Target demographic

You know you've passed some important and deeply depressing milestone when you are sitting in a family restaurant and suddenly realize that you really really dig the music you're hearing. You're not listening to it with ironic detachment, in a "that's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh" kind of way. No. When you're sitting in your booth at CiCi's, cramming your face with a slice of thin crust Supreme, seriously enjoying the Cure's "Pictures of You," and then feeling pleasantly surprised by the next track, a deep cut from U2's Boy, you can be sure that something profound has happened. You, meaning we, my friends, are now the target demographic. We are not the target demographic for things like Ipods and Xboxes and the things they sell in Glamour magazine. No. We are the target demographic for budget-oriented family dining establishments. We are the target demographic for Edward Jones, Luvs, Mueslix, and Spanx. It's a very short hop from here to being the target demographic for Ben-Gay and Sunsweet prunes, which makes me sad.

That being said, I recommend the Cici's at the intersection of Mt Holly-Huntersville and Hwy 16. They have really good music.

We've all got it coming, kid...

That's about all I have to say about that.

Night Terror

If we ever form a band, in manner of the Partridge Family, it will be called Night Terror, I've decided. We will draw heavily on punk influences such as the Ramones. Our first CD will be titled 4 am Rising. These are the tracks:

1. Timeout 2:59
2. Somebody Put Something in My Drink 3:01
3. That’s Not My Booger 4:00
4. Everybody Shut Up 1:07
5. Shut Up (Is a Bad Word) 5:09
6. Ginny Don’t Eat My Hot Dog 7:12
7. Mine! Mine! Mine! 3:13
8. I Want to Marry Brother :45
9. I Wish (He Was Never Born) 3:43
10. Hands To Yourself 1:23
11. You Said I Could :21
12. He Bites! He Bites! 9:09
13. Timeout (reprise) 4:00

By the way, I have solved one of the most profound mysteries of life: what happened to the socks. You know, the ones you’re sure you put in the dryer?

The Mommy Makeover

So there’s this ad that runs at least once a day on one of the radio shows I listen to in the morning, on the way to and from Ginny’s preschool. In it, there’s a thirty-something woman raving about Dr. So and So Plastic Surgeon Man and his “Mommy Makeover.” Having children wrecks your body, apparently. But whatever your problem might be, this guy will hook you up. Boobs down to your knees in manner of aboriginal woman in National Geographic? No problem. No discernable boobs, in manner of twelve year old boy? No problem. Unsightly gut, in manner of Homer Simpson? No problem. He doesn’t actually claim to do anything about stretch marks, but I imagine they are part of his repertoire as well.

Every single time I hear this ad, I feel two very different and equally unpleasant emotions: uncontained rage, paired with a nagging fear that I’m a pretty good candidate for a number of these procedures, right down to the thing that he can probably do for my bellybutton. I’ve read Our Bodies, Ourselves, and I know that the changes that motherhood brings to the body are both natural and normal. I get that. I also know that our culture is youth-obsessed to an unnatural and unhealthy degree, and wanting the thighs I had when I was 17 is both unrealistic and self-defeating. I know that my husband would never ever let me go under the knife for anything less than a really really good reason, such as being tromped on by a dinosaur, sustaining massive trauma to my entire body. So it’s not going to happen.

But there are a lot of women out there who are even more insecure than I am (hard to imagine, but I know it’s true), and they are probably Googling this guy, trying to figure out how much a tummy tuck will set them back. That’s where the rage comes in—how dare this person who has taken a vow to Do No Harm go around making women feel like crap? I don’t need to hear it. My daughter does not need to hear it. None of us need to hear it.

Anyway, for his information, I’ve already had a Mommy Makeover. Only, it’s not the kind of makeover he probably had in mind. Yeah, I kind of shun bikinis nowadays. Whatever. But I guarantee that this guy does not have my super-special parent powers. As Mommy, I can awake instantly, at any and all hours of the night, and know what the noise is that I just heard. (Usually Dan.) I know what that strange rustling is (Ginny getting into her Easter candy, attractively stored in the orange Halloween pumpkin on my kitchen counter.) I can tell the difference between a whiney I-picked-my-nose-too-much-and-now-it’s-bleeding cry and an oh-my-Lord-this-requires-stitches cry, from almost any given distance. I have magic hands. I know when it’s a fever. I can tell if the sippy cup is warm enough to be breeding deadly germs, and when it’s ok to drink. I have telepathic powers. I can find things by reconstructing my children’s byzantine thought processes, such as when Dan put Adam’s car keys in a suitcase.

So anyway, this guy doesn’t have anything to offer me. Nothing that I need. Nothing that I want. Or, at least, nothing that I can’t live without (or with, as the case may be).

Anyhow I have to wrap this up. America’s Next Top Model is on and I don’t want to miss it. Just don’t tell Adam. Or my daughter.

Living Deliberately: The Year of the Blog

So it’s been a year since I started the blog, one purpose of which was to describe my family’s transition to living in a new place and in a simpler fashion. So what have I learned this year? Well…it’s a mixed bag. Here goes:

1) Building a house in the woods means that you only live near people who have also built houses in the woods. You don’t actually interact much with your neighbors except to notice in passing who is making a garden, who is successfully cultivating their grass, who has hired a cleaning service, etc. However, we have discovered that we DO have good neighbors. They respond when you are in need. They help you figure out what to do when the wiring to your well pump is screwed up. They let you and your 18-month old in their houses when you Can’t Stay Home One More Minute and have lost your car keys. The bad neighbors (the ones who fly a confederate flag and have a tarp exclaiming “FAT SLOB” strapped to their chimney) keep entirely to themselves. I kind of wish we got invited to their bonfire party last year, but not really. So far so good.


2) The Simple Life is a relative concept. One reason for our simpler lifestyle was the default setting that most everyone I know resorts to when we have children—no more movies, no more date nights, no more fancy vacations, no more discretionary income. It’s a little like being in college again, before you get a real job. You go to the library instead of the bookstore, buy all used stuff, eat a lot of pasta and beans. You feel slightly left of center, rather more virtuous than the people who can afford to consume more than you. You feel guilty about not recycling enough and try to reuse things like Ziploc bags, until you reach your gross-out threshold. Well, anyway—that’s been my experience.

As part of our experiment in deliberate living (and yeah, I’m square with the fact that this term is both stale and self-aggrandizing—deal with it, it’s the best blog title I could come up with on the spot), we also decided to build a smaller house based on what we thought we needed/wanted, and I decided to work less and spend more time at home with the kids (more on this issue later). However, I’ve learned that I could go much much further with the Simple Life thing. My friend Angie the Coupon Maven is a beacon of frugality which I would do well to emulate. I’ve also learned that when everyone around us is getting laid off, my version of the Simple Life looks like living pretty damn high on the hog, so I probably ought to not talk about it anymore. Ok, check.

3) The best thing about staying at home with the kids is that you’re getting to stay at home with the kids. The worst thing about staying at home with the kids is that you’re stuck at home with the kids. When you’re a full-time worker (or WOH mom, as it’s called on all the discussion boards), you feel guilty that you aren’t with your kids, relishing everything they say and do, giving them the best possible developmental context. When you’re staying at home with them all the time, you feel guilty because you’re not relishing everything they say and do (which involves a lot of fighting, to be honest), and not giving them the best possible developmental context, because all you want to do is eat your friggin bowl of grits so please go watch George, just for a minute, pleeeease???

4) Sometimes, you have to come out of the woods. Seriously. Being alone a lot (ok, without other adults) can really mess with your head. This year, I joined Facebook, which was both good and bad. I got connected to some old friends whom I haven’t spoken with in a long time, and have really enjoyed catching up with them. I’ve also been inspired to keep going with some of my writing projects. But I’ve also spent way too much time on there, investing far too much energy in building an online persona—for people whom I may not see again until the next reunion, if at all. So, I have almost got my Facebook addiction under control, which is very good. But I’m still working on making actual friendships here, friends of the non-virtual variety. My success has been limited by the fact that I’m an introvert, not a joiner of anything (except Facebook, obviously), and don’t have much in common with many of the people I meet. However, I have at least one friend whose place I can crash at almost anytime, kids in tow. So far, so good.

In looking back at the blog entries over the past year, I do think I’ve learned quite a bit. I’ve also found that many of the issues and questions I have about life and how it should be lived are destined to be revisited again and again. I’ve also learned that I’m my own harshest critic. But that’s as it should be, right? I mean, I’m the only one who knows what I’m really thinking, the only one who knows what I really mean, the only one who knows how severely I should be rapped on the knuckles.

But at the same time, I’ve discovered that pretense is unsustainable. I’d like to be a better person but I’m probably going to have to settle for being the person that I am. I don’t know for certain, but I strongly suspect that there are a lot of us like that out there, somewhere, thinking we should be doing something better with our lives, but sensing that we’d better get our heads wrapped around where we are and what we’re doing. Like the motto of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegonians, sumus quod sumus. We are what we are.

So far, so good.

The Prime of Ms. Amy Overbay

When I picked Ginny up from preschool on Friday, I could see that the class had been winding up their “community helpers” unit (formerly known as ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’— I guess there’s now a socialist tinge to the time-honored question). On the wall was a big sheet of poster paper listing what each kid wanted to do as an adult. Some responses were predictable-—most of the boys wanted to be a fireman or police officer. The girls’ responses had more variety. Sierra wanted to be a daddy, Taylor wanted to be an ice cream store, Ginny wanted to be an artist.

Then, on the drive home, Ginny asked an important question: how old is an adult? How old are YOU, mommy? I told her—I’m 34. Her brow furrowed, her best version of mommy’s “icky face.” She shook her head, upset. “But Mommy, I told Ms. Jennifer that you are 40. We had to write it down in our book about what we want to do when we’re grownups like our mommies and daddies.” Gasp! Whaaaaa?! You told your teacher I’m 40, and she wrote it down in an official childhood memento? She BELIEVED I was 40?

Now I’m depressed. I feel that I have passed the physiological version of Peak Oil. I start thinking of all the signs that should have warned me something like this was coming. 1) I have not been carded recently, except by the very very geriatric lady in the checkout line at Harris Teeter, where the policy states that if you look YOUNGER THAN 40 they are SUPPOSED TO CHECK. 2) Even marginally hot guys have not been surreptitiously checking me out (although in truth there are few guys of any description at the places I hang out—Moms N Tots playgroup, the library, the grocery store. I guess that’s a bad sign too.) 3) People used to ask if I was sick when I showed up at places dressed in my ordinary clothes. (Ok, they DO often double as pajamas, but given my social itinerary, that’s ok, right?) They don’t ask if I’m sick anymore.

To make myself even more depressed, I pore over pictures of myself from college, noticing the differences. Then: hair blown-dry, sleek, shiny. Now: Do I own a hairbrush? It's not clear. Then: Makeup, shamekup. Now: No undereye concealer=victim of domestic abuse.

Next, to make myself feel even worse, I think about all the left-handed compliments (the most honest kind, right?) that I’ve ever received about my looks:

-You look a lot better when you wear your glasses. They cover up your face (from a fellow 15-year old.)
-Your hair looks a whole lot better now (from my husband, after any and all haircuts.)
-I think you’re just the kind of girl who is not going to peak in high school (from Jason Albright, age 16, the kindest boy I knew at the time, bless him.)

Tonight, just before I popped in a Morrisey/Cure compilation to really complete my wholehearted wallow in the excesses of self-pity, I’m lying beside my daughter, just before she goes to sleep. Wrongly, I know, I ask her again: “How old did you tell Ms. Jennifer I was?” I can see her little face, eyes closed in the almost-darkness. “I told you, Mommy. I said you were 40.” I persist. “But why did you think I was 40?” Ginny sighs, rolling over onto her back. “Because I know that Colin (neighbor boy) is 13, and you are older than that. Forty is more than that. You showed me on the number line.” Hope springs up—“Wait, Ginny, did you mean 14?” Ginny looks at me, shaking her head. She is now annoyed. Like her mother, she does not like to be wrong. “Yes, I mean 14. But 34 is more than that, so I was wrong about that too.” She closes her eyes. She goes to sleep.

Oh.

I wish I could say that I am laughing at my shallow narcissistic reflections of the previous two days. I wish I could say that you’re as young as you feel, because, except for the chronic sleep-deprivation, I feel pretty good. Because the truth is, one day I will be 40. God willing, one day I will be 50, 60, 70, or more. I hope that one day I will be a big enough person to be happy with the many things I’ve been granted, and stop wishing for the few things that I haven’t.

But until then, I’m going to make sure I head for the very geriatric lady’s line at Harris Teeter. Being carded still makes my day.

And if anybody asks how old I am, here will be my new answer: I'm in my prime. I'm in my prime.

How to be a Domestic Goddess

I know that I passed some important milestone last week when, nonchalantly, as if it were nothing of any consequence whatsoever, I made gravy. I did not call my grandmother, confused and slightly panicked. I did not consult a recipe. I just took the butter, melted it, cooked the flour, put in the pan drippings, and cut it with milk. And, just like that, I feel strongly that I took an important step in my evolution from somebody’s mommy to The Mother. Not my own mother, necessarily. It should be stressed that I come from an entirely gravy-free home. No, I believe that this knowledge was deep-seated, almost instinctual, not a product of my environment. Like Uba, Ayla’s adopted Clan sister, all I needed was to tap the Memories, and out the gravy came, the wealth of the accumulated knowledge of generations.

I recently gave Ginny the Mommy quiz (a list of questions about what Mommy does/doesn’t do well, etc), and she apparently thinks I’m pretty incompetent on most fronts. However, what she doesn’t know is how much more incompetent I used to be. Put another way, if you look at my scale score, I’m still functioning in the lower, sub-average percentiles. But if you calculate my growth score, I’m off the charts.

Barely 4 years ago, I had no idea that I’d be able to stuff a thermometer up somebody’s backside, much less hold it there long enough to be able to read it by nightlight. Who knew I could make 3 separate breakfasts in under 3 minutes, while checking my email from work? Who would have believed that phrases like “walk on mouse feet” and “inside voices” and “no trucks on the table” would issue reflexively from my lips, as nuns chant novenas? I used to teach people how to avoid logical fallacies. Now I have mastered the art of the circular argument: “why?” Because I said so. “But why?” Because I know you would ask me why so I said so before you asked because that’s how it is.

Did I learn these things from bitter experience? No, I maintain. Getting catapulted into the sturm und drang of parenthood simply launched the developmental/maturational sequence that was encoded in my DNA. So I’m not Freya or Vesta or Isis yet. But one day—perhaps sooner than expected—I will become a full-fledged Domestic Goddess (Nigella Lawson-style, or at least that’s what Adam is hoping.)

My Brain on Books, Part 2

Ok, to continue, here are some other books that I’ve been reading lately:

4) Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America (Kozol). I read Kozol’s Savage Inequalities over 15 years ago, and am still haunted by what his book had to say about the state of education in our country. This 2005 publication should receive equal notice, in my opinion. Kozol’s dark description of the way that districts in the US are busily disregarding the Brown decision makes me cringe. As a methodologist, I must admit that Kozol’s work is less about a thorough investigation of the situation than a sensationalistic appeal to the reader’s values—the statistics provided at the end feel to me as if there’s some cherry-picking going on. But it’s not hard to sensationalize an issue this important. And living so close to Charlotte (which has returned to “neighborhood schools,” becoming more segregated than ever), I feel especially implicated in what Kozol has to say. Rating: Diet Mountain Dew (a certain amount of artifice, but I feel motivated to act anyway.)


5) This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader (Gussow). This book came out at about the same time as Fast Food Nation and provides a nice complement to it—if you’ve read FFN and feel horrified about the US food industry (you will), Gussow provides the average American with an interesting scenario about what can be done at the individual level about the situation. Gussow talks about her own experience growing enough food (produce, that is) for her family on a normal-sized suburban lot in New York State. She also talks about the true cost of food and the importance of buying locally, shooting down most counterarguments, without being at all preachy. She also offers lots of recipes for home-grown produce (yum). I will say that the passages that describe how she sprinkles her dead husband’s ashes on her garden as a substitute for bone meal creeped me out a very great deal. However, this is an excellent intro to the question of sustainable agriculture—don’t be put off by the cover, which shows an elderly woman waving a beet. Rating: Ripe Tomato.

6) The Bondswoman’s Narrative (Hannah Crafts, ed by Gates). If you haven’t heard about this book, you should have. Scholar Henry Louis Gates found the manuscript for this novel (written around 1850) at an estate auction, and apparently it is the oldest known novel written by an African-American woman—possibly the only known novel written by a slave. Gates describes his search for the author (mostly fruitless), which was fascinating to me, as part of my own novel deals with this kind of research. Crafts actual narrative is astonishingly good, given the circumstances under which it must have been written. The book’s content isn’t all that original (lots and lots of Gothic conventions—very comparable to an Alcott novel), but it stands up to many of the works that we study as literature—for example, she uses the same plot device as Twain in Puddenhead Wilson—biracial twins switched at birth, but a good 30 years before he does. As a sociological phenomenon, the book provides fascinating insights into racial consciousness, from an essentially untapped perspective. I bet Gates’ colleagues are pea green with envy. I know I am, on their behalf! Rating: Devil’s Food Cake.

7) Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion (Ayala). This book, which was written by a Spanish-educated former priest turned astrophysicist, provides an interesting point of view on the compatibility of evolutionary science and traditional religion. For people like me who are largely over this issue, it’s nice to read somebody who basically confirms everything I think. For people who currently wrestling with these questions, I think it would be a heartening read. It’s also a nice counterpoint to the book I wrote about last time, Before the Dawn, which dwells a good bit on evolutionary psychology (which I find largely unconvincing.) Rating: Whole wheat pita wrap (it makes me think of unleavened bread, which always reminds of communion, somehow).

I’ve also been reading a number of other things that are noteworthy, including
-Pilgrim (Timothy Findley) Rating: Ratatouille—interesting but not wholly satisfying.
-People’s History of the U.S. (Zinn) Rating: Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings. (I feel like I might burst, but I’m glad I did it anyway…)

So I’ve been having a grant old time, gorging myself on all the new books lying around my house. And—better yet—there’s a used booksale tomorrow at a local church—just in time!

You are what you you eat, or, this is my brain on books

I recently became alarmed when Ginny started becoming obsessed with Wordgirl, her favorite program on TV. I knew she would drop everything when the program came on, and I’ve seen her doing the Captain Huggyface dance, but my first serious indication that she was truly crazy about this show was when Wordgirl became a part of her prayer life.

Mommy: Ginny, do you have anything you’re thankful for tonight, anything you’re worried about?
Ginny: I wish Jesus would make me fly like Wordgirl. And that Wordgirl was real. And I want Jesus to stop Professor Two Brains.

And then there is the documentary evidence (coming soon). You will note that in Picture A, not only has Ginny drawn a picture of Wordgirl, she has also faithfully rendered the \television stand, the TV itself, as well as the pile of junk on top of it. This has led to some serious reconsideration about what I’ve been feeding my child’s developing brain. (Oh, don’t worry—I’m not going to make her give up Wordgirl. That’s crazy talk.)

I’ve also been thinking about what I’ve been feeding my own brain, of late. I’ve always been a voracious reader, partly because I started early and loved it, but also because my parents, though they had little extra money, also loved books and there were always plenty lying around for me to check out. I would take a volume of Will Durant to bed with me when I was a kid, read volume C of the encyclopedia on the toilet (not all at once, of course), and pore over my Little House books in the bathtub. When I was in grad school, my reading reached a frenzied pace. Then, for almost a year after I finished my degree, I read practically nothing serious—nothing philosophical, nothing too challenging. I had to keep reading the professional literature related to my field, but I kept to abstracts if possible, unless absolutely forced to look at the whole thing because I was trying to include it in a lit review for a paper of my own.

I wish I could say that I jumped wholeheartedly back into the fray after that time, but I really can’t. I still read every chance I get, but most of it has been fiction, and much of that has been fairly fluffy stuff, especially historical fiction. (See last year’s summer reading list: (http://livingdeliberately-amyo.blogspot.com/2008/07/ok-were-back-from-beach-once-again.html) But then a friend asked me recently “what are you reading?” Since he’s one of the best-read people I know, the question gave me pause. What have I been reading? What have I been filling my mind with? What have I been consuming?

So I was inspired to order some new books, finish some old ones, AND have devised a way to rate the books’ value as food for the brain. Here’s my view (and this is strictly my personal view, my personal aesthetic): it’s easy for a book to have something profound/”nourishing” to say. However, life is short, and for me to persist in reading a book, it has to be something fairly palatable—something about it has to be pleasing. The very best books, for me, are a meal unto themselves—for example, my beloved O’Brian novels would each garner a Chicken Pot Pie rating. Shogun, another favorite, would at least rate a Stouffer’s Turkey Tetrazzini. However, World as Will and Representation would receive a Metamucil rating, being perhaps a necessary evil for some academic reading lists, but not something that goes down easy. And, hopefully, it's something you won’t have to revisit very often. So here goes...

1) Before the Dawn (Nicholas Wade). This book explores what recent findings about the human genome have to tell us about humankind’s prehistoric origins and cultural achievements. There are a number of fascinating insights about everything from what the evolution of the body louse can tell us about human migration patterns to how and when people began to use spoken language. I have to say that I felt vaguely uneasy reading this, not because of any of the book’s conclusions, but because the human genome was only fully mapped in 2003—all this information is stuff I couldn’t possibly have learned in a science class, which makes me feel kind of sad and anachronistic. (I felt the same way when my daughter’s Solar System placemat informed me that Pluto was no longer a planet.) Anyway, one of the juicier things about this book is that it shed light on a number of arguments and personal conflicts among scholars in the field of anthropology—it achieves what few quasi-academic texts can: it is gossipy. Rating: broccoli casserole.


2) The Irony of American History (Reinhold Neibur). This 1952 book almost makes the reading of #3 unnecessary. It was very eerie, in fact, to see Neibur making almost exactly the same claims and raising the same issues about America’s usurpation of power in the 20th century as Chomsky, more than 50 years later. (I’m not surprised—it just kind of gave me the willies.) Writing as he was at the height of McCarthyism, one of the things that I was most interested in was the way Neibur critiques the “city on a hill” concept, that is, the divine mandate that so many Americans seems to feel applies to the U.S., justifying so much of what we do in the name of the “Lord’s work.” He does make a giant pile of generalizations about the people of the “Orient” and how capable they are of democracy. On the whole, however, it stands the test of time, I think. There are many gems in this short work, but here’s one that I like: “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.” The point is—America’s history is ironic, rather than tragic. There’s always hope for a happy ending. Rating: spinach salad.

3) Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (Chomsky). I read Chomsky’s 9/11 in 2002 when I was working on my dissertation (it was on the syllabus for students in my study). My own reaction to this brief work was pretty subdued—a sort of…yeah, of course—so? The students in my study, however, really struggled with its critique of American foreign policy, not surprisingly. Fast forward to now…I now am the one sticking my fingers in my ears, saying “lalalalalalalaaaaa.” (With chapter titles such as “A Cauldron of Animosities,” you can see what I mean.) It’s not because I disagree with anything that he’s saying about how we’ve screwed up, where, and why. It’s that I can
barely stand to think about this stuff anymore. Partly this has to do with the election and everything that was said about the last eight years. Look, can Obama just sign an executive order making everybody in Congress read this book? There are at least three hopeful pages at the end, so hopefully everyone will make it through. The only funny sentence, in fact, is at the end of the book, on page 235, when he says “It would be a very great error to conclude that the prospects [for democratic success] are uniformly bleak.” Oh, OK! There’s only 234 pages worth of bleakness here. This is the kind of book that should be dutifully consumed, but you aren’t going to go back to the well very much. Rating: Christmas fruitcake.

There's more to come (just not right now! I'm tired!)

Lost and Found

Since I’m on a roll with the blog-as-confessional theme, I’ll tell you another story, one that was brought to mind by a conversation I had recently with an old friend:

Picture a 1930s era brick school building, kids milling about on the blacktop outside, waiting for their rides to appear. Paint (probably lead paint) is flaking from the windowpanes, and there is a large Africa-shaped slab of concrete missing from the foundation on the south side of the building. It’s an early fall afternoon and the summer heat hasn’t broken yet. The school building doesn’t have AC, so everyone is wearing shorts; those who didn’t in deference to fashion are regretting the choice. The blacktop is lined off for 4-square games, and there are a few takers, but mostly people disdain this activity because a) it’s hot as hell and b) the schoolyard has a significant slope, which means that the losers have to chase down stray balls at top speed, and this sucks.

The cool kids—those who haven’t left already—are standing with their backs to the wall of the school, or in the shade of the trees at one end of the blacktop. Everyone else is trying to either get the attention of the cool kids or simply look inconspicuous. There are no adults in sight. Kids get in cars or walk home, without anybody taking much note. On another day, I will get into the car of an older boy I have a crush on (one of the more thrilling events of the year, for me). The day after, a teacher will ask me about this, apparently out of curiosity, for I am not reprimanded and nobody notifies my parents. The police state found in contemporary schools does not yet exist. We are left to our own devices, expected to police ourselves.

On this day, I am 13 years old. I am waiting for the bus to take me to my grandmother’s house, where I will consume chocolate pudding and cable TV, two things not available at home. My mom does not believe in junk food and my dad does not believe in cable TV. We have 3 channels, one being PBS. My friends watch MTV on Friday evenings. I watch Lawrence Welk. This does not bode well for my social life, as anybody (but my parents) could tell.

Suddenly, I hear laughter and shouting, and see a group of kids huddling up in a circle, packed tight around some spectacle. Usually this means a fight. Obeying some deep-seated pack instinct, everyone on the blacktop makes a beeline for the huddle. I am standing on the outside of the circle, but I can see what is happening. I can see who is inside (a kid I’ll call Alex), but it’s not a fight. Alex is in the grade below mine, but he is older than me, having failed several grades. He has some sort of speech impediment, and is fat. He is what we would nowadays call “special needs,” but that is not a term we know. We call him retarded, not necessarily because he is stupid, but because he is crazy, and this word is an excellent catch-all for his freakish qualities. Alex is often goaded into fights because everyone loves to see what he will do. He does not throw punches like other boys—he sort of slaps at his opponent, working himself into a maniacal rage, lurching and leaping and foaming at the mouth until he gets completely tired out, or his opponent walks away, laughing.

On this day, however, Alex is not fighting anyone. Instead, he is dancing. The kids around the circle are clapping and chanting “go Alex, go Alex” and he is obligingly doing something that is a cross between the running man and churning the butter. The other kids toss pennies at him to encourage him to keep it up. I am looking, laughing too. Then I catch Alex’s eye and am ashamed to my very core. Alex knows me, a little. Once, after he failed at least one grade, but before he failed the next, he was in my class, and I gave him part of a fruit roll-up I brought one day for snack. He was nauseatingly grateful and wanted to sit next to me for a long time, which was intolerable. But I had never been actively mean to him. Now I can see that he does not want to be dancing, just as he did not really ever want to fight. I want to say something to the other kids to make them stop. I don’t. I know that the pack can turn, instantly, on another victim. I will experience this myself later that winter, when a classmate will yank my skirt down as I walk into the gym, in front of the entire student body. I have my own problems, but I know already, as Alex does not, that the only way to survive is to keep your head down. This is what I do now. A bus comes and I get on it. I am grateful, later, that I didn’t have any pennies in my pockets, because I might have thrown them.

I was saved the summer of my 9th year, at church camp in Swannanoa. Of the kids from my church, I was the last person to go down to the altar. Even then I was reticent about public displays of any sort, and mostly went down because I didn’t want to make the preacher feel bad. What I remember most about the whole experience is that while praying fervently that God would find the lost sheep, that Heaven would come down and Glory fill my Soul, I ended up breaking my friend Newana’s headband, a blue plastic affair that I had borrowed for the evening. So there I was kneeling with two halves of the headband in my hands, trying to figure out what to do with them. Leave them there? Put them in my pockets? I had just Washed my Robes in the Cleansing Fountain, but I was already feeling that Sin hath left a Crimson Stain on me, all over again.

What I didn’t know then, is that we need saving from ourselves not just once, but over and over again. We need that amazing grace, not just once, but many times. I was lost, but now I’m found. Then I got lost again, and got found again. And again. And again. It’s the process of losing our faith in everything, perhaps, that makes finding it again more powerful, more beautiful, more redemptive.

I was in Wal-Mart the other day, picking up a few odds and ends, and was just about to walk out the door, when suddenly somebody tapped me on the shoulder. It was Alex. “Hey,” he said, handing me a bottle of Children’s Motrin that I’d accidentally left in my cart, “they forgot to scan this one.” I took it from him, and the cashier rang it up. As I paid, Alex smiled at me. He actually looked pretty ok, aside from the fact that two of his front teeth were missing. I could tell he didn’t remember me. “I just wanted to save you from that alarm. I hate that damn thing.” And then he walked out the door. There’s no ending to the story, really. But it looked like maybe he was found, too. I hope so, I really do. For his sake, and for mine.

Hey, Jealousy...

I think that blogs are so popular because they provide us with something that is sorely lacking in our society nowadays: the opportunity to confess. Blogs are perfect for this. They have the confessional quality of a journal or diary, but are only obliquely public, giving the refreshing sense that somebody is listening to you, but not judging you too much. Plus, you can always cancel any comments that you don’t like, an option not available, unfortunately for most, in the non-virtual version.

In this spirit, I have to talk about something that has been on my mind. It’s my own personal Achilles’ heel, the deadliest (for me) of the seven deadlies: the sin of envy. And where did the serpent strike me most recently? You guessed it—in Sunday School, the scene of most of my other recent bad behavior. Here’s what happened: one of the women in my class (my neighbor, incidentally) told everyone that she had started work on a novel. She was making excellent progress, she told everyone, already she’s on Chapter 4—AND, to top it off, HER DAD IS A PUBLISHER.

You know the scene in Throw Momma From the Train when Danny Devito’s character (the horrible horrible beyond horrible writer) is telling Billy Crystal (the creative writing teacher and aspiring novelist) about the novel he was writing, based on their time together? And Crystal starts throttling Devito out of pure rage? Well, I didn’t actually throttle anyone, but I was nanoseconds away from it. I should note that I have no idea if my neighbor is a good writer—she probably is. The point is, as I’ve mentioned in the blog before, I’ve been working on a novel for two years, and lately it hasn’t been going well. The prospect of someone, anyone, I know being successful at novel-writing suddenly made me go berserk, or want to.

Naturally, I’ve been in a repentant (sort of) state ever since. I mean, who do I think I am? Oh yeah, the hyper-competitive lunatic. And if I wanted to start a massively overcomplicated epistolary novel spanning two centuries, a novel that involves murder/suicide, a psychic, and miscegenation, a novel that is probably beyond my own ability to finish--it’s my own damn fault. Who am I to object if my neighbor wants to write an allegorical fantasy novel about a unicorn? A novel that will probably get published. GAAAHHHH!!!!! Ok, I need to get hold of myself.

The fact is, I’ve always had a problem with jealousy. I’m sure that my therapist (if I had one—boy I really do need one) would tell me that it stems from a deep-seated lack of proper self-esteem. Maybe that’s true—it’s an awfully convenient explanation. I remember being very young, maybe six, and delving into a little pack of paper medals in my mom’s desk drawer, the kind of thing that people receive when they win something at field day. I remember writing my own name on all of the medals: the blue medals I’d award myself for something that I was actually good at, like reading or singing. The red medals were for things that I was pretty good at, like monkey bars and the long jump. The white medals were for things that I wished I was good at, like math and swimming. When my mom found out what I’d done she was both confused and appalled. I think she thought that I was suffering from an overweening pride when, in fact, the opposite was the case. I’d like to be able to blame my parents (who wouldn’t?), but I long ago decided that they did the best they could with what they had to work with. The fault, as we have heard from another source, lies not in our stars (or parents), but in ourselves.

Over the years, I’ve done and said a great many stupid things because I wanted to be the best. Now that I’m older, I don’t do them (or say them aloud), but I still think them, and often let them get the best of me. A belated resolution for 2009 (the year is still young, right?) is going to have to involve besting this trait, once and for all. Or, if we can look to Daniel’s example, I need to redirect the behavior, turn the impulse to envy into something else, something productive. Sigh. I guess this means I need to get to work on the novel project again. The novel without end, amen, amen.



PS--here's my most favorite scene from the movie...love it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbmRmtW5q00&NR=1

The world is too much with us, or can Hannah Montana be saved?

In 1807, Wordsworth lamented

"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not..."


Now, for all the yapping I hear about terrorist threats and economic collapse, the U.S. in 2009 isn't really in the same kinds of dire straits that England in 1807 was facing. I mean, Bin Laden and Hamas are problems for us, but not on the same level that, say, Napoleon was for the English. Compared to the very real threat of being pressed into the Navy just for stepping outside your door, things like higher gas prices don't seem like such a big deal. On the other hand, I think that a growing number of people would agree that Wordsworth's critique of materialism is pretty much spot-on, especially in view of the recent financial crisis.

Case in point: I went to the mall to do a little shopping last weekend. I rarely go to the mall anymore as it's too much of a pain(see Overbay, Daniel). When I do, I feel a) way old, b) tacky and c) therefore poor. (Although I should also say that with the exception of point A, I have probably always felt this way in malls--which is probably part of their underlying marketing strategy, come to think of it.) Anyway, having those kinds of feelings enables me to basically view the shopping experience as a kind of anthropological experiment in which everything that is familiar is made strange. Besides, after living on our squirrely compound in the woods, I find it hard to integrate into suburban settings like the mall, and the inner cynical teenager that is always lurking inside me keeps making snarky comments about people who frequent Brooks Brothers or Sharper Image.

However, the most unnerving part of the mall experience is, for me, found in stores like Gymboree, Baby Gap, and Limited Too, where I am seriously tempted to buy things--not for myself--but for my kids. After being lured in by some super cute leggings, I am apalled by everything else inside. Why wouldn't a 3 year old need a string bikini and matching purse? Why wouldn't a 5 year old need knee length pleather platform boots? Why wouldn't said 5 year old need a pair of shorts with "TART" embossed on the rear? Why wouldn't an 11 year old need a padded training bra? (Ok, as someone who was definitely chest-challenged, I guess I can relate to that last one.) The world is too much with us, indeed.

Which brings me to Hannah Montana. (Ok, bear with me here--I'm getting to the point.) After I got home from the mall, who was lying on the kitchen table, but Ginny's new Hannah Montana doll, bought for her by her grandma in an excess of child-pleasing zeal. Ginny doesn't actually know anything about Hannah Montana, except that, apparently, she's fabulously cool according to the other kids at preschool. So here's Hannah Montana, clad in her micro mini skirt, legs aspraddle, on my kitchen table. And I was hearing my mother-in-law's voice in my ear: "Ginny doesn't KNOW that the clothes are supposed to be suggestive, so it's ok!" Suddenly I was consumed by righteous indignation, and decided that it was time for Hannah Montana to get saved. Yes, she now looks like she's joined FLDS, but I feel like it's an improvement. Unfortunately, the clothes that fit her best belonged to Cinderella, so it's not the complete slap in the face of the worldwide Disney marketing conglomerate that I would have liked, but it's an improvement nonetheless.

So Hannah Montana got saved. They say that Americans in general are saving more, spending less these days, that we've cut down on gasoline consumption and energy spending, and are taking on less debt. So I'm hoping for great things for the rest of us, and for myself in particular. If I can stay away from the mall, that is.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot?

Patrick O'Brian, author of the Master and Commander series, is one of my very favorite writers, and I often ruminate on little passages from his works. One of the little interludes that's been on my mind today has to do with a moment in the first novel in the series, when Jack (the captain) and Stephen (his best friend) are talking about identity:

'Identity?' said Jack, comfortably pouring out more coffee. 'Is not identity something you are born with?'

'The identity I am thinking of is something that hovers between a man and the rest of the world: a mid-point between his view of himself and theirs of him - for each, of course, affects the other continually. A reciprocal fluxion, sir. There is nothing absolute about this identity of mine. Were you, you personally, to spend some days in Spain at present you would find yours change, you know, because of the general opinion there that you are a false harsh brutal murdering villain, an odious man.'

'I dare say they are vexed,' said Jack, smiling. 'And I dare say they call me Beelzebub. But that don't make me Beelzebub.'

'Does it not? Does it not? Ah?' (O'Brian, 278).


I recently joined Facebook, apparently the last person in my generation to make this effort. It's been nice to hear from old friends, many of whom I haven't seen or spoken to since we graduated high school. But at the same time, the foray into Facebook has taken me back to a different point in my life, and I'm not 100% happy about it--not by a long chalk, as Jack would say.

I feel that I'm a very different person than I was when I graduated high school. Shouldn't I be? I mean, I've lived almost half my life since graduating. The post-high school Amy is the one who got married, crafted an academic career (of sorts), had children, built a house, joined a completely different denomination, etc. But therein lies the rub.

If who we are is, as Stephen suggests, partly dependent on how other people see us, the people who knew me back then (and don't really know me now) are only ever going to remember me the way I was. And that person isn't/wasn't so great. She was hyper-competitive, pretty immature, suffering from a massive inferiority complex. (Who else goes to grad school for English, except people with these kinds of problems, I ask you?) I'm not altogether different now, but I'm different enough to not want to go back there. Worse, looking at the profiles of people I knew back then (people I liked and respected, mind you) is bringing up a lot of negative feelings--I feel that I haven't achieved enough, don't have a good enough job, haven't maxed out whatever potential I might have had. Virtual contact (VIRTUAL contact, for pete's sake!) with old acquaintance is turning me back into precisely the same kind of competitive lunatic I have tried for years to stop being.

So maybe auld acquaintance SHOULD be forgot and never brought to mind. Perhaps the best thing I can do for myself in the new year is to cancel the Facebook account and live in the now, as opposed to the days of auld lange syne. As the song says,


We twa hae paidl’d i' the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine ;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin auld lang syne...

The water is wide indeed. Perhaps it is so wide that I shouldn't care whether people thinking I'm Beelzebub makes me Beelzebub. But I'm not sure I can stop caring, whether I should or not...