It's been about six months since I laid down my membership in my Quaker meeting. I haven't been to worship on a Sunday since, not in a Quaker meeting or anyplace else. I miss it. I really enjoyed the Vespers service at the Festival of Faith & Writing for giving me a chance to worship, and I'm looking forward to next Saturday's bat mitzvah for the same reason. But I'm not feeling led to go to weekly worship, despite missing it. I thought I would. I left my Quaker meeting with an optimistic sense that I was going to find a new religious community, and imagined myself visiting around on Sunday mornings for awhile until something clicked.
And then I didn't do that.
"I'm just not ready to date yet," I said. And this feels true. It's a big commitment to join a community, and there's a lot of work to be done. Getting to know people, learning the norms, taking the risk that you'll invest your time and energy and it won't work out. Once in a conversation with some friends, I said that if my relationship with Raider ended, I'd probably just choose to be single. I love my relationship with Raider, it's the foundation for everything else in my life, but let's not kid ourselves: it has taken a lot of work. I sometimes doubt I'd be willing to take on that work again.
Maybe I'm not willing to take on the work of joining a religious community, either, even though I know that the payoff can make it worthwhile.
Also, I'm still a Quaker. This felt very clear to me when I was at the FLGBTQC midwinter gathering. So, it's not that I'm completely uncommitted and ready to be snapped up by any attractive faith that comes along. I'm a Quaker without a monthly meeting, and that feels different. It has held me back from visiting congregations that I might like but never feel I could commit fully to.
I've also been lukewarm about the obvious churches I might visit, the Unitarian Universalists and the United Church of Christ. One of my points of friction with my monthly meeting was our tendency to be talky, self-satisfied, affluent liberals, and I can't see the UU or the UCC improving much on that.
At the Festival of Faith & Writing, I had the opportunity to get to know a friend-of-a-friend, and listening to her talk about her church, I got excited for the first time. She is part of a United Methodist congregation in Brighton, Michigan (about 40 minutes from where I live) that decided to be a "missional" church. Their mission statement is "transformed by God to transform the world," and they try to do this by taking concrete action in their community and in the world. They feed the homeless in Detroit and house them in Brighton; they support a local dental clinic for low-income people, and a hospital in Haiti. They do work projects locally, in Appalachia, in North Dakota, and sometimes in the Czech Republic, where they also financially support a sister church. They throw a birthday party every month at a long-term care facility. Look at this list!
Quakers think of ourselves as activists, but in my experience our activism tends toward writing letters, writing "minutes" that we send to legislators and organizations, and demonstrating. It's not that I think a faithful witness like maintaining a weekly vigil for peace for over a decade of war is something to be derided. But I have often longed to be able to do something more concrete. I have always admired the Baby Pantry my friend Julie's church maintains, for instance. I hoped that when my monthly meeting built a meetinghouse, we'd be able to do something like that, something that would let us, on a regular basis, do something concrete and good for a real person standing in front of us.
But the meetinghouse we built doesn't have enough storage space to do that kind of thing (I was, for years, a big booster of the building project. But I remember the moment that changed for me, when I came to feel that we were spending too much money to build a building that would be too small for our needs as soon as we moved in. I know that many people love that meetinghouse, and it is a beautiful little building to worship in. But some of the doors that I hoped would open once we stopped renting space weren't able to open because of space constraints).
Anyway, I found myself seriously attracted to Suzy's church. It felt restful to imagine a church where, perhaps, I wouldn't be asked to do a lot of thinking and talking so much as I would be invited to show up to make sandwiches, to celebrate a birthday, to hammer a nail, to get some diapers or a new crib to a foster family. Perhaps part of what I was attracted to was Suzy's undiluted enthusiasm for the projects her church does. Sure, you'd expect that of her--she's the Director of Missions and Outreach. And she seems like a pretty enthusiastic person in general. I expect that many other people who meet her like her as much as I did. But it also made me aware of one reason I haven't gone church-shopping. After 20 years of practicing the Quakerly endurance test of sitting still, I am strongly drawn to the idea of specific action.
Hmmm. This isn't what I meant to talk about. I was going to talk about the many secular, familial, personal, and professional opportunities that have opened up. Laying down my membership cleared my calendar and settled my mind. But I will save that for another day.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Pretty, Pretty Princess
Ever since I wrote yesterday about the Tiny Tornado and her love of all things culturally coded "boy," I'm been thinking about the girls who love the things coded "girl." I like these girls, too, and I want to be careful that, when we're cheering the Tiny Tornado on as she engages the world in what is obviously a very self-directed and awesome way, we're not inadvertently dismissing kids whose awesomeness doesn't cut across the grain. Those of us who are nonconforming in some significant way love to see nonconforming kids letting their freak flag fly, especially if we weren't able to fly ours.
But sometimes we carelessly talk as if kids who clearly identify as "boy" or "girl," or whose dress is comfortably within the limits of what is culturally approved, are not also exercising their preferences. As if the only reason a girl could love princesses is because she's a weak-headed dupe of the patriarchy.
It's important to remember that the limits of what is culturally approved actually encompass a lot of variation. Sometimes it's relatively sublte. Word Boy and the Lego Savant are both pretty much "typical" boys, and they both dress in a fairly standard boy-style costume of t-shirts and cargo pants or sweats. But the Lego Savant has a strong preference for solid, dark colors--he wears a lot of black t-shirts. If they have any design on them, it's probably a skull. Word Boy likes stripes. He has a lot of navy blue t-shirts with red or light blue or gray or maroon stripes. Neither of them is very athletic, but their friend A--also a "typical" boy--is. He is athletically talented and self-confident to the point of boldness. I can remember watching a bunch of kids run across a field when A and the Lego Savant were preschoolers, and just watching them run randomly around, you could see A's talent in his grace, his form, his speed. He just didn't run the same way the other little kids ran.
My point is that even a homogenous-seeming group of "typical boys" will have a lot of variation.
And when you get to the girls--whoa nelly! There are a number of girls in the Tiny Tornado's preschool class, who dress in conventional girl ways. But they don't really dress alike. There is one girl who likes nice dresses; she often shows up in a green velvety number with a satin sash. There are a couple of girls who have that "young fashion designer" vibe going--they're putting together funky and unexpected combinations of striped tights, bright colored skirts, shirts in colors that clash just a little bit. One of the girls likes to have interesting things on her head: sparkly head bands, heart-shaped doodle boppers. And there are several girls who always or nearly always, so far as I can tell, wear pants.
My best friends have a 5-year-old girl who will only ever wear dresses, and usually dressy ones rather than casual. One of her moms told me one time, "I just walk into the store and ask if they have anything glamorous in a size 5." She is the girliest girl that ever girled a girl (and, as an aside, though in general we find it appalling when people sexualize kids by talking about their "boyfriends" and "girlfriends," my friend and I cannot resist, when the Tiny Tornado and the Glamour Girl are playing together, characterizing them as the world's tiniest and most adorable butch-femme couple. Goddess forgive us).
My point is: these girls are not dupes. They are not weak. Unless their clothing choices are being coerced by their parents, which I know happens but I hope is rare, they are exercising their preferences just as much as the Tiny Torndao is. The Tiny Tornado isn't the only little kid with agency just because her agency is so visible in her unconventional choices. She didn't corner the market on preschool awesome. There's plenty of it to go around, and that long-haired girl with the Hello Kitty t-shirt and the twirly skirt and the shiny shoes by God got her share of it, and is putting it to work.
But sometimes we carelessly talk as if kids who clearly identify as "boy" or "girl," or whose dress is comfortably within the limits of what is culturally approved, are not also exercising their preferences. As if the only reason a girl could love princesses is because she's a weak-headed dupe of the patriarchy.
It's important to remember that the limits of what is culturally approved actually encompass a lot of variation. Sometimes it's relatively sublte. Word Boy and the Lego Savant are both pretty much "typical" boys, and they both dress in a fairly standard boy-style costume of t-shirts and cargo pants or sweats. But the Lego Savant has a strong preference for solid, dark colors--he wears a lot of black t-shirts. If they have any design on them, it's probably a skull. Word Boy likes stripes. He has a lot of navy blue t-shirts with red or light blue or gray or maroon stripes. Neither of them is very athletic, but their friend A--also a "typical" boy--is. He is athletically talented and self-confident to the point of boldness. I can remember watching a bunch of kids run across a field when A and the Lego Savant were preschoolers, and just watching them run randomly around, you could see A's talent in his grace, his form, his speed. He just didn't run the same way the other little kids ran.
My point is that even a homogenous-seeming group of "typical boys" will have a lot of variation.
And when you get to the girls--whoa nelly! There are a number of girls in the Tiny Tornado's preschool class, who dress in conventional girl ways. But they don't really dress alike. There is one girl who likes nice dresses; she often shows up in a green velvety number with a satin sash. There are a couple of girls who have that "young fashion designer" vibe going--they're putting together funky and unexpected combinations of striped tights, bright colored skirts, shirts in colors that clash just a little bit. One of the girls likes to have interesting things on her head: sparkly head bands, heart-shaped doodle boppers. And there are several girls who always or nearly always, so far as I can tell, wear pants.
My best friends have a 5-year-old girl who will only ever wear dresses, and usually dressy ones rather than casual. One of her moms told me one time, "I just walk into the store and ask if they have anything glamorous in a size 5." She is the girliest girl that ever girled a girl (and, as an aside, though in general we find it appalling when people sexualize kids by talking about their "boyfriends" and "girlfriends," my friend and I cannot resist, when the Tiny Tornado and the Glamour Girl are playing together, characterizing them as the world's tiniest and most adorable butch-femme couple. Goddess forgive us).
My point is: these girls are not dupes. They are not weak. Unless their clothing choices are being coerced by their parents, which I know happens but I hope is rare, they are exercising their preferences just as much as the Tiny Torndao is. The Tiny Tornado isn't the only little kid with agency just because her agency is so visible in her unconventional choices. She didn't corner the market on preschool awesome. There's plenty of it to go around, and that long-haired girl with the Hello Kitty t-shirt and the twirly skirt and the shiny shoes by God got her share of it, and is putting it to work.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Trunks, Trunks, Trunks like the Boys, Boys, Boys
When I was pregnant for the first time, people who know about our family's ties to trans community, and all the trans folk in our life, would ask if we were going to refuse to assign the baby a gender, or use gender-neutral pronouns. "Nope," David would say. "We're going to go with the apparent biological sex. We figure the baby will let us know soon enough if we're wrong."
That was the Lego Savant. His ABS was male, and he's never wanted to be anything else, not seriously. Though, growing up in a family that says things like, "most people who have penises are male," and "most little girls grow up to be women," he did spend some time as a young child considering whether he wanted to grow up male or female. I remember him saying once that he thought he'd be a woman, so he didn't have to worry about shaving or trimming his beard. But that was just a preschooler's partial understanding of how things worked; he's always been comfortably male.
Likewise Word Boy, who came along three years later. Despte that one summer he spent running around in an adorable red a-line dress with a big daisy on the front (in which he never looked the least bit feminine, but only like a sturdy little boy in a daisy dress), his gender and his apparent biological sex have always been comfortably in alignment.
And then the Tiny Tornado came along. Apparently a girl, by the age of three she was insisting on having her hair cut short, and increasingly refusing to wear clothes she identified as being for girls. These days, almost 5, she wears only boy clothes, from her boxer briefs on out, and wears her tighty-curled black hair trimmed close to her head, or in a mohawk. Despite the strength of her feelings about this, she doesn't have a strong grasp on gender in general--she still calls everyone "he," for instance, even if she knows perfectly well the person is female. This is part of the reason we haven't switched pronouns for her; she hasn't asked for it, and doesn't seem to care much at this point.
On the other hand, she almost always identifies as a boy if you ask her, though sometimes she will say, "I'm a girl who wears boy clothes," and once in a great while she will simply say she is a girl. She doesn't usually get upset when people call her either a girl or a boy (I was going to say, "get her gender wrong," and then I realized I wasn't sure what that means--are they wrong when they call her a girl? or when they call her a boy?), but she doesn't like it if I correct someone's use of a male pronoun, so I don't.
If people ask us whether she's a boy or a girl, we defer the question to her. I can tell that some people find this odd, but she is the only one who knows, and she doesn't always give the same answer.
The other day, she brought me last year's swimsuit, a blue tankini. "This is not going to fit me anymore," she said. "And also, it has flowers on it." Then she started marching around, chanting rhythmically, "I want trunks, trunks, trunks, like the boys, boys, boys."
I fretted for about 5 seconds about the possible implications of buying her swim trunks. What if someone figured out she was female-bodied and flipped out about her nipples showing? And then I remembered the existence of rash guard shirts and realized that we could accommodate our culture's ridiculous paranoia about preschool girls' nipples by buying her one of those to go with her swim trunks.
It's been a pretty smooth road so far. A little boy who was as gender-creative as the Tiny Tornado would be having a much harder time of it. She has had a wonderful preschool teacher this year who was very comfortable with our suggestions for how to handle classmates' questions (refer them to the Tiny Tornado for answers!), and has only reported one or two, mostly friendly, conversations with classmates about whether she is a boy or a girl. I thnk it may get harder as she gets older, but I'm not worrying about that yet.
I appreciate the smooth road. I have many friends who are butch lesbians, or female-to-male transgendered people, who have traumatic memories of being forced into skirts as children, and I am glad to be raising this child in this day. I am struck, though, by how often people want to tell me their own story, or stories of children they know, who started out like the Tiny Tornado and grew up into girly-girls. I think, on the one hand, that she simply reminds them of those stories. On the other hand, perhaps they want to reassure me, and themselves, that she will grow up "normal." They don't say, "it's just a phase," but that's what those stories are about: girls going through a phase.
For my own part, I try not to make predictions. She could grow up to be a butch lesbian, or a transsexual man, or one of those interestingly androgynous straight women you meet from time to time, or who the hell knows what? Because one thing that has been clear about the Tiny Tornodo from the very beginning was that she is absolutely committed to pursuing her own path.
Just to be on the safe side, though, I am trying to break myself of the habit of calling her older brothers "the boys." Because it's really not so clear just who "the boys" are.
That was the Lego Savant. His ABS was male, and he's never wanted to be anything else, not seriously. Though, growing up in a family that says things like, "most people who have penises are male," and "most little girls grow up to be women," he did spend some time as a young child considering whether he wanted to grow up male or female. I remember him saying once that he thought he'd be a woman, so he didn't have to worry about shaving or trimming his beard. But that was just a preschooler's partial understanding of how things worked; he's always been comfortably male.
Likewise Word Boy, who came along three years later. Despte that one summer he spent running around in an adorable red a-line dress with a big daisy on the front (in which he never looked the least bit feminine, but only like a sturdy little boy in a daisy dress), his gender and his apparent biological sex have always been comfortably in alignment.
And then the Tiny Tornado came along. Apparently a girl, by the age of three she was insisting on having her hair cut short, and increasingly refusing to wear clothes she identified as being for girls. These days, almost 5, she wears only boy clothes, from her boxer briefs on out, and wears her tighty-curled black hair trimmed close to her head, or in a mohawk. Despite the strength of her feelings about this, she doesn't have a strong grasp on gender in general--she still calls everyone "he," for instance, even if she knows perfectly well the person is female. This is part of the reason we haven't switched pronouns for her; she hasn't asked for it, and doesn't seem to care much at this point.
On the other hand, she almost always identifies as a boy if you ask her, though sometimes she will say, "I'm a girl who wears boy clothes," and once in a great while she will simply say she is a girl. She doesn't usually get upset when people call her either a girl or a boy (I was going to say, "get her gender wrong," and then I realized I wasn't sure what that means--are they wrong when they call her a girl? or when they call her a boy?), but she doesn't like it if I correct someone's use of a male pronoun, so I don't.
If people ask us whether she's a boy or a girl, we defer the question to her. I can tell that some people find this odd, but she is the only one who knows, and she doesn't always give the same answer.
The other day, she brought me last year's swimsuit, a blue tankini. "This is not going to fit me anymore," she said. "And also, it has flowers on it." Then she started marching around, chanting rhythmically, "I want trunks, trunks, trunks, like the boys, boys, boys."
I fretted for about 5 seconds about the possible implications of buying her swim trunks. What if someone figured out she was female-bodied and flipped out about her nipples showing? And then I remembered the existence of rash guard shirts and realized that we could accommodate our culture's ridiculous paranoia about preschool girls' nipples by buying her one of those to go with her swim trunks.
It's been a pretty smooth road so far. A little boy who was as gender-creative as the Tiny Tornado would be having a much harder time of it. She has had a wonderful preschool teacher this year who was very comfortable with our suggestions for how to handle classmates' questions (refer them to the Tiny Tornado for answers!), and has only reported one or two, mostly friendly, conversations with classmates about whether she is a boy or a girl. I thnk it may get harder as she gets older, but I'm not worrying about that yet.
I appreciate the smooth road. I have many friends who are butch lesbians, or female-to-male transgendered people, who have traumatic memories of being forced into skirts as children, and I am glad to be raising this child in this day. I am struck, though, by how often people want to tell me their own story, or stories of children they know, who started out like the Tiny Tornado and grew up into girly-girls. I think, on the one hand, that she simply reminds them of those stories. On the other hand, perhaps they want to reassure me, and themselves, that she will grow up "normal." They don't say, "it's just a phase," but that's what those stories are about: girls going through a phase.
For my own part, I try not to make predictions. She could grow up to be a butch lesbian, or a transsexual man, or one of those interestingly androgynous straight women you meet from time to time, or who the hell knows what? Because one thing that has been clear about the Tiny Tornodo from the very beginning was that she is absolutely committed to pursuing her own path.
Just to be on the safe side, though, I am trying to break myself of the habit of calling her older brothers "the boys." Because it's really not so clear just who "the boys" are.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Possible, but not Easy
My new juggling balls arrived in the mail yesterday. I like them; they have a sueded finish and are very firm, and they're a good size for my hands. I am not very good at juggling, but Raider and I have recently moved the old juggling balls from our closet onto a shelf in the living room, and we have been practicing again. The kids are learning; The Lego Savant, who is almost 11, is working very hard on perfecting what we call the "one-ball jug," which is learning to reliably pass one ball from one hand to the other and back again, making a nice relaxed arc that crosses just in front of your eyes before it drops right into the waiting hand--it's less about catching than it is about aim, making tosses so accurate that your catching hand hardly needs to move and you don't have to think about it at all. When you can do this well with one ball, it's a surprisingly short step to doing it with three.
Raider can pick up the balls after months or years away and immediately start juggling, the balls going tock-tock-tock in a steady unbroken rhythm. Word Boy said the other day, "Daddy looks so relaxed when he's juggling," and it's true. The Lego Savant, watching me just now, said, "See, you make it look possible, but not easy. Dad makes it look easy." A very apt way to put it. [The Tiny Tornado said, "Mom, can I have some ice cream? Can I have some applesauce? With cinnamon on it? Can I get my own puppy? When I'm five? Can I have a skateboard? Can I take a bath? Can I help you cook dinner? Mom, these pants have a hole in them. You have to buy me some new pants. I want new shoes. I want flip-flops. Can we get some candy at the store?"]
Back when we had no kids, a lot more energy, and not one full-time job between us--and therefore all the time in the world to do anything we wanted--we juggled a lot. Raider taught me, and I got pretty good. Not as good as him. But good enough. We'd put on some music with a good beat and stand facing each other as we juggled in time to the beat. Michelle Shocked's old album Short Sharp Shocked has quite a few perfect juggling songs, and we often used that. Of course, it wasn't her "old" album back then.
Now, when you get into the groove with your juggling, it's like you slip into an alternate, slower timestream. Instead of scrambling to pluck each ball out of the air before it falls, your hand has to wait for it to fall effortlessly into your palm. You can feel the rhythm of it in your whole body. Your eyes focus somewhere in the distance; you're not looking at the balls, just seeing them as blurs in your near vision while you take in the view out the window. You start to have time to fill. You can walk; you can talk; you can toss one ball up as high as you can; you can start making smaller, lower arcs so the balls pass faster and faster, and then you can slow it back down again; you can start throwing the balls so they go outside each other's paths instead of inside them.
Raider and I used to focus on each other's eyes while we juggled. We still would, except that right now I can't keep the balls going long enough. He stands there, juggling steadily, while I juggle a little, drop a little, chase my balls around. Part of why we're practicing is because I'd like to do this again. It's surprisingly intense juggling in time while looking into someone's eyes. Many years ago, our friend Adrianne was watching us. "Jeez, you guys," she said after a couple of minutes. "Get a room!
We used to be able to do tricks together, stealing balls from each other or passing them back and forth. Sometimes you can throw a fourth ball to Raider and he will just grab it out of the air and boom! He's juggling four.
Juggling is a good thing to learn if you need to practice making mistakes. Because everyone drops balls. Even Raider, though not very often. When I was learning, sometimes I'd drop a ball and that was OK. Sometimes I would drop two, and Raider would say, "Double drop! Impressive." Sometimes I would drop all three, and he'd throw his hands in the air in mock triumph: "It's a triple drop! Yay, Su!" Now we cheer for the children. They don't find it quite as funny as I did.
Just now I was juggling--making it look possible, as the Lego Savant says, which is actually an improvement from just a few days ago when the sound of my balls hitting the hardwood floor was like a steady artillery bombardment. For a minute or two, I crossed into that other time stream. For about fifteen minutes, I juggled, passing in and out of it, clumsy to graceful and back again, with the Tiny Tornado's endless string of chatter fading into a steady buzz in the back of my mind. "Mom, do monkeys have bones? When I'm five, will my teeth start falling out? Is there much blood when your tooth falls out? How old do I have to be to drive a car? Is driving a car fun? Will you make my dog an eye patch? Aargh, matey! I think my fever's coming back. I'll get the thermometer. Can we have dutch baby for dinner? Do you have enough dollars for me to get a skateboard?"
I had forgotten that the peaceful rhythm of juggling is also a meditative path to serenity. I shall have to try not to forget again.
Raider can pick up the balls after months or years away and immediately start juggling, the balls going tock-tock-tock in a steady unbroken rhythm. Word Boy said the other day, "Daddy looks so relaxed when he's juggling," and it's true. The Lego Savant, watching me just now, said, "See, you make it look possible, but not easy. Dad makes it look easy." A very apt way to put it. [The Tiny Tornado said, "Mom, can I have some ice cream? Can I have some applesauce? With cinnamon on it? Can I get my own puppy? When I'm five? Can I have a skateboard? Can I take a bath? Can I help you cook dinner? Mom, these pants have a hole in them. You have to buy me some new pants. I want new shoes. I want flip-flops. Can we get some candy at the store?"]
Back when we had no kids, a lot more energy, and not one full-time job between us--and therefore all the time in the world to do anything we wanted--we juggled a lot. Raider taught me, and I got pretty good. Not as good as him. But good enough. We'd put on some music with a good beat and stand facing each other as we juggled in time to the beat. Michelle Shocked's old album Short Sharp Shocked has quite a few perfect juggling songs, and we often used that. Of course, it wasn't her "old" album back then.
Now, when you get into the groove with your juggling, it's like you slip into an alternate, slower timestream. Instead of scrambling to pluck each ball out of the air before it falls, your hand has to wait for it to fall effortlessly into your palm. You can feel the rhythm of it in your whole body. Your eyes focus somewhere in the distance; you're not looking at the balls, just seeing them as blurs in your near vision while you take in the view out the window. You start to have time to fill. You can walk; you can talk; you can toss one ball up as high as you can; you can start making smaller, lower arcs so the balls pass faster and faster, and then you can slow it back down again; you can start throwing the balls so they go outside each other's paths instead of inside them.
Raider and I used to focus on each other's eyes while we juggled. We still would, except that right now I can't keep the balls going long enough. He stands there, juggling steadily, while I juggle a little, drop a little, chase my balls around. Part of why we're practicing is because I'd like to do this again. It's surprisingly intense juggling in time while looking into someone's eyes. Many years ago, our friend Adrianne was watching us. "Jeez, you guys," she said after a couple of minutes. "Get a room!
We used to be able to do tricks together, stealing balls from each other or passing them back and forth. Sometimes you can throw a fourth ball to Raider and he will just grab it out of the air and boom! He's juggling four.
Juggling is a good thing to learn if you need to practice making mistakes. Because everyone drops balls. Even Raider, though not very often. When I was learning, sometimes I'd drop a ball and that was OK. Sometimes I would drop two, and Raider would say, "Double drop! Impressive." Sometimes I would drop all three, and he'd throw his hands in the air in mock triumph: "It's a triple drop! Yay, Su!" Now we cheer for the children. They don't find it quite as funny as I did.
Just now I was juggling--making it look possible, as the Lego Savant says, which is actually an improvement from just a few days ago when the sound of my balls hitting the hardwood floor was like a steady artillery bombardment. For a minute or two, I crossed into that other time stream. For about fifteen minutes, I juggled, passing in and out of it, clumsy to graceful and back again, with the Tiny Tornado's endless string of chatter fading into a steady buzz in the back of my mind. "Mom, do monkeys have bones? When I'm five, will my teeth start falling out? Is there much blood when your tooth falls out? How old do I have to be to drive a car? Is driving a car fun? Will you make my dog an eye patch? Aargh, matey! I think my fever's coming back. I'll get the thermometer. Can we have dutch baby for dinner? Do you have enough dollars for me to get a skateboard?"
I had forgotten that the peaceful rhythm of juggling is also a meditative path to serenity. I shall have to try not to forget again.
Monday, April 30, 2012
The Trouble with Word Boy
I have a small e-mail list of friends I send long rambly notes to pretty regularly. Except not lately. A couple of months ago, I started one of these e-mails like this:
It's also true that I am tremendously busy. I tend to be on the go all day long these days, between the house and errands and homeschooling and keeping the Tiny Tornado from setting things on fire. And then, once we get the kids to bed in the evening, I just want my down time. I settle into The Big Chair and read, or sometimes watch TV (if I can pry the remote out of David's hands--he takes his downtime at night by playing video games). Lately, since I took up amigurumi a couple of weeks ago, I might listen to an audiobook while I crochet. So, no urgency to write, no time to write: no writing. Except that I miss it. And I think it's pretty important in my life. And I have a book project in mind that I want to do something with--I've wanted to write a book since I was, what, 3? 4? And no matter how good my life is otherwise (and it is very good), I'm going to regret it on my death bed if I never do it. Even if it's a bad book. Even if no one ever reads it.
So, I decided that in May I would commit to writing 750 words every day. Not necessarily project-related words. Just words. Just practicing. Just seeing what writing might be like in this new time in my life when I am in so much less pain than I ever have been before in my adult life, and so much less driven by anxiety. I suppose it's a good sign that I felt like getting started a day early.
But what shall I write about today?
One thing that has been heavy on my mind is that Word Boy is struggling with anxiety and perfectionism. None of us is exactly the most flexible or resilient of people (except the Tiny Tornado, who swam in from outside our gene pool), and Word Boy has hit a rough patch. He doesn't like questions that don't have right answers; he gets upset if he doesn't understand his math the moment he looks at the page; an art curriculum that gave him open-ended "try this!" assignments reduced him to panic attacks. His perfectionism cripples him; he has practically no problem-solving skills because he's so afraid of getting the wrong answer; he worries so much about making other people happy that it is like pulling teeth to get him to say what he wants.
At least we're past the roughest stage, when he was having anxiety attacks that lasted for hours at a time. Now his "fits," as we call them, during which he breathes rapidly and his whole body shudders, are usually quite short. The improvement has been primarily because of behavioral interventions--to the extent that he can control these things, we have encouraged him to control them, by sending him out of the room to get himself together, say, or simply flogging him along to whatever needs to be done--I remember at the Midwinter Gathering in February, he started to have a fit about going to childcare (which he loved! So, what the heck with the fit?) and I pretty much pushed him down the hall to the childcare room, where he pulled himself together within a couple of minutes of my leaving him, and went on to have a great afternoon. If I'd engaged with him, we could have been stuck all afternoon.
So, now he still has multiple fits per day, at unpredictable intervals, but they're usually short. Still, we'd rather see even fewer of them, and, more importantly, I'd like to see some progress on the cognitive side of things: improvements in his perfectionism, improvements in his problem-solving skills, improvement in his resiliency when faced with minor setbacks.
I don't quite know how to get that. We were seeing an excellent therapist, but by his own admission Word Boy's problems were outside his area of expertise--he was super-good on the specific behavioral stuff (witness the complete extinction of The Lego Savant's elevator phobia, for instance) but completely lost when it came to sussing out the underlying mental issues and helping the kids deal with them. I am looking for someone else--there is a therapist I heard of on the west side of the state who specializes in anxiety in gifted kids, and I'm going to at least ask her for a consultation or a referral. She's probably too far away to work with regularly, but hopefully she's willing to be a resource. Maybe she'd even be willing to consult with Word Boy's old therapist--with whom he has great rapport, and who is willing to educate himself.
The gifted thing matters. I used to think it didn't, and I felt that one advantage of homeschooling was that I didn't have to worry about whether my kids fit some criterion for "giftedness" or not. I have, or at least did have when I was younger, a whole array of issues related to being identified as a gifted kid, and the services I did, and did not, receive, and I have been glad to avoid having to navigate that for them within a school system. I also have dormant issues around academic achievement and hoped that by homeschooling I could avoid re-awakening them, and avoid passing them on to my children.
But the pattern of Word Boy's perfectionism and anxiety is a classic pattern for gifted kids. So I find myself seeking out information on raising gifted kids. Less of it is useful than I had hoped, and it brings me into contact (so far, only virtually) with a lot of parents who are interested in doing competitive bragging and arguing about whether each other's kids are truly gifted.
Somewhere out there have to be parents and teachers and therapists who have helped kids navigate this as well as it can be navigated. I met one parent just last weekend, a friend-of-a-friend whose kids are grown now but who recognized exactly the kinds of issues we're dealing with, and I glommed onto her like a drowning woman. When she had pried my frantic arms from around her neck and gotten her breath back, she said sure, she'd be glad to talk to me about this stuff. So that's one resource, and a very important one. But I need more. I didn't get effective treatment for my anxiety until I was in my late 20s, and I want to do better by my smart, sweet, splendid children. And I want support for me and David--so we know that we're doing the best we can.
And now--on to all that I've been neglecting: the dishes, the kids, the laundry, my shower, the homeschooling. We are doing a science experiment with radish seedlings and they need to have something done every single day, so there's no slacking on that (I called it "The Tyranny of the Radish Curriculum" and my friend Margaret said, "That right there is a chapter title." So I wrote it down.) Tomorrow: the Tiny Tornado wants a boy swim suit.
A woman whose blog I read recently posted about seeking treatment for her depression, and being really optimistic about a new medication, but worrying that being too happy would stop her from writing. I could have told her she had good reason to worry. I feel like the last few months I just haven't ever gotten to that point I used to get to, where I felt this incredible urgency to write and was going to pop if I didn't get a chance to. I blame my neurologist.
Many of you know that I have been seeing a terrific headache specialist since October. Despite some ups and downs, and some failed medication experiments, and some tweaking, I can tell you that the results have been hardly less than miraculous. After trying a couple of things that didn't help, he put me on Effexor--it's an anti-depressant, but has been very effective at treating Chronic Daily Headache as well. Well, for me, not only has it dramatically improved my headaches, but the anti-depressant part of it has eliminated Psycho Screamer Mom from my PMS (I might get a little bit cranky these days) and also made me more cheerful than I ever knew was possible. I mean, it's more than just not being anxious. It's being basically happy. I've never been a basically cheerful person; I've always tended to be kind of melancholy. This happy thing is really wonderful. I had no idea life could be like this.
It's also true that I am tremendously busy. I tend to be on the go all day long these days, between the house and errands and homeschooling and keeping the Tiny Tornado from setting things on fire. And then, once we get the kids to bed in the evening, I just want my down time. I settle into The Big Chair and read, or sometimes watch TV (if I can pry the remote out of David's hands--he takes his downtime at night by playing video games). Lately, since I took up amigurumi a couple of weeks ago, I might listen to an audiobook while I crochet. So, no urgency to write, no time to write: no writing. Except that I miss it. And I think it's pretty important in my life. And I have a book project in mind that I want to do something with--I've wanted to write a book since I was, what, 3? 4? And no matter how good my life is otherwise (and it is very good), I'm going to regret it on my death bed if I never do it. Even if it's a bad book. Even if no one ever reads it.
So, I decided that in May I would commit to writing 750 words every day. Not necessarily project-related words. Just words. Just practicing. Just seeing what writing might be like in this new time in my life when I am in so much less pain than I ever have been before in my adult life, and so much less driven by anxiety. I suppose it's a good sign that I felt like getting started a day early.
But what shall I write about today?
One thing that has been heavy on my mind is that Word Boy is struggling with anxiety and perfectionism. None of us is exactly the most flexible or resilient of people (except the Tiny Tornado, who swam in from outside our gene pool), and Word Boy has hit a rough patch. He doesn't like questions that don't have right answers; he gets upset if he doesn't understand his math the moment he looks at the page; an art curriculum that gave him open-ended "try this!" assignments reduced him to panic attacks. His perfectionism cripples him; he has practically no problem-solving skills because he's so afraid of getting the wrong answer; he worries so much about making other people happy that it is like pulling teeth to get him to say what he wants.
At least we're past the roughest stage, when he was having anxiety attacks that lasted for hours at a time. Now his "fits," as we call them, during which he breathes rapidly and his whole body shudders, are usually quite short. The improvement has been primarily because of behavioral interventions--to the extent that he can control these things, we have encouraged him to control them, by sending him out of the room to get himself together, say, or simply flogging him along to whatever needs to be done--I remember at the Midwinter Gathering in February, he started to have a fit about going to childcare (which he loved! So, what the heck with the fit?) and I pretty much pushed him down the hall to the childcare room, where he pulled himself together within a couple of minutes of my leaving him, and went on to have a great afternoon. If I'd engaged with him, we could have been stuck all afternoon.
So, now he still has multiple fits per day, at unpredictable intervals, but they're usually short. Still, we'd rather see even fewer of them, and, more importantly, I'd like to see some progress on the cognitive side of things: improvements in his perfectionism, improvements in his problem-solving skills, improvement in his resiliency when faced with minor setbacks.
I don't quite know how to get that. We were seeing an excellent therapist, but by his own admission Word Boy's problems were outside his area of expertise--he was super-good on the specific behavioral stuff (witness the complete extinction of The Lego Savant's elevator phobia, for instance) but completely lost when it came to sussing out the underlying mental issues and helping the kids deal with them. I am looking for someone else--there is a therapist I heard of on the west side of the state who specializes in anxiety in gifted kids, and I'm going to at least ask her for a consultation or a referral. She's probably too far away to work with regularly, but hopefully she's willing to be a resource. Maybe she'd even be willing to consult with Word Boy's old therapist--with whom he has great rapport, and who is willing to educate himself.
The gifted thing matters. I used to think it didn't, and I felt that one advantage of homeschooling was that I didn't have to worry about whether my kids fit some criterion for "giftedness" or not. I have, or at least did have when I was younger, a whole array of issues related to being identified as a gifted kid, and the services I did, and did not, receive, and I have been glad to avoid having to navigate that for them within a school system. I also have dormant issues around academic achievement and hoped that by homeschooling I could avoid re-awakening them, and avoid passing them on to my children.
But the pattern of Word Boy's perfectionism and anxiety is a classic pattern for gifted kids. So I find myself seeking out information on raising gifted kids. Less of it is useful than I had hoped, and it brings me into contact (so far, only virtually) with a lot of parents who are interested in doing competitive bragging and arguing about whether each other's kids are truly gifted.
Somewhere out there have to be parents and teachers and therapists who have helped kids navigate this as well as it can be navigated. I met one parent just last weekend, a friend-of-a-friend whose kids are grown now but who recognized exactly the kinds of issues we're dealing with, and I glommed onto her like a drowning woman. When she had pried my frantic arms from around her neck and gotten her breath back, she said sure, she'd be glad to talk to me about this stuff. So that's one resource, and a very important one. But I need more. I didn't get effective treatment for my anxiety until I was in my late 20s, and I want to do better by my smart, sweet, splendid children. And I want support for me and David--so we know that we're doing the best we can.
And now--on to all that I've been neglecting: the dishes, the kids, the laundry, my shower, the homeschooling. We are doing a science experiment with radish seedlings and they need to have something done every single day, so there's no slacking on that (I called it "The Tyranny of the Radish Curriculum" and my friend Margaret said, "That right there is a chapter title." So I wrote it down.) Tomorrow: the Tiny Tornado wants a boy swim suit.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
2011 Reading Report Part 1
It's January first, so I can tally up my 2011 reading. I expected to find that it had been pretty light this year--it feels like for most of December I didn't even have a book going. I told David, "I've read all the books!" I just haven't happened across anything that grabbed my attention.
Still, I read quite a bit: 230 books in all. Last year I read 201. Both of these numbers are down from all the other years since 2006, when I started my nifty little spreadsheet. I had been reading around 300 books a year. I guess I've been slacking off since Yehva learned to walk and began requiring constant supervision.
That 230 doesn't count 55 books I started and didn't finish. I sometimes write a very short comment about a book, just a few words, and I find it fun looking at my comments for the books I abandoned: "What a blowhard!" "Nothing new here." "Very interesting but a long article would have sufficed." "Piece of crap." "Such bad writing." "Remembered that I tried to read this before and hated it then, too." "Apparently I was not actually in the mood for a 600-page biography of Ronald Reagan."
I read a lot of genre fiction this year that I didn't give my highest grade to but that I flagged as "recommended"--which usually means, "You'd like it if you like that kind of thing." All of Anne Perry's William Monk mysteries fell into this category (and, yes, I read all 17 of them, in order, because I am like that), as well as Lisa Lutz's hilarious Spellman series, which I highly recommend if you need a frothy something for an afternoon at the beach or next to the fire.
There were also a couple of science fiction books in this category, though I didn't read a lot of sci-fi this year. David and I were talking the other day about the amount of mental energy it can take to get into a meaty science fiction novel, especially the kind where the author drops you into a universe and doesn't explain anything, just leaves you to figure it all out as you go along. The point of our conversation was that neither of us has had the mental energy lately. But I liked Greg Bear's Hull Zero Three, and David and I both liked James Corey's Leviathan Wakes. George R.R. Martin blurbed it as a "kickass space opera," and if there's one thing I like, it's a kickass space opera. I pretty much like anything with people living on icy asteroids in a colonized solar system or in big ships slowly traversing the vast reaches of space.
In non-fiction, I flagged a handful of books that didn't rise to greatness but that I thought were good reads, including Rapture Ready: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, which I found thoughtful and sympathetic and appreciated for its avoidance of the obvious cheap jokes; The End of the Obesity Epidemic, which was surprising in not being polemical but instead takes a careful and soberingly critical look at the biases and assumptions of all sides in the current debate. Not a great book to read if you're looking for someone to validate your own point of view (whatever that might be) but very thought-provoking. And Misreading Masculinity: Boys, Literacy, and Popular Culture was the best book I've read on that topic.
Next I'll tackle the very short list of books I gave my highest rating to. But I slept late this morning and haven't fed the parrots yet, so it will have to wait awhile.
Still, I read quite a bit: 230 books in all. Last year I read 201. Both of these numbers are down from all the other years since 2006, when I started my nifty little spreadsheet. I had been reading around 300 books a year. I guess I've been slacking off since Yehva learned to walk and began requiring constant supervision.
That 230 doesn't count 55 books I started and didn't finish. I sometimes write a very short comment about a book, just a few words, and I find it fun looking at my comments for the books I abandoned: "What a blowhard!" "Nothing new here." "Very interesting but a long article would have sufficed." "Piece of crap." "Such bad writing." "Remembered that I tried to read this before and hated it then, too." "Apparently I was not actually in the mood for a 600-page biography of Ronald Reagan."
I read a lot of genre fiction this year that I didn't give my highest grade to but that I flagged as "recommended"--which usually means, "You'd like it if you like that kind of thing." All of Anne Perry's William Monk mysteries fell into this category (and, yes, I read all 17 of them, in order, because I am like that), as well as Lisa Lutz's hilarious Spellman series, which I highly recommend if you need a frothy something for an afternoon at the beach or next to the fire.
There were also a couple of science fiction books in this category, though I didn't read a lot of sci-fi this year. David and I were talking the other day about the amount of mental energy it can take to get into a meaty science fiction novel, especially the kind where the author drops you into a universe and doesn't explain anything, just leaves you to figure it all out as you go along. The point of our conversation was that neither of us has had the mental energy lately. But I liked Greg Bear's Hull Zero Three, and David and I both liked James Corey's Leviathan Wakes. George R.R. Martin blurbed it as a "kickass space opera," and if there's one thing I like, it's a kickass space opera. I pretty much like anything with people living on icy asteroids in a colonized solar system or in big ships slowly traversing the vast reaches of space.
In non-fiction, I flagged a handful of books that didn't rise to greatness but that I thought were good reads, including Rapture Ready: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, which I found thoughtful and sympathetic and appreciated for its avoidance of the obvious cheap jokes; The End of the Obesity Epidemic, which was surprising in not being polemical but instead takes a careful and soberingly critical look at the biases and assumptions of all sides in the current debate. Not a great book to read if you're looking for someone to validate your own point of view (whatever that might be) but very thought-provoking. And Misreading Masculinity: Boys, Literacy, and Popular Culture was the best book I've read on that topic.
Next I'll tackle the very short list of books I gave my highest rating to. But I slept late this morning and haven't fed the parrots yet, so it will have to wait awhile.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Misreading Masculinity
I recently read the book Misreading Masculinity: Boys, Literacy, and Popular Culture, by Thomas Newkirk. I've read a lot of the current boys-in-peril/misunderstood-boys literature, and this is surely the strongest of the ones I've read.
I don't have time to do a full write-up, and the book is already overdue at the library, so I just want to use this as a placeholder for a few of the quotes from the book that I flagged as I was reading. Here they are:
Why, then, is violent content in classical literature perceived as nonthreatening (even uplifting and humanizing), when the same violent conflict in more popular media is seen as provocative and dangerous? The answer may reside not in the representation of violence, but in the way the audience for that violence is imagined. The reader of classic literature, or someone who rented the incredibly violent movie Titus (a rendition of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus) would be assumed to be part of a nonviolent literate social class who would approach the film with the proper aesthetic distance. There would be no danger of suggestibility in these activities because they would be intelligently mediated by the reader or viewer. No such assumption is made about someone watching a much less graphically violent movie, such as one from the Lethal Weapon series. The nonelite group that chooses to watch the more popular version of violence is perceived as more susceptible to suggestion, less capable of keeping the proper distance, more volatile. All of which leads to the question, Is the issue really about violence, or is it about the social group (and age group) the violence appeals to? (p. 96)
*****
The [research] approach is circular, assuming what is presumes to prove. It is assumed that the children have nothing interesting to say about the visual stimulus--so they aren't asked. The film is treated not as a text that is interpreted by the child, not as something processed in any way. The child is presumed to have virtually no capacity to interpret, to resist or mediate.... In this huge body of work, students were rarely interviewed or allowed to discuss reactions or interpretations--because it was assumed they did not have real interpretations, only reactions to stimuli. (pp. 98-99)
*****
One final problem with traditional research on media violence needs to be noted. Few shows that contain violence are about only violence; most action movies also stress teamwork, loyalty, perseverance, ingenuity, problem solving, stoicism, athletic fitness, courage, and frequently patriotism. The action hero typically has to overcome adversity, failure, and sometimes discouragement at having to face a superior force. If 200,000 exposures to violence cause a person to be violent, does the same number of exposures to teamwork create an ethic of cooperation? Does 200,000 exposures to ingenuity create a desire to be ingenious? Why should one message--that of the acceptability of violence--be the sole effect of these shows when even cartoons are about much more than that? The alarmist claims about the effects of media violence rest on research that reduces complex narratives with multiple messages to simple "stimuli" that work automatically, like a carcinogen, at an unconscious level. Not only is the media narrative reduced; the young viewers too are reduced, to being unconscious reactors with no interpretive responses. (pp. 102-103)
I don't have time to do a full write-up, and the book is already overdue at the library, so I just want to use this as a placeholder for a few of the quotes from the book that I flagged as I was reading. Here they are:
Why, then, is violent content in classical literature perceived as nonthreatening (even uplifting and humanizing), when the same violent conflict in more popular media is seen as provocative and dangerous? The answer may reside not in the representation of violence, but in the way the audience for that violence is imagined. The reader of classic literature, or someone who rented the incredibly violent movie Titus (a rendition of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus) would be assumed to be part of a nonviolent literate social class who would approach the film with the proper aesthetic distance. There would be no danger of suggestibility in these activities because they would be intelligently mediated by the reader or viewer. No such assumption is made about someone watching a much less graphically violent movie, such as one from the Lethal Weapon series. The nonelite group that chooses to watch the more popular version of violence is perceived as more susceptible to suggestion, less capable of keeping the proper distance, more volatile. All of which leads to the question, Is the issue really about violence, or is it about the social group (and age group) the violence appeals to? (p. 96)
*****
The [research] approach is circular, assuming what is presumes to prove. It is assumed that the children have nothing interesting to say about the visual stimulus--so they aren't asked. The film is treated not as a text that is interpreted by the child, not as something processed in any way. The child is presumed to have virtually no capacity to interpret, to resist or mediate.... In this huge body of work, students were rarely interviewed or allowed to discuss reactions or interpretations--because it was assumed they did not have real interpretations, only reactions to stimuli. (pp. 98-99)
*****
One final problem with traditional research on media violence needs to be noted. Few shows that contain violence are about only violence; most action movies also stress teamwork, loyalty, perseverance, ingenuity, problem solving, stoicism, athletic fitness, courage, and frequently patriotism. The action hero typically has to overcome adversity, failure, and sometimes discouragement at having to face a superior force. If 200,000 exposures to violence cause a person to be violent, does the same number of exposures to teamwork create an ethic of cooperation? Does 200,000 exposures to ingenuity create a desire to be ingenious? Why should one message--that of the acceptability of violence--be the sole effect of these shows when even cartoons are about much more than that? The alarmist claims about the effects of media violence rest on research that reduces complex narratives with multiple messages to simple "stimuli" that work automatically, like a carcinogen, at an unconscious level. Not only is the media narrative reduced; the young viewers too are reduced, to being unconscious reactors with no interpretive responses. (pp. 102-103)