So far, my commitment to writing something every day in May has gone well, in that I've managed to do it and here we are at the seventh already. Like all steady writing, it's had its ups and down--some entries haven't quite held together, but I pretty much hit one out of the park on Saturday. Funny how you can never tell--I really thought that one was going to be a rather flat throw-away anecdote, but it came together very nicely.
Every now and then someone asks if they can share a link to my blog on Facebook, or forward an entry to a friend. Good God, people, yes! Imagine how exciting my life would get if my readership rose into the triple digits.
Today, I am short on ideas, so I'm going to dip into my notebook and see if there's anything I can work with...ah, OK. Here's one:
Every night when I get ready for bed, after I have done the usual tooth-brushing and face-washing, I do the following things:
1. I smear a thick ring of Eucerin--the original stuff, with the consistency of paste--around my eyes. I do not attempt to rub it in. It's just like a raccoon's mask, except in white. This is a protective layer to prevent the air vent on my CPAP mask from turning the skin around my eyes into a mess of dried-out, red and scaly lizard skin.
2. I put eye drops in my eyes. Thick eye drops, full of glycerin. They are so thick that they adhere to the surface of my eyes and actually impair my vision. The world begins to look like the dream sequence from a bad TV show. These drops are on the advice of my ophthalmologist, and are to prevent my eyes from drying out when I sleep (here also the air vent on my CPAP mask comes into play). Last fall, I experienced something called "corneal erosion," which is basically your cornea having a hole ripped in it, and it was even more painful than giving birth to Word Boy. It actually made me cry, it hurt so bad, and David had to wake up all three of the children and take me to the ER at 2 in the morning. I do not want to experience this again. Hence, the Eye Drops of +5 Viscosity.
3. I now stumble across the hall to the bedroom, ricocheting off door frames I can barely see. I sit on the edge of the bed and slather my feet with a thick coating of lotion and then put on socks. This is basically like sleeping with your feet tucked into bags of goo, but it has done a remarkable job of rehabilitating the skin on my feet after years of neglect. This summer I hope to wear attention-getting sandals, so it is important to keep up the regimen. Also, should any chivalrously old-fashioned butch woman want to give me an impromptu nurturing foot massage, I mean to be ready for it. (Also, if you see me with a professional pedicure and wonder what in the world would posses a person with chemical sensitivities to spend a long morning at the nail salon, the answer is also: Butch woman, foot massage. Why the flirty dress? Butch woman, foot massage. Why the styling product? Must I spell it out for you? OK: BW,FM.)
4. I put on my CPAP mask. It looks like this. Mine is even more tricked-out though. I have a special blue flannel pad for the forehead support thingy, because I realized about six months ago that what I thought were just age-related forehead lines was actually the permanent hourglass-shaped imprint of my CPAP above my eyebrows. And I have a special fluffy gray headgear to replace the standard blue one, because the edge of the standard blue one was--I kid you not--cutting the back of my neck and making it bleed. So my head is basically wrapped in grey fleece at this point.
5. My hands get very dry, because I wash my hands many times throughout the day and also occasionally wash dishes. So I have recently started to do the bag of goo treatment on my hands as well as on my feet. I slather them thickly with lotion, and then I put socks on my hands.
6. I whack the big ON button on my CPAP machine with one of my thumbless Gumby paws, and it makes a noise like a smallish jet engine starting up.
7. I think, "Boy, I just get sexier every day." And then I scoot the Tiny Tornado out of my spot, lie down and snuggle my teddy bear Cupcake. The Tiny Tornado makes an irritated noise and presses her knees into my kidney. And thus, I sleep.
Monday, May 7, 2012
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Some Pigs are More Equal than Others
A couple of months ago, one of my friends and I were having a Tiny Tornado Appreciation Moment. My friend said, "She's just so special. I mean, all kids are special, right, I just mean...she's really special. Not that all kids aren't special. It's just that..."
I laughed and said, "It's just that some pigs are more equal than others."
I knew what she was struggling to say. It can be hard to say, "this kid is exceptional" without sounding like you're denigrating all the other kids in some way. But I have a couple of thoughts about this kind of thing.
One is that the Tiny Tornado is certainly a forceful and compelling little person. She draws attention wherever she goes. Here's one example: I took 5 kids, ages 11 to 4, to a First Robotics competition. At some point, we decided to leave the bleachers and go do something--eat, or use the bathroom, or whatever. We had to excuse ourselves past a group of 3 sitting by the aisle. The quite attractive 11-year-old said, "Excuse me," and they slid their knees sideways and smiled slightly as he went past. The sturdy and handsome 9-year-old said, "Excuse me," and they nodded at him. The 8-year-old flashed his brilliant smile and said, "Excuse me," and they said, "no problem." The totally adorable and highly verbal 6-year-old said, "Thank you for letting us through," and they said, "You're welcome." The Tiny Tornado stepped forward to take her turn sidling by, and they said, "Oh, my God! He is soooo cute! Hi, sweetheart!" And then to me, as I passed, "What a doll! What a cutie!"
But, the thing is, it's not entirely that the Tiny Tornado is more amazing than those other four kids. It's that somehow she wears her amazingness on the outside, where people seem to see it even if she's not actually doing anything more noteworthy than walking by. It's not just that she's a handsome little person, though she is. It's something less definiable, something charismatic that draws the eye.
And this would make her a very special child except that I know several kids who have this quality as well. One in particular that I, the mother of a charismatic kid, cannot take my eyes off whenever I'm around. It's a good thing I only see this particular child twice a year or so, or I'd be walking into walls and falling over chairs much more often than would be good for me.
It's also, I think, worth noting that public amazingness isn't necessarily better than the more private kind. The Tiny Tornado is always doing and saying things that get her attention; she attracts an audience wherever she goes. Her older brother, the Lego Savant, is especially talented at building things in three dimensions. He can do anything with Lego, hence his name. He made a tiny working crossbow the other day, for instance, and sometimes you can't tell whether something he built is a Lego Savant original or a Lego set, made by following the directions. But he's good with clay, folded paper, and coasters and extra forks in restaurants. Set him down somewhere with nothing particular to do, and something he can pick up and start fiddling with in front of him, and in short order he will have made something of it. He's a relatively introverted kid and doesn't much like being the center of attention, but I can take pictures of the stuff he makes and if I show them around, people say, "Wow. He's really talented."
Word Boy has a special gift for language. He pays close attention to the nuances of words, and since he was very young (2? 3?) has asked questions about why a writer chose this word over that one, or whether a speaker didn't really mean something else. One day last year, at breakfast in a restaurant, I said, "I hope our breakfast comes fast," and he said, "Shouldn't you say you hope breakfast comes soon?" He does this kind of thing twenty times a day. David and I are are always giving each other "did you hear that?" glances over his head. But you're not going to notice that unless you spend a lot of time with him. You're not going to pick up on it just watching him sneak past your knees in the bleachers.
There is a kind of feedback mechanism that happens with the Tiny Tornado, where people are very vocal about how charmed they are, and then she ramps up the charisma to get that attention, which she loves, and then they find her even cuter. Often she does things in public that I wish she wouldn't do--she'll argue back to me, or take matters into her own hands when I've said No about the candy on the shelf, or say something that is both precocious and bratty, as if her lines were written by our sitcom's writing staff--and nearby people will laugh and make goo-goo eyes at her. It makes extinguishing these behaviors extra-challenging. Extra-extra-challenging, since I also find her charming even when she's mischievous, and since she is not exactly easy to extinguish. If behavior were a fire, hers would be one of those chemicals that burns even in the complete absence of oxygen.
What was my point? Oh, that this kind of flashy, lay-it-all-out-there "specialness" is certainly one kind of specialness. But it isn't the only kind, or even necessarily the best kind, and I think it carries its own set of...dangers is too strong a word. But it is not without its drawbacks.
I laughed and said, "It's just that some pigs are more equal than others."
I knew what she was struggling to say. It can be hard to say, "this kid is exceptional" without sounding like you're denigrating all the other kids in some way. But I have a couple of thoughts about this kind of thing.
One is that the Tiny Tornado is certainly a forceful and compelling little person. She draws attention wherever she goes. Here's one example: I took 5 kids, ages 11 to 4, to a First Robotics competition. At some point, we decided to leave the bleachers and go do something--eat, or use the bathroom, or whatever. We had to excuse ourselves past a group of 3 sitting by the aisle. The quite attractive 11-year-old said, "Excuse me," and they slid their knees sideways and smiled slightly as he went past. The sturdy and handsome 9-year-old said, "Excuse me," and they nodded at him. The 8-year-old flashed his brilliant smile and said, "Excuse me," and they said, "no problem." The totally adorable and highly verbal 6-year-old said, "Thank you for letting us through," and they said, "You're welcome." The Tiny Tornado stepped forward to take her turn sidling by, and they said, "Oh, my God! He is soooo cute! Hi, sweetheart!" And then to me, as I passed, "What a doll! What a cutie!"
But, the thing is, it's not entirely that the Tiny Tornado is more amazing than those other four kids. It's that somehow she wears her amazingness on the outside, where people seem to see it even if she's not actually doing anything more noteworthy than walking by. It's not just that she's a handsome little person, though she is. It's something less definiable, something charismatic that draws the eye.
And this would make her a very special child except that I know several kids who have this quality as well. One in particular that I, the mother of a charismatic kid, cannot take my eyes off whenever I'm around. It's a good thing I only see this particular child twice a year or so, or I'd be walking into walls and falling over chairs much more often than would be good for me.
It's also, I think, worth noting that public amazingness isn't necessarily better than the more private kind. The Tiny Tornado is always doing and saying things that get her attention; she attracts an audience wherever she goes. Her older brother, the Lego Savant, is especially talented at building things in three dimensions. He can do anything with Lego, hence his name. He made a tiny working crossbow the other day, for instance, and sometimes you can't tell whether something he built is a Lego Savant original or a Lego set, made by following the directions. But he's good with clay, folded paper, and coasters and extra forks in restaurants. Set him down somewhere with nothing particular to do, and something he can pick up and start fiddling with in front of him, and in short order he will have made something of it. He's a relatively introverted kid and doesn't much like being the center of attention, but I can take pictures of the stuff he makes and if I show them around, people say, "Wow. He's really talented."
Word Boy has a special gift for language. He pays close attention to the nuances of words, and since he was very young (2? 3?) has asked questions about why a writer chose this word over that one, or whether a speaker didn't really mean something else. One day last year, at breakfast in a restaurant, I said, "I hope our breakfast comes fast," and he said, "Shouldn't you say you hope breakfast comes soon?" He does this kind of thing twenty times a day. David and I are are always giving each other "did you hear that?" glances over his head. But you're not going to notice that unless you spend a lot of time with him. You're not going to pick up on it just watching him sneak past your knees in the bleachers.
There is a kind of feedback mechanism that happens with the Tiny Tornado, where people are very vocal about how charmed they are, and then she ramps up the charisma to get that attention, which she loves, and then they find her even cuter. Often she does things in public that I wish she wouldn't do--she'll argue back to me, or take matters into her own hands when I've said No about the candy on the shelf, or say something that is both precocious and bratty, as if her lines were written by our sitcom's writing staff--and nearby people will laugh and make goo-goo eyes at her. It makes extinguishing these behaviors extra-challenging. Extra-extra-challenging, since I also find her charming even when she's mischievous, and since she is not exactly easy to extinguish. If behavior were a fire, hers would be one of those chemicals that burns even in the complete absence of oxygen.
What was my point? Oh, that this kind of flashy, lay-it-all-out-there "specialness" is certainly one kind of specialness. But it isn't the only kind, or even necessarily the best kind, and I think it carries its own set of...dangers is too strong a word. But it is not without its drawbacks.
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Portrait of a Marriage by the Light of the Microwave
So, when I go to the Festival of Faith & Writing, I drive back and forth between home and Grand Rapids. It's about a 75 minute drive, cheaper than a hotel, and I listen to music or an audio book and generally enjoy myself. One night during the most recent festival in April, I get home late, just as Raider is getting ready to go to bed. I can see how tired he is, how ready he is to sleep. But he also wants to hear about my day, so he follows me into the kitchen to listen to me chatter as I pack the next day's lunch.
I discover that the hoagie rolls are frozen, so I wrap one in a paper towel and pop it into the microwave to thaw. Raider watches me as I press a few beeping buttons and then START.
We are facing each other, and I see his eyes cast sideways at the microwave and then come back to rest on me. Very quick. Hardly noticeable. You would not have noticed it. But I have shared my life with this man for almost 19 years, and I see that glance, and I know what that glance means. It means that I have not microwave-thawed my hoagie roll in the way that he would have done it. He suspects that his way is better. Therefore, he has advice to give me on the subject of microwaving hoagie rolls.
He has also shared his life with me for almost 19 years. He know that I do not want to hear the advice he has to give me. He knows that after starving children, persistent urban and rural poverty, and wanton environmental destruction, there is almost nothing I hate more than unsolicited advice.
He has a habit, this person I love, of making little suggestions about the way I do things. He likes to walk into the kitchen while I'm cooking and stir my sauce, or center the pan more perfectly on the burner. In the car, he wonders why I don't take Service Rd. to Trowbridge and get on 496 instead of going down Okemos Rd. to 96, since the Service Rd. route is just that little bit quicker--he knows, because he has timed it. And so on.
Someday, when he is dead, I will remember his habit of helpful suggestions. I will miss it. I will stand in the kitchen unpacking the groceries and weep because there is no one there to point out that I bought the wrong kind of salsa, or to ask whether I chose the tortillas I did because the store was out of the "good kind."
But, in the meantime, it just drives me nuts.
So. He feels the urge. It is strong, this urge. An instinctive drive, like the one that makes the butterflies migrate or the mother bear protect her cubs. The primal urge to say something to me about the choices I make--the poor choices I make--in hoagie roll thawing. But he knows I don't want him to say it. I am watching him feel the urge. He is watching me watch him. We can both feel the force of it. There is tension in the air; it crackles between us. He is fighting the urge as the seconds tick down on the microwave's timer.
The urge cannot be defeated. He speaks. "Are you familiar," he says carefully, "with the auto-defrost feature?"
"I am," I reply as formally as a witness in Federal court. "I use it quite often."
"Ah," he says.
There is a pause. The microwave's hum is the only sound in the room.
"I really missed you today at the conference," I say. He starts to smile; he knows what's coming. "You are so easy to love at a distance."
And then we're both laughing. And then we are in each other's arms.
I discover that the hoagie rolls are frozen, so I wrap one in a paper towel and pop it into the microwave to thaw. Raider watches me as I press a few beeping buttons and then START.
We are facing each other, and I see his eyes cast sideways at the microwave and then come back to rest on me. Very quick. Hardly noticeable. You would not have noticed it. But I have shared my life with this man for almost 19 years, and I see that glance, and I know what that glance means. It means that I have not microwave-thawed my hoagie roll in the way that he would have done it. He suspects that his way is better. Therefore, he has advice to give me on the subject of microwaving hoagie rolls.
He has also shared his life with me for almost 19 years. He know that I do not want to hear the advice he has to give me. He knows that after starving children, persistent urban and rural poverty, and wanton environmental destruction, there is almost nothing I hate more than unsolicited advice.
He has a habit, this person I love, of making little suggestions about the way I do things. He likes to walk into the kitchen while I'm cooking and stir my sauce, or center the pan more perfectly on the burner. In the car, he wonders why I don't take Service Rd. to Trowbridge and get on 496 instead of going down Okemos Rd. to 96, since the Service Rd. route is just that little bit quicker--he knows, because he has timed it. And so on.
Someday, when he is dead, I will remember his habit of helpful suggestions. I will miss it. I will stand in the kitchen unpacking the groceries and weep because there is no one there to point out that I bought the wrong kind of salsa, or to ask whether I chose the tortillas I did because the store was out of the "good kind."
But, in the meantime, it just drives me nuts.
So. He feels the urge. It is strong, this urge. An instinctive drive, like the one that makes the butterflies migrate or the mother bear protect her cubs. The primal urge to say something to me about the choices I make--the poor choices I make--in hoagie roll thawing. But he knows I don't want him to say it. I am watching him feel the urge. He is watching me watch him. We can both feel the force of it. There is tension in the air; it crackles between us. He is fighting the urge as the seconds tick down on the microwave's timer.
The urge cannot be defeated. He speaks. "Are you familiar," he says carefully, "with the auto-defrost feature?"
"I am," I reply as formally as a witness in Federal court. "I use it quite often."
"Ah," he says.
There is a pause. The microwave's hum is the only sound in the room.
"I really missed you today at the conference," I say. He starts to smile; he knows what's coming. "You are so easy to love at a distance."
And then we're both laughing. And then we are in each other's arms.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Unchurched: Six Months On
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.
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.
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.