Having just recorded my wish to avoid hemlock-laced coffee, I am now spurred on to share a realization that I had the other day about my overwhelming addiction to that most honorable beverage.
I say my overwhelming addiction to coffee rather than caffiene because I now believe myself to be over the latter. We spent last week in Springfield visiting family, and I chose that time when good coffee is hard, if not impossible, to find in the homes in which we were staying to get off of caffiene and handle the headaches while grandparents were around.
After all, my doctor had mentioned that caffiene was not a good choice for a migraine sufferer, as it is a well-known headache trigger. I wasn't entirely disturbed by this news, since I like coffee much more than I like caffiene, and I palate decaf relatively well. But I will admit being a bit confused by my sensitivity to caffiene. I really never drank more than two cups a day. Really. I mean, when I was pregnant I was always told that that was an entirely acceptable amount to drink (although I was always too chicken), and have been told by many other medical professionals that that particular amount of coffee was fine. Just two cups. So why all of the headaches? The jitters that came on even when I had eaten? Did coffee *gulp* hate me?
I was pondering this as I was dumping the (decaf) grounds out of my french press yesterday. In doing this I also thought about my habit of pushing the plunger only halfway down when I get the first cup, so that the second cup can continue to get really good and gritty and dark. And how I leave it in the press for a LOOOOONNNNNGGGGG time so that it's really, really dark. And how I like dark coffee so much that if it weren't entirely texturally gross, I'd probably eat coffee beans.
And then I realized that the way that I'm making coffee, I'm drinking what is probably the equivalent of 7-8 espresso shots at a time.
Yeah, that'll do it.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
You Can Call Me Socrates
I've decided that the problem with teaching is the grading.
I mean, showing up somewhere and talking for awhile is something that I do rather naturally all the time. Yes, the problem is the grading. And I suppose that it wouldn' t be such a big deal if I only had the students who write the extremely readable and factually correct papers all the time, but uh, none of us have more than a couple of those in any given class.
If we are lucky.
So in my fantasy career world, I am much more like a Socrates, with followers who come to sit at my feet, to hear what I have to say, and then we all engage in a rousing discussion. And what wisdom we come up with! How we resolve the world's problems! And there would be coffee, lots of coffee, and some sort of other yummy snack always around.
Oh, but not the "Socrates, you corrupted the minds of the youth of Greece, so we will kill you" part. Yeah, not so hot on hemlock in my coffee.
And this is why I keep grading.
I mean, showing up somewhere and talking for awhile is something that I do rather naturally all the time. Yes, the problem is the grading. And I suppose that it wouldn' t be such a big deal if I only had the students who write the extremely readable and factually correct papers all the time, but uh, none of us have more than a couple of those in any given class.
If we are lucky.
So in my fantasy career world, I am much more like a Socrates, with followers who come to sit at my feet, to hear what I have to say, and then we all engage in a rousing discussion. And what wisdom we come up with! How we resolve the world's problems! And there would be coffee, lots of coffee, and some sort of other yummy snack always around.
Oh, but not the "Socrates, you corrupted the minds of the youth of Greece, so we will kill you" part. Yeah, not so hot on hemlock in my coffee.
And this is why I keep grading.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
A Clean Bill
I'm sure you will join me in celebrating my clean bill of health, the call from the doctor's office that indicated that my brain was normal.
Or to paraphrase my mother, "Your brain is not normal. It's just not growing anything."
Thank you, mother.
Or to paraphrase my mother, "Your brain is not normal. It's just not growing anything."
Thank you, mother.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
I'm Done! With Galaga
So I'm back home, having just been MRI-ed and otherwise traumatized. But interestingly, the MRI wasn't the majority of the trauma.
Yesterday's post, as you might remember, briefly discussed my anxiety over the MRI and its possible (but not probable) bad results. Shortly after writing that, in the 13.5 minutes when all three children were sleeping at the same time, I had a rather frightening "attack" of....something? The numbness in my face spread up higher than it ever had (up to my nose), and my fingers grew numb. This was followed by a rather robust headache within half an hour, which although uncomfortable, was, honestly, reassuring, as this is much more "migraine-like" than "scary stuff" like. I called the doctor, who seemed relatively settled that I wasn't having a stroke. After all, both sides of my mouth went up when I smiled! Yet despite the power of my symmetrical smile, I felt out of commission for most of the day.
So while I managed to get some knitting done and the dishwasher loaded (ACCOMPLISHMENT!), I spent most of yesterday being a slug. That night around dinner time, Cole started complaining about an earache. That is *never* good, and *always* means that an ear infection is brewing. Neither of my black market pediatricians -- ie, my ped. friends from whom I can mooch information and services -- have/can find their otoscopes, so one of these kind souls called in a prescription for a lidocaine solution meant specifically for the ears so that if this was what I thought it was, we wouldn't be up all night.
Well, we were up all night anyway.
Poor Cole was absolutely miserable. Just beside himself, really. He cried and thrashed and tossed and turned, pawing miserably at that left ear that just won't stop giving him trouble. By this morning he complained of trouble breathing. Where I had been content to see if the ear infection would resolve itself without a trip to the doctor, I was not so content with pneumonia (which he had 4 weeks ago), and we coasted into the doctor's office at 9:45, the earliest they could get us in.
Keep in mind that a babysitter was originally supposed to come at 10, and I was supposed to be at the hospital for the MRI at 11: 15.
The doctor's office moved surprisingly quickly, and after finding that Cole had double ear infections, and Micah had one too ( a very bad one, it turns out!), we left with prescriptions for three ears and two boys. We cut across the street to Target for what should have been a quick in and out prescription filling event, and I even told the pharmacist that we were in a terrible hurry and that if the meds couldn't be filled promptly we would go somewhere else -- that was fine, we just needed to know up front. I was assured that we would be in and out the door in 15 minutes.
So 25 minutes later we finally get the drugs, and I'm approaching a frantic state because the babysitter, who was waiting at our house, was 15 minutes away, and it was 11:00. And I had to be at the hospital at 11:15. In other words, best case scenario I would be 15 minutes late. So I called the babysitter, who met us at the hospital, and who took the kids to a nearby shopping center to feed and otherwise amuse them (I *love* good babysitters....*love* *love* *love*). And with that, having relinquished car keys, children, and vehicle, I went inside to get zapped.
The problem was that the receptionist checking outpatient people in was sloooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwww as molasses, so slow that she was still working on the same woman 25 minutes after I walked in. I attempted to remain calm and un-grumbly about this until the MRI people started calling down to her to ask if I was there. After all, I was supposed to be with them. Not to hold a grudge or anything, but I could have made it home from Target, fed the children, cleaned the house, planted some annual seeds, stood around to watch them sprout, and then made it back in plenty of time before she finally got to me. By then it was almost noon. And by then I remembered that in my rush to get Cole to the doctor, I had forgotten to eat. This might explain why I felt a headache coming on. Or maybe it was that I hadn't slept?
So after I was "processed"at the speed of a turtle, and had a hospital band placed around my arm (I really hate those. They induce such a patient mentality by their very presence), I went back to radiology. Where they reminded me that I would be having an injection of a chemical dye to make the contrast on the MRI better. Which is not compatible with nursing.
Are you kidding me? Could this have been mentioned BEFORE HAND?
So after I clarify with the radiologist how long this stuff stays in my system, and come up with a plan to hold off Micah for 24 hours, and look suitably grumpy over that lack of shared information, and then apologize for said grumpiness, explaining that my son was up all night with an earache, and then stood and wondered to myself whether I should have apologized, I entered the MRI room itself.
I'm telling you. It's exhausting to be me.
Happily, this MRI machine was much shorter than the one that I was in 10 years ago -- that one encompassed my entire body in a tube that made me pray and bargain with deities. But this didn't look nearly as bad. Next I was asked whether I wanted music, or earplugs? The MRI machine is, after all, extremely loud.
Here I was caught in a horrible catch-22, for the earplugs could easily give the feeling of being squeezed, confined; at the very least they could exacerbate the pressure that was in my head from the headache I had brewing. And believe me, when you're already facing being stuck in a tube, you don'twant multiple layers of other sorts of squeezing going on. On the other hand, music? What if it was too loud? Or just *awful*? She explained that the music choices weren't great, but here's the list that I remember:
Big Band
Frank Sinatra
Counting Crows
Tim McGraw
Enya
Johnny Cash
Quite an eclectic bunch, don't you think? I voted Enya.
What I did not know at that moment was that the Enya recording they were using was one that a friend had copied from another friend's mom from two separate cassette tapes that were partially unwound in 1985 but that someone had managed to put back together with a pencil and some ingenuity in 1986. So my muffly-Enya-d self was pushed into the tube. And by golly, it seems that either I was deaf during my previous MRI, or all of the claustrophobic anxiety caused me to completely forget the sound.
THE. SOUND.
You know, i'm sort of glad for the sound, because it was such a bizarre experience that I spent most of my time in the tube thinking about how I might describe it to you. Really. Words that come to mind include "air horn/air raid", "jackhammer" "construction in your house while you're trying to sleep", and my favorite "every sound from Galaga, happening right inside your head."
Here's what it was like:
~~~~~~~enya~~~~~~~ (muffled) sail away, sail away, sail away ~~~~~~~enya (static)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
JACK HAMMER! WAKE UP! THERE'S A BOMB COMING! AND WE'RE TEARING DOWN THE WALL! JACK HAMMER! DUCK! YOU'RE BEING SHOT AT WITH COMPUTER GRAPHICS! ~~~~~~~~~~(static) enya~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After this interesting auditory experience, I entered the Galaga free world, to find, waiting in the parking lot, the lovely babysitter Lindsey with my three children. The two whose ears hurt looked like they'd been shot, but their spirits were decent. The third, who was scheming how she might get me to purchase a personalized diary for her that she'd seen while out with Lindsey, peppered me with questions about how much money she had saved, and how she thought such a purchase just *might* be feasible!
And with that, life went on.
Yesterday's post, as you might remember, briefly discussed my anxiety over the MRI and its possible (but not probable) bad results. Shortly after writing that, in the 13.5 minutes when all three children were sleeping at the same time, I had a rather frightening "attack" of....something? The numbness in my face spread up higher than it ever had (up to my nose), and my fingers grew numb. This was followed by a rather robust headache within half an hour, which although uncomfortable, was, honestly, reassuring, as this is much more "migraine-like" than "scary stuff" like. I called the doctor, who seemed relatively settled that I wasn't having a stroke. After all, both sides of my mouth went up when I smiled! Yet despite the power of my symmetrical smile, I felt out of commission for most of the day.
So while I managed to get some knitting done and the dishwasher loaded (ACCOMPLISHMENT!), I spent most of yesterday being a slug. That night around dinner time, Cole started complaining about an earache. That is *never* good, and *always* means that an ear infection is brewing. Neither of my black market pediatricians -- ie, my ped. friends from whom I can mooch information and services -- have/can find their otoscopes, so one of these kind souls called in a prescription for a lidocaine solution meant specifically for the ears so that if this was what I thought it was, we wouldn't be up all night.
Well, we were up all night anyway.
Poor Cole was absolutely miserable. Just beside himself, really. He cried and thrashed and tossed and turned, pawing miserably at that left ear that just won't stop giving him trouble. By this morning he complained of trouble breathing. Where I had been content to see if the ear infection would resolve itself without a trip to the doctor, I was not so content with pneumonia (which he had 4 weeks ago), and we coasted into the doctor's office at 9:45, the earliest they could get us in.
Keep in mind that a babysitter was originally supposed to come at 10, and I was supposed to be at the hospital for the MRI at 11: 15.
The doctor's office moved surprisingly quickly, and after finding that Cole had double ear infections, and Micah had one too ( a very bad one, it turns out!), we left with prescriptions for three ears and two boys. We cut across the street to Target for what should have been a quick in and out prescription filling event, and I even told the pharmacist that we were in a terrible hurry and that if the meds couldn't be filled promptly we would go somewhere else -- that was fine, we just needed to know up front. I was assured that we would be in and out the door in 15 minutes.
So 25 minutes later we finally get the drugs, and I'm approaching a frantic state because the babysitter, who was waiting at our house, was 15 minutes away, and it was 11:00. And I had to be at the hospital at 11:15. In other words, best case scenario I would be 15 minutes late. So I called the babysitter, who met us at the hospital, and who took the kids to a nearby shopping center to feed and otherwise amuse them (I *love* good babysitters....*love* *love* *love*). And with that, having relinquished car keys, children, and vehicle, I went inside to get zapped.
The problem was that the receptionist checking outpatient people in was sloooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwww as molasses, so slow that she was still working on the same woman 25 minutes after I walked in. I attempted to remain calm and un-grumbly about this until the MRI people started calling down to her to ask if I was there. After all, I was supposed to be with them. Not to hold a grudge or anything, but I could have made it home from Target, fed the children, cleaned the house, planted some annual seeds, stood around to watch them sprout, and then made it back in plenty of time before she finally got to me. By then it was almost noon. And by then I remembered that in my rush to get Cole to the doctor, I had forgotten to eat. This might explain why I felt a headache coming on. Or maybe it was that I hadn't slept?
So after I was "processed"at the speed of a turtle, and had a hospital band placed around my arm (I really hate those. They induce such a patient mentality by their very presence), I went back to radiology. Where they reminded me that I would be having an injection of a chemical dye to make the contrast on the MRI better. Which is not compatible with nursing.
Are you kidding me? Could this have been mentioned BEFORE HAND?
So after I clarify with the radiologist how long this stuff stays in my system, and come up with a plan to hold off Micah for 24 hours, and look suitably grumpy over that lack of shared information, and then apologize for said grumpiness, explaining that my son was up all night with an earache, and then stood and wondered to myself whether I should have apologized, I entered the MRI room itself.
I'm telling you. It's exhausting to be me.
Happily, this MRI machine was much shorter than the one that I was in 10 years ago -- that one encompassed my entire body in a tube that made me pray and bargain with deities. But this didn't look nearly as bad. Next I was asked whether I wanted music, or earplugs? The MRI machine is, after all, extremely loud.
Here I was caught in a horrible catch-22, for the earplugs could easily give the feeling of being squeezed, confined; at the very least they could exacerbate the pressure that was in my head from the headache I had brewing. And believe me, when you're already facing being stuck in a tube, you don'twant multiple layers of other sorts of squeezing going on. On the other hand, music? What if it was too loud? Or just *awful*? She explained that the music choices weren't great, but here's the list that I remember:
Big Band
Frank Sinatra
Counting Crows
Tim McGraw
Enya
Johnny Cash
Quite an eclectic bunch, don't you think? I voted Enya.
What I did not know at that moment was that the Enya recording they were using was one that a friend had copied from another friend's mom from two separate cassette tapes that were partially unwound in 1985 but that someone had managed to put back together with a pencil and some ingenuity in 1986. So my muffly-Enya-d self was pushed into the tube. And by golly, it seems that either I was deaf during my previous MRI, or all of the claustrophobic anxiety caused me to completely forget the sound.
THE. SOUND.
You know, i'm sort of glad for the sound, because it was such a bizarre experience that I spent most of my time in the tube thinking about how I might describe it to you. Really. Words that come to mind include "air horn/air raid", "jackhammer" "construction in your house while you're trying to sleep", and my favorite "every sound from Galaga, happening right inside your head."
Here's what it was like:
~~~~~~~enya~~~~~~~ (muffled) sail away, sail away, sail away ~~~~~~~enya (static)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
JACK HAMMER! WAKE UP! THERE'S A BOMB COMING! AND WE'RE TEARING DOWN THE WALL! JACK HAMMER! DUCK! YOU'RE BEING SHOT AT WITH COMPUTER GRAPHICS! ~~~~~~~~~~(static) enya~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After this interesting auditory experience, I entered the Galaga free world, to find, waiting in the parking lot, the lovely babysitter Lindsey with my three children. The two whose ears hurt looked like they'd been shot, but their spirits were decent. The third, who was scheming how she might get me to purchase a personalized diary for her that she'd seen while out with Lindsey, peppered me with questions about how much money she had saved, and how she thought such a purchase just *might* be feasible!
And with that, life went on.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Scared
There is always a certain paranoia that accompanies the unknown, I guess, and at least in my mind, this paranoia proliferates under the influence of my very robust imagination. If there's anything that I do well, it's imagining worst case scenarios.
With that on the table, tomorrow I have an MRI to make sure that I don't have a brain tumor. I have been assured that I probably do not have such a tumor (or "the scary stuff," as my doctor as called it), and that the flashes of light and numbness in my face and lips that have come on over the past five months are more likely the result of "migrainous events" rather than uninvited tumor cells.
But it still leaves me a bit panciky and undeniably morose. After my doctor's visit the other day, during which I desperately hoped that she would find a very easy answer for these symptoms, I left feeling like things were spiraling out of control. FOR PETE'S SAKE? If "go get an MRI" means that things are spiraling out of control, what does actual bad news mean? That reason implodes?
Maybe. I'm hoping I don't find out. I'm also hoping that I become more of a realist, reign in my active imagination, get on with life today, and load the dishwasher. But for now I think I'll be content with drinking more coffee, knitting, and neglecting the children until they are either a) bleeding or b) screaming.
Now *that* is a rational plan.
With that on the table, tomorrow I have an MRI to make sure that I don't have a brain tumor. I have been assured that I probably do not have such a tumor (or "the scary stuff," as my doctor as called it), and that the flashes of light and numbness in my face and lips that have come on over the past five months are more likely the result of "migrainous events" rather than uninvited tumor cells.
But it still leaves me a bit panciky and undeniably morose. After my doctor's visit the other day, during which I desperately hoped that she would find a very easy answer for these symptoms, I left feeling like things were spiraling out of control. FOR PETE'S SAKE? If "go get an MRI" means that things are spiraling out of control, what does actual bad news mean? That reason implodes?
Maybe. I'm hoping I don't find out. I'm also hoping that I become more of a realist, reign in my active imagination, get on with life today, and load the dishwasher. But for now I think I'll be content with drinking more coffee, knitting, and neglecting the children until they are either a) bleeding or b) screaming.
Now *that* is a rational plan.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
A BAND OF ROBBERS!
In response to a rash of overly-aggressive play, Cole's teacher informed me today that she was going to crack down on some of the overall negativity that has pervaded her little preschool room. I was assured that Cole wasn't one of the ones who was actually being aggressive to other people, but apparently he's quite the follower when it comes to angry pretend-play.
My tolerance for aggression and overall negativity in our house is low. I mean, superlow, sometimes low enough that I wonder whether I might not be letting our kids work something out that they need to express. So while I've attempted to be a bit more laid back about that, I will not back off on my feeling that pretending to harm or kill others is not acceptable, nor is saying things to others that is intended specifically to hurt them (either physically or mentally).
So today when Cole's teacher informed me of this shift in her classroom I welcomed the news, in part because it's really hard to get that under control in your own house when your child goes to school and, naturally, finds it very hard to resist playing such games with his peers who are doing it. "Consistency in discipline! You will be mine!" I thought.
With that, as we climbed in the car, it seemed a good time to address the loads of "I don't like you and I wish you weren't my brother/sister!" that we've been hearing quite a lot of lately. I mentioned that in light of the changes that were going on in Cole's classroom, it might be time to take on some of those same changes at home. After all, I commented, we are a family who wants to be known for the fact that we are helpful, not hurtful (this is the criteria that we often use when faced with a moral decision, btw.....). "We want to be known as the helpful Smiths, not the hurtful Smiths", I said. Then, attempting to drive the point home, I asked, "After all, if we're not helpful, what does that make us?"
At this juncture, I expected my daughter and elder son, who are both extremely good with the concept of opposites, and who are both known for their extraordinary abilities to pick up on subtleties far beyond their ages, to chime in "HURTFUL!", the natural opposite of helpful. For Pete's sake, I'd already set them up for the answer. And it was the ultimate no-brainer.
Cole had no response, looking at me with vacuous, tired post-school eyes. I'll give him that, he's always tired after school. But Annemarie, who never is tired when it's time to be, simply rolled her eyes as if she was too good for this conversation, and answered, "Robbers?"
Robbers?
My tolerance for aggression and overall negativity in our house is low. I mean, superlow, sometimes low enough that I wonder whether I might not be letting our kids work something out that they need to express. So while I've attempted to be a bit more laid back about that, I will not back off on my feeling that pretending to harm or kill others is not acceptable, nor is saying things to others that is intended specifically to hurt them (either physically or mentally).
So today when Cole's teacher informed me of this shift in her classroom I welcomed the news, in part because it's really hard to get that under control in your own house when your child goes to school and, naturally, finds it very hard to resist playing such games with his peers who are doing it. "Consistency in discipline! You will be mine!" I thought.
With that, as we climbed in the car, it seemed a good time to address the loads of "I don't like you and I wish you weren't my brother/sister!" that we've been hearing quite a lot of lately. I mentioned that in light of the changes that were going on in Cole's classroom, it might be time to take on some of those same changes at home. After all, I commented, we are a family who wants to be known for the fact that we are helpful, not hurtful (this is the criteria that we often use when faced with a moral decision, btw.....). "We want to be known as the helpful Smiths, not the hurtful Smiths", I said. Then, attempting to drive the point home, I asked, "After all, if we're not helpful, what does that make us?"
At this juncture, I expected my daughter and elder son, who are both extremely good with the concept of opposites, and who are both known for their extraordinary abilities to pick up on subtleties far beyond their ages, to chime in "HURTFUL!", the natural opposite of helpful. For Pete's sake, I'd already set them up for the answer. And it was the ultimate no-brainer.
Cole had no response, looking at me with vacuous, tired post-school eyes. I'll give him that, he's always tired after school. But Annemarie, who never is tired when it's time to be, simply rolled her eyes as if she was too good for this conversation, and answered, "Robbers?"
Robbers?
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Revelation
I like our church. A bunch. And one reason I like it is that, unlike almost every other church I've attended in my life, it doesn't make me mad to be there. In fact, when we moved here we almost joined a church that I thought I liked because I felt at home there. But then I realized that the "at home" feeling was really the "pissed off" feeling. It had just become so normal to be pissed off that I mistook it for something good.
Yes, our church is a study in progessive orthodoxy, to put it simply. Led by a pastor named Heather (rather than someone named something like the Rev. Walter T. Glockenspiel, Jr. -- my apologies to the real Rev. Glockenspiel, wherever he is), it is openly committed to racial, economic, and cultural justice and diversity in a county known for its lack of all of these things, for its advocacy of separation of church and state (*sigh of relief*), and for the ways that it seeks to be imaginative and progressive and creative and open and interesting and intelligent. I *like* all of those adjectives. And it is still a flavor of Baptist, although you can probably guess that it's not exactly the conservative kind. In fact, it is precisely not the conservative kind, although it remains so truly respectful of the beautiful aspects of Christianity that it would be hard to call it anything but orthodox. So how's progressive orthodox sound?
Take, for example, a retreat that I attended this weekend, which was a lovely thing to behold in many ways. Good friends handled the music, which was lovely, and which was modeled after monastic chants. Children, cared for by babysitters (HURRAY! FREE BABYSITTERS!) bantered in and out, and were made a welcome part of all that went on. And everyone was glad that they were there. And some even told them so, personally offering them blessings and telling them how special they are.
We practiced praying and meditating with icons, colors, mandalas, labyrinths, and many other forms, and Jungian psychology, the Eucharist, scriptural meditations, guided imagery, God-as-female, and other items not so frequently discussed in Christian churches were happily introduced and embraced. And there was coffee (it was church coffee, so it tasted like dirt, but at least it was warm?), and good food, and I ate approximately 14 cookies.
And I brought my knitting and worked on a sweater while listening to the goings-on, and a friend leading the event remarked on the Benedictine nature of working with the hands as a religious affair, and everyone else admired the lovely Malabrigo silky merino that I'm working with, which in its variegated blue-green-yellow-purple self (something someone likened to a Van Gogh), is a prayer in color all its own. And the always terrific pastor Heather did what she usually does -- runs around, in, over, and under things and takes pictures -- and made sure that both my children and sweater made an appearance in the photos.
Yes, Heather is my friend :).
But I was arrested -- and I truly believe that there might not be a better word -- by a time that we shared this morning, during which we were challenged to take the theme of the weekend ("Brokenness and Blessing") personally by sharing with others the way that we wish we would have been blessed as a child, but weren't. There was also the other option of sharing how you actually were blessed as a child, but interestingly, few people offered that. It seems that everyone had a hurt to share. Now before you sigh and throw this off as another sappy excuse for Christian pop psychology, let me say that this time was led by a group of very educated theologians and otherwise intelligent and religiously diverse and aware people. In other words, this wasn't exactly a Christian Jr. High camp meeting, the success of which is almost always measured by how many people cry and subsequently get saved. No, that wasn't the ambiance at all.
My arrestedness was/is the result of one woman's utterance to me, a woman who I would guess is in her late 60s or early 70s, someone who undoubtedly has had sufficient time to have plenty of perspective on life. This was the first time I'd met her. This woman, K, revealed in an almost-whisper that she wished she had heard as a child that it was OK that she was a girl. Her dad had wanted a boy, she said.
And I sucked in my breath. Literally. And then I started crying.
I'm a semi-sobber, I will admit. This is a tendency that has grown since I've had children, since the world seems all the more tinged with poignancy and emotion. I could do nothing more at this moment, though, than to remember how scared I had been when, pregnant with Cole, I found out that he was a boy. Not to get TMI on you, but I didn't exactly grow up with the greatest healthy male role models. Or come to think of it, ANY healthy male role models. Marrying Brian didn't scare me, for some reason, perhaps because he's so different than any of my man-family. But producing a boy that would share the genetics of the man-family -- now THAT was a scary prospect.
But enough of that. Obviously I knew that there was a good chance of getting a boy when getting pregnant! I just hadn't internalized it. And for those of you who know Cole, and me and Cole together, you know that it is quite the love affair: he is a most sensitive, funny, and lovely person whose presence makes my life immeasurably wonderful. He is, in short, amazing.
But when he was a fetus, I was friggin' scared of him. In great part this was for what he might become ("the bad guys"), but in another way it was for the ways I might harm him if I couldn't pull myself together. Yes, for an instant it seems that I saw what might have become of Cole had those magical mothering instincts of mine not kicked in, the fear-made-flesh of all of my pregnancy woes made manifest in a 70 year old woman, the mourning that she experienced for an inadequacy that could never be fixed.
Now I certainly am not trying to make the woman out to be a basket-case -- she wasn't. She was a woman sharing what is, sadly, a rather normal sort of hurt. Would you be surprised to know that a very significant number of this group (ranging in age from 30s-70s?) mentioned their fathers as part of this lack-of-blessing? I for one, was not.
So thinking of your parenting in terms of what your kids need.....and the difference between this and what you give.......now that's an interesting exercise.
Yes, our church is a study in progessive orthodoxy, to put it simply. Led by a pastor named Heather (rather than someone named something like the Rev. Walter T. Glockenspiel, Jr. -- my apologies to the real Rev. Glockenspiel, wherever he is), it is openly committed to racial, economic, and cultural justice and diversity in a county known for its lack of all of these things, for its advocacy of separation of church and state (*sigh of relief*), and for the ways that it seeks to be imaginative and progressive and creative and open and interesting and intelligent. I *like* all of those adjectives. And it is still a flavor of Baptist, although you can probably guess that it's not exactly the conservative kind. In fact, it is precisely not the conservative kind, although it remains so truly respectful of the beautiful aspects of Christianity that it would be hard to call it anything but orthodox. So how's progressive orthodox sound?
Take, for example, a retreat that I attended this weekend, which was a lovely thing to behold in many ways. Good friends handled the music, which was lovely, and which was modeled after monastic chants. Children, cared for by babysitters (HURRAY! FREE BABYSITTERS!) bantered in and out, and were made a welcome part of all that went on. And everyone was glad that they were there. And some even told them so, personally offering them blessings and telling them how special they are.
We practiced praying and meditating with icons, colors, mandalas, labyrinths, and many other forms, and Jungian psychology, the Eucharist, scriptural meditations, guided imagery, God-as-female, and other items not so frequently discussed in Christian churches were happily introduced and embraced. And there was coffee (it was church coffee, so it tasted like dirt, but at least it was warm?), and good food, and I ate approximately 14 cookies.
And I brought my knitting and worked on a sweater while listening to the goings-on, and a friend leading the event remarked on the Benedictine nature of working with the hands as a religious affair, and everyone else admired the lovely Malabrigo silky merino that I'm working with, which in its variegated blue-green-yellow-purple self (something someone likened to a Van Gogh), is a prayer in color all its own. And the always terrific pastor Heather did what she usually does -- runs around, in, over, and under things and takes pictures -- and made sure that both my children and sweater made an appearance in the photos.
Yes, Heather is my friend :).
But I was arrested -- and I truly believe that there might not be a better word -- by a time that we shared this morning, during which we were challenged to take the theme of the weekend ("Brokenness and Blessing") personally by sharing with others the way that we wish we would have been blessed as a child, but weren't. There was also the other option of sharing how you actually were blessed as a child, but interestingly, few people offered that. It seems that everyone had a hurt to share. Now before you sigh and throw this off as another sappy excuse for Christian pop psychology, let me say that this time was led by a group of very educated theologians and otherwise intelligent and religiously diverse and aware people. In other words, this wasn't exactly a Christian Jr. High camp meeting, the success of which is almost always measured by how many people cry and subsequently get saved. No, that wasn't the ambiance at all.
My arrestedness was/is the result of one woman's utterance to me, a woman who I would guess is in her late 60s or early 70s, someone who undoubtedly has had sufficient time to have plenty of perspective on life. This was the first time I'd met her. This woman, K, revealed in an almost-whisper that she wished she had heard as a child that it was OK that she was a girl. Her dad had wanted a boy, she said.
And I sucked in my breath. Literally. And then I started crying.
I'm a semi-sobber, I will admit. This is a tendency that has grown since I've had children, since the world seems all the more tinged with poignancy and emotion. I could do nothing more at this moment, though, than to remember how scared I had been when, pregnant with Cole, I found out that he was a boy. Not to get TMI on you, but I didn't exactly grow up with the greatest healthy male role models. Or come to think of it, ANY healthy male role models. Marrying Brian didn't scare me, for some reason, perhaps because he's so different than any of my man-family. But producing a boy that would share the genetics of the man-family -- now THAT was a scary prospect.
But enough of that. Obviously I knew that there was a good chance of getting a boy when getting pregnant! I just hadn't internalized it. And for those of you who know Cole, and me and Cole together, you know that it is quite the love affair: he is a most sensitive, funny, and lovely person whose presence makes my life immeasurably wonderful. He is, in short, amazing.
But when he was a fetus, I was friggin' scared of him. In great part this was for what he might become ("the bad guys"), but in another way it was for the ways I might harm him if I couldn't pull myself together. Yes, for an instant it seems that I saw what might have become of Cole had those magical mothering instincts of mine not kicked in, the fear-made-flesh of all of my pregnancy woes made manifest in a 70 year old woman, the mourning that she experienced for an inadequacy that could never be fixed.
Now I certainly am not trying to make the woman out to be a basket-case -- she wasn't. She was a woman sharing what is, sadly, a rather normal sort of hurt. Would you be surprised to know that a very significant number of this group (ranging in age from 30s-70s?) mentioned their fathers as part of this lack-of-blessing? I for one, was not.
So thinking of your parenting in terms of what your kids need.....and the difference between this and what you give.......now that's an interesting exercise.
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