I woke up this morning thinking about my friend Farina Endfen, certainly because of our plans to have lunch today. But I think about her a lot, with great admiration for the work she does. Farina is a Physician Assistant in a prison in Ohio.
Before she made a mid-life career change to be a PA, she was a medical social worker. She worked in a hospital in Detroit, on a unit for closed-head injuries. Many of the patients had been gunshot. At least once, they had two patients at the same time who were members of rival gangs, and when their friends came to visit them things could be...tense. One of her jobs was finding people long-term placements when their time in the brain injury rehab unit ended. All the social workers knew that people's options were limited, and that they sometimes--often?--placed people into substandard facilities because there were no other options. But they would keep looking, hoping to find something better.
Except, it seemed to Farina, that in staff meetings to discuss case dispositions, her boss was more inclined to encourage the social workers to keep looking if the patient was white, and more likely to encourage them to make a quick and easy placement into a bad facility if the patient was black. So she said so. And then she started refusing to disclose her patients' race during these meetings.
Because that is the kind of thing she does.
She worked as a social worker in a community health center, and, after earning her second master's and becoming a PA, in the worst hospital in Detroit. Resources were scarce, there were more patients than beds, and many of her patients were gun shot victims or addicts, some of them with septic wounds from injecting with dirty needles, some of them with assorted diseases and injuries, and some of them just drug-seeking.
One of the things I've always respected about her is that she has always worked with poor people, with addicts, with criminals, and it's not that she doesn't judge so much as she is able to maintain her sense of these folks as human beings. Even when a drug-seeking addict is trying to manipulate her into giving him drugs, she still feels compassion. And on the occasions when they succeed--like when a patient at the prison clinic got her to write a Vicodin prescription for him and then was seen playing basketball in the yard an hour or so later--she doesn't take it too hard. She figures they don't get past her too often.
She likes some things about her work at the prison. One benefit of working with underserved populations is that she has more independence as a PA than she would have elsewhere. She gets to diagnose, for instance, which she likes. And she gets to do lots of minor surgical procedures, which she loves and is good at, in part because the guys at the prison get lots of boils and infected toenails (which she is terrific at removing, but whatever you do don't let her describe the process, and for God's sake don't let her show you the pictures). They also get lots of wounds that need to be stitched up, and while she doesn't like it that they go around poking each other with sharpened things, she does a great job fixing them up.
She likes being able to say to me, "Hey, wanna see what I took out of a guy today?" and pull a bullet out of her pocket. She has a whole collections of bullets she's taken out of people. Over months or years they work their way near to the surface, or into an uncomfortable place, and if one is bugging a guy, she'll remove it for him.
Other things, she doesn't like so much. She hates the bureaucratic stupidity that bans anything that could be a potential weapon, but then issues heavy padlocks to the prisoners. A padlock in a sock, it turns out, makes a great bludgeon and leaves a very distinctive crescent-shaped would. Farina has treated many of these wounds.
She doesn't mind the murderers, she says. And, while she can spot a domestic abuser right away because of their transparent attempts to dominate her space, she can hold her own with them. What she has more and more trouble dealing with are the child molesters and rapists. I remember she had one guy, a rapist if I remember correctly, brought to her with a broken leg. All she had to do was relieve his pain and stabilize him for transport to the ER. She didn't want to. She didn't want to relieve his pain. She didn't want to handle his leg in the least painful way possible.
She did it. She made herself do it. But she didn't want to.
A few months ago she had a patient who had drowned his two toddlers in the bathtub, not all that long ago. Uncharacteristically, she asked the corrections officer who accompanied him to come into the exam room--usually they wait outside. "Scared of this guy, huh?" the officer said to her. "No," Farina said. "I'm afraid if someone else isn't in there I won't behave appropriately."
Usually the patients are well-behaved with her. She has something they want, she says, and she treats them well. Indeed, she has a reputation among the prisoners for being competent and respectful. She's been at the prison a few years now, and the rotating staff of doctors have one important thing in common: they are all incompetent. More than once she has resolved a patient's long-term problem by making a diagnosis that, she says, is "first-year med school stuff," but which had been missed for months or even years. But the doctors just don't look at the patients enough. They just don't care enough. And they just don't know enough.
One day, on her way out of work, a prisoner called from the yard to thank her for arranging for his transport to the nearby city hospital for a test he needed. But when would he get his results? he asked. "Oh, you're scheduled with Dr. So-and-so on Monday, he'll take care of you," she answered. The man said, "He'll see me, but we all know it's you who takes care of us."
One patient did grab her breast one time. She stepped back, yelled, and pushed her panic button. Nearby staff, hearing her yell, also pushed their panic buttons. This shuts the whole prison down: the officers get the prisoners back to their cells, a little squadron comes on the trot to where the button was pushed. The prisoner ends up in solitary.
It's not funny, of course. But she was getting ready to remove a growth on his neck at the time. I can't help wondering how stupid or desperate you need to be to grope a woman who is literally bending over you with a scalpel to your throat.
All of this is old news. Farina's been telling me these stories all along, usually with a good dose of gallows humor. But a month or two ago, we were out to dinner with an old friend who was passing through town, and in response to some of his questions, she got talking about dealing with rapes.
The corrections officers, she says, collude so as not to witness rape. The staff on the night shift see nothing and hear nothing. All rape victims are found in their cells by the morning staff. The assumption is that there was a fight, and both parties are treated as potential perpetrators until there can be a hearing, usually after a week or more. In the meantime, they're brought to the clinic in shackles and then kept in isolation until the hearing.
If Farina is on staff that morning, she will treat the victim on-site. This means examining him in shackles, with an officer present, and doing any treatment she needs to--stitches, for instance, are common--under those conditions as well. But the benefit of treating them there instead of transporting them to the hospital is that she knows she will do a good job of stitching, and she will be as compassionate as she can be, and she won't add to their trauma by being abusive.
The corrections officers, she says, are exactly as the stereotypes would lead you to expect. They are ignorant, brutal, racist, and homophobic. But it behooves her to cultivate good relationships with them. She does this by treating minor wounds, and by writing them antibiotic prescriptions for the STDs they routinely acquire.
She keeps a careful mental tally of just how high her standing is with the officers. "If it's high enough," she says, "once in awhile I can ask for something that will make things easier for a rape victim. I can get his shackles removed for his exam, or I can get the officer to step outside so he can tell me honestly what happened, or I can just show him more sympathy when he cries than the officers would normally let me get away with."
"How often do you deal with this?" I asked.
She said, "Two or three times a week." Two or three days a week she comes into work and examines a shackled and brutalized rape victim who will then be put into isolation for a week or more. Once in awhile, if she writes enough antibiotic prescriptions for a bunch of guys who don't know enough to wear a condom, if she ignores enough racial slurs and homophobic cracks over enough days and weeks, she can take this little pellet of goodwill she has earned and spend it to make that exam just a tiny bit less terrible.
She can do nothing, she says, for the gay prisoners, for the trans prisoners. The culture is too toxic; there is not enough goodwill in the world. There is a crack she can pry open just a hair so she can get this prisoner a CT scan, or that prisoner a better diagnosis and appropriate treatment for a leg injury, or the shackles taken off one rape victim in, what, 20? 30? But the homophobia is an impenetrable wall.
She's going to leave the prison before too long. I hope so, anyway. I'd like to see her working in a nice clean well-stocked suburban clinic, treating, oh, poison ivy and splinters, doing punch biopsies on suspicious moles and stitching up the cuts people get trying to open cans of cat food. Where nobody gets shivved, and she doesn't have to carry a panic button in her pocket or be searched on the way into work, and rape is not part of her daily life. She has done her share, and more. She deserves the easy job now.
But I'll be sorry, too, just like I was when she left the addicts and drug-seekers and gunshot victims in Detroit. Because it so often looks to me like she is the last line of defense between these people and the complete inhumanity of the institutions they are trapped in. She is the last human in their lives, because she is the only one who sees their humanity.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Infant Piety, A Cheetah-Colored Bird, and the Pirate Wench
1.
Raider ViaDude and I took five kids to a Renaissance Festival today: our three, and two brothers who are friends of the Lego Savant and Word Boy. When we arrived in Marshall, where the festival was being held, the weather was cold and rainy. Needing lunch in any case, we decided to forego fast food in favor of a leisurely meal at what was called Win Schuler's back in the day, a nice steak place in a historic hotel.
The five kids were very well-behaved in the restaurant, placing their orders clearly and politely, thanking the server, getting loud only at infrequent intervals. They discussed books (the older four, anyway) and drew pictures while we waited for our food. Our 9-year-old friend, who I'll call The Explainer, was so pleased with his meal that he left his own tip, out of his spending money, in addition to mine.
At the end of the meal, the kids were getting restless, so Raider took them outside while I waited for our check. When the server brought it, she said to me, "Wow, five boys! And all so well-behaved."
I was tempted, for just a moment, to bask in her praise, but I fessed up to some of the kids just being with us for the day.
When I caught up with the rest of the group, I told them what the server had said. Our 12-year-old friend, who I'll call The Armorer because he makes the most wonderfully accurate shields, helmets, breastplates, and so on out of cardboard and whatever bits and pieces are lying around, said, "When we get comments like that, our mom rewards us."
The Lego Savant said, "You know what my reward is when I hear about a comment like that? Just getting the comment. Just knowing someone said it."
Which was very sweet, but brought instantly to mind this favorite passage from Jane Eyre:
(Our long lunch served us well, by the way. We came out to a pleasantly cool overcast, and the sun didn't come out and start baking things until we were just about ready to leave the festival anyway.)
2.
I have heard of musical prodigies, and math prodigies, and chess prodigies. But it had never occurred to me there could be bird-watching prodigies until one showed up in my own family. The Tiny Tornado keeps a close eye on the birds at our birdfeeders, and is often the first one to spot a new bird. When she does, she loves to tell us about it, and she is very good at describing them. Often we can then find them in our bird book.
The other night, Raider was out doing errands, and the Tiny Tornado told me excitedly, "I saw a new bird! It had a reddish head and (patting her belly) was colored like a cheetah."
I had no idea what she was talking about, and although we checked our book and both the Sibley and Peterson iPad apps, she and I couldn't find her bird.
Raider got home and saw the bird book sitting on the table. "Did somebody look up a bird?" he asked.
"We tried to," I said. "The Tornado saw a new bird but we couldn't find it. She said it had a reddish head and was colored like a cheetah."
Raider said excitedly, "A Northern Flicker! What a wonderful description!"
I give you The Red-Headed Cheetah-Colored Bird:
3.
This year, I promised myself, I would get "garb" for the Ren Fests. There is a seamstress on etsy who I was going to have make me a beautiful medieval surcoat. But today I impulsively bought a red leather tricorn hat, which will not go with the surcoat at all no matter how much I pretend not to care about historical authenticity. In fact, it pretty much locks me into Pirate/Wench looks. Not that I'm opposed to that. It just means I'm back to square one in my shopping.
I told Raider, "We did great today. Except for our extravagant lunch and my $50 hat, we stuck right to our budget for the day!"
Word Boy bought a skunk skull from the guy at the fur booth. I knew as soon as I saw the skulls that he would want one, and be transported with joy from it. And so it was.
The Lego Savant wants garb, too. Mostly he wants a cloak, though if he could have a whole shirts/pants/bow with quiver/cloak thing he'd have the whole Ranger's Apprentice look going, which is what he wants:
This month, as I've been posting almost daily, my pageviews have more than doubled--easy to do when the numbers start out so small. Several people have let me know how much they like my blog, or a particular post.
I love getting these comments. But I also like having readers, so next time you like something, tell me if you must, but I'd be grateful if you'd also tell a friend.
Raider ViaDude and I took five kids to a Renaissance Festival today: our three, and two brothers who are friends of the Lego Savant and Word Boy. When we arrived in Marshall, where the festival was being held, the weather was cold and rainy. Needing lunch in any case, we decided to forego fast food in favor of a leisurely meal at what was called Win Schuler's back in the day, a nice steak place in a historic hotel.
The five kids were very well-behaved in the restaurant, placing their orders clearly and politely, thanking the server, getting loud only at infrequent intervals. They discussed books (the older four, anyway) and drew pictures while we waited for our food. Our 9-year-old friend, who I'll call The Explainer, was so pleased with his meal that he left his own tip, out of his spending money, in addition to mine.
At the end of the meal, the kids were getting restless, so Raider took them outside while I waited for our check. When the server brought it, she said to me, "Wow, five boys! And all so well-behaved."
I was tempted, for just a moment, to bask in her praise, but I fessed up to some of the kids just being with us for the day.
When I caught up with the rest of the group, I told them what the server had said. Our 12-year-old friend, who I'll call The Armorer because he makes the most wonderfully accurate shields, helmets, breastplates, and so on out of cardboard and whatever bits and pieces are lying around, said, "When we get comments like that, our mom rewards us."
The Lego Savant said, "You know what my reward is when I hear about a comment like that? Just getting the comment. Just knowing someone said it."
Which was very sweet, but brought instantly to mind this favorite passage from Jane Eyre:
“Do you say your prayers night and morning?” continued my interrogator.The Lego Savant earned his second gingerbread-nut today. And I'm just glad he was with homeschoolers and not on a public school playground, or he'd surely have been walloped.
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you read your Bible?”
“Sometimes.”
“With pleasure? Are you fond of it?”
“I like Revelations, and the book of Daniel, and Genesis, and Samuel, and a little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings, and Chronicles, and Job and Jonah.”
“And the Psalms? I hope you like them?”
“No, sir.”
“No? oh, shocking! I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows six Psalms by heart: and when you ask him which he would rather have, a gingerbread-nut to eat, or a verse of a Psalm to learn, he says: ‘Oh! the verse of a Psalm! angels sing Psalms,’ says he; ‘I wish to be a little angel here below;’ he then gets two nuts in recompense for his infant piety.”
“Psalms are not interesting,” I remarked.
(Our long lunch served us well, by the way. We came out to a pleasantly cool overcast, and the sun didn't come out and start baking things until we were just about ready to leave the festival anyway.)
2.
I have heard of musical prodigies, and math prodigies, and chess prodigies. But it had never occurred to me there could be bird-watching prodigies until one showed up in my own family. The Tiny Tornado keeps a close eye on the birds at our birdfeeders, and is often the first one to spot a new bird. When she does, she loves to tell us about it, and she is very good at describing them. Often we can then find them in our bird book.
The other night, Raider was out doing errands, and the Tiny Tornado told me excitedly, "I saw a new bird! It had a reddish head and (patting her belly) was colored like a cheetah."
I had no idea what she was talking about, and although we checked our book and both the Sibley and Peterson iPad apps, she and I couldn't find her bird.
Raider got home and saw the bird book sitting on the table. "Did somebody look up a bird?" he asked.
"We tried to," I said. "The Tornado saw a new bird but we couldn't find it. She said it had a reddish head and was colored like a cheetah."
Raider said excitedly, "A Northern Flicker! What a wonderful description!"
I give you The Red-Headed Cheetah-Colored Bird:
3.
This year, I promised myself, I would get "garb" for the Ren Fests. There is a seamstress on etsy who I was going to have make me a beautiful medieval surcoat. But today I impulsively bought a red leather tricorn hat, which will not go with the surcoat at all no matter how much I pretend not to care about historical authenticity. In fact, it pretty much locks me into Pirate/Wench looks. Not that I'm opposed to that. It just means I'm back to square one in my shopping.
I told Raider, "We did great today. Except for our extravagant lunch and my $50 hat, we stuck right to our budget for the day!"
Word Boy bought a skunk skull from the guy at the fur booth. I knew as soon as I saw the skulls that he would want one, and be transported with joy from it. And so it was.
The Lego Savant wants garb, too. Mostly he wants a cloak, though if he could have a whole shirts/pants/bow with quiver/cloak thing he'd have the whole Ranger's Apprentice look going, which is what he wants:
This month, as I've been posting almost daily, my pageviews have more than doubled--easy to do when the numbers start out so small. Several people have let me know how much they like my blog, or a particular post.
I love getting these comments. But I also like having readers, so next time you like something, tell me if you must, but I'd be grateful if you'd also tell a friend.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
The Post-Preschool Experiment, Day 1: Report of Subject #1
My captors have isolated me with a tiny humanoid. It looks innocent--indeed, its appearance evokes in me a kind of atavistic instinct to nurture and protect it. It seems in all ways like living flesh but I think it must be a construct of some kind as no living thing could be so indefatigable and relentless. It has recently gone into some kind of resting mode; perhaps I will have an opportunity to examine it more closely, though its resting platform is guarded by two beasts, small furry creatures it calls "dogs," which, though small, make ferocious noises and are possessed of fangs.
I do not know how long the resting mode will last. I must write quickly.
I have learned that when the tiny humanoid utters the nonsense syllable "mom," it is seeking my attention. Using this attention-seeking strategy, which becomes louder and evolves into the two-syllable "mommy" if I do not respond quickly enough, it issues contradictory requests and disconnected pronouncements at intervals of approximately 6-10 seconds at all times when not in resting mode. I am obligated to respond to these requests although it is not possible to fulfill them all. I do my best to comply although I am exhausted by the effort.
I do not know what the tiny humanoid is capable of; I fear its punishment. Sometimes it arms itself.
And it is a master of disguise.
It seems to have an "argumentation" subroutine installed which leads it to reject every proposal I make or proposition I utter. Its programming is clearly sophisticated, yet a bug in its code causes it to misunderstand the word "no" or any other negative response as permission to proceed. My only respite comes when it turns its attention to the other beings that share our enclosure, these "dogs." They do not speak but also demand my attention and care, as do some minute caged creatures the tiny humanoid refers to as "hamsters." In addition to the other challenges I face, I must protect these creatures from the tiny humanoid's depredations.
I do not know what purpose my torment serves: amusement for some hidden observer? some scientific purpose? punishment? I only know I must endure. Perhaps someday I may return to the life I knew before. Dreamlike and half-remembered, it nonetheless gives me hope. In the meantime, I ingest vast quantities of a stimulating sugary beverage with which the food cooling unit is stocked, and visit the personal hygeine cubicle as often as possible. There I may gain a few precious seconds of peace before my tiny tormentor tracks me down. The sound of its voice calling "mom" from the other side of the door fills me with dread. What will it ask of me next?
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Reality Television, Baader-Meinhof, & More About Memoir
Until recently, I had never watched a reality TV show. It's not that I'm above bad TV; there is some bad TV I love. But I never have much time for watching TV, and I didn't think reality TV was likely to be my thing. I find it excruciating to watch people be awkward or embarrassed (this is part of why I also rarely watch sitcoms). I assumed that reality television would have a lot of that kind of thing, and that it would be tacky and stupid and full of people being mean to each other.
Recently, though, it occurred to me that I had let this whole cultural phenomenon pass me by, and so, sometimes, late at night, when there's nothing else on, I have been dipping into reality TV. I've watched 10 minutes of Hoarders, 7 minutes of Dance Moms, and as much as 5 minutes of several other shows. Usually that's all I can handle, because it's pretty much exactly like I imagined.
Last night, though, I watched an entire episode of Toddlers & Tiaras. And I might watch another one sometime. It was exactly like I imagined it, and yet...I kind of liked it.
My thoughts on Toddlers & Tiaras:
1. One of the moms named her daughter after the calamari she craved during her pregnancy.
2. Was that one mom really that nasty, or was she playing it up to get screen time?
3. I thought the mom who worked as a wrestling "ring girl" and raised extra money by putting out a sexy calendar of herself was actually quite awesome.
4. I was amused by the winking-at-the-audience way the show undercut the moms' claims about their daughters. "The thing is, Destiny is just a star! She absolutely sparkles!" Cut to Destiny, slumped against a wall, finger shoved up her nose to the second knuckle. Or: "Camari loves doing pageants. She has a total understanding of what it is, more like a 6 or 7 or 8 year old would, she's so mature, and this is just absolutely where she wants to be." Cut to montage of Camari's assorted tantrums as her mom tries to get her to practice her moves, tries to get her into the makeup chair, tries to get her dress on her.
5. The biggest prize you can win in any given pageant is a thousand-dollar savings bond, yet one mom said she had spent over $30,000 on pageants in the last two years, and another one admitted that she had maxed out the family's "emergency" credit card on pageant stuff.
6. The biggest surprise for me was that I thought these kids would actually be talented. I mean, I thought they'd be precocious little hoofers, a whole generation of Shirley Temples. But they were pretty much like any 2- or 3-year-old you've ever met. Their moms usually went on stage with them and pushed them around like little rhinestone-bespackled sacks of meat during the "beauty" portion, and during the "disco" portion, when they were supposed to dance, they usually stood around blankly until their moms, signaling from behind the judges or standing on-stage prompting with whispers, reminded them to do their "moves." Their "moves" were a handful of gestures their mothers had taught them--blowing a kiss, doing a John Travolta disco point, shaking their chubby little hips, putting their hands under their chins and batting their eyelashes--which they did at more-or-less random intervals and which were universally unnatural-looking and somewhat disturbing.
7. The show followed three girls, but there were quick-cut montages of the other contestants. I really wanted to know more about the boy doing the disco bit.
8. One of the girls had a white ring around her mouth because she wouldn't take her pacifier out when she was getting her spray tan.
9. I really missed an opportunity not getting the Tiny Tornado in on this.
Speaking of the Tiny Tornado, a friend posted this to my Facebook wall:
On the one hand, it's perfect. On the other hand, it makes me feel that I could have been more creative in coming up with a pseudonym for her. Who knew "tiny tornado" was a cliche?
Or it's the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
So, two days ago I wrote a little stub about memoir and the tension between Art and Relationships. Hit a dead end in the writing, and I still don't have a place for it to go. But I do want to say a bit about the possibilities.
What got me thinking about this issue is that I attended a panel of memoirists at the Festival of Faith & Writing last month, and this question came up. The panelists were asked about how they handled writing about real people, how they dealt with the possibility that what they wrote would hurt someone's feelings, violate their privacy, make them angry. What made me sit up and take notice was that all of the writers on the panel gave priority to their relationships over their writing. They came at this question with an underlying premise--"relationships should be respected" that was the opposite of the one I was acculturated to, "your art is the most important thing."
So each of them had developed strategies for preserving their relationships. One gave her manuscript to people and asked for feedback about how she had written about them, though she reserved to herself the right to make final decisions. Another actually gave some people veto power, though she was an extreme outlier. Many made specific changes to protect people's identities, creating composite characters or putting one person's words into another's mouth. One woman gave a single character all the thoughtless and hurtful things her friends said to her after her daughter was born with Down Syndrome, for instance.
One writer made such dramatic changes to people and situations that I thought she had crossed a line and was no longer writing memoir. For instance, she took a conversation she'd heard two adults have and, in order to disguise their identities, put it into the mouths of two imaginary children on a playground. To me, inventing characters and settings wholesale is fiction.
I was interested, though, to hear them say that much of this was pointless anyway. One writer, after carefully disguising someone, was surprised that everyone figured out who she was anyway (though she refused to confirm their guesses). Another got her brother-in-law's approval for her book, but after it was published he told her that it was different actually having it out there rather than just reading the manuscript, and there were things he regretted allowing her to include.
The other piece of all this is that I feel quite differently about this issue than I did when I was young. I have, in recent years, even found myself relieved that certain pieces were never published, or at least never published in any place my family might happen upon, because they would have hurt my mother, and right now in my my life, I don't want to hurt my mother.
I know people who remain estranged from their families of origin, and for good reason. But I also know many people whose relationships with their families have evolved. I'm one. My parents, for instance, are never going to match up with the picture of ideal parents I have in my mind. But over the years, I've learned to do a better job of taking them as they are; they may not express love in the ways that I craved as a child, but as an adult I can see the ways that they do express it. Despite their failings, I've become very fond of them--not just loving them in the automatic way that children love their parents, but fond of them. I like seeing them. I enjoy spending time with them. I respect them--my mother in particular was an extraordinary young woman who made her own way in the world at age 16 with purpose and intent and discipline.
I have a friend whose childhood was undeniably bad. But she has a pretty good relationship with her father these days. She says, "The thing is, he's a much better parent of grown children than he was of young children." These things are complicated and they change as we change.
As a middle-aged person, I am glad that I didn't recklessly burn any bridges during that young adult time of feeling that my parents had failed me in every possible way. Because my parents, love them as I do, are not the kind of people to get over that kind of thing.
I still have to wrestle with these issues. I am a writer, and the thing I write about most often is my life. This means that if you are in my life, even briefly, I will almost certainly write about you. Sometimes people like this--if I spend time with your kids, I will probably write something about your kids, probably privately, and sometimes I send a collection of what I've written to the parents and they think it's great. On the other hand, sometimes I mention something that seems innocuous to me and it hurts someone's feelings. Or I think I'm being funny and the humor doesn't come through, and they're offended. No one has stopped being my friend because of this, but I know that some of my friends--I'm thinking of one in particular--have a love/hate relationship with my tendency to write about them.
And there are a few things I absolutely long to write about and can't because David doesn't want me to. He is a very private person and is remarkably patient with my tendency to hang our laundry out to dry--indeed, he loves my writing and is my biggest fan--so I try to respect those few things around which he has drawn a line. I try. And I almost always succeed.
Recently, though, it occurred to me that I had let this whole cultural phenomenon pass me by, and so, sometimes, late at night, when there's nothing else on, I have been dipping into reality TV. I've watched 10 minutes of Hoarders, 7 minutes of Dance Moms, and as much as 5 minutes of several other shows. Usually that's all I can handle, because it's pretty much exactly like I imagined.
Last night, though, I watched an entire episode of Toddlers & Tiaras. And I might watch another one sometime. It was exactly like I imagined it, and yet...I kind of liked it.
My thoughts on Toddlers & Tiaras:
1. One of the moms named her daughter after the calamari she craved during her pregnancy.
2. Was that one mom really that nasty, or was she playing it up to get screen time?
3. I thought the mom who worked as a wrestling "ring girl" and raised extra money by putting out a sexy calendar of herself was actually quite awesome.
4. I was amused by the winking-at-the-audience way the show undercut the moms' claims about their daughters. "The thing is, Destiny is just a star! She absolutely sparkles!" Cut to Destiny, slumped against a wall, finger shoved up her nose to the second knuckle. Or: "Camari loves doing pageants. She has a total understanding of what it is, more like a 6 or 7 or 8 year old would, she's so mature, and this is just absolutely where she wants to be." Cut to montage of Camari's assorted tantrums as her mom tries to get her to practice her moves, tries to get her into the makeup chair, tries to get her dress on her.
5. The biggest prize you can win in any given pageant is a thousand-dollar savings bond, yet one mom said she had spent over $30,000 on pageants in the last two years, and another one admitted that she had maxed out the family's "emergency" credit card on pageant stuff.
6. The biggest surprise for me was that I thought these kids would actually be talented. I mean, I thought they'd be precocious little hoofers, a whole generation of Shirley Temples. But they were pretty much like any 2- or 3-year-old you've ever met. Their moms usually went on stage with them and pushed them around like little rhinestone-bespackled sacks of meat during the "beauty" portion, and during the "disco" portion, when they were supposed to dance, they usually stood around blankly until their moms, signaling from behind the judges or standing on-stage prompting with whispers, reminded them to do their "moves." Their "moves" were a handful of gestures their mothers had taught them--blowing a kiss, doing a John Travolta disco point, shaking their chubby little hips, putting their hands under their chins and batting their eyelashes--which they did at more-or-less random intervals and which were universally unnatural-looking and somewhat disturbing.
7. The show followed three girls, but there were quick-cut montages of the other contestants. I really wanted to know more about the boy doing the disco bit.
8. One of the girls had a white ring around her mouth because she wouldn't take her pacifier out when she was getting her spray tan.
9. I really missed an opportunity not getting the Tiny Tornado in on this.
Speaking of the Tiny Tornado, a friend posted this to my Facebook wall:
On the one hand, it's perfect. On the other hand, it makes me feel that I could have been more creative in coming up with a pseudonym for her. Who knew "tiny tornado" was a cliche?
Or it's the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
So, two days ago I wrote a little stub about memoir and the tension between Art and Relationships. Hit a dead end in the writing, and I still don't have a place for it to go. But I do want to say a bit about the possibilities.
What got me thinking about this issue is that I attended a panel of memoirists at the Festival of Faith & Writing last month, and this question came up. The panelists were asked about how they handled writing about real people, how they dealt with the possibility that what they wrote would hurt someone's feelings, violate their privacy, make them angry. What made me sit up and take notice was that all of the writers on the panel gave priority to their relationships over their writing. They came at this question with an underlying premise--"relationships should be respected" that was the opposite of the one I was acculturated to, "your art is the most important thing."
So each of them had developed strategies for preserving their relationships. One gave her manuscript to people and asked for feedback about how she had written about them, though she reserved to herself the right to make final decisions. Another actually gave some people veto power, though she was an extreme outlier. Many made specific changes to protect people's identities, creating composite characters or putting one person's words into another's mouth. One woman gave a single character all the thoughtless and hurtful things her friends said to her after her daughter was born with Down Syndrome, for instance.
One writer made such dramatic changes to people and situations that I thought she had crossed a line and was no longer writing memoir. For instance, she took a conversation she'd heard two adults have and, in order to disguise their identities, put it into the mouths of two imaginary children on a playground. To me, inventing characters and settings wholesale is fiction.
I was interested, though, to hear them say that much of this was pointless anyway. One writer, after carefully disguising someone, was surprised that everyone figured out who she was anyway (though she refused to confirm their guesses). Another got her brother-in-law's approval for her book, but after it was published he told her that it was different actually having it out there rather than just reading the manuscript, and there were things he regretted allowing her to include.
The other piece of all this is that I feel quite differently about this issue than I did when I was young. I have, in recent years, even found myself relieved that certain pieces were never published, or at least never published in any place my family might happen upon, because they would have hurt my mother, and right now in my my life, I don't want to hurt my mother.
I know people who remain estranged from their families of origin, and for good reason. But I also know many people whose relationships with their families have evolved. I'm one. My parents, for instance, are never going to match up with the picture of ideal parents I have in my mind. But over the years, I've learned to do a better job of taking them as they are; they may not express love in the ways that I craved as a child, but as an adult I can see the ways that they do express it. Despite their failings, I've become very fond of them--not just loving them in the automatic way that children love their parents, but fond of them. I like seeing them. I enjoy spending time with them. I respect them--my mother in particular was an extraordinary young woman who made her own way in the world at age 16 with purpose and intent and discipline.
I have a friend whose childhood was undeniably bad. But she has a pretty good relationship with her father these days. She says, "The thing is, he's a much better parent of grown children than he was of young children." These things are complicated and they change as we change.
As a middle-aged person, I am glad that I didn't recklessly burn any bridges during that young adult time of feeling that my parents had failed me in every possible way. Because my parents, love them as I do, are not the kind of people to get over that kind of thing.
I still have to wrestle with these issues. I am a writer, and the thing I write about most often is my life. This means that if you are in my life, even briefly, I will almost certainly write about you. Sometimes people like this--if I spend time with your kids, I will probably write something about your kids, probably privately, and sometimes I send a collection of what I've written to the parents and they think it's great. On the other hand, sometimes I mention something that seems innocuous to me and it hurts someone's feelings. Or I think I'm being funny and the humor doesn't come through, and they're offended. No one has stopped being my friend because of this, but I know that some of my friends--I'm thinking of one in particular--have a love/hate relationship with my tendency to write about them.
And there are a few things I absolutely long to write about and can't because David doesn't want me to. He is a very private person and is remarkably patient with my tendency to hang our laundry out to dry--indeed, he loves my writing and is my biggest fan--so I try to respect those few things around which he has drawn a line. I try. And I almost always succeed.
Monday, May 21, 2012
What It Was Like When We Were Young & Took Ourselves Way Too Seriously
As a quick aside, I'll mention that I am at the discouraged stage of learning to crochet amigurumi. A month ago, when I started, I was just thrilled to be able to do it at all, and if things came out a little lopsided, well, I didn't mind. Now I am ambitious. I really wanted the Tiny Tornado's hamster to come out well, and it...didn't. (Not that she minds.) I'm disappointed. This is the part where it's hard to stick with it until my skills catch up with my higher ambition.
And now, our feature attraction:
Years ago, when I was a Serious Writer hanging out with many other Serious Writers, I participated in many conversations about what responsibility, if any, a writer had to the people she wrote about in memoir or poetry. In my MFA program, at OutWrite (the Gay & Lesbian Writers' Conference I attended for many years), in casual coffee-shop conversations, we talked about it. And talked about it.
Being queer and feminist, we saw the writing we did about our own lives as important. We were always "breaking silence." People were writing about child abuse, sexual abuse, rape, harassment. About childhood crushes, same-sex experimentation, the hidden homosexuals in our family tree. One year during my MFA program, I swear half the class showed up with stories about their grandmothers' abortions.
All of this felt very meaningful. We saw ourselves as the inheritors of the second-wave feminists of the 60s and 70s, of the wild energy that drove the crowd at Stonewall. We thought it was an act of courage to write honestly about women's lives, about lesbians' lives, about children's lives. We thought it mattered to tell these stories. We thought it mattered to us, as we made sense of our lives and grew into our work. We thought it mattered to the broader culture, which had simply chosen to ignore a great deal for a long time and needed a reckoning. We thought it mattered to other women, to other lesbians, to girls and boys who didn't have words for their experiences, and who didn't know they weren't alone. In many ways, we were late to the party: second-wave feminism's mad ferment was already starting to die down, and Stonewall's 20th anniversary had come and gone. But we felt like we were part of it.
On the other hand, we didn't see much reason to be loyal to the people we might write about: mom, dad, the great-uncle with the roving hands, the drunken grandpa, the big brother or cousin who had much to say on the subject of dykes and faggots. My first lover's father sent out word on the family grapevine that he knew we were lesbians and he wasn't upset about it and nothing bad would happen, he just wanted her to be honest with him. So she was, and he suddenly realized he could no longer afford to pay her college tuition or help with living expenses. My own parents responded to my coming-out letter by not saying a word about it (the letter, or the topic) for a good fifteen years. I had one friend who'd been institutionalized as a teen for being bisexual. My David, an only child, lost both his parents in the same year, and was attacked by his uncle for bringing his same-sex partner--who had lived with his parents and cared for them in their illnesses--to his own mother's funeral.
In the realm of bad things that happen to people who are queer, most of our complaints were small. But we were connected, through our broader community, to people much worse things had happened to, were still happening to. We were just old enough to have been a part of the AIDS crisis; we'd seen The Normal Heart in Greenwich Village, we'd volunteered with Gay Men's Health Crisis, we'd viewed The Quilt at the March on Washington in 1987, and stood silent and tearful in front of the panels of friends and acquaintances and loved ones. Sometimes they were panels we'd sewn. We felt--even us lesbians--like we were part of a community that was under attack in a time of grief.
My point is, that when anyone asked whether what we were writing and publishing and reading out loud might hurt someone, we tended to say, "Who cares?" If we were accused of abandoning all family loyalty, well, for the most part they abandoned us first.
When I started writing this, I knew where I wanted to go. But I can't get there from here. I can't seem to get anyplace else, either. I've been banging my head against it for the better part of the afternoon, while the laundry molders and the children run amok. I give up. I didn't want to write a whiny rant; I wanted to start with this thing I'd been thinking about Art v. Relationships and take it someplace more nuanced and thoughtful. But the Muse laughs!
So, I'll just leave this here. Maybe something more will come of it sometime. Or maybe not. Sometimes all you get is a fragment.
And now, our feature attraction:
Years ago, when I was a Serious Writer hanging out with many other Serious Writers, I participated in many conversations about what responsibility, if any, a writer had to the people she wrote about in memoir or poetry. In my MFA program, at OutWrite (the Gay & Lesbian Writers' Conference I attended for many years), in casual coffee-shop conversations, we talked about it. And talked about it.
Being queer and feminist, we saw the writing we did about our own lives as important. We were always "breaking silence." People were writing about child abuse, sexual abuse, rape, harassment. About childhood crushes, same-sex experimentation, the hidden homosexuals in our family tree. One year during my MFA program, I swear half the class showed up with stories about their grandmothers' abortions.
All of this felt very meaningful. We saw ourselves as the inheritors of the second-wave feminists of the 60s and 70s, of the wild energy that drove the crowd at Stonewall. We thought it was an act of courage to write honestly about women's lives, about lesbians' lives, about children's lives. We thought it mattered to tell these stories. We thought it mattered to us, as we made sense of our lives and grew into our work. We thought it mattered to the broader culture, which had simply chosen to ignore a great deal for a long time and needed a reckoning. We thought it mattered to other women, to other lesbians, to girls and boys who didn't have words for their experiences, and who didn't know they weren't alone. In many ways, we were late to the party: second-wave feminism's mad ferment was already starting to die down, and Stonewall's 20th anniversary had come and gone. But we felt like we were part of it.
On the other hand, we didn't see much reason to be loyal to the people we might write about: mom, dad, the great-uncle with the roving hands, the drunken grandpa, the big brother or cousin who had much to say on the subject of dykes and faggots. My first lover's father sent out word on the family grapevine that he knew we were lesbians and he wasn't upset about it and nothing bad would happen, he just wanted her to be honest with him. So she was, and he suddenly realized he could no longer afford to pay her college tuition or help with living expenses. My own parents responded to my coming-out letter by not saying a word about it (the letter, or the topic) for a good fifteen years. I had one friend who'd been institutionalized as a teen for being bisexual. My David, an only child, lost both his parents in the same year, and was attacked by his uncle for bringing his same-sex partner--who had lived with his parents and cared for them in their illnesses--to his own mother's funeral.
In the realm of bad things that happen to people who are queer, most of our complaints were small. But we were connected, through our broader community, to people much worse things had happened to, were still happening to. We were just old enough to have been a part of the AIDS crisis; we'd seen The Normal Heart in Greenwich Village, we'd volunteered with Gay Men's Health Crisis, we'd viewed The Quilt at the March on Washington in 1987, and stood silent and tearful in front of the panels of friends and acquaintances and loved ones. Sometimes they were panels we'd sewn. We felt--even us lesbians--like we were part of a community that was under attack in a time of grief.
My point is, that when anyone asked whether what we were writing and publishing and reading out loud might hurt someone, we tended to say, "Who cares?" If we were accused of abandoning all family loyalty, well, for the most part they abandoned us first.
When I started writing this, I knew where I wanted to go. But I can't get there from here. I can't seem to get anyplace else, either. I've been banging my head against it for the better part of the afternoon, while the laundry molders and the children run amok. I give up. I didn't want to write a whiny rant; I wanted to start with this thing I'd been thinking about Art v. Relationships and take it someplace more nuanced and thoughtful. But the Muse laughs!
So, I'll just leave this here. Maybe something more will come of it sometime. Or maybe not. Sometimes all you get is a fragment.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
When You Are Trying to Write Every Day, They Can't All Be Gems
From 1990 to 1993, I worked for Lesbian Connection--I was an Ambitious Amazon, which means something in certain circles.
For tens of thousands of women, LC was a place to have conversations, to discuss issues, to learn about events and books and musicians. Pre-internet, it was a lifeline for women in rural communities, and for those just thinking about coming out. We used to get subscription requests from women who also had men's names on their checks, and we'd make a note of that with their info. Sometimes, six months or a year later, we'd get a change of address and a donation from a new checking account, with just her name on it. Or her name and the name of another woman. Once we got a letter asking us to discontinue a subscription from one of these women; she was the mother of a lesbian who had subscribed for awhile as a way to understand her daughter's life and community better. She wrote us a nice thank-you note and sent another check.
We got most of our new subscribers by signing women up at music festivals. We'd get a table in the crafts area and sit there saying, "Hi, do you get Lesbian Connection?" to every woman who walked by. Since subscriptions were free, we signed up lots of women. Some of them would drop off the list a year later, but many of them would become donors. I think LC might be the most successful business ever to operate on a "give it away free" model. No woman was obligated to pay anything to have a subscription, ever, but the magazine was so valuable to subscribers that many women did donate, and generously. Because it was free, we reached a lot of young women, poor women, women in temporary financial trouble as they came out. Many of these women became donors as the years passed.
When I worked at LC, we not only made a halfway decent wage (which was the same for everyone), but we had pretty good health insurance and a very modest retirement plan.
Although our subscription database was computerized by the time I began to work at LC, we maintained the archaic index-card system the original Amazons had started with. I wonder when, and if, they ever stopped doing that? I used to see it as a tremendous waste of time, creating and updating all those cards by hand every time someone subscribed or unsubscribed or moved. At the same time, though, I imagined those hundreds of thousands of index cards as a rich data source for some future scholar trying to understand the lesbian community of the time.
Each woman's index card had her name on it, of course, and a six-digit code made out of her name and address. This is where we also wrote notes like, "man's name on check." When a woman sent us a change of address, we made her a new card, and on the new card we also included her past zip codes. So it might say:
Su Penn
326 Livingston Ave.
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
old: 48103, 48107, 48430
And then, on her old card, we'd write on the edge: "Moved to 08901, 5/15/87."
The old card would go into the old card room, and the new card would stay in the active file once its info had been entered into the database.
With a little time and effort, you could, if you wanted to, trace a woman's movements and relationships. Two women might move in together, and their cards would merge. Two years later, their cards unmerge again, and we could tell you not only that one of them moved in with someone new, but which one got to keep the house. We could tell you that so-and-so's relationships usually lasted about three years. We could tell you every address a woman had lived at for the last 15 years.
Of course, by "a little time and effort" I mean "an extraordinary amount of both."
If you could somehow aggregate all the info on all those cards, you could have a remarkable picture of lesbian mobility and the pattern of lesbian relationships during the time the Amazons maintained the index card system (perhaps right up to today! I left LC almost 20 years ago, but the Amazons were a very slow-to-change kind of people). I still imagine some archivist someday sitting down to this incredibly daunting task and making an extraordinarily rich study out of it.
That was a digression, and not what I planned to write about. But I'm too far in to write about what I meant to. If this was an essay I was grading, I'd be writing, "Intro too long, get to the point!" in the margin.
*thinks a bit, hums a little tune, taps fingers on desk*
OK.I find I can't stick with the "when I worked at LC" theme because I have nothing else to say about it just now. And I can't move on to the other thing because it really needs its own post. So, hmmm.
Well, many of you have heard me say this before, but working at LC led directly to me working at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. I had only been to festival once as a "camper" when I started the job, and for the next four summers I went to Michigan--and to the National Women's Music Festival, and to Rhythmfest (the one where Melissa Etheridge always made a "surprise" appearance on the night stage, where she would spend the evening being coy about whether she was a lesbian or not--ah, the old days!), and to the Ohio Lesbian Festival, and the National Lesbian Conference...
You would probably not be surprised that many of the big performers at these festivals were the same in any given year. Jamie Anderson hits what passes for big in the world of women's music, or The Washington Sisters come out with a new album, and they get booked everywhere. You might be more surprised to learn that many of the women in the crafts area, and even a surprising number of the women who are giving workshops for free, are also making the circuit.
I finished up my time at LC by working Michigan in 1993. By this time, I had seen every singer/songwriter many many times; I'd browsed the crafts area until I knew every labrys earring and every tiny crocheted crystal pouch and every double-womoom-symbol coffee mug; I'd drummed, learned to read Tarot cards, and engaged in serious discussions about whether straight women really existed. I could not imagine keeping myself occupied at Michigan as a camper.
Also, I was spoiled. When you're a craftswoman, you come in the day before the festival starts, and you get to drive your car onto the land to unload. I found the prospect of having to unload in the parking area, take one of the festival shuttles in, and then carry all my stuff into the woods enervating.
So I applied to work. And I did, for the next 5 or 6 years. It feels like more, because I loved working at festival and it was a very important part of my life, but my first year must have been 94, and my last year on crew was 2000, about a month before I got pregnant with the Lego Savant.
I didn't know I wouldn't be back. The worker area was full of dirty half-naked little kids, and I expected mine to be among them. But when I was ready to go back, in 2002, the festival had enacted some austerity measures. When I was working, moms of young children worked reduced shifts, and the worker camp had its own childcare area. This was eliminated as the festival got smaller. Moms were expected to work a full shift, and child care was integrated with the general childcare for campers. I could not imagine working a 9-10 hour shift while being responsible for a toddler in my off hours, nor did I think the Lego Savant would do well away from me for so long. (Also, he didn't like to get dirty.)
So I didn't go back.
I did take the kids a few years ago. The boys loved Brother Sun, the boys' camp, and the Tiny Tornado and I wandered around the land. I found that I am still not all that interested in the music, the crafts, or the workshop. I still love the festival. I just don't want to be a camper.
For some reason, I was thinking about this yesterday and realized that there is no good reason the Tiny Tornado and I can't go next year. I wouldn't be able to work my favorite crew, Security, because it does 24-hour shifts. But there are lots of other options. And the Tiny Tornado will not mind being away from me in childcare, and she will not mind being dirty, and she will love sleeping with me in a tent. I only wish I had thought of it for this year.
For tens of thousands of women, LC was a place to have conversations, to discuss issues, to learn about events and books and musicians. Pre-internet, it was a lifeline for women in rural communities, and for those just thinking about coming out. We used to get subscription requests from women who also had men's names on their checks, and we'd make a note of that with their info. Sometimes, six months or a year later, we'd get a change of address and a donation from a new checking account, with just her name on it. Or her name and the name of another woman. Once we got a letter asking us to discontinue a subscription from one of these women; she was the mother of a lesbian who had subscribed for awhile as a way to understand her daughter's life and community better. She wrote us a nice thank-you note and sent another check.
We got most of our new subscribers by signing women up at music festivals. We'd get a table in the crafts area and sit there saying, "Hi, do you get Lesbian Connection?" to every woman who walked by. Since subscriptions were free, we signed up lots of women. Some of them would drop off the list a year later, but many of them would become donors. I think LC might be the most successful business ever to operate on a "give it away free" model. No woman was obligated to pay anything to have a subscription, ever, but the magazine was so valuable to subscribers that many women did donate, and generously. Because it was free, we reached a lot of young women, poor women, women in temporary financial trouble as they came out. Many of these women became donors as the years passed.
When I worked at LC, we not only made a halfway decent wage (which was the same for everyone), but we had pretty good health insurance and a very modest retirement plan.
Although our subscription database was computerized by the time I began to work at LC, we maintained the archaic index-card system the original Amazons had started with. I wonder when, and if, they ever stopped doing that? I used to see it as a tremendous waste of time, creating and updating all those cards by hand every time someone subscribed or unsubscribed or moved. At the same time, though, I imagined those hundreds of thousands of index cards as a rich data source for some future scholar trying to understand the lesbian community of the time.
Each woman's index card had her name on it, of course, and a six-digit code made out of her name and address. This is where we also wrote notes like, "man's name on check." When a woman sent us a change of address, we made her a new card, and on the new card we also included her past zip codes. So it might say:
Su Penn
326 Livingston Ave.
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
old: 48103, 48107, 48430
And then, on her old card, we'd write on the edge: "Moved to 08901, 5/15/87."
The old card would go into the old card room, and the new card would stay in the active file once its info had been entered into the database.
With a little time and effort, you could, if you wanted to, trace a woman's movements and relationships. Two women might move in together, and their cards would merge. Two years later, their cards unmerge again, and we could tell you not only that one of them moved in with someone new, but which one got to keep the house. We could tell you that so-and-so's relationships usually lasted about three years. We could tell you every address a woman had lived at for the last 15 years.
Of course, by "a little time and effort" I mean "an extraordinary amount of both."
If you could somehow aggregate all the info on all those cards, you could have a remarkable picture of lesbian mobility and the pattern of lesbian relationships during the time the Amazons maintained the index card system (perhaps right up to today! I left LC almost 20 years ago, but the Amazons were a very slow-to-change kind of people). I still imagine some archivist someday sitting down to this incredibly daunting task and making an extraordinarily rich study out of it.
That was a digression, and not what I planned to write about. But I'm too far in to write about what I meant to. If this was an essay I was grading, I'd be writing, "Intro too long, get to the point!" in the margin.
*thinks a bit, hums a little tune, taps fingers on desk*
OK.I find I can't stick with the "when I worked at LC" theme because I have nothing else to say about it just now. And I can't move on to the other thing because it really needs its own post. So, hmmm.
Well, many of you have heard me say this before, but working at LC led directly to me working at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. I had only been to festival once as a "camper" when I started the job, and for the next four summers I went to Michigan--and to the National Women's Music Festival, and to Rhythmfest (the one where Melissa Etheridge always made a "surprise" appearance on the night stage, where she would spend the evening being coy about whether she was a lesbian or not--ah, the old days!), and to the Ohio Lesbian Festival, and the National Lesbian Conference...
You would probably not be surprised that many of the big performers at these festivals were the same in any given year. Jamie Anderson hits what passes for big in the world of women's music, or The Washington Sisters come out with a new album, and they get booked everywhere. You might be more surprised to learn that many of the women in the crafts area, and even a surprising number of the women who are giving workshops for free, are also making the circuit.
I finished up my time at LC by working Michigan in 1993. By this time, I had seen every singer/songwriter many many times; I'd browsed the crafts area until I knew every labrys earring and every tiny crocheted crystal pouch and every double-womoom-symbol coffee mug; I'd drummed, learned to read Tarot cards, and engaged in serious discussions about whether straight women really existed. I could not imagine keeping myself occupied at Michigan as a camper.
Also, I was spoiled. When you're a craftswoman, you come in the day before the festival starts, and you get to drive your car onto the land to unload. I found the prospect of having to unload in the parking area, take one of the festival shuttles in, and then carry all my stuff into the woods enervating.
So I applied to work. And I did, for the next 5 or 6 years. It feels like more, because I loved working at festival and it was a very important part of my life, but my first year must have been 94, and my last year on crew was 2000, about a month before I got pregnant with the Lego Savant.
I didn't know I wouldn't be back. The worker area was full of dirty half-naked little kids, and I expected mine to be among them. But when I was ready to go back, in 2002, the festival had enacted some austerity measures. When I was working, moms of young children worked reduced shifts, and the worker camp had its own childcare area. This was eliminated as the festival got smaller. Moms were expected to work a full shift, and child care was integrated with the general childcare for campers. I could not imagine working a 9-10 hour shift while being responsible for a toddler in my off hours, nor did I think the Lego Savant would do well away from me for so long. (Also, he didn't like to get dirty.)
So I didn't go back.
I did take the kids a few years ago. The boys loved Brother Sun, the boys' camp, and the Tiny Tornado and I wandered around the land. I found that I am still not all that interested in the music, the crafts, or the workshop. I still love the festival. I just don't want to be a camper.
For some reason, I was thinking about this yesterday and realized that there is no good reason the Tiny Tornado and I can't go next year. I wouldn't be able to work my favorite crew, Security, because it does 24-hour shifts. But there are lots of other options. And the Tiny Tornado will not mind being away from me in childcare, and she will not mind being dirty, and she will love sleeping with me in a tent. I only wish I had thought of it for this year.
Friday, May 18, 2012
The Awakening: A Coming Out Story in Pictures
Last night at our homeschool group's curriculum sharing night/7-hour chatfest, a friend I hadn't seen in awhile said, "Su, you look fabulous!"
And I thought, "Yes, I do."
This morning I had the idea of doing a blog post about how sometimes I look at old pictures of myself, and I am lovely, but when I think about what I thought about myself at the time, it breaks my heart. I was going to put up a picture like this one of me at 22:
And I was going to say: Look at this attractive young woman. She is packing up to leave the land after her first Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, and this unposed shot was taken by a friend. She is smiling out of the frame at her lover at the time (whom you may know as my friend Farina Endfen from some recent blog posts). She looks happy, relaxed, fit, and lovely. She has a charming, easy smile and, apparently, dimples, although this photo is too low-quality for you to be able to see them.
However, this is what she thinks of herself: she thinks that she is grossly fat. She thinks that certain unfortunate features of her physical appearance--her eyebrows, her nose, her high forehead, and her facial hair, to name only a few--mean that she is not, and never will be, pretty. Although she has never had any trouble finding either romantic or sexual partners, she is convinced that each person who expresses an interest in her in this way has been so charmed by her intelligence, her wit, and her bubbly personality that it has overcome their, what? Revulsion is too strong a word...so is distaste. Ah, let us say, their indifference to her physical appearance. It has never occurred to her that someone might be attracted to her because of her physical appearance, or that those who enjoy her bubbliness and wit and intelligence might also sometimes just enjoy looking at her.
I was going to go on to say that one of the many reasons that this, right now, is the best time of my life is that I feel very good in my body, and I look good in my body, and I know it. (Do I have any pictures? No. The only person who takes pictures of me is the Tiny Tornado, and they are usually pictures of my butt. But maybe I can get David to take some this weekend.)
I was thinking of doing a series of these: here I am at 16. Adorable! Yet self-hating. Again at 23. Again at 30. And so on. Until the thrilling conclusion: Here I am at 46, happier in my body than I have ever been before. Even though I am also, without a doubt, actually fat and not just imagining that I am. Who'd have predicted that?
The first box of photos I found covered only the years from my high school graduation at age 17 through my First Grad School Foray, which ended 6 years later. And as I flipped through these albums, I saw a different story being told: "My Gay Boyfriends: Seriously, How Could We Not Have Known, Just Look at These Photos."
But that's not the only story, and it's not the one I'm telling today. This is the one I'm telling today:
Until I was 20, in almost every picture taken of me, I am crossing my arms. Whether I am on a sailboat in San Diego Harbor with my dad's cousin Barbara or coming down the dunes with my cousins or getting my picture taken with Grandma Irene before we leave for the airport, my arms are crossed over my stomach:
If I can't cross my arms, I fold up on myself and look away from the camera:
In those last two shots, I am 17 and on a bike trip with my cousin Marion, who is 57. She's on the glider there with me, in the red tank top, looking completely at ease and gazing cheerfully and directly into the camera. The young woman on the glider drinking a Dr. Pepper is an amazing physical specimen. She can ride her bike 60 miles in a day, set up camp, and then hop back on to go exploring, riding another 10 or 20 miles before bed. Her bulging thighs and calves are like granite. But she believes herself to be basically an unfit and sedentary person, because she is so often harassed for the time she spends sitting around reading, and because she does not play any sports or do anything "athletic." She does her best to hide when the camera comes out, because even though she is in the middle of pedaling her bike over 700 miles across the state of Michigan and then up the western shore to the UP, she is ashamed of her body.
This is only a sampling of the pictures like this I could show you. But then, one day, something changes:
[Side note: In this picture, you can see my son the Lego Savant, who won't be born for another 16 years, squinting into the camera with me.]
Let me tell you the story of this picture:
I am 19. I am transferring to the University of Michigan, and they have assigned me a roommate. I get a letter that tells me that my roommate's name is, well, let's call her Muffy Lou. At this time in my life, I am hanging out with punk rockers a lot, though you can tell from this picture that I am not, myself, actually a punk rocker. I am not happy at the thought of rooming with a preppy. And Muffy Lou sounds like the ultimate preppy name.
A couple of days later, I get a phone call from someone who identifies herself as Louie and says she is my roommate for the fall. I say, "I'm confused, my letter said Muffy Lou." "Oh, yeah," she says, "that's my name but nobody actually calls me that. I think we should meet."
So we do. That picture is of us meeting. She's not home when I arrive at her house, and her mom shows me to the rec room in the basement. After a couple of minutes, I hear the door open and that woman in the picture comes down the stairs. Blonde hair, plaid skirt, oxford shirt, sweater on a chain: Muffy Lou. The preppy personified.
Then she whips off the wig.
In this picture, I think that I am not just squinting into the sun but perhaps also not as OK with this practical joke as I am pretending to be. You can see that Louie does not have my problem with body image--Look at how she stands, hands on hips! Look at that smile! Look at that direct gaze! She is tough, good-humored, smart, playful, self-confident, outgoing. She has a little bow-legged swagger and boundless physical energy. After this picture is taken, she will change into regular clothes and then barbecue seafood for me on the beach.
It is August. By the time I turn 20, on October 13, we will be lovers.
This is the last picture of me with my arms crossed over my stomach. After I come out, my pictures start looking like this:
And this:
And this:
And, for heaven's sake, this:
[My cat Susie Sienkiewicz, may she rest in peace, chewed a bite out of that one.]
It's not that all my body image issues are magically resolved. I doubt they ever will be, not completely. I would be a much better person than I actually am to live as a fat woman in our culture and have no issues at all with how I look and how much I weigh. But you can see that something happens. And it's not just sex--I'd had sex before, with men. Some of whom turned out to not actually be gay, even. It's something else. Something complicated about finally understanding why, for all those years growing up, I felt I didn't fit in but didn't know why; and about Lou liking to look at me and me figuring that out after awhile (why else do I have all these pictures of myself?); and about love; and about it just being very exciting to be a young lesbian in the late 80s.
p.s. In case you are wondering what Lou looks like under that wig, here we are a couple of years later:
We're Facebook friends now. She looks exactly like that but 100 times better--one of those women who starts out cute and just gets better with age. I am happy about every good thing in her life, because she was one of the good things in mine.
(Also, these pictures look crappy because I don't own a scanner, so I just took pictures of them with my camera. I hope they're good enough to make my point.)
And I thought, "Yes, I do."
This morning I had the idea of doing a blog post about how sometimes I look at old pictures of myself, and I am lovely, but when I think about what I thought about myself at the time, it breaks my heart. I was going to put up a picture like this one of me at 22:
And I was going to say: Look at this attractive young woman. She is packing up to leave the land after her first Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, and this unposed shot was taken by a friend. She is smiling out of the frame at her lover at the time (whom you may know as my friend Farina Endfen from some recent blog posts). She looks happy, relaxed, fit, and lovely. She has a charming, easy smile and, apparently, dimples, although this photo is too low-quality for you to be able to see them.
However, this is what she thinks of herself: she thinks that she is grossly fat. She thinks that certain unfortunate features of her physical appearance--her eyebrows, her nose, her high forehead, and her facial hair, to name only a few--mean that she is not, and never will be, pretty. Although she has never had any trouble finding either romantic or sexual partners, she is convinced that each person who expresses an interest in her in this way has been so charmed by her intelligence, her wit, and her bubbly personality that it has overcome their, what? Revulsion is too strong a word...so is distaste. Ah, let us say, their indifference to her physical appearance. It has never occurred to her that someone might be attracted to her because of her physical appearance, or that those who enjoy her bubbliness and wit and intelligence might also sometimes just enjoy looking at her.
I was going to go on to say that one of the many reasons that this, right now, is the best time of my life is that I feel very good in my body, and I look good in my body, and I know it. (Do I have any pictures? No. The only person who takes pictures of me is the Tiny Tornado, and they are usually pictures of my butt. But maybe I can get David to take some this weekend.)
I was thinking of doing a series of these: here I am at 16. Adorable! Yet self-hating. Again at 23. Again at 30. And so on. Until the thrilling conclusion: Here I am at 46, happier in my body than I have ever been before. Even though I am also, without a doubt, actually fat and not just imagining that I am. Who'd have predicted that?
The first box of photos I found covered only the years from my high school graduation at age 17 through my First Grad School Foray, which ended 6 years later. And as I flipped through these albums, I saw a different story being told: "My Gay Boyfriends: Seriously, How Could We Not Have Known, Just Look at These Photos."
But that's not the only story, and it's not the one I'm telling today. This is the one I'm telling today:
Until I was 20, in almost every picture taken of me, I am crossing my arms. Whether I am on a sailboat in San Diego Harbor with my dad's cousin Barbara or coming down the dunes with my cousins or getting my picture taken with Grandma Irene before we leave for the airport, my arms are crossed over my stomach:
If I can't cross my arms, I fold up on myself and look away from the camera:
In those last two shots, I am 17 and on a bike trip with my cousin Marion, who is 57. She's on the glider there with me, in the red tank top, looking completely at ease and gazing cheerfully and directly into the camera. The young woman on the glider drinking a Dr. Pepper is an amazing physical specimen. She can ride her bike 60 miles in a day, set up camp, and then hop back on to go exploring, riding another 10 or 20 miles before bed. Her bulging thighs and calves are like granite. But she believes herself to be basically an unfit and sedentary person, because she is so often harassed for the time she spends sitting around reading, and because she does not play any sports or do anything "athletic." She does her best to hide when the camera comes out, because even though she is in the middle of pedaling her bike over 700 miles across the state of Michigan and then up the western shore to the UP, she is ashamed of her body.
This is only a sampling of the pictures like this I could show you. But then, one day, something changes:
[Side note: In this picture, you can see my son the Lego Savant, who won't be born for another 16 years, squinting into the camera with me.]
Let me tell you the story of this picture:
I am 19. I am transferring to the University of Michigan, and they have assigned me a roommate. I get a letter that tells me that my roommate's name is, well, let's call her Muffy Lou. At this time in my life, I am hanging out with punk rockers a lot, though you can tell from this picture that I am not, myself, actually a punk rocker. I am not happy at the thought of rooming with a preppy. And Muffy Lou sounds like the ultimate preppy name.
A couple of days later, I get a phone call from someone who identifies herself as Louie and says she is my roommate for the fall. I say, "I'm confused, my letter said Muffy Lou." "Oh, yeah," she says, "that's my name but nobody actually calls me that. I think we should meet."
So we do. That picture is of us meeting. She's not home when I arrive at her house, and her mom shows me to the rec room in the basement. After a couple of minutes, I hear the door open and that woman in the picture comes down the stairs. Blonde hair, plaid skirt, oxford shirt, sweater on a chain: Muffy Lou. The preppy personified.
Then she whips off the wig.
In this picture, I think that I am not just squinting into the sun but perhaps also not as OK with this practical joke as I am pretending to be. You can see that Louie does not have my problem with body image--Look at how she stands, hands on hips! Look at that smile! Look at that direct gaze! She is tough, good-humored, smart, playful, self-confident, outgoing. She has a little bow-legged swagger and boundless physical energy. After this picture is taken, she will change into regular clothes and then barbecue seafood for me on the beach.
It is August. By the time I turn 20, on October 13, we will be lovers.
This is the last picture of me with my arms crossed over my stomach. After I come out, my pictures start looking like this:
And this:
And this:
And, for heaven's sake, this:
[My cat Susie Sienkiewicz, may she rest in peace, chewed a bite out of that one.]
It's not that all my body image issues are magically resolved. I doubt they ever will be, not completely. I would be a much better person than I actually am to live as a fat woman in our culture and have no issues at all with how I look and how much I weigh. But you can see that something happens. And it's not just sex--I'd had sex before, with men. Some of whom turned out to not actually be gay, even. It's something else. Something complicated about finally understanding why, for all those years growing up, I felt I didn't fit in but didn't know why; and about Lou liking to look at me and me figuring that out after awhile (why else do I have all these pictures of myself?); and about love; and about it just being very exciting to be a young lesbian in the late 80s.
p.s. In case you are wondering what Lou looks like under that wig, here we are a couple of years later:
We're Facebook friends now. She looks exactly like that but 100 times better--one of those women who starts out cute and just gets better with age. I am happy about every good thing in her life, because she was one of the good things in mine.
(Also, these pictures look crappy because I don't own a scanner, so I just took pictures of them with my camera. I hope they're good enough to make my point.)