On the Basis of Sex and the Open Discussion Project

The boys returned to school on Monday, and today Oliver stayed home sick. He is the easiest, most darling sick kid ever, and as today was frigid, we enjoyed a roaring fire while reading for book club, doing homework, and so forth. I got a bit of work done, though not as much as I’d hoped or planned. I am lucky that that’s OK, but it can be hard to not feel disappointed at times- at the loss of time, of the quiet hours counted on but taken. Tom and I showed the kids The Pursuit of Happyness last weekend, in part because it’s such a good movie but also for perspective; how on the line so many people are constantly, and the stress in that. It’s excruciating.

I didn’t think about it all too much until we picked up Jack and a friend and, as everyone had finished homework, went to see On the Basis of Sex. I felt this intense determination to see it. Today. I bribed my children with candy; Jack’s pal said, “Oh, that sounds wonderful. I’d love to see that.” I swear to god sometimes being with other people’s kids makes you believe that while you may not always see your lessons coming to fruition in your own spawn, you can have some faith that they are and will. Interacting with other kids with good parents lets you see that they can and do apply their skills and loveliness when the time is right. I see this all the time in my students too. Ah, parenting.

Anyway, after plying the children with all manner of “food,” we settled in to our seats, and I exhaled deeply. I’ve felt fitsy all week- tired, and an unsavory blend of worried and furious. The shutdown continues, hurting and stressing so many Americans. It continues because of an ignorant, mean man and the craven, pitiful people who enable him. It continues because of a greedy desire for power, nothing more. This shutdown has nothing to do with protection, nothing to do with security. It is wasteful and rude and the wall is stupid and ineffective.

I mention that because on Sunday I begin participating in the Open Discussion Project. I am both thrilled and honored to have been selected to do so, and yet, as the time approaches, I find myself nervous. The ODP, a joint project of six American bookstores, including my beloved Politics & Prose here in DC, is an effort to talk over the chasm of polarization dividing our country. You can learn more about it here, but in short, it brings together groups of people from across the political spectrum to talk and read books about current events and discuss them. “The goal of this effort is not conversion but conversation and understanding.”

I applied as soon as I read about the opportunity. I exclaimed aloud when I was accepted. I have studiously read our assigned book, highlighting and making mental notes all the while. And yet, I am nervous. I’m nervous because I’m furious. I’m nervous because although I value emotion and fully believe it comes from places of feeling and love I also recognize that it can counter reason, inhibit objectivism, and cloud and fuck things up. Emotion has always been part Achilles heel for me, part gift. We have a skeptical relationship, I think it’s fair to say.

In any case, I admit to feeling extremely correct in my belief that our country is in seriously bad straits, and I am sick to death of racism, sexism, bigotry, religion, and exclusivist conservatism cornering the fucking market on “real” and “salt of the earth” Americans.

No.

I, too, am a real American. A patriot. I am an atheist, an active anti-racist who recognizes that I will always have work to do, a feminist, and a proud progressive. I do not want walls built, on our borders or in our society. And so I worry that I will be unable to hear arguments for the wall. I worry that I will react badly to support for this “president.” I will try to listen, try to understand, but I’m nervous.

Back to the movie. We all loved it, the 7th graders and me especially. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a boss. Incredible human. I cried at the end and found myself struggling not to cheer or retch aloud several times throughout.

“Please introduce yourselves and tell us why you deserve a spot that would otherwise have gone to a man.”
”You used to be pretty and so smart. Now you sound shrill and bitter.”
”You’re just not a fit. I mean, our firm is a family. The wives get jealous.”
”The natural order of things…Caretakers are women.”

Jesus christ. It’s enough to make me insane. Talk about rousing emotions. I was nearly apoplectic at times. And yet still, women carry the bulk of the familial load, the mental load, the emotional load, and so on. We manage the expectations of how to look, how to act, how to be. But most women can never actually win. Not really. Can never strive without seeming strident. Can never assert without seeming shrill. I mean, just look at “grab them by the pussy and take what you want” having zero consequence versus “I want to impeach that motherfucker” being talked about ad nauseum for days. (Trump, Tlaib, respectively.) Really?

I think I carry all this with me into the ODP. I am mad. And driven. And worried. And strong. But that leash of propriety is still around my neck, yanking me back at times. Into expectation or submission or appropriateness or whatever.

It’s infuriating and in instills fear, often simultaneously. And I’m white.

Goodbye 2018: thoughts as we bid it adieu

We returned home yesterday from Christmas with my family in Louisiana, and the trip, an unexpected 12+ hours, was utterly horrific. It involved everything from no available food to multiple missed flights, to gate agents closing the doors in my and the boys’ faces to a “customer service” representative behaving so badly that I ended up sobbing. We finally got home at midnight, and I slept fitfully.

Nonetheless, we are fortunate, and I hold that front and center. We’re home, safe, warm, and so loved. Several days ago, four generations of us played a spirited round of Hearts- Jack, Ol, me, my mom, my dad’s mom who turned 93 that very day. The next day, Mom and I brought flowers to Nanny’s grave. We rearranged the scattered rocks into the hearts shaped by Oliver years ago. Then I hugged my niece and nephew once more. We’re lucky.

As we close out 2018-Tom and I well-fed and Nutmeg purring next to us, the boys with our other nieces at my mother-in-law’s having the best time (they are such great cousins) and a slumber party- there is no way that I’ll make it to midnight. That’s fine.

I know I’ve not been in this space nearly as much this year as in past; I think that’s how things will remain, for a variety of reasons. In the meantime, I  thought I’d leave you with a few of my thoughts before one last episode of Killing Eve.

1. Thank you. From oldest to newest, those I’ve met through and because of Em-i-lis continue to make me feel so lucky. Eli, Amanda, Christine, Elan, Monika, and on and on. I love knowing you. I’m glad you’re out there.

2. Follow your heart and your inner voice. That sounds cheesy, especially this time of year, but what I mean is, trust yourself. If someone isn’t actually a good friend, leave or change the relationship. If you’ve always want to try something, do. If you want to meet someone or get to know them better, reach out. If you think some help might be positive, find it. Therapy is great.

3. Consider the difference between healthy competition and its ugly kin, toxic one-upping. If you’re a parent, please keep in mind what messages you share with your children. Don’t make their worth contingent on diminishing other kids’ value. Don’t snitch, don’t try to out, don’t compare. It’s ugly, it’s sad, it invalidates everything your child might be or is. It makes them see others as competition versus colleagues. It makes you, well, you figure it out. There’s room for all of us. There really is. Be the good. Please.

4. Politically, for those inclined, the fight is ahead of us. After Trump, we will need to heal. It will be hard and it’s going to take a very long time. Stand your ground but remain open. Relativism serves no one. If everything is offensive, nothing is. Some things are wrong. End of story. Others are based on perspective, worthy of discussion. For racism, for example, there is no room. It makes all of us less. For real, fact-based political discourse, there is all the room. It makes all of us better. Please consider your beliefs malleable. Those who act as drying concrete only serve to entrench polarization. Read. Be informed. Be willing to learn. Be willing to change if the facts suggest it worthy to do so. Stand for what is right.

5. Be kind. Be generous. Give. Serve. In any way, in all ways you can. Your family, neighbors, strangers, animals, the earth, those in dire need. I promise you that generosity feels so good. I know that most if not all of you know that. I’m just thinking about how kindness really goes such a long way, and how much so many need some right now.

6. Words matter. They impact and count, so be accurate, think before you speak, respond rather than react when you can. Try to steer clear of nuance’less thinking; little is black or white. 

Goodnight, be well, here’s to a 2019 that is truly better for all of us.

What we're loath to say

There are days in which the degree of highs and lows takes me clear by surprise. In my 40s, I increasingly rarely feel actual surprise. Disappointment? For sure. Disgust? Yep. A grim sort of foregone conclusion? Uh huh.

But outright surprise is harder to come by these days and is usually reserved for horrors like untimely death. Or the continued cancer of the current “president.” How that man gets grosser and grosser is truly astounding, but maybe that’s my naiveté and ever-hopefulness.

In any case, what I will say is that there are moments in which parenting cuts you off at the knees so brutally, so painfully, so egregiously, and so quickly that it takes your breath away. The method of harm, the size of the input force, is not directly correlated to the degree of issue or transgression; that, further, is part of the gasping pain.

I have largely stopped writing about parental challenges, recognizing that my boys, as they grow up, are more aware of what I do and share, more private and rightfully so, and more distinct as formed (forming) humans. Their voices are theirs; their lives belong to them. The space I have left as their mother, in terms of writing and public processing, is increasingly small. This is as it should be, in my opinion. What remains is MY experience as their mom, what I can capture as personal experience distinct from theirs.

This terrain is less charted with regards to the “mommy blog” and pediatric spheres. Sure, you have a general sense of tweendom, but each tween is such a unique being, interplaying in such specific ways with their hormones, family, peers, school, classes, personal struggles, interests, identities, and so forth. What you can expect at 12 years is infinitely more complicated, generally speaking, that what you can expect at 12 months. Perhaps this is actually what makes parenting adolescents so vexing: each of us is always dealing with a new challenge.

I’m actually not much interested, tonight, in delving into research or generalizations. What I am is tired and furious and in love and sad and over it. And tomorrow looms. And that stops for nothing.

What I want to say but am sometimes shy to say; what I think so many of us want to say but are loath to for a variety of reasons that irk the shit out of me, is that sometimes this whole parenting gig just sucks. It sucks and blows so hard that it takes my breath away and renders me speechless and pissed.

It leaves me having spent all day making a special meal to find myself standing in my pjs with the show I’d been wanting to watch all day on pause because a note from a teacher just came about a missed assignment that was now a zero and suddenly, everyone is screaming and in tears. Is someone kidding? It’s both real and absurd. It’s the complete opposite of how I envisioned tonight and so very much wanted it to be.

At the end of the day, the gumbo was one of the best I’ve made, and the fighting and crying probably made us closer, and that show isn’t that good anyway. But still. It all felt so damn fraught and not remotely easy and also not remotely efficient or timely, and seriously, WTF?

The gumbo was loved and there is more for tomorrow. The banjo was played, and lovingly so. The paper will be better, but still a deserved zero. The book remains forgotten at school for another damn day. The Bach on the piano is being studiously avoided. The wine bottle is less full. We are all tired. And maybe this is the best of family, and the worst, and real life. But sometimes I sure wish it was easier.