflict. Dunno. But when we drove away and I turned around for a last look, I felt triumphant. We're about the same age, that house and me, but damn, I've worn much better.
When I dream--night dreams, not ambition-type dreams--the drama almost always unfolds within the house in which I grew up, the house into which we moved just after I turned 4 and that my mother sold when I was 25. The rules of time and space fall apart in dreams-- my teenaged brothers, my mother in her late 30s, my vicious junior-high classmates, baby Owen, toddler Hugh, the current Keith, now-dead colleagues, and friends from England and Poland all move in and out, but they do so, usually, in my childhood bedroom or the den with the shag carpet and faux leather sofa or the rarely used "front room" with its white couch and breakable knick-knacks or the massive front yard with its gravel driveway descending down a hill made treacherous by Chicago winters.
It always made sense to me that my dreamscapes were those of my childhood--obviously, it would have been different had I been an army brat, say, or a corporate kid who moved every year or so, but I wasn't, and given that "home" still tends to call up this very specific half-wood, half-brick, five-bedroomed, 3 1/2 baths suburban split-level, well, why shouldn't it be the setting of my subconscious? That just seemed, yes, normal. Until I happened to mention to my therapist (my former therapist, I should say, one in a long line of therapists, counsellors, psychologists, social workers, pastors, nuns, and caring professionals, all of whom meant well, a few of whom actually did well) that my dreams almost always occur within the confines of the house in which I grew up.
Gosh. Bingo. Paydirt. The treasure map unearthed. You'd have thought I confessed I fantasized about murdering my mother and having sex with my dad. No, you'd have thought I confessed I actually did kill off mom and fuck my father. The therapist could barely remain seated. Perched on the edge of her chair, positively vibrating excitement, she informed me in her thick German accent (yes, she really did have a German accent) that no, no, most people (normal people, that is) did not dream regularly about their childhood home and that the fact that I did so clearly indicated the presence of "unresolved conflicts about my upbringing."
Well, of course I have unresolved conflicts about my upbringing. Who doesn't? Surely it's, umm, yes, not normal to have no unresolved childhood conflicts? Geez. Had this woman never read Philip Larkin?
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you up with the faults they had
And add some extra just for you.
But they were fucked-up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats. . .
So I reject the whole childhood house dream=unresolved family conflict thesis. Given the fuckeduppedness of family life in general, if the thesis were true, we'd all be dreaming constantly of our family home. And evidently we all don't. Evidently only not-normal me.
Actually, tho', that house has featured far less in my dreams of late. Ever since this past May, when Hugh and I visited the house with my mother. We were just driving by the old neighborhood, me and mom pointing out the skating lake and the Heckman's old house and the corner where all the accidents occurred. But then there was our house on the hill. "Looks empty, doesn't it?" says Mom. "There's a For Sale sign," Hugh points out. So of course we park and begin to snoop around the yard and peer into the windows--activities that bring out the somewhat alarmed occupant and her toddler daughter. Yet we're able to convince her our intentions are honorable and soon we're having a tour of the entire house. There are the inevitable changes: All the carpet has been ripped out. My bedroom has disappeared, swallowed up in an expansion of the master suite. My parents' bathroom now features a black toilet and sink. A much-used tv area has replaced the pristine and uncomfortable front room. There are surprising continuities: The back yard remains enormous. the kids' bathroom is untouched--same tile, same sinks, same tub and toilet. But overall is a sense of shabbiness, of a house worn down and worn out. The wood is cracking, the bricks could use some nipping and tucking, water-stains mark the ceilings, pits and pock marks dot the cement porch.
Maybe the house will fill up my dreams again. Or maybe that visit shattered some residual tie. Goodness, maybe it even resolved some childhood conflict. Dunno. But when we drove away and I turned around for a last look, I felt triumphant. We're about the same age, that house and me, but damn, I've worn much better.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Younger Brothers
Last night I went to a pub and watched the World Cup semi-final between Spain and Germany--hardly my usual choice of activity. But I was hanging out with two colleagues who are teaching with me here in Ireland, it was what they wanted to do, and I tagged along. Dan and Joe are in their 30s. Relaxed, witty, and smart, they're fun travel companions. (Except when I start talking about things that happened at LSU in the early 90s and they smile politely and I remember, oh right, they were, what, 12 years old when that happened, and then feel old and feeble-minded.)
I imagine that having younger brothers is like the last few weeks with Joe and Dan--hanging out, having a drink, watching sports, laughing a lot. I've never had younger brothers, but they strike me as far preferable to older brothers. They don't hang you upside down and dunk your head in the toilet. They don't nail you inside the clubhouse. They don't tie you to the bedpost with a belt and then leave you there while they go out with friends. They don't tell you that their friends say you're fat. They don't sit you down before your first day of high school and advise you to do with boys whatever boys want you to do so that you'll be popular. Often, when people learn that I grew up with five older brothers, they coo, "Oh, you must have felt so protected." I can only conclude that such people have no experience with older brothers, or at least not with mine.
My sister's husband once asked, after hearing her recount the toilet dunking story (which I confess happened to her rather than to me: I was a chunk of a child whereas she was one of those skinny kids with bones jutting out all over, the perfect size and shape for a quick grab, flip, and dunk),"Where in the world was your mom?" Such a strange question. My mom fed and clothed us. She made sure we caught the school bus. She washed out our mouths with soap if we swore and she slapped us if we spoke disrespectfully to an adult. She tucked us in at night and heard our prayers. She helped us memorize the books of the Bible. She bought our Christmas and birthday presents. She drove us to our various school and church activities. It never occurred to us, or to her, I am quite sure, that she was supposed to do anything more. Making it through the day, surviving the torments that older brothers devised, that was up to us.
I got back at them, of course. I turned to the time-honored survival strategies of the weak: I became a world-class eavesdropper and snitch. I suppose I should thank my brothers for teaching me that words have power and that information, when wielded well, is a powerful weapon. Right after I find some really big guy with experience in toilet dunking.
I imagine that having younger brothers is like the last few weeks with Joe and Dan--hanging out, having a drink, watching sports, laughing a lot. I've never had younger brothers, but they strike me as far preferable to older brothers. They don't hang you upside down and dunk your head in the toilet. They don't nail you inside the clubhouse. They don't tie you to the bedpost with a belt and then leave you there while they go out with friends. They don't tell you that their friends say you're fat. They don't sit you down before your first day of high school and advise you to do with boys whatever boys want you to do so that you'll be popular. Often, when people learn that I grew up with five older brothers, they coo, "Oh, you must have felt so protected." I can only conclude that such people have no experience with older brothers, or at least not with mine.
My sister's husband once asked, after hearing her recount the toilet dunking story (which I confess happened to her rather than to me: I was a chunk of a child whereas she was one of those skinny kids with bones jutting out all over, the perfect size and shape for a quick grab, flip, and dunk),"Where in the world was your mom?" Such a strange question. My mom fed and clothed us. She made sure we caught the school bus. She washed out our mouths with soap if we swore and she slapped us if we spoke disrespectfully to an adult. She tucked us in at night and heard our prayers. She helped us memorize the books of the Bible. She bought our Christmas and birthday presents. She drove us to our various school and church activities. It never occurred to us, or to her, I am quite sure, that she was supposed to do anything more. Making it through the day, surviving the torments that older brothers devised, that was up to us.
I got back at them, of course. I turned to the time-honored survival strategies of the weak: I became a world-class eavesdropper and snitch. I suppose I should thank my brothers for teaching me that words have power and that information, when wielded well, is a powerful weapon. Right after I find some really big guy with experience in toilet dunking.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Bad Words
I never used to swear or curse. I grew up in an astonishingly curse-free, swear-averse environment. My mom and dad did both say the occasional shit, but that didn't count--as I explained in an earlier post, shit isn't really a Bad Word in the Dutch immigrant society that constituted my early universe. But hell, damn, dammit, God, Goddamn, oh God, my God, oh my God, Jesus, Christ, and Jesus Christ--if not used in the religious context, such words were absolutely, utterly forbidden. And I never heard either of my parents--or their friends-- use these words in a cursing context, not ever, not even during their pinochle games with friends that went long into the night and were accompanied by copious quantities of hard liquor. (Always a light sleeper and a highly skilled eavesdropper, I'd lie in bed and listen to the rumble of adult talk punctuated by shouts of laughter.) The only exceptions were the Donovans, but that made sense because unlike all my parents' other friends, the Donovans were not Dutch and they did not attend a Reformed or a Christian Reformed church. So they did utter the occasional damn and their girls, my some time playmates, frequently said, Oh my Gahd. But Mrs. Donovan was also the only mom I knew who smoked and drank beer, so it was all of a piece.
Swear words had a small but more marked presence in my childhood,via my older brothers and the occasional movie. I first heard cunt, for example, when I saw An Officer and a Gentleman in high school; I wasn't really sure what it meant tho' I sort of got the gist of it. And I first heard prick in an argument between my brothers; I just thought, huh? Fuck came in much earlier, I don't know how, when, where, or why (probably the Donovan girls); but I knew the word, and knew it was Really Really Bad long before I knew its literal meaning.
But the point is, I didn't say it. Or any of these words. Except in situations of extreme duress or heartbreak. That's what they were for. Words that tore through the curtains of respectability, words that broke all the rules in acknowledgment that extraordinary times demand extraordinary words.
Now I swear and curse all the time. Extraordinary words for extraordinary times? Umm, well, "extraordinary times" hardly seems an appropriate label for the mundanities of menopause. Mostly I'm just tired, confused, and pissed off most of the time, and so inclined to ignore the rules.
But my linguistic descent began before the onset of menopause. First, there was George W. Bush. Honestly, during the Bush years, how could one not swear and curse?
And then there was, there is, the Owen Factor. I realize parents are supposed to mold their children, rather than vice versa, but basically I've learned to swear from my son. Most kids are fascinated by Bad Words but Owen, Owen was enchanted, mesmerized, transfixed, obsessed. When he was tiny and the Bad Words were shut up and stupid, I finally told him if he felt like saying them, he should go into the bathroom. If he wanted to whisper Bad Words in there, or shout them, or chant them, well, ok. So, golly, that's what he did. Repeatedly. Enjoyed himself immensely. As Owen got older and we'd allow him to watch the occasional PG film, he'd giggle in absolute delight at every naughty word. And then we moved to England, where we lived in a working-class neighborhood and took the city bus to his school, so his mornings were filled with "fookin' idjut" and "bloody hell, yeh wanker." He lapped it up.
Then we came home from England and took the boys to an anti-Iraq war rally in New Orleans. Within minutes, 12-year-old Owen was part of a college group that had resurrected that old chant, "1-2-3-4, We don't want your fuckin' war!" He was so happy.
By the time Owen entered high school, we were battling constantly, and fruitlessly, against his bad language. Then, at age 15, he spent 6 months in South Africa on an international student program. Fundamentalist Christians, his host family nonetheless utilized fuck as comma, period, exclamation point, adjective, and qualifying adverb. And that was it. Owen came home, we acknowledged defeat in the language war, and somewhere along the line I went over to his side.
Which is a problem. Because when the bad times come, as they do, as they will, what words will I have left?
Swear words had a small but more marked presence in my childhood,via my older brothers and the occasional movie. I first heard cunt, for example, when I saw An Officer and a Gentleman in high school; I wasn't really sure what it meant tho' I sort of got the gist of it. And I first heard prick in an argument between my brothers; I just thought, huh? Fuck came in much earlier, I don't know how, when, where, or why (probably the Donovan girls); but I knew the word, and knew it was Really Really Bad long before I knew its literal meaning.
But the point is, I didn't say it. Or any of these words. Except in situations of extreme duress or heartbreak. That's what they were for. Words that tore through the curtains of respectability, words that broke all the rules in acknowledgment that extraordinary times demand extraordinary words.
Now I swear and curse all the time. Extraordinary words for extraordinary times? Umm, well, "extraordinary times" hardly seems an appropriate label for the mundanities of menopause. Mostly I'm just tired, confused, and pissed off most of the time, and so inclined to ignore the rules.
But my linguistic descent began before the onset of menopause. First, there was George W. Bush. Honestly, during the Bush years, how could one not swear and curse?
And then there was, there is, the Owen Factor. I realize parents are supposed to mold their children, rather than vice versa, but basically I've learned to swear from my son. Most kids are fascinated by Bad Words but Owen, Owen was enchanted, mesmerized, transfixed, obsessed. When he was tiny and the Bad Words were shut up and stupid, I finally told him if he felt like saying them, he should go into the bathroom. If he wanted to whisper Bad Words in there, or shout them, or chant them, well, ok. So, golly, that's what he did. Repeatedly. Enjoyed himself immensely. As Owen got older and we'd allow him to watch the occasional PG film, he'd giggle in absolute delight at every naughty word. And then we moved to England, where we lived in a working-class neighborhood and took the city bus to his school, so his mornings were filled with "fookin' idjut" and "bloody hell, yeh wanker." He lapped it up.
Then we came home from England and took the boys to an anti-Iraq war rally in New Orleans. Within minutes, 12-year-old Owen was part of a college group that had resurrected that old chant, "1-2-3-4, We don't want your fuckin' war!" He was so happy.
By the time Owen entered high school, we were battling constantly, and fruitlessly, against his bad language. Then, at age 15, he spent 6 months in South Africa on an international student program. Fundamentalist Christians, his host family nonetheless utilized fuck as comma, period, exclamation point, adjective, and qualifying adverb. And that was it. Owen came home, we acknowledged defeat in the language war, and somewhere along the line I went over to his side.
Which is a problem. Because when the bad times come, as they do, as they will, what words will I have left?
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Running Water
We have running water in the kitchen! Hallelujah. Blessed be the saintly Plumber Guy. Much as I loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books when I was young, I'd be a really lousy frontierswoman.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
A Life of Danger
All of my life I've been a cautious, rules-oriented, color-within-the-lines sort of soul. So, now, facing 50, it's kind of a revelation to look back and realize that really, I've lived a life of incredible danger.
I grew up drinking whole-fat milk at every meal (the Dutch legacy--milk and cheese were big) and eating red meat at least once a day. We'd pour spoonfuls of sugar onto our already sweetened cereal and shake layers of salt onto our canned vegetables.
I didn't have a car seat; as a toddler I sat on the arm rest next to my mom and when she braked suddenly she'd put out her arm to block me from flying through the wind shield. (To this day, Mom flings out her right arm when coming to a sudden stop while driving.) When I was older, I romped around the back seat; using a seat belt was unheard of. Bike helmets? I don't think we knew they existed. (Did they?)
And by the time I was 4, it was common, in fact expected, that I'd disappear from home for hours on end. We frequently went exploring in the woods behind our house that led up and beyond the interstate highway--which we ran across without much thought. We also never gave a thought to the signs screaming WARNING: HEALTH HAZARD: NO SWIMMING that were posted along the stream that ran through the fields below. We couldn't see any health hazards so we thought the signs were silly. Into the stream we'd plunge, the same stream that came running out of Argonne National Laboratories (you may have heard of Argonne; big name in the development of atomic and then nuclear weapons).
On summer nights we'd listen for the telltale rumble of the mosquito truck, and once we heard it we'd all run out, jump on our bikes, and peddle like mad to catch up with the sweet-smelling, cough-inducing cloud of poison.
On Halloween we headed out as soon as we could get off the school bus and into our costumes; we'd tumble back home around 10 pm, exhausted, streaked with chocolate, (no one told us an adult should check out our candy before we ate it; I doubt if any adult in our lives realized they were supposed to do such a thing), our costumes ripped from climbing fences and jumping culverts. Sometimes grown-ups would drive by and see us, slogging on home with our bulging bags of candy, and they'd offer us rides, which we gratefully accepted. Strangers. In cars. And in we'd pile.
Good lord. Where were our parents?
Inside. Drinking martinis. Playing pinochle. Watching Gunsmoke. Living adult lives completely separate from our own.
Bizarre. Tempting, but bizarre.
I grew up drinking whole-fat milk at every meal (the Dutch legacy--milk and cheese were big) and eating red meat at least once a day. We'd pour spoonfuls of sugar onto our already sweetened cereal and shake layers of salt onto our canned vegetables.
I didn't have a car seat; as a toddler I sat on the arm rest next to my mom and when she braked suddenly she'd put out her arm to block me from flying through the wind shield. (To this day, Mom flings out her right arm when coming to a sudden stop while driving.) When I was older, I romped around the back seat; using a seat belt was unheard of. Bike helmets? I don't think we knew they existed. (Did they?)
And by the time I was 4, it was common, in fact expected, that I'd disappear from home for hours on end. We frequently went exploring in the woods behind our house that led up and beyond the interstate highway--which we ran across without much thought. We also never gave a thought to the signs screaming WARNING: HEALTH HAZARD: NO SWIMMING that were posted along the stream that ran through the fields below. We couldn't see any health hazards so we thought the signs were silly. Into the stream we'd plunge, the same stream that came running out of Argonne National Laboratories (you may have heard of Argonne; big name in the development of atomic and then nuclear weapons).
On summer nights we'd listen for the telltale rumble of the mosquito truck, and once we heard it we'd all run out, jump on our bikes, and peddle like mad to catch up with the sweet-smelling, cough-inducing cloud of poison.
On Halloween we headed out as soon as we could get off the school bus and into our costumes; we'd tumble back home around 10 pm, exhausted, streaked with chocolate, (no one told us an adult should check out our candy before we ate it; I doubt if any adult in our lives realized they were supposed to do such a thing), our costumes ripped from climbing fences and jumping culverts. Sometimes grown-ups would drive by and see us, slogging on home with our bulging bags of candy, and they'd offer us rides, which we gratefully accepted. Strangers. In cars. And in we'd pile.
Good lord. Where were our parents?
Inside. Drinking martinis. Playing pinochle. Watching Gunsmoke. Living adult lives completely separate from our own.
Bizarre. Tempting, but bizarre.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Fashion Revolution
The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things. . . actually, just hats and gloves. And I'm not really the Walrus. I think that was John Lennon.
Anyway. I've been looking at my hands. They are old lady hands. Wrinkly. And there are these spots. They used to be freckles--charming, mischievous, evoking a youth spent dropping from the rope swing into the lake (there was no swing; there was no lake; there wasn't much of a youth-but the freckles didn't know that). Now these insouciant little freckles have morphed into age spots. Just like my mom's. Geez. Just like my Gram's. They (the age spots, not Mom and Gram) look like some amoeba-like aliens planning their conquest of the human race.
And then there are the fingernails. Or lack thereof. I try. I really do. And for a month last spring, I actually did have nails. A brief, shining moment of being good at being female. But then I reverted to my usual ragged, jagged nails bit to the quick, bleeding cuticles, pus-pulsating hangnails. I can't help it. Life is hard. Fingers are close at hand. I bite. I tear. I chew. I pick. I prod. I peel.
So. The solution, obviously, is a grass-roots renaissance of gloves. Not utilitarian winter gloves, which clearly would not catch on here in the Deep South. I mean, ladies' gloves. Gloves for all climates and classes. Elegant, silk-like elbow-caressing gloves. And little lacy white wrist gloves. You know, gloves. The sort of gloves I have some vague, primordial memory of my mother wearing to church. And even me, as a very little girl, in white fake patent-leather shoes and white tights and a pastel blue church dress. And gloves.
And if we're doing gloves, then we must do hats. Again, fuzzy, hazy pictures come swimming up from long ago of my mother and the other Ladies, bedecked and bedazzling up on top. Think of it. No more Bad Hair Days. The ability to put off your roots touch-up for another month. No more blowdryers and curling irons and straightening rods, no more mousse and gel and paste and wax and "Product." Just pop on that sexy little beret. A dashing toque. A demure yet ooh-la-la pillbox. A jaunty newsboy cap. A feminine, postmodernist take on the cowboy hat. Oh, the possibilities are endless.
But if the grassroots Hats-and-Gloves movement fails, then I suggest we all adopt the hijab in solidarity with our Muslim sisters. Or shoot. Given the realities of the Body Facing 50, let's just go for the fullout burka. All this time, I've identified the burka with oppression, but honestly, maybe it would be the ultimate liberation: Time to go to work? Pull on the burka and you're heading out the door, 60 seconds max.
But I've got my eye on the cutest straw cloche with a black silk ribbon, paired with lacy black cotton gloves. Maidens of menopause, unite!
Anyway. I've been looking at my hands. They are old lady hands. Wrinkly. And there are these spots. They used to be freckles--charming, mischievous, evoking a youth spent dropping from the rope swing into the lake (there was no swing; there was no lake; there wasn't much of a youth-but the freckles didn't know that). Now these insouciant little freckles have morphed into age spots. Just like my mom's. Geez. Just like my Gram's. They (the age spots, not Mom and Gram) look like some amoeba-like aliens planning their conquest of the human race.
And then there are the fingernails. Or lack thereof. I try. I really do. And for a month last spring, I actually did have nails. A brief, shining moment of being good at being female. But then I reverted to my usual ragged, jagged nails bit to the quick, bleeding cuticles, pus-pulsating hangnails. I can't help it. Life is hard. Fingers are close at hand. I bite. I tear. I chew. I pick. I prod. I peel.
So. The solution, obviously, is a grass-roots renaissance of gloves. Not utilitarian winter gloves, which clearly would not catch on here in the Deep South. I mean, ladies' gloves. Gloves for all climates and classes. Elegant, silk-like elbow-caressing gloves. And little lacy white wrist gloves. You know, gloves. The sort of gloves I have some vague, primordial memory of my mother wearing to church. And even me, as a very little girl, in white fake patent-leather shoes and white tights and a pastel blue church dress. And gloves.
And if we're doing gloves, then we must do hats. Again, fuzzy, hazy pictures come swimming up from long ago of my mother and the other Ladies, bedecked and bedazzling up on top. Think of it. No more Bad Hair Days. The ability to put off your roots touch-up for another month. No more blowdryers and curling irons and straightening rods, no more mousse and gel and paste and wax and "Product." Just pop on that sexy little beret. A dashing toque. A demure yet ooh-la-la pillbox. A jaunty newsboy cap. A feminine, postmodernist take on the cowboy hat. Oh, the possibilities are endless.
But if the grassroots Hats-and-Gloves movement fails, then I suggest we all adopt the hijab in solidarity with our Muslim sisters. Or shoot. Given the realities of the Body Facing 50, let's just go for the fullout burka. All this time, I've identified the burka with oppression, but honestly, maybe it would be the ultimate liberation: Time to go to work? Pull on the burka and you're heading out the door, 60 seconds max.
But I've got my eye on the cutest straw cloche with a black silk ribbon, paired with lacy black cotton gloves. Maidens of menopause, unite!
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Grounding and Garbage
Hugh is grounded. Again. "Can't you think of a different punishment for once?" Hugh demanded. Dweeb parents that we are, we can't.
Could be worse, I tell him. My brother J.T. was grounded for his entire senior year of high school--and even into that summer. It didn't initially start out as a year-long grounding. I think first he faced a month-long detention, but just as the month was ending, he snuck out of the house. And got caught. So the month became three months. And then, just as the end of his purgatory was drawing nigh, yes, out he snuck again. And got caught again. Poor J.T. He really really wanted to be a Bad Kid, but he just wasn't very good at it. Anyway, on it went, for his entire senior year.
We kid my mom now, about the endless grounding. It's not really fair as she was generally quite creative in the punishment department. Take the time she found some pornographic magazine--not Playboy, not Penthouse, far beyond that--that J.T. had tucked in amidst the towels in the bathroom. (Like I said, he was really very bad at being bad.) Mom didn't say a word. But that night, when we sat down for dinner, there was no plate at J.T.'s place. "I've made something special just for you," she explained to him. Cheryl and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes; it wasn't out of the ordinary for my mother to cook just for one of the boys. In fact, once there was no longer a boy at home, Mom simply stopped cooking altogether. The fact that Cheryl and I were there, well, that didn't count. But--I digress. Back to the fateful dinner. So daughters roll their eyes, son anticipates a treat, we all say grace. And then my mom gets up, pulls a plate out of the warm oven, and sets it in front of J.T. On it sat a pile of garbage, an oozing glop of gunk from the trash can. And then, very calmly, she said, "If you're going to put garbage in your mind, you'll put it in your body."
I was totally impressed.
I was even more impressed by what she said next: "If you ever show such disrespect to me or your sisters again, you'll eat nothing but garbage at my table." I was 15. I had never thought of myself as someone to be respected. I certainly had never dared to think that any one of my five older brothers was supposed to respect me. I rather liked the idea.
Hugh hasn't a clue how lucky he is that I failed Creative Punishments.
Could be worse, I tell him. My brother J.T. was grounded for his entire senior year of high school--and even into that summer. It didn't initially start out as a year-long grounding. I think first he faced a month-long detention, but just as the month was ending, he snuck out of the house. And got caught. So the month became three months. And then, just as the end of his purgatory was drawing nigh, yes, out he snuck again. And got caught again. Poor J.T. He really really wanted to be a Bad Kid, but he just wasn't very good at it. Anyway, on it went, for his entire senior year.
We kid my mom now, about the endless grounding. It's not really fair as she was generally quite creative in the punishment department. Take the time she found some pornographic magazine--not Playboy, not Penthouse, far beyond that--that J.T. had tucked in amidst the towels in the bathroom. (Like I said, he was really very bad at being bad.) Mom didn't say a word. But that night, when we sat down for dinner, there was no plate at J.T.'s place. "I've made something special just for you," she explained to him. Cheryl and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes; it wasn't out of the ordinary for my mother to cook just for one of the boys. In fact, once there was no longer a boy at home, Mom simply stopped cooking altogether. The fact that Cheryl and I were there, well, that didn't count. But--I digress. Back to the fateful dinner. So daughters roll their eyes, son anticipates a treat, we all say grace. And then my mom gets up, pulls a plate out of the warm oven, and sets it in front of J.T. On it sat a pile of garbage, an oozing glop of gunk from the trash can. And then, very calmly, she said, "If you're going to put garbage in your mind, you'll put it in your body."
I was totally impressed.
I was even more impressed by what she said next: "If you ever show such disrespect to me or your sisters again, you'll eat nothing but garbage at my table." I was 15. I had never thought of myself as someone to be respected. I certainly had never dared to think that any one of my five older brothers was supposed to respect me. I rather liked the idea.
Hugh hasn't a clue how lucky he is that I failed Creative Punishments.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Booyah
Significant health care reform--BOOYAH!
Politics is (are?) a weird thing. I grew up in a Republican household, although for much of my childhood, I had no idea. My parents never talked about politics. They always voted--that was a Christian's duty--but they never seemed to indicate that it mattered much, or maybe they just never thought there was anything to discuss.
This parental political vacuum left me free to make sense of the world with what I had on hand: a religously infused value system, an "eldest daughter" obsession with being good and doing right, a voracious reading habit, and, by and large, a genuine love of learning anything involving words rather than numbers. So, unguided, with none of the maps usually provided by family dictates and labels, I put all this together and, profoundly influenced by John F. Kennedy's Profiles of Courage (plus the fact that he was cute-as-all-get-out in the photos), concluded that I was a Democrat. After years in church services and Sunday School classes and family devotions and Bible classes, I could recite whole passages of the Old Testament prophetic condemnations of the rich and powerful who failed to ensure justice for the poor, as well as Jesus' teachings, such as "when I was hungry, you fed me; when I was thirsty, you gave me water." And, as I read and read and read in American history, it just seemed that the party that championed unions and social security and civil rights and the minimum wage and Medicaid was the party of the right and good.
I was stunned to discover, then, that most of my family disagreed, shocked to realize that my parents (small business owners) regarded unions as evil, genuinely horrified to learn that my mother had voted for Barry Goldwater. Barry Goldwater. I mean, geez.
Now of course as I grew older and read more and saw more, things grew more complicated. I grew up in suburban Chicago, in the shadow of Richard Daley. Daley's machine--not exactly a force for right and good. And my gorgeous JFK: turns out he was a Cold Warmonger who desperately crawfished on civil rights throughout his short life and of course launched us into Vietnam.
Still, despite all that, despite my family's objections, I could never see any other way to embody my religious beliefs in political terms, other than to be a Democrat.
And then in my sophomore year of college, I took a course on the social and cultural history of the U.S., and it changed my life. It introduced me to social and cultural history, for one thing, and that's what I've been doing ever since. But more to the point of this posting: in the lecture on LBJ, Nixon, and Medicaid, the prof said, "Now let me be clear and let me be honest here. I strongly believe that a civilized society is one that ensures that all its citizens have access to decent health care." I had never thought about health care before. When I got sick, Mom took care of me. But this lecture, and that particular statement--they tore open the universe.
That was 30 years ago. I've been a staunch advocate of universal health care ever since. We're not there yet. But damn. We're a helluva lot closer. BOOYAH!
Politics is (are?) a weird thing. I grew up in a Republican household, although for much of my childhood, I had no idea. My parents never talked about politics. They always voted--that was a Christian's duty--but they never seemed to indicate that it mattered much, or maybe they just never thought there was anything to discuss.
This parental political vacuum left me free to make sense of the world with what I had on hand: a religously infused value system, an "eldest daughter" obsession with being good and doing right, a voracious reading habit, and, by and large, a genuine love of learning anything involving words rather than numbers. So, unguided, with none of the maps usually provided by family dictates and labels, I put all this together and, profoundly influenced by John F. Kennedy's Profiles of Courage (plus the fact that he was cute-as-all-get-out in the photos), concluded that I was a Democrat. After years in church services and Sunday School classes and family devotions and Bible classes, I could recite whole passages of the Old Testament prophetic condemnations of the rich and powerful who failed to ensure justice for the poor, as well as Jesus' teachings, such as "when I was hungry, you fed me; when I was thirsty, you gave me water." And, as I read and read and read in American history, it just seemed that the party that championed unions and social security and civil rights and the minimum wage and Medicaid was the party of the right and good.
I was stunned to discover, then, that most of my family disagreed, shocked to realize that my parents (small business owners) regarded unions as evil, genuinely horrified to learn that my mother had voted for Barry Goldwater. Barry Goldwater. I mean, geez.
Now of course as I grew older and read more and saw more, things grew more complicated. I grew up in suburban Chicago, in the shadow of Richard Daley. Daley's machine--not exactly a force for right and good. And my gorgeous JFK: turns out he was a Cold Warmonger who desperately crawfished on civil rights throughout his short life and of course launched us into Vietnam.
Still, despite all that, despite my family's objections, I could never see any other way to embody my religious beliefs in political terms, other than to be a Democrat.
And then in my sophomore year of college, I took a course on the social and cultural history of the U.S., and it changed my life. It introduced me to social and cultural history, for one thing, and that's what I've been doing ever since. But more to the point of this posting: in the lecture on LBJ, Nixon, and Medicaid, the prof said, "Now let me be clear and let me be honest here. I strongly believe that a civilized society is one that ensures that all its citizens have access to decent health care." I had never thought about health care before. When I got sick, Mom took care of me. But this lecture, and that particular statement--they tore open the universe.
That was 30 years ago. I've been a staunch advocate of universal health care ever since. We're not there yet. But damn. We're a helluva lot closer. BOOYAH!
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Missing the '6os
I always felt bad about missing the '60s. Obviously as a Woman Facing 50, I was born in 1960, which means I spent most of that pivotal decade absorbed in such trivialities as learning how to walk, talk, use the potty, read, write, and roller skate. By the time I came to political consciousness, well, there wasn't much worth being conscious about. Disco? Detente?
Actually, Saturday Night Fever is truly a great movie and detente an enormous step forward in international cooperation. But it just doesn't have the same zingggg as having danced at Woodstock, now does it?
And then there's the clothing issue. I've got good upper arms, small boobs, and unruly hair. I was born for fringe and frizz and long swirling Indian skirts and braless vests. But no, no, I came of age in the 70s. My hair never conformed to the mandated Farrah Fawcett feathering (by the way, there's a website on "How to Have Farrah Fawcett Hair." Complete with step-by-step blowdrying and curling instructions. ) and I fell off my platform shoes with dismal regularity. The tube top, however. . . oh, the tube top. I was good at the tube top.
But still, being good at the tube top--it's not on par with hearing Martin Luther King give the "I Have a Dream" speech on the Mall or joining the March against Vietnam or Going Clean for Gene, is it?
My '60s inferiority complex explains why, in the early 80s, I felt implicated, indicted, no dammit, downright guilty, when my history professor exploded in frustration and fury one day because I couldn't remember where I was when John F. Kennedy was shot. "But, umm, I was only three," I stammered apologetically. He tore at his hair, yelled, "Augggghhh!! I can't stand it!" and left the room for several minutes. The rest of the class shrugged. What a weirdo. What are you doing this weekend? Anyone got the notes for the next book review? But I, I sat there, knowing I had failed an essential test, one that I desperately wanted to ace, one that I could never pass no matter how hard I studied.
So I'm lecturing on the Revolutions of 1989. And I'm telling my students that the American version of this story, that "Ronald Reagan won the Cold War," is completely parochial, ahistorical, and well, just plain incorrect. We need to focus on the actions and intentions of Mikhael Gorbachev, as well as eastern European activists like Vaclav Havel. And a student raises his hand: "Sorry. But what was the "Cold War"? You mean, like, something in Finland or Norway?"
Augggghh!! I can't stand it!!
Actually, Saturday Night Fever is truly a great movie and detente an enormous step forward in international cooperation. But it just doesn't have the same zingggg as having danced at Woodstock, now does it?
And then there's the clothing issue. I've got good upper arms, small boobs, and unruly hair. I was born for fringe and frizz and long swirling Indian skirts and braless vests. But no, no, I came of age in the 70s. My hair never conformed to the mandated Farrah Fawcett feathering (by the way, there's a website on "How to Have Farrah Fawcett Hair." Complete with step-by-step blowdrying and curling instructions. ) and I fell off my platform shoes with dismal regularity. The tube top, however. . . oh, the tube top. I was good at the tube top.
But still, being good at the tube top--it's not on par with hearing Martin Luther King give the "I Have a Dream" speech on the Mall or joining the March against Vietnam or Going Clean for Gene, is it?
My '60s inferiority complex explains why, in the early 80s, I felt implicated, indicted, no dammit, downright guilty, when my history professor exploded in frustration and fury one day because I couldn't remember where I was when John F. Kennedy was shot. "But, umm, I was only three," I stammered apologetically. He tore at his hair, yelled, "Augggghhh!! I can't stand it!" and left the room for several minutes. The rest of the class shrugged. What a weirdo. What are you doing this weekend? Anyone got the notes for the next book review? But I, I sat there, knowing I had failed an essential test, one that I desperately wanted to ace, one that I could never pass no matter how hard I studied.
So I'm lecturing on the Revolutions of 1989. And I'm telling my students that the American version of this story, that "Ronald Reagan won the Cold War," is completely parochial, ahistorical, and well, just plain incorrect. We need to focus on the actions and intentions of Mikhael Gorbachev, as well as eastern European activists like Vaclav Havel. And a student raises his hand: "Sorry. But what was the "Cold War"? You mean, like, something in Finland or Norway?"
Augggghh!! I can't stand it!!
Thursday, February 18, 2010
God Bless Mrs. Postma
I remember exactly when I became a feminist. OK, maybe not exactly. I don't have the exact date, but take it from a professional historian, exact dates rarely matter. I do know the year: 1965. Back in the Glory Days of kindergarten, long before assessment targets and standardized tests and curriculum reviews. Mostly we played. Yes, we learned to count to 50 and to sing the alphabet song. We planted seeds in cups and collected pussy willows. We made Mother's Day cards and pressed our hands into plaster-of-Paris and glued macaroni onto soup cans and and tried to jump-rope (DeeDee was the best, but that was because she had gone to nursery school, which was a totally unfair advantage). We ate our mother's cookies and drank whole-fat milk from little glass bottles and took naps on rectangular rag rugs. But mostly we played.
It was a glorious place to play. The second floor of the Western Springs Christian Reformed Church housed our kindergarten. On Sunday it served as the home of the Sunday School but on weekdays, it was ours: a large central room for our circle discussions and our singing and our nap times, and six small rooms, three on each side, that opened onto the central room. These small rooms could be closed off with sliding panels--which is what happened on Sundays--but during kindergarten, they remained open to the central hall, under the keen eyes of our teacher, Mrs. Postma. In each of the small rooms was a different play area: Room 1 was set up as a play school room, Room 2 as a play kitchen, 3 contained the large pressboard building blocks, 4 held many sets of Lincoln Logs, 5 housed a racetrack and cars, and 6, ah, in Room 6 stood a fantastic Wild West fort, complete with soldiers and horses and stagecoaches and attacking Indians.
Already at age 5 I knew that the best place in which to spend my time was the Past. And I wanted, desperately wanted, to play with that fort. But our little play rooms were sex-segregated, or as we say in academia these days, "gendered." At play time, the boys played in Rooms 4 thru 6, girls played in Rooms 1 and 2. Room 3 was a bit more ambiguous. Some of the rougher girls played in Room 3. I was not a rough girl. But I longed for that fort. Cowboys and Indians. The Wild West. All the romance and glamor of the Past.
Finally, after weeks and weeks of pining, one memorable day in 1965 in a quiet suburb of Chicago, at kindergarten play time, I girded my loins (so to speak) and entered Room 6.
Oh my.
The boys first jeered and then, when I would not leave, pelted me with plastic Indians and frontiersmen, while the other girls cheered them on. And Mrs. Postma? She marched over, grabbed my arm, and informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I belonged in Room 2. Geez. Not even Room 1.
I looked up at her, and I saw Power. And Injustice. And just plain Stupidity. I trudged over to Room 1. I cried. I sulked. And I became angry. Very Angry.
God bless Mrs. Postma.
It was a glorious place to play. The second floor of the Western Springs Christian Reformed Church housed our kindergarten. On Sunday it served as the home of the Sunday School but on weekdays, it was ours: a large central room for our circle discussions and our singing and our nap times, and six small rooms, three on each side, that opened onto the central room. These small rooms could be closed off with sliding panels--which is what happened on Sundays--but during kindergarten, they remained open to the central hall, under the keen eyes of our teacher, Mrs. Postma. In each of the small rooms was a different play area: Room 1 was set up as a play school room, Room 2 as a play kitchen, 3 contained the large pressboard building blocks, 4 held many sets of Lincoln Logs, 5 housed a racetrack and cars, and 6, ah, in Room 6 stood a fantastic Wild West fort, complete with soldiers and horses and stagecoaches and attacking Indians.
Already at age 5 I knew that the best place in which to spend my time was the Past. And I wanted, desperately wanted, to play with that fort. But our little play rooms were sex-segregated, or as we say in academia these days, "gendered." At play time, the boys played in Rooms 4 thru 6, girls played in Rooms 1 and 2. Room 3 was a bit more ambiguous. Some of the rougher girls played in Room 3. I was not a rough girl. But I longed for that fort. Cowboys and Indians. The Wild West. All the romance and glamor of the Past.
Finally, after weeks and weeks of pining, one memorable day in 1965 in a quiet suburb of Chicago, at kindergarten play time, I girded my loins (so to speak) and entered Room 6.
Oh my.
The boys first jeered and then, when I would not leave, pelted me with plastic Indians and frontiersmen, while the other girls cheered them on. And Mrs. Postma? She marched over, grabbed my arm, and informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I belonged in Room 2. Geez. Not even Room 1.
I looked up at her, and I saw Power. And Injustice. And just plain Stupidity. I trudged over to Room 1. I cried. I sulked. And I became angry. Very Angry.
God bless Mrs. Postma.
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